A lot of adults need this too. The addictive apps are very well designed, while most blockers are either too easy to ignore or too annoying to keep using.
I built a small iOS blocker because I had the same problem. Making it strict enough to actually work without making people hate it is the main challenge.
On the radio I heard a reporter talking about things China does during school exams. Apparently all schools have exams at the same time and during that period, social media shuts down at night. I forget the exact hours (10pm - 6am maybe). I'm starting to think that would be a great policy in general for everybody.
I think they also said AI companies go offline during exam hours, but I may have got that wrong.
Absolutely wild that we’re seeing proposals to shut down parts of the internet and regulate when people can talk to each other on social platforms as a real suggestion on HN.
I feel like we’ve completely lost the plot when we’re starting to invite government partial Internet shutdowns as a good idea. This is a totalitarian government play.
I think it speaks to the complete lack of government regulation in the area that people see such extreme answers as positive. If any government had seen fit to engage in light regulation of what social media can do people might be happier.
Governments have been working on regulating platforms. Every time they get close, there’s outrage when people realize what it means for them.
Age regulations are the best example. Every time the topic comes up there is a lot of support for government regulation of social media by age.
Then every time there comes an actual attempt at government regulation or even self-regulation by the companies, everyone goes ballistic when they realize what that regulation means.
This topic is awash in ideas that regulation will come in like a scalpel that only touches something that won’t affect anything we like, only hurt some companies in some specific way that doesn’t take anything away from us. This notion doesn’t survive contact with reality.
That’s how we get these short sighted comments inviting the government to come shut down parts of the internet. I bet the person who asked for that assumed it would be perfectly targeted at sites they don’t need or use, leaving their version of the internet untouched. They never imagined the government might scope creep it to start shutting down communications they didn’t like.
Maybe the people of
" Age regulations are the best example. Every time the topic comes up there is a lot of support for government regulation of social media by age."
and
" Then every time there comes an actual attempt at government regulation or even self-regulation by the companies, everyone goes ballistic when they realize what that regulation means."
are different?
"This topic is awash in ideas that regulation will come in like a scalpel that only touches something that won’t affect anything we like, only hurt some companies in some specific way that doesn’t take anything away from us. This notion doesn’t survive contact with reality." Depends on the regulation. Also maybe the non intended effects are still worth to introduce the regulation?
If it's so dangerous, get off social media, and get your kids off it. It's literally that simple. We don't need a nanny state telling the rest of us how to live because some scared, hysterical parents need a villain
I can only imagine these people have never experienced such censorship.
Maybe they'll feel differently when they have to upload their ID and face scan (which later gets leaked) just to be able to read a recipe for beer or whatever.
> I feel like we’ve completely lost the plot when we’re starting to invite government partial Internet shutdowns as a good idea. This is a totalitarian government play.
There's been criticism about the culture surrounding platforms like Mastodon/Bluesky that anticipated this.
Putting China aside, and regardless about one's opinion on the aformentionned measure, I think you need first to learn the concept about totalitarian governement and representative democracy before trying to use those words because you clearly don't know what these are.
But it's kind of a logical, if misguided, consequence of regulators being completely corrupt and letting those feudal lords do whatever the hell they want.
You don’t need to be an addict to doomscroll, drink alcohol, consume weed, etc. In free countries we generally consider it ok let you do things that aren’t necessarily good for you at large doses.
Toast notifications were the big mistake. Also badges. In my perfect world, the only thing to retain the ability to keep messages alerting the user that someone tried to contact them would be voicemail, subject to the same spam laws as everything else.
This argument is lacking nuance. Just because there are some instances of paternalism one is prepared to accept, doesn't mean that every possible paternalist policy is always okay. Being in favour of some instances but not all, is not a logical inconsistency. We can talk about each instance on a case by case basis.
Seatbelt laws have very limited impact outside vehicle safety. Nor does it open a slippery slope that leads to buses and trains and elevators and dining chairs and beds getting their own seatbelts.
