Dopa Block

A chrome extension that prevents facebook notifications from activating your brain's happiness receptors.

Dopa Blocker begins by stripping the Facebook webpage of its bright red notification counter before the page loads. You'll still see a bright white notification icon to indicate you have unread notifications, but won't get the same dopamine hit as seeing the counter in candy-red. Earlier this year (2018), Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, revealed that the social network was founded non to unite us, but to distract us. “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” Ask yourself, how often did you visit Facebook.com out of casual habit and stuck around for a bit longer just so you could find out what's behind the bright red notification counter? It's a vulnerability in human psychology, that Facebook exploits to get a little hit of dopamine.