
I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit - curuinor
https://howonlee.github.io/2020/02/12/I-20Add-2020-20Seconds-20of-20Latency-20to-20Every-20Website-20I-20Visit.html
======
Antwan
I ran a website for youngsters several years ago. One of the duties to
maintain it was to moderate discussion boards. Some kids were difficult to
manage and would not accept to be banned (via email/IP/or whatever solution)
and would keep recreating profiles.

Ultimately I dealt with those ppl by “greylisting” them. Added a sleep() prior
each page rendering of 5 to 25 secs (actually it was more sophisticated and
would stream chunks over TCP so the slowness feeling was even more real).

Worked like a charm. Few days after the recalcitrant would no longer come on
the website.

I called this “moderation by degradation of user experience”, and was pretty
effective like the solution described in your post.

Think about page load if you need to restrain visits.

~~~
anw
This reminds me of the old VBulletin plugin "Miserable Users"[0].

We also had a community suffering from this problem (during the early 2000's).
Bans would take care of a lot of problem users, but would just give energy to
those truly out for blood, troll, bored, or very immature.

We had one user get banned over a dozen times while we tried banning IPs, name
regex or anything else we could think of. Finally, like you, we found that if
we annoy them first, they get bored and shuffle off to some other, lower
barrier place.

Some of the nice features from that plugin (via the site) were:

1\. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).

2\. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).

3\. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).

4\. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage
by default).

5\. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).

6\. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).

7\. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper
page.

* [0] [https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258](https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258)

~~~
hinkley
Kinda reminiscent of advice I’ve overheard for breaking up with a narcissist:
make them break up with _you_ by being boring.

~~~
oska
This is the 'Grey Rock' strategy:

> So, how do we escape this parasitical leech without triggering his
> vindictive rage? Gray Rock is primarily a way of encouraging a psychopath, a
> stalker or other emotionally unbalanced person, to lose interest in you. It
> differs from No Contact in that you don’t overtly try to avoid contact with
> these emotional vampires. Instead, you allow contact but only give boring,
> monotonous responses so that the parasite must go elsewhere for his supply
> of drama. When contact with you is consistently unsatisfying for the
> psychopath, his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama.
> Psychopaths are addicted to drama and they can’t stand to be bored. With
> time, he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself
> drawn to you less and less often. Eventually, they just slither away to
> greener pastures. Gray Rock is a way of training the psychopath to view you
> as an unsatisfying pursuit you bore him and he can’t stand boredom.

[https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-
with-p...](https://lovefraud.com/the-gray-rock-method-of-dealing-with-
psychopaths/)

~~~
justinjlynn
> his mind is re-trained to expect boredom rather than drama

> he will find a new person to provide drama and he will find himself drawn to
> you less and less often

> he can’t stand boredom

Unnecessarily gendered language is jarring for the reader and also, (possibly)
unintentionally, sexist. The singular they/them/their is generally acceptable
to use in cases such as these.

~~~
Hnrobert42
I disagree. I did not find it jarring nor did I perceive it as sexist.

~~~
zadokshi
Perhaps we need a browser plugin for people to detect when ‘he’ is being used
as the default gender and convert it?

‘He’ worked as the default pronoun for a long time in many languages all over
the world. (And still does in many languages) I find it curious how many
people can be sold into the idea that a language can be considered sexist.

~~~
leshenka
> browser plugin

They exist. I'm not sure that they can de-gender language, but they can swap
word A for word B

------
jtrip
This is brilliant! I've been suffering from work related anxiety for years
which I've learned to douse with Youtube, Reddit or HN. This became a huge
problem for me recently and so I had to try to break my habit loops (Cue ->
Action -> Reward).

I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block
the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety.

Youtube always gives you an option to look for more content, either on the
side of the video you are currently watching, on the screen immediately after
you are done watching or by going to the home page and giving you the options.
Using Origin ad-blocker I removed all the immediate suggestions. And also the
youtube home button, the only red element of the Youtube gui that catches your
notice, that you click on to reduce your anxiety. That you then develop a
habit on, just like the suggestions. On mobile I uninstalled the app and used
the ad-blocker to render it useless. All external links play videos and the
search still works.

For reddit I force the old view, without the infinite scroll, just like the
author. I also removed the 'all' link from all the pages as I had formed a
habit with that as well. And I limit the number of posts visible at any given
time.

I have, other than the author's solution, no counter for HN.

For other websites, I've similarly blocked such habit forming gui features.
And the most important bit has been deleting websites from the auto suggest
feature of firefox. I've deleted a good number of the common offender websites
form it, but I still don't know how to disable those ~10 websites that show up
when you go to type something.

The Key has been disrupting the 'cue' of the habits. It leaves you a little
confused when you don't find your habit enabler on the websites, but then it
gets better. Or like me you form other new habits. The solution author
suggests will definitely be of help.

Edit: Words. Also, does anyone know how to disable the dropdown suggestions in
the address bar? The one you get when you haven't typed anything, because I've
got a habit with the dropdown button as well. There is nothing in the options,
but what about the developer options?

~~~
bvinc
I do this exact kind of blocking. On Reddit I blocked the entire bar at the
top of other subreddit suggestions.

YouTube, I got rid of suggestions on the side, at the end of the video, and at
pause.

Call me crazy but I even got rid of typing suggestions in the Firefox address
bar.

