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Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

tweeks.io

171–180 of 218 posts

Re: Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

#171
post #155

I had basically this exact idea too a few months ago and at the time already found a few implementations attempting it. https://robomonkey.io/ being one example I found so didn't pursue it further. Also it turns out llm's are already very good at just generating Violentmonkey scripts for me with minimal prompting. They also are great for quickly generating full blown minimal extensions with something like WXT when yo…

Yeah I have thought about more user friendly Violentmonkeh before. This sort of thing just needs to be open source and non-profit, there isn’t even much upkeep to it. At what point will the investors want some form of return?

This is built from the system that created enshittifcation in the first place; a cleaner web is definitely not going to come from a startup.

Re: Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any actual examples of C&Ds or lawsuits in this regard, or did you just mean they might ban the users/your account? The latter is pretty expected and tame, but it'd be surprising/interesting to look at actual examples of the claimed.

Being banned from Facebook would be a VERY big deal for many users. If FB is willing to ban users of the extension (however they detect it), usage will drop to 0 fast. Far outweighing the benefit of tweaking the UI.

No argument with any of that, but that's still a far cry from a C&D or lawsuit.

Re: Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

#176

Like this free opensource alt? https://github.com/kchander/magix-extension

Yeah, but I think there is a space in the market for people who don't want/know how to manage their own API keys. Anyway, IMO Tweeks is not for most of the HN audience [EDIT: because there are alternatives like Magix or even Greasemonkey itself].

Re: Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

#178
Tested it last night, here is some feedback:

* Tried the obvious one, removing all Shorts sections and buttons from Youtube.com, it one-shotted it without apparent issues. Great!

* Tried a second one on youtube: increase the information density, shrinking the size of each video entry so more entries can fit in my screen. This one was a fail: it took 180+ seconds (vs. around 60 seconds of previous query), then some thumbnails got smaller (not all), while the physical space and padding for each entry was still there (so no real density was gained from the change)

* I think it'd be useful to be able to check the exact prompt that was used, so I can re-read it. It might even be interesting if it was editable, so I might decide to rephrase something from it. Otherwise, a chat-like interface would be interesting too, so the extension asks me what it interprets from my words before working to produce it. Right now, it feels like a very slow iteration process where I write something, it doesn't get it, and I keep trying to refine it and waiting around 60 to 100 seconds between results.

* I'd also like to see the actual filters that are being generated and applied on each change. This is so I can learn from them and probably edit them manually for refinement, as it can be faster to change a little bit in there, than trying to convey the exact phrasing of what I want to the LLM.

* This brought to mind the obvious (to me at least!) idea of how helpful it would be to have an uBlock Origin rule creator with same kind of LLM help. Filter rules are so esoteric and complicated for me (a C++ backend dev) that I always spend several hours of reading and DOM analysis as soon as I want to do anything that's not as simple as using the extension's element picker.

* A collection of curated changes would be useful. My first instinct was to check if there's a gallery of the most common changes that people request to some popular websites. I guess this can be analyzed and trends can be discovered.

* All in all, this looks amazing. It's a very useful and really gamechanging usage of LLMs! Changing website contents was out of reach for the general public before, so this extension could become their door to that.

Re: Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web

#180

What about security? Happier if the tweak is vibe coded once and kept rather than running AI continuously (since continuous AI could be bamboozled by third party content text e.g. github issue)

The script is generated once and then persists across reload. There is no AI running continuously.
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