[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) - defense against online ...
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Launch HN: Motion (YC W20) - defense against online distractions
and addictions
Hi everyone, It's Harry, Ethan, and Omid here from Motion
(https://inmotion.app). We built a Chrome extension that uses real-
time interventions to prevent people from unknowingly wasting time
on online distractions. A few months ago, I mentioned that I was
spending too much time on Facebook. Omid recommended a browser
extension to block certain sites. It worked well - my time wasted
dropped to 15 minutes the next day. However, a few days later, I
was setting up my company's Facebook page, and the extension
blocked me at the 15-min mark, the time I set for myself. I needed
to finish that page, but there was no way around the hard-block, so
I had to uninstall the extension. Later, I tried other similar
extensions. Each was either so permissive that it wasn't useful for
my purpose, or so strict that I had to uninstall it. We realized
that existing solutions did not work because their approach is too
prescriptive and simplistic. They didn't recognize that people also
need to use Facebook, Youtube, etc. for legitimate purposes. The
problem is really intricate. On one hand, Facebook is great for
getting reminders on friends' birthdays or managing business pages;
on the other hand, every minute spent on Facebook could potentially
lead to a trap. These traps come in all forms - video autoplay,
news articles with catchy titles, and sponsored content that looks
just like your friends' posts. Instead of always being hindered
from visiting these sites, I needed to have access to their useful
parts, but be careful to not get distracted in the process. I
decided to build a simple tool for myself - a countdown timer each
time I visit a distracting site. We all started using it and liked
it, so we decided to hand out the extension to some friends.
Surprisingly, despite many bugs, our user retention was infinitely
higher than our previous ideas. In fact, we built 6 MVPs during our
pivoting process - commission-free prediction market, recruiting
platform for quant traders, intercity carpooling service, workplace
motivation app, online travel agency, and crypto options market
making (last one because both Ethan and I were options traders
before our startup; Omid was a college student until this year. For
backstory - Ethan and I were best friends in college, and Omid and
I have been friends since high school) Since none of these ideas
had worked and we were finally getting some users, we decided to
work on this one. Also, with this one we were solving a problem
that we ourselves had. Here's how it works now: each time you
visit a distracting site (e.g. Twitter), we show a screen where you
can choose to either leave or proceed to the site with a visible
countdown timer. On sites like Facebook and Youtube, you can choose
to hide the newsfeed or video recommendations. Once time is up, we
ask you whether you're done. When you visit less distracting sites
such as Gmail, you get reminders on how long you've been on these
sites, so you don't unknowingly spend too long on things like
responding to email. Before you start working on something, you
can write down your task, and it will show up with a timer on every
tab you visit until you clear the task, so you don't get
sidetracked. Finally, every morning, we give you a report on how
you spent your time the previous day, and allow you to mark the
sites that are distracting. We firmly believe in data privacy, and
promise that we will never sell user data. We do not collect the
URL or content of sites you visit. We had to decide between using
Chrome's "all_urls" permission and the more narrow "activeTab"
permission. If we only had activeTab, each time the user opens a
new page they would have to manually activate our extension. That
would be an unacceptable user experience in our opinion, so we
settled on the broader permission. The extension is free at the
moment. We plan on releasing for other browsers in the upcoming
weeks. We plan on monetizing either through a premium tier with
productivity tools built for power users or charging a very low
amount from every user. Big tech companies have been attacking our
attention with sophisticated technology, spending billions of
dollars to optimize their engagement metrics. We may think we are
in control, but often we are unknowingly being exploited by
companies who profit handsomely off our attention--which, if you
think about it, is the most valuable asset we have. If we could
just simply turn off all these products, that would be an effective
defense, but for many people that's not an option, so something
more is required. It's far from complete, but we believe we're on
the road to building a more useful tool to help individuals defend
their attention against these traps. This is a problem many in the
HN community have thought a lot about. We'd really love your
feedback and learn what you would like to see in a tool like this -
what productivity problem do you have that a tool could help solve?
