Setting up an internet whitelist
Hi,
I am looking for opinions on the best / most effective way of setting up an internet whitelist.
My primary aim is to avoid procrastination. I spend far too much time on the internet. What is worse, is that it is often very unproductive and not worthwhile websites. I will spend hours idly clicking through things like Reddit, Hackernews, youtube, and so on.
I feel that the modern web has been purposely designed to be as addictive as possible. I would be happy if this was addictive content that benefited my life, but I find that it is usually content that, in retrospect, is typically low quality and toxic. When I don't have easy access to these types of sites I find that I am much more productive and make better use of my time.
Steps I have previously taken....
1. I stopped using social media. I don't use anything like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...
2. I have blocked websites I never want to use again in /etc/hosts
3. I have decided to make my desktop not connected to the internet (no WiFi) and have my X200 as the only internet connection computer. It is easier to put that in a drawer out of sight when I want to not use the internet. (more effort to access = less likely to use it).
I still find myself switching back to useless websites when I am on my X200. It has become a bad habit!
I was thinking that using a whitelist might be a way to stop this from happening. Essentially, locking the computer down to only the core sites I need. If I want to visit I new website I would have to make a conscious decision to add it to my whitelist.
Is it possible to set up a whitelist via /etc/hosts? I think there also might be extensions for icecat, but it might to too easy to just turn this off.
Oh, and I also switched to a dumbphone. That made a big difference as smartphones seem to be the crack cocaine of time sinks!
I should also add that router based solutions would not work. I typically access the internet through a shared WiFi and through work based WiFi so blocking via the router is not an option.
Suppression/avoidance (the approach you seem to be looking for) can only reduce the stimulus but never remove it completely. Addiction is cured instantly and fully through insight.
> content that, in retrospect, is typically low quality and toxic
You can't trick yourself to have an insight through words (even strong ones) because insight doesn't happen on intellectual level. You have to actually see that addiction is bad for you - to watch yourself, feel how it drains your energy and how it enslaves you, keeps you away from your beloved ones. Then you would never touch it again, without relapse.
I was thinking the solution during breakfast.
Usually the only way which prevents people from addiction is going to until the end of the way then experiencing horrible things. Some people get fatal damage, some can regret and learn then improve themselves from that.
The insight happens on that, I think. Saying something to addicts is useless.
However, some solutions occured in my mind.
I assume you can use the internet traffic unlimitedly. How about buying every month limited data? It would come high.
But if you are wealthy, this wouldn't effect success. In this case, OK, I might be able to help you. First, you decide how much you pay a month for the limited data. It is preferable to set the price as it pressures your finance very much. Then you send money every month to me. then I buy a limited data sim card or something and send you it. You would be able to save your time but not your moner, though. Sounds good. It is the win-win proposal.
> Usually the only way which prevents people from addiction is going to until the end of the way then experiencing horrible things.
Dying from an overdose doesn't free you from addiction, neither it leads to insight
Right. So calculating and adjusting the dead line always somewhere in the brain, because like some car racers who go over the line, if they don't attack until near the line, or sometimes over the line, they can't win. Big wavers, too. I think it might be somewhat better than spending boring life. It is a difficult matter, especially when it comes to certain things.
I think you idea has some merit.
- I read a blog post about productivity. The writer had cancelled his home internet plan. He just had internet at work, and he could go to a local cafe (or other place - e.g. library) if he needed the internet urgently. He said that it was a positive effect on his life. I will be moving in about 2 months and I plan to not have internet at home.
- I have had some successful with the increase cost = decrease used idea in the past. I had a Replicant OS phone. This is a Free OS, so the WiFi does not work. I would be much more careful about internet use because it was not free. I disliked owning a smartphone so I no longer have that phone.
> I will be moving in about 2 months and I plan to not have internet at home.
A,ah... I did not think you were so serious. Well, good luck. But take it easy. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing than you think. At least you will not die even if you could quit that, I guess.
I suggest that you (1) identify through self-reflection how you wan't yourself to use the Internet, and then (2) find (and if necessary modify or get help modifying) the right free-as-in-freedom tools to facilitate this. You will likely find it helpful to use dedicated clients for the tasks you want to do on the Internet, as opposed to doing everything in your browser.
Here are some questions you might ask and answer for yourself about various Internet-related tasks.
How often do you want to check each form of communication (email, chat, social media, etc.), and if/when/how you want to receive notification?. The drawback of notifications is that they can be distracting, but the drawback of not receiving notifications is that you can get into a habit of compulsively checking to see if you have a new message. Here are some ideas:
- Receive notifications at an interval of your choosing. For example, you might decide that you want to be notified of chat messages instantly, but you only need your email client to check for new emails one an hour, and you only need to see new social media posts once per day.
- Maybe you'll want to have different settings for different times, (when I'm in the middle of reading something I only want chat notifications every 20 minutes, when I'm expecting an important email I want my email client to check for new messages more frequently, etc.)
- The form that the notification takes can also be a factor. For example, I receive email and chat notifications instantly, but in the form of silent and discrete icons appearing on the top panel of my desktop. If I'm reading, writing, or otherwise in the middle of something I generally don't notice and be distracted by the icon, but when I look up to take a break I notice it. This way I don't have to go out of my way to check for notifications, but I'm also not getting constantly interrupted. This works for me, but there's no one-size-fits all approach.
For reading the news, I recommend deciding what news sources you want to use and configuring a news aggregator like Liferea.
- How often do you want your news aggregator to check for new articles? Do you want to read the news once a day? More than once? Less? Should you leave your news aggregator open all the time, or open it when you consciously decide to use it and close it when you're done.
- Do you want videos and/or articles? For articles, do you want to see images or just text? Do you want to be able to see/follow links to other articles?
Ask yourself similar questions for other things you do on the Internet.
- Is this something that is useful to me but I need to do it less? Is this useless to me and I'm only doing it because of addiction? If I want to keep doing it, but in a healthier way, what is the best tool for the job and when/how should I use it.
- If you stop using your desktop/laptop for an Internet-related task, will that result in you using a phone for that task more often? A phone is a computer too, so all the same questions will apply.
No one can answer these questions for you. The important thing is to self-reflect, make a conscious choice, and then find or create the tool that empowers you to carry out that choice. It's a more positive and human-centric approach than starting with one tool (your web browser) that you use for everything Internet-related and blocking sites in reaction to frustration with your use of it.
name at domain wrote:
> For reading the news, I recommend deciding what news sources you want to use and configuring a news aggregator like Liferea.
Unless RSS feeds are of personal nature (e. g. user’s feed on some forum), I would recommend to use a service, that maintains a public and persistent archive of collected articles. The only such a service, I am aware of, is Gwene.org (a counterpart of the indispensable Gmane).
Why would anybody want a public archive of news she reads?
On 04/15, Dmitry Alexandrov wrote:
> Unless RSS feeds are of personal nature (e. g. user’s feed on some forum), I would recommend to use a service, that maintains a public and persistent archive of collected articles.
Is this in order to have an archive if the original news site goes down,
or are there other advantages?
Here's a good discussion of how to use dnsmasq to whitelist the internet in the way you are asking. It works by redirecting requests for all but the sites you want to visit back to localhost: https://superuser.com/questions/625885/dns-block-all-websites-except-for-whitelisted-sites
Here's a Debian wiki on setting up and using dnsmasq: https://wiki.debian.org/HowTo/dnsmasq