Show HN: Firefox addon that hides news articles about Covid-19 | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Firefox addon that hides news articles about Covid-19

addons.mozilla.org

173 pointsmailea110 comments

I was literally developing the exact same thing (I called it Novid-19 [1]). While testing it out on HN, I saw a post filtered out.

It was this post...

[1] https://github.com/christoshadjiaslanis/novid-19

You just made me spit out my coffee, thanks!

I keep a long list of blocked words in Twitter, Feedly, and I try... as much as I can, to only consume news on reuters.com (and 4 print weeklies). I block CNN and Facebook in my hosts file.

And yet, I'm barraged on the web with celebrity news, popular news, Tiger King (never clicked on it, never wanted it, can't get away from it), whatever the foamy coffee thing that's big right now.

I know about the shelters in place. I knew not to bring my re-usable bags to the grocery this morning.

The whole of media, content, everything you see when you open your browser and leave the house, is a monumental barrage of trending, overwhelming, unavoidable content. Memes you can't get away from but which you'll see hundreds, thousands of times.

Whatever people need to do to get away from it... you'll still get it, but if you choose and are aware of the filters you use, by all means.

I stopped reading the news entirely. Doesnt even matter what they're saying, I'll hear about it eventually.

If you go outside you need to know what is legal or not and that could change day to day though. Your city could have a curfew, require a form justifying your errands or whatnot. I normally don't read news at all but in this specific times some type of awareness is required.

You should read that sort of info directly from the source. eg. your city or goverment web page. Not spoon fed by facebook, news sites, et.al.

which source? do I have to scour all of the following on a rolling basis: city, county, state federal websites? Which departments at each level? seems a lot easier to just visit <mylocalnews>.com and get info displayed in order of (relative) importance.

edit: a word

My address is well documented. If the government wants to tell me something, they know where to find me.

Frankly, that's why I consume nothing but torrents. There's no other way to avoid being assaulted by ads for the trash you describe.

Torrents help you to _avoid_ ads? I must've been using them wrong back when I did. Sounds like you know the right site/app/workflow to use.

Not sure how you consume yours but I do the same old search on pirate Bay + download with Deluge.

Deluge is a good torrent app, the frogs boiled slowly with uTorrent and BitTorrent as they were overcome, but deluge still appears to be ad free!

Stremio and popcorn time. It's netflix for torrent. No popups or animation. I think there is one banner somewhere, but it's so discrete I don't even remember.

uTorrent has a search tab for example.

We have come a long way from Limewire apparently.

I saw the first episode of Tiger King, expecting to see some epic, thrilling dramatic series, given all the buzz. I was severely disappointed. Is this really what humans love to watch?

It only gets worthwhile in the last episode when he’s giving the eulogy

I'm on episode 4 as we speak, taking it for what it is (low brow entertainment). Still waiting for it to live up to the hype. I've seen far more engaging junk.

Gotta throw on one more to the pile here. My wife and I have had one episode left for a while now, not sure if/when we'll watch it. Mostly I'm wondering why they didn't just shrink this down to 1.5 hours of content. We basically knew about all the crazy stuff from the trailer.

I wasn't super impressed with the first episode. But if you are generally into documentaries and true crime, the series as a whole is great.

It was a bit of a letdown at the end. I was expecting more to it than just, well he's in prison how. Very anti-climatic.

The best description I read was that is was a perfect "Human Zoo"

Tangentially: I have a ton of fun trying to figure out various events based on the memes and other references I'm exposed to. The most recent is Tiger King. My best guess at the moment is that he's a guy who went to prison for liking tigers the wrong way.

Surely there's other people who do this or some term for it. I feel like there's a fruitful cultural idea here. Kind of reminds me of how I know most of my dad's childhood TV shows because of the Simpsons.

I used to watch the political discourse on tv during lunch in the hopes I'd find out what they're actually talking about before my lunch was over. Often I didn't guess. Was a fun game when a worked alone from home at the time.

I don't use: Twitter, Feedly and have my main account of FB on another browser. HN is my only news website as it gave better aggregate content than my 200+ Feedly subscriptions.

That's how I do it.

Oh and I use YouTube for entertainment with 300+ subscriptions, sometimes news comes through. But my recommendation feed is more fun anyway.

Genuinely asking out of curiosity, but at what point does it not become easier to just get off of those services than to maintain something to make them useable (only just by the sounds of it in your case)?

What we need is an AI agent that runs locally, crawls the web, figures out what you want to see, and turns off any javascript when you look at it.

