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by dang
1857 days ago
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Thanks for the answer! > As far as 'blocking' them: I scrape the titles and domains and hide threads matching patterns in either of those two fields. I'd love to see some examples of domains that you block, and would even more love to see some examples of title patterns that you block. |
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- 'nytimes', 'theverge', 'theguardian' or 'npr' (politics, pop news and US business);
- 'bbc' for all those reasons and their inaccurate reporting on tech and science for the sake of accessibility;
- 'femfosec' (can we not?); and
- 'krebsonsecurity' (for dramatising and clickbaiting fairly mundane stories).
I'm fortunate enough that I hardly have to deal with FAANG where I live and work, so I also block 'fb.com' and any Google brand TLDs since I have trusted circles that act as a human filter on the interesting parts. I also previously blocked '.dev' because it's unavailable from the networks I'm usually working on, and they were usually vapourware email farms or CV padding.
For titles:
- /sexual|lgbt|pedo|culture war/ (unfortunate combo, I know) hides most US politics;
- /america|united states|\busa\b|u\.s\.|senat(?:e|or)|biden|trump/ hides the rest;
- /cov(?:id|-2)|corona(?:virus)?/ isn't what I'm interested in;
- /\w+js/ hides the JS (framework|library) of the (week|month);
- /in mice/ to hide the deadend studies.
I've also started filtering titles beginning in /^how\b/, since these are almost always advertisements ('How to do X with $product') or political essays. /\(\d{4}\)/ also hides links to past articles, since the graverobbers are usually just trying to make a statement by invoking the wisdom of old. The hidden gems make their way to me through other channels.
I use this exact same filter on several other aggregators with similar success, so I don't think it's specifically an HN issue. For example: when applied to entertainment aggregators, I only get the entertainment news I came for. HN is my best place for a general feel of the industry's pulse, it just has some fluff in the way.