“If you don’t like it, look away.”

This is often cited on the Internet as an answer to censorship. If you don’t like what you see, go somewhere else. There are plenty of sites I don’t like on the web, and I avoid them. Simple enough.

Some sites are harder to avoid than others, because they post linkbait or engage in deceptive practices. I got tired of falling into their traps so I set up a simple filter in my browser to redirect me away from them. It comes to this page with these explanations:

Huffington Post

It’s hard to say exactly why I hate Huffington Post, but I really can’t stand it. It’s loud, strongly biased, and seems to shout all of its half-baked opinions from every page, all at once. It’s the opposite of the way I’d like to see discourse carried out on the internet.

Occasionally a friend has an article feature on HuffPo. I don’t read those articles either.

trap.it

There’s some crazy variant spelling for the actual name of the service, but the flaw is right in the name. I don’t want to be trapped by a link-sharing service. I want to use the Web as its own.

phys.org

Sometimes the headlines on phys.org seem like they’re written specifically to catch my attention. The articles never, ever, ever follow through; they’re either horribly-written vague descriptions of research that doesn’t (when investigated) back up the headline, or horribly-written recapitulations of other better-written articles. I avoid both.

wordIQ

I can’t remember exactly why I blocked this one, but from a quick glance it looks like they present linkbait definitions to search engines that disappear when clicked through. Something like that.