On Android, I like the Niagra launcher because I can customize my entire home
screen and hide everything else so that I only see it when I'm looking for it.
No recommendations!

~~~
netsharc
The crazy thing about addiction-forming parts on websites is, that even stack
overflow has it, with their hot networks box. Great (/s), when your metric as
a provider is not how helpful you've been but user engagement...

Luckily they're easily blocked with uBlock Origin.

------
adambyrtek
I'm a self-diagnosed completionist and I hate the infinite scroll so much that
I developed a mental habit that helps me work around it. When I visit a site
with infinite scroll (e.g. YouTube or new Reddit) I immediately scroll down
until the first loading spinner (e.g. by pressing the End key). At this point
I stop and go back up processing the items in reverse order. This might sound
silly, but it gives me a sense of completion and a natural exit point once I
get back to the beginning.

~~~
dkthehuman
I've been working on a Chrome extension called Hide Feed that automatically
hides the feed. It's not quite yet ready for prime time, but it should help
remove the need for that habit because you can just hide the feed whenever you
don't want to look at it anymore.

[https://hidefeed.com/](https://hidefeed.com/)

~~~
gorpovitch
I've been looking for something like this ! Definitely interested (will you
open source it?)

I'm doing this manually using Stylus for facebook and twitter. It's
unbelievable how healthier it made my consumption of these sites. I couldn't
find stylus for mobile firefox though...

------
liquidise
This is a funny and particularly well written post that touches on a serious
topic. Tech addiction and attention seeking are not yet being self-moderated.
We are living out a massive social experiment of sorts because of the rapid
advancement of the internet. I believe it is a certain net-positive on
society, but we need to pay more attention to the cons.

~~~
lukifer
> we need to pay more attention to the cons

I like the probably-accidental double-entendre here. ;)

I think there is some attention (though probably still not enough) being paid
to algorithms/clouds/etc gamifying our dopaminergic cycles, often without our
best interests in mind. But it's worth remembering that individuals can easily
fall into these anti-patterns independently, without coercion from centralized
servers or dark UI patterns.

When I first heard the RHCP lyric referencing "getting high on information" I
thought it a clever turn of phrase, maybe even a bit of a good thing; now I
view the phenomenon with deadly seriousness, as I find it an ongoing struggle
in day-to-day life, trying to keep focus on what matters amidst a deluge of
both noise _and_ signal.

------
karatestomp
Packages show up on the lawn it is astonishing how they appear.

They are astonishing surprises.

It’s what I ordered the cat food the espresso machine the two new tables.

Ordering things and how they appear basically I am a small-scale sorcerer.

On the road I press the button and the music goes.

Air conditioning gas pedal restaurant take-out etc.

It is my will being perpetually sated.

Pretend we are writing a fable in which a sorcerer always gets what he wants.

Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants.

— Emily Bludworth de Barios, from the preview page for issue #31 of Forklift,
Ohio (and, indeed, the issue itself, if you have it):

[http://www.forkliftohio.com/index.php?page=freight-31](http://www.forkliftohio.com/index.php?page=freight-31)

~~~
inopinatus
A few weeks ago, in support of a customer's new facilities, I tasked a
satellite imaging platform to take a photograph of Dubbo, Australia, using an
app on my iPhone. Placing the instruction took less than two minutes, the
longest part of which was downloading the app. The processed image was
downloaded to my device before close of business that same day.

Against a glowing surface, my hand describes a complex sigil, and orbital
mechanisms leap into action on my whim.

Next up: pulling together the components for Karsus's Avatar

~~~
LeifCarrotson
After reading your comment, I was curious what your photograph might have
looked like and where Dubbo was. A moment later, I had selected, searched for,
and been presented with images of and articles about Dubbo. I gave them a
brief, bored glance and moved on.

~~~
inopinatus
This age of mundane wonders.

------
dom96
This is actually a brilliant idea, but I want to ask about something slightly
off-topic, hope others can chime in as well:

> Withdrawn mostly from Reddit __in favor of early 2000’s style forums that I
> pay money for __

I 've never heard of such forums. Does anyone have any examples of these? In
particular ones that you pay for, but I'm interested in free ones too.

~~~
jfim
The SomethingAwful forums [0] used to cost $10 to join [1] in the early 2000s.
A more recent example is the Farnam Street community, which costs money to
join [2].

[0] [https://forums.somethingawful.com/](https://forums.somethingawful.com/)

[1]
[https://secure.somethingawful.com/products/register.php](https://secure.somethingawful.com/products/register.php)

[2] [https://fs.blog/membership/](https://fs.blog/membership/)

~~~
prostheticvamp
Does anyone here use FS? Do you find it helpful (we’ll leave aside questions
of cost), or is it like ... productivity porn?

------
mmmuhd
Here in my country (a developing country in Africa) internet speed is so bad
you don't have to add any latency filter - just thinking out loud.

~~~
downerending
Hmm. Are there any VPN providers there? :-)

~~~
danielhlockard
How is a VPN supposed to increase speed?

~~~
downerending
If all of my procrastination passed through a slow VPN, it would increase the
speed of my real work greatly. :-)

------
tjoff
I've been thinking of these types of quotes for a while now "Amazon found that
every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Google found an extra .5 seconds
in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%." (from this first link
in the post)

And kind of thought that no one believes in that anymore, that it was a 90s
thing - at least when considering the absolute mad UX that is prevalent today.
Some sites must deliberately pretend to process your decision for close to a
second just to annoy you.

100ms latency is bad but privacy banners with stupidly obvious dark UI
patterns (where they are even deliberately breaking the law) are worth it? In
what universe does that make sense? There is something seriously ill with the
web today.

Maybe this article is a cure. Not one I imagined but I'm intrigued.

~~~
pier25
Not only that but latency is introduced artificially to make users feel more
confident about changes they've made.

[https://uxmag.com/articles/let-your-users-
wait](https://uxmag.com/articles/let-your-users-wait)

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that-
will-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin-
apps-for-you)

~~~
velosol
If the app or site isn't trying to sell me something then I don't see the
draw. I understand the research around the marketing aspect but if I've
already paid for something using a sleep() doesn't seem like it would make me
trust something. I think I would rather ask why something is so slow (and
doubly-so for anything on-prem which should be fast!).

