Dead right on twitter. The normies have all left it. Pre Elon Twitter was the community bulletin board and meeting place for all sorts of interesting subgroups. They’ve all left. Normal younger people consider twitter to be as relevant to their lives as Compuserve.
My feed there used to be cool physics stuff. Now it’s just all the people in the world who want me dead and for every real one of those 99 bots joining in.
This is a great blog post. I do a lot of similar things on my phone (GrapheneOS, airplane mode, CoMaps).
The thing that I’d been looking for on this minimal setup was a way to prevent access to the browser or installing apps at will. It was easy enough when I was on iOS. I just used Apple Configurator [1] to block Safari and the App Store, but on GrapheneOS, there was no great option.
Recently I made a device owner app [2] which allows hiding any UI app and locking itself. It ended up being quite an elegant solution as it allows full access to app stores for updates (new apps you install are hidden until you unlock and approve them). The only way around it is with the lock code or a factory reset.
This makes my phone a quite private device whose functionality I intentionally set ahead of time. It can only do what the apps I’ve chosen can do. I prefer browsing and similar on a computer.
[1] Apple’s Mac MDM app anyone can use. You need a Mac and to factory reset your phone first.
This really resonates for me. I've gone back and forth on staying on social media given the mental side effects but also how useful it can be. I was on Instagram one day and I noticed that only one in five posts it showed me were from people I actually followed. I found a feature that let met only see stuff from people I followed (Insta makes this hard to find and use) and I felt a lot more at peace when scrolling my feed. Maybe I need to look for a firefly equivalent for it.
> We need social media less than before, because you can talk to the bot for information instead (and for human connection, there's still the old-fashioned solution: going out and talking to people in real life).
I kinda believe this. The web for collaboration, work, dumping out information and doomscrolling is a great tool, but I think is bad for any kind of socializing or 'communitizing' at a human level, where you are forced to treat humans as such instead of looking at some transduced digital representation of a real person in the form or chars or pixels prone to dehumanization.
> Firefly is a multi-client that combines together X, BlueSky as well as Farcaster and Lens (both partially-Ethereum-based decentralized social media platforms). You can see tweets from all four platforms, and you can make a tweet that gets auto-posted to all four platforms.
It is really interesting to see a third-party client for Twitter still operational. How is this still possible? This seems like an unauthorized third-party hack that would likely get shut down with too much attention?
I feel like this is... a bit too much, no? Particularly the cellular part. I see the appeal of staying off the grid, but people with families would certainly struggle with this. Not to mention the many inconveniences this would bring about.
And using Twitter/X even with a different client... it's not really minimalism is it?
I can agree to some extent about the gripes with social media. It's why I prefer using Substack over Twitter, Reddit, etc. It is much more limited, but certainly not as toxic. BlueSky has also been decent in my experience.
> Not to mention the many inconveniences this would bring about.
This is what reinforces the problem.
When we choose conveniences, we reinforce them. This makes it harder to get away from the things that brings us that convenience.
Conveniences to be able to get a hold of anyone in seconds rather than waiting. Believe it or not, there was a time when we were just, not available. It was OK.
Did that mean that things were a little more challenging? Of course, road trips or going anywhere new meant more upfront planning. Not knowing where your children were brought anxiety which meant rules. However, it was all manageable. By ALWAYS choosing conveniences, we shut the door on alternative options which in turn make it harder to deal with inconveniences.
The other side of this coin is that not everything about the past was better.
I’m struggling to see how having anxiety about losing your children is better. I’m struggling to understand how knowing where they are would lead to having fewer rules.
I struggle to figure out how my friends being more available to text is a negative. What was character-building about calling them on a landline or losing contact with them entirely as an alternative?
I got chicken pox as a kid, that doesn’t mean my kids should get it.
I’ve had arguments like this with my parents about urbanism. When they grew up, the city was dirty, crime-ridden, etc. They also grew up during a time when the automobile was like the tech industry of their day. It was an innovation that changed their lives for the better in their opinion and lived experience. Their house got bigger, their car got bettter and lasted longer and their neighborhood got cleaner and safer, in their eyes.
My parents feel like trying to use the car less and switching to public transit or cycling more is like denying progress. What was the point of all that innovation and progress if we are “going backwards” in their eyes?
The end result of these discussions isn’t that I don’t believe in urbanism anymore, but I’m now more accepting of their point of view on the subject. I see their viewpoint as more valid than I used to. There’s nothing horribly wrong about their way of life even though I don’t necessarily want to adopt many aspects of it.
I am not saying that those things have no value. The opposite is definitely true. However, you are accepting a lot of baggage by reinforcing the systems that bring those conveniences. Now, you MUST have a cellphone or you are a Luddite. You MUST have a cellphone or you can't read a menu at a restaurant, unlock the door to your hotel room or access your bank funds.
You now have lost digital sovereignty to large corporations because you need to be able to get a hold of your kids within seconds.
All conveniences come with costs that you and society must bare.
Last two sentences of your first paragraph are definitely not the sort of thing I was trying to say is okay.
I also don’t think some of the conveniences I talked about have much of a cost. My kids having a cell phone with basic phone and texting capability isn’t a digital sovereignty issue.
And I’m not sure if digital sovereignty matters if the alternative is digital abstinence.
That’s like saying “When you buy a Toyota Camry your life is beholden to Toyota, you should just walk to your destination.” The trade-off isn’t really even, is it?
> My kids having a cell phone with basic phone and texting capability isn’t a digital sovereignty issue.
Of course it is, the first version of Twitter was a texting platform. You can't draw some line and say that this is the end of the baggage that comes with this convenience because that is not how the world works. The inevitability of social pressure means "keeping up with the Joneses" so your kids need to communicate with others, not just you.
Just because it doesn't come in the form of an app doesn't mean it is safe or come without risks.
Car dependency is an excellent parallel. People buy cars on the promise that they should expect freedom of movement, but then they arrange their lives so they can only go where roads have been paved, and arrive where buildings have been demolished for parking lots. They become financially dependent on oil extraction in the Middle East. They become incapable of getting anywhere alone when they lose the ability to drive, due to ailments or age.
So why do we do it? Because we can't imagine living without the convenience of our phones.
