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Show HN: I created a Chrome extension that block media giants in Google search (chromewebstore.google.com)

27 points by petertsfn ↗ HN
There has been many recent discoveries (including the leak) about how 16 media companies dominated Google Search results, abusing their status to rank very high on a bunch of garbage they put out.

And like that saying goes, I can't change the world, but I can change myself. I don't want to look at their bullshit anymore when I search for food recipes or product reviews. So this extension is my way of protesting.

Full write up: https://thesolofoundernewsletter.com/p/secondpage

25 comments

[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] thread
chiefalchemist
It's a sounds and well-meaning effort. I'm with you 100% on the ideals. Unfortunately, because of similar ideals, I no longer use Chrome*, and Google Search is my search of last resort.

All that said, kudos for making the effort, if for no other reason to change yourself.

* Or Brave. Instead, I use Firefox.

chiefalchemist
Give helpful, solid and honest feedback. Get down voted. HN you've jumped the shark.
bananamerica
Could that be a Ublock Origin filter instead? Honest question, I'm not a programmer.
elektor
It'd easier to use Kagi's domain blocker.
yreg
Why would that be easier than uBlock Origin?
KomoD
ublacklist for the win
mmh0000
One of the many features of Kagi I love is the ability to manually change the weights of individual domains. Or just outright block them.

Pinterest: blocked IMDb: pinned Instagram: blocked

Spivak
Gotta be one of my favorite features — every one of those stackoverflow scrapers: blocked.
jaggs
But Kagi costs money?
pants2
Google costs your time and attention. Up to you which is more valuable.
bluish29
I think this is better suited as a list of this great extension ublacklist [1] You can turn it off or on to achieve everything, a new plugin (with new attach surface). Even better, this can be done as uBlock Origin list too.

[1] https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist

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Nuzzerino
I dumped the list of blocked domains to this pastebin, since it wasn't documented anywhere.

https://pastebin.com/VHuHTeqp

Interesting that ycombinator.com is on the list, but not reddit

And why would you block Soundcloud? Lots of starving musicians are scraping by on there, and many of them are doing great work.

dawnerd
There’s at least one dot gov on there too. What a weird list
Dalewyn
I saw at least two from a quick skim: bls.gov and cdc.gov.

Assuming the dump is accurate, this is at best an impractical and at worst a misguided blacklist.

duskwuff
There's a whole bunch of US government sites on the list (notable inclusions: fda.gov, nasa.gov, whitehouse.gov) for some reason, as well as quite a few non-corporate web properties:

* Stack Exchange, but only one of their sites: superuser.com

* Wikimedia: wikimedia.org, wikidata.org, and wiktionary.org (but not wikipedia.org)

* Image hosting: imgur.com, giphy.com, tenor.com, deviantart.com, artstation.com

* Audio and video hosting: soundcloud.com, vimeo.com, dailymotion.com

* Blogging and web hosting: livejournal.com, squarespace.com, substack.com, typepad.com

* Fan fiction: tvtropes.org, archiveofourown.org, fanfiction.net

* Miscellaneous indie web properties: bogleheads.org, craigslist.org, ifixit.com, instructables.com, knowyourmeme.com, mozilla.org

Overall this is a very strange list.

petertsfn
I hear you. I wrote my reasoning on a comment above, but the gist is: It's an afternoon project, I fucked up the list because I didn't think much about it, and this project is probably better off being crowdsourced.

I think it's a proof of concept on how we can theoretically make searches better. Anyways, I'm pushing an update removing all the sites you mentioned. Do you have any other suggestions?

Nuzzerino
That's fair tbh, I agree there is an unmet need for something like this, so no arguments there. It is only fair that the users should have at least an equal say in keeping companies off of their search results. The search engines are making the choices for you because you're the product, not the customer.

The implementation details take time to get right. And getting this far in an afternoon as a non-developer is pretty respectable.

If you want to have the most reach / impact with something like this though, it will take consistent, sustained effort over a long period of time, and it will be a thankless job, at least for awhile.

petertsfn
You guys made a valid point. I got a list of 1000 highest traffic sites in the us in 2023, and I did a skim to remove sites that might be actually useful, but apparently I missed a lot.

This was an afternoon project after I read the article about how 16 media companies own ~600 top media sites that's getting organic traffic.

I submitted an update with a more cleaned list (no more .gov and a few other misfires).

Truth is this project is probably better if it uses a crowdsource approach to the source list (like SponsorBlock). It's a bit out of scope for me since I'm not a developer. I just make things I think is fun. My hope with this thing is to raise more awareness to this problem of large brands publishing SEO garbage, and then maybe someone smarter will come along actually make searches usable again.

ASalazarMX
If the default list is the weak point, why not start empty and let users hide as they go? You keep the value of the extension without the extra maintenance.
Nuzzerino
He said he wasn't really a developer and this was more of a proof of concept. Having a configuration screen is a bigger task than having something hard coded
daft_pink
You essentially created a hack that replicates Kagi.

I don’t understand why Google doesn’t let you block certain domains and boost others like Kagi. It’s such an obvious and basic feature and it ads so much usability.

ASalazarMX
It used to, but Google is foremost an ad company, and it probably hurt ad revenue.