[HN Gopher] uBlacklist - Block specific sites from appearing in ...
___________________________________________________________________
uBlacklist - Block specific sites from appearing in Google search
results
Author : sanketpatrikar
Score : 448 points
Date : 2022-06-10 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| kgwxd wrote:
| Years ago, I made a FireFox addon for myself to do exactly this
| but everywhere on the internet. You specify a regular express to
| match attribute values and/or text, and the CSS to apply to the
| elements containing the matches. You can specify any CSS you want
| but if it's something like visibility: hidden or display: none it
| has this effect (and is the only thing I've actually used it
| for). It even worked on FireFox for Android when that supported
| proper addons.
|
| It's really nice to never see a link to Facebook, Twitter, etc
| anywhere on the internet. It's almost like they don't exist. It
| causes a few oddities here and there (The text matching is
| problematic but it's optional, the attribute value matching works
| really well), but I've never missed anything important. I feel
| like if everyone had this power everywhere, it would serve as
| incentive for sites to not suck.
|
| It took some fun javascript APIs I've never had to use before
| (like MutationObserver and TreeWalker) to get it to work right
| and efficiently, especially on sites that load content via JS
| (like Google).
|
| Source: https://github.com/7w0/ssure (the interesting bits are in
| content.js)
|
| Addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssure/
| rc_mob wrote:
| this is cool. kagi has this as a built in feature
| swader999 wrote:
| Doesn't Google do this well enough already?
| baobob wrote:
| Not even slightly
| adictator wrote:
| marcodiego wrote:
| Goodbye pinterest.
| causi wrote:
| Excellent, I can finally use Image Search without every single
| gif result being a damn video file.
| vwcx wrote:
| And pinterest!
| tjpnz wrote:
| Yes fuck Pinterest.
| dionian wrote:
| the biggest problem with google, for me, is their internal
| blacklist - nothing i can do to get them to stop censoring. this
| is a nice start though. still sticking with bing as the lesser of
| evils. i switch to google sometimes if i cant find what i want on
| bing (for non-controversial topics that google doesnt censor, its
| still the best)
| polyrand wrote:
| You can do the same with uBlock Origin filters. But writing them
| manually is hard.
|
| I use https://letsblock.it/filters to automatically generate
| lists of sites for the different search engines. It's been
| working wonderfully.
| pbreit wrote:
| IshKebab wrote:
| If the author is here, please don't.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I think we're far enough removed from the 1660 Stuart
| Restoration that no one is going to confuse this with the list
| of regicides of Charles I.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I think that we're not far enough removed from anything to
| not be mindful of terms that imply that white==good and
| black==bad.
| IshKebab wrote:
| This is such a misguided train of logic that I can't quite
| figure out where it's wrong. Like those maths puzzles that
| prove 1=0.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What do you mean? Personally I'm trying to avoid any
| terms that imply that black==bad. Black people, just like
| other groups of people, experience discrimination and
| abuse and I'm mindful of that. To me it would be the same
| as naming something christianlist and muslimlist to
| denote "good" and "bad", maybe that's a better example.
|
| At the end of the day I think my approach is not making
| the world any worse and possible might even make it
| infinitesimally better. But you do you, I have no problem
| with that.
| kleer001 wrote:
| > What do you mean?
|
| It's a wild goose chase. It's The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
| and it's garbage.
|
| > Black people, just like other groups of people,
| experience discrimination and abuse
|
| Sometimes. Other people do sometimes too and it sometimes
| has nothing to do with their skin colour.
|
| > my approach is not making the world any worse
|
| That's misguided. Maybe focus on making yourself better
| first before mucking with the rest of the world.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Trying to control other people's language makes them
| resentful and annoyed by the cause, especially when they
| very obviously have no ill intent. This does in fact make
| the world a worse place.
| slingnow wrote:
| Except that there are no other interpretations of the
| words "christian" and "muslim", where it's quite clear
| you're referring to specific religions.
|
| Black and white are colors. _You_ are making the leap
| from color to ethnicity.
|
| At the end you claim you "have no problem with that", and
| yet you're all over this discussion proclaiming the same
| weak argument. Seems like you have quite a problem with
| it.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Black and white are colors. _You_ are making the leap
| from color to ethnicity.
|
| Except that we're not living in a hypothetical bubble but
| a world where white and black make many people think of
| skin color, I feel like it's hard to deny that at least
| in NA.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| mikewhy wrote:
| So since chess players aren't a very progressive group,
| none should strive to be progressive?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| ;)
| rc_mob wrote:
| this is pedantic as hell. if you are going to be so
| pedantic, then i ask you: should we be calling black
| people "black". that is not even close to an accurate
| description of their skin color.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think the fundamental issue is that you think there is
| some link between racism and the fact that the word
| "black" is commonly associated with bad things.
|
| People aren't racist towards black people because of the
| word black. (You might have noticed that non-black people
| can be victims of racism too!)
|
| And "black" isn't associated with badness because of
| racism against black people either.
|
| And it isn't even the black community calling for this.
| It's white SJWs. Ok I think they probably do have good
| intentions but they also want low-effort feel-good
| actions and don't really care what effect they _actually_
| have.
|
| It's the "set your profile picture" of racism. The only
| effect is making people who do it feel like they've done
| something worthwhile.
|
| > To me it would be the same as naming something
| christianlist and muslimlist to denote "good" and "bad",
| maybe that's a better example.
|
| Terrible analogy. There's a fundamental difference
| between "blacklist" and "darkielist" (for example). Black
| doesn't _just_ mean "black people". It is also just a
| colour.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > And it isn't even the black community calling for this.
| It's white SJWs. Ok I think they probably do have good
| intentions but they also want low-effort feel-good
| actions and don't really care what effect they actually
| have.
|
| > The only effect is making people who do it feel like
| they've done something worthwhile.
|
| I feel like you're discrediting your point a little bit
| with this by labeling people with that term and assuming
| something about what "they" want or think.
| miohtama wrote:
| W3c.org
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Finally, an easy way to ban forbes and heavy.com and their
| clickbait.
| flowinho wrote:
| kleer001 wrote:
| Ah, the good old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis linguistic theory. I'm
| not a fan.
|
| > I think words have a lot of power.
|
| They do, as symbols, as tools. That's why they're fundamental
| to civilization. They allow thoughts to stay. However, they
| don't control people. IMHO people are pretty recalcitrant and
| more powerful than words.
|
| Tools do not control the hand.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Blacklist comes from King Henry's "Little Black Book" which was
| a list of his political enemies.
|
| Attempts to make it a racial thing are ahistorical and racist
| in and of themselves.
| almog wrote:
| You seem to copy and paste this fake fact about 'King Henry's
| Little Black Book"' all over the thread.
|
| > Blacklist comes from King Henry's "Little Black Book" which
| was a list of his political enemies.
|
| While the term Blacklist does not originate from colonialism,
| it seems to have first been used in the 1639 tragedy "The
| Unnatural Combat" by Philip Massinger.
|
| Not only did I not find any evidences supporting your fun
| "fact" about "King Henry and his enemies", the name Henry was
| quite popular as far as kings go, but non of them even lived
| in the 17th century according to this list:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rulers_named_Henry
|
| Back to the term - while blacklist _origin_ has nothing to do
| with racism, it's counterpart, "white list" was first used in
| the mid 19th century (not sure where it was first used
| exactly) - while the people who made these terms popular in
| the 20th century perhaps were not racist, they also were also
| did not think about how black people would feel about
| labeling white with "allow" and black with "reject", and I
| while I can't hold it against them since it might have been
| different times, the fact that some people are trying so hard
| to keep using these words, despite being triggering toward
| some people is hard for me to understand without making
| cynical assumptions about their motives.
|
| Could it be that you're basing your historical knowledge on
| this ad? I'd love be wrong on this one.