I'm not a parent and a bit autistic so excuse the unemotional reply but surely there are other ways not to have anxiety about your children surely?:
Teach independence/self-defence/street smarts, encourage weight lifting for older kids, therapy/meditation for yourself (some anxiety is natural of course!), move to a safer city, have more children (easier to pair them up on adventures, plus less subconscious physiological fear of losing your one and only child), distract yourself and stay busy, go with them to places the first few times to assure yourself then take off your training wheels. Or just say no to certain things.
It doesn't seem to me a special case of anxiety that can only be addressed by spy apps and knowing you might be able to instantly contact them.
lol, have my kids carry a phone or have more kids so the can be paired up.
That’s a wild thing to say out loud. And absolutely doesn’t solve the problem. Kids need to have their own friends and own social circles if you want to teach independence.
Knowing where they are isn’t necessarily “installing spy apps,” it can just mean being able to call them or text them.
“Move to a safer city” is a lot more expensive than a phone plan. A lot of people don’t have that luxury.
I agree that all the things you talk about are life positives but the way I see it, giving a kid who is old and mature enough to use one a cell phone is like a $15/month cost proposition for an outsized benefit of being able to contact them.
I have cellular and wi-fi permanently disabled on my phone since the beginning of smartphones. I only use it with Ethernet. Works really well. If it's important, call. If it's not I can get to it next time I connect an Ethernet cable.
We made all of this work before phones even existed. Getting your attention siphoned away by your phone isn't a convenience, it's an unhealthy dependence.
> I feel like this is... a bit too much, no? Particularly the cellular part. I see the appeal of staying off the grid, but people with families would certainly struggle with this. Not to mention the many inconveniences this would bring about.
Similarly, I think for people who are stuck in prison in Burkina Faso, I think much of this things also don't apply, as they don't have the freedom to chose if they want cellular service or not, if we're going through scenarios where all of those things might not apply :)
It's a shared personal experience, it is what it is? I don't think author is advocating that everyone in every circumstance should try to emulate all of those things. You read it, build your opinion, then learn from what you found useful and ignore the rest. If something would be impossible because of your personal circumstance, then you can just not think about that.
I don’t have a phone, I don’t have an account on any AI (though google search gets me)
No AI is easy, I don’t want it.
No phone is inconvenient sometimes, but I’m well aware I don’t want my life to be more convenient, I want it to be more fulfilling. I do things that are inconvenient because I want to. Bake bread, chop wood to heat our house, hunt to fill the freezer. I talk to people face to face, I live basically the same as I did as an adult from 2000 onwards.
I spend my days outside where there is no cell service anyway, and have no interest in being contacted or contacting others. The people with me are who I want to spend time with.
I guess minimalism is relative. I wouldn’t describe this as minimalism. Minimalism is not using a tool “that combines together X, BlueSky as well as Farcaster and Lens”. To me that is a way to cope with the opposite of minimalism.
You actually can just leave Twitter and read a book instead.
I agree with you, but this is probably not true for Vitalik, who is basically an influencer. We should all close our computers and spend our time in nature and reading books, but this does limit our outreach possibilities significantly.
The article is broken into three primary sections:
- Social media minimalism
- Cell data minimalism
- Web minimalism
What you say is true about the 2nd section, but the comment you are replying to is referencing the 1st section which states, in part:
"I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface. Instead, I have been doing most of my tweeting through Firefly:
Firefly is a multi-client that combines together X, BlueSky as well as Farcaster and Lens (both partially-Ethereum-based decentralized social media platforms)."
That experiment also felt more cute than actually minimalist to me.
When I decided to take a break from being terminally online, I didn’t turn off the phone feature but leave Wi-Fi on so I could still check my socials on the office Wi-Fi; that wouldn’t have actually done much. I forced my phone off the bulk of the internet by turning off Wi-Fi and disabling cellular data for everything but a few core apps like Messages and Maps.
I hope Digital Minimalism doesn't mean depending on an AI product subscription, his written code(which is not minimal) or having a black hole of npm dependencies for running a wallet on the cli that(reporting what's on their repo):
"NOTICE: this CLI has NOT BEEN AUDITED and IS UNDER ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT and HAS BEEN WRITTEN WITH HELP FROM CLAUDE et al"
What a "fantastic" era we're entering into. I think eventually these people will have a minimalistic life, with malware stealing everything
Its definitely not a super toxic site though, but its social media. Same as discord and other chatrooms. Something like IRC we would have called by another name in the past but I think nowadays we could say it's a form of social media.
> HN has no recommender system so I dont count it in.
HN front page is digitally curated. HN has an opaque post ranking algorithm.
> How are stories ranked?
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
It's an interesting question: How do you define the line between a 'forum' (which most don't consider addictive or harmful), and 'social media' (where there is growing evidence of addiction and harm)? What are some attributes of social media that are missing on forums?
Opaque ranking algorithms?
Human curation / moderation?
Automated curation / moderation?
Voting / flagging?
Infinite scroll?
Images and/or auto-playing video?
Advertising inline with posts?
Profit motive to get users to do certain things?
I don't know where you draw the line, and what makes Facebook harmful but Hacker News not harmful.
All these words and no mention of the book where the term comes from, also eponymous, by Cal Newport. His book is about actual digital minimalism versus whatever Vitalik is referencing here.
Hadn't gotten to TFA yet and assumed it was about Cal Newport's book (why I opened the thread). I was confused why AI kept coming up here in the comments, as the book predates the current AI fad. Thanks for pointing this out.
I think that's telling. If you're reducing digital human interaction on social media (which yes, has its share of problems) but replacing it with "social" interaction with AI, that's not minimalism. You're replacing one vice with an even worse one and coping about it.
He may be using it as a tool, but that doesn't mean it's not displacing social interaction. Previously he would've had to collaborate with people to get the same stuff done, which necessarily involves social interaction.
Sure but that's rather different from productive collaboration. People have previously replaced those things with Netflix or video games which also cannot replace human collaboration
Local LLMs are pretty powerful and useful for me personally, and the best compute I have locally is a an RTX2060. I certainly have no paid AI subscriptions.
Obviously depends what you're doing, and not suitable for everyone, but it's an unhelpful generalisation to say AI in its current form is purely a paid product subscription.
