Digital Minimalism

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.

Notably absent: AI minimalism.

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.

This is a great blog post. I do a lot of similar things on my phone (GrapheneOS, airplane mode, CoMaps).

Phones are not inherently bad for privacy. Due to being built for security and privacy from the ground up, they're a much better place to start for making a private OS that protects user data. Using GrapheneOS with airplane mode, as Vitalik mentions, is more private than any comparably usable desktop computer and operating system one can use. GrapheneOS has UX good enough that my mom can use it.

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 [0] to block Safari and the App Store, but on GrapheneOS, there was no great solution. Before Android 17, you could uninstall system apps (the system browser was the problem) using ADB, but this was removed in Android 17 to the dismay of debloating tool users [1]. So I used ADB to uninstall Vanadium from a secondary user profile and relied on GrapheneOS's improved user profiles [2].

Recently I made a device owner app [3] which allows hiding any UI app and locking itself. It ended up being quite an elegant solution as I found out that I could do it all in the main Owner profile and allow full access to app stores for updates. The only way around it is with the lock code or a factory reset.

I find it great to have no easy way around it, so my phone becomes a very private device whose functionality I intentionally set ahead of time. It’s way more secure than a traditional “dumbphone” as it has E2EE messaging, additional hardening, and frequent updates. You get all the benefits of powerful apps like Signal and Bitwarden, but without any possible distraction.

[0] Apple's Mac MDM app anyone can use. You need a Mac and to factory reset your phone first.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49193173

[2] GrapheneOS adds many features which improve the experience of using user profiles. The ones I relied on in my old setup were blocking app installs from within the profile and pushing apps from the Owner profile. https://grapheneos.org/features#disabling-app-installation

[3] https://beeswax.getflourish.org/

> ...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.

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.

See also the 2019 book by Cal Newport, "Digital Minimalism": https://calnewport.com/my-new-book-digital-minimalism/

> 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.

> 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

> 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...

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