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/how-
| wann...
| IshKebab wrote:
| You're not the only one, but most people think you're being
| ridiculous. It has nothing to do with black and white people
| any more than blackmail does. Or... should that be extortmail?
|
| Same nonsense as the Git `master` panty-twist. Though at least
| `main` is a real word that makes sense and doesn't make me
| cringe.
| zo1 wrote:
| That particular framing only has "power" if we give it. Once
| you open that can of worms, you will struggle to put it back.
| Next up we get white, yellow and red. Take all the words out
| there that use those and imagine what chaos and hatred it'll
| cause when we start trying to accommodate everyone.
| voxl wrote:
| You're ignoring the fact that this isn't an issue just for
| you and them. Everyone is involved in giving these words
| power, and the reality is the ship has already sailed, black
| means evil and white means divine in popular culture, in
| video games, etc. Angels are white and demons are black.
|
| This might not even have racist origins, but it does
| reinforce racist ideals. Importing this culture into a block
| list is the weird thing, why randomly call it a black list if
| you're not appealing to this culture?
| secondcoming wrote:
| You're gaslighting by pretending that calling it a
| blacklist is 'random'.
| voxl wrote:
| It's not gaslighting at all, the point is that the origin
| of the name comes from culture not from description.
| Without the culture backing up the name it would be
| random, you're getting your order of operations wrong.
| infamia wrote:
| > black means evil and white means divine in popular
| culture, in video games, etc. Angels are white and demons
| are black.
|
| It's not nearly as black and white (/pun) as you portray.
| Black is also symbolic of ultimate luxury and
| sophistication (black limo, black tux, AMEX Black Card,
| etc.). Nor is white universally considered a good thing
| either (e.g. whitewashing a bad situation).
| voxl wrote:
| That's funny! Because I _never_ hear anyone call it a
| black limo, or a black tux, though they are usually
| black, they are not referred to as black.
| infamia wrote:
| > I _never_ hear anyone call it a black limo, or a black
| tux, though they are usually black, they are not referred
| to as black.
|
| I was responding to your blanket assertion that "black
| means evil and white means divine in popular culture",
| which is clearly not true as I've illustrated. Colors
| have various connotations depending on the context, you
| have simply latched on to one context and want to apply
| it everywhere to fit your argument. The fact that AMEX
| chose to brand their ultra-exclusive card as AMEX Black
| is telling. Clearly, AMEX thinks you are going to
| associate their card's name with luxury and exclusivity,
| and aren't going to associate their card with evil.
|
| Edit: Accidentally quoted the grandparent instead of the
| parent.
| dshpala wrote:
| I suggest approaching this issue from the other angle -
| which alternatives are worse than whitelist/blacklist in
| your opinion?
| permo-w wrote:
| >This might not even have racist origins, but it does
| reinforce racist ideals
|
| fear of the dark equally fits this profile. is that
| offensive?
|
| >why randomly call it a black list if you're not appealing
| to this culture?
|
| do you think the author asked himself: "how can I import a
| harmful cultural theme into my work today?" or could it be
| that blacklist and whitelist are the common usage terms for
| lists of disallowed and allowed members of a group?
| voxl wrote:
| No I think it was a cognitive bias, why are you importing
| blame?
|
| People who so vehemently defend calling something a
| blacklist instead of a blocklist are very suspicious to
| me. Similar energy to defending calling a woman female.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| How about we stop using colors to categorize human beings?
| If it offensive to call Chinese people yellow or Aboriginal
| people red then we should stop calling other people white,
| black, or brown.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I don't think slippery slope applies here. Black==bad and
| white==good is quite backwards in today's world and I think
| it's fine to be mindful of that.
| [deleted]
| permo-w wrote:
| ignoring social justice concerns, "blocklist" is a more
| descriptive word
| YATA2 wrote:
| No it's not. List of filesystem blocks? List of block
| devices?
|
| Or use blacklist, a word that has a definition that predates
| modern computing and non-English speakers can quickly
| translate using any old translator, dictionary, etc.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Am I the only one that is annoyed by people taking a chainsaw
| to the English language in the name of linguistic determinism?
| bradlys wrote:
| I agree for the simple statement that blacklist and whitelist
| are not really descriptors but historical terms crafted by some
| weirdos in the 1600s.
|
| Blocklist and Passlist seem to carry the same number of
| syllables. So, seems like decent replacements. (Allowlist is a
| better term but multiple syllables is annoying)
| dopa42365 wrote:
| https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist/issues/160
| almog wrote:
| Wow, while I can perhaps understand perhaps why the
| repository owner, given that he's not from the US (according
| to his Github) and lacking the historical background, could
| think that the fact that closing the issue with the comment
| "I don't want to touch this controversial issue" might
| actually be a neutral approach (it's not, he touched the
| issue when he chose the name in 2018, perhaps later if he
| heard about twitter and other companies explicitly choosing
| not to use this term anymore and finally now, when he had a
| chance to explain his possible blind spot, but instead chose
| to look aside).
|
| That I can (maybe) understand, but every other commenter is
| intentionally toxic in a way I've never on open source
| projects.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > lacking the historical background
|
| I think you might be the one lacking the historical
| background. Blacklist comes from King Henry and his list of
| political enemies.
|
| > but every other commenter is intentionally toxic
|
| I find realpoliticking innocous words to be toxic and
| problematic.
| almog wrote:
| > I think you might be the one lacking the historical
| background. Blacklist comes from King Henry and his list
| of political enemies.
|
| 1. You seem to assume that historical background is
| synonymous with "words first origin". By historical
| background I meant to refer to not being fully aware of
| just how much racism toward black Americans was and is
| still present everywhere. I say so as a non-American
| myself. It's not present in your every day, one cannot
| fully grasp it.
|
| 2. While the term Blacklist does not originate from
| colonialism, it seems to have first been used in the 1639
| tragedy "The Unnatural Combat" by Philip Massinger.
|
| 3. Not only did I not find any evidences supporting your
| fun "fact" about "King Henry and his enemies", the name
| Henry was quite popular as far as kings go, but non of
| them even lived in the 17th century according to this
| list:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rulers_named_Henry
|
| 4. Back to the term - while blacklist _origin_ has
| nothing to do with racism, it's counterpart, "white list"
| was first used in the mid 19th century (not sure where it
| was first used exactly) - while the people who made these
| terms popular in the 20th century perhaps were not
| racist, they also were also did not think about how black
| people would feel about labeling white with "allow" and
| black with "reject", and I while I can't hold it against
| them since it might have been different times, the fact
| that some people are trying so hard to keep using these
| words, despite being triggering toward some people is
| hard for me to understand without making cynical
| assumptions about their motives.
|
| > I find realpoliticking innocous words to be toxic and
| problematic.
|
| While I'm not sure what Realpolitik has to do with any of
| it, but your issues with it, whether justified or not, do
| not make the comments on that issue any less toxic.
| secondcoming wrote:
| American Privilege in action
| icelancer wrote:
| Thought the author's response was fine. If it's that
| important, fork it and rename it.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Wow, reading those responses made me not want to use the
| extension. I'll stick with krono's recommendation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31693787
| barbazoo wrote:
| I've seen the terms allowlist and denylist a couple of times
| now and started adopting those terms in favor of whitelist and
| blacklist.
| prepend wrote:
| You're not the only one, but I prefer "blacklist" as it's
| indicative of black holes and darkness and badness. So it fits
| with bad sites I want to block.
|
| Of course my favorite color is black so I'm ok with using terms
| with different contexts and would condemn anyone trying to
| associate the negative associations of the color with
| populations that have dark skin color or use the label "Black."
