[rd]

I've always wished there was a "block comments from this user" feature that didn't rely on vibe-coding my own Chrome extension (and thus not work on Safari where I spent at least 50% of my HN time). I imagine it could even work like Sponsorblock does, and we could crowdsource people who's comments are inflammatory.

I've also noticed that very obviously LLM-generated comments are called out, and the community tends to agree, but those that have any plausible deniability are given far too much leniency, and people will over-index on the guidelines to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I don't think a captcha is the solution, as it'll degrade conversation by an OOM though.

[tptacek]

This is an anti-goal for HN. There are forums that silo themselves in various ways. HN is an experiment in how far you can get without any of those kinds of features, with a single global pool of conversations and participants. That's not to say there's no value in siloing, just that it's specifically not what HN is exploring.

[lagniappe]

>There are forums that silo themselves in various ways. HN is an experiment in how far you can get without any of those kinds of features,

Normally I'd agree, but we have shadowbans, which really irks me.

[tptacek]

Only for actual bad actors --- spammers, overt griefers, and people evading bans. A lot of HN's shadowban rep comes from Paul Graham's stewardship of the site (this whole site was a side-hustle of a side-hustle for him) and ignores over a decade of Dan's work professionalizing it.

Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

[lagniappe]

>Almost everyone banned on HN is banned publicly, with a public message explaining why.

I would love for this to be the case, however I quite extensively investigate this phenomenon and this does not match what I've seen. I'd like for us to be better than shadowbans. In some cases, I don't even get to vouch, it's just a comment that is banned-banned. It feels the worst when they're saying something substantive to the conversation and we have no means to surface the comment.

Some type of annual amnesty consideration or something of that nature is in order, or soon we'll recreate other echo chambers that are slowly fading out.

[tptacek]

Every time I've looked into it, when you see suddenly and without reason ban-banned after a string of real comments, the backstory has been that it's someone with a track record under other usernames.

At some point, no matter what HN does, being comfortable with its moderation requires you to take Dan's word for things. I take his word for it on shadowbans.

Ironically, I'm irritated with moderation in the other direction: ten years of "if you keep breaking the guidelines under alternate accounts, we'll ban your real account" sort of makes my blood boil (people having long-running alts does that too), but I roll with it, because I couldn't do the job better than Dan and Tom do.

[6510]

I think the tech is advanced enough to recognize a user by their choice of words. Not to downplay the problem but currently a new user might start out with a few comments on the poor side then talk into the shadow realm indefinitely. In my not very humble opinion the asshole level of the poor comments can easily be lower than the asshole level of the response.

I wrote a fun solution one time where the document comes with a token that needs to mature for a duration depending on the user. Then, when your [say] 30 seconds are expired the input area is displayed but the submit button only appears if you input enough characters - where enough again depends on the user. If you are likely to make low effort postings I want at least 500 or 1000 characters worth of low effort. In even worse cases ill also hold the comment for moderation - until I get to it. (which might be a long time)

[lagniappe]

>the backstory has been that it's someone with a track record under other usernames.

This has gaps, as you know, and doesn't wash. Let someone turn a new leaf. Amnesty puts a stop to this.

[basilikum]

I've had submissions and comments of mine on this very account shadowbanned before I got some karma. It's just how the spam detection system works. So no, it's not just for bad actors, but for anyone an automated system suspects to be spammy enough. It's also easy to see whether your submission was shadowbanned by just looking for it while being logged out; only works if you know you might be shadowbanned though. So unsuspecting people who just got falsely flagged might never find out they are not being displayed to others.

[lossolo]

They're also shadow banning/silently disabling your votes, and they will not inform you about this. You think you're voting on stories or comments, but you aren't if they perceive your behavior as "upvote too many flamewar comments, culture-war/ideological battle comments, or otherwise low-quality comments for HN" and "if a user has a track record of upvoting comments that break the guidelines and/or downvoting good comments, or voting in ways that seem unfair – e.g., voting based on political side or personal acrimony, rather than on the objective merits of the comment itself".

