Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels

Dude if you only want to use insta for dms, try bleeper. I swear, most of my school friends only use / are active on insta and I never used insta because I Hated reels / insta in general (my personal opinion, never found it appealing)

So my friend suggested me to use bleeper, I had heard of it ofc but I mean I always thought eh it would be too much of an hassle, then when my friend did it and said its easy so I actually downloaded bleeper created an insta with a password on private incognito and then just pasted the password to my phone's bleeper in insta and then gave it to friend and boom I am now in insta dms without using insta.

And its all free. and they even run on matrix protocol and are pushing to be even more self hosted (ie. currently the account gets in their server, (i think) afterwards, it would be on your local device)

Seriously man, I think I am sort of a shill of bleeper even though they don't even know who I am or I have an incentive to, but I genuinely like their product. I genuinely hope that they don't ever enshitten it man. Bleeper team if you are reading this, that's my only request, don't add power creep, keep on focusing on local as you are doing right now and just don't ever enshitten your product.

It’s not nice to subject your friends’ private communications to ad tech surveillance.

I deleted my Instagram account, now my friends and I message on other (end to end encrypted) platforms that don’t subject us to censorship and spying.

They didn't even consider what you want or anyone other than the way to make profit of the app. Sometimes those goals align, many times not. The reason they show you random accounts is because they want you to get hooked and watch the ads they sell.

It’s like X reverting to “For you” from “Following” no matter how intently you ask them to show less often. It’s like X telling you - “don’t ever install our app, it’ll be worse”.

By the way, Meta then must add a paid plan “Messaging Only” mode for Instagram :)

While I do get the frustration, you cannot really complain if you don't use Instagram for its main feature...

You can use an application like Franz or Beeper to have ONLY the chats and nothing else.

Is there any account that just shows boring stuff every day? Because now it says when I snooze that I won't see recommended posts unless I've scrolled past my friends' posts. So it seems I need to follow something that I'm totally uninterested in (I'm thinking gray boxes of unvarying sizes would be good), and that posts quite often.

OOh I found a use for AI slop! Getting me off instagram!

[dead]

I've tried adding rules to ublock origin but sites like youtube and many others now have "component obfuscation". Meaning there is no unique ID on their components/elements and it makes it much harder to target.

And some element titles/names are even on a different component than the content, which is even harder still. So it says "reels" on one component and the actual reels are on another.

Blocking now has to be a logical combination of CSS selection, text identification and a target-action component.

+1

Native apps can in many ways be better than web apps but they definitely lack the client side control that a web app (or any website) comes with. The user is sadly just a consumer and the product at the same time without an opinion.

What I also don’t like are companies that more and more push the user into using the native (I.e. installed) app over the website. I use almost all apps in browser (YouTube, LinkedIn) and the LinkedIn website has a “this content is only visible in the LinkedIn app” banner that is so prominent, it’s disgusting. You’re unable to see details of people changing their job / completing a degree and you’re unable to see the list of “visitors of your profile” (even though this is a silly feature).

On iOS I use YouTube in the browser for a single reason: ads are not shown and/or skippable by reloading the site. Sometimes I use the YouTube app on an iPad and the advertisement experience is so bad. I highly recommend using YouTube in browser (Safari).

Since I’m also somewhat addicted to short, but only use YouTube, I’ve built a chrome+safari extension that allows me to watch X shorts (for longer than 1sec) before closing the page and redirecting me to a different page (whatever you want). This is quite helpful. You can check it out [here](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-shorts-trac...). I also use it on iOS via the Safari extension but I haven’t published it yet.

I also use DFInstagram. You can keep stories; I have mine configured to kill the feed & cancerous search page grid but allow me to see stories. Works great.

F.B. Purity[1] works great for Facebook. It can selectively remove ads, suggested crap, reels, etc.

[1]: https://www.fbpurity.com/

I'm very curious how you manage to pull in social feeds-- there are many billions of dollars working against your accessing social media posts that haven't been dipped in digital crack. As far as I can tell, the API's that are available are really limited, as a result.

I do the same, I include a few news outlets, HN, some good blogs I follow, even podcasts. All sorted chronologically: you can filter by source or tag, no clutter, no ads, just links and often even the full text. All is hosted on an ancient RaspberryPi 3 and exposed over public Internet (with password protection).

https://freshrss.org/

can you elaborate on the setup? this is interesting I want the same

This looks exactly what I am trying to achieve with RSS but never quite got to the point where it's usable enough to stick to it long term.

Sounds like a great thing to build! Seems like a lot of commenters are interested in more granular implementation details :)

This does sound divine. Please give us some more details.