How can tooling help to give us back control over our own
attention? Thanks so much in advance! Harry, Ethan, and Omid
Author : qiyuxuan96
Score : 117 points
Date : 2020-02-17 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
| ximeng wrote:
| The problem isn't time spent on these sites, it's finding better
| quality ways to spend the time. That's the real challenge.
| Solution needs to be pull to something better not push away from
| something worse. Not that the push is necessarily bad but it's
| not the full answer.
| mnowicki wrote:
| I agree with your point about finding better ways to spend
| time, but I also think that any LESS time spent on facebook and
| the like is a VERY positive thing. And despite being skeptical
| when reading the first few sentences of the original post, I
| think his app actually sounds like it does something valuable.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| That's actually something we actively think about and have
| tried a failed solution in the past; we implemented a feature
| where you can find other productive things to do - the
| implementation wasn't good and we plan on giving this concept
| more tries in the coming weeks.
| mrborgen wrote:
| Awesome! Just installed it, looking forward to seeing how it
| works.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks! Please let us know your thoughts :)
| georgebarnett wrote:
| I will not use chrome but I'd love to try your extension. Could
| you add a way to get a reminder from your team when Firefox or
| safari support is available?
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| We have an informal manual list of emails of people who have
| requested Firefox. Please email harry@inmotion.app and I'll add
| you to the list. Thanks!
| monkin wrote:
| What about other browsers? Or other online distractions that
| aren't related to web browsers? For myself, extensions like this
| doesn't work at all, and for most addicted will not work as well.
|
| Would like to see extensions that doesn't block but make reading
| Facebook or other services extremely annoying. For example: I go
| to 9-5 job, and when I open Facebook all posts are from PornHub.
| Without a way to turn this off, so no one will open site like
| that... :)
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| What I currently do is block on /etc/hosts. But like the OP
| says I don't actually want to perma block these sites, I do get
| real value out of them maybe 5 minutes a day. It just needs to
| not turn into 20 minutes. But you can use /etc/hosts perhaps if
| you really want a less easily turned off block.
| benibela wrote:
| Me, too. I blocked reddit in hosts, so now I am here
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Definitely agree with your sentiment; I probably only need
| Twitter for 10 minutes on most days. Yes - we are working on
| making it harder to ignore our extension when a person's
| being distracted. The key is really to build a good
| classifier of when a person's being productive or not on a
| distracting site. We currently let the user decide that when
| we intervene.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks for letting us know. Extensions for other browsers are
| in the works, and will be available soon.
|
| That's a good point - making Facebook annoying to be on is a
| solution. We currently let you block elements like the
| newsfeed. As we ourselves found out, however, we want Facebook
| to be easy to use when we need to do legitimate work, and only
| block us when we aren't. Thus, we came up with a middleground.
| monkin wrote:
| Great! I really like the idea, but for users that are
| addicted from social media or from visiting that "one and
| only" website this isn't enough. They will uninstall
| extension, remove /etc/hosts or move to another browser to
| look on Facebook.
|
| I once knew a guy that beat his own dad with a keyboard when
| he threw away his computer because he was spending all his
| time scrolling through FB. Internet addiction is very hard,
| extensions are one way to solve them (noprocrast setting on
| HN is another one...). Good that someone is tackling this
| problem. :)
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Definitely agree with you that this is very hard and
| intricate - we are continuously thinking about how to
| balance between intermediate interventions/reminders and
| solving the most serious social media addictions.
| monkin wrote:
| Just a loose thought. It would be awesome to have a
| desktop app with minimal settings that would learn your
| habits and adapt to them. Something that will not block
| access but assist you with cutting your time spent on
| unnecessary tasks. Essentially, something that you
| already build, but without browser extensions and working
| on all system apps.
|
| Sensing if you spend time on browsing newsfeed or
| administrating Facebook pages, and distinguish between
| these different activities. Did you work for the last two
| hours in VS Code, and now you are browsing newsfeed? IRC?
