[HN Gopher] Shutting down the letsblock.it project and its offic...
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Shutting down the letsblock.it project and its official instance
Author : imbnwa
Score : 284 points
Date : 2024-03-31 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| What's the reason? Cost?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| > This project is making the commercial web more bearable, but
| I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial web
| more attractive.
|
| Sounds like they got bored.
| mock-possum wrote:
| 'Bored' isn't what I'd read into this - it sounds more like a
| shift in priorities to me.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Inatead of asking for a new maintainer they "shut it down",
| making it a more attractive project to pick up. Smart
| boesboes wrote:
| More like 'Frustrated' if you ask me
| nalinidash wrote:
| > This project is making the commercial web more bearable,
| but I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial
| web more attractive. I want to support communities and
| applications that respect their users and value what we have
| to say. These websites don't need letsblock.it rules, because
| they don't shove low-quality content and anti-features down
| our throats.
|
| Does this sound "bored"?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Yeah, perfectly. That's why I suggested it. It sounds like
| he was super interested in one thing, 2 years passed, and
| now he isn't interested in that one thing and wants to do
| something else. Bored. There's nothing wrong with that.
|
| Being bored isn't a bad thing.
| maxcoder4 wrote:
| I don't think I would call that bored. It's say this
| project let them grow enough that they realized that what
| they really want is something different than what they're
| working on.
|
| But to me "bored" sounds like a bad thing, so maybe I'm
| just arguing semantics.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Boredom isn't bad; its often how we become creative and
| create novel things. Not really the same quality of
| boredom as what I'm talking about, but this video from
| Veritasium is still relevant, I think:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPwKFigF8U
| mtlynch wrote:
| > _This project is making the commercial web more bearable, but
| I 'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial web
| more attractive._
|
| They don't spell it out explicitly, but I think the author
| realized that they were effectively acting as an enabler.
|
| The letsblock.it tool encouraged customers to use workarounds
| so that they could still continue engaging with big tech
| companies that are so customer-hostile. Instead, the author is
| choosing to let big tech make their experience worse, and
| customers have more incentive to seek out non-commercial
| alternatives.
| Handprint4469 wrote:
| ding ding ding!
|
| _Exactly_. If the commercial enshittified web bothers you to
| the point of trying to fix it, at some point you 'll realize
| that it's a quixotic crusade, and that you don't even want to
| engage with the content offered on these platforms anymore.
| Why would you? The shittier the platform, the shittier the
| content.
|
| The future of good online interactions is in small, closed,
| well-maintained and asynchronous communities.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Why would you? The shittier the platform, the shittier
| the content.
|
| Paradoxically that's the way some people find salvation.
| They have to hit the bottom. Instead of making their
| experience of digital abuse more palatable what they need
| is _more_ YouTube, more Facebook, more Snapchat, TikTok and
| Instagram. Until something inside snaps and their soul
| pukes.
|
| I'd totally get it if the author realised they were just
| prolonging users' misery. As Nietzsche said; "What is
| shaky, push it!"
| blindstitch wrote:
| The last line resonates with me as the discord I hang out
| in is my only source of good recommendations anymore.
| Almost all of the good stuff I've seen in the past years
| comes from there. My algorithmic feeds by comparison are
| all high-viewcount trash for idiots. That onion article
| from years ago about the lowest common denominator dropping
| at an alarming rate has only gotten more true over time.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > They don't spell it out explicitly, but I think the author
| realized that they were effectively acting as an enabler. >
| The letsblock.it tool encouraged customers to use workarounds
| so that they could still continue engaging with big tech
| companies that are so customer-hostile.
|
| With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't
| have any measurable effect. To think otherwise is hubris.
|
| People use products from "big tech companies" because they
| offer something that is useful that others don't offer. In
| the author's conflation of "big tech" and "commercial", I
| think they need more clarity in what they really want to
| accomplish, what their mission is. Being "against" something
| is a valid goal in life, but then you really have to be very
| strategic about it. Being "for something" and pouring your
| energy into making something that people want or need seems
| more productive. Even then, you want to be strategic because
| there's an infinite number of things you could go after. Do
| you diffuse your attention or do you focus? Supporting the
| "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Such a weird comment. Are you trying to debate them back
| into working on the project?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Are you trying to debate them back into working on the
| project?
|
| No, I think the project was based on wrong assumptions
| (strategy) and poorly executed.
