Chris Finke
chrisfinke.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Chris Finke, a developer of browser extensions such as YouTube Comment Snob and RSS Ticker, writes about extensions and side-project marketing.
What HN saysHN links it for his comment-filtering extension and for his experience earning money from extensions and from a TV mention's traffic.
22HN people shared it
13linked it in comments
21stories submitted
207story points
3 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Youtube comment snob4 people · first shared 2008
- 2Welcome to TwitterBar3 people · 2 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 3Welcome to the RSS Ticker2 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 4Show HN: A Chrome extension I wrote to filter out inane comments on any website.2 people · 2 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 5My Future of Developing Firefox Add-Ons2 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 6Facebook scavenger2 people · first shared 2008
- 7Rss ticker2 people · first shared 2013
- 8What kind of traffic is driven by a single mention of a domain on network TV?1 people · 159 points · first shared 2010 · 54 comments on HN
- 9What domains do people type in the address bar?1 people · 12 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Typo.js: Client-side JavaScript Spellchecking1 people · 5 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 11The Plight of the Self-Taught Programmer1 people · 5 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 127 ways to be a better developer1 people · 4 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 13Improving password input on mobile devices1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 14Run Your Own Television Network in the Browser with Channel Two1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Monetizing a browser add-on by replacing websites' ads1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · 2 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
genieyclo · 2011-09-29
You don't have to go that far, often times the comments can be helpful and insightful. I use Youtube Comment Snob[1] to weed out the most likely low-quality comments based on text patterns like lots of !!! and ??? in them, or lack of capitalization at the beginning of a sentence, excessive fucking profanity, COMMENTS IN ALL CAPS, and other customizables. Check it out, there exist addons for both Firefox and Chromium.
edit: I forgot to link the more general Comment Snob[2], also by the talented Chris Finke which is the same idea but for the general web as well as Youtube. Amongst the sites it features by default are HN and Reddit. It's really easy to write new site rules to add to it with the example he provides in the link. Only for Chromium though.
[1] http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/youtube-comment-snob/
[2] http://www.chrisfinke.com/comment-snob/
vaksel · 2009-11-17
awesome thanks! yeah that text should work.
Agree fully on the ads, the only reason I spent any money, was because I had some facebook and adwords credits. And since I'm not even running any ads now(don't want to scare off users), there is no X in ads = X new subscriptions.
Oh btw, I have the url fixer plugin for firefox, and it "fixed" your site to www.com, happened like 3 times before I realized what was going on, you should email that developer and tell him to whitelist your exact url. If that works, you'll get a ton of extra traffic.
The guy behind that plugin is http://www.chrisfinke.com/
cfinke · 2011-02-24
> Advertise in non-intrusive spaces.
I've tried this one, and it did ok - $500/month or so at its peak, when I happened to release updates to my most popular extensions all in the same month. Still felt a little spammy, but not too much. The user experience did suffer a little, so I moved to simple firstrun pages that focus more on "How do I use what I just installed?", like this: http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/twitterbar.php
> TwitterBar "via" field.
In the "new Twitter," the "via" field is hidden until you click on a specific tweet - the visibility is far too low to be worth it I think.
> [Lastly] Gather email addresses.
I started doing this just last week - see http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/twitterbar.php or http://www.chrisfinke.com/firstrun/rss-ticker.php. Opt-in rate so far has been low - about 1.5%, but I'm doing some A/B testing to work on that.
> Get a sponsorship
> Opt-in link juice/affiliate links.
I'll look into these two, thanks.
noosphr · 2025-09-06
I found a neat little artist page where they have the local star map, the milky way, the local super cluster and a bunch of other neat laser crystal stuff: https://www.bathsheba.com/crystal/#astro
I'd get one, or for that shipping cost make a better one and send them the data, but current shipping in and out of the US is ... interesting.
A quick google on openscad shows how someone build a model of the solar system: https://www.chrisfinke.com/2016/03/08/animating-the-solar-system-with-… if anyone else wants to have a go this would be a good place to start generating a model to send to the artist.
rndgermandude · 2016-04-30
Quite a few add-on authors say the direct opposite, that an WebExtensions only future will kill their add-ons and that there is no way mozilla will be able to provide enough APIs to stop that from happening.
Some examples:
- https://github.com/hultmann/multifox
- http://www.chrisfinke.com/2015/08/21/my-future-of-developing-firefox-a…
- http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/
PS: It goes without saying that Giorgio and NoScript due to their popularity and because Giorgio is very well networked within mozilla get a lot of special treatment an add-on that has only a couple of hundred or thousand users will not. This isn't a bad thing, for NoScript at least, but does not help other add-on developers.
clouddrover · 2016-04-30
> This isn't a bad thing, for NoScript at least, but does not help other add-on developers.
You should read Giorgio's blog post. The API features NoScript needs also help FlashGot, Ghostery, RequestPolicy Continued, ad blockers, and similar add-ons.
Both multifox and Chris Finke's blog posts are not saying their add-ons aren't possible with the new API, just that they don't want to rewrite them for the new API. Chris Finke is looking for new maintainers for his add-ons. Why don't you become the new maintainer for, say, RSS Ticker (or another of his add-ons) and port it to the new API? See RSS Ticker's page: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/rss-ticker/
willvarfar · 2013-03-14
I may be simplistic but I like the RSS Ticker plug-in for Firefox: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/rss-ticker/
It just shows you a scrolling marque of clickable headlines and doesn't otherwise get in the way. Its something to glance at when you're waiting for a compile ;)
anigbrowl · 2011-07-07
Try Comment Snob: http://www.chrisfinke.com/2011/03/18/youtube-comment-snob-is-now-comme…
Also allows filtering of HN.
silent_tone · 2009-11-13
This is sort of like a Youtube Snob for the rest of the internet.
http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/youtube-comment-snob/
planck · 2009-06-15
Why not just use existing technologies and implement it yourself? It's already been done anyway: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/nsfw-detector/
olegp · 2009-01-04
Interesting to see the author siding with Facebook on this one.
What if someone wrote a grease monkey script that let me scrape my data from Facebook's servers? In other words, what if I automated a process I could do manually without accessing any information I had no rights to in the first place or affecting the service in any way whatsoever.
Facebook would still be sending take-down notices: http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-scavenger/
In the UK the data protection act states that individuals have a right of access to the information held about them. If a user is blind and can only access their information using this script, wouldn't Facebook be violating their rights by preventing them from using it?
amoeba · 2008-08-30
Immediately reminds me of http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/youtube-comment-snob/.
I can't seem to create a string that qualifies as stupid text (Demo: http://stupidfilter.org/demo.php). Apparently I just don't have it in me to be stupid.
Can anyone trigger it?