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Comment by kylek | Hacker News Reader

NYTimes is the main reason I've been on the search for some kind of feature for HN (addon? greasemonkey script? ANYTHING) to auto-hide articles based on domain or title matches. Does anyone have a solution?

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> NYTimes is the main reason I've been on the search for some kind of feature for HN (addon? greasemonkey script? ANYTHING) to auto-hide articles based on domain or title matches. Does anyone have a solution?

You'll leave an orphaned article info table row with this approach but you can hide the article row itself with uBlock Origin procedural filters[1].

Add the following to 'My Filters':

news.ycombinator.com##table tr tr:has([href*="nytimes.com"])

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

This is pretty nifty! I never considered uBlock's cosmetic filters (nor looked into how they might be implemented actually). TIL!

Ohh this brings me back to my Stackoverflow days. HN simplicity makes this relatively easy, here you go (greasemonkey): https://gist.github.com/m00g00/99084d0ca401ab411e518bfdee46a...

It's just a domain search, but should be easy to modify for title searches too (title is in a.storylink).

EDIT: Updated to filter on keywords in the title too...guess I'm bored: https://gist.github.com/m00g00/e539ec22bf588edca0e6dfe1a05eb...

Thank you! Javascript is not my bag, I'm glad it was simple!

Np. One of the many nice things of having a website not laden with overwrought design and javascript (ironically). I updated the script to deal with keywords in the title as well, in my parent comment.

It is difficult for me to see this as not being naive. Yes, the editorial staff of any newspaper would have opinions, and even worse, implicit biases. 1: that does not mean that the firewall between journalists and editorial is being broken casually; 2: you correct for bias by using diverse journalistic sources (and removing only the worse offenders like say Breitbart or Infowars), not by completely disregarding information from imperfect sources.

Likely just me, but nearly every title of a NYT article that shows up here elicits some kind of emotional response in me. I can't tell anymore if they're expertly crafted or that I've just become really sensitive to it. At this point I'm happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm just looking for tech news, man! I don't want to be prompted to get out the pitchfork every time I browse HN.

I think I disagree with the premise: there are many things that happen in the world that could easily make me angry, but instead of pitchforks I just try to act on only when I can change things (for which I need to be at least somewhat informed). There is this "prayer" that I like as an atheist: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

Appreciate this comment (not being facetious), but I do feel not wanting to be blasted with this stuff is something I can change!

Maybe it's not anger/pitchforks. I'm not exactly trying to live in a self-created bubble, but too often it feels like there are nefarious forces (and implicit biases) at work trying to force a reaction out of me to in-turn use that for market research. (Even more tinfoil-hatty, but sometimes I think this is how many "modern" memes work too). It's just not what I come to HN for.

In theory you could filter out articles based on the emotions the NYT thinks the article will elicit in you. Of course the advertising classification might turn out to be imperfect.

The commenter stated they wanted to skip seeing NYT, which seems like a personal preference. Why not skip breitbart and NYT? If you're trying to avoid exposure to a certain bias for personal reasons it seems reasonable that any news source could be avoided.

For example, it sounds like you might identify as center left. Some people on the left are so disillusioned with the establishment that they would rather avoid it entirely. For example one could replace NYT with Democracy Now and get an informed global perspective like the NYT without getting so much centrist exposure.

I concur with the sibling comment. I am not suggesting filtering based on political ideology. I am suggesting filtering based on journalistsic quality and honesty (e.g. WaPo on the left, and some parts of Fox on the right can be somewhat biased, but they are worthwhile) versus naked editorial decisions that do not care about facts (e.g. Infowars or some "antifa" outlets).

And yes, the OP can certainly be happy if they do not consume any news or if they consume only media taylored to their emotional pleasure[1]. However, it is in my interest for my fellow humans to be well informed, with a diversity of legitimate sources, so that when we make collective decisions we decided not-horribly.

1: Although specifically singling out NYT is very strange in that context, as they are by far a more moderate and truthful albeit imperfect source.

Your assumption is showing.

Truth be told I'd probably add democracy now to the list as well.

> Why not skip breitbart and NYT?

Are you implying NYT and Breitbart are equally biased around some mythical "center"?

Not to mention that if you disregarded all imperfect sources, you would have no news.

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