Effectively it is. I hear relatively very few people talking about self-hosting it, or even just using one of those GPU rental services. It's all about claude, openai, gemini, if you haven't tried this week's model revision you can't complain, and so on.
No one knows for sure, but my guess is no? The difficulty with this conversation of course, lies in the details - specifically in terms of "to what extent can the user, or other presumably positive forces, modify what the person puts in their own brains."
This is why I'm a huge proponent of something like "small AI."
Not per se, but if you're using it as a substitute for human interaction (like most 'chatbot' style UIs want you to), then yes, absolutely.
The main problem is that talking to AI is like talking to a human without any of the thorny parts. It's only going to be nice and helpful and always available to you. Chatting with AI is to social interaction like candy is to a balanced diet. Sure it's more instantly gratifying but long-term it's really bad for you. You need the thorny parts to build important social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
> It's only going to be nice and helpful and always available to you.
You could always try "You are a thorny internet troll" as your system prompt instead. Works wonders.
> social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
We're not still talking about social media, are we?
(I agree that substituting AI for human interaction is bonkers, btw. But I'm not sure social media helps, or doesn't also involve mostly AI interactions these days.)
Prompting the AI to be mean doesn't do shit. It doesn't change that your interaction with it is always consequence-free. It will never refuse to talk to you, and if it gets too mean you can just nuke it and start an new session. You don't have to build or retain any social skills.
Yes it is because it's the next stage in the emergent phenomenon of tech becoming more addictive so that we can't help but develop it. AI puts technology first over the needs of humans and it's harder to avoid.
But where’s the line? You could say the same about the Internet (or movies or books…) It can be used badly, but also to learn and reduce mundane tasks, unlike social media (though you actually can learn from social media, asking the AI is way more effective).
There isn't a line, just like 'dangerous speed' isn't a line. The addictive and deleterious effect of a technology is more like a continuous quantity and as that quantity increases, the probability of misuse and deleterious effects increase too.
Depends, if you care for the bot or develop a para-social relationship with it, then yes, it will be much worse. It does not care or have emotions or understand the human experience. It simulates those things through words and that really messes with the human brain.
If you are using it as an assistant, coach, or deep researcher to chat about interesting things with, then no.
I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface
Left Facebook and twitter 6-7 years ago. If you just can't leave something without constantly trying to reach back to it in some shape, then you are no different from the junkie that thinks he can quit anytime if he really wanted to.
Rant aside, beside social media minimalism I am also a big fan of compute minimalism. I don't use VScode with 100+ plugins or a zsh maxed up with so much bells and whistles that the terminal looks like Christmas and respond with the speed of microsoft powershell.
But I guess most people in SF are in the opposite camp.
When you said compute minimalism, I thought you were going to talk about using a RISC-V processor and using Emacs for any text editing. I'd say that's the real compute minimalism. xD
Good ol' Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping holds up well these days when the competition is stuff like vscode. But yeah, I think vim is probably a bit more minimal.
> beside social media minimalism I am also a big fan of compute minimalism. I don't use VScode with 100+ plugins or a zsh maxed up with so much bells and whistles
That’s what I thought the article would talk about. If it were social media, I’d rather buy a cheap used phone, put the app on it, and turn it on only when I want to check something. Then it’s off. But I deleted/haven’t logged into my accounts for years now.
As for as minimal compute goes. my daily driver is an old laptop I put OpenBSD on. I also have an m1 air that I mostly use for shopping and meeting. Then an iPad for reading. But the key thing is that app and software are tools. It’s either tied to an activity (even relaxing ones) or it’s not used. No ricing or theming, just basic configuration to get the job done.
I have skimmed the post but some of the things are not minimalism, but replacement of delivery mechanisms. On the other hand I'm also doing something similar in my digital life.
I have reduced my social media to two sites: Here and Mastodon (with a very limited follow circle). I don't follow tons of ad-ridden websites. I have a self-hosted RSS reader, following 10 feeds. Instead of following junk tech news, I read LWN.
Next step might be enabling antiproc on HN to reduce my time here, since I added time limits on applications on my phone and love that artificial limit.
I have limited energy and I want to focus it instead of spreading it around. Otherwise progressing beyond a certain point becomes impossible.
For me it's less about the tools I use, and more about building health habits (or reducing the bad habits). I use ScreenZen to enforce limited short session for a short list of harmful apps and websites (socials & news), and I configured it to allow a few 5-min-long sessions per day. The short sessions being cut in the middle help me stay informed but break the addictive nature of socials/news. I also use Android's Digital Wellbeing with Bedtime Mode (like Do Not Disturb) and Focus Mode (pause apps and notifications for almost all apps at night). Also uninstalled specific apps (e.g. Facebook) and using the mobile web version, which has subpar experience, which also helps in making it less addictive.
Kind of a misleading title. I would call this creating a dashboard through which you interact with social media. Which is a good idea, and conceivably a lot easier to build nowadays with AI. I'd even expand it to the internet at large, using RSS or something like it.
Having some kind of notification system would be helpful as well, since most platforms are actively trying to minimize the accounts you follow and replace them with their algorithmic suggestions.
Regarding the social media part, hugely recommend revanced, for those in android.
My Instagram app (besides showing no ads) shows just the stories and feeds of people I follow, chronologically. Just a couple days this way will make you realize how little content there is, my friend's Korea trip has been the top one for like a couple weeks already.
Then you can get the DMs to avoid FOMO and realize how antisocial the whole thing is.
No idea if it works for x, I left that long ago and everytime I've checked out of curiosity I've been shocked at the absolute cesspit it is.
> ...used some kind of semantic search to show the user a search result from the local database immediately, and then followed that up with a very small LLM writing a text answer. This gives actually-good answers in a very reasonable timeframe
I have tried this very same thing on https://grimoire.bio. Large corpus of biological knowledge with detailed visualizations that are shown immediately upon searching, but adding LLM answer when missing/needed.
> I propose a philosophy of technology use called digital minimalism in which you radically reduce the time you spend staring at screens, focusing on a small number of digital activities that strongly support things you deeply value, and then happily ignoring the rest.
This is why I am so careful about what I click and what signals I send to the algorithm. If you don't want to see car crashes then don't rubber neck with morbid curiosity at the first one.
