A mute button for news feeds

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. AI-slop filtering dominates since 2023; one duplicate post dropped; search-result blocklists excluded.

1. Oct 2026Wants a browser LLM plugin that permanently hides any topic or argument they never want to see again. Read it: a comment in “Apple HomeView”
2. Sep 2026Wants a browser extension that labels top HN posts with AI-detection scores so they can skip low-quality writing. Read it: a comment in “The revolt of the reader”
3. Jun 2026Would pay for a tool that filters AI-generated slop and agent chatter out of their feeds. Read it: a comment in “Don’t use AI to write things that you present as your own work”
4. May 2026Wants a browser extension that hides or highlights likely AI-generated text on Reddit and similar sites. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Forbid Reddit HN Submissions?”
5. May 2026Wants an internet-wide never-show-again button for slop pages. Read it: a comment in “AI slop is killing online communities”
6. Feb 2026Wants something that filters out thinly disguised advertisements posing as articles. Read it: a comment in “How AI skills are quietly automating my workday”
7. Jan 2026Wants a Chrome extension that filters snarky meme-style comments from discussion threads. Read it: a comment in “Xfce is great”
8. Dec 2025Wants a SponsorBlock-style community addon that flags AI slop videos, replacing the lost dislike signal. Read it: a comment in “How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants”
9. Oct 2025Wants a browser extension that hides all submissions from one tech news site on HN. Read it: a comment in “If things in America weren't stupid enough, Texas is suing Tylenol maker”
10. Oct 2025Wants a feed that never resurfaces items already scrolled past without engagement. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: I built a tech news aggregator that works the way my brain does”
11. Oct 2025Wants a social network curated by a user-written LLM prompt, showing only high-quality factual content. Read it: a comment in “A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator”
12. Jul 2025Wants a uBlock-style addon that wipes out every post and discussion about LLMs. Read it: a comment in “I'm dialing back my LLM usage”
13. May 2024Wants an extension that automatically blocks links to Substack sites. Read it: a comment in “No one will read your book (2021)”
14. Mar 2024Wants a blocklist of AI-generated spam sites that is not an anti-AI crusade blocking whole discussion communities. Read it: a comment in “Blocklist that contain AI generated content for uBlock Origin and uBlacklist”
15. Feb 2024Wants a Hacker News filter that strips out paywalled news-site links before they appear in the feed. Read it: a comment in “[dead]”
16. Jan 2024Wants a service that groups recent HN stories by theme, since keyword filtering for AI topics falls short. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there a service that clusters HN articles by theme?”
17. Jun 2023Would pay for a browser extension that marks and optionally blocks GPT-generated content. Read it: a comment in “Undetectable Watermarks for Language Models”
18. May 2023Wants a plain-language filter for the HN front page, such as tech only with politics removed. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: GPT-filtered Hacker News front page”
19. Jan 2023Would pay for a service that screens fear-inducing clickbait and surfaces only items that affect their life. Read it: a comment in “Endemic pathogens are causing psychiatric illnesses and shortening lives”
20. Dec 2022Would pay for an ML browser extension that erases one person entirely: images, mentions, articles, screenshots and videos. Read it: a comment in “Stop the scroll: Muting everyone on social media can put you back in control”
21. Nov 2022Wants a plugin or tagging feature that shows only tech content on HN, not social issues. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there a way to filter just tech content?”
22. Oct 2022Wants an extension that filters low-effort will-it-be-shut-down jokes under news about Google products. Read it: a comment in “Announcing KataOS and Sparrow”
23. Sep 2022Wants a plugin that hides opinion pieces disguised as news, using patterns like Study Shows headlines. Read it: a comment in “Some Uber drivers are worried they're being used as drug mules”
24. May 2022Wants a clickbait headline filter that removes sensational, question-style or misleading news titles. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What small library or tool do you want that doesn’t exist?”
25. Jan 2022Would pay for a Twitter extension that hides political tweets from accounts followed for software knowledge. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What kind of online tools are you using, missing or can be improved?”
26. Oct 2021Wants a site showing only technical or scientific content from HN, without self-promotion and funding talk. Read it: a comment in “About that time I had an outburst during the Y Combinator Interview”
27. Sep 2021Wants HN's newest feed filtered by their own keywords, matching HN and original titles, with notifications. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there a site for Hacker News filtered by my topics?”
28. Sep 2021Wants an anti-spoiler extension that blocks news about one anxiety-causing project until it succeeds or fails. Read it: a comment in “James Webb Space Telescope launch media kit [pdf]”
29. Apr 2021Wants a way to avoid seeing paywalled articles on the HN front page at all. Read it: a comment in “Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming”
30. Apr 2021Wants a filter that excludes paywalled links, since they refuse to pay for paywalls. Read it: a comment in “Reuters website goes behind paywall in new strategy”
31. Dec 2019Wants a Chrome extension that detects tired conspiracy cliches in discussions and hides those threads automatically. Read it: a comment in “Ultrasound destroys 80 percent of prostate cancers in one-year study”
32. Nov 2019Wants an extension that removes Forbes and other paywalled sites from their HN list. Read it: a comment in “Astronomers Despair as SpaceX Starlink Ruins Observation of Nearby Galaxies”
33. May 2019Wants an HN clone that removes links to big news outlets, and asks if others want it. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there a HN clone that can remove NYtimes, WashPost, etc.”
34. Jan 2019Wants an AI quality filter for social media that shields public figures from abusive messages, like a moderator. Read it: a comment in “Matz: We are mere mortals”
35. May 2018Wants a curated, personalised reading service pulling articles from across the web, like HN tuned to them. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Do you dislike the way you read articles?”
36. Dec 2017Wants a private dislike button that trains social media to stop showing posts that make them sad. Read it: a comment in “Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?”
37. Oct 2017Wants an extension to hide comments mentioning one specific website in a thread. Read it: a comment in “Documenting the Web together”
38. Dec 2016Wants a plugin that removes all links to chosen domains from any page, with a shared community list. Read it: a comment in “How publishers are defeating ad blockers and how ad blockers are fighting back”
39. Nov 2016Wants a tool that blocks any news source mentioning a particular politician, leaving a whitelist of other topics. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Online Trump Blocker”
40. Oct 2016Wants an app that ensures they never read anything by one specific annoying author again. Read it: a comment in “Hyperloop Freight is a Joke”
41. Jan 2016Would pay a monthly fee for a service that accurately filters or removes clickbait and noise. Read it: a comment in “A Colleague Drank My Breast Milk and Other Wall Street Tales”
42. Apr 2014Wants a plugin to hide front-page headlines permanently, the way a 4chan thread stays hidden across sessions. Read it: a comment in “An Update on HN Comments”
43. Mar 2014Wants an HN app that sorts posts into topics by text analysis so fluff can be filtered. Read it: a comment in “Please add this 1 line, make HN mobile friendly”
44. Dec 2012Wants a browser extension that removes topics they declare uninteresting across all popular sites. Read it: a post: “HN Idea: Filter The Internet”
45. Jul 2010Wants a hosted service that takes an RSS feed and filters, then returns a new filtered feed link. Read it: a comment in “A cure for Hacker News overload”