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I've been using Google Hit Hider, a userscript, for this for
| years. I can import/export my list, sites can be both "banned"
| and "blocked", I can de-duplicate and de-www my lists if needed,
| etc. It's very flexible. (Despite the name, it's DDG compatible
| as well) It's also completely free.
|
| What advantages does this have over Google Hit Hider?
| richardsocher wrote:
| you.com let's you select the sources and apps you want to see
| more of in the appstore you.com/apps
| trinovantes wrote:
| This only applies display:none to the bad sites which means for
| some queries, your entire search results might be empty
|
| To get full results, you have to use "-site" but sadly Google
| limits queries to 32 words which means for a 5 word query, you
| can only "blacklist" up to 27 sites
| darthrupert wrote:
| Marvellous, I have been looking for this for a while.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Google used to allow this on its search page, but of course they
| couldn't have users filtering spam and trash out of their results
| that might cost Google a penny.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| medium.com should be top of the list !
| behnamoh wrote:
| to be fair, there are some good articles on Medium. But I
| agree, most are click-baits due to Medium's partnership
| program.
| northisup wrote:
| love the player hate the name
| ezekg wrote:
| Alternatively, you could stop using Google and use Kagi
| (https://kagi.com), which offers the same feature. :)
| bl_valance wrote:
| It is great, I used it during their early-access, but the
| 10/month is a bit steep tbh. I would be more inclined to pay up
| at <5/month. One of my favourite features was the toggle for
| showing results only from discussion boards.
| Normille wrote:
| ...or use Grease/Tamper/Violent- monkey and the excellent
| Google Hit Hider by Domain[0] --which is free and [in spite of
| the name] works across all major search engines.
|
| I feel like an evangelist for this script as I seem to mention
| it on an almost monthly basis here. But, as the saying goes "No
| connection. Just a happy user."
|
| PS: as I said last time 'uBlacklist' was promoted here;
| whatever the merits of your product, trying to subconsciously
| associate yourself with the excellent 'uBlock Origin', by using
| a similar naming convention, is very shady.
|
| PPS: reading the rest of the comments, I'm amazed at the number
| of people saying they've signed up for this, or intend to. $10
| a month for something you could have for free --and we're
| supposed to be in recessionary times. It's true what they say
| about 'a fool and his money...'
|
| [0] https://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/google-hit-hider/
| dinkleberg wrote:
| You're joking right? We're on a forum where a good chunk of
| the people commenting have 6-figure salaries, some on the
| very high side of that. And some here have a lot more money
| than that.
|
| $10/mo for something used many times every day is a drop in
| the bucket for many. It's not true for all, but for many.
| prepend wrote:
| It's not the amount. It's the value for me.
|
| $10 for something that is minimal value is the path to
| ruin, especially when done by many people.
|
| There's opportunity cost (ie, what if I donated to charity,
| etc) but mainly I want to support high value products with
| some link to costs. All these "just the price of coffee"
| 4-hour-work-week type things are an unhealthy way of
| looking at the world.
|
| I like open source so I can stop worrying about stuff that
| has near zero marginal costs.
|
| I hate to think of a future where everything I enjoy or use
| is "just $10 every month."
| dinkleberg wrote:
| To each their own. But to me, a search engine is a very
| high value tool.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Paid search means that the service is not incentivized to
| appeal to advertisers. Disclaimer: happy Kagi subscriber here
| :)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| GHH just removes the results from the list, it doesn't add
| anything. I don't see how it could appeal to advertisers.
| EDIT: Oh, you're talking about Kagi. Gotcha.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Also an avid user of GHH. It's excellent. Configurable, easy
| to export/import, and free.
| function_seven wrote:
| About your PPS: I search from my own machine, from my work
| laptop, and from my phone. I also use different browsers.
| Maintaining a user script to "undo" crap results won't work
| well in this scenario. Having those settings saved in the
| search engine itself is really nice!
|
| I'm a paying Kagi user now, and this isn't my first comment
| gushing over that product. :)
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Huh, $10 a month is pretty steep. It's great that they offer a
| free plan, but that comes with all the misaligned incentives
| again. Any reason they don't just do pay-per-use (1 cent per
| query)?
| Kuinox wrote:
| From their usage panel, I do 50-200 research per day. In 10
| days my usage cost is estimated at 11.69$. It look like each
| query cost 1.25$ to Kagi. I don't want to be conscientious of
| the cost of my search usage, I fear it will inconsciously
| reduce my search usage and access to knowledge.
| geysersam wrote:
| You'll get used to it. Of course you won't limit your
| access to knowledge just to save $20 monthly.
|
| How much does it cost to have a suboptimal search
| experience 50-200 times every day? Saving 5 seconds (on
| average) per search, that's something like $10 per day in
| savings (provided you search during work hours).
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > I don't want to be conscientious of the cost of my search
| usage, I fear it will inconsciously reduce my search usage
| and access to knowledge.
|
| Sure, but this whole adventure won't last very long if the
| company loses money even on paying customers. If your usage
| costs them about $30 a month but you only pay $10, who will
| pay the remaining $20? _Someone_ has to finance your access
| to knowledge in the end...
| coryfklein wrote:
| No, it's industry standard to operate at a deficit to
| gain userbase and subscriptions. They're certainly
| prioritizing shipping product right now _over_ reducing
| COGS, but you can bet that if they 're successful in the
| short-term that in a couple years they'll be able to
| significantly reduce cost per search.
| freediver wrote:
| Correct, we are betting that avg user will cost us less
| than $10 in the future. Our current userbase is skewing
| towards HN - heavy usage. If that does not happen, we
| will have to change the price. Cost per search is
| unlikely to (significantly) change without
| (significantly) jeopardizing the quality of results we
| are known for.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > It look like each query cost 1.25$ to Kagi.
|
| Correction: they're saying 80 searches cost them ~1$.
|
| >Why does Kagi cost $10/month?
|
| >Our proposed price is dictated by the fact that search has
| a non zero cost. With other search engines, advertisers
| cover this cost. But it costs us about $1 to process 80
| searches.
|
| >Someone searching 8 times a day would perform about 240
| searches a month, costing us $3. An average Kagi beta user
| is actually searching about 30 times a day. At $10/month,
| the price does not even cover our cost for average use, and
| we are basically betting that average use will go down a
| bit with time because during beta people may be searching
| more than normal due to testing etc.
|
| >Our goal is to find the minimum price at which we can
| sustain the business. If it turns out that we have more
| room we will decrease it. But it can also be that we may
| need to increase it.
|
| >The free plan will be limited to 50 searches a month (and
| this too has to be paid by paying customers which makes the
| above math even harder).
| corrral wrote:
| How... do 80 searches cost them a dollar? That seems
| insanely high unless they're counting fixed costs that'll
| go down fast (on a per-search basis) as they get more
| subscribers.
|
| 8,000 searches costing a dollar, in actual resource use?
| OK, maybe. Still seems a little high, but maybe. 80? Are
| they paying someone to manually look things up for you?
| prepend wrote:
| Perhaps amortizing really high salaries. $1M/month for a
| chief metrics officer or something.
