Noscroll AI bot does your doomscrolling, delivering curated news summaries via text

Meet Noscroll, an AI bot that does your doomscrolling for you | TechCrunch

What if you could outsource your doomscrolling? That's the premise behind the new startup Noscroll, which is offering an AI-powered bot that can browse your social feeds, news sites, and other online chatter, then text you when something important happens. "No feed. No brainrot. No ragebit," reads Noscroll's pitch to users. "Just signal." The idea itself is fairly simple -- it's a bot that reads the web for you. But to work, there's a lot that needs to go on under the hood. Nadav Hollander -- previously the CTO at the NFT marketplace OpenSea after selling his decentralized finance startup to the company in 2022 -- said he built Noscroll because he found himself in a love/hate relationship with X. He was taking time off after leaving his job at OpenSea, and spent a lot of time on the social platform. "It's phenomenally entertaining and really informative in ways you just don't get from normal media," Hollander told TechCrunch. "But it's so toxic culturally, and it's just very upsetting to read," he said, comparing it to the nutritional equivalent of fast food. "You just feel terrible after it." Hollander said he wanted to get off the app without missing out on the news and content. That inspired him to build Noscroll, which launched just a couple of days ago to the public. To get started with the service, you just text the Noscroll AI agent directly at (415) 583-7721, and it sends you a link to connect your X account to the service. This authentication provides Noscroll with information about your likes, bookmarks, and the accounts and posts you follow. The bot uses a variety of off-the-shelf AI models running on the company's own proprietary infrastructure. The models have been customized with a lot of prompting, so the bot has its own unique voice and communication style. You can chat with the AI agent in natural language, telling it what sort of news or topics you want to keep up with, as well as what you don't care about. It will then prepare a sample digest. To work, the AI pulls in information from beyond X, including news sites, blogs, Reddit, Hacker News, Substack, and more. It can even tap into things like research papers, local politics, or any other sources you may need. (You can recommend specific sources, too, if there's something you want to make sure it checks.) Then, instead of spending your time scrolling through endless social media feeds to stay current on the news you care about, Noscroll will send you news digests via text at whatever cadence works best. For instance, a casual user might want to receive a weekly update on a topic, while a news junkie might want texts multiple times per day. These digests are essentially a collection of news links along with a brief AI summary of the article. If you want to know more, you can tap the links to open them up in your preferred web browser and read the article in full. You can also reply to the AI bot to ask questions and have conversations about the news you're reading, too, as you could with other AI chatbots. Or you can add it to a group chat or Telegram group to have others engage with the service. (Other chat apps will be supported later on, we're told.) The bot also knows when there's breaking news worth seeing immediately and will text you as it's happening. Over time, the AI learns what you care about and uses that to better curate the types of information it sends you, the company claims. While the bot currently costs $9.99 per month to use, it will send you a sample news digest for free so you can customize it to your interests and try it out for 7 days. You can cancel the subscription at any time. Hollander notes Noscroll may experiment with variable pricing in the future. While there's an obvious use case for those in the tech industry struggling to keep up with the constant stream of daily AI news and updates, Noscroll is not limited to tech topics. You can keep up with just about anything: reality TV, your favorite band, local news, your friends' posts, your unread newsletters, or anything else that you find interesting. Hollander has been surprised to see how people are using it outside of tech. "People [are] following really niche anime industry news and local restaurant openings in Kyoto," he says. Users are trying to stay on top of job listings, layoff tracking, and more. Journalists have also taken advantage of the tool to follow things like local politics and events. "I think the archetype that's been interesting is anybody who has a professional need to be very online and follow things very closely. It's quite useful to have a deputy who's kind of doing that for you on whatever your beat is," he adds. The AI bot has seen fast adoption, he says, and has already attracted investor interest. Hollander, who built the bot alongside his friend, an open source developer from the crypto world who only goes by the user name @z0age on X, says the two have not yet made a decision on what to do with the inbound attention yet.

This AI bot does the mindless internet scrolling for you so you can skip the brainrot

No more doomscrolling. Just the news you care about, delivered to your phone. Spending too much time on social media and doomscrolling is bad for your brain. We all know it instinctively, and research has proven it time and again. But the fear of missing out keeps us glued to our feeds anyway. Noscroll, a new AI-powered service, aims to solve that by reading the internet for you and texting you only what matters. The pitch is simple: no feeds, no brainrot, just signal. How does it work? To get started, you text Noscroll's AI agent at (415) 718-4828. It sends you a link to connect your X account, which gives it access to your likes, bookmarks, and the accounts you follow. Recommended Videos From there, you tell the bot in plain language the topics you want to follow and the ones you don't care about. It then pulls information from across the web, including news sites, blogs, Reddit, Hacker News, Substack, research papers, and more. You can even point it to specific sources you want it to monitor. The bot then texts you news digests at whatever frequency works for you. If you are a casual reader, you might want a weekly roundup, while a news aficionado might prefer multiple updates a day. Each digest includes links and a short summary, but you can always tap through to read the full article. You can also reply to the bot to discuss what you're reading and tweak your digest. Who built it and why? Noscroll was built by Nadav Hollander, former CTO at NFT marketplace OpenSea. He told TechCrunch that his relationship with X inspired the idea. "It's phenomenally entertaining and really informative in ways you just don't get from normal media," he said, but added that the platform is "so toxic culturally." He wanted the news without the misery. So he built the tool himself, alongside a friend from the open source world. Noscroll costs $9.99 per month, but you can try it free for seven days. You can find it at Noscroll.com.