|
| I am merely putting constructive ideas out there.
| zekrioca wrote:
| I don't think you are. You have a very utilitarian set of
| ideas, where optimization towards some unspecified goal
| of commercial success is the objective, and everything
| else is deemed 'lack of strategy', or 'poor'.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > You have a very utilitarian set of ideas, where
| optimization towards some unspecified goal of commercial
| success is the objective, and everything else is deemed
| 'lack of strategy', or 'poor'.
|
| Their strategy was to provide free UX enhancements for
| commercial companies. When they are _against_ the
| commercial web!
|
| Success does not have to be commercial. It can be about
| non-monetary impact. They had 800 users and tells
| themselves "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running
| for over two years is a big success in my book". Claiming
| that outcome as a big success is odd and I don't know
| that the author is learning from failure. When they can
| say to themselves "I failed in my mission, let me learn
| from it," I think they will have a larger chance to grow,
| be more successful, have bigger impact.
| idontknowifican wrote:
| "constructive ideas" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
| in ignoring your lack of empathy. i am always amazed by
| the people that provide "constructive ideas", and then
| fail to take any "constructive ideas" from others.
|
| you are failing in the same way as the original author by
| your own metric
| andsoitis wrote:
| > "constructive ideas" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
| here in ignoring your lack of empathy.
|
| Empathy can be "nice" but does not necessarily mean it is
| helpful, and can sometimes even be harmful.
|
| When you care about someone, but fail to challenge them
| directly you are not helping them, you just coddle them.
| danShumway wrote:
| > Being "against" something is a valid goal in life, but
| then you really have to be very strategic about it. Being
| "for something" and pouring your energy into making
| something that people want or need seems more productive.
|
| From the announcement:
|
| > but I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-
| commercial web more attractive.
|
| The author pretty explicitly states that they want to shift
| from an "against something" mentality (against disruptive
| content in proprietary apps, against the _intended_ user-
| experience of those apps) to a "for something" mentality
| (building and supporting non-commercial services).
|
| I genuinely do not see the complaint.
|
| > With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't
| have any measurable effect.
|
| Unless the author was planning on never making a popular
| project, I don't think this is a good way of evaluating
| direction or effort. In either case, putting in a huge
| amount of effort to support 800 active users who might
| otherwise (at least partially) shift their attention to
| better services seems reasonable to question. If we take it
| that there is any value in improving experiences for a
| small number of people, then there is equal value in making
| it more pleasant for those people to use Libre services.
|
| And of course that's even before asking about the
| opportunity cost. If an author can take the same amount of
| time they were devoting to this and instead build tools
| that make a Libre/Community service more attractive for 800
| people, that's arguably a much higher impact activity on
| the health and growth of that service than wasting that
| effort trying to make proprietary platforms palatable.
|
| But again, if your point here is to focus in on a mission,
| starting with "nothing I build will have any impact on any
| of this" is just not really helpful at all.
|
| > Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my
| opinion.
|
| A general mission statement/direction is often the first
| step towards narrowing down product ideas. I think making a
| decision in a direction (ie, pivoting from doing free UX
| enhancements for commercial companies towards saying, "I
| want to benefit services that don't feel exploitative") is
| a good place to start. Of course over time the author will
| probably narrow that focus, but this at least lays out a
| category that they can start looking into.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > > Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague
| in my opinion. A general mission statement/direction is
| often the first step towards narrowing down product
| ideas. I think making a decision in a direction (ie,
| pivoting from doing free UX enhancements for commercial
| companies towards saying, "I want to benefit services
| that don't feel exploitative") is a good place to start.
| Of course over time the author will probably narrow that
| focus, but this at least lays out a category that they
| can start looking into.
|
| This further emphasizes the lack of clarity, focus, and
| suboptimal strategy. When I read _your_ assessment of
| their previous strategy "doing free UX enhancements for
| commercial companies" while the person is _against_
| commerce, I do not walk away with a sense that they have
| reconciled for themselves what is worth going after and
| so the non-specific "I want to support communities and
| applications that respect their users and value what we
| have to say." I predict will likely also have no
| registrable impact.
|
| I have more candid feedback for the author and that is to
| take a more clear look at how they evaluate themselves.
| They say "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running
| for over two years is a big success in my book." Instead
| they should call it what it is - a failure - and learn
| from it. Failure is fine, failure is great, even. They
| would be more successful by dreaming _bigger_ and with
| more _focus_.
