I want to preface this by noting that this isn’t a guide on “how to be more productive”. I don’t believe people need to be productive all their waking hours. These strategies and tools might not work for you but they helped me have more fun with games, be less angry as much about stuff that doesn’t matter and in general have a better time online.
With that out of the way, let’s get into what I do to stay a bit more sane online. Let’s break it down into sections by service and tool:
If you are actively reading Twitter (aka X), why? I understand if you need it for a job, or to reach people for “marketing” but actively reading and engaging with it? Sounds like a bad time to me. I still have an account, but it’s set on private and I log into it only once a while to make sure it sticks around and no ass takes my nickname, but I actually stay logged off most of the time.
Initially, I replaced Twitter with Mastodon which is a nice, much slower alternative in my experience and eventually I felt ready to engage a bit more again and started using BlueSky.There was a period when I got really overwhelmed because I stupidly put myself on a bunch of gamedev lists and got a ton of follows, but muting the phone notifications fixed that quite easily.
Now, if I need to read a tweet, I go through XCancel and similar services. Those let me get the whole context and replies without having to log in.
On the topic of deleting accounts, Reddit was the next to go. Originally I actually just left most subreddits and still used reddit, especially leaving game related subreddit led to me enjoying the games I play a lot more, because I was not reading annoyed comments about those games every day, souring my experience in the process. And then, Reddit made their API paid, making it more difficult to use third party clients and I was out.
I tried to avoid Reddit completely, but unfortunately, it is sometimes useful.
Nowadays, I visit a handful of smaller subreddits deliberately, to keep up with some news. I also use an extension (click here to skip that section) to block /r/all, because I caught myself going there as if on autopilot and I don’t want to spend more time on Reddit than necessary.
To plug the message board/forum shaped hole in my heart, I now visit Tildes for a more deliberate, meaningful and slower conversation, it’s been nice.
YouTube
I have quite a few gripes with YouTube, but the biggest one is most likely shorts. I don’t know what it is but they’re just way too addicting and I can easily spend hours just scrolling through them, and that sucks. And because companies don’t understand consent today and every “No” is actually just “Ask me later”, hiding Shorts only works for a while before they rear their ugly, addicting head again.
Fortunately, since I use Firefox, the solution to that was pretty easy easy - there’s a filter for uBlock Origin that gets rid of shorts for good. I felt like that was the best solution because I already use uBlock Origin to avoid ads online in general and I don’t really need more browser extensions. I also really do not use YouTube on my phone, ads are probably a part of that, but it just makes it easier to avoid things.
Discord
Discord is a big one, I spend a lot of time there. Maybe way too much. But it’s just how I stay in touch with friends, up to date on my gaming news and more. One thing I try to go by a lot more now is that if I don’t really vibe with someone or something on a server, I can just mute the server and stick around for the announcement channel or worst case simply leave.
It’s freeing to realize that you do not have to spend the energy on some people.
There also also third party modifications and clients that make Discord a lot more bearable, reducing the visual noise, there’s even one that can integrate DeArrow. But those are against Discord’s Terms of Service, and nobody would use those, right? ;)
Now that I covered some services and how I approach them, it’s time for some tools mostly in the form of browser extensions.
uBlock Origin
This one probably needs no introduction, though nowadays it’s been really nerfed in Chrome with other Chromium based browsers following suit probably quite soon. Maybe consider using Firefox or its derivatives?
Some people make the argument that blocking ads is the same as piracy, and maybe they’re right. But as ads get more and more intrusive and annoying, I feel more and more compelled to block them. Annoying me into spending money through ads rarely works either. For example in the case of YouTube, I’d sooner stop watching videos or maybe look for alternatives, than spend on the premium plan. But that’s a rant for another time.
I am of the persuasion that I am free to do with internet traffic entering my home as I please, so I will continue blocking ads, simple as that.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers
Another Firefox one, yeah. Seriously, it’s a good browser :)
Multi-Account Containers is a seriously useful extension that isolates your profile, logins, cookies etc. into separate containers. That means I can use one Firefox browser to be logged into multiple BlueSky accounts for example.
Using the same technology, there is Facebook Container, which isolates all sites ran by Facebook/Meta into containers automatically, reducing tracking of my behaviour online. There are other extensions that do this for Google and some others as well.
Consent-O-Matic
We’re all bothered by those awful cookie popups, right? The maliciously compliant ones are the worst, you know, the ones that force you to untick every single “legitimate interest” party one by one, annoying you into just accepting everything so you can get on with your day.
Consent-O-Matic tries to solve this problem by automatically denying cookies on websites. It makes the internet nice and usable again, and it’s developed by people at the Aarhus University in Denmark. Genuinely an awesome project!
SponsorBlock
This falls into the same category as adblocks to me. I don’t want to see ads, and sponsor segments are just that. I apologize to everyone who tries to make a living on Youtube, but I am not watching your sponsor segments.
SponsorBlock is a great extension that crowdsources timestamp of sponsor (and other) segments of videos from a large community of people and the extension thens automatically skips those segments. It’s made Youtube a lot more bearable for me.
DeArrow
DeArrow is an extension by the same developer as SponsorBlock. In the same vein, it crowsources titles and thumbnails for videos on YouTube with the goal to reduce sensationalism and clickbait.
It even works without crowdsourced alternatives, albeit your mileage might vary, as I think it just uses a random still from the video in that case and applies some rules to the titles such as lowercasing all-caps.
Intention
A fairly recent addition to my arsenal, Intention lets me fight that compulsion to visit certain sites on autopilot. It’s effective enough to stop me in my tracks long enough to think about if I actually want to go where I clicked while letting me visit if I really want to … You know, browse the web intentionally.
The best trick for me is being able to block certain sub-pages. Like I mentioned, I visit certain subreddits without anything in my way, but I have a block for /r/all to make me ask the question if I actually want to go there. I also do the same with HackerNews but on comment sections. I still want to get the overview of articles people post, sometimes there’s really interesting stuff there, but I noticed the comments often left me feeling worse off, so I just block the comments page. It works really well.
I also block Linkedin, because while it’s useful sometimes, I really do not need to see the constant corporate ragebait and AI shilling even if it was for some reason hard to stay away. Not with Intention though.
There’s also one sec which as a similar goal and works on phones. I tried it briefly, I didn’t really like it, but maybe someone will.
And that’s probably all I have to say on that topic. I was contemplating adding a section about avoiding AI enabled services and finding alternatives but on further thought, that’s a topic that deserves its own post, so stay tuned for that.
I may keep updating this post now and then, if I do, I will make sure to say what has changed!