Regulation on speech threatens the basis of democracy. The fact that the countries pushing them most successfully (UK, Australia) are also the ones with serious freedom of speech problems compared to their Western peers should also tell you that no, they will not stop at throwing you in jail for memes on twitter.
personally yes, that kind of choice should belong to the individual not the government. besides that though the laws are nonsensical why is a seatbelt required in a car not not in a bus, why are motorcycles even allowed at all?
This argument falls apart for countries with socialized healthcare.
As long as all people are paying for your dumb decisions, it is reasonable to expect the government to reduce the frequency of dumb decisions by adequate means.
I notice that these sorts of justifications for increased paternalism as a consequence of socialized services come up in public discourse all the time but never seems to be mentioned by advocates when proposing these socialized systems. It should be mentioned up front as a significant cost as part of the package, it comes with strings attached like the government telling you how to live your life. Interesting that people don't seem to want to mention that up front.
I support socialized medicine and I completely agree with you, we should be honest about the fact that it requires some level of regulatory coercion to work well.
Enforcing a healthy diet and exercise would have a vastly larger impact than any seatbelt laws in terms of reducing health care costs. Seatbelts and smoking always seem to be about as far as the advocates are willing to go though.
Yes, I do. Its just another way that cops can pull you over for bullshit charges and revenue enhancement.
I remember in my state, it was initially only a citation that couldnt be pulled over on. Then they flipped that and started pulling over for it. Why? Pure fucking money grab.
Me not wearing a seatbelt means I risk getting splattered. Not you, or anyone else.
> Me not wearing a seatbelt means I risk getting splattered. Not you, or anyone else.
Except who pays for your million-dollar reconstructive surgery and rehab? I don't suppose you will cover that out of pocket to avoid burdening your fellow insurance payers with your reckless behavior?
>Me not wearing a seatbelt means I risk getting splattered. Not you, or anyone else.
Physics says otherwise. In a collision you don't decide where you body is yeeted and your skull could end inside the skull of a passenger using his seatbelt. Don't be a moron.
https://youtube.com/shorts/n2yLMGA_YSA?si=AlvRgfpb-PJxGCBw
Are motorcycles without seatbelts or harnesses satire?
All im saying is that an adult should be able to choose to wear a seatbelt or not in their own vehicle. And also, shouldnt get fined for choosing to not wear one.
BTW, i wear one when i drive or am a passenger. And if im driving, i ask everyone to wear one.
So, you dont care about children on schoolbusses? None of them have seatbelts.
And motorcycles are explicitly allowed, and have no restraints or harnesses. Mopeds, same. Scooters, same. Bicycles, same.
Adults *should* have the right to do risky behaviors that increases the risk of bodily injury. But no matter the link you put forth, doesnt explain why fucking schoolbusses that transport years 6-18 dont have seatbelts.
You seem like a very angry individual based on how you respond to very normal dialogue here. I suggest therapy.
Secondly, seatbelts are not just about you, genius. If you are thrown from a car you could hit something or someone else, endangering others. Thus, seatbelts are not only for your safety, but for others as well.
> I don't want to grant government the power to make that decision for me.
The alternative is letting multi-trillion dollar companies make those decisions for you, which they do with the explicit intent to manipulate you AND to push the politics of the currently sitting government of the United States.
Meta has repeatedly censored LGBT content, with no warning or stated policy change, since the government changed. All without the formal legislative process. Good chance the Trump admin didn't even ask for this, Meta just did it pre-emptively to suck up to them.
Opposing some basic restrictions on addictive and exploitative features and the requirement to offer users a standard reverse-chronological-followed feed without "The Algorithm", does not make you an Anti-Government Free Thinker. You're the exact kind of "sheep" Zuckerberg & the Trump administration want you to be.
You might have the self-awareness and impulse control to stop yourself from getting addicted to these apps, but the majority of the world's population does not.
These giant companies pour millions upon millions of dollars into engineering their services to be as "engaging" (read: addictive) as possible with the specific goal of making users spend more time on them.
