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Shut Up: Comment Blocker

rickyromero.com

41–45 of 45 posts

Re: Shut Up: Comment Blocker

#41
post #11

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.

Heh, this reminds me of that study that showed people would rather give themselves painful electric shocks than be alone. https://www.science.org/content/article/people-would-rather-...

I mean yeah but that's not what the study says though... full link here: https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pd...

Participants did not choose to give themselves electric shocks continuously. The average was around once during the entire 15-min window. It also showed a stark difference in gender: only 25% of women participants did it while 67% of men did it. All of them did not enjoy it (but that's obvious). 1 man shocked himself more than 190 times during the 15-min period, so the average data is much higher because of him.

So overall, it is correct that the human mind will seek stimulus (even negative ones) if they're bored/have nothing to do but nothing suggests they will give themselves continous painful "electric shocks than be alone".

Additionally, they were alone, but they also had no cellphones, no computers, nothing to engage their brains with other than the possibility to give themselves a small 4 volt shock. And most of them did it once and not again. I think it speaks more to human curiosity than the idea that you'll prefer pain to social isolation.

Re: Shut Up: Comment Blocker

#42
Effing yes, I thought about installing or building such an extension myself.

Honestly, with the extreme moderation and censorship, these days I can only tolerate YouTube comments and their sickly positivity that rises to the top. Every other platform is a cesspool of bots and people trying to one-up each other, defending the indefensible just to have an argument or to show off how smart they are (Russeau spoke of this 200 years ago already)

And forums won’t save us, despite the nostalgia. I am part of a few that have survived from the early 2000s, and silly arguments that continue for weeks going nowhere are commonplace.

Web 2.0 was a mistake.

Re: Shut Up: Comment Blocker

#43
post #7

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.

Odd comparison. Admin cancels on Usenet were focused specifically and totally on individual, service-abusing or commercial "spam". While this is a tool that wipes out comment sections from view entirely.

Re: Shut Up: Comment Blocker

#44
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The internet has and will always be about increasibg the signal te noise ratio for the user.

And my point is that the signal used to primarily originate from peer interactions, not broadcasting. Look at Usenet, AOL's structure, or Web 1.0. There's an inversion in the modern era, where broadcast messaging is perceived as the signal, and peer interactions the noise.

Re: Shut Up: Comment Blocker

#45
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe I didn't know about this. I had to track down mediocre extensions to try to replicate UBlock's element blocking. I did find that Adguard was pretty okay, but this looks much nicer.

uBO lite is available for safari though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

Yeah it is now, but it wasn't at the time. I have both Adguard and uBlock Origin Lite installed now. uBlock Origin came out about six months ago (saw on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825
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