How to escape the algorithm
I found this great blog post: Attention is all you have on the front page of Hacker News. It is well worth your time to read it, but what it is essentially trying to do is to encourage us to be more intentional about our internet use. Instead of letting the algorithm decide what we see, we must be in control of what we consume.
Instead of picking what we want to see we let other people decide what is supposed to be good for us. And when you let someone else dictate what appears on your screen, it’s the same as giving them the key to your brain.
I wrote about this last year in my post about quitting social media: 5 years of no social media.
My thoughts, my identity, taste and interests are not shaped by the algorithm. Following an information diet is one of the most important things I have done in my life.
A few things have changed since I wrote that post - I’m back on X and trying to post more on LinkedIn. The main motivation is that I want to interact more with the Tech/AI community, and share more of what I’m building and writing with others.
There are ways to use these platforms without letting the algorithm tell you what to consume, and that’s why I’m writing this post - to share how I follow an information diet and hopefully encourage you to do the same.
How I do it
The main thing to do is to figure out a way to remove (or hide) the “For you” page or recommendations feed. This is usually done by alternate clients or browser extensions. Here’s a list of what I use.
X (Twitter)
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Android: QuaX. It has a minimal interface where you only see the tweets of people you follow. One thing I like is that you can group people into categories and only see tweets from people of that category.
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Web: Control Panel for Twitter. This is a browser extension and it’s incredible. It has a lot of controls. I’ve setup mine to only see tweets of those I follow in chronological order. No “For you” page, no trending topics.
YouTube
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Android: NewPipe. A lot of people use this to remove ads, and enable background playback. But it also does what we want: only the videos of channels we’ve subscribed to, hide recommended videos (or “more like this”), and even to hide comments. The best part is that there’s no “Shorts” page for you to doomscroll.
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Web: Unhook. Browser extension with options to hide homepage recommendations, trending, suggestions wall, shorts, and comments.
With reddit, I noticed that you are mostly fine if you are careful with which subreddits you’ve joined and avoid the Popular tab.
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Android: Infinity for Reddit+. I don’t use Reddit on my phone. If I have to, I just use the browser version which only shows posts from subreddits I’ve joined. Infinity is an alternate client if you want to avoid ads, and control layouts.
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Web: Distraction Free Reddit. Browser extension with options to hide main feed, r/popular, comments, trending news & sidebar tab. I found the default settings a bit too extreme - it hides comments, which is where reddit is most interesting & useful.
Instagram is last because I don’t have an instagram account, so it is not a huge problem for me. A basic search led me to these options:
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Web: IGPlus. There are options to disable reels, hide recommendations, and even to hide stories.
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Android: I used Barinsta in the past but it has been discontinued now. I couldn’t find any other options online which I could verify that they work.
The choice is yours
Time to decide: who’s going to shape your thoughts, your interests, your taste and maybe even your identity. You or the algorithm?