| danShumway wrote:
| > When I read your assessment of their previous strategy
| "doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies"
| while the person is against commerce, I do not walk away
| with a sense that they have reconciled for themselves
| what is worth going after [...]
|
| > Instead they should call it what it is - a failure -
| and learn from it.
|
| I'm going to be really blunt here, it sounds a lot less
| like your critique is that the author isn't clear about
| their goals or that the author doesn't know how to
| evaluate themselves -- and more like your critique is
| that the author's evaluation of themselves and their
| goals doesn't match _yours_.
|
| Running any project with 800 users for 2 years as a
| hobbyist can be reasonably called a success. This reads a
| lot like how VC people will come into Mom and Pop shops
| and say, "this business is a failure, they just have
| years of loyal customers in a niche, what a disgrace!
| They obviously haven't thought enough about their product
| focus."
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Running any project with 800 users for 2 years as a
| hobbyist can be reasonably called a success.
|
| That's not success, and certainly not a "big success"
| which is the author's self-reflection.
|
| Unless the author's goal was to run something for 2
| years, accumulate 800 users, and then shutting it down.
|
| > This reads a lot like how VC people will come into Mom
| and Pop shops and say
|
| I think they set out to make a big impact. That means
| growth, but doesn't imply commercial success.
| danShumway wrote:
| > That's not success, and certainly not a "big success"
| which is the author's self-reflection.
|
| Again, the author is not obligated in any way to align
| themselves to your definition of success. And them
| disagreeing with your definition of success is not the
| same thing as them being confused or not having thought
| enough about what they want. It might just mean they
| disagree with you.
|
| > I think they set out to make a big impact. That means
| growth
|
| No, not necessarily. Growth _can_ be a component of
| impact, but they are not synonymous, and many highly
| impactful projects never see a lot of attention or direct
| growth -- they enable other projects to succeed or fix
| some of the many diverse pain points that subsets of
| users for those projects have.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 800 people might not fix the whole tech ecosystem (it is
| impossibly broken which so I can see why the author would
| like to just go work on something else). But if you got 800
| people in a room to say thanks, I bet it would feel pretty
| cool.
|
| (This isn't intended as a full counter argument against
| your broader point, which I'm still not really sure either
| way about, I just wanted to note that sometimes we have
| small effects and that's OK. We're only individuals after
| all, it wouldn't make sense to expect every person to
| change the world in some sense, it would be chaos).
| andsoitis wrote:
| > But if you got 800 people in a room to say thanks, I
| bet it would feel pretty cool.
|
| Absolutely. It feels great, and that is a perfectly valid
| reason to spend the time - so that you feel the warmth
| from others.
| politelemon wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this until now, but it seems (seemed) like a
| decent idea. From what I can tell it's a UI that lets you
| configure what you'd like to block on certain sites, and there
| can be community contributed templates. You get a URL, you then
| add that URL to your UBO filters. It actually reminds me of
| nextdns.
| vidyesh wrote:
| I heard of this project on HN sometime last year, I never used
| their instance but I have been using their YouTube UBO filters
| and even contributed to fix some after some YouTube updates.
|
| And the UBO filters are fairly easy to maintain which is why I
| was a little surprised that they are shutting down this
| project, I understand the instance might be hard to maintain
| but the filters can very well be maintained I think.
|
| Either way, there seems to be other alternatives that do
| similar things. I will likely be using those then.
| crest wrote:
| I have to applaud taking even "failed" projects serious enough to
| come up with a reasonable exit plan (unlike some large
| companies).
| gcanyon wrote:
| I have to wonder what the creator has against Mike Boyd? "Nebula:
| filter out videos by creator... To get the code for a creator, go
| to their page... For example, Mike Boyd's page..."
|
| Filtering Nebula in general seems like a low-probability use-
| case?
| Y-bar wrote:
| I don't know who that is. But I am a Nebula subscriber and I do
| wish there were a way to hide a few channels in the app.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Fair point -- I think Mike Boyd is the "how long will it take
| me to learn this obscure thing" guy. I can see why that might
| not be to everyone's taste, but he seems relatively
| innocuous. -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| The obvious question to me in a situation like this is: how
| does Nebula provide preference? And honestly, I get it -- I
| am a subscriber, and I have a hard time getting a feed of the
| people I'm interested in, to the extent that I just do it to
| support the creators, I don't actually use Nebula. I continue
| to watch Nebula creators on YouTube, which has got to be a
| bottom-tier result for them.
| magnetowasright wrote:
| Same here. I have discovered so many new creators on Nebula I
| never would have found otherwise^* but there's definitely
| channels I just never want to see.
|
| * I never watched youtube as a primary source of
| entertainment like pretty much everyone uses youtube. I just
| had channel pages bookmarked (invidious instance links
| usually lol) so I never stumbled upon relevant channels even
| on the off chance something not terrible was in the
| recommendations which I always ignored. I got onto nebula
| because almost all of the very small handful of creators I
| watched were on it and it was cheap enough to justify the
| subscription lol
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I have a similar issue with some YouTube channels that
| despite liking their content I cannot subscribe to their
| channel because they publish dozens of shorts every week.
| So I just have a memory list of channels I visit every so
| often to see if they published anything. The shorts
| practically broke the subscription system for me.
| dylnuge wrote:
| Nebula used to not have a discovery feed and just a most recent
| videos one, so I could see someone wanting to filter out
| creators who they've watched and decided aren't for them to
| have a better chance of potentially finding new channels they
| do want to watch.
|
| EDIT: Also, not sure if you're just joking or not, but I'd bet
| the author is a Mike Boyd fan. I feel like people tend to use
| examples of things they like in documentation, and it's just an
| example.
| gcanyon wrote:
| It seems futile to filter Amazon products by name, but it's
| interesting that it seems to be able to filter YouTube shorts.
|
| Given that after two years there are only about 30 templates, I'm
| guessing it's too difficult to actually accomplish something
| useful given the tools provided. That's not a knock on the
| creator -- off the top of my head I don't know how I'd provide an
| easy way to customize/filter/modify web content -- I'm just
| saying I understand the shutdown given the apparent lack of
| traction.
| blindstitch wrote:
| Ublock origin's filter syntax is very good but has limitations
| that make it borderline impossible to filter out some elements
| and also very brittle. For example, this one is one of 20 lines
| of filters to get rid of Shorts: `www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-
| guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint path[d^="M10 14.65v-5.3L15
| 12l-5 2.65zm7.77-4.33"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer)`
|
| The frontend code is so abstracted that as soon as it is
| updated it is probably going to break. With userscripts you can
| filter these things with more sophisticated functions, but it
| slows down the interface more than UBO. In google's case that
| type of frontend abstraction (imo) is not intentionally
| designed to break interface filtering but it has that effect.
| For other companies like facebook and amazon they actively make
| filtering elements harder, because of their anti-adblock
| strategies, but they are all casting a wide enough net that
| element filtering is affected too. It's a long game of cat and
| mouse.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| The way YouTube forces shorts on users who likes long form
| content is really frustrating. uBlock filters are great but
| doesn't solve the fundamental issue here. There should be a
| way to opt out of YouTube shorts.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's not just the length that's frustrating, it's the near
| total lack of control. Miss the first few seconds because
| your sound was off/low? Gotta watch the whole fucking thing
| to the end and then let it replay because there's no slider
| or restart/rewind button.
|
| All because either they purposefully wanted to force us to
| do that (view count boosting I guess, or it's more likely
| to be remembered?) or some google exec got Shorts barely
| done enough to show off at a board meeting and say "done,
| made something that competes against reels!" and then ran
| off to work on something else to try and boost their
| stature in the company.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think the reason is they know they'll lose the market
| share if they don't force them. Most people know that
| they are addictive and "bad for you" so many people would
| not opt in to them. But if they're almost forced, they
| will succumb to the addiction.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Does Premium provide this?
| teddyh wrote:
| > _For example, this one is one of 20 lines of filters to get
| rid of Shorts_
|
| Just get this plugin:
| <https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-suggestions>
| and enable "Hide all Shorts" under Homepage/General.
| squigz wrote:
| Funnily enough, the code responsible for hiding shorts in
| that is just under 20 lines long :P
|
| https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-
| suggestions/b...
| teddyh wrote:
| Sure, but you don't have to maintain them.
| squigz wrote:
| Well, someone does; just like someone has to maintain,
| say, https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
| blindstitch wrote:
| It was a great project but it's kind of pissing in the wind.
| These things break constantly as new awful features get added.
| And there's not much you can do with ublock about high-level
| frontend changes that are the real problem, like google switching
| to infinite scroll or removing the plus operator. I can
| understand getting worn down.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It really is an arms race, and bigger/more well-known services
| like ublock origin are in the front lines of responding to the
| changes.
