This is really cool! Tho I've found it really hard to not just disable these self-made barriers when the urge overcomes me. I guess the trick is to create sufficient _additional_ barriers to disabling the (initial) barriers so that it becomes too costly vs. the 'hit' of the initial bad habit. I feel a more realistic blocker might be to increase the latency of these habits, so that they're in that sweet spot between accessibility and inaccessibility where usage is kind-of naturally regulated. Slowly demyelinating those quick-hit dopamine-infused pathways! :P E.g. imagine setting up an ISP level enforced latency for social media. Would that work?
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I think any sufficiently motivated person would be able to scroll no matter what (your example can be bypassed by a VPN I think).
When I was quitting some vices, just interrupting the automatic Bored->browsing transition was enough to get me to make other choices
I also found this by just blocking things like HN in my /etc/hosts file. It's amazing how often I found my myself staring at an error page and then wondering why if I didn't make a conscious decision to go there. Habits can be unsettling like that.
I only access HN from my mobile now, which I put out of reach when working.
Neuroscience nit - you’re likely depotentiating synapses rather than demyelinating axons.
> E.g. imagine setting up an ISP level enforced latency for social media. Would that work?
It depends on what you mean. Do you mean some sort of mechanism on the ISP's account page that lets you delay certain sites? IMO that sort of functionality would be better self-hosted, though I'm not sure of any open-source projects offering such functionality at this time.
If you are proposing a mechanism where the user does not have control, no it would not. The whole point of net neutrality is to not slow down certain sites. Even though Ajit Paid fucked that up, I imagine people would not be very happy if an ISP slowed down certain popular websites. I imagine said popular websites would be used to speak out against this too, paradoxically.
It can easily be done at OS level, forcing you to wait 30sec to 1min to open Twitter. Want to disable the timer ? Sure, it's possible in the settings, you just have to wait 1 min before being able to disable it.
I configured screen time in iOS, but it just don't work, I know the code.
Using the method in the article, it should be possible to restrict access to the Shortcuts app itself to certain times (for example to between 5am and 6am ;)), so that the original shortcut can’t be disabled at any time.
I can confirm that screen time doesn’t really work unless a different person controls the code.
So I checked and you can’t choose Shortcuts app as a trigger.
But I can understand why. This could be a recipe to break a device.