One thing that's great about Stacker.news is that with some digging, we can actually SEE what is being hidden from us.

And right now, most of what's being hidden (what somebody is spending by far the most sats to hide, with downzaps) is anything that's critical of Israel and the Iran War.

A while back I created a browser extension called Stacker News Downzap Spotlight. Previously it just made it easier and more "top of mind" to see downvotes, by creating a Downzaps link right on the top menu.

Below is what my Stacker.news front page looks like (see instructions below on how to set up the extension yourself).

Having this, and looking at downzaps much more often (as my anti Iran War posts get downzapped to oblivion), had made me see some patterns.

• I had almost zero downvotes before I started posting about the Iran War, Israel, and the Charlie Kirk assassination and potential Israeli involvement. A few scattered "-21" downvotes, probably when people thought I was being too much of a carnivore booster, but basically almost nothing. And nothing that seemed designed to push something off the top of the feed.
• Since I started posting more on the Iran war and Israel, a lot of my posts - any of them that got traction - have been downzapped to oblivion. In other words, downzapped so far that they're not on the front few pages
• In the past couple days another pattern has emerged. And that is - high amount "Red Herring" downzaps. Downzaps that are meant to obscure what the main pattern is (which is - anything that's anti Iran War or anti Zionist is downzapped). For instance, check out the top downzaps for the week (https://stacker.news/top/posts/week?by=downsats)

Notice - 5 of the top 7 downzapped posts are in some way anti Iran war, or about the downzapping issue. The 2 that are not?

I think 1 person did those downzaps. And I think they did it just to obscure the main pattern (anti war, anti censorship posts are being downzapped). Because seriously - what bitcoiner could be against this one - JoinMarket Maker DoS Attack: What's Happening and How to Fix It, for exactly 5000 sats?

They did it so that when you look at top downzaps for the week, it's not quite as blindingly obvious that most of the downzapping is to support the Zionist cause and the Iran war.

Installing Stacker News Downzap SpotlightInstalling Stacker News Downzap Spotlight

Here's the browser extension I wrote with the help of AI. It adds a downzap link on the front page, and shows the amount downzapped, in red. It should be easy to install, ask if you have issues. I had a few problems pasting in code so that it formatted correctly, h

Works on Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera, and Arc.

Install

1. Create a folder somewhere permanent. Call it StackerNewsDownzapSpotlight. If you delete the folder later, the extension stops working.
2. Save the two files below (manifest.json and content.js) into that folder.
3. Open chrome://extensions (or brave://extensions, edge://extensions, etc).
4. Turn on the Developer mode toggle in the top-right.
5. Click Load unpacked and select the folder.
6. Open https://stacker.news — you should see the Downzaps link at the top, and red downzap badges next to post titles.

If your browser shows a yellow banner about disabling developer-mode extensions, ignore it. That's normal for anything not installed from the Chrome Web Store.

File 1: manifest.json (describes the extension)

{ "manifest_version": 3,

"name": "Stacker News Downzap Spotlight", "version": "1.0",

"description": "Adds a Downzaps tab to Stacker News and shows each post's downzap total next to the title.",

"content_scripts": [

{

"matches": ["*://stacker.news/*"],

"js": ["content.js"]

}

]

}

File 2: content.js (this file actually does the work)

// This function creates, places, and styles the button

function injectButton() {

// Check if we are currently on the 'downzaps' page

const isDownzapsPage = window.location.href.includes('by=downsats');

const allLinks = document.querySelectorAll('a');

let topLink = null;

// Loop through to find the 'top' link in the navigation bar

for (let target of allLinks) {

if (target.textContent.trim().toLowerCase() === 'top' && target.getAttribute('href') && target.getAttribute('href').includes('/top/')) {

topLink = target;

break;

}

}

// If we can't find the 'top' link, stop here

if (!topLink) return;

// Check if our custom button already exists

let newLink = document.getElementById('custom-downzap-btn');

// If it doesn't exist yet, we create and insert it

if (!newLink) {

let nodeToClone = topLink;

let insertTarget = topLink;

