Great idea, though something I accepted about myself years ago is I always want to read at least some of the comments, even if they’re horrific and make me want to sand off my own eyeballs. It may be horrible a lot of the time, but the total boredom and loneliness of experiencing the internet without feeling the presence of others is somehow worse.
I know it’s ridiculous, just seems to be the way I am.
For Safari users, don’t overlook that beautiful “Hide Distracting Items” menu which lets you block specific items elements on a per-site basis. Want to permanently hide a popover dialog? Hide it! Hide the comments section. Hide fog layers that obscure the content behind them. I use this all the time.
I've found this extension to be highly valuable on sports and movie/tv sites at thwarting spoilers and blabbermouths. Its value on political sites is much appreciated.
Pretty fun to see this, I've been doing the same for a while for a number of sites (e.g. YouTube) via just Ublock. May be a bit safer for those who don't want to introduce a new dependency into their environment.
Find it somewhat ironic that the first screenshot shows stack overflow, the once place where comments are still potentially useful - if we ever visit the site again. Author if you are reading: maybe use a screenshot of somewhere else like Hacker News?
If you want something like this for Hacker News (and you should, this place is getting intolerable without a blocklist) I suggest Comments Owl for Hacker News (https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news)
And thus concludes the internet's decades long transition from a peer community of idea exchange ala UseNet to a broadcast messaging medium controlled by elites for their own benefit ala Bari Weiss' CBS. Welcome to the Dead Internet.
Usenet had the Cancelmoose, so message sanitization has always been part of the Internet. In this case, I see this browser extension as purely a tool of the end user and not a blanket threat to the peer community at large.
Usenet kill file, IRC ignore list, email spam filters, web browser adblockers, disabling JavaScript, using Archive.org/.today to read content, using plain text and a remote host to parse URLs to forward the content to email, RSS readers, converting content based on CSS selectors or json (e.g. jq) to XML/RSS.
The internet has and will always be about increasibg the signal te noise ratio for the user. The fact someone resorts to blacklisting entire comment section tells us something about how they view the quality of these in general; subpar.
It isn't just LLMs which contribute to that. Troll farms do, too.
Great idea, though something I accepted about myself years ago is I always want to read at least some of the comments, even if they’re horrific and make me want to sand off my own eyeballs. It may be horrible a lot of the time, but the total boredom and loneliness of experiencing the internet without feeling the presence of others is somehow worse.
I know it’s ridiculous, just seems to be the way I am.
Very neat!
For Safari users, don’t overlook that beautiful “Hide Distracting Items” menu which lets you block specific items elements on a per-site basis. Want to permanently hide a popover dialog? Hide it! Hide the comments section. Hide fog layers that obscure the content behind them. I use this all the time.
I've found this extension to be highly valuable on sports and movie/tv sites at thwarting spoilers and blabbermouths. Its value on political sites is much appreciated.
I use ublock origin for that. Some examples from my filters:
Pretty fun to see this, I've been doing the same for a while for a number of sites (e.g. YouTube) via just Ublock. May be a bit safer for those who don't want to introduce a new dependency into their environment.
Find it somewhat ironic that the first screenshot shows stack overflow, the once place where comments are still potentially useful - if we ever visit the site again. Author if you are reading: maybe use a screenshot of somewhere else like Hacker News?
I might be misreading it, but that screenshot looks like an example of how you can disable the plugin for particular sites, like SO.
There's irony for commenting about blocking comments.
In general, browser extensions are not to be trusted. Even if you trust them now, they could change owners. There are examples.
If you want something like this for Hacker News (and you should, this place is getting intolerable without a blocklist) I suggest Comments Owl for Hacker News (https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news)
Not my project, I just really like it.
I use uBlock origin to block certain trolls on certain forums because moderators won't.
Feels like this will be especially valuable as more comments are just AI slop
Fake reviews too, whether human or AI.
And thus concludes the internet's decades long transition from a peer community of idea exchange ala UseNet to a broadcast messaging medium controlled by elites for their own benefit ala Bari Weiss' CBS. Welcome to the Dead Internet.
Usenet had the Cancelmoose, so message sanitization has always been part of the Internet. In this case, I see this browser extension as purely a tool of the end user and not a blanket threat to the peer community at large.
Usenet kill file, IRC ignore list, email spam filters, web browser adblockers, disabling JavaScript, using Archive.org/.today to read content, using plain text and a remote host to parse URLs to forward the content to email, RSS readers, converting content based on CSS selectors or json (e.g. jq) to XML/RSS.
The internet has and will always be about increasibg the signal te noise ratio for the user. The fact someone resorts to blacklisting entire comment section tells us something about how they view the quality of these in general; subpar.
It isn't just LLMs which contribute to that. Troll farms do, too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file
Not sure this particular thing concludes it