I have never seen a Hitler post but if I saw one I would immediately block that user and the algorithm knows that. It doesn't show me people arguing it shows me debates and tech. Because that's what I taught it to do. It is not even hard it just requires a little discipline.
When a friend sends a link I refuse to click on it unless my VPN is on and I'm using Mullvad Browser. I don't want their taste (which is quite often look at this outrageous thing) ruining my feed.
One trick I have is if I see a video in my sidebar on YT that I don't want to taint my profile, I copy the url without going to it and open it in mpv directly. I tend to watch all my videos in mpv, but I do usually like to have them in my browser history and save them to playlists to find later as well, so I'm just skipping that part. I don't know if this method is perfect, they should still see my IP, but anecdotally I think it's been fine.
I recently got into reviving old tech and was looking at a Nokia 3210. The main challenge is that these only work on 2G which is getting shut down in more and more countries across the world.
There are 4G mainboards you can buy and projects like https://www.nokia3310lteproject.com that aim to bring them into the modern world but for me these don't go far enough as they try to preserve the original UI. For me, the ideal device would be a 4G/GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth-capable Nokia brick with modern interpretations of apps for maps, music, messaging etc. with optimized user interfaces for the limited screen space their tiny LCDs offer.
TOTP at least should be doable on pretty old/basic stuff. I saw someone make a TOTP app for 3DS. Maybe a literal 15 year old Nokia is pushing it, though. This wouldn't cover SMS MFA or the one where you need to hit a button from a specific app, but ideally those would die out anyway...
Wow, that's not a leap I would ever have made, let alone posted online. The rest of the article felt similar, like it was well intentioned but maybe somewhat unrelatable: hopping off X by using a different app to read/post, quitting mobile internet by mapping every hotspot in town. Maybe it's relevant more as a break from the author's norm?
Not sure who you mean by "this person" but if you mean the author of the article, that would be dipping a toe into personal attack, which we really ask people to avoid here.
(Note the "evokes worse from others bit" in my comment below—I'm sure it's not what you intended but this is exactly how that works.)
(Also of course, persons don't need to be relevant for articles to be interesting, and it's the latter that we're shooting for.)
It wasn't meant as an attack, but I did want to draw the connection to the author's identity, which I felt explained a lot of the aspects of the article I found jarring. I'll try to reframe it!
I’m going to sound like an ass, but is this the sort of crap we’re going to see published in 10yr when all these crypto folk grow up a bit and start reflecting on their “glorious revolution”?
At least the Beanie Baby people realized it was ridiculous.
I guess the better comparison is dotcom folks, and they were pretty insufferable for quite a while
Can you please not do this here? That is, not fulminate and not cross into personal attack in HN comments?
I realize that this kind of remark is better-intentioned than it comes across on the internet. In personal conversation it can be just another way of chatting and making sense of the world. Tone of voice can do a lot to modulate pejoratives.
But in an online forum like HN it degrades and makes conversation more shallow, and tends to evoke worse from others, leading to downward-spiral-mode, which we're really trying to avoid here.
That is a fair criticism. I’m letting my frustration with longer-term behaviors in social media influence my comments, and this is an inappropriate forum. I appreciate the correction.
Every time I read a Vitalik blog post, I end up wondering - how did a thinker so smart and so deep end up creating a technology that’s (now) so crass and shallow
> If you access a web application, you end up re-downloading the application from the server thousands of times, and you are fully trusting the server each time. If the server gets hacked even one of the thousands of times that you open the site, you might be screwed. Regular old-fashioned applications (where you explicitly click "download") are better than this: you only need to trust the server to not be malicious or hacked at that exact moment once.
That's precisely why something like signed distributions packages are way more secure than curl bash'ing.
But many simply don't understand that. We had plenty of forged Web certificates likely. And even without that, with curl bash'ing anything sensitive you have to cross fingers that the server ain't serving one in 10 000 request with a backdoored version.
With curl bash'ing everybody is trusting every single time that the server ain't compromised or intentionally malicious.
At this point I've lost any hope: people simply don't understand security.
And as long as we'll have people saying that curl bash'ing is just as safe as signed distros packages, we'll have daily posts about major security incidents.
Security is a mindset and most people simply don't have it.
> if you spent a lot of time on X you will likely remember a particular one: everyone seemed to be suddenly becoming fans of Adolf Hitler... I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface
You know, it really is entirely optional to hang out at the Nazi bar.
> A phone connected to cell is an always-on tracking device
A phone connected to wifi is also an always-on tracking device. You can't really escape this without removing the "phone" part of the equation
Wifi is much less of a concern than cellular. The phone only connects to networks you choose, and MAC randomization keeps it anonymous. GrapheneOS also fixes VPN leaks that stock Android has, which helps on wifi too. Linux, Windows, and MacOS are not good at preventing VPN leaks.
Phones are not inherently bad for privacy. The cell connection, telemetry, and default apps are the main problems. The first can be solved with airplane mode, and the latter two with a custom OS (or an iPhone to an extent), just as you’d install Linux for those advantages over Windows. Due to their security model (app sandboxing, permissions, exploit protections), they’re a much better place to start for making a private OS that protects user data. GrapheneOS with airplane mode is more private than most desktop setups.
Unfortunately the network prison keeps people at the Nazi bar.
Mandatory Interoperability is the only solution here, which depends on the government, which depends on Nov 11 folks.
You know, there’s a world out there beyond the prison. It has no locks and no fences. You can just choose to go outside, right now; go for a hike, see some trees, watch a bird. There is nothing stopping you from never visiting the prison or the bar ever again.
What is so important on xitter? I've ended up following a link there at most a small handful of times in the last 5-10 years. I can't think of anything I would miss if it shut down tomorrow.
I used to go to that bar a lot. When it became clear it was becoming a Nazi bar, and the owner saw that as a feature, not a bug, I stopped. Describing it as a network prison seems to imply that staying there isn't just a choice like anything else. Yes, it's a choice with consequences, potentially very negative ones, but these things often are. If it were always easier to be moral than amoral, we wouldn't be in this mess.
People on Twitter really overblow it's importance, but the vast majority of humans do not use it. Things posted there really only matter to other Twitter users, and are inconsequential in the real world.