// Check if the "top" link is inside a layout wrapper (like an <li>)

const parent = topLink.parentElement;

if (parent && (parent.tagName === 'LI' || parent.children.length === 1)) {

nodeToClone = parent;

insertTarget = parent;

}

// Clone the element

const newContainer = nodeToClone.cloneNode(true);

// Find the actual <a> tag inside whatever we cloned

newLink = newContainer.tagName === 'A' ? newContainer : newContainer.querySelector('a');

if (newLink) {

newLink.id = 'custom-downzap-btn';

newLink.href = '/top/posts/day?by=downsats';

newLink.textContent = 'downzaps';

// Insert it into the page exactly after the 'top' link's container

insertTarget.parentNode.insertBefore(newContainer, insertTarget.nextSibling);

// Give it a little breathing room so it doesn't touch the 'top' link

newContainer.style.marginLeft = '12px';

}

}

// --- Styling / Bold Logic ---

if (newLink) {

if (isDownzapsPage) {

newLink.classList.add('active');

newLink.style.fontWeight = 'bold';

if (newLink.parentElement) newLink.parentElement.classList.add('active');

topLink.classList.remove('active');

topLink.style.fontWeight = 'normal';

if (topLink.parentElement) topLink.parentElement.classList.remove('active');

} else {

newLink.classList.remove('active');

newLink.style.fontWeight = 'normal';

if (newLink.parentElement && newLink.parentElement !== newLink) {

newLink.parentElement.classList.remove('active');

}

}

}

}

// Downsats-next-to-title decoration. Listings don't show downsats anywhere,

// so we fetch each visible item's downSats via the site's own GraphQL

// endpoint and stamp the value next to the title.

const downSatsCache = new Map();

const pendingIds = new Set();

let fetchDebounce = null;

let decorateDebounce = null;

function collectItemTitleAnchors() {

const out = [];

const anchors = document.querySelectorAll('a[class*="item_title"]');

for (const a of anchors) {

const href = a.getAttribute('href') || '';

const m = href.match(/^\/items\/(\d+)(?:[/?#].*)?$/);

if (!m) continue;

out.push({ anchor: a, id: m[1] });

}

return out;

}

function scheduleFetch(ids) {

for (const id of ids) pendingIds.add(id);

clearTimeout(fetchDebounce);

fetchDebounce = setTimeout(runFetch, 200);

}

async function runFetch() {

const ids = [...pendingIds];

pendingIds.clear();

if (!ids.length) return;

const aliases = ids

.map((id, i) => `i${i}: item(id: "${id}") { id downSats }`)

.join('\n');

const query = `query { ${aliases} }`;

try {

const res = await fetch('/api/graphql', {

method: 'POST',

headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },

credentials: 'include',

body: JSON.stringify({ query })

});

const json = await res.json();

if (json && json.data) {

for (const key of Object.keys(json.data)) {

const item = json.data[key];

if (item && item.id != null) {

downSatsCache.set(String(item.id), Number(item.downSats) || 0);

}

}

}

} catch (e) {

// Next mutation tick will retry.

}

decorateDownSats();

}

function decorateDownSats() {

const targets = collectItemTitleAnchors();

const toFetch = [];

for (const { anchor, id } of targets) {

if (anchor.dataset.downsatsDecorated === '1') continue;

if (!downSatsCache.has(id)) {

if (!pendingIds.has(id)) toFetch.push(id);

continue;

}

const value = downSatsCache.get(id);

anchor.dataset.downsatsDecorated = '1';

if (value > 0) {

const badge = document.createElement('span');

badge.className = 'custom-downsats-badge';

badge.textContent = `${value} sats \u2193`;

badge.style.cssText = [

'display: inline-block',

'margin-right: 8px',

'padding: 1px 7px',

'background: #c0392b',

'color: #fff',

'border-radius: 3px',

'font-size: 0.85em',

'font-weight: 600',

'white-space: nowrap',

'vertical-align: baseline'

].join('; ');

anchor.insertAdjacentElement('beforebegin', badge);

}

}

if (toFetch.length) scheduleFetch(toFetch);

}

const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {

injectButton();

clearTimeout(decorateDebounce);

decorateDebounce = setTimeout(decorateDownSats, 150);

});

observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });