Comment by 3eb7988a1663
1 day ago
I am suddenly realizing how silly it is that I have put up with this for decades. Are GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites? I am thinking I should be able to run my own styling to make the ads nearly invisible. Or do the big players do all sorts of tricks to make identifying the ad content so dynamic that it would require constant vigilance to maintain? I have heard that Facebook does insane rendering tricks to prevent people from scraping their sites, not impossible to imagine some companies obfuscate the ad selection.
Probably a few dozen lines of CSS could give me a much better browsing experience.
Yes, Greasemonkey still exists. Also there are ad blockers, you know? Such as the oft recommended uBlock Origin[0].
[0]: https://ublockorigin.com/
I use the Stylus extension for site-specific CSS in Chrome. Usually end up with a big comma-separated list of selectors getting the { display: none !important; visibility: hidden !important } treatment.
> GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites
That's default firefox behavior.
Funny enough, even iOS Safari has a “hide distracting items” button you can sorta use for this kind of thing. I guess it won’t work on the App Store though.
ublock origin does wonders. I use it to give HN a dark mode
Sure enough, this looks great. Found a blog post where someone did the exact same thing. Unlike the Firefox mechanism of usercontent.css which requires a reboot after every change(?) this works dynamically on a page reload. Now trivial to restyle some content which would otherwise not hit a blocklist.
https://darekkay.com/blog/ublock-website-themes/
As someone extremely adverse to plugs, I was unaware ubo (the only plugin I use) was capable of this. Thank you!
Use an adblocker, like the FBI recommends.
It's more important even than anti-virus since advertising, nowadays, is so ubiquitous and regularly-enough the actual vector for a virus infection.