I rely on the intelligence of my own mind to do exactly that, beeing able to observe yourself while you do things can be a invaluable skill (and it is in fact the foundation of all artistic skill)

The problem is connections to other people using those services as information sources. For example, there is some genuinely valuable stuff on HN, so I stay, but a lot of noise leaks in as well, and it’s non-trivial to separate. (And people vary on what they consider signal.)

Pi-hole has done wonders for my (and my family/friends) internet browsing experience. Just threw it up on a DO droplet and very occasionally ssh in to update.

I feel the same. Talking about my angst with fellow tech workers leads to a similar conclusion: we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve all made this.

Not sure you meant to respond here?

It sounds like a subscription to The Economist is what you're looking for, vs the noise online.

This makes me think that you could use the Treendly site recently posted (discovers trends on the Internet) as a blacklist. :]

I don't know. I think it's important to stay informed about the evolution of the pandemic, and local news are also extremely useful for staying prepared and anticipating certain actions that you'll need to take.

It might be better to consume all news in small daily doses rather than blocking out potentially critical information.

nearly all of the current wall of corona news on every news site is designed to foment anxiety (entirely different from the "fake news" naysayers) and garner future clicks, rather than provide critical information.

the public is already doing what they need to do (physical distancing, washing hands, self-quarantining if necessary). medical professionals and scientists (and their suppliers) need time and support to provide care, create/perform tests, and develop new treatments and protocols.

beyond that, we need to get our houses in order and then just relax as much as we can and wait until we get substantial evidence to do something different. all this corona hysteria is entirely counter-productive.

Well, I'd say the situation is serious enough to require daily coverage in all front pages. This is the biggest global crisis since WW2.

We've had a global underreaction that didn't pan out exactly well due to politicians and media sticking the head in the sand while the outbreak started in China.

So I disagree, this is good, the situation is critical and people need to be fully aware/informed.

I agree, staying informed is good. I also think taking a stroll on the internet to read other things happening non C19 related is also healthy.

That is very much a challenging task.

There is a limit IMO. Getting bombarded with COVID-19 news, videos, blogs, Tweets every second of the day is definitely not healthy. I would definitely prefer taking like 30 minutes 2-3 times a day to keep myself updated using my preferred sources.

Well the person you are replying to said "in small daily small doses". To be honest I think 30 minutes, 2-3 times a day is already well past that.

yea. I no longer have facebook or twitter. nor reddit. hn i check monthly at most. I generally just keep to hammerstone feed that I check weekly.

Very little of what I've read in the news has been actionable, particularly national/world news. What am I supposed to do with news about hospital supply shortages or crazy shoppers two thousand miles away? My local government's website and some local news stories have had more useful information.

For examples, the top five headlines from lite.cnn.com/en/ right now:

>This nurse demonstrates just how fast germs spread even if you're wearing gloves

I'm not a nurse, and I don't have gloves, so this isn't actionable. It might be if I were a nurse, but I'm not.

>Fact-check: Trump says some states aren't in jeopardy from the virus, denies saying it would go away by April

There is nothing I can do about Trump being an idiot. Not actionable.

> Opinion: Trump put American lives in China's hands

Ditto.

> Supplies could be delayed due to confusion from the White House, companies say

Ditto.

> Trump says HHS secretary meant the 'concept' of a pandemic kept him up at night in 2019 comment

Ditto.

The news has long been more entertainment than information, at least in the US. And perhaps Trump stumbling with clown shoes through this whole ordeal is just confirming something you already know, but I'd hope that people who previously voted for him might cast a more critical eye over his actions in light of his shambolic response.

Whether or not these sort of headlines are politically beneficial, my point is that very few of these news stories give me any information I can use regarding Covid-19. Really my comment wasn't about politics, it just happened that most of the top headlines were political. Here are two more headlines to better illustrate my point:

>I moved to Paris during lockdown. Here's what I found

I am not in Paris, so this article is worthless to me. There is nothing I can do with knowledge of the situation in Paris.

> How to make your own face mask

This however, is information I could actually put to use. Articles like this are sadly a minority.

Every news source does sensational reporting and gives us conflicting information day by day. They do not report anything useful at this point. It's mindless. It's Orwellian. It's different depending on the network you listen to. The opinions change every day, all the leaders and corrupt, in every nation, and all we get are pieces of bullshit.

The truth of all of this won't be known until at least two years out looking back, studying the news from this era. I do not think history will look kindly back on this moment. I think the future will hold 2020 as a cautionary tale, of how even when the dangers are real, we can still be susceptible to hysteria on a truly global scale.