| rcpt wrote:
| I feel like you could use an AI to keep your blockers up to
| date
| andsoitis wrote:
| > It has been running for more than two years now and its
| official instance currently serves more than 800 active users and
| hundreds of anonymous visitors every day. We achieved this thanks
| to dozens of contributors and financial sponsors who I am
| grateful for.
|
| Failing to find product/market fit is a good time to reflect upon
| one's assumptions, biases, and perspective. Another piece of
| unsolicited constructive feedback I would offer the author is
| that from where I sit, I think they would be more successful if
| they are motivated and inspired by a more positive and strategic
| outlook.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Unsolicited, generic, drive-by advice, given with almost no
| understanding of the context and people involved is generally
| worthless.
| idontknowifican wrote:
| i love how he hides from being an asshole via calling his
| behavior "constructive ideas". imagine being a child raised
| with this cognitive dissonance.
|
| "if i do not think i am mean i can not be mean" is
| fundamentally the go to for bullies, this person included
| refulgentis wrote:
| I suggest relaxing, lest your comment become funny, because
| it describes itself better than the mind it is trying to
| read.
|
| Want an "asshole" version? i.e. the honest version? (note,
| I'm not the guy you're diagnosing and mind-reading, just
| want to highlight how absurd your conception of OP is)
|
| That was one of the strangest deprecation announcements
| I've ever seen, foaming at the mouth, blaming massive
| external factors (companies...pursuing money? is an odd
| thing to be surprised by), way overly dramatic lies about
| ex. Google "content-blocking extensions with MV3 under
| false security claims and planning to lock down the OS and
| browser with DRM."
|
| I have no love for Google, but as soon as someone starts
| saying "MV3 [makes] false security claims", I remember MV3
| is just Safari's more private content blocking from years
| ago.
|
| When I see "planning to lock down the OS and browser with
| DRM.", I'm like "wait...he can't be describing...", click
| through, and see he's describing the one-off public
| announcement of beginning a prototype of a browser API that
| a user is human (transparent!), that was cancelled,
| publicly, extremely shortly after, because of reactions
| like this. (thankfully!)
|
| Much like the constructive version of this comment, I bet
| they'd be able to keep going if they didn't see their
| project in such epic terms, given _they framed giving up in
| terms of companies continuing to pursue money and Google._
| idontknowifican wrote:
| your points are all fair and valid, and i can see how
| mine was missed.
|
| i am attempting to say:
|
| the way you give feedback is highly correlated with it
| landing.
|
| your "mean" feedback is not, it speaks to why and does
| not just dismiss the author or try to trivialize a
| number. it provides clear links to issues, not just
| attacking the intelligence of the poster. you make a
| series of great points, reinforced by others feelings and
| examples of real world issues.
|
| this feedback can be turned into something useful, allows
| reflection, and does not attack the authors entire reason
| to be here.
|
| the original dude literally says:
|
| 1. 800 users is shit 2. your app had no effect 3. you
| dont even know how to choose a goal
|
| you must be able to see this difference?
|
| is asshole a diagnosis?
| romseb wrote:
| At least for the YouTube filter templates, https://unhook.app is
| a great alternative.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I'm looking forward installing this on brave as soon as I get
| my hands on my pc, my attention span is so low that sometimes
| when I open up YouTube in incognito, I get overwhelmed. (I
| often do that to not mess with my actual recommended comment if
| I know I just need to search a video or two for one offs)
|
| The homepage shows a lot of crap and clickbait thumbnails, and
| especially thumbnails with people having weird expressions and
| staring at me makes my brain completely lose context and lose
| focus for a few seconds, so that I have actually to think again
| about what I was gonna search, and sometimes I can't even
| remember it
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I wish YouTube had a premium feature called the focus mode
| where we can just watch our subscriptions with no hassle.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Although I hope something similar will exist, I do believe
| the push towards promoting bullshit and shallow content is
| too strong
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| You're right and that push for shallow content just
| frustrates me. I wish at least they took my subscription
| fee and distributed to the channels and videos I watched.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| I use New Pipe for this. Also no ads.
| lawn wrote:
| I've been using this as a good way to filter and configure the
| familys browsers. For example to filter unwanted YouTube videos
| oe hiding shorts.
|
| Is there another easy way to sync blocklists like this?
