Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by howderek 3368 days ago
Consensual, transparent censorship. Interesting.
2 comments

Really not that different than kill files, something comment threads still desperately need.

I realize I'm well off the curve here, but I'd still love a browser killfile plug in with:

- fine-grained cookie management by name/secure status/path

- Make every cookie a session cookie in a given domain

- "Cookie pipes": I'd like the ability to execute scripts on cookie value changes, optionally returning a new value

- Javascript exec turned on/off by domain

- Access to various Javascript methods controlled by domain/path

I'm probably forgetting some things from a list I made a while back.

> - Javascript exec turned on/off by domain

Opera used to have this ;'-( before they fired the entire Presto (browser engine) team and switched to webkit/chrome.

I've been giving the "modern" Opera a test run for the past week and while it's still way snappier by miles (compared to firefox and chrome, on a slow laptop) but it still misses so many features I used to depend on in the 2000s.

Yes you can get add-ons for almost all of the functionality, but you'll grind firefox or chrome to a halt before you even get close the the functionality of the old Opera that just came with all that stuff, batteries included.

(before accusations of bloat: installer/executable size was tiny, I seem to remember below 1MB for medium-old versions)

> - Javascript exec turned on/off by domain

That one you can get with uMatrix, which gives you a table of Domain x {cookie, css, image, plugin, script, XHR, frame, other}. You can use this table to selectively decide what gets loaded, and what gets blocked. The default rules are, everything "first-party" (from the domain you're visiting) is allowed, but only images and CSS are allowed from any other sources. Beyond per-primary-domain overrides, you can also whitelist all or some of the content permanently in settings.

I've been using it for the past year or so, and while occasionally annoying, it makes the Web a saner place to visit, and it also makes it very obvious just how much useless crap people make you download to display their site.

EDIT: also, favouriting your comment for future reference. Maybe one day I get pissed enough and write the plugin you describe.

Can't help but think about what is censorship. What role does intent place? If you're trying to inform? Entertain? Sell?

Write an ad blocker you're celebrated, write an add-on that's hides divs that mention <insert political movement here>, you're a villain.

I think when you're the one controlling the list it's called filtering instead of censorship :)