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238 points madinmo | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.265s | source

Hi all,

I kept wasting time on social media, even though I’d promised myself I’d stay focused. Regular site blockers didn’t help.

I needed something that felt annoying enough to break the habit. That’s how the idea came up: make the blocker ask me to say something embarrassing out loud before it lets me back in. If I actually have to yell “I’m a loser” into my mic. Even better - the louder I screamed, the more time I’d get.

So I put together Scream to Unlock. It’s silly, but so far it’s done its job. My social feeds stay locked unless I really want them.

Extension link - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-ye...

Its open source and transparent - https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock. No data collection or tracking, Audio processing happens locally in your browser. No recordings saved or transmitted.

1. ssalka ◴[] No.44380876[source]
As much as I hate to say it, forcing users to look at ads probably does a decent job of limiting social media time, at least it would for me.

On TikTok you can just swipe through ads when they come up, so lots of people now have built-in muscle memory to auto-swipe every 4th or 5th video, or if they see "Sponsored" in the lower left. If I was instead forced to watch every one of those through to completion, I'd spend a lot less time on there.