| throw310324 wrote:
| This was a failed idea from the start. Furthermore, the
| "commercial web" is not so bad. Sometimes I'm not sure if peoole
| like this dude truly live in a bubble. I mean, you have to take
| HN with a grain of salt, opinions here not representative at all
| and not better than the ones from the general population.
| frankzander wrote:
| Well ... Bubbles are everywhere ... you may live in one too? So
| maybe I am. "not so bad" ... means what? It's bad but I got
| used to it. For me this is always the beginning of the end ;-)
| throw310324 wrote:
| Well, I've been using (surfing?) the web since the late 90s
| and sure, some things have become more commercial, there are
| new walled-gardens, some ads are annoying, cookie banners
| annoying but really you can do everything you could do back
| then an 100x more.
|
| Would I want to go back to the so-called golden, idealized
| age of the web in the late 90s/early 2000s? No.
|
| So, what I'm saying is that it hasn't deteriorated. The only
| thing that's happening is that HN is an echo chamber.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Reading this submission and the comments here, I am struck by how
| much pressure build-up there is now against the ensh*ttified web.
| Surely something good much come of this, and if it is via the
| mechanism of creative destruction... so be it. It may not come
| this year or next, but within 5 years? I could see that
| happening.
| ryandrake wrote:
| What a cool project and much-needed idea! Had I known about it,
| I'd probably be user #801. It's a shame it's shutting down.
|
| The modern web is exceedingly user-hostile, and browsers are not
| doing a good job as the User's Agent. Browsers are the ones that
| should provide users control over what they see, what they use,
| and what they skip. But, instead of giving the user the choice
| and respecting the user's preferences, browsers are acting like
| dumb canvases, allowing web developers to just spew whatever they
| want at the user. We shouldn't need extensions and third party
| hacks like this to keep control over what our browser does. And
| we should not accept browsers that just enable the web developer
| to do whatever they want.
|
| Rant over. Awesome project, sorry to see it go, wish I had a
| chance to experiment with it.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I didn't know about this project and had for a while been
| thinking of writing something like it. Now maybe I know better.
| Oh well, thanks for all the fish.
| gnyman wrote:
| Something along the same line is StopTheMadness (get the new
| Pro version).
|
| Also on some pages disabling JavaScript makes the experience
| better (although nowadays most pages just break), but if you
| don't have a way to easily disable it per-website you could
| check out my pet project https://noscript.it
|
| Combined it with STM's automatic url-rewrite and you can get
| automatic per-site noscript even on the iPhone.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Shutting off JS often makes things worse. What I really want
| is an ultra-aggressive Reader Mode that doesn't get fooled by
| so many sites. That means it has to know how to extricate the
| relevant text from a bunch of specific sites. At one point I
| had a special proxy just to clean up a few sites that I was
| reading frequently, but it broke. I also fooled around with
| running a headless Firefox under Selenium to get the text
| out, but I got bored with that. I might try to get that going
| again, or might try to figure out how browser plugins work.
| eek2121 wrote:
| I've been toying with the idea of using headless firefox
| with UBO as a filtering proxy, but nothing has come of it
| so far.
|
| I'm actually focused more on writing a quality search
| engine that ranks pages based on the amount of anti-user
| behavior, dark patterns, etc. a site has. Have a really
| crappy site with tons of ads, popup modals, and trackers?
| No clicks for you! So I'm doing something similar to what
| the author is doing I guess.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I am sorry to hear this. I have been a satisfied user since I
| found out about this project on HN a few months ago. It has kept
| Amazon and a lot of other garbage out of my search results for
| starters. I use uBlock Origin extensively but have never been
| able to learn to write my own filters. letsblock.it handled a lot
| of that seamlessly. My sincere thanks to the developer for his
| valiant efforts.
| Quenhus wrote:
| I'm sad to learn this projet is shutting down. The maintainer
| (xvello) contributed a lot to my uBlock dev filter [0]. We tried
| to reduce the time lost on deceptive and low-quality content for
| search engine users. Generative ML and aggressive SEO technics
| hit hard.
|
| Bye letsblockit and I wish you well @xvello.
|
| [0] https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter
| yinser wrote:
| They're not wrong that generative AI is enshittifying content but
| ironically they could leverage it to keep up with the template
| generation letsblockit could benefit from.
| Funes- wrote:
| I think it's time we build real alternatives to dystopian web
| services rather than try to salvage or parasitize them in any
| way.
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