Ask HN: Should Browsers load explicit content in Incognito mode automatically?

3 points by chrmod 6 years ago | 2 comments

That way explicit content urls won’t land in browsing history accidentally. Should browsers do that automatically or ask user every time domain known for explicit content gets detected?

CM30 6 years ago |

It's an interesting idea, but I think that it'd have to tell users the current page is considered 'explicit', give them a clear opt out and maybe make it an optional feature you can opt in to instead.

That's because actually detecting a piece of content is explicit is much trickier than it seems, and if the browser makes a mistake... well the user is going to end up with a page they may want to revisit being excluded from their browsing history, and potentially impossible to find again. That's not going to go down well.

Add to how different people are when it comes to deciding what they count as explicit (and what they do/don't want to be visible to friends/family/coworkers/etc), and this seems like a feature that'd have to be opt in to work well.

zzo38computer 6 years ago |

That is a interesting idea, but if implemented it should be user-configurable what URL patterns (and sources of URL patterns, so that you do not have to enter all of them by yourself if you do not want to) and to enable/disable such function, and maybe should be an extension. Anyways there are other purposes for Incognito mode too that you might want such a thing (which is possible whether it is "explicit content" or not).