| RSS? Anything other than working? In this case, it will
| automatically switch you over to the last used app, and
| inform the user about spending too much time using FB or
| anything other on nonsense. Automatically filtering every
| system notification, showing you the most important ones.
| Not using the computer for more than 30 minutes after 6
| pm? It will let you do anything you want but notify about
| other activities, for example, 4 hours on Netflix, and
| it's almost 12am? Then it will tell you, that for the
| last four days you slept at that time. And ask if you
| want to spend more time on those activities or gradually
| turndown brightness of your screen, and put your computer
| to sleep... :)
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks a lot for all these ideas; can definitely be a
| great approach. Desktop and mobile are our two biggest
| directions. It is definitely on our minds to bring
| functionalities of our extension onto apps on the
| computer, and be more intelligent on how we intervene
| people and bring them back to productive work, like the
| ones you suggested.
| kick wrote:
| I wouldn't personally use a proprietary extension with access
| to every tab, but:
|
| Extensions written for Chrome can be hand-ported to Firefox in
| the span of ten minutes, even if you don't have unminified
| source code. There used to be an extension that automatically
| did it, but I can't remember what it's called. WebExtensions
| are pretty neat!
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Yes - we definitely plan on turning on Firefox and other
| browsers soon. As you've mentioned, there are tools out there
| that makes this neat.
| ohadron wrote:
| Started using it about a week ago and it's super effective.
|
| I used StayFocused before that but I think this is a bit more
| effective in emphasising the specific point in time in which I
| start being distracted.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| I'm glad to hear that; thank you. Please let us know how we can
| make it better.
| disiplus wrote:
| as somebody with ADHD i use SelfControl and it's my savior. On
| the Android side i use a VPN that im connected to all the time
| that has a dual purpose, to block ads and to control what i do (i
| installed it on a super cheap VPS). And on my smartwatch i use
| pomodoro timer to keep me productive. I'ts hard and i fail a lot
| but it helps.
|
| https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that - I also know friends who use the VPN
| method on mobile. I myself used Forest as my pomodoro timer;
| one problem I had was often times I would forget to turn it on.
| ignoramous wrote:
| This is great stuff, Harry. Congratulations on the launch.
|
| Since you're asking for it, a request that I have is if there was
| a mobile-OS wide implementation of it, that'd be great. I've
| tried launchers like https://getsiempo.com (defunct?) and
| https://lessphone.app but walked away unimpressed due to a
| variety of reasons: The main one being having to change habits to
| adopt to the new UX, whilst solutions like blloc [0] look
| appealing from far-out, they need equal amount of buy-in. That
| said, I am all for zero-config solutions.
|
| A personal hack, I want to share: I exclusively use distractive
| websites from the browser (no installing "fast", "always-on"
| apps), and I force clear cookies everytime tabs are closed.
|
| That means, I'm forced to login to view any new comments, likes,
| messages, or notifications and that is enough of a detterent and
| an annoyance that I don't feel the urge to seek validation often
| by rechecking on number of upvotes, likes, or replies of the
| trails I leave on various social media websites like news.yc
| (which is amongst the cleanest social media websites out there,
| in that it doesn't employ any dark patterns to lure you in, but
| that karma count must keep going up, right? #growth-mindset).
|
| Coming back to mobile, on Android, Google's digital well-being
| initiative [1] has help kick-start competing implementations. I
| particularly like OnePlus' version of it-- the Zen Mode [2]-- It
| requires no setup or configuration and simply learns to know
| what's causing distraction, shows you a pop-up warning about too
| much usage, and if enabled, it simply goes nuclear and denies
| access to the phone for 20m.
|
| I'll keep an eye-out for Firefox and/or Brave versions of Motion.
| Any idea on timelines for those?
|
| [0] https://www.blloc.com
|
| [1] https://wellbeing.google
|
| [2] https://www.androidcentral.com/oneplus-explains-how-and-
| why-...
