RustConf 2021 - How I Used Rust to Become Extremely Offline by Luke Westby
14How I Used Rust to Become Extremely Offline by Luke Westby
I've been on a mission to escape the internet. I have wasted uncountable hours doomscrolling, idly browsing, and posting opinions that no one cares about. I hit a breaking point, and I had to quit. I had to log off.
So, I deleted all of my accounts and I blocked all of the websites that distracted me. I thought I had finally succeeded, but it seems content always finds a way to be consumed. My preferred search engine shows little snippets of news, recent posts, and titles of videos related to the topic of the query. The temptation to search for "The News" and get distracted by the headlines was often too strong, and unfortunately my site blocker only works on URLs and not elements of a page.
In order to cut out this final source of distraction and finally become Extremely Offline, I had to do it myself. I built a browser extension that removes those areas of the page, and I used Rust to make sure I will never turn it off. Let me show you how.