I agree.

Think of willpower as a finite resource. It's simply not feasible to rely on it solely. You need to build the world you want to live in. (Set yourself up for success)

Also works on the mobile page.

The other thing possible is to block certain post types with uBlock origin, on desktop or mobile:

  www.instagram.com##article:has-text(Suggested for you):style(visibility: hidden !important; height: 300px !important; overflow: hidden !important)
  www.instagram.com##article:has-text(Because you liked a post):style(visibility: hidden !important; height: 300px !important; overflow: hidden !important)

Facebook mobile tip: if you click on the burger menu and select "Feeds" you will be taken to a page with a list of different feeds at the top. If you then select the "Friends" tab you will see only posts from your friends. Doesn't get rid of ads, unfortunately, but it does get rid of all the crap from recommended pages, etc...

I didn't know this one, thanks!

Can you set this as default?

THANK YOU

Rather hard to sell it here to people who are (mostly) capable to install Tampermonkey and add one line rule.

which sites does this work with?

You can't take the same approach on iOS but to Apple's credit, they do a great job with user privacy with their Screen Time permission. Apps with that permission get the ability to restrict other apps on the phone without ever knowing what they are. They can even report data back to the user without ever knowing that data.

Source: I am a developer of Clearspace, which is an iOS Screen Time App https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearspace-reduce-screen-time/...

For Android I did it using the Accessibility Service API, iOS doesn't provide any similar API, the platform itself is much more restricted. So I think is technicaly not possible

Yeah, this is not possible in iOS because there is no equivalent of Accessibility services for apps to control other apps behavior.

Not sure what OP is running waitlist for, my guess is a combination of screen time + focus modes + content blockers in Safari.

It’s currently Android only. There is a waitlist on their website for the iOS version.

The answer is jailbreak or sideloaded modified ipas.

DigiPaws has the headlining feature of the app advertised here, and is open source.

https://github.com/nethical6/digipaws

I understand your point.

The short answer is that, indeed, it comes down to trust, and I really understand and respect your perspective.

The long answer is that it's very unlikely this trust would be broken. Let me explain:

Firstly, the accessibility service doesn’t provide anything close to "full control." It’s just an API provided by Android that gives accessibility events, like changes in the screen layout and the UI nodes present on the screen to infer the type of content shown (Reels in my case). You can check online for details on accessibility events. It's nothing like a constant screen recording where the app gets all your data.

Also, Google is very strict with these permissions. When you publish an app on the Play Store, you need to clearly disclose why you're using those permissions. If you do something wrong or try to abuse this, they will take your app down. Anyone who values their reputation wouldn’t attempt something like this just to sell some user data.

Lastly, ScrollGuard doesn’t need to connect to any server to work!, all the detection happens on the device. So, if you want to be extra cautious, you can always go to your phone settings and block internet access to ScrollGuard. It will still work, and without internet access is imposible to export any data.

If you want even more control and just need a solution for Instagram, you can modify the app yourself. I wrote an article a couple of years ago on how to do this here: https://breakthescroll.com/block-reels-instagram/

What guarantees do you have that open source code faithfully reflects what is in the compiled binary?

must be a rather useless device you have there then...

> full control on my phone if it's not open-source.

bro is using social media that listens and records ton's of data in background.

https://www.hipaajournal.com/jury-trial-meta-flo-health-cons...

I understand the position, but I think that's a silly concern here. This is an app that stops you from using social media features that absolutely farm every bit of data out of you they possibly can.

Feels a bit like being afraid to install a smart lock on your front door, so instead you leave it unlocked all the time.

This is a good point, I will try to find a solution. Currently, it's able to whitelist Reels from the DM feed, and it will block the rest as soon as you start scrolling, I'll see how to do this for normal posted reels.

One problem I have with all these self control style apps is that they only let you set total per day hourly limits. My intuition is that if you give yourself a two hour, one hour, even 30 minute limit per day you're still liable to drift into zombie mode and are more likely to want to unblock after that long brain rot session. My ideal blocking app wouldn't restrict your total per day, instead the key feature would be that you can only scroll for 5-10 minutes at a time with a cooling off period. That is, if you scroll for 5 minutes you then have to wait X minutes before you can scroll again. I think this should have a strong c-c-c-c-ombo breaker effect without giving you enough time to get hooked so badly that you immediately want to bypass it.

I deleted the YouTube and Instagram apps and I still end up scrolling / watching shorts - it doesn't matter, browser still lets you scroll

I'd recommend just uninstalling the apps. I'm still able to get the content I need, and scroll mechanic doesn't work as well on the websites so a lot of the temptation to doom scroll goes away.

