Anything very close to current politics are very bad, and tend to be the worst offender when it comes to flooding with low effort comments. If I click “comments” and every two comments I see are low quality bickering, troll accounts, etc. from such a thread it will get hidden. Others have noted American politics are particularly bad, which is true, but additionally some of the most vicious threads have been on Indian political topics.

On the more technical topics, cryptocurrency is generally one of the hot beds right now. Threads on Rust can also can get pretty boring , but I won’t typically block those unless they seem mostly bad, which isn’t always the case.

To be a little more vague in attempt to not trigger any of the discussed issues, there are some more specific topics or words I will avoid and block threads about, because my experience is that even from the most neutral, analytical or intellectual perspective they cannot be discussed without triggering a ton of arguing.

As for how, it’s mostly ad-hoc clicking “hide” when I feel I don’t want to see it anymore. As a side note, it seems “hide” does not fully work for Ask HN threads and I assume Show HN as well (though it’s unlikely I’d be blocking the latter). Unfortunately I’ve also considered recently finding or making an extension to also hide certain users as there are certain accounts I remember by name for engaging in this sort of thing.