If research shows users aren't sure if something happened then fix the UI to
give some feedback to the user that their action was registered. This will
likely involve a small delay even if it's just in the user's perception of the
feedback but less than presented in the articles.

It's been much too long since I've run or participated in a UX study so maybe
it's a good time to get back into it.

------
oldtapwater
I wrote an extension for this since I couldn't find a good one for Firefox.
Feature and pull requests welcome

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/delaywebpage/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/delaywebpage/)

~~~
ahofmann
Just what I was looking for! Thanks for this add on. For me youtube.com would
still be extremely important. I set the blue window with the text to white and
deleted the text, it's too embarrassing to have the big blue text on my
screen.

~~~
oldtapwater
I'll add youtube to the list! Hm, I hadn't thought of that angle, maybe a
white background and small text is a better default

------
bravura
This is fascinating.

My laptop died during this one month of travel I’m doing, and I’m stuck doing
everything on mobile. (No apple licensees where I am.)

I bought a keyboard for my iPad, it’s still painful AF. So I began avoiding
and canceling unimportant tasks because of their inconvenience.

And then I realized: how much of this mindless garbage do I accept on my plate
just because I am trying to „optimize my productivity“?

(Typed with two thumbs. Perhaps hypocritically?)

------
pier25
A couple of years ago I was pretty addicted to Facebook and would compulsively
open a new tab and start typing "f..." in the address bar. Even if I had
another tab with Facebook open.

I tried blocking it for lapses of time but it didn't reduce my addiction. What
did work was logging out of Facebook. The annoyance of having to log in and
stop my flow was enough for me to stop using Facebook. Now I use it less than
once a month when I want to contact some company that only has a Facebook
page.

~~~
MayeulC
It helps that Facebook is pretty annoying when logged out, not sure it would
translate well to Reddit (or HN). Maybe I should insert adds, banners, etc, on
purpose in my tabs?

~~~
pier25
It would not help much on HN for me but if I was forced to use new Reddit I
would stop using it. AFAIK you can't opt out unless you are logged in.

------
bonoboTP
Another from me: blacklist the recommended questions from other stackexchange
sites! I always get distracted by some juicy story on workplace.se or
interpersonal skills or academia or worldbuilding or politics. My monkey brain
will read those questions and think about the answer, then I have to click and
see what others say. But Stackoverflow remains productive if I block this box.

~~~
K0SM0S
I wonder if, in the near future, we might not need blinkers¹ for internet,
like we put on horses to keep them focused on the road, or conversely not
distracted or scared by things around.

Basically ad/js blockers elevated to content selectors, somewhere halway
between full functionality and reader mode of the core content of a page.

I see a literal tsunami of tiny projects like that on HN and various other
places, and I suspect it's quickly gaining the characteristics of a product
category — how much would you pay, or give away, to reclaim a distraction-free
highly-focused web experience? Not sure about individuals (most mainstream
users), but in businesses, offices, on the clock? That makes a stupid amount
of sense. _( "stupid" because, heh, it's seeking a solution for a problem we
created in the first place, businesses deploring the consequences of things
whose causes they cherish, should we say champion in modern lingo.)_

[1]: not that kind! [https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_Pawel-
Kuczynski_blin...](https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_Pawel-
Kuczynski_blinkers.jpg)

------
jonas21
You don't need a fancy solution to randomly add latency -- just do what I did
and sign up for Cox Internet.

~~~
dylan604
I've heard the latency can be as bad as 3 days depending on how strong the
wind blows.

~~~
fpgaminer
This is the trap that so many fell into when they ditched DSL for CPL (Carrier
Pigeon Line). The price was right; the bandwidth was _incredible_ (1TB packet
sizes!); and the latency, bad as it was, was something you expected and
prepared for. What's easily missed, as you pointed out, is the variability of
that latency. If the wind is in your favor you'll have the latest copy of the
internet downloaded in one or two days, unlike those plebs on fiber who have
to spend weeks downloading the thing. But one strong headwind later and you'll
be spending your time reading the x86 reference manual* for the hundredth time
while you wait.

* Fun side fact (as if this comment was enough of a tangent already), you used to be able to request a _free_ physical copy of the x86 reference manuals. Not sure if that's still the case, but younger me was _thrilled_ when I found out and received that small library in the mail.

~~~
terinjokes
You haven't been able to do so for at least a decade. I requested one from
Intel a decade ago and they recommended asking a print shop to print and bind
the PDF.

------
woliveirajr
Low-latency isn't the only problem, I think. The small-enought latency seems
to be worst: you click somehing and wait for the reward just few ms later.
Incresing this wait to seconds prevents this effect.

~~~
thdrdt
Well I am on a not so fast connection a lot and what is even worse: click on
something and get absolutely no clue the click event was registered.

Click again to see if you did something wrong and, yes, youe action was
registered 2 times causing all kinds of trouble.

To all SPA developers around the word: show me if I interacted and show me if
something is loading.

~~~
Can_Not
I ensure my loading graphic shows for a minimum of 333ms to make sure my users
see that something was happening, just incase the operation completes too fast
for the user to realize it happened.

------
numbers
I just use a VPN connecting to a far away server so that the latency does go
up and at the same time confuses the sites I’m visiting.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
You know, it never occurred to me to treat the latency of TOR as a feature
rather than a bug.

~~~
surround
The only reason why I wasn’t using TOR for all of my browsing is because of
the latency. I guess I might just use it now.

------
toddmedema
Nice! I recently launched a similar Chrome extension (free, open source, no
tracking or ads) that also includes a greyscale option to make the websites
less interesting / addicting once they load
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-your-focus-
bac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-your-focus-
back/hgokmjffmfnkaofmgjekjpiiocfafdoc)

~~~
beat
Thanks for reminding me to reset my iPhone to black and white!