Against that, the average person has no chance. The power balance is hugely uneven.
A responsible government which actually cares for its people has a duty to protect them from abuse like that.
Unfortunately it seems like by design on IOS there is no way to make an IOS blocker you cannot disable relatively easily. I would love a way to have a DNS blocker that you need a password to disable but it seems like this isn't possible. Every blocking app you can simply delete and the block goes away.
I used to use it all the time until about a year ago or so. Its responses are full of filler and the safeguards are really overbearing. It often will just give wrong answers in a way that GPT-5.x does not. I once asked it why a particular celebrity was canceled and it refused to tell me because it may harm me to know what they said!
Fwiw - I found the advanced AI voice feature to be actually detrimental. It's good if you just want a single sentence answer. I've turned it off though when I want a more detailed, structured, considered answer.
Interestingly, that kind of parallels the real world too: if you want a quick and high level answer, talk to someone in person; if you want something detailed and info-dense, get them to write it down.
The AI attached to their voice chat is running a completely different model. Ask any question and you quickly realize it is completely, unapologetically lobotomized. If you want to talk to it about how you feel after your gf/bf broke up with you, it is fine. If you want to ask it something about tunneling machines and how tunneling through different types of rock impact engineering decisions, it is going to skim the first four sentences of some blog article and then defend whatever hill it has chosen until it dies, regardless of what the larger body of work on the topic says. OpenAI's voice chat being so bad and being totally divorced from their SOTA models is largely why I cancelled my subscription. I am tempted to wire up piper/whisper and the OAI api to get back what I actually want/need. But today you cannot have a conversation about engineering questions and get anything close to factually reliable answers out of it.
Turning advanced voice still leaves "regular" voice interaction which are actually (for me:) much much better - it's just the regular response, verbalized :). Voice quality isn't worse, it just doesn't try to summarize in one casual sentence.
(I still hate that the voice is getting more and more "natural" - the umms and ahhs and weird pauses)
Well, even working as an AI engineer is no longer secure. It may soon be the case that all humans work for bots created by others. Is that the universal salary we are talking about?
I also made an app to fix my scrolling issue — it’s called EvoCat.
The idea came from wanting to combine the best parts of all the focus apps I used: scheduled block sessions like Opal, mindful breathing interruptions like One Sec, and some light gamification to make it feel less like punishment.
EvoCat is a small animated character (a cat-phone hybrid) that evolves as you stay focused. The longer you avoid distractions, the stronger it becomes — and the harder it gets to cancel your focus sessions. It turns screen time control into something a bit more playful, but still effective.
I currently have a beta available on iOS and I’m happy to share a TestFlight link if anyone wants to try it out.
You can also check it out here: https://evocat.app
Would love feedback from fellow builders and focus-app nerds :)
Hi HN,
I've been working on a solution to a problem I personally struggled with—maintaining focus in our hyper-connected digital environment. Rather than simply blocking apps or showing stats, I wanted to create something that would make the journey toward better digital habits engaging and rewarding.
EvoCat is the result: a digital companion that evolves visually as you build better focus habits. Think of it as a Tamagotchi with a purpose. Your cat grows stronger when you successfully complete focus sessions, and it provides increasingly sophisticated interventions (like guided breathing exercises) when you're tempted by distractions.
Technical highlights:
Uses on-device activity monitoring without sending data to servers
Implements progressive friction that adapts to your usage patterns
Gamifies focus with visual pet evolution that provides tangible progress markers
Combines scheduled focus sessions with real-time intervention
I'd love feedback from the HN community on both the concept and implementation. Has anyone else tried merging digital wellbeing with virtual pets? What other interaction patterns might make focus more engaging?
You can try it at [https://evocat.app]. There's a free tier to get started.
A lot of adults need this too. The addictive apps are very well designed, while most blockers are either too easy to ignore or too annoying to keep using.
I built a small iOS blocker because I had the same problem. Making it strict enough to actually work without making people hate it is the main challenge.