[tptacek]

This seems like an especially silly complaint on a site that is clear on the label about votes being just one of many signals deciding placement on pages and threads. We've known since 2008 that the HN experiment doesn't work if it runs off raw votes; you just get a front page full of memes.

[lossolo]

If this were clearly public (like written in the rules) then maybe it wouldn't be worth mentioning. But if it isn't, it's good for people to know, so they understand how their voting habits can affect whether their votes count, right? That's why I mentioned it.

[6510]

Maybe it is possible to create such a [hidden] page.

[caminante]

Preach it.

I'm still amazed at how Reddit weaponized the block feature.

If you block someone, you not only can't see their posts, but you ice them out from replying in the rest of the thread.

[hananova]

I don’t really enjoy block systems myself, but that is what block has shifted to mean.

In the past “block” used to mean what “mute” means now: Hide from me. I believe it’s around the time Twitter became popular that the meaning has shifted to being a bi-directional mute.

I find that the need for a blocking system as that just points to a broken moderation system, and a broken society at large.

[caminante]

At least for Reddit, these "broken" features (like making your comment history private) have clear financial motives to mask bots and bad actor detection.

[swat535]

I don't think that kind of feature would be useful for HN.

The one thing I like about this place is that it's well moderated and you have shared opposing view points engaging (mostly) respectfully.

My personal and political views couldn't be further from most HN users (I'm both a Conservative _and_ a practicing Christian), yet I appreciate taking part in various discussion. I enjoy reading about point of views that directly challenge mine.

Let's keep HN respectful and accessible.

[subsection1h]

> I'm both a Conservative _and_ a practicing Christian

But unlike most HN users who label themselves conservative Christians, you've never suggested that climate change is a hoax:

https://hn.algolia.com/?type=all&query=author:swat535+climat...

I don't ever want to consume information from people who are so illiterate that they believe that scientists all over the world, in fields ranging from geoscience to statistics, are participating in some kind of global conspiracy, regardless of how respectful these commenters are. I block these people immediately after they reveal themselves.

[Kim_Bruning]

People don't represent groups. They represent themselves. Swat535 gets to define what being a conservative Christian means through their own words and actions, not serve as contrast to stereotypes about others.

[Kim_Bruning]

I don't know. Depending on what kind of conservative (and from where) and what kind of christian (and from where), you might be very much closer to a lot of HN people than you might think.

If your view is that we should conserve western values and institutions and walk in the footsteps of Christ, ultimately that's not too far from universal human values that many people do in fact agree with.

The devil is in the details, of course.

[stock_toaster]

One problem with this is it often leads to a missing stair[1] syndrome for new users not knowing whom to block and finding the place overall too toxic.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair

[Bender]

I've always wished there was a "block comments from this user"

In uBlock Origin -> My Filters:

    news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing.comtr:has(a.hnuser):has-text(/\bUsername\b/)

[elashri]

I have a userscript that takes a list of keywords, domains and user names on HN. I host the json file containing the list on git instance and I use userscript plugin on iOS safari which would support this userscript. This is the lowest friction solution I found that would work on different devices.

I find HN much more tolerable this way.

[SockThief]

That kind of feature would be welcome.

Blocking domains would be nice too. Like substack or medium. I'm happy to just ignore them, but it sure would be nice to filter them out if possible.

I get that it's complicating the system and keeping it simple is perhaps for the best.

[Baljhin]

There's a userscript called 'HN Blacklist' that's existed for quite a few years, does what OP and others are asking for-- can hide/filter content from users, titles and domain sources {this was actually a request I submitted to the developer}: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43282379

[ghssds]

Try Glider on F-Droid.

[SockThief]

Great app! Thank you.

Anything you know that could help me on PC?

[SomeUserName432]

A whole extension? Seems like something any custom-css/custom-js plugin can handle. Stylus, or those monkey extensions.

.hnuser attr=href=?user?id=rd

.parent().parent().hide()

Though no idea if such a plugin exists for Safari.