------
nabnob
This is a great idea. I know various types of addiction have a negative impact
on the prefrontal cortex, which handles your ability to focus and manage time.
I would like to see research investigating the relationship between internet
addiction and one's attention span - I feel like my ability to read difficult
literature and focus on creative hobbies like music is worse today than it was
when I was in middle school.

------
chalst
Any recommendations for a Firefox alternative to Crackbook Revival?

~~~
byte1918
You can configure Leechblock (1) to do this. You have to configure it to show
the 'Delaying page'.

(1) - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-
ng...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/)

~~~
unicornporn
I tried that, but only works for the first visit of a domain? Once I've waited
those seconds for the page to load I can mindlessly wander around for hours if
I don't close the tab.

~~~
byte1918
there's a checkbox `Block only first accessed page of site when delaying page
is used`. Uncheck it.

------
saltking112
Not simulating slow connection but delaying page display via JS/Tempermonkey.

[https://jsfiddle.net/16yuzxLr/](https://jsfiddle.net/16yuzxLr/)

------
cellularmitosis
Something I've found beneficial is to self-enforce a "search-only" usage of
social media (youtube, twitter, etc). Essentially, don't allow yourself to
mindlessly consume feeds, but if you'd like to search for something specific,
go ahead.

It might be worth writing some sort of extension or wrapper website to enforce
this.

------
swirepe
I'm late to the party, but this article inspired me to write this script to
slow down connections to reddit

    
    
         #!/usr/bin/env bash
         DEV=enxe04f439470d2
         DOMAIN=reddit.com
         LATENCY=5200ms 
         
         sudo tc qdisc del dev $DEV root # Ensure you start from a clean slate
         sudo tc qdisc add dev $DEV root handle 1: prio
         sudo tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 1:3 handle 30: netem delay $LATENCY 
         for IPADDR in $(dig @8.8.8.8 +nocmd $DOMAIN any +multiline +noall +answer | grep -E -o "([0-9]{1,3}[\.]){3}[0-9]{1,3}")
         do
             echo "Slowing down connections to $IPADDR on $DEV"
             sudo tc filter add dev $DEV protocol ip parent 1:0 prio 3 u32 match ip dst $IPADDR flowid 1:3
         done

------
hammock
Another suggestion: Limit your browser use to only one tab at a time. Or,
allow yourself multiple windows but only one tab each.

If it takes 8 seconds to load a website I could see someone just opening a
bunch of tabs and coming back to them later. This suggestion avoids that
(among other accomplishments).

~~~
CathedralBorrow
Good suggestion. I do feel that any self-imposed rule or limitation will be
vulnerable to you simply deciding to ignore or bypass it though.

------
Matumio
LeechBlock NG (the browser extension) has a "delay" mode of blocking. Make
sure you enable "count only active tab" or it will waste much RAM and CPU.

With full blocking I used to cheat by disabling the block, and then "forgot"
to enable it again.

With delay-based blocking I'm also cheating: instead of waiting for the delay
I get up and do some minor chore. I used to feel smug about how clever I was,
sabotaging my own block. Until I realized what a positive change this was.

PS: I've waited 40s to submit this comment. You'll need another plugin to
recover the text if you submit and then hit the delay page. Or submit before
the timer runs out.

~~~
unicornporn
Please tell me how you configured LeechBlock NG. I tried the delaying mode,
but only works for the first visit of a domain? Once I've waited those seconds
for the page to load I can mindlessly wander around for hours if I don't close
the tab.

~~~
lnreddy
I think that is the point. It doesn't block the website entirely lest you go
and disable the extension. It's designed to frustrate you slightly.

~~~
unicornporn
I see. Not very functional for those who have tabs for these sites permanently
open.

~~~
Matumio
Right, I always open news front pages from a bookmark for some reason, and
stories as background tabs. Each tab has its own delay-block when activated,
and at some point I usually close unread tabs instead of waiting for them.

But the block repeats every few hours, and I'm pretty sure that clicking on a
link within the same tab repeats the block then (maybe depends on the page).
So yes, the "dosage" of how many delays you get is not very well controlled
for. Still, I'm using this setup for years and it definitely does something
for me.

------
lcall
It seems like this kind of thing is much easier if one has a considered
purpose and direction in life, that let one derive joy from making stepwise
progress toward those: a vision, strategy, goals, tasks. We all have to choose
what we love the most, and implement that in our daily decisions &
acdtivities. Whether one is religious or not, I have written about this more,
at a simple, I hope skimmable, site:
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html)
.

------
dropoutcoder
Exception: If I’m researching technical topics I want the fastest computer,
browser, and internet possible.

~~~
celeritascelery
You want the fastest possible connection when doing real work. But slow when
just playing around.

------
Romanulus
I get the sentiment, but I do not agree at all... similar to putting fences
around all the coastlines of the world, I would rather just teach my children
to swim.

I had to go back and make sure what was being said was actually the case which
now makes me question what one does with all that latency time... just sit and
breath and try not to totally freak out? I don't want to come off as too crass
on this, but this type of self-regulation is just totally missing the mark
(unless I'm missing something here).

~~~
vibrafox
A good quote I don't have a source on: you do not rise to the level of your
ambitions, you fall to the level of your systems. Willpower is finite, but you
can maximize it with systems like this.

~~~
Romanulus
Makes me think of the quote (paraphrased): "Your reach should always exceed
your grasp." To me it feels like you are tamping down your maximum reach.

~~~
vibrafox
I tried that for a long time and didn't get anywhere. Building a safety net of
systems/habits raises the floor for the inevitable slips back down.

