Scroll the comment section on virtually any site on the web and you’re bound to encounter at least a few toxic comments. Maybe more than a few, depending on the site you’re looking at and the topic of the post people are commenting on.
Sometimes the comment section can be great. Commenting allows you to chat with others who have read the same article about your thoughts, engage in friendly debate, and potentially learn something new. Other times, the comment section can be difficult to read and can do more harm than good. For those times, there’s the Chrome extension Shut Up.
Shut Up has been around for a while, but given our current life situation as a country it’s worth pointing out again. Essentially the Chrome (and also Firefox and Safari) extension serves one purpose: to help you avoid the comments. There’s also an iOS app for the service.
Once installed, the extension blocks the comment section on sites so you don’t see them by default. If you read something you’d like to see the comment for, you can switch it back on and view them as normal.
If there are sites you love commenting on you can also have some sites comments on by default.
The good part about it, in my opinion, is you’re opting in to seeing what people have to say, not accidentally stumbling across a horrific comment from a troll that brings you down for the rest of the day (or encites you to start a comment debate/brawl with said troll).
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