A switch marked enough

Late at night in Amman, someone opens their phone to check tomorrow's weather. Twenty minutes later they are deep in a staged argument between two strangers in a mall, a home remedy that apparently fixes everything, and a footballer's transfer that will be denied by morning.

There used to be a place for this kind of thing, and it was a place you could leave. A cheap channel near the end of the dial, selling knives and rumours at two in the morning. You found it by accident, watched for a minute, and changed the channel.

Now the channel follows us. It sits at the top of every search, in every feed, in the inbox. It is put together, piece by piece, by people who have worked out that invention and anger are cheaper to make than anything true, and pay better.

Millions of people install tools to block adverts. What I want is something wider. A single switch that hides everything made only to provoke, alarm or sell an easy dream. Not the hard news, not the uncomfortable facts. Just the material that exists because someone profits from my looking at it and nobody gains from my having seen it.

And I would like the switch to start in the on position.

Described like that, it is hard to think of many people who would say no to it.

People lived for a very long time without strangers pouring commercial manipulation into their homes from waking until sleep. Most of us are not tired at the end of a day online because we did too much. We are tired because so much was done to us.