No Socials November

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

YouTube, Algorithms, and Short-Form “Holes”

  • Several commenters say YouTube’s recommendations feel increasingly aggressive, especially Shorts, which they find uniquely “doomscrollable.”
  • Common coping strategies:
    • Use only the Subscriptions tab and ignore the homepage.
    • Clear or disable watch history to reset or blunt personalization.
    • Browser extensions (Unhook, Focused YouTube) to hide recommendations/Shorts and turn YouTube into “search-only.”
    • Some pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads; others refuse, preferring ad blockers or just not watching.

Is Hacker News Social Media?

  • Large disagreement:
    • “Yes” camp: upvotes, comments, dopamine hits, and addictive checking make it clearly social media, even if less optimized for engagement.
    • “No” camp: sees HN as a forum or “social news” site—text-only, no DMs, no personalized feed, no follower graph, topic- not identity-centric.
  • Some define social media by mechanics (user voting, algorithmic feeds, profiles, followers); others by how you use it (social interaction vs just reading).
  • Multiple people say HN is their “last remaining social” and also their hardest to quit.

Psychological Effects: Envy, FOMO, Addiction

  • Several note social media triggers envy and inadequacy; others say HN can feel just as status-laden and jealousy-inducing, especially around careers and money.
  • Others push back: much content is exaggerated or fake “lifestyle porn,” and these reactions are common enough to be considered normal (FOMO), not individual pathology.
  • HN is often described as lower-toxicity and better signal/noise than mainstream platforms, but still a dopamine source.

Alternatives, Boundaries, and Tools

  • Many advocate permanent structure over one-month fasts:
    • Use RSS, or email as a central hub with batching and filters.
    • Script or extension-based interventions to kill feeds, thumbnails, comments, or entire sites; avoid apps, use only browsers.
    • Move toward smaller, topic-focused communities (forums, Fediverse, custom microblogs, self-hosted “mini-Twitter” blogs).

Broader Critiques of Social Media & “Simulacrum”

  • Several comments frame social media and news as simplified, distorted models of reality that increasingly reshape the offline world.
  • Some argue corporate, ad- and engagement-driven platforms systematically promote outrage and anger; non-corporate or decentralized networks are seen by some as a partial antidote, by others as still fundamentally social-first distractions.