| freediver wrote:
| Kagi is completely bootstrapped. It has basically 10
| developers and me doing everything else. No managers. The
| expense is low as humanely possible as still coming out
| of my own pocket.
| coryfklein wrote:
| It's new software, features are always prioritized over
| cost efficency at the beginning when pressure to ship
| product overrides all.
| ezekg wrote:
| I think I remember somewhere that they said a very high
| percentage of searches are totally unique i.e. never
| queried before thus not served from cache. I don't think
| they reword searches like Google does for a higher cache
| hit rate.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| I never thought about that. That could explain a lot.
| Although I also recall Google themselves saying a lot of
| their queries are totally unique anyway.
| ezekg wrote:
| > Although I also recall Google themselves saying a lot
| of their queries are totally unique anyway.
|
| Which is probably why search quality is going down.
| They're rewriting your query to a more common way of
| saying the same thing, at least according to Google.
| geysersam wrote:
| I'd love if more services worked this way. Same for
| streaming, YouTube etc.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| As someone who prefers to search in private tabs, I was
| wondering why do I need to create an account, until I saw the
| pricing. It's an interesting conundrum, either you search
| anonymously with bloat and ads, or have your activity pinned
| to your account maybe with ads, or guaranteed without ads for
| $10/month.
|
| As much as it bothers me, I'd prefer to work around the first
| option.
| rc_mob wrote:
| they now have a browser plugin that allows search in
| private tabs
| ipaddr wrote:
| All searches are logged to your account which is tied to
| your credit card / kpi.
| freediver wrote:
| They are not. See kagi.com/privacy
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| They promise never ever to share your confidential info,
| but that promise wouldn't be necessary if they didn't
| have it in the first place.
|
| I understand they need it for customization and
| monetization, but search queries are too private to ask
| for trust.
| goda90 wrote:
| Yeah, $10 is steep, but I feel like I'd be happy with a
| bundle deal. Search, reliable email, a small bit of storage,
| and other small services for $20 or $30. I'm sure I'm
| underestimating how much I use search, but it just doesn't
| feel like an essential part of my life that I'd want to pay
| that much.
| ezekg wrote:
| I'd honestly rather see Kagi focus entirely on search and
| not try to branch out too much. These days, I think
| startups try to chew up too many markets at once instead of
| really honing in on one.
| geysersam wrote:
| 100% agree. Maybe I'm missing something but where's the
| synergy between search and email + storage unless you're
| harvesting data?
| freediver wrote:
| The synergy is in the fact that email and storage are
| high margin products. We are currently basically losing
| money on search. Cost of providing email per user is
| negligible (compared to search) but you could double the
| price and make the economics work.
| heretogetout wrote:
| I don't think charging per query would work for most folks,
| for the same reason micropayments to bloggers or what have
| you won't work: it discourages use. If you know that every
| time you hit enter on a search query will cost you something,
| anything, you'll hesitate. You might choose to just use
| Google and use your data to pay for your search instead.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| But that's kind of the point: It always costs Kagi that
| amount when you do a search (according to their pricing
| page). If the relationship between user and Kagi is not
| supposed to be adversarial, then indeed the "price vs
| value" tradeoff needs to be resolved on the user side.
|
| At the moment, I'm either overpaying (because I perform
| less than $10 worth of queries per month), or the company
| is losing money on me. And with the existence of the free
| tier, the business model can only work if most paying users
| are effectively overcharged significantly. Right now they
| are operating at a loss in both tiers, if their pricing
| page is to be believed.
|
| One would hope that costs amortize better with more users
| (e.g. scraping is pretty much fixed cost regardless of the
| number of users, but maybe that's already negligible) to
| push the price low enough for pay-per-use to not feel
| spendy. (When did you last think about how much one toilet
| flush costs you?)
| pitched wrote:
| Scraping and building their index probably costs way more
| than querying it. The way that db would scale is very
| friendly to replication (read your own writes isn't
| anywhere near required for example) so the number of
| queries (times cost per query) needed to match the
| indexing costs is probably very, very high. I bet the
| 10$/month cost is meant to cover scraping and indexing
| costs, not the queries.
| CrendKing wrote:
| > I'm either overpaying
|
| The company is aiming to have many users that everyone is
| overpaying with their $10, so that they make money,
| thanks to the reduced marginal cost. And the company
| hopes that the $10 is low enough that enough everyone
| knows they are overpaying they are still willing.
| [deleted]
| freediver wrote:
| Pay per use is a great model for search and I wish we could
| use it. But I don"t think the world is ready yet.
|
| In our survey 90% of users told us they preffered fixed fee
| over pay per use and feedback we got was that pay per use
| would make them anxious to use search. Also it adds
| additional friction in the signup flow (where the idea of
| paid search is already a novelty and then pay per search?)
| and so we decided to go with a fixed monthly price.
|
| Sweet spot would be $15-$20/month but this way we would not
| have enough users, and less users equals leas feedback to
| build product. Our pricing is subject to a change, we had to
| launch with a price and we've chosen one that was good
| compromise.
|
| We are likely to introduce pay per use first in our
| enterprise plan. Pricing Kagi is an extremely difficult
| intelectual challenege. (Kagi founder here)
| [deleted]
| tandr wrote:
| $1-2 per month would be worth it for me. But $10 per month just
| for search - no, it is not, sorry.
| tgv wrote:
| I've tried Kagi a few times, but the results were not better
| than qwant.com (which is quite comparable to DuckDuckGo and
| Brave).
| prophesi wrote:
| The results have been fine for me, the date filtering and
| archive.org results in particular have been really helpful.
| And as an FYI, Kagi runs their own web crawler, but also
| sources from Google & Bing.
|
| https://kagi.com/faq#Where-are-your-results-coming-from
|
| Of course, I'm biased as I was a beta tester and now a
| subscriber, hoping they succeed.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Except Qwant and Brave are their own search engines, unlike
| DuckDuckGo who sources Bing. The first two add diversity to
| the search engine industry.
| redox99 wrote:
| I tried Kagi a month ago, compared about 20 queries to Google,
| and all of them were either equal or worse on Kagi compared to
| Google.
|
| Also showing the date on reddit threads was either broken or
| not there.
| fallat wrote:
| uBlacklist is actually better than Kagi for a multitude of
| reasons.
|
| http://len.falken.directory/web/overall-disappointed-in-kagi...
|
| Expresses it a bit better...
| babypuncher wrote:
| I've been using Kagi for almost two months and I absolutely
| love it. Well worth the $10/mo they started charging a couple
| weeks ago.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Does it support IE6? (Google does, and it's a browser I enjoy
| using.)
| 0des wrote:
| for those who need a double scoop of agencies to go with
| their agency.
| matyasrichter wrote:
| Is this the next iteration of the "I browse with javascript
| disabled" HN comment?
| freediver wrote:
| We didn't try yet but Kagi works the same with JS disabled.
| JS is there to enhance UX, not create it.
|
| Let us know.
| rajamaka wrote:
| Why would anyone support a deprecated browser?
| prepend wrote:
| Because customers like it and they want to retain or
| attract those customers. (Basically the same reason any
| company does anything)
| mimimi31 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation. It looks like a great service
| and I'd love to support them, but as a student I just can't
| justify $10/month as long as Google with an adblocker is still
| an okay experience. Credit card being the only payment option
| is another problem, since I (like most people where I live)
| only have a debit card, with credit cards usually costing
| extra. I'll definitely keep an eye on kagi though, hoping for
| more payment options and a <$5 subscription.