------
snthd
See also [https://www.xkcd.com/862/](https://www.xkcd.com/862/) 's alt text

> After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my
> impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological
> reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in
> which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would
> load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those
> sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.

And: [https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-
corr...](https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-
extensio/)

>At various times, I thought of doing it with an X modification, Firefox
extension, a Chrome add-on, an irssi script, etc—but none of them worked too
well (or involved a lot of sustained undistracted effort, which was sort of a
Catch-22). Then I hit on a much simpler solution:

>I made it a rule that as soon as I finished any task, or got bored with it, I
had to power off my computer.

~~~
CathedralBorrow
I'm always interested in the "one year later" follow-up to these suggestions.
I love that someone found a cool hack that worked for them, but did it
survive?

------
anonytrary
There's an analogue for consumerism in young single adults who haven't settled
down: Next time you move, put everything you own in a box. You can only take
something out of the box to use it. After 6 months (or a duration of your
choosing), simply discard the box and everything still in it. The theory is
that you won't miss anything you didn't actually need.

------
dlsso
Interesting. I'm surprised this actually works for people. For me it would it
would just make me waste more time, and turn browsing into a stress multiplier
instead of a stress reliever.

I favor extensions that give an alert or block the site after a certain time.
More effective and less anger inducing for me personally.

~~~
Swenrekcah
I can understand where they’re coming from I think.

I browse HN or reddit a lot when I put something in motion that will take 4-30
seconds to complete. Because who can wait tens of seconds for something.

Then 15 minutes later...

But if I know that I’ll probably have to wait just as long for the site to
load then perhaps I’d just sit and endure, maybe...

~~~
codebje
Lately I've simply been keeping the slow activity visible on screen, it's been
enough that the flicker of motion when it finishes can pull me away from the
distractions.

------
souterrain
Network Link Conditioner is new to me. (I’m not a developer.) I find it
strange that this exists, because as a mobile application consumer, it has
been my experience that many apps don’t seem to consider network quality in
their implementations. (Again, just based on my personal use; absolutely zero
rigor in my method.)

I suppose this the result of a feature of the human being: be lazy as
possible. Rather than write code for poor quality networks (which in my
experience are prevalent in rural areas and in older parts of cities) simply
declare “we need faster mobile networks for all!”

I suspect this will be a never-ending battle, and developers might consider
caring at some point, to reach those eyeballs that will never have the cutting
edge mobile networks.

Or, don’t, and said eyeballs will be slightly less likely to become addicted,
if this article is to be believed.

------
wpskidd
I’m still surprised that this type of findings hasn’t had more of an impact on
commercial design. It is not uncommon to find Fortune 500 sites with load
times over 20 seconds. I get it that it is hard to write and maintain clean
code, still, repeated studies have shown the value proposition is there.

Here is a little proof of concept I did awhile back to see how tight I could
make a responsive page with a good amount of graphics. The whole page is two
server calls (one is for the fav icon). It loads in about 400 ms total from
github or in less than 200 from Godaddy shared hosting:
[https://pbskidd.github.io/cockenoe](https://pbskidd.github.io/cockenoe)

------
pradn
I was recently looking at getting new hardware to improve Chrome loading
times. (This is a somewhat theoretical affair for me since my desktop is
already pretty fast.) But, now I wonder if I should downgrade.

Maybe it's good not to upgrade to the latest iPhone?

------
daniel_iversen
You can use a somewhat similar method easily on your phone, using iOS’ Screen
Time to “block” certain apps. Then it’ll pop up and tell you you’ve “reached
your limit” and gives you enough time to think about what app (or web/Safari)
you’re about to use in order to interrupt any default undesirable patterns
(also related maybe to the psychological concept of Delay Discounting). I’ve
found it very helpful to reduce my app usage - [https://www.nexle.dk/5-simple-
steps-to-improving-your-mobile...](https://www.nexle.dk/5-simple-steps-to-
improving-your-mobile-phone-productivity-and-calmness/)

------
city41
I dropped my phone a while back and the screen now has issues. It gets
"streaks" all across the entire screen. It's harder to see content, but you
can get by. My first inclination was to get it fixed, but I've now had it this
way for several months. I find I use my phone a lot less and now sort of
consider the streaks a "feature".

I've investigated going to a true dumb phone, but that's not nearly as
feasible now as I would prefer. The Nokia 3310 is the only reasonably priced
option I can find; and all the boutique, low volume dumb phones are absurdly
expensive.

~~~
bacon_waffle
Overall, the not-smartphone thing is great! I wasn't particularly hooked on my
(basic) smartphone, but definitely feel a bit more present without it. The
urge to look at the rectangle in my pocket after being idle for 5 seconds is
gone.

I switched to a Nokia 8110 a couple months ago, and really want to like it,
but the basics are too poorly done. On the 8110 in particular, the keys are
quite small, and their debouncing is terrible. I worry the debounce might be
the same for other phones in that family, which all seem to have the same
guts. A single keypress is very often interpreted as a double-press, which
makes T9 frustrating and the predictive mode practically impossible.

There's no way to switch the ringer off, without opening the cover and
navigating two layers of menu. The music player is borderline useless, a shame
considering it has a microSD slot.

At least on my network (Vodafone NZ), MMS messages don't work in either
direction - basically you have to ring someone back when they try to send you
one.

The idea of having maps is nice. But, in practice, I've just reverted to
noting directions in a notebook that I carry anyway. So, while maps was one of
the main reasons I tried a Nokia KaiOS phone, it's not a requirement for the
next one.

