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Comment by advisedwang | Hacker News Reader

This says it's using AmazonBrandFilter's list of brands. Why would we use/support this chrome extension instead of the upstream one [1] which is actually doing the important maintanance task?

"Knockoff" seems to be literally describing itself.

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazonbrandfilter/m...

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AmazonBrandFilter dev here.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't love that they're just ripping the list like that, I wouldn't mind as much if they at least helped contribute to the list. That is far and away the hardest part of this thing.

But it is what it is, I'll be more peeved if they monetize it (which I'm unsure if they're doing).

Maybe I should put one of those buy me a coffee links on the repo, I'd probably be better about focusing on it then.

need the firefox extension please

2nd that

I gotchu

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonbrandfi...

I'm a Firefox user myself. It is cross browser but it started Firefox first.

thanks

>I'll be more peeved if they monetize it

FSL (vs a copyleft license or just plain old OSS) implies they want to turn this into a revenue source for themselves ultimately, unfortunately.

>Maybe I should put one of those buy me a coffee links on the repo

Absolutely :) Cool project.

Are you really the dev or just the person who signed up with this name? The profile was created 6 minutes before this post and the only one ever.

Yeah my buddy sent it to me. I don't usually visit ycombinator. I just created an account because I'm basking in my small amount of recognition.

But if ya want some proof I'm about to update the filter list with a bunch of mosquito repellents in like 10 minutes :)

You forgot Skin So Soft! My grandmother swore by that brand!

I just checked and it's actually in there, it's part of AVON! :D

nice. So in a way it is great that it was released as it brought more attention. Also may of provided you a way to see a path forward on how to make it more available.

Are you really going to be upset that what you originally built would be built upon and potentially monetized? The money will allow more fuel to make it better and better (hopefully)

Project: https://github.com/chris-mosley/AmazonBrandFilter

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonbrandfi...

TIL, thanks for your work!

Nice.

I wish there was something like this but that filtered out AI books.

Are there any objectively good systems for sussing out AI books? If not, perhaps treating them like "low background steel" wrt their publication date is the way to go (known good up to a point and confidence falls off without human review and confirmation after a specific year).

I'm extremely wary of anything written from 2024 onwards by lesser known authors.

I've spotted a book once in the wild that actually had a ghibli-style piss-tinted cover image, which was a dead giveaway, but it's not always so clear cut.

2024 is a good cut-off. I use these additional heuristics. Bad cover art. Not from a real publisher or not from an author that hasn't published before 2024. I hope that real books that just happen to slip through the cracks, that are also genuinely good books will eventually surface as easily findable somehow. Maybe that's wishful thinking, I don't know.

I know one thing. It's grim out there for publishing and real humans who have something good to say but don't have a popular voice.

Not that trying to repackage and possibly resell existing work isn't a little lazy and borderline scummy, but your filter list "brands.txt" is MIT licensed.

You could always release the plugin code MIT and keep the brands.txt file proprietary or under a more restrictive license if you don't like what they are doing. After all, you did explicitly allow this.

To be honest it just felt like the right way to do it. I also never expected it to ever get any amount of traction. The fact I got more than 10 people to run it is thrilling.

Amazon ripped off the price tracking and history from camelcamelcamel.com

Can we get a Safari version?

I'll have to look into that. It should just work since it works on Chrome and I've made effort to request as little privilege as possible. But I'll have to test and try it out.

If you're able and willing, create an issue on the addon repo: https://github.com/chris-mosley/AmazonBrandFilter/issues

And I'll build a version for safari for you to test.

Thanks so much! Will do

So yeah checking. Apple stopped making Safari for Windows a long time ago. So the issue with me supporting it is I have no way to test before publishing. I'll need to figure out something for that if I want to make the Safari version a real boy.

Thank you for your work! Just installed the plugin, hope it will ease the pain of finding things on Amazon. :-D

edit: lol. tried searching for USB C flex cables. WHOLE search result page is gone. Love it! :-D

Ha, oh yeah USB chargers was a huge pain.

Something I've actually found I do is I just leave the addon in debug mode all the time. It's more verbose about what it's doing but it also highlights instead of hides listing. Which I've found I really like.

So I think I'm actually going to make that into a feature, highlighting vs hiding.

Yes, that feature was my very first though.

And now that feature has shipped! I plan to add custom colors at some point but it's definitely low priority.

Thanks Chris, great work!

Allow users to opt into you injecting referral links. If they opt in, when they land anywhere, you rewrite amazon links to your referral code. Costs users $0, it's opt-in, and you make money.

I've considered this. I just feel like I need to be really careful on that front.

Right now I'm dealing with a dude that requested his own brand be added. Which is totally cool. But looking at said brand. I am reeeaaallly struggling to tell if hes 3dprinting his stuff to sell, or if hes drop-shipping it and trying to get on the list.

Could you ask him for a video of himself 3d printing it?

In the current age of AI, deepfakes, etc this is a very hard problem and I don't envy you. I think asking vendors to go through a paid verification process is fair. There are a slew of KYB vendors out there who can help.

Have him send you a sample piece, with his name embossed in the print. Easy to do in most slicers.

I think you're going to have to standardize what you consider to be knock offs and what's not, or you're going to end up in continuous quagmires like this trying to make a determination based on vibes.

You might even end up getting together a team of volunteers to look through them or it'll probably get overwhelming.

What determination did you use to make the original list?

So the original list is very specifically about no-name dropshippers. I very specifically state in the readme that the list isn't a measure of quality. So in the case where this guy is 3D printing stuff and selling it. That's good enough for the list if he's been doing it long enough. But looking at the details of this one, he's dabbled in crypto. He apparently sold crystal tubes... So like he sorta feels like he might be a state-side dropshipper.

I am sorta leaning towards just adding his brand. The list isn't append only, we can remove stuff if people feel the need.

How did you determine who was a no name drop shipper though? Based on what criteria?

Well, he closed the pull request himself I guess. Know it doesn't matter, but I say it's printed personally.

How do you account for comingled inventory?

Mixed inventory is really a different issue. So short version, I don't. However Amazon did announce they were stopping the practice so hopefully that's just solved.

This is like the maintainers of all Adblock lists getting upset at the creator of uBlock origin for using them.

Except that Raymond Hill explicitly refuses to accept financial contributions of any sort and directs people to support the list maintainers.

This guy isn’t taking financial contributions, and the Amazon brand list is only one part of the product.

I actually just put in a buymeacoffee link lol.

But also the List is by far the hardest part. It's way more work/time/misery than the addon itself.

They acknowledge your project under the "Prior art" section of their README.md and the list is MIT licensed. Seems fine to me?

Great original idea, BTW. Wish I had known about your extension prior!

It seems like AmazonBrandFilterList is one of the lists they use. It also seems like there a couple extra features that doesn't have. Either way, it's not like they're hiding the use of it. It would be another thing if it was being secret about it.

On top of that, it has a more restrictive license than AmazonBrandFilter. Given this appears to be a very simple AI project, why not just reimplement any missing functionality from AmazonBrandFilter into something under a free license? The most difficult to duplicate component is MIT.

Further, what on earth is the reason for FSL for such a trivial project? FSL immediately makes me assume this project is monetized in some way, yet it's not immediately presented what that is, which makes me suspicious of the whole project. Maybe that suspicion is unfounded, but it could be immediately cleared up with some explanation on the landing page.

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