| freediver wrote:
| Kagi accepts debit cards.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| It depends on the kind of debit card apparently. What I
| have is a girocard[1], which doesn't have the required 16
| digit card number and CVC. I didn't even know that debit
| cards can have those. My online payments are usually made
| via SEPA bank transfers, Giropay[2] or Paypal.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girocard
|
| [2] https://stripe.com/docs/payments/giropay
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| Landing page : signup or login
|
| No thank you
| Belphemur wrote:
| Being using it through the beta and moved toward their annual
| subscription :)
|
| Also you can give more importance to some website in the search
| result, create your own search template.
|
| It's so feature rich, and to make things easier they provide
| and extension to set your default search engine for you.
| ayushnix wrote:
| I was considering subscribing to Kagi but $10/month is almost
| as expensive as my fiber broadband connection and I don't
| think I can justify this expense. I would likely subscribe if
| it was $5/month.
| Belphemur wrote:
| I thought the same at first. Then I thought on an annual
| budget and price.
|
| Does Kagi worth $120 per year for me ? Yes, yes it does,
| it's barely nothing compared to the value of having proper
| search result. I checked ... I make more than 50 searches
| per day...
|
| $120 yearly is nothing compared to other expenses that I
| have like my broadband internet around $70 per month for
| it...
| xtracto wrote:
| My thought process was like that: i do 50 searches per
| day, i lose on average 3 seconds per search filtering
| ads, pinterest,quota,geekforgeek,etc. results. This means
| 150 second or 3 minutes a day. Which means 1.5 hours a
| month. My hourly rate is about $70 USD, so paying $10 to
| give me back $100 of my time seemed like a good deal.
| corrral wrote:
| I need to get around to signing up. I started a couple weeks
| back, but stalled about some question re: what search means to
| you, or something like that, went off for a while to think
| about it, and never went back.
|
| Guess I need to just write "finding stuff" or something trite
| and get on with it.
|
| (don't ask me open-ended questions as part of a signup process
| unless you want me to brain-lock and never finish the form :-)
| Though I just checked and it looks like the signup flow's very
| different and more normal now, so that's good)
| ezekg wrote:
| You probably had to answer questions during their closed
| beta, so they could look for and invite specific user types
| as they ramped up. As of last week, IIRC, they're now in open
| beta. That could explain why their sign up flow changed.
| corrral wrote:
| Makes sense. I wasn't mad about it or anything, just
| noticed that it had that effect on me, and was like, "huh,
| weird". The three or four times I'd thought about going
| back, remembering that was there had stopped me, too ("eh,
| I don't want to get started and just end up abandoning it
| again, waste of time") until checking again after reading
| this thread.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Wow it costs them 1c per search to service your request!
| jarek83 wrote:
| Just tried the first example search "best laptop" and results
| are not really very useful - usually old content and none of
| the results showed the publishing dates of the articles.
| https://kagi.com/search?q=best+laptop
| freediver wrote:
| What are the ideal results for "best laptop"?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I have yet to find any competitor which provides its own
| results and is even 50% as good as Google's results.
|
| Features are nice, but for a search engine results are
| everything.
| rfrey wrote:
| From reading the site it seems like Kagi uses Google on the
| backend, so it's probably privacy, filtering and presentation
| you're paying for.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Yeah but I actually like the fact that Google knows what I
| search, because it adapts the results to what I care about.
| When I search for "python" I don't want to learn about
| snakes.
| PeterPumpkin45 wrote:
| A lot of people seem surprisingly happy with Kagi's results
| but I would like to put my hand up as someone who is, so far,
| underwhelmed and occasionally frustrated. I realise I've
| started automatically starting almost all of my searches with
| the prefix to search via Google instead. I recently
| reinstalled my desktop OS and I've been happily delaying
| configuring Kagi as my default browser search.
|
| It's slower, sometimes painfully so (maybe due to downtime?
| Understandable but not fun). I really miss Google's cards;
| for example, finding opening hours for a local business is
| immediate in Google, but requires opening another link which
| may not even be correct in Kagi. When I'm searching errors or
| code examples, sometimes Kagi embeds a useless snippet with
| little relevance. Sometimes it has a bizarre 'memory effect'
| where one or two of the results will be ghosts from an
| earlier search but completely unrelated to the current search
| term.
|
| It's not perfect. I'm suspicious of people pretending
| otherwise.
| deltree7 wrote:
| HN crowd for all their smartness are as ego-driven and as
| susceptible to human biases like everyone else.
|
| Most opinions come from an irrational hate towards Google.
| (It's the nerd equivalent to be edgy/hip among peers by
| hating something popular).
|
| Then there is sunk cost fallacy, like I pay $10, it must be
| good. It's not Google, it must be good (never mind that the
| founders of all these companies are all cut from the same
| silicon valley cloth and are equally good/evil/shades of
| grey)
|
| Finally, it's the illusion of "Feel Good factors" --
| Privacy, David vs Goliath
| freediver wrote:
| Kagi does not have local search results (yet).
|
| Speed is on average faster than Google for most users, so
| if that is not the case for you please let us know via
| https://kagifeedback.org
|
| And if there is any kind of bug, glitch or issue please
| also use kagifeedback.org
|
| > It's not perfect. I'm suspicious of people pretending
| otherwise.
|
| If is far from perfect. I would say we are 30% through what
| our vision for the product looks like. I can totally
| understand how it does not meet your expectation right now.
|
| The beauty of our model is that people pay with their
| wallets, not their data, and the momemt the product sucks,
| we lose a customer (or don't get one like in your case).
| Incentives are perfectly aligned.
|
| The fact that barely a week afer the public beta launch,
| over a thousand people already pay for Kagi, while still
| being in beta and (very) rough around the edges, is the
| greatest motivation we can have to serve our user community
| well and continuing improving the product in the future.
| gnuj3 wrote:
| Kagi is even better than Google in my opinion. I'm still
| thinking whether I want to pay a subscription for it but it's
| tempting since the results are so good. M
|
| When I first switched from Google to DDG I found myself using
| g! all the time as I wasnt happy with the results, especially
| local such as finding a specific shop in my area etc. I dont
| recall using g! with Kagi, and when I was bored and compared
| the Kagi search result with Google to see if I was missing
| out, it turned to be the other way - I realised I was
| actually getting a much wider spectrum of results. I
| discovered many cool websites and blogs I never knew excited
| thanks to it or rather thanks to the fact that they show you
| what's relevant to your search unlike Google that shows what
| they think is.
| brodo wrote:
| I've had the same experience. Maybe it's my developer
| bubble, but Kagi has better search results than Google for
| me.
| hedora wrote:
| Ha! I'm the opposite. When I use someone else's computer, I
| get confused because the results are all crap, then I have
| to manually type duckduckgo.com into their URL bar.
|
| At least Google Search has started blocking itself with a
| consent wall on new devices. It's the best feature from
| them in a while, at least for me. I wish their tracking
| stuff was opt in too.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Kagi is honestly not good at all about local results. I use
| !g the most often when trying to find information about
| stores or restaurants. For all other "encyclopedic"
| knowledge, like Wikipedia (pinned), Stack Exchange, blogs,
| etc., Kagi has way less SEO spam than Google.
| gnuj3 wrote:
| By local I meant like when I'm searching for Adidas
| trainers or garden fence panels it will bring up shops
| that sell it in UK and a lot of them are local as they
| have physical shop in my location. With DDG I was getting
| shops from America even when I had UK setting switched
| on. For example tool shops like Screwfix or Toolstation
| never came up in DDG whereas Kagi shows them on first
| page.
|
| I didnt mean like places to eat near me etc. sorry. Not
| something I really do to be honest.