------
skybrian
Source code for the Chrome extension mentioned is here:
[https://github.com/Ishmaeel/CrackbookRevival](https://github.com/Ishmaeel/CrackbookRevival)

------
Tade0
I use wondershaper:

[http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/wondershaper...](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man8/wondershaper.8.html)

And limit my speed to 256KB/s which sounds like a lot and 15 years ago that
was really fast, but it's enough to stop me from gorging on YouTube videos,
which interestingly are less addicting when viewed at a maximum of 480p.

Adding latency is not necessarily the best route, because some apps (looking
at you, gmail) send tens of requests in sequence just to load the main page.

~~~
Aperocky
A monkey that occupy the screen for 5 seconds on each new frame load with
quotes might neatly solve that problem.

------
PsylentKnight
> Android is the hardest to do this in.

The Firefox addon LeechBlock NG can delay access to sites. Of course, that
can't stop you from opening Chrome - which as far as I can tell, you can't
uninstall from Android.

------
mrob
Is there any Free software alternative to the proprietary Charles Proxy?

~~~
penagwin
After trying to find something similar myself, originally I found some
"methods" online to bypass the trial time, but I eventually just gave in and
bought a license - and IMO it does exactly what it says on the tin, and is
still updated and is cross platform so I think it's worth it.

But if anyone knows of any nice GUI tools that are similar do share!

EDIT: Just thought I'd mention how I use it. Basically I use it like the
chrome network tools, but I intercept POST requests to the server and try to
much with the data that's sent to make sure the backend isn't blindly trusting
the client, or to see if there's weird ways I can break the code with special
input, etc.

------
superkuh
This happens naturally for me. The worse a website is, the more javascript it
uses. This is a pretty solid correlation. So I use a browser that is meant to
browsing websites instead of one that's meant to run javascript applications.

This makes going to web app sites (the bad sites) fairly slow. Especially when
I have to serially temp-whitelist 4 domains each requiring a reload of the
page every time I visit.

But normal web sites that don't suck pop in instant and fast.

------
otakucode
What about making it so that the amount of latency added is dynamic? It could
be set up so that frequency of visitation leads to greater and greater
latency. Something like exponential growth of 1.5x every time the site is
visited with an exponential decay function applied since the last time
visited. This would encourage slowing down, and would most heavily penalize
the most heavily used sites which seems coherent with the goal.

------
JadeNB
The author's description of this as 'watering down' the Internet, as if some
élan vital is absent, I think is potentially misleading. As the author makes
clear, this is working to minimise the addictive aspects of browsing, not to
block the content. All the content is still there, just organised in a way
that forces you to acknowledge that you can't and shouldn't deal with it all
at once, or non-stop.

------
PaulRobinson
There are ISPs that do this to customers who sign up for low price unlimited
bandwidth deals and then hammer them for torrents. Traffic shaping them down
to 1Mbit/sec or lower means they're likely to move onto another ISP within a
few months.

Legally dubious, but no other way of managing the 1% of users who are using
95% of the bandwidth in a way you'd not provisioned for (because then your
economic model is broken).

~~~
Retric
Non peak bandwidth should be effectively free for ISP’s. Limiting their
bandwidth during those peaks should be sufficient without losing a customer.

------
annoyingnoob
I was really hoping this was more of an attack on the site, a way to get back
at sites that don't work well due to too many ads/tracking. We should all
really slow play the connections and data rates from advertisers/trackers -
make them pay in latency. We need a tool to slow-play ads/trackers that
happens in the background, where the user experience is blocking them anyway.

------
the21st
I have been using a chrome extension called waitblock [1] which does something
similar and it did wonders for reducing my addiction.

[1]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfeppclpdinikcljfjigoongebpkh?hl=en)

------
Thorrez
Linus Sebastian says that making his phone slower to open made him enjoy it
more[1]. One easy way to make your phone slower to unlock is to give it a long
password, this has the additional benefit of making your phone more secure.

[1] [https://youtu.be/WGZh-xP-q7A?t=305](https://youtu.be/WGZh-xP-q7A?t=305)

------
kponds
The article mentions that he has "Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of
early 2000’s style forums".

Which good ones are still around that are not specific to a certain topic? I
am interested in this.

Since he said "that I pay money for", I'm assuming somethingawful maybe? Are
there any others that are still good and active?

~~~
thefunnyman
I'm also curious about this. I frequently find myself wishing for a Reddit
alternative but haven't been able to find something worth switching to.

------
unwabuisi
Does anyone know any free/open-source alternatives to Charles? The closest I
could find was this [0] but it doesn't look like it can throttle connections
for specific hosts

[0] -
[https://github.com/sitespeedio/throttle](https://github.com/sitespeedio/throttle)

------
markus_zhang
I'm wondering what are those "early 2000’s style forums that I pay money for".
A few months ago I stumbled into such a website mostly for programmers and the
style is completely different from HN or Reddit or whatever sites I'm on.
Sadly I lost the website during a laptop breakdown :(

