A letter about attention

Sometime around the early 2010s, I attended a talk by Nir Eyal on habit-forming products in San Francisco. During the talk, Nir explained the psychology behind the hooks, variable rewards, and all the triggers designed to pull users back again and again. He was handing out books on how to hijack human attention.

I remember the way I felt after that talk. Nir was sharing what I consider to be devious tactics if used incorrectly, but he presented them with genuine excitement. It was like he had solved a puzzle, but the puzzle was people. Something shifted in me after that. I knew that advertising funds the “free” web, and therefore attention is currency. But I’d never seen the tactics laid out so plainly, in a full room, with a smile. I was watching a standard being set.

Following the talk, I didn’t retreat backwards into the hills or quit my job. I’ve been building digital products for over a decade and believe technology can genuinely improve our lives, but these tactics have been normalized. They are ubiquitous now. The feeds, notifications, autoplay, and infinite scroll. We just accept them.

The companies responsible for programming these algorithms that shape our feeds do not have your best interests at heart. The algorithms amplify the business objectives built into them by humans, such as attention, growth, and engagement. They will learn your weaknesses, predict your vulnerable moments, and adapt in real-time to keep you engaged. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said they compete with sleep. They’re not just competing with other apps. They’re competing with your relationships, your rest, your goals.

Content has the power to shape your beliefs, values, and worldview, so letting opaque algorithms control your attention means you risk letting them influence who you become, and what’s meaningful.

Around the time of that talk, I decided that social media was no longer benefiting me. I decided to delete the apps. When I felt the urge to pick up my phone and scroll, I’d reach for whatever I was reading. I kept Facebook Messenger to stay in touch with friends but stepped away from the feeds. I found out about Tristan Harris and the Time Well Spent movement, and based on their recommendations, I installed browser extensions to hide YouTube’s homepage. I killed the recommendation sidebar, stripped out ads, and the web became more usable. I felt like I’d finally created a healthy environment online, where I was using technology, not the other way around. For a while, it really worked.

Unfortunately, there were limitations in the tools that existed. They didn’t work on phones. So I would be disciplined on my laptop, and then pick up my phone and fall right back into the patterns I thought I’d escaped. The phone was always there, and it had no guardrails.

I tried every blocker or productivity tool I could find. None of them worked perfectly. They claim to sync between your computer and phone but in practice, they don’t. They treat all screen time the same. But thirty minutes of sustained attention and thirty minutes of fragmented switching are entirely different experiences. They block and restrict, but they don’t redirect you toward your own goals.

When you’re fighting a system designed by the best engineers and behavioral scientists money can buy, and your attention is their business model, this isn’t a failure of discipline. You’re basically bringing willpower to a gunfight.

I was frustrated, so about two years ago, I tried building a tool myself. I gave up when I realized I’d just be making another slightly nicer blocker that still didn’t solve the real problem. There’s a reason none of the other tools work. They are all fighting too many technical constraints.

Then something clicked: what if we build within a single ecosystem? Every other tool focuses on blocking apps, but apps are closed systems. You can’t reach inside the app to remove the algorithmic recommendations, while keeping the content you actually came for. You can’t selectively remove the design patterns engineered to keep you scrolling. You have no visibility of what is happening in the apps either. You can only block by time.

But the web is different. The web is open.

And Safari, across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, gave me something no other approach had: one ecosystem with rules that sync instantly. No escape hatch. Real visibility into what you’re consuming, not just how long. And the ability to modify what you see.

That’s Algoasis, and our philosophy is simple. Think of it as a set of tools, which we call guardians. They sit between you and the internet and fight for you.

Just like other tools, Algoasis can block by schedule, time-limit, or permanently, but when you hit a limit, we don’t just show you a wall, we guide you toward something meaningful. Your goals, your tasks, the things you actually want to spend your time on. Blocking alone is punitive, whereas blocking with redirection is guidance.

We can change the environment to remove the distracting parts.

Aza Raskin, the designer who invented the infinite scroll, has spoken publicly about his regret. The code he wrote removes the pause or end to a page, so browsing turns into drifting. One of our Algoasis guardians, the Doom Stopper, brings the pause back. It adds pagination to feeds, so at the end of a page you’re reminded: do I want to be here? We restore that moment of choice. Yes, you might miss some content. But that’s a worthy trade for your time back.

Or recommendations, the YouTube sidebar and homepage are designed to lead you from what you searched for, to what the algorithm wants you to watch. Another one of our guardians strips those out entirely. The platform becomes a tool you use rather than an environment that uses you.

Each Algoasis guardian is optional. You can deploy the ones that help you and ignore the ones that don’t. It’s your choice.

Dark design patterns are insidious. The whole industry is trained to remove friction, create strong hierarchy, guide users to the next step without thinking.

How many times have you sat down with a coffee, opened your laptop, ready to work, and thirty minutes later you’re confused about what you even looked at? That’s not an accident. That’s the design working exactly as it was intended.

I do think certain design patterns can be harmful. I think infinite scroll is harmful. I think autoplay can be harmful. I think algorithmic recommendations optimized purely for engagement are harmful. I’m not neutral about this, and Algoasis isn’t neutral either.

We know that what counts as a distraction for you, probably isn’t the same as what counts as a distraction for me. And we’re not here to dictate how you use your devices but we want to give you tools sharp enough to actually help, and let you decide which ones work for you.

Currently, Algoasis only works on Safari, for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Other browsers impose limitations that make this kind of control unreliable. We believe everyone should have access to this kind of control but for now, Safari is the only place we can build it right.

If any of this resonates with you, sign up for the waitlist and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready.

Christian