Overmod
Overmod is a small program and directory that allows blocking and highlighting users on Hacker News. Other users can subscribe to my blocklist or create new ones if they so desire.
Why
I often find myself annoyed by people on social media who post repetitive comments that are mostly about one culture war item or another. For instance, comments like the following are not particularly interesting to me to read, though I'm sure there are many other people who enjoy these kinds of comments very much.
Embarrassed by the HN comments here. Lunch ladies, along with other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get. Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is pathetic. Such commenters should be forced to prepare and serve lunches for hundreds of hungry children while also being forced to listen to screaming political rants through taped-on headphones. The lower middle class, my native land, gets too little applause for their contributions.
Other Solutions
The usual way things are done on the Internet is that eventually people get annoyed by how some participants behave and then they request that they be banned from the site. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. But in either case, a new little battle emerges on whether or not they should be banned. These kinds of local parish fights are quite popular because participation requires no knowledge or skill. But also they tend to spawn everywhere, even on unrelated posts.
Philosophy
I think the better model is to form overlay networks. The biggest advantage of being in the software world is that participants in the world do not occlude you; their presence can be non-rivalrous if you want it to be. Both you and I could be on the same social network, viewing the same post, but with a completely different comment thread. On Hacker News, this happens already because some people have showdead turned on, and others are shadow-banned. I think we could probably take this to the next level and just allow a meta-layer of blocking and highlighting that allows users that annoy you for whatever reason to be removed from your view.
I also don't like self-censorship too much, even though I do it. I'd like for people to be able to either want to see me or not see me depending on their own choices, and I think if people want to delegate that authority to others they should be able to do that as well.
My Stuff
I made the extension as minimal as possible. There is no notion of user authentication and discoverability is minimal. I'm hoping that anyone who wants to make a list will distribute it out of band on whatever other way they want to do it.
For my part, here are a few lists I've made:
- Roshan's Socialism Slop for users that post about shit like "corporations are ruining the world" and shit like that.
- Roshan's Privacy Slop for users that I see post the usual privacy takes. I'm not really interested in privacy-maximalists so I don't want to see their comments.
- Roshan's Low Information for users that post wrong information or just low-value takes. I think I've heard "LLMs are just next-token predictors" a million times. I don't really need to hear it once more. I put people in here regardless of the truth of what they're saying. It's the repetitiveness that annoys me.
- Roshan's Outrage Merchants for users that try to get others riled up. I'm pretty easily riled up and I don't want to be. So I'd rather not see this stuff.
And I also have some users who I want highlighted:
- Roshan's Favourites for users whose comments I want to make sure I don't miss
One common element, I've realized, is that I really don't like repetitive nonsense or comments from people who obviously cannot understand what others are saying. This stuff annoys me quite a bit. So off they go.
Results
I've been using this extension for a week or so and already my Hacker News usage is better when I'm at my computer (where the extension is installed in Chrome) than it is when I'm on my phone.
Installation
You can either install the Overmod extension from the Chrome Web Store or you can load it unpacked from Github if you want to control update cadence and all that.
