Still Unbuilt

All 100 ideasBrowser

#52 of 100 · Browser

Feeds and Shorts stripped from sites

A browser extension that hides feeds, Shorts and recommendations on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, or slows sites down, while keeping messages and search.

10asks, each re-read
10separate threads
9of 19 years
3since 2024
2010first asked

Asks per year

’081’10’12’141’16’1811’2011’2211’242’26

What the askers want

  • Would pay10%
  • Want it local or private50%
  • Object to subscriptions0%
  • Want it open source or self-hosted0%
  • Want AI to do it0%

Share of the 10 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.

What exists on Show HN

Built, still asked for7 Show HN launches do this job, and 14 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.

Instead of: News Feed Eradicator, LeechBlock, StayFocusd, YouTube

The idea, as matched

A browser extension that removes feeds, Shorts, Reels and recommendations from sites like YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn, and limits or slows time-wasting sites while keeping the useful parts.

Jev first matched 10 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 10 of 10.

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. All counted items hold up.

  1. Aug 2025Wants a way to block all YouTube Shorts in the browser. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels”
  2. Apr 2025Wants a browser plugin that hides Facebook posts from pages and people they have not subscribed to. Read it: a comment in “The Gruen Transfer is consuming the internet”
  3. Jun 2024Wants a browser extension that blocks vertical video everywhere across sites and embeds. Read it: a post: “Browser extension that globally blocks vertical video?”
  4. Oct 2023Wants a browser extension that removes the LinkedIn feed entirely so it cannot be reached by accident. Read it: a comment in “LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees”
  5. Aug 2022Wants a browser extension that keeps a site's page shell but removes all content, to break habits. Read it: a comment in “How I regained concentration and focus”
  6. Mar 2021Wants an extension or Mac app that slows bandwidth for chosen domains, so Twitter loads sluggishly. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: Ten seconds to ponder if a thread is worth it”
  7. Sep 2020Wants an app or plugin that removes recommendations and the home feed from YouTube. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?”
  8. Apr 2019Wants a YouTube extension removing sidebar suggestions unrelated to the current video, keeping only related ones. Read it: a comment in “The golden age of YouTube is over”
  9. Feb 2016Would pay for a LinkedIn extension that removes the news feed, like News Feed Eradicator for Facebook. Read it: a comment in “LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value”
  10. Aug 2010Wants a Chrome blocker like LeechBlock that blocks everything except an allowlist, with brief breaks every few hours. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: How to solve HN-loop?”

Building this?

Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.

See all 100How the counts work

Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own

This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.

Get your own box

$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.