I mean, the rest of us just stopped going there. The interesting tech discussions long since left twitter, and if you are jonesing for a fix there is always bluesky or mastodon
> It's where influential folks post. Whether you like it or not.
It's where a bunch of rich (and often very right-leaning) assholes post. I'm not clear that correlates with "influential" outside of very specific circles - certainly all the thinkers and doers I used to follow on twitter left long since.
I pretty much stopped reading at the justification for hanging around on X. Lots of people are still there! But at least own it. "I implicitly support the owner of the Nazi bar as long as he tells most of the Nazis to stay away from me" isn't a moral stand I'd be comfortable committing to on paper, digitally, or otherwise.
> Now, in fairness to X and Elon and its hard-working employees, the Adolf Hitler fandom does seem to have greatly wound down in the one and a half years since then. I suspect part of this is because such movements inevitably burn out once people realize how immoral and stupid they are. But another part is undoubtedly genuine improvements in how The Algorithm™ works.
> Click on the tweet and look around its quotes and responses, the same way that someone would morbidly stare at a car accident.
Twitter gets money from ads. They can sell more ads for more money when they can demonstrate eyeballs and eyeball time. Therefore, they're incentivized to keep your eyeballs on the app for as long as possible. If that means putting car accidents in front of you, that's what it'll do!
I strongly believe that social media is basically a lost cause for this and a few other reasons. I tried out Mastodon and Bluesky, but people there don't seem to actually be interested in conversation, and there's physical limitations that prevent meaningful conversation anyway in the form of character limits. ~200 characters is simply not enough space for anything meaningful to be conveyed, so the platform selects for snippy clapbacks and pithy virtue signalling.
I'm also unconvinced there's anything of value to be had from these platforms, maybe including HN. I seem to be hearing about the new hotness in the AI space for example by just regularly attending coworking events. I guess if everyone stopped using Twitter, that would stop being the case. Or maybe we'd go back to RSS...
I would recommend Pleroma over Mastodon. Character limits are configurable and I've often seen ones 10k or higher. While Mastodon can see and reply to the fedi posts that long, it may not be able to make them.
I reply to people on fedi quite a bit, personally. I think people are conversing.
Bluesky inherited Twitter's toxic culture and most of its users switched over for political reasons. That creates an echo chamber full of the worst "2020 cancel culture liberal" types who think they're radical but are really just annoying.
There are parts of the community where it's a lot better (atmosphere and open source devs, some digital artists who are not vocally pro/anti AI) but most people will see the front page that's almost exclusively US politics and get turned off.
I don't know how to fix this. Maybe create a new site that starts out focused on a specific large, politically mixed group like gaming or football fans and then expands to a general audience. Or use a personalized algorithm by default and initialize it randomly so new users see more diverse content.
> some digital artists who are not vocally pro/anti AI
I finally unsubscribed from the RSS feed of a web comic creator who has for over a year now (I think) not posted a single comic that is not about AI.
I mean there is not a single plot point beside "AI is bad" in those dozens of newer strips. I‘m not exaggerating as a rhetorical device, I mean this literally.
I‘m actually sympathetic to his view, but I came for the wonderful world and drawings. I‘m sad about the effect AI had on this artist, because yes, he‘s objectively endangered and right to protest it, but it has already taken away his oeuvre in a way.
1. Small social like Discord, WhatsApp / facebook groups, Bandcamp (I was recently invited to a topical group there).
I have some designs for something like ATProto by fully permissioned and focused on small social modalities. I'm not interested in platforms with globalness, reposts/quotes, or blocking (fence sitting this one tbh)
2. Spending more time offline, with people in real life, then taking those social dynamics and interaction patterns back to online ones. We are currently doing the opposite as a society.
Even if the platform weren't originally a microblogging one, longform text is basically over at a societal level because the majority of internet users now are on phones, and that medium discourages longform text. You can see this from Reddit, where comments a decade ago where often much longer, a couple of solid paragraphs, and now they tend to be microblogging-length inane quips.
It depends on which subreddit you're on. Reddit has this strange dynamic where it's simultaneously a series of web forums, and a single feed scrolling app. Some subs have more of a community feel and they can encourage longer form posts depending on the subject matter.
What's really notable is how the tone of a small subreddit post changes completely if a post gets boosted to everyone's front page. There's a small cycling sub I read with good posts about routes, tips, and advice. When something reaches the front page, it becomes a shitshow of car v bike culture war bullshit.
Until I gave up on Reddit this year, I was solely on small hobby subs. I hadn't even seen the big general subs since sometime before Covid. And yet all of those small subs I was on had degenerated into insubstantial comments and image posts. Posting substantial comments, the kind that used to be normal, started making one look like an autistic-infobombing weirdo.
Substantial discussion of some hobbies has moved from Reddit to invite-only WhatsApp groups, precisely because Reddit went downhill. (This is true for long-haul bicycle travel, for example.) Unfortunately, on WA, too, everyone is on their phone, so messages are on average too short for comfort, and also there is no FAQ culture so people just ask the same questions again and again.
X is the only social media I use, and I use it a lot. I’ve never seen a Hitler or a Mao post. My feed is saturated with my intellectual interests. It’s a joy to use, filled with novel discoveries that I often want learn more about.
Getting this experience is simple: don’t click or garbage, occasionally block content you don’t like.
My feed there used to be cool physics stuff. Now it’s just all the people in the world who want me dead and for every real one of those 99 bots joining in.
The thing that I’d been looking for on this minimal setup was a way to prevent access to the browser or installing apps at will. It was easy enough when I was on iOS. I just used Apple Configurator [1] to block Safari and the App Store, but on GrapheneOS, there was no great option.
Recently I made a device owner app [2] which allows hiding any UI app and locking itself. It ended up being quite an elegant solution as it allows full access to app stores for updates (new apps you install are hidden until you unlock and approve them). The only way around it is with the lock code or a factory reset.
This makes my phone a quite private device whose functionality I intentionally set ahead of time. It can only do what the apps I’ve chosen can do. I prefer browsing and similar on a computer.
[1] Apple’s Mac MDM app anyone can use. You need a Mac and to factory reset your phone first.
