Making the internet a better place

This is the first article in my newsletter, so I want to give you an introduction about me, my mission, and what you can expect from subscribing.

I’m Samy, a CS student passionate about making the internet a better place by building products and spreading information.

I started my journey a couple of years ago. When I was a kid, I was addicted to the internet. I spent most of my time either playing MMORPGs or scrolling through social media. It was literally a time sink. I spent years like this, watching my life slip from my hands.

I always thought what I was doing was bad, but I was way too deep in it to get out. Then the most unexpected thing happened: I broke my laptop, my primary way of accessing the internet at that time. Even though I had a phone, I was so used to using my laptop that I didn’t immediately become addicted to my phone. It was a sudden separation that I really needed. Suddenly, I found myself not impulsively wanting to go online whenever I was home.

This change was crucial. For the first time ever, I got the feeling that I wasn’t controlled by anything, that I had complete control over my thoughts and actions.

Obviously, what happened next was that I became addicted to the social media app on my phone. But the seed that was planted in that sudden separation from the internet played a big role in my life.

After becoming addicted again, I started to notice how this state of addictiveness was different from the state of freedom I was in when I didn’t have a laptop. I started to think, what if I could become free again?

This was the beginning of my journey to become free from the chains of the internet. It triggered a series of experiments to try to break out of it. It was a lot of trial and error. I almost gave up plenty of times, but after years, I can confidently say that I have firm control over my relationship with the internet.

Sadly, this is something that not a lot of people have achieved. I know that some people don’t experience any negative effects from the internet, but many do. And most of these individuals are in the first phase that I was in; they don’t even know they’re being controlled. Even the people who have passed this phase have a hard time breaking the chains.

I used a lot of techniques to achieve my freedom, from dopamine detox (completely quitting the internet for some time) to moderation techniques and using website blockers. I even developed new ways of using these blockers. And now I’m trying to build my own apps to accomplish what these blockers fail to do.

Now, I want to ship the apps I’m building as well as share my thoughts on how to have a better relationship with the internet.

This is where this newsletter comes in. Periodically, I’ll post a letter to either provide an update on what I’m building or discuss a concept that I think will help you.

If you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and share it on social media.