Keeping abreast of all news is important, but it's quite impossible to do unless you make a conscious effort to break out of the current news cycle.

If you follow the news, you know there's a pandemic going on, and you know there's a wealth of information out there if you need it. But if you're skimming headlines on most aggregators, that's more or less all you get to know (with the notable exception of gripe-pieces/love-letters concerning the Trump administration).

The cognitive overhead of filtering out all that redundant information, and the accompanying bullshit hot-takes by self-aggrandizing bloggers masquerading as journalists can be so exhausting that you risk giving up or developing tunnel-vision around it.

It's hard not to remember to check for pandemic updates even if you do deliberately filter them out of the news - it directly effects you.

I think this plug-in is a very good idea, and should make it easier to stay informed with respect to the bigger picture of the world.

Missing a couple articles lamenting our circumstances isn't really going to save that many lives.

> It might be better to consume all news in small daily doses rather than blocking out potentially critical information.

I'd rather read the one news app on my phone - which basically covers everything of what's interesting about the pandemic - than trying to consume all news but ending up reading the same thing on every social platform. This add-on could be a solution to this.

sounds like everyone forgot what an RSS reader is already. that was fast...

In many (most?) developed countries, citizens are automatically getting information on changes to the lockdown rules by SMS. So, there really is no need to read the news to hear about further restrictions. As other have mentioned, it only foments anxiety.

It’s not just about restrictions but also new discoveries and a more nuanced coverage than what the big media and government decides to tell us.

Anything that can support critical and informed thinking really.

I'd be surprised if even 5% of that coverage is actionable in any way.

Some municipalities/provinces (states) already have their own channels where you can consume important news OR they send emergency alerts to your phone (such as this morning in Ontario).

How many articles/tweets can you read about social distancing, washing your hands? Or one more article about others not doing those things? Ugh.

That presumes that paying attention to the news is the same thing as becoming informed

How exactly consuming all news in small daily doses is helping you? I don't think it's 'extremely' useful, actually I don't think it's useful at all!

I agree, I understand the sentiment, but shutting yourself off is a dangerous head-in-the-sand strategy. Something to be used responsibly.

>but shutting yourself off is a dangerous head-in-the-sand strategy

only if that actual makes a material difference in your life. I think the opposite is true in this case.

People read about Covid-19 all day as a coping mechanism because absorbing more information gives people the illusion they have control over the situation.

Reality is nobody has much individual control over a pandemic, life got more dangerous, and reading a thousand papers isn't going to reduce that anxiety. We live in an age where people keep telling us that 'knowing things' is an antidote to tragedy or danger in life, because they're content creators, but really it isn't.

Everyone can learn how to deal with this in 5 minutes. Wash your hands, only leave your house if necessary, yet still people may die, even some you know. No news source in the world will fix that.

I've had two anxiety attacks already when reading news in the past weeks, because the press and the goverment (I'm in Italy) love to only put the bad stuff out.

Also the news were cause of many arguments among the family. For this reason, I decided to stop for the time being to read anything at all. The quarantine is already taxing (fifth week this Monday) and I don't want to make it worse it already is.

what is it you think they're not going to hear about eventually that their family, neighbors or strangers wont inform them of?

A healthy adult should be able to get the necessary information from other sources than have to consume the news.

The only information you absolutely need to hear is "am I under a stay at home order or not". Other than that you can probably read no news until the election when you should figure out if you think Trump did a good job handling COVID-19 (lol).

> The only information you absolutely need to hear is "am I under a stay at home order or not".

I doubt that's the case for most people, unless they have the luxury to completely isolate themselves for months.

I mean if you need aid you should actively seek it out not hope the news talks about it in between updating you on the death toll and such.

Direct link in English: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/phagocyte/

Thanks! I didn't notice I posted the German version, will double check next time...

Thank you, this is the best thing right now binging on the news is unhealthy taking care of the community is better.

I have to say. Staying off Twitter and avoiding any non-local news has been incredibly beneficial to my mental health over the past few weeks.

I'm seriously thinking I should develop a plug-in that blocks news articles about the Kardashians.

I've never seen an article about the Kardashians. Maybe your news sources are the problem.

Same here. I don't recall ever seeing anything about them in newspapers or on TV news except in entertainment news sections/segments.

I think that a lot of people nowadays don't really have news sources. Whatever news they get is whatever shows up on their social media feeds which include hard news, sports news, entertainment news, satire, opinion pieces, and come from a variety of sources including what their friends post or like, wire services, newspapers, blogs, and paid promotions, selected according to what the social media site's algorithm predicts will keep them most engaged.