[2] https://beeswax.getflourish.org/
I kinda believe this. The web for collaboration, work, dumping out information and doomscrolling is a great tool, but I think is bad for any kind of socializing or 'communitizing' at a human level, where you are forced to treat humans as such instead of looking at some transduced digital representation of a real person in the form or chars or pixels prone to dehumanization.
lol, looks like someone haven't learned from the early internet of the 90s
people talk on internet *because* going out in real life is not a preferable option
Social media is like a townhall where humans and bots interchange information, meme, find work, collaboratrs and meet n greet (socialize).
But just as in real life, spending your entire existence in the town hall is akin to being homeless.
It is really interesting to see a third-party client for Twitter still operational. How is this still possible? This seems like an unauthorized third-party hack that would likely get shut down with too much attention?
And using Twitter/X even with a different client... it's not really minimalism is it?
I can agree to some extent about the gripes with social media. It's why I prefer using Substack over Twitter, Reddit, etc. It is much more limited, but certainly not as toxic. BlueSky has also been decent in my experience.
This is what reinforces the problem.
When we choose conveniences, we reinforce them. This makes it harder to get away from the things that brings us that convenience.
Conveniences to be able to get a hold of anyone in seconds rather than waiting. Believe it or not, there was a time when we were just, not available. It was OK.
Did that mean that things were a little more challenging? Of course, road trips or going anywhere new meant more upfront planning. Not knowing where your children were brought anxiety which meant rules. However, it was all manageable. By ALWAYS choosing conveniences, we shut the door on alternative options which in turn make it harder to deal with inconveniences.
I’m struggling to see how having anxiety about losing your children is better. I’m struggling to understand how knowing where they are would lead to having fewer rules.
I struggle to figure out how my friends being more available to text is a negative. What was character-building about calling them on a landline or losing contact with them entirely as an alternative?
I got chicken pox as a kid, that doesn’t mean my kids should get it.
I’ve had arguments like this with my parents about urbanism. When they grew up, the city was dirty, crime-ridden, etc. They also grew up during a time when the automobile was like the tech industry of their day. It was an innovation that changed their lives for the better in their opinion and lived experience. Their house got bigger, their car got bettter and lasted longer and their neighborhood got cleaner and safer, in their eyes.
My parents feel like trying to use the car less and switching to public transit or cycling more is like denying progress. What was the point of all that innovation and progress if we are “going backwards” in their eyes?
The end result of these discussions isn’t that I don’t believe in urbanism anymore, but I’m now more accepting of their point of view on the subject. I see their viewpoint as more valid than I used to. There’s nothing horribly wrong about their way of life even though I don’t necessarily want to adopt many aspects of it.
I am not saying that those things have no value. The opposite is definitely true. However, you are accepting a lot of baggage by reinforcing the systems that bring those conveniences. Now, you MUST have a cellphone or you are a Luddite. You MUST have a cellphone or you can't read a menu at a restaurant, unlock the door to your hotel room or access your bank funds.
You now have lost digital sovereignty to large corporations because you need to be able to get a hold of your kids within seconds.
All conveniences come with costs that you and society must bare.
I also don’t think some of the conveniences I talked about have much of a cost. My kids having a cell phone with basic phone and texting capability isn’t a digital sovereignty issue.
And I’m not sure if digital sovereignty matters if the alternative is digital abstinence.
That’s like saying “When you buy a Toyota Camry your life is beholden to Toyota, you should just walk to your destination.” The trade-off isn’t really even, is it?
Of course it is, the first version of Twitter was a texting platform. You can't draw some line and say that this is the end of the baggage that comes with this convenience because that is not how the world works. The inevitability of social pressure means "keeping up with the Joneses" so your kids need to communicate with others, not just you.
Just because it doesn't come in the form of an app doesn't mean it is safe or come without risks.
So why do we do it? Because we can't imagine living without the convenience of our phones.
Teach independence/self-defence/street smarts, encourage weight lifting for older kids, therapy/meditation for yourself (some anxiety is natural of course!), move to a safer city, have more children (easier to pair them up on adventures, plus less subconscious physiological fear of losing your one and only child), distract yourself and stay busy, go with them to places the first few times to assure yourself then take off your training wheels. Or just say no to certain things.
It doesn't seem to me a special case of anxiety that can only be addressed by spy apps and knowing you might be able to instantly contact them.
That’s a wild thing to say out loud. And absolutely doesn’t solve the problem. Kids need to have their own friends and own social circles if you want to teach independence.
“Move to a safer city” is a lot more expensive than a phone plan. A lot of people don’t have that luxury.
I agree that all the things you talk about are life positives but the way I see it, giving a kid who is old and mature enough to use one a cell phone is like a $15/month cost proposition for an outsized benefit of being able to contact them.
We made all of this work before phones even existed. Getting your attention siphoned away by your phone isn't a convenience, it's an unhealthy dependence.
Similarly, I think for people who are stuck in prison in Burkina Faso, I think much of this things also don't apply, as they don't have the freedom to chose if they want cellular service or not, if we're going through scenarios where all of those things might not apply :)
It's a shared personal experience, it is what it is? I don't think author is advocating that everyone in every circumstance should try to emulate all of those things. You read it, build your opinion, then learn from what you found useful and ignore the rest. If something would be impossible because of your personal circumstance, then you can just not think about that.
- Not using social media at all
- Not using your phone at all
- Not using AI at all
No AI is easy, I don’t want it.
No phone is inconvenient sometimes, but I’m well aware I don’t want my life to be more convenient, I want it to be more fulfilling. I do things that are inconvenient because I want to. Bake bread, chop wood to heat our house, hunt to fill the freezer. I talk to people face to face, I live basically the same as I did as an adult from 2000 onwards.
I spend my days outside where there is no cell service anyway, and have no interest in being contacted or contacting others. The people with me are who I want to spend time with.
You actually can just leave Twitter and read a book instead.
Love or hate it, he invented the 2nd -- maybe even the 1st -- most impactful form of cryptocurrency.
Twister is a cancer that doesn't need replacement.
