Shutting down the letsblock.it project and its official instance
github.com
github.com
Given that after two years there are only about 30 templates, I'm guessing it's too difficult to actually accomplish something useful given the tools provided. That's not a knock on the creator -- off the top of my head I don't know how I'd provide an easy way to customize/filter/modify web content -- I'm just saying I understand the shutdown given the apparent lack of traction.
The frontend code is so abstracted that as soon as it is updated it is probably going to break. With userscripts you can filter these things with more sophisticated functions, but it slows down the interface more than UBO. In google's case that type of frontend abstraction (imo) is not intentionally designed to break interface filtering but it has that effect. For other companies like facebook and amazon they actively make filtering elements harder, because of their anti-adblock strategies, but they are all casting a wide enough net that element filtering is affected too. It's a long game of cat and mouse.
All because either they purposefully wanted to force us to do that (view count boosting I guess, or it's more likely to be remembered?) or some google exec got Shorts barely done enough to show off at a board meeting and say "done, made something that competes against reels!" and then ran off to work on something else to try and boost their stature in the company.
Just get this plugin: <https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-suggestions> and enable “Hide all Shorts” under Homepage/General.
https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-suggestions/b...
Bye letsblockit and I wish you well @xvello.
The homepage shows a lot of crap and clickbait thumbnails, and especially thumbnails with people having weird expressions and staring at me makes my brain completely lose context and lose focus for a few seconds, so that I have actually to think again about what I was gonna search, and sometimes I can't even remember it
Also wish YouTube would copy X/Twitter where you get two toggle options:
1) For you (algo recommendations)
2) Directly following
You would ideally use directly following on the days where you’re time crunched.
I also created a secondary “channel” under my main account that I watch certain topics only. It’s quite a hassle but kind of works.
Filtering Nebula in general seems like a low-probability use-case?
The obvious question to me in a situation like this is: how does Nebula provide preference? And honestly, I get it -- I am a subscriber, and I have a hard time getting a feed of the people I'm interested in, to the extent that I just do it to support the creators, I don't actually use Nebula. I continue to watch Nebula creators on YouTube, which has got to be a bottom-tier result for them.
* I never watched youtube as a primary source of entertainment like pretty much everyone uses youtube. I just had channel pages bookmarked (invidious instance links usually lol) so I never stumbled upon relevant channels even on the off chance something not terrible was in the recommendations which I always ignored. I got onto nebula because almost all of the very small handful of creators I watched were on it and it was cheap enough to justify the subscription lol
EDIT: Also, not sure if you're just joking or not, but I'd bet the author is a Mike Boyd fan. I feel like people tend to use examples of things they like in documentation, and it's just an example.
And the UBO filters are fairly easy to maintain which is why I was a little surprised that they are shutting down this project, I understand the instance might be hard to maintain but the filters can very well be maintained I think.
Either way, there seems to be other alternatives that do similar things. I will likely be using those then.
Also on some pages disabling JavaScript makes the experience better (although nowadays most pages just break), but if you don't have a way to easily disable it per-website you could check out my pet project https://noscript.it
Combined it with STM's automatic url-rewrite and you can get automatic per-site noscript even on the iPhone.
I'm actually focused more on writing a quality search engine that ranks pages based on the amount of anti-user behavior, dark patterns, etc. a site has. Have a really crappy site with tons of ads, popup modals, and trackers? No clicks for you! So I'm doing something similar to what the author is doing I guess.
The modern web is exceedingly user-hostile, and browsers are not doing a good job as the User's Agent. Browsers are the ones that should provide users control over what they see, what they use, and what they skip. But, instead of giving the user the choice and respecting the user's preferences, browsers are acting like dumb canvases, allowing web developers to just spew whatever they want at the user. We shouldn't need extensions and third party hacks like this to keep control over what our browser does. And we should not accept browsers that just enable the web developer to do whatever they want.
Rant over. Awesome project, sorry to see it go, wish I had a chance to experiment with it.
Interesting idea - I like the non-commercial web and am inspired by attempts to invigorate it, and yet I also get the feeling that its ship sailed when everyone left for the commercial web. I don't see them (us?) coming back.