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thank you so much for sharing these tips and suggestions on
| mobile. Mobile is definitely on our todo list, more so Android
| than iPhone. Like you mentioned, Android's digital well-being
| initiative helps better products emerge. Unfortunately, Apple
| still does not allow developer access to screen time
| functionatlities, and the only way to mimic that is through
| MDM, which not only is a bad workaround but also has been
| banned by Apple.
|
| I find your personal hack on mobile to be very useful myself
| too - I found myself to be so much less stressed and more
| productive after uninstalling apps like Facebook and Reddit on
| my phone, and disabling notifications on nearly all other apps.
| When I need to use Facebook, I would go to my computer.
| agrinman wrote:
| What about a DNS based approach on iOS? You don't need MDM,
| just a VPN extension. You could send push notifications when
| your DNS server detects a site to block and mimic the same UX
| you have with a browser extension.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| You are correct - that would work to send reminders
| (notifications). However, we wouldn't be able to prevent
| people from using their apps. This is definitely something
| we are considering.
| keenmaster wrote:
| From my experience, it's better in the long run to apply brute
| force restrictions on programs. It's too easy to modify and
| delete Stayfocusd though.
|
| Idea: I think we need a cross-platform website/app restriction
| utility. At the beginning, you get to choose intervals where you
| can change your settings for free. Let's say the interval is 3
| months, and your settings dictate that you can only spend 40
| minutes on social media sites (with only 10 minutes during work
| hours, zero after 10 PM), and 50 minutes on news websites a day.
| You can violate a limit, but you'd have to donate money to a
| political party of your choice: the catch is that you'd have to
| donate the same amount to the opposing political party! The
| punishment amount increases the more you violate the terms of
| your 3-month agreement.
|
| After the 3 months/year/whatever are up, you can change the
| restriction and punishment settings. Holiday exceptions can be
| pre-programmed, or selected from a default profile ("student"
| "professional with 3 weeks vacation" etc...). You can always make
| the settings more restrictive before the interval is over, but
| not more forgiving.
|
| There would also be an agreed-upon penalty for deleting the
| program, so that you don't delete and redownload to avoid the
| restrictions.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion! We've actually experimented with a
| similar concept - hold people accountable to their goals
| through social accountability, where friends can "watch over"
| each other and win/lose points (or money, in your case).
| Definitely interested in this concept.
| keenmaster wrote:
| I like the idea of looping in friends, I just wouldn't make
| the dollar payouts to them. I can imagine people enjoying
| sending money to their friends, partly for ironic comedic
| value (lol look how helpless I am, haha now we have a funny
| story of how I can't control myself and you're a terrible
| watchdog - maybe I'll even screenshot and post my failure so
| that our other friends can ironically enjoy this). For
| similar reasons, I also wouldn't pay my future self with the
| money. I can imagine people appreciating that as a way of
| forced saving, and you don't want them to appreciate the
| monetary loss at all. In fact, you want them to hate it -
| hence part of the punishment being a donation to a group that
| they don't like. The great thing about that is that the cost
| of the punishment could far exceed the monetary value of it -
| if you really hate a political party, the perceived cost
| could be 5x the dollars donated. Good luck with your program,
| and shoot me an email if you're interested in discussing
| further. My HN email address is in my profile.
| kick wrote:
| I've been thinking on this for a few minutes, and I'm realizing I
| have no idea on what criteria YCombinator funds anymore. This
| seems like something the Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud
| might have funded.
|
| The extension looks cool (outside of it being proprietary) and it
| looks like you did a good job on it! I'm just trying to think of
| reasons as to why YC is trying to mimic Softbank. The only reason
| I can think of is that extensions occasionally get sold for
| thousands to malware vendors and the like, but that doesn't seem
| like something that would bring _that_ much of a return, and
| seems too user-hostile to be something YC would bank on.
| [deleted]
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| This is a serious problem we experience personally, and we know
| it's a painful one for millions of others. We have the
| opportunity to help people claim back a significant amount of
| their time each day. The initial product is simple, but there
| are many other ways to expand and tackle this problem. Safe to
| say selling data or being acquired by malicious vendors is off
| the table.
