Yeah, self-configured DNS blocklist. Some of the reasons I’m not a fan of twitter apply to hacker news as well; for example, both can be distracting and contribute to procrastination.
Compared to hacker news, my main issues with twitter are a much lower signal-to-noise ratio, lack of prioritization over time windows—if I take a day/week/month away from hacker news, it’s easy to catch up on the top things I missed at https://hn.algolia.com —lack of depth in content, and pervasive tracking across other sites including through t.co.