Show HN: Cut the crap – remove AI bullshit from websites

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

What the tool does

  • Takes a URL and returns a condensed version of the page, aiming to strip “clickbait, filler, and AI-generated SEO sludge” and keep core facts.
  • Positioned as similar in spirit to browser Reader Mode, but more aggressive and LLM-powered rather than just DOM-cleaning.
  • Current prototype has a ~2000-character input limit to control costs and lacks browser integration.

Reception and main use cases

  • Many commenters like the concept, especially for:
    • Recipe sites bloated with stories, ads, and videos.
    • News sites with cramped layouts, autoplay videos, and intrusive UI.
    • Over-marketed SaaS/landing pages where the value prop is unclear.
  • Some find the outputs “RSS-like” and pleasant for terminal browsers or RSS-style consumption.

Accuracy and limitations

  • Mixed results:
    • Works “perfectly” on some recipe/news pages, giving just the needed info.
    • Fails or misleads on others: e.g., local news pages where it pulls in unrelated link titles, marketing sites where it produces generic domain knowledge, or misinterpreted real-estate examples.
    • On some inputs it even gets longer or drops most of the article.
  • Several commenters doubt LLM summaries in general, calling them lossy, shallow, or “AI slop.”

AI vs AI and broader concerns

  • Strong irony noted: using an LLM (“bullshit generator”) to remove LLM-generated and SEO filler.
  • Some see this as a wasteful arms race: AI inflates content, other AI compresses it again, adding energy use with little net value.
  • Others argue it’s still useful, akin to grepping logs or compressing lawyerly legalese into more digestible text.

Impact on creators and the web economy

  • Debate over incentives:
    • Critics worry this disincentivizes content creation and reproduces Google’s “answer without clicking” problem.
    • Defenders say users aren’t obligated to consume content in ad-friendly form and that much current “creator” output is low-value anyway.
  • Nostalgia for a pre-ads internet where people wrote for joy and expertise, not monetization.

Implementation details and integrations

  • Reverse-engineered prompt appears to be very simple (“Condense… remove bloat, clickbait, scaremongering.”), using GPT‑3.5.
  • Requests for:
    • A URL-parameterized API and larger context window.
    • Browser extensions (Chrome/Firefox/Safari, Arc-like, Safari Reader-style) and possibly RSS-bridge integration.
  • Some prefer in-page transformation (like uBlock/reader mode) over off-site summarization to keep visiting original pages.