- Social media minimalism
- Cell data minimalism
- Web minimalism
What you say is true about the 2nd section, but the comment you are replying to is referencing the 1st section which states, in part:
"I did not leave X the platform, but I did leave X the interface. Instead, I have been doing most of my tweeting through Firefly:
Firefly is a multi-client that combines together X, BlueSky as well as Farcaster and Lens (both partially-Ethereum-based decentralized social media platforms)."
When I decided to take a break from being terminally online, I didn’t turn off the phone feature but leave Wi-Fi on so I could still check my socials on the office Wi-Fi; that wouldn’t have actually done much. I forced my phone off the bulk of the internet by turning off Wi-Fi and disabling cellular data for everything but a few core apps like Messages and Maps.
having a phone with "flip to shhh" (put it face down, notifications are silenced) is really nice
What a "fantastic" era we're entering into. I think eventually these people will have a minimalistic life, with malware stealing everything
Sounds great.
> But it's just using social media less, not using the Internet on your phone and using the CLI more
Never used social media, my phone only gets internet via a cable connection and I only use GUI where the CLI isn't capable enough, like a web browser.
Not sure what I was expecting. It's great advice, but kinda preaching to the choir.
Particularly if you comment.
Its definitely not a super toxic site though, but its social media. Same as discord and other chatrooms. Something like IRC we would have called by another name in the past but I think nowadays we could say it's a form of social media.
I agree it needs a definition and its no easy limes to draw, but id put it around algorithmic infinite feed recommender systems.
HN has no recommender system so I dont count it in. For me, its a forum. Plain, sometimes boring and often deep & rich.
HN front page is digitally curated. HN has an opaque post ranking algorithm.
> How are stories ranked?
> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.
> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Ever noticed the YC posts that cannot be commented on?
Opaque ranking algorithms?
Human curation / moderation?
Automated curation / moderation?
Voting / flagging?
Infinite scroll?
Images and/or auto-playing video?
Advertising inline with posts?
Profit motive to get users to do certain things?
I don't know where you draw the line, and what makes Facebook harmful but Hacker News not harmful.
Interesting... are you using a particularly old blackberry or PDA? Or is this something you've got your modern phone to use.
I think that's telling. If you're reducing digital human interaction on social media (which yes, has its share of problems) but replacing it with "social" interaction with AI, that's not minimalism. You're replacing one vice with an even worse one and coping about it.
People are using LLMs to fill friendship, romantic, and mental health voids. Instead of turning to friends, lovers, and therapists/priests/mentors.
Obviously depends what you're doing, and not suitable for everyone, but it's an unhelpful generalisation to say AI in its current form is purely a paid product subscription.
This is why I'm a huge proponent of something like "small AI."
The main problem is that talking to AI is like talking to a human without any of the thorny parts. It's only going to be nice and helpful and always available to you. Chatting with AI is to social interaction like candy is to a balanced diet. Sure it's more instantly gratifying but long-term it's really bad for you. You need the thorny parts to build important social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
You could always try "You are a thorny internet troll" as your system prompt instead. Works wonders.
> social skills like tactfulness and navigating conflict.
We're not still talking about social media, are we?
(I agree that substituting AI for human interaction is bonkers, btw. But I'm not sure social media helps, or doesn't also involve mostly AI interactions these days.)
But that’s better than social media, which substitutes human interaction with chronically online weirdos. At least AI is smart and respectful.
But I'd also guess that interacting with AI is better than unhealthy humans, esp those put in front of you by social media.
If you are using it as an assistant, coach, or deep researcher to chat about interesting things with, then no.
Sherry Turkle breaks it down more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMiR-GxTrtM
Rant aside, beside social media minimalism I am also a big fan of compute minimalism. I don't use VScode with 100+ plugins or a zsh maxed up with so much bells and whistles that the terminal looks like Christmas and respond with the speed of microsoft powershell.
But I guess most people in SF are in the opposite camp.
That’s what I thought the article would talk about. If it were social media, I’d rather buy a cheap used phone, put the app on it, and turn it on only when I want to check something. Then it’s off. But I deleted/haven’t logged into my accounts for years now.
As for as minimal compute goes. my daily driver is an old laptop I put OpenBSD on. I also have an m1 air that I mostly use for shopping and meeting. Then an iPad for reading. But the key thing is that app and software are tools. It’s either tied to an activity (even relaxing ones) or it’s not used. No ricing or theming, just basic configuration to get the job done.
Digital minimalism is less time on devices/platforms.
This article is more about digital curation, which has value in it's own right.
I have reduced my social media to two sites: Here and Mastodon (with a very limited follow circle). I don't follow tons of ad-ridden websites. I have a self-hosted RSS reader, following 10 feeds. Instead of following junk tech news, I read LWN.
Next step might be enabling antiproc on HN to reduce my time here, since I added time limits on applications on my phone and love that artificial limit.
I have limited energy and I want to focus it instead of spreading it around. Otherwise progressing beyond a certain point becomes impossible.
Having some kind of notification system would be helpful as well, since most platforms are actively trying to minimize the accounts you follow and replace them with their algorithmic suggestions.
My Instagram app (besides showing no ads) shows just the stories and feeds of people I follow, chronologically. Just a couple days this way will make you realize how little content there is, my friend's Korea trip has been the top one for like a couple weeks already.
Then you can get the DMs to avoid FOMO and realize how antisocial the whole thing is.
No idea if it works for x, I left that long ago and everytime I've checked out of curiosity I've been shocked at the absolute cesspit it is.
I have tried this very same thing on https://grimoire.bio. Large corpus of biological knowledge with detailed visualizations that are shown immediately upon searching, but adding LLM answer when missing/needed.
> I propose a philosophy of technology use called digital minimalism in which you radically reduce the time you spend staring at screens, focusing on a small number of digital activities that strongly support things you deeply value, and then happily ignoring the rest.
I have never seen a Hitler post but if I saw one I would immediately block that user and the algorithm knows that. It doesn't show me people arguing it shows me debates and tech. Because that's what I taught it to do. It is not even hard it just requires a little discipline.
When a friend sends a link I refuse to click on it unless my VPN is on and I'm using Mullvad Browser. I don't want their taste (which is quite often look at this outrageous thing) ruining my feed.