| freediver wrote:
| We haven't rolled out our local results yet. It is work
| in progress, ETA 2 weeks to shipping first version.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| > When I first switched from Google to DDG I found myself
| using g! all the time
|
| lol, I did the exact same thing! After a month of that, I
| just went back to Google :(. Google's results are just so
| damn good.
| infamia wrote:
| Try !s for Startpage when DDG doesn't have what you want.
| Startpage uses Google's index and is quite good. DDG and
| StartPage together give me more (and higher quality
| results) without Google's obnoxiously deceptive ads.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That was me a couple of years ago, I've tried DDG every
| year since it was announced on HN as a project. Google
| got worse and DDG got better, I use DDG mostly now (also
| Kagi and Brave, Google, and very occasionally Bing).
| suslik wrote:
| To me Kagi also feels way better than google. I am paying
| for the service.
| lolinder wrote:
| Beat me to it!
|
| Kagi also goes one step further and allows you to "pin" sites
| to the top. For example, I've got MDN pinned, so whenever I'm
| searching for web stuff they're the top result, even if there's
| an SEO'd blog post that normally would have come first.
|
| Abandoning Google is a huge motivator for me, but this feature
| set is why it's my primary search engine. Google tries to guess
| what I want and just ends up feeding me the same garbage it
| feeds everyone else. Kagi allows me to correct it when it
| guesses wrong. That makes all the difference.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I used to just download the MDN docs to my computer so I can
| search locally. Offline search beats everything. You don't
| need the Internet to search.
| digitalsin wrote:
| I started using it a couple of weeks ago, absolutely love it. I
| haven't gone back to google a single time yet.
|
| I see people complain about a price, but I suspect also they
| complain about being tracked by google. I guess you can pick
| your poison. I think I'd rather pay a few bucks a month at this
| point, but to each his own.
| Normille wrote:
| There are other, better, free options. See my comment above.
| Startpage + GHHBD.
| [deleted]
| bstar77 wrote:
| I only need this for W3Schools.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| linuxquestions dot org: Here is something pertinent to Debian
| Potato
| Vanit wrote:
| 100% the bane of my trying to use Google for Mozilla docs.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| ddg, then you have !mdn for mozilla docs !mdn
| Array sort
|
| works like a charm, there's also !rust, !cpp, etc
| skilled wrote:
| Absolutely crazy how such a low quality site comes up for
| technical queries. Speaks volumes for how smart Google
| algorithm is.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I wouldn't doubt many people click W3Schools results when
| they see them, they're not that bad, the explanation is
| straightforward, and it has exercises and a REPL for
| immediate practice. That reinforces their ranking as useful
| results.
|
| Conversely, I have no idea why Pinterest plagues everything.
| Does it manage to trick many people into clicking for a login
| form?
| skilled wrote:
| W3Schools is the prime example that Google does use site
| authority for its ranking approach. A lot of their content
| is thin one-liners that don't explain the subject you're
| looking an answer for.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Blocking pintrest from image search results is also very
| helpful.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Just enabled the ios safari extension, and it works very nice on
| DDG
| gbraad wrote:
| Anything to make pinterest disappear from my search results
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Finally an easy solution to Pinterest image spam.
| dezmou wrote:
| Great now I will be able to never see quora.com again
| Belphemur wrote:
| I'd argue all Q&A services devolve into madness when they get
| mainstream.
|
| Before Quora we had yahoo answer and before that surely
| something else.
|
| As soon as they get mainstream the quality of question and
| answer goes down. Those systems only work with well defined
| constraints either on the subject of the question or the
| validation of the expertise of the people answering.
|
| All of those platform just open the valve with close to no
| moderation. We can see the same with Reddit and big sub Reddit.
| yakubin wrote:
| Stack Exchange works pretty well. There is some moderation on
| SE, but not much IMO.
| oofbey wrote:
| Stackoverflow and it's dozens of sigs seem fine. What do you
| think is the exception? Not mainstream?
|
| I'd argue it's good community policing with a carefully
| Maintained incentive structure.
| permo-w wrote:
| I think stack exchange's extraordinary resistance to
| content deterioration is largely due to the moderation
| atmosphere that I would describe as something akin to a
| particularly pedantic police state
| rc_mob wrote:
| I love stack overflow and all but I am so sick if very old
| answers showing as the top result in google. no I'm not
| using java 6 or laravel 4 or whatever
| Normille wrote:
| You think Quora is bad? Try blocking Pinterest from your
| search results. I swear those bastards have registered
| _pinterest <dot><every-fucking-TLD-in-existence>_
| jandrese wrote:
| You will know you have died and gone to hell when you can
| navigate to pinterest.mil.
| orangepurple wrote:
| pinterest.lol and pinterest.pics are available today for $3
| a month introductory pricing
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| Only $3/mo, plus $800/hr to defend against the trademark
| infringement lawsuit
| skilled wrote:
| This is largely platform's fault though. Quora had every
| opportunity to stop site spammers from posting non-
| informative answers just to farm clicks for the blog posts
| they link to for the "full" answer.
|
| Mind boggling that Google hasn't penalised them since years
| ago.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Google didn't penalize Pinterest either. In Google image
| search, Pinterest results are abundant but clicking on them
| and viewing them requires a sign-up on Pinterest.
|
| I still remember the good old days of Quora; it was a nice
| era but it's gone...
| cptskippy wrote:
| Quora is the new ExpertSexChange.com.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _uBlacklist: Blocks specific sites from appearing in Google
| search results_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29546433 -
| Dec 2021 (294 comments)
| wanderingmind wrote:
| There are custom filters for development you can import in ublock
| origin targeted to remove SEO spam in Google/DDG [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter
| Vladimof wrote:
| I like this extension but I don't use it that much because I tend
| to avoid Google...
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Google Hit Hider (despite the name) works for non-google search
| engines and is free. Worth a look.
| Vladimof wrote:
| must be an Apple thing, I can't find it
| donohoe wrote:
| Anyone know a similar extension that works for DuckDuckGo too?
| (Ideally one extension that covers numerous search engines)
|
| I've been using "Personal Blocklist(not by Google)" for Google
| search and is pretty good too:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...
| wallmountedtv wrote:
| It works with duckduckgo as well, you just enable it in the
| options menu.
| sanketpatrikar wrote:
| You can enable uBlacklist to work on DDG and other search
| engines from settings.
| erikcw wrote:
| According to the README, this also works with DDG and some
| other search engines.
| spread_love wrote:
| What features are offered here that aren't in the similar
| "Personal Blocklist (not by Google)" extension?
| its_Caffeine wrote:
| You can already do this if you're logged into google
|
| I have geeksforgeeks blocked because that site is a complete pile
| of garbage
| sanketpatrikar wrote:
| I am logged into google and don't see such an option. How do
| you achieve that?
| wmeredith wrote:
| How? I thought they did away with this feature a decade ago.
| ki_ wrote:
| Jedd wrote:
| With google you can search with type:pdf so that you filter in
| scientific papers.
|
| I'd also suggest that the phrase 'correct information' does
| suggest you already know what you believe you're looking for
| (otherwise how would you know what you're reading is
| incorrect?).
| jbaczuk wrote:
| For me I'd just like to hear a story and any relevant
| details. But the news orgs usually take a small bit of
| information and the rest is their opinion and extrapolation
| without much evidence. You know because sometimes they will
| reach a "verdict" which is opposite what the judge and jury
| reach after days of reviewing all of the evidence. I've
| realized it's up to me to find all the info, and try my best
| to determine the truth, which sometimes is quite literally
| impossible.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Good recommendation. Scientific papers and tweets is pretty
| much the source of most large publications articles at this
| point.
|
| Better to just search PDFs and tweets at this point than read
| their verbose outrage & clickbait wrappers.
| infinityio wrote:
| Out of interest, what do you consider to be credible/high
| quality news orgs?
| ki_ wrote:
| I dont really read news anymore. But i think forbes was a
| decent one. I havent checked in a while though.
|
| edit: i'd say hackernews is a good way know about things.
| much variety.
|
| edit2: news is not really that important to begin with. It's
| just about what's happening in the world. It's not that
| important to know that. You rather want to fill up your brain
| with information about engineering, science, nature, etc. You
| know.. information that you can "USE". That's why it's
| "useful".