| corentin88 wrote:
| Was about to post something similar. They might start with only
| a chrome extension though, while the big vision is much
| broader?
| dang wrote:
| YC has always funded startups where the initial idea seems
| small but the founders seem effective and it's possible to
| imagine a path from the small thing to a big thing. That's one
| of YC's favorite kinds of startup to invest in. The fact that
| they seem odd and not worth funding is an advantage!
|
| Actually, if you read
| http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html and
| http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html, this startup is exactly
| the sort that pg was writing about. That's why I told these
| guys to include the bit about solving a problem they themselves
| had; it's a classic marker. See also
| http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html: "Don't be discouraged
| if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss
| as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign."
|
| It's a fun exercise to imagine a path from the small thing to a
| big thing. Can we do it in this case? I'd say so. Online
| distractions, addictions, and the exploitation of human
| attention by big-tech companies are a big deal. Reclaiming
| control over time and attention could be something that a lot
| of people care about.
| monkin wrote:
| Exactly that! You can start from simple extension and in few
| years have full fledged solution for internet addiction worth
| millions. For this to happen you have to find great founders,
| that keep on going no matter what. :)
| kick wrote:
| I wasn't implying that YC had changed, just that _I_ can 't
| tell what the reasoning is anymore. The second link is an
| interesting thing to link, because the reason I included the
| last line (along the lines of "I guess it could be sold to a
| malware vendor or something") was more or less because I was
| thinking on that; I took my time to think, and couldn't find
| many optimistic things.
|
| My only other guess outside of the one listed is that it
| could be sold to Facebook or twitter after getting a large
| audience, because it aligns with historical acquisitions
| somewhat.
|
| I'd be happy to be shown wrong in a year (I'd literally take
| anything over what I imagine is going to happen to it), but
| presently I'm mostly just confused.
|
| Responding to the edits I only noticed after responding:
|
| _" Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is
| something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a
| good sign."_
|
| I wasn't trying to discourage the people making the
| extension! I was mostly seeing if I could get any spare
| guesses as to what YC's mindset was when thinking about this.
|
| Regarding whether what it's combating is a big deal:
|
| Certainly, but I'm not sure if the solution to all of those
| is...a new big tech company, to put questions of
| profitability aside. It seems partially like bait to be
| acquired by a social media company, or Nielsen (which is a
| literal malware company at this point, they pay users to MITM
| their connections; a way to get the same data without paying
| seems like something they'd love).
| dang wrote:
| I'm no expert in YC's business, but I think the confusion
| might be coming from thinking about this too similarly to
| how later-stage investment works, where there are many
| fewer investments to place and much more information
| available, and therefore much deeper up-front analysis.
| It's not feasible to do that in YC's case, where they fund
| hundreds of startups a year. Nor can such analysis apply
| anyhow--there's way too much uncertainty at the earliest
| stage.
|
| The way YC looks for signal is different: it's simple and
| rooted in a few fundamentals. Do the founders seem
| effective? are they talking to users? and so on. Other than
| that, it's pretty stochastic. The funny thing is, even
| though the fundamentals are simple and have been laid out
| in pg essays for a decade or more, it's surprisingly hard
| to reason with them. The mind doesn't like to stop with so
| little. I think that's why YC funding something like this
| feels paradoxical. (In the present case, it wasn't what
| they applied with but something they came up with later;
| but that helps make the point.)
|
| "Bait to get acquired" would be considered a negative,
| since that's not how a business like YC ends up with the
| few big successes that make or break it. It's more like
| this: is there some plausible random world in which this
| thing ends up becoming a major breakthrough? It doesn't
| have to be probable, just fairly imaginable. And the
| founders have to seem like the kind of people who might,
| with luck, pull it off.
|
| (Sorry for editing the carpet from under you! What I just
| wrote here was in response to your pre-edited comment too,
| but hopefully is still relevant.)