------
ReverseCold
This might be a good alternative to tools like Leechblock. Instead of blocking
sites, give the "bad"/timewaste sites a bunch of random latency. It might
discourage but not stop usage, which is useful when you need to use reddit or
something to do research but not get distracted.

~~~
goda90
And it could be an escalating latency, so it gives you a bit of fast
experience, but the more you use it, the slower it gets. I've used Leechblock,
but I also find myself trying to game Leechblock sometimes. Being totally cut
off from something can make me motivated in ways that just being annoyed by
the experience wouldn't.

------
sizzle
"You get the web from 2 basic kinds of nightmare rectangle: laptops and
desktops, where you control a material portion of the computing environment,
or mobile and tablets, where you control less."

Gonna start using "nightmare rectangle" instead of "computer" from now on ...

------
majani
Another good way to reduce time spent on social media is to reduce the number
of connections on each platform to less than 100 people/brands. All platforms
struggle to find new crap to feed you with once you go below this threshold
(except YouTube)

------
baxtr
Interesting approach. I have gone one step further: I have simply blocked
major sites I visit regularly. Every time I try to visit one of the sites I am
reminded by the blocker that I should not.

(HN is one of them - but only on my mobile device)

------
SirWilliamM
This sounds a lot like what Apple slowly does to iOS to make you buy a new
phone...

------
henvic
If you need this, consider just getting cheaper and slower Internet connection
:)

------
0x262d
This post has some pretty good suggestions. But I always get frustrated with
this issue and honestly there will never be a great solution to it.

The underlying problem is that addicting people is core to the business model
of facebook, twitter, and many other sites. With the web coupled to the profit
motive there will always be infinitely more resources put towards making sites
addictive than making them user-friendly, ie, encouraging healthy user habits.
If the web was treated as a shared, public utility with no-strings-attached
funding for developing shared tools like social media as well as supporting
user-written clients for everything, effective tools for this that anyone can
easily use would proliferate and web addictiveness and these clunky solutions
would be nearly a non issue.

This is basically the dream of socialism. Utility set free from the malignant
requirements of profit. I think it's much closer to people's original dreams
for what the internet could be before venture capital crept in and came to
rule everything.

------
t_treesap
My internet addiction was at least 90% as bad even when I only had dial-up.
Unfortunately, tabs make the latency thing an ineffective deterrent.

(In the dial-up days, before tabs, my workaround was to have 20 IE windows
open.)

~~~
kilovoltaire
The Crackbook Revival chrome extension he mentions restarts its timer if you
switch tabs, so at least it remains effective despite tabs

------
rement
>Android is the hardest to do this in.

I don't know a lot about Android development but could you use the Android VPN
APIs to add latency to requests? I might use an open source app that adds this
kind of functionality.

------
celeritascelery
> Coerced old-style on Reddit without an infinite scroll

This is why I deleted the reddit apps and use the mobile site instead. Having
only one page at a time really helps from sitting forever in an infinite
scrolling list.

------
rb808
Does anyone know of a 2G/3G cell network in the US? Its would be cheaper and I
know I avoid my phone a lot when it reverts to 3G when I run out of 4G data. I
still want email, uber etc though.

------
andrepd
>Deleted all variable pictures from YouTube with my adblock. The avatars of
the people, the teaser images with people making obnoxious faces on them, the
logo, etc.

invidio.us with "thin mode" on

------
jtolds
I also deliberately slow down certain sites! It's wonderful.

[https://github.com/jtolds/twitoderm](https://github.com/jtolds/twitoderm)

------
jobseeker990
I wonder if Apple would consider adding this to the Screen time feature?
Otherwise I don't see how you can apply it on the iPhone for just certain
websites or certain times of day.

~~~
pzumk
They probably wouldn’t because it’s too specific. I’m in Germany and figured
I’d just connect to one of the currently most used VPN Servers in New Zealand.
Makes my connection slow when I can’t procrastinate or want to reduce screen
time without actually blocking apps by enabling iOS Screen Time.

------
jandrese
Lag is absolutely infuriating on a web browser.

[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/no_internet)

------
davnicwil
Blocking comments from various sites is an amazing idea.

Are there any extensions anyone can recommend for doing this comprehensively
across all the popular sites / 3rd party comment engines?

~~~
MayeulC
I often browse with umatrix blocking all third-party js, so I tend to
whitelist some of those on a per—site basis. That might partially work for
you.

------
purplezooey
this is a fascinating idea but I had never heard of Charles Proxy

~~~
penagwin
It's really great for a lot of network testing. It let's you intercept and
modify requests/responses directly which is great for testing front end
/backend input sanitization.

------
CreepGin
My household has too many devices to setup individually. Anyone knows a good
router to do this on? My router can blacklist ips and urls, but cannot just
add latency to them.

~~~
megous
My MikroTik router has traffic shaping fairly easily configurable. I have used
it at times for the similar purpose. Though, if you know how to disable
something, you eventually will.

If you want to know how it works in Linux:

[https://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html](https://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html)

------
wrsh07
This is an excellent mental trick and I would love to be able to configure
gradually increasing latencies as I sit on the internet for an extended
duration

------
jobseeker990
This is actually a really brilliant idea. Just make an addiction inconvenient
instead of denying yourself. You could apply this to all kinds of stuff.

------
throw18374
I took similarly extreme measures to end my video game addiction many years
ago.

I played MMOs compulsively. They basically hijacked the reward center of my
brain to the point where what happened outside of the game seemed completely
irrelevant to me. I didn’t even see the point of showering.

During “moments of clarity” I understood perfectly well exactly what was
happening to me, how the game was specifically designed to put me in that sort
of state, how fake and toxic it all was.

So during these “moments of clarity”, I would take some of my life back by
deliberately sabotaging myself inside the game so I wouldn’t want to play
anymore.

I destroyed all my valuable items and deleted my characters.

When I came back, I told support it was an accident and they recovered the
items and characters for me...

So then I gave all my valuable items to other players, thinking support
couldn’t take those back from those people, because that would be creating
free duplicates.

So I told support it was an accident, and they recovered the account and
created duplicates of all of my lost items.

So I did that again, this time handing all the items to someone I knew.

Support again recovered the account and created duplicates of everything, but
warned that they wouldn’t be able to do this a third time because of concerns
about in-game markets being disrupted by duplicates.

So I did it again.

This time they recovered the account, and some of the items, but none of the
most valuable ones.

Even then, I still wanted to play.

So this time I did the same, deleted all my items, deleted my characters, and
created a new email account on yahoo.

I made that yahoo account’s username and password both something complicated I
would never remember. I changed my game account’s email to that yahoo account,
confirmed the email change, changed my game account’s password to something
long I would never remember, changed all the game account’s personal and
contact information to nonsense, logged out of the yahoo account, logged out
of the game account, and closed the incognito tab.