For most people, they will be a lot better informed if they pick a handful of news sources that either are just news, or that clearly separate news from other content, and skip the "news" that shows up on their social media--just use social media to see what your friends are saying.

Also, there is no need to constantly follow the news. That's another problem with the "news as part of social media" approach. It's just mixed in with everything else that way, coming in 24/7. It's easy to get overwhelmed.

Best, I think, is to watch the first half of one of the daily news broadcasts on your local TV station. That should give you all the important things you need to know for your city. Do the same for the national news broadcast of one of the major over-the-air TV networks to keep up with the major national issues.

You can even do this while doing other things, like reading or web surfing. Just make it a habit to put on the daily local and national news broadcasts, and give them enough attention while reading or surfing to notice and watch when something important goes on.

In addition to, or instead of those, use a major newspaper if you want more depth.

Apple news and google news shovel the Ks at me, along with brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I’ve tried instructing both to stop suggesting them to me but they won’t.

I don’t use either anymore, but the forces are out there. I wanted some of those feeds but couldn’t control it. And so I did make a choice about the sources, but those are very popular news platforms that promise customization.

try an rss reader like liferea or feedly

I made and use this to do exactly that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssure/

I recently added "covid" and "corona" to my desktop list, I wouldn't have seen this post, or your comment (because you said Kardashian) but I dont use my phone to browse much so I haven't updated the list much.

I have the same plugin, it’s very effective.. I blocked them years ago and have largely forgot they exist.

2 out of the total 6 users of the plugin, and one of the others has to be the author. Amazing.

Wait, someone besides me is using it? And browsing the same HN thread nearly the same time as me?

I'm pleased to meet someone who shares the same desire to ignore attention seekers :) This warrants the founding of a secret society (of 2) with cloaks and moose hats.

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super-Chro...

This means this Show HN link won’t show when using the plugin? Clever.

Thanks for the plugin. I dont know about other countries, but here in Poland we receive SMSes with crucial informations. So there is no need to read all the time about it. Unfortunately it is very hard to read anything else these days. This plugin can help. We need to take care of our mental health. And it is very easy to go into panic mode. Especially since its very hard to notice symptoms of this. It can be bad for our health also. So again thanks. Appreciated

ublock origin filter:

a:has-text(Corona)

a:has-text(Covid)

a:has-text(Epidemic)

a:has-text(Pandemic)

a:has-text(Virus)

a:has-text(Death)

a:has-text(ICU)

a:has-text(Social Distancing)

a:has-text(corona)

a:has-text(covid)

a:has-text(epidemic)

a:has-text(pandemic)

a:has-text(virus)

a:has-text(death)

a:has-text(social distancing)

With ignoring case:

a:has-text(/corona/i)

a:has-text(/covid/i)

a:has-text(/epidemic/i)

a:has-text(/pandemic/i)

a:has-text(/virus/i)

a:has-text(/death/i)

a:has-text(/ICU/i)

a:has-text(/social distancing/i)

One-liner:

Source: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

I suppose that this only works with a-href right?

The filter is applied to entire content of a given tag and its subtags, here is the example for HN (has-text must be site-specific):

    news.ycombinator.com##.itemlist .athing:not(.comtr):has-text(/corona|covid|\bsars\b|(?:epi|pan)demi|virus|death|social distanc|\bICU\b|wuhan|quarantin/i)+*
    news.ycombinator.com##.itemlist .athing:not(.comtr):has-text(/corona|covid|\bsars\b|(?:epi|pan)demi|virus|death|social distanc|\bICU\b|wuhan|quarantin/i)

Will this remove just the word, or the entire paragraph, or what?

Just any a-tag containing the listed phrases.

Are there not case insensitive ublock origin filters?

Oh great so I'm not the only one who's avoiding all of this. I stopped following the news after the Guardian put up a death counter.

There just isn't enough balance and too much negativity - or at least there was two weeks ago when I last checked. I can only imagine how bad it must be on those 24hr news channels. Regurgitating the same thing over and over again.

For those who don't want spend too much time on news, but want to stay informed, do check us out : https://www.thefactual.com (daily newsletter with summaries and multiple viewpoints from curated news sources)

Document.write('')

be interesting if augmented reality eventually allows you to block things in real life such as political signs or billboard adds. sort of a pi hole, but with goggles. granted this comment is not related but thats what i thought of after reviewing comments on here.

i'm making one that replaces that psyop name with the disease's actual name: SARS-2.

> i'm making one that replaces that psyop name with the virus's actual name: SARS-2.