| kick wrote:
| (It's no problem! I edit after posting about as much as
| anyone, so I definitely understand it! I appreciate the
| depth of response; I just made sure to wait a bit before
| forming a response to this one; it's fun to watch the
| stages a comment goes through, sort of like watching
| thought in process but more refined. Thanks for putting
| so much thought into your responses!)
|
| That last line in the second paragraph made it click for
| me, thank you! At first I was under the impression they
| were funded after the 6 MVPs, but it makes sense that
| they were funded before/during that! With that bit of
| context, "betting on the founders" in this case makes
| much more sense to me.
| mrkurt wrote:
| I think yc would consider all those acquisitions you
| mentioned to be failures. One of the best things about yc
| is they are happy to get behind interesting projects built
| by interesting people and see what happens.
| kick wrote:
| _I_ would consider all of those acquisitions to be
| failures, but YC has funded advertising companies and
| other "What if we sell user data?"-style companies in the
| past, so I'm not entirely sure. (Kuhcoon comes to mind,
| which was a notable backfire.)
| igammarays wrote:
| Yeah I'm wondering what was written on the "how does this
| become a $100m business" field on the YC application form.
| monkin wrote:
| There's nothing like that in YC application form.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| slig wrote:
| Congrats on shipping! I've just installed and I'm curious on how
| do you plan to monetize this extension (since it's free and
| doesn't collect the URLs of the sites visited).
| kick wrote:
| They had a line in the post that explained that:
|
| _The extension is free at the moment. We plan on releasing for
| other browsers in the upcoming weeks. We plan on monetizing
| either through a premium tier with productivity tools built for
| power users or charging a very low amount from every user._
| slig wrote:
| Ouch, thanks! I missed that.
| 10xRich wrote:
| I have this idea I like to think about from time to time.
|
| "Know when to be Achilles and know when to be Odysseus."
|
| When it comes to online distractions and addictions, I've found
| anything that any tool that doesn't offer precommitment and
| restrictions of editing/removing the intervention will be
| ineffective in the long run.
|
| If Odysseus could have untied himself from the mast, he would
| have.
|
| Apps like these seem to be designed for our best selves, when we
| need help for our worst selves. My best self would probably be
| successful using this app. But my worst self, probably will
| ignore the prompts over time until I get annoyed and uninstall
| the app
|
| My app of choice has been Freedom, where you can set a schedule
| and prevent quitting the app. I have had problems where I needed
| to get work done on a website and couldn't so I understand the
| use case. A work pass feature is something I'll suggest to the
| Freedom team. But for me as a customer, having success in not
| over-consuming distracting/addicting sites/apps is immensely more
| important than the infrequent inconveniences from having to
| access sites for business/work purposes.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thank you letting us know your thoughts; you definitely raise
| some valid points on how much control we should give to our
| users. In our case, our philosophy is that our product should
| assist users in making the correct decisions, instead of
| forcing decisions upon our users.
|
| One middleground we are exploring, though, is making it
| increasingly more difficult to bypass our interventions each
| time.
| 10xRich wrote:
| Will be sure to keep an eye on Motion and how the product
| evolves. Good luck with the product you all.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks!
| [deleted]
| proszkinasenne2 wrote:
| @qiyuxuan96 Hi there. I am developing a cross-browser extension
| development/deployment SaaS. Would you be interested in hearing
| more?
|
| We make life easier with things like: - versioning, - packaging
| extensions for different extension galleries, - collecting
| payments, - gathering analytics (extension views, installations
| etc.).
|
| Ping me at niespodd@gmx.ch if interested.
| lopatin wrote:
| Just installed and this looks great. Good job on thinking it out
| more than other extensions.
|
| Question unrelated to app, but to your experience: Why did
| options market making not work out?
