Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 247 posts

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#101

Post by untog »

skrowl wrote: post #78
antupis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A probably better community.

In an age where everything other than hard left speech is quickly labeled 'hate speech', I think that any censorship-free areas will quickly be judged as having a 'bad community'. Have you ever actually tried Dissenter or Gab, or are you basing the 'bad community' off of what you've heard elsewhere?

I've browsed both. They are filled with hate. In fact, I just took a look on Gab's public explore page:

https://gab.com/popular

within a couple of scrolls found a rant about "Corey Booker's tranny abortions", and a reference to a "lispy Mexican faggot". Most other posts are either pro-Trump memes or anti-immigration rants, and there are plenty of those on Facebook and Twitter.

I get it: the sales pitch here is that you come to Gab to hear interesting thoughts are are censored by mainstream sites. But I'm not seeing a single post that made me stop and think about anything. It's mindless, hateful garbage. Even if you disagree with that and don't think it's a "bad" community I still question what would ever make it an interesting or worthwhile community. Because I'm seeing nothing.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#102

Post by Spivak »

toyg wrote: post #23
kristopolous wrote: post #13

These were generally called metaweb tech when they were popular about 15-20 years ago. The problem was that everyone had to have a particular author's plugin to see the extra content. Some of them were better than others, allowing cross referencing, citation insertion, and a number of other sophisticated features. I don't know if they still are around. Sites like reddit and hn are really inverted versions of this con…

Yeah, this has been tried over and over. Unless it becomes a standard browser feature (and decentralized, e.g. dht-backed), it's always been a nonstarter for technical reasons alone. Also, if you start from an anti-censorship anti-moderation position, in this day and age, you are likely to attract the worst of society right off the bat.

The various meta-web providers are already decentralized. Given that the value of CommentSection-aaS is curation there's really not much value in federated accounts outside of the baseline "woudldn't it be nice if everything..."

Censorship resistance doesn't necessarily attract the worst type of people although the phrase is has become a synonym for anti-moderation among certain crowds.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#103

Post by [deleted] »

Jaruzel wrote: post #94
rtpg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a chrome extension that went the opposite direction: hit the extension button and you would get a list of hacker news and reddit submissions for that URL. Was super useful for finding some cool comments on a page I’ve since moved to Firefox and gave up on the extension, but it might be an easy port...

You might be able to do with just a bookmarklet into the algolia search for HN. EDIT: I've just created a proof of concept that works: http://www.jaruzel.com/apps/hnlookup/

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#104

Post by crankylinuxuser »

cachehit wrote: post #59
s9w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they have to, as it is law. I specifically wrote about legal speech. Extensions like this (or much more popular: dissenter) allows people to exercise that right on sites that limit their free speech.

Don't refer to freedom of speech like something everyone is obliged to provide. That's not what it means. https://xkcd.com/1357/

And, we already know that's not entirely true.

There was a recent decision that POTUS twitter feed is a public space (https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitt...) . We can easily see this extended to any US elected official.

And there is also historical context in an 1980 decision in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins where, based on Californian law, private property of the shoping mall was deemed open to political speech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...)

When its a private, non-political forum, the corps can do as they choose. But once politics and political speech move in along with public elected officials, all bets are off.

(Thanks to hn:dexen for the links. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20268802 )

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#105

Post by s9w »

untog wrote: post #101
skrowl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an age where everything other than hard left speech is quickly labeled 'hate speech', I think that any censorship-free areas will quickly be judged as having a 'bad community'. Have you ever actually tried Dissenter or Gab, or are you basing the 'bad community' off of what you've heard elsewhere?

