How to consume content on the modern internet without losing your mind or turning yourself into an idiot

I often preach about the downsides of allowing Big Press and social media to firehose us with trash content. But that doesn’t mean I’m against internet content consumption. Fact is, in the age of content abundance, there is way more great content available to us than ever before. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of terrible content, and this is mostly what social media algorithms and clickbait news choose to serve us. So, the secret to being informed on the internet while maintaining social and mental health is to find ways to filter out the junk.

Here are my recommendations for healthier ways to consume content on the internet.

① Kill the doomscroll

Feeds that serve you things your amygdala would like to see, despite your preference for healthy and interesting information, are the biggest problem with the modern internet.

The best way to escape doomscrolling is to completely avoid social media feeds and online news websites. The best alternatives to toxic newsfeeds are RSS and email newsletters.

• RSS is a technology that allows you to directly subscribe to websites. This is an open technology, so there are many different apps you can use to achieve this. An RSS app serves you a chronological inbox of new posts from your favourite websites and blogs. My favourite app is NetNewsWire for MacOS and iOS, which is free. Another great app is Feeeed, which also lets you subscribe to Twitter users, YouTube channels, Reddit subreddits, and more.
• These days, most great blogs offer email newsletters. I personally prefer RSS, but newsletters are the more popular option because they’re so easy to set up (everyone has email).
• Roulette is a simpler alternative. With Roulette, you can bookmark a number of websites and flick through them, like you would on TikTok or Instagram. Of course, the quality of this approach depends on the quality of the websites you choose to bookmark. I recommend avoiding any news websites. Focus on long reads.

Finding good blogs

While social media is terrible for consuming content, it’s unfortunately the best way to discover blogs and newsletters. This is why I still dip my toes into Twitter occasionally.

• Blog directories are websites that catalogue blogs that you can follow. Ooh! Directory is one of my favourites.
• If you’re into tech, Hacker News offers RSS feeds, and many of the posts on Hacker News are posts from various blogs. I’ve found and followed many great blogs after first discovering one of their posts on Hacker News.
• There are a number of prominent blogs that mostly share links to other blogs (we call these linkblogs). Daring Fireball, for example, can be a good way to discover other blogs.
• All Substack blogs have an RSS feed and email newsletter. Substack also has a decent discover page. You can find a lot of great blogs to follow on Substack.

② Improve the browsing experience

Today, the experience of reading on most websites is terrible, thanks to ads, cookie banners, and other user experience annoyances.

I use Safari on iOS and MacOS, which is nice because they share the same browser extensions. Any extensions mentioned below are Safari extensions, though some might be available for other browsers, and there are certainly equivalents available.

• Block ads. The web is a far more welcoming place without ads¹. There are many options for this; my favourite is 1Blocker, which also blocks most ads within apps and has options to ban annoyances like comment sections, social media widgets, trackers, and more.
• Use reader view. Many browsers have a reader feature that lets you view articles in a simplified UI (kind of like reading an ebook). Safari, for example, ships this by default on all devices. If you turn on Reader while reading articles online, the experience vastly improves.
• Fix videos. Many websites use custom video players. They do this so they can track you, serve you ads, and control your experience on their website. However, the default video player for your web browser is most likely a lot nicer than these custom video players that websites push onto you. Baking Soda is a safari extension that replaces custom video players on most websites with the browser-native video player. Vinegar does the same but for YouTube and also blocks ads. This has the added boon of supporting picture-in-picture videos.
• Block miscellaneous annoyances. Hush is a great extension that hides annoyances like cookie popups.
• iCloud Private Relay is a VPN service from Apple that counters tracking and targeted advertising. 1.1.1.1 by Cloudflare is a similar solution for other platforms.

③ Bookmarks, highlights, and summaries

I read for entertainment and learning. The best way to solidify your learning is to take notes. The best way to take notes about the things you read online is with a modern bookmarking app.

I use Raindrop for this. Raindrop makes it easy to save links to read later, highlight key passages from an article, and even write notes based on an article you’ve read. Raindrop then makes it easy to search your notes, highlights, and bookmarks for old articles.

Footnotes