[xnx]

Not sure what extensions work in Safari, but I think I used this one for awhile in Chrome: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005699 / https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist

[al_borland]

The problem with extensions on Safari is that they now need to go through the App Store. So you can’t just code it up and run it. It would require signing up for a developer account, paying $99/year, and all of that stuff.

You can run temporary unsigned extensions for development purposes, but they are removed after 24 hours or whenever you quit Safari, which would make using it daily a non-starter.

[ibejoeb]

I don't see a many habitual problem accounts. Do you? I guess there was the arguably special case of a certain OS enthusiast...

[tomashubelbauer]

An account doesn't have to be problematic for you to not want to see their comments. I have several handles in mind where I'd add them to such a list if it were a feature. Nothing against the people in particular, but sometimes when I see a handle (like others said, very often old accounts with high karma), I already know what they will go on about merely just based off the title of the submission and having unintentionally gleaned what topics they usually comment on just by being on HN for a while. It's a waste of time to read those comments, at least for me. Wouldn't hurt them if they lost my attention. I am not bothered by it enough to vibe code a browser extension for it, though. That threshold is a bit higher, I did it for blocking certain domains; there is only so many times I can sit through an article or an "essay" which should have been a podcast.

[tptacek]

I disagree and would be hurt to lose your attention.

[pepperball]

> I don't see a many habitual problem accounts.

It’s usually old/high karma accounts, as they can get away with it easier. Throwaways that establish themselves for a time too, but those are usually dealt with eventually

[pepperball]

> I don't see a many habitual problem accounts.

It’s usually old/high karma accounts, as they can get away with it easier

[ktallett]

Do we have any users here that have such controversial or meme esque opnions that require blocking every single one?

[pamcake]

Spammers plastering /new with self-promotion posts is a thing and filtering those out would be useful. I don't see how more CAPTCHAs would improve the over-all situation, on the other hand.

On the more benign side, maybe some people enjoy the musings of amichail on Ask but I could honestly do without.

[krapp]

There are a few users who, when you see their name in certain contexts (usually politics) you just know that comment chain going to turn into a train wreck. I'm not going to name names but anyone who's been here long enough could probably guess a few repeat offenders.

But mostly in my experience it's otherwise perfectly normal users who at some point just decide to post something racist or bigoted, advocate violence (again, usually in political threads) or antisemitism or espouse some insane conspiracy theory nonsense. At that point I no longer care about anything else they might have to say.

[tempodox]

Comments Owl for Hacker News has a block-this-user feature. Available for the major browsers.

https://github.com/insin/comments-owl-for-hacker-news/releas...

[dpifke]

I use uBlock Origin for this, something like:

  news.ycombinator.com##:matches-path(/^/item\?id=/) tr a.hnuser:has-text(/^dpifke$/):upward(tr)

This mostly works, but only kills the user's comments and not replies, so it sometimes can be confusing.

[subsection1h]

Here's another implementation:

  news.ycombinator.com##.default:has(a[href="user?id=dpifke"]) .comment

[Imustaskforhelp]

> I imagine it could even work like Sponsorblock does, and we could crowdsource people who's comments are inflammatory

Let's discuss how to make this reality.

Do you want a ranking system where more the people downvote some person, the better? if so how do you prevent spam in that, do you take metrics like karma or what exactly?

I don't think that captcha is a solution either but also that I don't know how to feel about removing entire swaths of people, I can think someone writing something bad once and probably get into this "black-list"

Another aspect is once again the black list, I don't know but do we really need a system of essentially a communal ban?

The only thing I can see it reasonable is if there is a slop bot comment poster but I rarely face this issue but if you do, you can probably create a tampermonkey script and tampermonkey scripts work on chrome,firefox and "Userscripts" which should work on safari as well and that script is most likely gonna be compatible on both tampermonkey and userscripts.

[ada0000]

+1. even blocking keywords could be nice, e.g. i don’t use AI for coding and don’t care much for news about claude code.

captcha would make it more of a hassle to post comments.

[notherhack]

That extension already exists and works well. “Comments Owl for Hacker News”