[teruakohatu]

It is an unusual list. Along with a list an AI websites it also blocks a handful of instagram, X and Pinterest profiles. It also blocks a number of specific products on Amazon, such as a colouring book that presumably was generated with AI.

This kind of reminds me Steam where indie devs need to exclaim loudly that they are not using AI, otherwise they face backlash. Meanwhile a significant percentage of devs are using GenAI for better tab completion, better search or generating tests. All things that do not impact the end user experience negatively.

[dexwiz]

I think AI as a tool versus AI as a product are different. Even in coding you can see it with tab completion/agents v vibe coding. It's a spectrum and people are trying to find their personal divider on it. Additionally there are those out there that decry anything involving AI as heresy. (no thinking machines!)

[latexr]

> Additionally there are those out there that decry anything involving AI as heresy. (no thinking machines!)

I don’t think anyone decrying the current crop of “AI” is against “thinking machines”. We’re not there yet, LLMs don’t think, despite the marketing.

[TheJoeMan]

Are you hitting tab because it’s what you were about to type, or did it “generate” something you don’t understand? Seems a personalized distinguisher to me.

[halyconWays]

Given the political comments in what's supposed to be a filter, and how everything is prefaced with "shit" like "Pinterest shit," I bet the author had a personal political disagreement with those accounts.

The list is also too specific to be useful in some cases, like, is it really important to you that you add 12 entries for specific Amazon products, like: ` duckduckgo.com,bing.com##a[href*="amazon.com/Rabbit-Coloring-Book-Rabbits-Lovers/dp/B0CV43GKGZ"]:upward(li):remove()`?

[GaryBluto]

It's bizarre that the list was even posted here. Why would anybody feel the need to share their own, personal blocklist with HN?

[rjh29]

Even if GenAI is helpful it's okay to morally reject using it. There are plenty of things that give you an advantage in your career but are morally wrong. Complaints include putting people out of jobs, causing a financial bubble, filling GitHub and the internet in general with AI slop, using tons of energy, increasing dram and GPU prices.

And it's not even that apparent how much GenAI improves overall development speed, beyond making toy apps. Hallucinations, bugs, misreading your intentions, getting stuck in loops, wasting your time debugging and testing and it still doesn't help with the actual hard problems of devwork. Even the examples you mention can be fallible.

On top of all that is AI even profitable? It might be fine now but what happens when it's priced to reflect its actual costs? Anecdotally it already feels like models are being quantised and dumbed down - I find them objectively less useful and I'm hitting usage limits quicker than before. Once the free ride is over, only rich people from rich countries will have access to them and of course only big tech companies control the models. It could be peer pressure but many people genuinely object to AI universally. You can't get the useful parts without the rest of it.

[NotGMan]

Indie game devs aren't really facing any real backslash.

A smart loud minority is screaming a lot but actual paying customers don't care as long as the game is not trash.

[janice1999]

You're right it's about paying customers. No one is going to waste time campaigning against a $1.99 squid game knockoff on Steam if it uses AI (many are just Unity assets flips already).

The backlash I've seen is against large studies leaving AI slop in 60+ dollar games. Sure, it might just be some background textures or items at the moment, but the reasoning is that if studies know they can get away with it, quality decline is inevitable. I tend to agree. AI tooling is useful but it can't be at the expense of the product quality.

[lpcvoid]

Devs also shouldn't be using GenAI, it's inherently anti-worker and IMHO also anti-human. But I guess that's an unpopular opinion around here.

[snet0]

If a "C+++" was created that was so efficient that it would allow teams to be smaller and achieve the same work faster, would that be anti-worker?

If an IDE had powerful, effective hotkeys and shortcuts and refactoring tools that allowed devs to be faster and more efficient, would that be anti-worker?

[GaryBluto]

Who could've predicted that the alarmist luddite viewpoint would be unpopular on the technology forum?

[nkmnz]

You shouldn't be using a wheel, it's inherently anti-worker.

[bdangubic]

what about cars? they are anti-horses… can we use cars/buses/trains… or nah?

[pil0u]

Yes, it is an unpopular opinion around here, but pretty much in the tech world.

I think this is because most of the users/praisers of GenAI can only see it as a tool to improve productivity (see sibling comment). And yes, end of 2025, it's becoming harder to argue that GenAI is not a productivity booster across many industries.

The vast majority of people in tech are totally missing the question of morality. Missing it, or ignoring it, or hiding it.

[Refreeze5224]

I agree. The goal of AI is to reduce payroll costs. It has nothing to do with IDEs or writing code or making "art". It's meant to allow the owning class to pay the working class less, nothing more. What it *can* do is irrelevant in the face of what it is for.

[ares623]

I think the backlash comes from all the "AI-driven" layoffs that absolutely impact the end users negatively.