Is there another easy way to sync blocklists like this?
Sounds like they got bored.
Does this sound "bored"?
Being bored isn't a bad thing.
But to me "bored" sounds like a bad thing, so maybe I'm just arguing semantics.
They don't spell it out explicitly, but I think the author realized that they were effectively acting as an enabler.
The letsblock.it tool encouraged customers to use workarounds so that they could still continue engaging with big tech companies that are so customer-hostile. Instead, the author is choosing to let big tech make their experience worse, and customers have more incentive to seek out non-commercial alternatives.
Exactly. If the commercial enshittified web bothers you to the point of trying to fix it, at some point you'll realize that it's a quixotic crusade, and that you don't even want to engage with the content offered on these platforms anymore. Why would you? The shittier the platform, the shittier the content.
The future of good online interactions is in small, closed, well-maintained and asynchronous communities.
Paradoxically that's the way some people find salvation. They have to hit the bottom. Instead of making their experience of digital abuse more palatable what they need is more YouTube, more Facebook, more Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. Until something inside snaps and their soul pukes.
I'd totally get it if the author realised they were just prolonging users' misery. As Nietzsche said; "What is shaky, push it!"
With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't have any measurable effect. To think otherwise is hubris.
People use products from "big tech companies" because they offer something that is useful that others don't offer. In the author's conflation of "big tech" and "commercial", I think they need more clarity in what they really want to accomplish, what their mission is. Being "against" something is a valid goal in life, but then you really have to be very strategic about it. Being "for something" and pouring your energy into making something that people want or need seems more productive. Even then, you want to be strategic because there's an infinite number of things you could go after. Do you diffuse your attention or do you focus? Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion.
No, I think the project was based on wrong assumptions (strategy) and poorly executed.
I am merely putting constructive ideas out there.
Their strategy was to provide free UX enhancements for commercial companies. When they are against the commercial web!
Success does not have to be commercial. It can be about non-monetary impact. They had 800 users and tells themselves "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running for over two years is a big success in my book". Claiming that outcome as a big success is odd and I don't know that the author is learning from failure. When they can say to themselves "I failed in my mission, let me learn from it," I think they will have a larger chance to grow, be more successful, have bigger impact.
you are failing in the same way as the original author by your own metric
Empathy can be “nice” but does not necessarily mean it is helpful, and can sometimes even be harmful.
When you care about someone, but fail to challenge them directly you are not helping them, you just coddle them.
From the announcement:
> but I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial web more attractive.
The author pretty explicitly states that they want to shift from an "against something" mentality (against disruptive content in proprietary apps, against the intended user-experience of those apps) to a "for something" mentality (building and supporting non-commercial services).
I genuinely do not see the complaint.
> With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't have any measurable effect.
Unless the author was planning on never making a popular project, I don't think this is a good way of evaluating direction or effort. In either case, putting in a huge amount of effort to support 800 active users who might otherwise (at least partially) shift their attention to better services seems reasonable to question. If we take it that there is any value in improving experiences for a small number of people, then there is equal value in making it more pleasant for those people to use Libre services.
And of course that's even before asking about the opportunity cost. If an author can take the same amount of time they were devoting to this and instead build tools that make a Libre/Community service more attractive for 800 people, that's arguably a much higher impact activity on the health and growth of that service than wasting that effort trying to make proprietary platforms palatable.
But again, if your point here is to focus in on a mission, starting with "nothing I build will have any impact on any of this" is just not really helpful at all.
> Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion.
A general mission statement/direction is often the first step towards narrowing down product ideas. I think making a decision in a direction (ie, pivoting from doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies towards saying, "I want to benefit services that don't feel exploitative") is a good place to start. Of course over time the author will probably narrow that focus, but this at least lays out a category that they can start looking into.
This further emphasizes the lack of clarity, focus, and suboptimal strategy. When I read your assessment of their previous strategy "doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies" while the person is against commerce, I do not walk away with a sense that they have reconciled for themselves what is worth going after and so the non-specific "I want to support communities and applications that respect their users and value what we have to say." I predict will likely also have no registrable impact.