There are 4G mainboards you can buy and projects like https://www.nokia3310lteproject.com that aim to bring them into the modern world but for me these don't go far enough as they try to preserve the original UI. For me, the ideal device would be a 4G/GPS/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth-capable Nokia brick with modern interpretations of apps for maps, music, messaging etc. with optimized user interfaces for the limited screen space their tiny LCDs offer.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Sigma_Phi
> Founded in Abilene Kansas, in 1931...
Wow, that's not a leap I would ever have made, let alone posted online. The rest of the article felt similar, like it was well intentioned but maybe somewhat unrelatable: hopping off X by using a different app to read/post, quitting mobile internet by mapping every hotspot in town. Maybe it's relevant more as a break from the author's norm?
(Note the "evokes worse from others bit" in my comment below—I'm sure it's not what you intended but this is exactly how that works.)
(Also of course, persons don't need to be relevant for articles to be interesting, and it's the latter that we're shooting for.)
I’m going to sound like an ass, but is this the sort of crap we’re going to see published in 10yr when all these crypto folk grow up a bit and start reflecting on their “glorious revolution”?
At least the Beanie Baby people realized it was ridiculous.
I guess the better comparison is dotcom folks, and they were pretty insufferable for quite a while
I realize that this kind of remark is better-intentioned than it comes across on the internet. In personal conversation it can be just another way of chatting and making sense of the world. Tone of voice can do a lot to modulate pejoratives.
But in an online forum like HN it degrades and makes conversation more shallow, and tends to evoke worse from others, leading to downward-spiral-mode, which we're really trying to avoid here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That's precisely why something like signed distributions packages are way more secure than curl bash'ing.
But many simply don't understand that. We had plenty of forged Web certificates likely. And even without that, with curl bash'ing anything sensitive you have to cross fingers that the server ain't serving one in 10 000 request with a backdoored version.
With curl bash'ing everybody is trusting every single time that the server ain't compromised or intentionally malicious.
At this point I've lost any hope: people simply don't understand security.
And as long as we'll have people saying that curl bash'ing is just as safe as signed distros packages, we'll have daily posts about major security incidents.
Security is a mindset and most people simply don't have it.
You know, it really is entirely optional to hang out at the Nazi bar.
> A phone connected to cell is an always-on tracking device
A phone connected to wifi is also an always-on tracking device. You can't really escape this without removing the "phone" part of the equation
Phones are not inherently bad for privacy. The cell connection, telemetry, and default apps are the main problems. The first can be solved with airplane mode, and the latter two with a custom OS (or an iPhone to an extent), just as you’d install Linux for those advantages over Windows. Due to their security model (app sandboxing, permissions, exploit protections), they’re a much better place to start for making a private OS that protects user data. GrapheneOS with airplane mode is more private than most desktop setups.
For most people, the phone records and relays network SSIDs it sees as well, even if not connecting to them.
That is this next Tuesday, four days from now.
example: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voters/helpful-information/...
For example just yesterday there was a tweet by Richard Sutton.
Even Zuckerberg tweets.
Having worked for the man some time ago, I'm pretty sure a bowl of oatmeal has more insightful things to say
But misses the point. The guy owns his own Twitter competitor, yet has to go there if he wishes to have any influence.
It's where influential folks post. Whether you like it or not.
It's where a bunch of rich (and often very right-leaning) assholes post. I'm not clear that correlates with "influential" outside of very specific circles - certainly all the thinkers and doers I used to follow on twitter left long since.
> Click on the tweet and look around its quotes and responses, the same way that someone would morbidly stare at a car accident.
Twitter gets money from ads. They can sell more ads for more money when they can demonstrate eyeballs and eyeball time. Therefore, they're incentivized to keep your eyeballs on the app for as long as possible. If that means putting car accidents in front of you, that's what it'll do!
I strongly believe that social media is basically a lost cause for this and a few other reasons. I tried out Mastodon and Bluesky, but people there don't seem to actually be interested in conversation, and there's physical limitations that prevent meaningful conversation anyway in the form of character limits. ~200 characters is simply not enough space for anything meaningful to be conveyed, so the platform selects for snippy clapbacks and pithy virtue signalling.
I'm also unconvinced there's anything of value to be had from these platforms, maybe including HN. I seem to be hearing about the new hotness in the AI space for example by just regularly attending coworking events. I guess if everyone stopped using Twitter, that would stop being the case. Or maybe we'd go back to RSS...
There are parts of the community where it's a lot better (atmosphere and open source devs, some digital artists who are not vocally pro/anti AI) but most people will see the front page that's almost exclusively US politics and get turned off.
I don't know how to fix this. Maybe create a new site that starts out focused on a specific large, politically mixed group like gaming or football fans and then expands to a general audience. Or use a personalized algorithm by default and initialize it randomly so new users see more diverse content.
I finally unsubscribed from the RSS feed of a web comic creator who has for over a year now (I think) not posted a single comic that is not about AI.
I mean there is not a single plot point beside "AI is bad" in those dozens of newer strips. I‘m not exaggerating as a rhetorical device, I mean this literally.
I‘m actually sympathetic to his view, but I came for the wonderful world and drawings. I‘m sad about the effect AI had on this artist, because yes, he‘s objectively endangered and right to protest it, but it has already taken away his oeuvre in a way.
(imo)
1. Small social like Discord, WhatsApp / facebook groups, Bandcamp (I was recently invited to a topical group there).
I have some designs for something like ATProto by fully permissioned and focused on small social modalities. I'm not interested in platforms with globalness, reposts/quotes, or blocking (fence sitting this one tbh)
2. Spending more time offline, with people in real life, then taking those social dynamics and interaction patterns back to online ones. We are currently doing the opposite as a society.
What's really notable is how the tone of a small subreddit post changes completely if a post gets boosted to everyone's front page. There's a small cycling sub I read with good posts about routes, tips, and advice. When something reaches the front page, it becomes a shitshow of car v bike culture war bullshit.
Substantial discussion of some hobbies has moved from Reddit to invite-only WhatsApp groups, precisely because Reddit went downhill. (This is true for long-haul bicycle travel, for example.) Unfortunately, on WA, too, everyone is on their phone, so messages are on average too short for comfort, and also there is no FAQ culture so people just ask the same questions again and again.
Getting this experience is simple: don’t click or garbage, occasionally block content you don’t like.