Beyond Dark Patterns: Designing a Social Network That Respects Your Time
10:30 PM. Just five more minutes of scrolling before bed.
…
And now it's midnight, and you're watching the twelfth consecutive video of people drifting their cars through the streets of Abu Dhabi, even though you've never done anything more dangerous in a car than rolling through a stop sign.
So that sucks.
The Attention Trap
Our lives have gotten bogged down in digital quicksand.
Social media platforms aren't designed to respect your time—they've been ruthlessly engineered to consume as much of it as possible. The infinite scroll, autoplay videos, constant notifications that trigger FOMO... these aren't bugs. They're features, working together to maximize the time they steal from you.
In the industry there's a name for it: "dark patterns", engineered experiences intentionally crafted to trick you into doing what they want. In the case of social media, they're used to trick us into giving away the most precious, non-renewable resource: our time.
The Algorithm Doesn't Care About Your Plans
Here's the truth that Meta, TikTok, and the rest hope you'll never really think about: their algorithms aren't optimized for your enjoyment, let alone your well-being or productivity. And they're definitely not trying to make your day better or to encourage genuine connections.
Their sole purpose is to keep you engaged for as long as possible so they can serve you more ads. Full stop.
(Actually, not full stop: they also do it so each of those ads can be sold for even more money, to tell advertisers "Users are spending 6% more time on the app this year compared to 2024! Plus, we've mined 4 new data fields for every user. How? Ha, you guys know better than to ask!")
The average person now spends over 2 hours daily on social media. That's a full month of your year. A month you could spend hanging out with friends, starting a business, painting Warhammer figurines, throwing weird stuff into your air fryer, or whatever else you want to do.
And what are we getting in exchange for this massive investment of our time?
The Broken Bargain
Social media said it wanted to “connect the world”. Instead, it's delivered:
And FOMO, while simultaneously quite literally making us miss out on a whole range of other experiences!
These costs aren't accidental side effects—they're direct consequences of business models that prioritize engagement above all else.
Like a lot of other people, we've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable and untenable. It doesn't have to be this way.
Respecting Your Time By Design
What would a social network look like if it was designed from the ground up to respect your time rather than exploit it?
Here's how we're approaching it:
1. Reverse-chronological feeds without infinite scroll
When you open Sunslider, you'll see what the people you know have been up to lately, presented in a simple reverse-chronological order. If you get to the end (meaning you're back to wherever you finished scrolling the last time you visited the app), we'll put in a natural stopping point, with some indicator to let you know it's all good (think: "All caught up!").
At that point, maybe you'll hop over to the "Explore" feed; or maybe you'll decide to keep scrolling further, pulling up to have the feed load previous posts; or maybe you'll decide to just put the phone down and do something else. No matter what, you won't simply get stuck in an infinite feed full of algorithmic rabbit holes designed to trap you for hours.
2. Different metrics
"Time spent" on Sunslider will never be one of our key metrics, let alone our main selling point to advertisers. We'll know how often people are using the app; after all, if you're opening the app once per day on average, that would suggest that you're relatively satisfied with it; if you're only opening it every two weeks (or never 😱) it suggests we aren't doing our job of providing a meaningful sharing tool.
We'll also know things associated with your posting habits, who you interact with, and general app activity. But we won't use that data to simply "make number go up". If you're on vacation and post 20 photos a day for a week, that's great! But if you're back at work and just want to surf for a few minutes at the end of the day to relax a bit – or, hell, actually go surfing – , that's great too. Increasing long-term user satisfaction is our north star, not increasing user activity.
3. No notifications by default
When you sign up for the app, one screen is for your "Notifications" setting; importantly, the default on Sunslider is "No notifications". Effectively, this means that you'll see a small notification symbol on the app's home screen icon when you have notifications; but we won't send you push notifications that interrupt your day.
If you'd prefer more active notifications, you can choose that during sign up or at any time in your app settings. And no matter what, we'll never send you more than one push notification per hour.
Each of these points will be readily evident in v1.0 of the app (and in v2.0, v3.0, and beyond as well). If you have any other good ideas for how to build additional "time respect" into Sunslider, reach out to me at [email protected]!
Do People Actually Want This?
The tech oligarchs and their fanboys will tell you this is doomed to fail. "People say they want these features, but they don't really use them," they claim.
In a word, bullshit. If we build and promote systems that exploit our weaknesses, then yes, those weaknesses will be exploited. But if we build different systems, we can have different outcomes.
The examples are growing around the world, from a negative-free-zone social network in Vermont to the Twitter exodus that's pushed Bluesky to over 30 million users. People want something different, network effects and account history be damned.
It's not about ideological purity, it's about creating a better balance. Millions of us have become extremely uncomfortable with how social media treats us and how much of our time it consumes. We're ready for something better.
Value Alignment Matters
This comes down to values and incentives. When a platform's business model relies on maximizing time spent, of course it will create features that disrespect your time. Their incentives are fundamentally misaligned with your wellbeing.
At Sunslider, we've deliberately structured our business so that our success doesn't depend on exploiting your attention. We win when you have a satisfying experience that fits healthily into your life—not when we've managed to keep you scrolling for another hour.
Our goal isn't world domination—it's to build a social network that lets 10 million users share moments with the people they know and love. We want to make sure those 10 million to include the 50 people closest to you, the ones you really want to share with. Then we want the other 9,999,950 to include genuine people sharing real moments, giving you a fun glimpse into the rest of the world.
With 10 million people who love using the app, we can focus on delivering an incredible, satisfying experience without obsessing over endless growth. We believe a social network should enhance your life, not consume it. It should connect you with people and ideas that matter to you, then get out of the way.
You deserve technology that respects your time, your attention, and your humanity. At Sunslider, that's exactly what we're building: a social network that treats your time as the valuable resource it is, not as an asset to be harvested.
Because your time is yours. It's not ours.
And it's certainly not theirs.