I have more candid feedback for the author and that is to take a more clear look at how they evaluate themselves. They say "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running for over two years is a big success in my book." Instead they should call it what it is - a failure - and learn from it. Failure is fine, failure is great, even. They would be more successful by dreaming bigger and with more focus.
> Instead they should call it what it is - a failure - and learn from it.
I'm going to be really blunt here, it sounds a lot less like your critique is that the author isn't clear about their goals or that the author doesn't know how to evaluate themselves -- and more like your critique is that the author's evaluation of themselves and their goals doesn't match yours.
Running any project with 800 users for 2 years as a hobbyist can be reasonably called a success. This reads a lot like how VC people will come into Mom and Pop shops and say, "this business is a failure, they just have years of loyal customers in a niche, what a disgrace! They obviously haven't thought enough about their product focus."
That's not success, and certainly not a "big success" which is the author's self-reflection.
Unless the author's goal was to run something for 2 years, accumulate 800 users, and then shutting it down.
> This reads a lot like how VC people will come into Mom and Pop shops and say
I think they set out to make a big impact. That means growth, but doesn't imply commercial success.
Again, the author is not obligated in any way to align themselves to your definition of success. And them disagreeing with your definition of success is not the same thing as them being confused or not having thought enough about what they want. It might just mean they disagree with you.
> I think they set out to make a big impact. That means growth
No, not necessarily. Growth can be a component of impact, but they are not synonymous, and many highly impactful projects never see a lot of attention or direct growth -- they enable other projects to succeed or fix some of the many diverse pain points that subsets of users for those projects have.
(This isn’t intended as a full counter argument against your broader point, which I’m still not really sure either way about, I just wanted to note that sometimes we have small effects and that’s OK. We’re only individuals after all, it wouldn’t make sense to expect every person to change the world in some sense, it would be chaos).
Absolutely. It feels great, and that is a perfectly valid reason to spend the time - so that you feel the warmth from others.
Would I want to go back to the so-called golden, idealized age of the web in the late 90s/early 2000s? No.
So, what I'm saying is that it hasn't deteriorated. The only thing that's happening is that HN is an echo chamber.
Failing to find product/market fit is a good time to reflect upon one's assumptions, biases, and perspective. Another piece of unsolicited constructive feedback I would offer the author is that from where I sit, I think they would be more successful if they are motivated and inspired by a more positive and strategic outlook.
“if i do not think i am mean i can not be mean” is fundamentally the go to for bullies, this person included
Want an "asshole" version? i.e. the honest version? (note, I'm not the guy you're diagnosing and mind-reading, just want to highlight how absurd your conception of OP is)
That was one of the strangest deprecation announcements I've ever seen, foaming at the mouth, blaming massive external factors (companies...pursuing money? is an odd thing to be surprised by), way overly dramatic lies about ex. Google "content-blocking extensions with MV3 under false security claims and planning to lock down the OS and browser with DRM."
I have no love for Google, but as soon as someone starts saying "MV3 [makes] false security claims", I remember MV3 is just Safari's more private content blocking from years ago.
When I see "planning to lock down the OS and browser with DRM.", I'm like "wait...he can't be describing...", click through, and see he's describing the one-off public announcement of beginning a prototype of a browser API that a user is human (transparent!), that was cancelled, publicly, extremely shortly after, because of reactions like this. (thankfully!)
Much like the constructive version of this comment, I bet they'd be able to keep going if they didn't see their project in such epic terms, given they framed giving up in terms of companies continuing to pursue money and Google.
i am attempting to say:
the way you give feedback is highly correlated with it landing.
your “mean” feedback is not, it speaks to why and does not just dismiss the author or try to trivialize a number. it provides clear links to issues, not just attacking the intelligence of the poster. you make a series of great points, reinforced by others feelings and examples of real world issues.
this feedback can be turned into something useful, allows reflection, and does not attack the authors entire reason to be here.
the original dude literally says:
1. 800 users is shit 2. your app had no effect 3. you dont even know how to choose a goal
you must be able to see this difference?
is asshole a diagnosis?