The way that all these tech companies decided that the users couldn't simply turn those features off is maddening. And the "See this Less Often" option doesn't seem to do anything at all on apps like Facebook.

If you turn off YouTube view history, it breaks Shorts. It also breaks a lot of other shit (e.g. back button after you've clicked a video from a search).

I understand the privacy concerns. I did my best to address it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44943215. I completely agree with your second point.

Which is why I use modified version of YouTube on the web and on Android. I don't watch videos on iPad unless I have to. (I happen to have an Android tablet so that works well.) Although I know this is not a solution for everyone.

Thanks, glad you like it! I’m not planning to open source it, at least in the short term

I had an epiphany that faulting myself, and my self-control, is exactly what these sites want you to do. "Oh, it's just your bad self-discipline"

No, this is full-on war for control of your mind. And the adversary spends millions to hire teams of the world's best psychologists and engineers to deploy technology that never sleeps with the sole purpose of grabbing and keeping your attention.

Once I realized this, I started treating doomscrolling and Youtube rabbit holes not as personal insufficiencies, but as systemic failures in my psychological defense system. I started installing my own tech to keep me safe, and I am much, much happier.

Predictably, companies like Google try to disable the defenses (e.g. with Manifest v3, which was a garbage excuse to disable many defensive extensions). And so the war goes.

One thing I think a lot of people need to realize and ponder on more... is that these companies have nearly infinite resources, they have entire teams studying the psychology of how to get you to use their apps more (because they primarily chase engagement to sell your attention to advertisers).

Not only do they have well-paid experts working on getting you using their platform more often and for longer, but they also have a scary amount of metadata on hundreds of millions of people... they can pluck a person that behaves just like you out of the ether, compare their engagement trends, and apply the same algorithm to you.

The resource imbalance becomes really difficult to comprehend. It's like you're trying to avoid a pickpocket that has successfully pickpocketed millions of people, and the pickpocket has years of your behavior at their fingertips and can cross-reference it with every pickpocketing attempt they've ever attempted... oh, and they designed everything about the city you're walking in to make it easier to pickpocket you.

> This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control,

It's like food, easier to have self control not to buy candies in the supermarket than to have self control at home when you know you have candies in the pantry.

I haven't felt the need to watch a reel since I uninstalled IG, before that I ended up scrolling here and there, not much but enough to regret the lost time at the end of the week

It's also not some "oopsie". It's almost certainly not news but these sites want these 'one more' behaviors.

Years ago, I designed a minimalist YouTube player that removed video suggestions and autoplays but used their player, didn't evade ads, etc. I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed.

Pretty sure I am still banned on all Google APIs too.

would also be unnecessary if these apps respected the user rather than trying to addict them

A very effective partial solution - there is absolutely 0 reason to have any meta app cancers on phones/tablets. Just let them go, leave them for laptop/desktop and you are more than 50% there. This way they lose a lot of their instant addictivity.

Same goes for tiktok and similar other shit forming and then feeding on addictions. Everything becomes much easier afterwards, especially long term.

I removed FB apps quite some years ago when they were draining batteries of phones even when not used, a typical bad engineering that facebook seems to never get rid off (their web had always some issues, stuff doesn't work, feed doesn't load, comments fail or get posted 2x, albums don't upload all photos etc. with just ublock origin on firefox on fiber optic). I just don't need even their messenger, any worthy contacts can be migrated to other apps.

The exception to all above - whatsapp, simply too much used in Europe and literally everywhere else outside of US. But that's much better engineered product from start.

It'd be a lot easier if the companies behind these products gave users (paid or otherwise) literally any mechanism to opt-out. It drives me mad that YouTube provides a "not interested" button, but refuses to respect my explicit wishes, even as a YouTube Premium subscriber. It wouldn't even be quite so bad if they just didn't bother to ask, at least then I could imagine that such a mechanism would be too complicated or something, but they bother to ask--and then they comply for the remainder of my session. Just make it permanent, you absolute ghouls.

> This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control

I'm thankful that I'm weird enough to be actively annoyed by the mere existence of Shorts. No chance of getting addicted.

Don't use Instagram either so.

There's no weakness in identifying an adversarial situation and acting accordingly.

Your adversary is playing to win. Why should you forfeit the contest?

Why is it more surprising that scrolling is addictive versus, say, putting a stick of combusting plant matter in your mouth and inhaling the smoke?

> This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control

Or if the platform owners had a minimum of scruples or empathy for their fellow human beings, instead of being disgusting money-hungry goblins concerned solely with their own personal wealth.