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| A major reason is in crypto, people can already leverage 100x,
| and thus people who would normally use options for leverage no
| longer need it.
| mnemonicsloth wrote:
| _We firmly believe in data privacy, and promise that we will
| never sell user data._
|
| Everybody says that until they get a buyout offer from Google. I
| like the problem you've chosen but you're asking me to tie your
| tool into everything I do online. That makes you an acquisition
| target. So: are you going to turn down a big exit to keep this
| promise?
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks for voicing your concern. I don't believe we need an
| acquisition. As mentioned, we plan on monetizing either through
| a premium tier with productivity tools built for power users or
| charging a very low amount from every user. We are confident in
| our ability to generate revenue without selling user data.
| sub7 wrote:
| I would just get annoyed with the prompts and uninstall. This
| approach doesn't, hasn't and won't work.
|
| What will work is unfortunately a little more complex to build
| i.e. you need to change functionality on these sites forcibly
| e.g. disable autoplay on YT automatically, fetch and create a
| newsfeed on FB to replace the shit stock one etc etc.
|
| You would then need to keep up with these assholes trying to
| block your extension at every turn.
|
| Sadly, this is the only approach that will actually work short of
| serious legislation.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Agreed that we definitely have a lot more work to do. We
| currently let people change functionality on these websites -
| such as blocking the newsfeed. I like your suggestion that we
| should not only hide it, but also replace it. We'll think about
| that more.
| sub7 wrote:
| Yup, I've built 2 products that crossed 50M users. One was a
| browser extension in the years before the iPhone.
|
| I always assume my user is blackout drunk and generally not
| very thoughtful i.e. they know what they want but they want
| that shit on a plate with 0 effort.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| I definitely agree with you that for a lot of users, we
| need to make everything as easy as possible.
| mnowicki wrote:
| Hey guys, I have an idea/suggestion for you guys; you might
| already be doing this or it might just not be a worthwhile idea,
| but it sounds useful to me:
|
| Your addon/extension should track the amount of time spent on
| each of these time-waster websites, and allow the use to render
| graphs showing how their usage over time has changes. Perhaps
| even allow them to set goals(e.g less than 30 mins a day max, and
| under 2.5 hrs per week max) and visually show how close they are
| to their goals via graphs and other visuals.
|
| Not only would it show users how much your extension is helping
| them, it would also provide them motivation to use it more, not
| to mention giving you some nice looking visuals to use for
| marketing
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Definitely! Thanks for the idea. This is on our roadmap and we
| plan on implementing it next month.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| Looks promising, just installed.
|
| Once it's on other browsers I'd love for it to be able to sync
| between them, so that I can see cumulative stats across all
| browsers.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thank you! That is certainly on the todo list.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Thank you so much. It just installed it and I find the idea super
| cool. One suggestion, though: make it possible to enable 'hide
| news feed/recommend/...)' by default. Good luck!
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thank you! Yes - we are planning on implementing something
| along the line of remembering the last time you hide newsfeed,
| video recs
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| > We do not collect the URL or content of sites you visit.
|
| I was very concerned about this, but this is all I needed to
| hear. Thank you. This addresses a real market need.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks; it's something we would want ourselves when we download
| an extension, so we built it into ours.
| mwseibel wrote:
| I use this product and I love it. It's the small nudge I need to
| stay on task everyday. Recommend everyone gives this a try.
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Thanks; please continue giving us suggestions on how to
| improve.
| CameronBanga wrote:
| This looks well packaged, and I can see the argument that it may
| be easier to use than the competition.
|
| But how do you plan to make money? I'm looking for a model that
| isn't "we sell data on our customers", which I see is prohibited
| based on the TOS. But what would be the road to profit and what
| safeguards are in place to prevent you from just selling to a
| less ethical company down the road?
| qiyuxuan96 wrote:
| Hi! We plan on monetizing either through a premium tier with
| productivity tools built for power users or charging a very low
| amount from every user.
| gbasin wrote:
| Was my first thought, as well. However, making something
| previously un-monetizable with a much better UX can unlock new
| opportunities. Craigslist sublet board - Airbnb
| [deleted]
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