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| This comment has me confused and slightly concerned about what
| organizations you would consider credible.
| ki_ wrote:
| News organizations are low quality by default. Their
| bussiness model is creating multiple articles per day and
| make it sound interesting, sometimes more interesting than
| what really happened. This so they can maximize viewer
| retention and therefore maximize ad-revenue. It's not really
| a recipe where you'll find the most accurate truth.
|
| You can still read their websites for information, but when
| you google, those news website tend to fill up the first 3
| pages of your results and often you find better information
| once you get past those websites. e.g. independant journalist
| blog sites or scientific papers, etc...
|
| I also like to search back in time. e.g. when you want to
| learn about coronavirusses, it's better to search before
| january 2020. Else your results get filled with articles from
| journalist that never even heard of corona virusses before
| they wrote their article.
| [deleted]
| citizenpaul wrote:
| This tool is amazing. I know is simple but it has made search
| sooooo much better. It works on other search engines besides
| google as well.
|
| Yeah I know you can do it with uBlock but having the button is
| much simpler.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I have been using 'personal blocklist' extension for over a year
| and it worked well, going to try uBlacklist now.
| oofbey wrote:
| peterhadlaw wrote:
| Missing /s at the end
| oofbey wrote:
| No! Is it so hard to use language that is both less offensive
| and more descriptive? Why would you not do this?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I find your use of the O word to be bad and harmful. Please
| stop using the O word.
| oofbey wrote:
| Wow, I never thought of HN as a place with a generally
| racist vibe, but here we go.
|
| You're very clever to imply that anything anybody
| complains about must be cancelled. /s
|
| Here's a thought exercise for you: Try to earn a tiny bit
| of empathy for humans who have different backgrounds than
| you. I'm guessing by your attitude here that you've lived
| a pretty privileged life where things generally work out
| well for you. Me too. Now try to imagine what it would be
| like if for your entire life the language people used to
| describe you as a person was synonymous with "bad".
| Pretend your name is actually "Vorpal" and people talked
| about Vorpal-listing things that were malicious, or just
| undesirable. Think that might detract from your general
| mental health just a bit? Even if your ego is powerful
| enough that this wouldn't phase you, can you imagine that
| for a lot of people this kind of language would be a
| drain? Seriously, try to imagine living that life.
| Because lots of people do.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Yeah, you'll constantly see people use the same old tired
| jokes here with like 10K karma. I guess it's what this
| community goes for. Hence why it's started being referred
| to as "the orange site" and not by name, people don't
| want to associate themselves with a bunch of borderline
| racists.
| almog wrote:
| At first I thought he was just misinformed and tried to
| politely correct them, but now I see that they really
| just try to provoke people and using arguments of similar
| structures to the ones caring so much about displaying
| the Confederate Flag "because it's part of their American
| history".
| kramerger wrote:
| Finally I can get rid of those deadend Pinterest results...
|
| Edit. And quora
| schleck8 wrote:
| There is also a privacy respecting frontend for Quora which
| removes the bloat
|
| https://github.com/digitalblossom/alternative-frontends#quor...
| kramerger wrote:
| Privacy is important, but in this particular case I just want
| to hide low quality search results.
| dopa42365 wrote:
| You can use something like this to get rid of their millions of
| domains.
|
| /. _pinterest._ \\.. _/
|
| /._dreamstime. _\\.._ /
|
| /. _depositphotos._ \\.. _/
|
| /._gettyimages. _\\.._ /
|
| and whatever else you (don't) want.
|
| Or get rid of specific TLDs in your search results.
|
| /.\\.(porn|casino|xxx|zone)\/(.*)/
| sanketpatrikar wrote:
| Seems like you didn't properly escape some of your asterisks.
| dopa42365 wrote:
| Well, tell HN to add a proper code formatting option!
| ishbasho wrote:
| I specifically installed this extension for Quora some time
| ago.
| krono wrote:
| I've posted this before, but you can achieve the same with uBlock
| Origin static filters alone without having to install any
| additional extensions. For example:
|
| To block results from specific domains on Google or DDG:
| google.*##.g:has(a[href*="thetopsites.com"])
| duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(a[href*="thetopsites.com"])
|
| And it's even possible to target an element's text content with a
| `:has-text(/regex/)` selector:
| google.*##.g:has(*:has-text(/bye topic of noninterest/i))
| duckduckgo.*##.results > div:has(*:has-text(/bye topic of
| noninterest/i))
|
| As a bonus, here's how to get rid of Medium's obnoxious cookie
| notification across all domains: *##body > div
| > div:has(*:has-text(/To make Medium work.*Privacy Policy.*Cookie
| Policy/i))
| waynesonfire wrote:
| can you do an example for blocking pinterest?
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Amen. Pinterest is such a pathetic spambucket.
| krono wrote:
| Sure, unclear which type of search you meant so here's both.
|
| Regular search:
| google.*##.g:has(a[href*="pinterest.com"])
|
| Image search: google.*##.isv-r:has-
| text(pinterest.)
|
| Edit: Simplified the image search variant a bit.
| guelo wrote:
| Is there a way to get rid of results with listicle titles like
| "8 Best Toasters to Buy in 2022"?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Is it possible to block/hide "People Also Search For" boxes in
| Google search results? It's annoying because each time you go
| back to search results, this little box re-aligns the whole
| list of results so you can't quickly click on the next search
| result.
| krono wrote:
| This should do: google.*###search > div >
| div > div:has(span:has-text(/People also ask/))
| behnamoh wrote:
| This works!
| mattwad wrote:
| This is the worst. I always click it on accident. Glad I'm
| not the only one going crazy... if it can't load at first,
| then don't load it at all
| LightHugger wrote:
| Having a button to remove the offending site right from the
| search results saves quite a bit of time, so while i usually
| prefer not to have extra extensions, i see a lot of utility
| here.
| account42 wrote:
| Same reason why I still use uMatrix in addition to uBlock
| even though custom rules in the latter are not any less
| powerful - user interface matters.
| LightHugger wrote:
| Exactly! i often wish the umatrix UI was just merged into
| ublock origin as an optional tool.
| pbronez wrote:
| Wasn't it though? Just click the "I'm an advanced user"
| button in the uBlock Origin options. Then you get the
| per-domain block details in the uBlock Origin extension
| button just like uMatrix.
| aembleton wrote:
| Per domain, but not per feature. Matrix let you specify
| whether to block images, cookies, script, etc for each
| domain from the UI.
| ajvs wrote:
| How often does one want to individually allow specific
| 3rd-party cookies+images? uBlock already allows control
| over specific 3rd party scripts.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I still think Adblock Plus has superior UI than uBlock
| Origin, despite hasn't been using it for years.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| uBlock is a great blocker, but an absolutely garbage UI.
