Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels (gist.github.com)
106 points by shraiwi 8 hours ago
A filter list for uBO that blurs all video and non-follower content from Instagram. Works on mobile with uBO Lite.
Great! The more solutions to filter unwanted content on the internet the better.
Sometimes we find ourselves stuck having to use a particular platform because that's where the group chat is.
I've had great success with Firefox and the Social Focus extension. Works on a number of different sites including YouTube, Reddit and Instagram.
I would love have something like this on a phone but only solution which I thought of other than stop using the app is decompile whole app, remove the reels and recompile it again which is not very viable solution.
> I'm trying to make Instagram be what my parents said Facebook was.
Hell, you're trying to make Instagram be what Instagram used to be. Back in the early (pre-Meta) days, it was just a reverse-chronological feed of the posts from people you followed.
A decent part of why I bailed on Instagram back in 2019 or so was because it had stopped being this for a while (posts reordered, some not even shown, so many ads).
In my case, Instagram eventually got to a point where most of my friends and family stopped posting. And I started following more creators because their content was interesting. These days there are some a few people I follow who are friends and I mostly just send them dumb reels. I see it more as a platform to consume content than keeping up with updates.
That said, I go through cycles of removing the app and reinstalling it later because it gets addictive.
You can still get a chronological feed if you tap the Instagram logo at the top and click "Following"
But you can't turn that mode on as a default, and it essentially kicks you from the normal app hierarchy into a separate barebones screen. I find it's all for naught anyway because my friends have long since stopped making regular posts on Instagram, it's more common to use stories.
Didn't know about this and wow, I had missed stuff from real friends because the regular feed hid it.
Do Stories show up differently than posts? Asking as someone that has not used Instagram beyond looking at a few specific profiles.
Right, you used to be able to do that with Facebook, too (haven't been on there in forever, don't know the current state), but, right, it would reset to the usual slop after a little while.
This sort of garbage is just yet another reason why I don't want to be on these platforms. "Oh, you prefer it this way? No, fuck you, we know better as to what you want."
> my friends have long since stopped making regular posts on Instagram, it's more common to use stories.
Ugh. I don't know what my friends have been doing these days on Instagram, but the last thing I want to spend my day doing is watching short-form video clips posted by my friends. The photo stream (yes, with occasional short videos), was wonderful.
I don't use the app so I confess I'm a little confused, I saw your screenshot and it seems like the end result is just scrolling through nothing. Why would you want that? Isn't it better to just not open it altogether? Like, block the entire thing? Why scroll through a bunch of blur
The screenshot was to demonstrate what blocked posts look like. I scrolled past the posts of my friends since I didn't want to dox them, but organic posts do show up near the top of my feed.
The goal isn't to scroll through nothing, but rather have a clean feed that shows me just my friends and nothing else.
When you press "For you" at the top in the Instagram app (or the logo if it doesn't fully load), you can switch to "Following" and it will show you posts from only your friends from the past 30 days, and if you're using Instagram in the browser, you can bookmark https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following if you want it to be the default page you go to.
So why blur and not just hide?
It says in the post OP didn't want to fix the layout (and it is implied that empty space is less friendly than blurred content)
Same reason people use app timers when they can elect to not use the app instead.
From the gist:
> I'm trying to make Instagram be what my parents said Facebook was
This sure makes me feel old. It's a great goal though. I miss the golden era of Facebook when it was really just friend content.
It took a nosedive the day the news feed was released. I remember people were angry about it and it's one of those things that didn't just take getting used to, it still sucks all these years later.
Instead of using apps, use Brave browser and you will think that Instagram is a comepletely new social media.
I run PiHole + Unbound + OPNSense firewall at home, everything is filtered, plus Brave browser shield filter.
I also run GrapheneOS so I banned myself from using apps and use the mobile version instead, duuuuude, Instagram is actually usable.
To upload videos however, I must use its app, duuuuude, it is just ADs, suggestions, shorts and shit.
If people tried to use Instagram via Brave browser instead of the app, that alone would explain to you why I hate apps and how apps allow companies to push shit into you all.
Instead of promoting the Chrome ecosystem, you can just run Firefox with AdNauseum.
I think this is already possible. You can snooze suggestions and then if you scroll to the top of Instagram, you can select "Following" instead of "For you". Maybe this is not possible in browsers though, I've only ever done this on my phone.
I did something similar for myself a few years ago:
||instagram.com^
Does Instagram even have reels in the browser? If it has I've never noticed them
> I'm trying to make Instagram be what my parents said Facebook was. Christ, I'm old.
i was hoping Instagram would add a toggle to get rid of this stuff!
On the mobile app you can tap the Instagram logo and there's an option to show only posts from your follows. It's not sticky, unfortunately.
Also if you're on android I recommend:
distractionfreeapps.com/
They make a bootleg version of the app with the ability to remove certain feeds, e.g. reels, discover, stories
It's sticky on the web though:
Too bad that would hurt their bottom line.
My solution is rather simple: don’t use Instagram.
there are plenty of positive things that can come from using a platform like Instagram.
That's what they said about facebook. That's what they said about twitter. Not once has it actually been true for me.
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