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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)
757 points headalgorithm | 5 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.924s | source
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joshdavham ◴[05 Feb 25 15:50 UTC] No.42950233[source]▶
One thing to consider for those of us who are more sensitive to online outrage is to just quit social media all together. I’m technically gen z and I’ve been off of social media (aside from HN, WhatsApp and discord) for years and you wouldn’t believe how great it’s been for my overall state of mind.

Reddit, instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, etc are all the equivalent of digital junk food and I’d argue that we’re all a lot more negatively affected by it than we think. There’s a reason ‘brain rot’ was word of the year.

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1. su8898 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:26 UTC] No.42951963[source]▶
Not sure if you’ve intentionally omitted it but I would also include YouTube in this list. YouTube can be very addictive with all the clickbait thumbnails etc.
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2. ge96 ◴[05 Feb 25 17:28 UTC] No.42952010[source]▶
haha yeah that's where you inject custom CSS on the page to hide thumbnails, come to YouTube to see something? no thumbnails to distract your original intent
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3. joshdavham ◴[05 Feb 25 23:32 UTC] No.42956907[source]▶
> Not sure if you’ve intentionally omitted it but I would also include YouTube in this list

Yeah I did conciously omit it actually, but only because I consider Youtube to be basic internet infrastructure and quite valuable if used right.

However, for me personally, I've actually blocked Youtube from Chrome when not in incognito mode to keep me signed out by default and I've also completely blocked the site from my iPad (and ofc I also don't have the app installed).

I unfortunately struggle with some form of social media addiction and I've made pretty dramatic changes to keep myself away from these sites.

4. youainti ◴[06 Feb 25 01:13 UTC] No.42957730[source]▶
do you have a link to instructions on how to do that? It sounds really nice.
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5. ge96 ◴[06 Feb 25 03:36 UTC] No.42958749{3}[source]▶
by chrome extension, chrome extensions are pretty straight forward to build but yeah, you just inject a CSS file that hides what you want

you don't have to release the extension, you just load it unpackaged by developer mode in the extensions settings