Building a Better News Wall
Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
...after the election I let all my news wall filters go down.
It felt great to be *f*r*e*e* but I encountered lots of toxic stuff that made me anxious as fuck. So I raised my walls a little bit, but still wasn't sleeping well, unable to focus on things I'd formerly liked to do.
Now I've found a balance which works for me.
I've set up my net filtering software -- Freedom.to -- to create cracks large enough to hunt down information, and scheduled to minimize plunging into driven doom-scrolling.
News sites are only available between 11:30 and 11:59 am.
Twitter is only available between 12:30 and 1pm.
I can't follow news links from Twitter -- have to wait a day. Mostly, that's fine. Happily MyGuy, who's connected to the original streaming service (radio) has promised to let me know of anything vital.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-10 10:37 pm (UTC)Twitter is a fucking time suck as well as doom scroll
Date: 2021-02-11 07:05 pm (UTC)It's been engineered to wrest your attention away from anything else.
The Freedom.to tool works on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. I bought a forever subscription for $50 a couple years back, and it's the best money I've ever spent. Up to US$65 right now on special
Re: Twitter is a fucking time suck as well as doom scroll
Date: 2021-02-12 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-10 11:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-11 07:06 pm (UTC)Thanks!
It's taken a lot of experimentation, and I'm proud I've managed to reduce my pain (from sitting enthralled staring at Stuff) and lighten my brain.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-11 02:24 am (UTC)Thanks
Date: 2021-02-11 07:10 pm (UTC)I'm impressed that you have the self-control to click away from Twitter on desktop.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-11 10:50 pm (UTC)re: our conversation about this a few days ago:
I poked at the menu for the browser on my phone and figured out how to remove any immediately visible links to news sites. Now if I want the news I now have to type in at least part of the URL. With that barrier to access I’m doing pretty good about limiting news to once a day, sometimes even every day and a half or so. It’s definitely better for my sanity.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-14 11:30 pm (UTC)Insisting on typed input when you're using a phone is a great hack.
14 cheers for more sanity!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-12 06:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-02-14 11:31 pm (UTC)Awwww, yis.
So far it's working!