I hate yt shorts with a passion, so that's one way of having "perfect self-control" right there.

I would definitely `opkg install slow_drip_instagram` on my router :-D

In another thread here, the author of "TimeCap" mentions their iOS app. I just downloaded it and am currently trying it. It blocks a lot of the junk. I've only used it for 4 or 5 minutes now, but it does a lot of what I'm looking for, so it's worth a look. There is a fee ($30/yr or $3/week) so I'm currently trying the $3/week to see if it's what I want.

Google's ears just pricked up

When it feels like you constantly have to fight against the platform to try and scrap together a usable experience maybe its time to consider why you even use that platform. pixelfed is great and its such a breathe of fresh air compared to instagram.

For those times when you need/want to see an Instagram post, imginn.com is 10,000 times better than Instagram (assuming the account isn't private).

Not OP but... The universal answer to this somewhat cliche and paternalistic comment is always "but that's where my people are"..

And I want to be where my people are. So I choose to make informed trade-offs.

Don't know about reels, but there's "Unhook" for Firefox which will hide Shorts and recommendations on YouTube.

try this https://apps.apple.com/us/app/socialfocus-hide-distractions/...

Thanks! I haven't seen any issue with battery or performance. But if you find any problem, feel free to drop me an email and I'll take a look

I just don't understand the appeal of reels for the average user posting them (eg, not a "creator"). All comments come through as DMs which feels weird/creepy. The social/engagement is out the window; your friends can't comment on your content and reply to each other. It's just an effing weird one-way broadcast medium that's painful to deal with (might randomly play sound, might show photos for too long/too short, video with no easily usable scrubber, etc). The only "advantage" I see is that it's limited to 24h so you don't feel like you're making as permanent a record of your content. I'm sure some "younger" folks (who are probably 35 now) thought this was a good antidote to the generation before them being embarrassed by their old FB content, but man. I just hate reels.

Thankfully I don't doomscroll or otherwise sucked into the content generated by randos; I mostly only see stuff my friends post, but man, I would pay good money to never have to see a "suggested" anything again.

I actually built an app to do that for iOS. It’s called TimeCap, and it creates a web view of Instagram without reels and the explore page. Then I use Beeper for the DMs. My daily social media use is less than 20 min per day now.

I'm curious. I don't use social media and am very extroverted. All of the communication, including sharing media, I do through WhatsApp (because it's most popular and widespread) or Signal (preferred).

Does Instagram have any advantage in communication or media sharing over standard widely adopted messaging (and group messaging) apps?

This might be useful for you: https://pi-hole.net/. You can set your own DNS server at home and block specific domains

I partially agree. I think, first, it's necessary to make a commitment to breaking the addiction, and then raise the level of awareness in order to follow through with that commitment. I believe an app can help detect addictive triggers and help a person move from an "impulsive and automatic mental state" to a "state of awareness."

No need for a VPN, it uses the Android Accessibility Service

I had the same problem, but then discovered that chrome extension StayFree (used to be called StayFocused or something) released and app for android, that can block sites on android too. Now, I just added links to all the short video pages of all major social networks, and it does work!

It only works on the YouTube native app for the moment

This seems to be done through the accessibility services, which makes sense: they're built for apps like screen readers that must by nature be able to read the content of other apps. Each app has to be manually authorized by going to the accessibility menu, and there's a big scary pop up that says "enabling this app will allow it to see and interact with everything you do."

Awesome! Feel free to email me at scrollguard [at] breakthescroll.com and I’ll add you when I have a beta ready.

At the moment, it works only for the YouTube native app, but I'm considering extending the functionality to web browsers.

Control Panel for YouTube lets you hide Home, Shorts, Related videos, plus anything you don't want to see in Subscriptions (including videos you've already watched), plus you can disable autoplay of random videos, block ads and more, in YouTube itself.

https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube

You can accomplish this in Firefox with the Unhook extension

Sure!, you can download the app here: https://scrollguard.app/

Your solution is for everyone in the world to foster a degree of self-discipline they've never shown any inclination for in the past?

That doesn't sound like a scalable solution. These apps are so pervasive and their use adopted at such a young age (with a large degree of social pressure) it seems like legislation is the only way to curb these dark patterns.

Like other commentators have said these are extremely well resourced companies looking for ways to exploit human psychology at scale. It's in a walled garden, compiled app so it's you have very limited ability to modify what you're shown. End-users of apps need to be given more power over what they can be shown and if that kills companies then to me that's an acceptable tradeoff.

Unfortunately, we're well past that era. Certain tech is so "good", we need to actively fight it and, sadly, the only solution is more tech.

Not related, see also media and nutrition.