The virus's actual name is SARS-CoV-2, the disease’s actual name is COVID-19. [0]

SARS-2 is the name of neither, and neither of the actual names is a “psyop name” and calling it that is serious tinfoil hat territory.

[0] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

meant disease; point stands: IN 2002 the virus was named SARS-CoV and the disease SARS

> IN 2002 the virus was named SARS-CoV and the disease SARS

Yes, and...so what?

There's no consistent relationship between naming of diseases and naming of related viruses, so trying to paint a conspiracy out of the fact that a pattern you've extrapolated from one other example (and which is takes ignoring most every other disease/virus pairing to paint as the normal pattern) wasn't followed is, again, serious tinfoil hat territory.

The actual name of the disease is not SARS-2, nor is there any particular reason it should be.

How is ignoring a major event like this in any way good?

You can stay informed while also not wanting to fall into the 24hr news cycle drama.

I don’t think it’s healthy personally for me to read every bit of information on it I see. I’m staying at home, I’d rather be doing something productive and check in every few days.

How seeing a lot of news about an event that I can't do anything is good? It just gets me depressing! Watch the news is the worst thing at the moment! I'm encouraging everyone that I love to stay away from this. Fear/depression is way worst than this virus.

There can definitely be information overload. But ignoring everything is not good either.

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand why ignoring is not good.

You don't understand why ignoring news during the biggest global pandemic in a century might not be wise?

Yes. :) I don't even have a TV, I blocked news sites in my /etc/hosts about 4 years ago. So, I'm ignoring the news for more than years and have no idea why it is good for me to hear that, especially now. There is virtually nothing I can do to help and nothing good on that (watch news will give me anxiety) IMHO is a good idea to ignore the news, especially during the biggest global pandemic in a century

For one thing if you are aware of how your national or local government have responded to the crisis you can vote accordingly the next time elections come up. This may or may not affect you personally, depending on if you do or can vote, but it'll definitely be a factor in many elections across the globe.

Additionally if you were paying attention you might have started taking precautions earlier - getting set up for home-office, ensuring you had supplies (obviously I don't mean panic buying 50kg of pasta, but at least a sensible supply of the essentials to see you through a small period of quarantine) and postponed or cancelled trips into affected areas.

In my case if I was a little more informed and a little less flippant I would have not travelled to Austria for a skiing trip when I did. I thankfully isolated myself for 2 weeks when I came back (which I learned from the news was required by law for those returning from Austria). Plus I learned by the news that losing sense of smell and taste was a likely indicator of Covid-19. I got tested and discovered I was positive. Had I not learned this my girlfriend (who had moved out during my 2 week post-trip quarantine) would have returned and I might have infected her, and I might have been less careful in my apartment building and infected my elderly neighbours.

I actually made my decision to go ahead with my Austria trip before ANY European country entered lockdown, including Italy. Official guidance was that travel was fine, even to many parts of Italy. Had I been paying more attention to the news, I might have been more skeptical (I am not sure about this, though).

Yes the news can be overwhelming, you certainly shouldn't binge it and if you're easily spooked you should maybe take it in small doses otherwise you'll get yourself all worked up for nothing. But burying your head in the sand completely is perhaps too far in the other direction.

I think there's a difference in ignoring and trying to avoid being bombarded by media that aren't interested in reporting the current situation (in a toned, objective way) but getting clicks and profiling people with loud headlines and cheaply done content all the time.

We do all live in a huge stress now but it's important to remain sane and not let sink ourselves into some depressive state by being spoon-feed by media - that definitely won't help anyone in long turn.

Like everyone else, I'm indoors with just my family, ordering food/groceries, wiping everything down, wearing masks/gloves if we ever have to go out, explaining to my toddler why he can't play with friends, etc, etc. For the last month, and probably the next two or three.

What else do you want from me? Do I really have to spend every moment watching the slow train wreck from every angle? COVID is covered literally everywhere, you can't not see it.

The good is just maybe not falling into total depression, alcoholism, or worse.

There is no possible way to ignore what is happening right now. If you want a Cov-19 blocker, you know all you need to know already.

It might be worthwhile if the media was reporting news, but when you have CNN, ABC, MSNBC, ad nauseam stirring up idiotic drama for ratings—like throwing tantrums over what the word "our" means—what's the point? How is any of that useful?

So you are saying, it would be possible to block news on the latest trump thing that happened?

Its great to have a laugh but it gets old fast.

Would never block Covid-19 myself, but then again i think the media in the Netherlands are quite informative and value quality content above quantity.

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