I tried, but I never figured out a way to recover that account.

So I created a new account. Several times, but always repeatedly sabotaged
myself during moments of clarity. Eventually, after a few weeks, I completely
lost interest in trying and could finally do other things with my life.

I’ve used this same tactic with every game since. Total gameplay hours over
the last 10 years have been maybe 50 hours or so for Fallout 3, and that’s it.

I don’t play anything anymore. Life has turned out unreasonably good since
then, too. Career in software exploded.

Maybe because of redirected compulsivity.

Now I’m having a similar problem with workaholism.

I guess the real-world implementation of my prior solution would be to give
all my money away, burn all my bridges, and go meditate in a forest somewhere.
That doesn’t seem like such a great idea, though, especially with people
depending on me. I’ll have to figure out a different solution for this one..

~~~
z3t4
What you're looking for is probably "semester". Depending on where you live,
your employer can't deny you two weeks off. Then you go somewhere where you
wont have access to a computer. And treat yourself well. You should do that at
least once or twice a year. You can also set "working hours" and just don't do
any work outside those hours. Having a healthy work/life balance will make you
even more productive at work.

------
minusf
> Used an extension to remove all the comments from Youtube

it's enough to block all cookies on YouTube and comments stop loading

------
stanislavb
I've been using this since this morning and can already feel the benefits.
It's a great idea/extension.

------
taude
The artisanal "slow internet" movement. It's like slow food movement, but for
your data consumption.

------
tlholaday
Would a 25-minute latency be a good way to incorporate this tactic and
Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique?

------
rootsudo
This is a great article to explain the dopamine fueled feedback loop. It's a
simple way to fight it and win.

------
amelius
I add 1 second of latency when a Chrome user visits my website.

And I already convinced my boss to switch to Firefox.

------
gnicholas
reminds me of The Disconnect, the web-based magazine that you can only read
when you're offline:
[https://thedisconnect.co/one/](https://thedisconnect.co/one/)

~~~
ferzul
that's hillarious, but if you reconnect, you lose your scroll position. i
normally read things over days, weeks, months

------
mrobin88
Amazons underlying revenue comes from you paying for faster servers...

------
yegle
It's a common practice to put title in URL to boost SEO, but the URL seems to
convert all space (%20) to 20 and I doubt it would still be useful...

/2020/02/12/I-20Add-2020-20Seconds-20of-20Latency-20to-20Every-20Website-20I-20Visit.html

~~~
curuinor
It's not, it's just how my blogging thing works, I don't care much about SEO

~~~
progval
It makes the URL less readable though

------
baq
i'd like to do this on a home router for certain domains like reddit,
facebook, instagram - are small devices capable of such selective buffering
for long periods of time?

------
vhiremath4
hello Howon! Hope you're doing well. :-)

️ from Vinay (an old friend)

------
rainhacker
For anyone who wondered why large tech companies pay Software Engineers so
much, this is the reason. Software quality and performance translate into
quantifiable dollar amount, and that amount is quite high.

------
stevefan1999
So how do you calculate the expected added latency?

------
mLuby
2007: Breakthrough Internet Communicator

2011: Black Mirror

2020: Nightmare Rectangle

~~~
jmkd
"Nightmare Rectangle" is a brilliant phrase

------
jamesjyu
Alternate solution: downgrade to a dial-up ISP.

~~~
ferzul
speed isn't latency. i want to get my OS updates in a timely manner. but i
don't want hackernews to be so enjoyable

------
broabprobe
this is why I still use old iphones. They're slow and I have javascript turned
off so the web is WAAY less addictive.

------
miguelmota
> Reddit with 150ms latency feels like cocaine: Reddit with 8000ms latency
> feels like coffee.

Reddit with Spectrum internet latency feels like water.

------
sharmaakshat
why this application suggested on Blog read the Browser History.

------
b34r
So you’re intentionally wasting power and time. Cool. Maybe just go outside.

------
olliej
I also use Comcast.

~~~
cdoxsey
Here's an app that simulates bad networks named Comcast:

[https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast)

:)

~~~
emayljames
What if you use your Comcast connection to test, the universe might implode.

------
seedless-sensat
Or, move to Australia to curb internet addiction.

------
vincent-toups
This rules.

------
yori
> Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of early 2000’s style forums that I
> pay money for and HN

What are the names of these early 2000's style forums? I would like to join
them too.

~~~
AznHisoka
City-data.com and metafilter.com comes to mind.

------
animalnewbie
I've had similar addiction, 22 hours of AoE out of 24. But if you're addicted
to just regular web, maybe you should go see a therapist. You might be trying
to suppress something.

------
Fnoord
In remembrance of the dial-up time where, during load, you'd decide if you
liked the content you thus far saw. Or, where you'd load some websites and
disconnect internet to read offline.

------
aj7
The only time I want latency is when I have diarrhea.

------
cdoxsey
You might find freedom.to useful. You can block websites for certain times of
the day and it works with all devices.

I've found that if you can break the habit of reaching to some site when
you're bored the addiction falls off pretty quick.

Programming has a lot downtime sometimes - waiting for a build or a long test
run - and there's sometimes a steep context switch to working on something
else. (At least for me if I start something new I'll forget what I was working
on before) It's those times when I found myself on Twitter or Reddit.

One thing I've been trying to do instead is read an actual book - non-fiction
does ok, I can usually follow the argument reading a few paragraphs at a time.
And Kindle makes it easy to read in your browser and pick up where you left
off on an e-reader.

One tricky thing though: I blocked YouTube only to be reminded that Google's
login still goes through a YouTube domain, so I inadvertently made it harder
to login :(.