| Luckily the on/off button + 'Element Blocker' context
| menu entry do most of what I want without having to yet
| again try to decipher its cryptic icons.
| krono wrote:
| Not denying that. However, unless I'd be blocking new domains
| on a weekly basis, I just don't think it's worth installing
| an additional extension for something that's so easily
| achieved without.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean I definitely would be: I block YouTube channels
| pretty aggressively now, and there's a lot of websites I'd
| like to get rid of.
| wakeupcall wrote:
| I've started blocking results using ublock last year after
| it has been mentioned here, and I've got to the point where
| I have a script I can use to generate the relevant filters
| for google/bing and a few other search engines.
|
| When I spot any domain which has been squatted by SEO and
| useless comparison-alike websites I immediately block it.
| This has brought up the quality of results IMMENSELY.
|
| I'm blocking domains on a _daily_ basis.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The interesting thing is that Google could do this easily
| if they wanted to, but for some reason they don't. After
| all, if you can do it as an end user and in a low enough
| amount of time that it is worth it for you then surely
| Google can do it, they get to amortize that time across
| many more users.
| miked85 wrote:
| They actually used to offer this feature years ago but
| removed it.
| guelo wrote:
| Google in general has an aversion to giving users
| control. Their product vision is an omniscient AI that
| gives you enough of what you want that you'll tolerate
| the ads. The removal of user control is aided in many
| cases by justifications around security and UX design
| simplicity ("users don't know what they want"). But
| really it's about keeping control on the AI side.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Hey, could you post a gist? I'm currently using
| uBlacklist to block exactly that type of shitty site you
| mention.
| __ryan__ wrote:
| ...have you used Google lately? I'm blocking junk results
| daily.
| krono wrote:
| Been using this method to build on my blocklist for a few
| years, it's quite long by now ;)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Any chance of sharing it?
| pbronez wrote:
| That's the ticket. "Many intelligent people go out of
| their way to silence this site" is EXACTLY the kind of
| signal I want to pump into my information retrieval
| system.
|
| Should be possible to crowd source this and publish the
| result as a list that's consumed by uBlock origin...
| DreamFlasher wrote:
| Yes, please! But I guess we'd need some form of web of
| trust?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That would be awesome.
|
| I've found one other immediate and huge improvement to my
| mood was to remove all graphical elements from the news
| sites that I visit.
| krono wrote:
| There's too much personal stuff on there for me to be
| comfortable sharing it as is, and I'm afraid I don't have
| time to distil the list this weekend either.
|
| I'd be happy to create you some ready-made filters for
| any specific sites or other types of results that you'd
| like to get rid of though, just let me know!
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, no problem, if it is just for me, I figured that if
| this can be crowdsourced effectively it would really
| clean up the search results and that is worth it if
| enough people start using it.
|
| It might even be enough to stick it on github or gitlab
| and start accepting pull requests against a starter list.
| [deleted]
| jakobov wrote:
| Google search is so bad we need blacklists. Really says something
| alar44 wrote:
| What does it say?
| timbit42 wrote:
| It says Google search is bad.
| zucked wrote:
| It says that certain sites (cough:pinterest:cough) have
| totally poisoned the search results and that little has been
| done to rectify that.
| klausjensen wrote:
| That is certainly google's fault. :)
|
| Google lets them poison the results.
| jandrese wrote:
| It says Google is losing the SEO war.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| Yeah, google search has really gone downhill lately. It's hard
| to find quality results among all of the auto generated
| garbage.
| kazinator wrote:
| To take the best advantage of this, you want to crank up the
| results per page setting in the search engine. This is because
| the deletions simply cut results form each page without the
| results being repaginated.
|
| I made a lot of use of uBlacklist; but then I found Huawei's
| petalsearch.com, where pretty much none of the crap that I
| deleted appears in the first place.
|
| uBlacklist is really just a band-aid solution for a garbage
| search engine; it doesn't address the root cause.
| bjord wrote:
| probably won't get any of those pesky results critical of the
| chinese government, either
| kazinator wrote:
| So you might think.
|
| But I just tried the search terms "tiananmen square massacre"
| in PetalSearch. It comes up with the Wikipedia page on the
| subject, just like Google does.
|
| The second result in PetalSearch points to the rationalwiki,
| whose text begins "The Tiananmen Square Massacre was a
| ruthless crackdown on a pro-democracy protest ..."; and that
| is quoted in the search result.
|
| The next results after that are news items about Chinese
| censorship:
|
| "China censors tank-shaped Viennetta ice cream on anniversary
| of Tiananmen Square massacre"
|
| "China Censors Top Livestreamer, Fans Question Potential Link
| To Tiananmen Square Massacre Reference"
|
| and others.
|
| Seems all right to me.
|
| Of course, I'm not able to repeat this test from within
| China; but how would Google and others fare there?
| jppope wrote:
| its too bad there isn't a way to block the nytimes on hacker news
| permo-w wrote:
| program it yourself
| lordgilman wrote:
| I'm using uBlacklist plus these two blacklists that block out
| spam sites that clone pages from Stack Overflow and Github.
|
| https://github.com/arosh/ublacklist-stackoverflow-translatio...
| https://github.com/arosh/ublacklist-github-translation
| franga2000 wrote:
| Shameless plug for the blacklist I maintain:
| https://github.com/franga2000/aliexpress-fake-sites
|
| Anyone who has tried to buy something obscure locally will
| probably find this useful. There are hundreds of fake webstores
| that pretend to be in different countries (using national TLDs
| and machine translation), then just redirect you to AliExpress.
| I have a script that can recognise them and add them to this
| blocklist.
| behnamoh wrote:
| You can also import these lists in uBlock Origin's filters and
| use one fewer extension.
| stephane-klein wrote:
| I use https://github.com/pistom/hohser since few months with
| success.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| This is great, but the existing subscription lists leave a ton to
| desired, still. Porn for instance has huge amounts of SEO spam
| and yet there doesn't seem to be a list for that, which is
| surprising considering porn and its consumers are usually the
| first to adopt new tech.
| fokker wrote:
| causi wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.
| xigoi wrote:
| The real inclusivity is being able to use the word "black"
| without seeing a connection with race in it.
| corrral wrote:
| I try to be sympathetic to the "color blind is still racist"
| thing, since I'm white so maybe my perspective's not that
| useful.
|
| But I definitely feel a lot _more_ racist and _way_ more
| race-aware, to no productive purpose and in contexts where it
| can 't possibly matter, than I did 20 years ago, as a result
| of this stuff. My kids are _way_ more race-aware than I was
| at their ages, as a result, too. I sure hope whatever good is
| coming of this is worth it. I don 't like it a bit.
| xigoi wrote:
| I agree, but this is not even a case of "colorblind is
| still racist" -- it's seeing race where there is none.
| ignoramceisblis wrote:
| Being "color blind" is not being racist. It's the opposite.
|
| Be good to good people--that's what matters.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Unfortunately the problem I most often encounter with "unwanted"
| search results is not isolated useless sites but when the results
| for anything shopping-related are _multiple full pages_ of crappy
| SEO-spam results.
|
| If anyone has tips for addressing this situation I'd be much
| obliged.
| i13e wrote:
| Here are some well-maintained filterlists for ublock-origin that
| remove github/stack overflow copycats from search results
|
| https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter
| throwaway123808 wrote:
| My mind immediately went to uMatrix or uBlockOrigin. Just want to
| note that, so far as I can tell, this is not associated with the
| author (gorhill) of those other tools:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill
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(page generated 2022-06-10 23:00 UTC)