How I browse the internet

Most people I know are a little unsatisfied with how they browse the internet. Big tech companies invest billions of dollars into getting you to use the internet the way they want (read: on their product as much as possible). You might find that you use a website or app more than you’d like, because it provides some useful function, but after that function is fulfilled, it has an addictive quality that keeps you using it anyway.

I don’t purport to have solved this problem, but I do have some usage rules that help me get value out of the internet while avoiding “doomscrolling”. I’ll explain them here in case you find them useful too. Unless your attention span is already too fried to read it all.

YouTube

Rule 1: Turn watch history off. I did this about seven years ago. It’s been very nice, for a few reasons:

• YouTube recommends effective clickbait less often. More recommendation spots are filled by videos I’ve already seen, clickbait that doesn’t appeal to me much, or music videos that I watched in the month before turning watch history off.
• It grants me more control over my recommendations. Watching a video doesn’t affect my algorithm unless I interact; thus, all the signals the algorithm gets from me are conscious decisions to like or subscribe.
• As of a few months ago, YouTube no longer recommends videos on its homepage when you have watch history turned off. I think this is supposed to annoy you so you turn your watch history back on, but I like it this way, because it forces me to make an intentional decision about what to watch before any videos are recommended to me.

Rule 2: Never download the app. This keeps me from browsing videos when I’m not at a computer, and it means that I never deal with ads (except when uBlock needs an update).

Rule 3: Don’t scroll through YouTube Shorts. If a channel I follow uploads one, I might watch it, but there’s no need to start watching random shorts after that.

Reddit

Rule 1: Never download the app. Similar rationale as for YouTube, with the additional reason that I can’t stand to use “New Reddit”. (Reddit redesign its site in 2018, and they cut off all the third-party mobile apps in 2023.) If you don’t use Old Reddit don’t call yourself a Redditor btw.

Rule 2: Don’t bookmark any page from reddit.com. In my browser settings, I only have URL autocomplete enabled for links that I’ve bookmarked. I used to have some random Reddit page bookmarked, and I could just type R + Enter to go to Reddit. Now I have to type out “reddit.com” fully, which means it requires more than a half-second impulse to end up on Reddit.

Rule 3: Don’t subscribe to any big subreddits. My front page typically shows 2-4 posts at any given time. For further browsing, I have to type a specific subreddit name in the URL. I backed into this rule on accident, quite recently, after getting annoyed with nearly every subreddit I was subscribed to. What I’m getting at is, you should mature enough to realize that everything you’re browsing sucks.

TikTok

Rule 1: Do not browse TikTok.

Quite a simple rule! Sometimes I watch TikToks that my friends send me. But, despite the website trying to convince me otherwise, I always close the browser tab right after. I simply do not see how browsing shortform vertical video could have a positive impact on my life.

Instagram

Rule 1: Never download the app.

The website is, by design, basically unusable, so in practice this means “do not use Instagram”. Technically I have an account, @damien__snyder, but I don’t check it or post on it.

Unlike the other rules I’ve prescribed, I’ll admit that this rule gets in the way of a lot of real value. It’s the platform where most of my coworkers text each other, and it helps people keep up with all the goings-on in their friends’ lives, especially with more distant contacts. When meeting someone new, it’s a lot more natural to follow each other on Instagram than to exchange phone numbers. It’s the main way that local events get promoted. And it seems to play some significant role I don’t fully understand in the modern dating world. So I make some social sacrifices by not using Instagram.¹ Here are the reasons I don’t use it anyway:

• Pretty much everyone I know who uses Instagram is addicted to Reels. The Explore page is probably not much better either.
• Instagram is a very potent engine of mimetic desire. Seeing a huge number of likes on a post, or seeing certain people you know liked it, or seeing a ton of posts about the same thing, kind of hijacks your sense of what’s desirable or important. This isn’t exclusive to Instagram, but it’s no coincidence that the phenomenon of “influencers” first rose to prominence there.
• I wish to avoid the social panopticon that Instagram creates. Way too much attention paid to who liked what post, who liked whose story, who posted a pic with XYZ, who deleted XYZ from their profile. And then your conception of what plays well on Instagram influences how you live your life even when you’re not on your phone.² Even in our private lives, we understand what the online public would have to say about us.

Twitter

Rule 1: Only browse via lists³ or by going to specific account pages.

Rule 2: Never download the app.

Twitter is probably the product I’m worst about at the moment, on account of three factors:

• The website is actually functional on both mobile and desktop.
• There are a lot of accounts I want to stay loosely in touch with, but not see all of their posts, which is hard to do without using some sort of algorithmic feed.
• My algorithmic feed is not completely worthless.

Because of this, I’m considering logging out of my account on mobile, which will make Twitter pretty much unusable on mobile. I might also just stop using it entirely, because if we’re being honest I don’t get that much value out of it anymore, now that I’m not in New York where there is more of a Twitter “scene”.⁴

Discord

Rule 1: Mute any highly active channels or group chats, and don’t allow push notifications except from DMs or mentions. Without this rule, I would have notifications and unread messages constantly, for stuff that doesn’t require my immediate attention.

Rule 2: Only use servers that are just made up of my friends.

Discord is a great platform for chatting with and calling friends. So that’s what I use it for.⁵ The 10,000 person servers with constant activity basically seem horrible to me, and I don’t get why people use them.

Facebook, et al.

I do not have a rule for Facebook, or any other social media site not listed here. I don’t even know how I could become addicted to Facebook, because it is not interesting to me. Likewise for Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat, and so on, which I’ve never tried and don’t have any interest in trying. Similar deal for streaming services—I just don’t care enough about TV or movies to use them.

RSS

You probably don’t use RSS, but I do. I use an RSS feed, through Feedly, to keep track of a few dozen blogs from across the internet.⁶ I don’t know if you, reader, would enjoy so many blogs that you’d need an RSS reader for them. (You’re already reading one, so that’s something.) But I think blogs are a very positive medium, so I encourage you to try them out. And an RSS reader is the best way to keep up with them.⁷ Here are some blogs I personally read:

• Sympathetic Opposition, a perceptive blog about literature and poetry, heavily influenced by the now-inactive The Last Psychiatrist. Sometimes posts about cooking and other things too.
• coldhealing, the blog of someone I met through the Twitter scene in New York, who writes thoughtfully (if very plainly) about culture, mostly.
• Kathy’s blog, the blog of someone from an adjacent Twitter scene in New York who I didn’t meet. She mostly writes about her life and mental struggles, which I find interesting because they are very different struggles from my own, and because she is quite funny. She deleted a lot of old posts though :(
• Adam Cadre, who writes reviews of a lot of things, some interesting minutiae from his own life, and every year runs the highly amusing Lyttle Lytton sentence contest.⁸
• Astral Codex Ten (formerly Slate Star Codex), a highly influential blog in the rationalist and effective altruist movements, and in the world of intellectual technically-inclined people more generally.
• Space-Biff!, a prolific and thoughtful board game reviewer. Comes in handy when my friends go to Mox Boarding House and I need to pick out a board game all of a sudden.

Ok a lot of those are on Substack, so you could probably use Substack instead of an RSS reader. It’s probably still worse and more dark-pattern-y than RSS though.

damiensnyder.com

Highly addictive. Nothing of value. DO NOT USE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.