Exterior the harmful implications of Grok creating sexualized imagery of real women, it is the epitome of annoying X mind rot. I can’t go greater than two posts and not using a reply from somebody asking “@Grok is that this true?”
What began as an attention-grabbing alternative to truth test posts with edgy humor (resulting in some really hilarious self-owns from the largest peddlers of misinformation) has itself changed into a disinformation machine, from briefly claiming that the 2020 election was fraudulent to the deepfake disaster it finds itself in now. By the way in which, Elon Musk’s large reply to this isn’t to take the characteristic down, however to put it behind a paywall…
And while there’s not much keeping me on X outside of following key personalities in computing, the incessant use of Grok to edit people out of pictures based on traits or long-thread pursuits for even a whiff of confirmation bias is just plain annoying.
Well, buckle up, because I have the answer: Un-Grok is here, and it’s a Chrome extension that has saved my timeline.
What is Un-Grok?
Made by Salman Qureshi, Un-Grok checks your X feed in real-time and removes any post mentioning Grok or from Grok itself. Once you strip this stuff away, it helps you go some way toward seeing actual conversation.
Once you’ve added the Chrome extension, you can toggle it on or off at will, and it will filter out any interactions automatically as you scroll.
Of course, as this is a Chrome extension, you’re limited to just any browser sporting Chromium for now. (If you’re not using Google’s official browser, you can download the extension from GitHub.)
You don’t need to use this (but you should)
Now, could this be done by heading into the X privacy settings and muting the keywords (or just blocking @Grok)? Yes, and that’s your way around if you’re using something like Firefox.
But there’s a more masochistic use for me personally, because with Analytics Mode, you can toggle a counter showing how many posts were removed as you scrolled.
If ever you needed a reminder of just how far X discourse has gone down the toilet, this is a fun way of seeing it — watching that number tick up to triple figures quickly.
Of course, the benefit of blocking Grok via a Chrome extension is a quick switch to turn it back off (rather than having to tweak your privacy settings again).
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