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Comment by champagnois | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, to get too into it is to become part of the problem.

My way of handling it is to not participate and to set a better example for good citizens to follow.

When (X) became part of the internet hate machine last year, I put a filter on my home networks and self hosted search engines that essentially erased their partisan poison from existence.

Using the internet should feel like visiting a library. It shouldn't be an endless firehose of advertisement and partisan hatred.

It isn't enough to see the flaws of one side, you need to step back and see the whole picture. Both sides are frothing at the mouth for their brand of authoritarianism.

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> When (X) became part of the internet hate machine last year, I put a filter on my home networks and self hosted search engines that essentially erased their partisan poison from existence.

If you really did that then I tip my hat to you, that is a boss move!

> Using the internet should feel like visiting a library. It shouldn't be an endless firehose of advertisement and partisan hatred.

Ideally, but that's not possible in the world we live in. I am cynical about the hatred and the editorial spin applied to the propaganda that masquerades as news.

In my mind, everyone in media is a paid actor trying to push some agenda and are otherwise empty suits.

If our culture, money, and institutions are based on trust, then the last 5 years of media have run that trust out to the bitter end. The trust is reduced to the notion that "they wouldn't do that". 'That' being egregious awful things. Once 'that' becomes actual in the majority of minds, we're sunk.

I really did it.

Context:

I am essentially making a hobby of rebuilding my family's filtered version of the internet, leveraging the same powers as the tech giants.

With my setup, instead of promoting partisan hate, the front ends for search and internet access in my home send us in the direction of improving our focus, improving our connection with our own cultural history, and promoting content that reminds us of the great scientists and inventors that made our world possible...

Why expose my children to content that tells them to hate themself or others? Why expose them to areas of the internet full of foreign disinfo agents and their useful idiots? How about give them the experience I had in the 1990s... Freedom from the noise.

Wow, you have an interesting skillset to pull that off.

Would be a nice little business if you could publish a domain or subsite blacklist that I could subscribe to and somehow plug into my kids' and my browsers to add at least a little friction to their browsing. I'm of the same mind as you, I think, in that you shouldn't allow negativity and hate into your brain or else it will take over. You are taking it to another level by promoting human advancements and nobility.

The 90's internet was special, I agree.

Planning to try and do something like that.

Please, please publish this. This is something I hope to accomplish and it would be wonderful to understand how you do it and reduce the workload of maintaining a network like that.

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