I've browsed both. They are filled with hate. In fact, I just took a look on Gab's public explore page: https://gab.com/popular within a couple of scrolls found a rant about "Corey Booker's tranny abortions", and a reference to a "lispy Mexican faggot". Most other posts are either pro-Trump memes or anti-immigration rants, and there are plenty of those on Facebook and Twitter. I get it: the sales pitch here is that y…

I don't know gab too well, but the chans and voat DO contain worthwhile discussions as well as news/facts that are removed from HN/reddit etc.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#106

Post by marcinzm »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #104
cachehit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't refer to freedom of speech like something everyone is obliged to provide. That's not what it means. https://xkcd.com/1357/

And, we already know that's not entirely true. There was a recent decision that POTUS twitter feed is a public space ( https://theconversation.com/federal-judge-rules-trumps-twitt... ) . We can easily see this extended to any US elected official. And there is also historical context in an 1980 decision in Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins where, based on Californian law, private property of the shoping mall was dee…

The distinction, in this case, is that's it's NOT about using an existing forum for something. Web pages do not come with comment sections by default. So the discussion (ie: not having comments being a restriction of free speech) is about requiring you to build a forum specifically for speech to take place. It's like requiring a shopping mall to build a stage for people to have political speeches on. I feel few people would say free speech is infringed upon if every mall doesn't build such a stage.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#107

Post by _jyog »

untog wrote: post #101
skrowl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an age where everything other than hard left speech is quickly labeled 'hate speech', I think that any censorship-free areas will quickly be judged as having a 'bad community'. Have you ever actually tried Dissenter or Gab, or are you basing the 'bad community' off of what you've heard elsewhere?

I've browsed both. They are filled with hate. In fact, I just took a look on Gab's public explore page: https://gab.com/popular within a couple of scrolls found a rant about "Corey Booker's tranny abortions", and a reference to a "lispy Mexican faggot". Most other posts are either pro-Trump memes or anti-immigration rants, and there are plenty of those on Facebook and Twitter. I get it: the sales pitch here is that y…

I just looked. About one-third is drivel, one-third is pro-Trump, and one-third is just normal stuff (there's a picture of a 1930's vintage dress, and a pretty picture some one took of Cork, Ireland). Show me the social network which is clean. It's probably a similar breakdown on many others, just biased to the right rather than the left. Also, I think Gab doesn't do the kind of algorithmic filtering, promotion, and demotion of twitter/fb/etc.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#108

Post by Aromasin »

s9w wrote: post #105
untog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've browsed both. They are filled with hate. In fact, I just took a look on Gab's public explore page: https://gab.com/popular within a couple of scrolls found a rant about "Corey Booker's tranny abortions", and a reference to a "lispy Mexican faggot". Most other posts are either pro-Trump memes or anti-immigration rants, and there are plenty of those on Facebook and Twitter. I get it: the sales pitch here is that y…

I don't know gab too well, but the chans and voat DO contain worthwhile discussions as well as news/facts that are removed from HN/reddit etc.

I've been to Voat a number of times out of curiosity, and not once have I seen anything resembling meaningful discussion. It was a bunch a comments promoting drivel about white supremacy, lizard-people, LGBT+ lynching, Anti-Semitism, and Fascism. In fact, I distinctly remember every single thread having at least one comment regarding white supremacy.

The Chans are a different entity, as there's no voting function to complete the attention seeker feedback loop. I'd even argue they're one of the few places on the internet that doesn't bubble much, as it's completely anonymous with little reward function. Voat on the other hand is probably the one of the foulest places on the internet when it comes to discussing disgusting and dangerous ideology.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#109

Post by LinuxBender »

I like the idea. Third voice was fun for a while.

Are the iframes opt-in per domain? If not, how do you deal with leaking internal DNS names (referers) from within companies and government organizations? I don't see a referer policy [1]

Does your addon respect CSP policies? I assume the browser would enforce this, if iframes are not permitted.

[1] - https://securityheaders.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcomntr.github.i...

The domain mentioned in the README is not up.

Re: Show HN: A Firefox extension to leave comments on any URL

#110

Post by solstice »

mehdix wrote: post #92
toyg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this has been tried over and over. Unless it becomes a standard browser feature (and decentralized, e.g. dht-backed), it's always been a nonstarter for technical reasons alone. Also, if you start from an anti-censorship anti-moderation position, in this day and age, you are likely to attract the worst of society right off the bat.

The technical problem here is way easier to solve than the social one. You'd want to avoid having hatespeech or some attack being planned on URLs of your blog. This is by definition a tricky problem. Should moderation follow us to the remotest and most deserted corners of the web? Should prying eyes follow humans all the time, even on this abstract ocean of digital content? On technical side I think we'd need some so…

(Re: micropayments) Sigh... Flattr seemed so promising back in 2011.
Post reply on HN