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Comment by the_snooze

20 hours ago

>There is no corporate-curated algorithm that is up to the task, especially when the primary purpose is to profit from advertising.

I think this is the root cause of the problem. Google can easily put a big dent in this problem by allowing users to create their own importable/exportable filters and support the dissemination of something like "EasyList for search results." But that kills their golden goose of advertising influence.

> "EasyList for search results"

Who will be in charge of curating that list? We know that crowd-sourced stuff is easily abused (see Amazon reviews, see YouTube comments).

  • It would indeed be crowd-sourced, but with a core set of maintainers. Wouldn't be all that different from EasyList or Steven Black's HOSTS file. They basically take in merge requests from the community and serve as an initial filter against garbage. [1]

    And unlike Amazon reviews or YouTube comments, anyone can fork it if they think they can maintain it better.

    [1] "The filter lists are currently maintained by four authors, Fanboy, MonztA, Khrin, Yuki2718 and PiQuark6046, who are ably assisted by an ample forum community." https://easylist.to/