Alternatives
Products that do what Detoxer – Neutralize Addictive Content Without Blocking does
I've been trying to minimize my compulsive browsing of social media for a while, and tried a bunch of extensions and apps to block websites and such, but always ended up disabling them even if they were supposed to be "hard to disable". The fact is that sometimes you need to visit reddit for some info, but you don't want to get caught in an addictive loop. Disabling entire hostnames or trying to configure intricate block lists is annoying, and the end result is annoying. Parental controls don't work on me, and I resent them. I remembered what Tristan Harris once said on ways to prevent…
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Block distractions to eliminate wasteful browsing habits
2017
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2018 · chrome.google.com
- 13BP
Inspired by the nytimes post "Luddites don't want your upvotes", and presumably being a Luddite myself, I have used uBlock to block my Karma score at the top of the page. I found myself (on old account) reflexively checking my Karma score and found myself responding emotionally to it. I do not like this. Positive reinforcement can be a dangerous thing! And negative reinforcement make me feel a bit crap. I'm going to post what I think is the right thing, votes be damned! However I do see the use of downvotes for getting rid of stupid comments and spam as a good thing. I see the use of…
2023
- 14WD
Hey there, First time posting on Hacker News in about 2 years! The reason I’m posting is that I thought I’d write about the product I’ve been building, in hopes it resonates with people. Why build yet another social app? Because I deleted almost all social media around 3/4 years ago as it was just net negative on my life. There was very little that was truly interesting, I didn’t care about looking good to other people and because of the ‘media’ and ads, the apps were all designed to make me spend too much time for what I was getting. I hated it and what it meant for people’s behaviour,…
2022 · oncircles.com
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Would like to share here a project that we have been working on for the last ~10 months. It all started with the goal of properly blocking adult & explicit content out of our own kids devices and expanded it to a free service that anyone can use. Feedback is welcome: https://cleanbrowsing.org CleanBrowsing is free Anycast DNS resolver that automatically blocks adult content and enforces safe search on Google, Google Image search, Bing, Youtube, etc. We have been crawling and categorizing the web for many months and we feel it got to a point where our database is large enough and we…
2018
- 17DK
Hey HN, I made Detoxify, right now it's just a simple addiction tracker, but I'd like to build it out to focus primarily on another goal: addiction replacement. I was addicted to video games for basically my whole life, and I found that willpower alone is not enough to fully quit - you need to track it and you need to replace it. So in the future I'd like Detoxify to be able to give you something back in a big way - if you spend 8 hours a day on video games, imagine if you could begin a 'detox' and then have the app issue you replacements for those hours. 8 hours of video games becomes 2…
2018
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Whether it is a designer ultra-tweeting about some conference she is at or a venture capitalist intensely describing his pursuit of the always-elusive "inbox zero", sometimes you just want to mute someone you follow on Twitter. This extensions allows you to do just that. You can easily put accounts that you follow in the penalty box, where they will be silenced and feel shame. When you have deemed their sins absolved, you can let them out, free to fill your Twitter stream again. Download: http://bit.ly/u1giXH Read About: http://bit.ly/tdqX6y Source: http://bit.ly/tmxvf1
2011
- 19SI
Hey all, I'm Jun. I've always struggled with my doomscrolling habit, and so I spent the last few months building an app to remove short-form, addicting content from all major social media platforms (Instagram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Linkedin, TikTok). The app has the option to further customize (removing home feeds, stories, other subtabs, etc). Launch Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ablpEFt74
Jun 2026 · snowscroll.com
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*The Need I Discovered:* While talking with friends and community members, I noticed that many people struggle with maintaining their NoFap commitment and recovering from addiction. They often need better tools to help them resist temptation and stay on track. *Understanding the Need:* I realized that people often face distractions, especially online, which can undermine their efforts to stay committed. I believed that a browser extension designed to block harmful content and provide additional support could make a significant difference in their recovery journey. *Development Process:*…
2024 · noporn.net
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Hello! In an attempt to reduce my time spent on screens (and more time in real life), I uninstalled social media from my phone ages ago. The same for email: only on desktop for me. At some point, I discovered that I would, however, not spend that much less time on my phone, but rather 'migrate' to other habits, such as impulse checking of news sites. A mobile browser is like a fridge full of sweets if you're trying to stay on a healthy diet. So I've been living without a mobile browser for a long time: I disabled Safari on my iPhone in parental controls (as you can't delete Safari without…
Jun 2026 · leash.ax
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I'm always nervous to post online (this is my very first HN post), so I built an anonymous forum where posts are automatically deleted after 24 hours. Every upvote or comment resets the clock. Some things I like about this concept: - The sheer volume of information on the internet is overwhelming - disappearing.chat keeps that volume low - Unpopular content slowly fades away, so you can visually watch bad takes disappear - Content is always fresh because even popular things will eventually stop getting interaction - Takes the pressure off that your content is going to stick around forever…
2024 · disappearing.chat
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So I just did my semi-annual "log in to Twitter to see if it's any good yet", and found that in my absence I had followed a few thousand new spam accounts. Sweet. That explains why they emailed me and forced me to change my password last year. Being Awesome, Twitter doesn't have any way to simply toss out all your followers and start from scratch. And none of the spammy apps claiming to do so actually will (even seemingly after charging you money to try). So instead, I just pulled open the Dev console and did this:…
2014
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Hey HN, I'm a solo developer from Nigeria. I built Quran Unlock - an app that blocks distracting apps (TikTok, Instagram, etc.) until you complete your daily Quran reading. The idea came from my own struggle with phone addiction. I wanted to read Quran daily but kept getting distracted. So I built this for myself, then shared it. Some stats after 2 months: - 123K+ users - 64.9% returning user rate - 31M events tracked Tech stack: - React Native - Firebase (Auth, Firestore, Analytics, Cloud Messaging) - RevenueCat for subscriptions - iOS Screen Time API + Android UsageStats App Store:…
Jan 2026
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