Digital Detox Is Urgently Needed

Fighting #fashionistas with fashion. We have an app outline for that: iPhone or android.

Not as a lifestyle tweak, as wellness branding, but as collective infrastructure to push back against #dotcons capture. This native #OMN path isn’t about “self-control”. That framing is already poisoned by #stupidindividualism. The problem is structural, so the solution has to be social and procedural.

The core idea: The buddy method. You don’t fight addiction alone, don’t detox alone, you don’t escape algorithmic capture alone, you do it with another human.

App 1: Digital Detox Buddy

A simple app that sits on top of existing child lock / screen time APIs. No dark magic, spyware, behavioural profiling. Instead, simple:Just process, consent, and friction.

Defaults matter. Default allowance: 4 hours per day on #dotcons, when time runs out: You get a 10-minute grace extension button. Extending beyond this requires talking to your buddy

To permanently end limits: You must unbuddy (explicit social action). This creates pause, reflection, conversation – the opposite of dopamine scroll loops.

Time reduction is gradual, a soft landing, not punishment. Start at 4 hours/day, reduce by 1 hour per month. People can stabilise or reverse with buddy agreement. This is about retraining habits, not moral purity.

What Is counted (and what Is not)

Metered: Phone screen time (total). Time spent on #dotcons platforms.

Unmetered: Web browsing, FOSS apps, Reading tools, Local-first utilities, Creative tools.

The framing is explicit: The problem is not only “screen time”. The problem is extractive platforms.

Privacy + accountability balance, Aggregated stats are public (community-level visibility, cultural pressure). Exact stats are buddy-only (trust-based accountability)

Public stats answer: Average phone use, average #dotcons use, detox participation trends

This is #DemocracyOfReach applied to behaviour change – cultural signal without surveillance.

Architecture: First version: client–server is OK, preferably designed for #p2p later

Buddy relationship is explicit, revocable, symmetric, no central behavioural scoring, no advertising, no data resale, this is infrastructure, not a product.

App 2: Consumerism Detox Buddy

Same logic. Different addiction.

Consumerism Is also a platform problem, endless consumption isn’t “choice”. It’s nudging, targeting, and engineered impulse. This second app mirrors the first but focuses on shopping behaviour. How it works, uses geolocation, identifies time spent in: shopping centres, large retail chains, branded consumption spaces,

Same buddy rules: time limits, soft extensions, explicit social negotiation. Local markets, repair, reuse, libraries, commons spaces can be excluded or positively weighted.

This is anti-#deathcult economics made concrete.

Why this is a part of the #OMN path. This is not: personal optimisation, quantified-self nonsense, wellness capitalism, #NGO nudging, behavioural surveillance

This is: collective governance of attention, explicit social process, open defaults, visible culture change, tools that support talking to each other,

It’s #4opens applied to daily life: open process, open metrics (aggregate), open participation, open exit,

The apps don’t “fix” people, they change the environment people live in.

Why this matters now. Digital addiction and consumerism are not side effects – they are core pillars of the #deathcult. If we don’t build tools to step out together, we get isolated self-help while the system rolls on untouched.

This is a gentle, federated, human-scale refusal. Not banning. Not shaming. Not preaching. Just: “Let’s do less of this – together.”

If we can build social media, we can build social exit ramps.

This would be a good #OMN-native app.

#DRAFT