Figuring out how to get back to being a freeloader.

For maybe the last 15 years or so I've been blocking or avoiding ads. uBlock origin is probably the most valuable product I use as well as AdBlock Plus before that. I know I know! I'm morally bankrupt! Thats how people make money on their content. That's what makes the internet go round. But I can't help myself. I just can't stand advertisements. Where I can I pay to avoid ads like Netflix or Youtube Premium I do. But beyond that I've used ad blockers and various tricks over the last decade and a half to nearly completely avoid advertisements in my life. It has been delightful. I feel like I'm happier for it and have saved who knows how much time and attention by doing so. I've always said that for any given service if I couldn't figure out how to block the ads I would just stop using it and read more books or something instead. Short of that there is almost no ceiling for how much I am willing to pay to use an ad-free version of a service.

That strategy has been pretty effective and continues to be today. But whereas the deal used to be "we have content you want, but the trade is that you have to look at our advertisements" it seems like that deal has shifted a bit in the last couple years. Now it's more like "we have the content you want, but it's in a walled garden of really addicting algorithms." So even though I don't see ads on Reddit, Youtube, or whatever - thats no longer enough. I'm still finding my time and attention being taken up by this really addicting content that is optimized for engagement and leaves me no more informed and usually less happy.

The thing is the good content is still out there! In fact there is probably more of it than there ever was even though it doesn't feel that way now. For now I've stopped using reddit and feel much happier for it. I try all these little tricks with Youtube to use it in a way where I don't get sucked into that engagement trap but it's pretty tricky.

All the well known tricks like uninstalling the app and using it in the browser or turning off notifications feel like trying to smoke 3 cigarettes a day or eat just one potato chip. They work moderately well but I often find myself slipping. It's also a constant willpower battle that is it's own drain on time and attention.

I've considered giving up the lot of it like I used to threaten I would do if I couldn't block ads anymore. Just read more books and so on. But I don't want to! What I want is to have my cake and eat it to. I want to go back to being a freeloader where I get the interesting content that I love without paying for it with my time, attention, and well-being, in a labyrinth of engagement.

I want an algorithm blocker that works like an adblocker. Maybe using machine learning to identify content that fits the bill. It seems somewhat unrealistic honestly. I'm not exactly sure what you're training the algorithm on in order to get that. Also maybe ML isn't the path there. Maybe there is another clever way to do it. I'm not sure. But I do think about it from time to time.

Short of that I've also considered trying to shift the sources to sites that have interesting and novel content without being so addictive and negative. Random wikipedia articles or random github repositories, that sort of thing.

Thinking about the biggest problem I have this was the most concrete one I could come up with. It's hard to quantify just how much value I would get out of a solution if it was as big of a benefit for me as adblockers have been up to now.