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Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

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superasn

The great cat and mouse game

1. uBlock - Blocks annoying ads

2. Sponsorblock - Blocks annoying nordvpn, curiositystream, et al

3. uBlacklist - Blocks annoying pinterest, quora, et al

Keep the good fight going guys. Kudos!

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Every time I accidentally click a Quora search result it makes me so unhappy. I must have missed the memo about Pinterest though. I always liked that site but haven't been on there in a while. I'm reading up on what's wrong and it sounds like a few years ago it started drowning in ads. Then this year they pushed an update that caused half their users to stop using the platform. Is that accurate?

If you want to feel Pinterest pain, try an image search for something you are tying to make or create, particularly something craft or art related.

Every hit will take you somewhere bad in Pinterest land, and somehow not provide the image you want.

I'm not seeing it: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=crochet+ducks&iax=images&ia...

This post is about Google, DDG doesn't rank Pinterest the same way.

https://www.google.com/search?q=crochet+ducks&tbm=isch

Although I have to admit that the amount of Pinterest results for this search term is acceptable (I see 2 in the top 10).

I’ve just tested a few searches and I can’t see any Pinterest. I used to really struggled with Pinterest contamination and it looks there is none now?

Pinterest was terrible also earlier. Kept appearing in image search results, on following link image was not present.

What's wrong with Quora? Now I don't use Quora for any serious source of information, but it's just a site with lots of fun anecdotes. Reading these anecdotes isn't a bad way to pass the time; it's IMO much better than mindlessly watching videos on Instagram or TikTok (which I don't do at all).

Maybe 1% of the time they're gossiping about people like Jeff. But the rest of the time Quora is like Stack Overflow except the top answer is unrelated promoted content which fools me every time and it makes me so unhappy to feel like a fool after reading several sentences into something I didn't intend to read. Usually when Quora does have answers they aren't very good. If Quora isn't intended as serious then it'd be the uncanny valley of knowledge, so I'd feel more comfortable sourcing from Uncyclopedia.

My experience with Quora is it's extremely unpredictable. Sometimes you get lucky and get a high quality answer by a subject expert. Sometimes you get junk answers.

On many topics top answers are completely false.

Its just like reddit with no threading, more annoying site with unblockable ads.

>much better than mindlessly watching videos on Instagram or TikTok (which I don't do at all).

How can you definitively say that? If I said this thing I never tried is worst than what I do, wouldn't you at least suggest I try it? Good stuff you might really like exists too: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/programmerhumor?lang=en

It's better in the sense that you're not demolishing your attention span with low quality ~30 second videos that usually aren't even funny or entertaining. It requires some level of cognition to read Quora comments, it requires none to sit and watch Tiktok for hours.

Sure, that's one part of tiktok, but its like saying all facebook is bad. With sites like HN or Reddit, I don't see its benefits. If you think you need zero cognition to watch videos, you are watching the wrong kind.

>Its just like reddit

It most definitely isn't like reddit which, similar to HN, is about topical discussions rather answers by "experts". Frequently I add "reddit" as keyword in my searches but I'ld gladly nuke Quora out of the results.

The fact you quoted “experts” is why it’s just like those two sites. The answers are just as dubious.

Quora would be awesome if it weren't for the constant pestering to install the app.

For me "better than Instagram" is not sufficient

Don't forget BlockTube, thanks to it I haven't seen a soyface thumbnail in over a year.

Clickbait remover for YouTube is also good for this https://github.com/pietervanheijningen/clickbait-remover-for...

On Android, there is "SmartTubeNext" (or so), you may find it via "STN youtube". It just takes out all the crap from YouTube, but keeps all features (at least the ones I know).

dont forget blocknyt.com for twitter. i wish they'd make it extensible so we could subscribe to a variety of blocklists

They want access to my twitter timeline? Fat chance of that happening...

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