# Hacker Smacker

> Highlight (friend) and filter (foe) individual authors on Hacker News

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/hacker-smacker](https://chrome-stats.com/d/hacker-smacker)

## Overview

- **ID:** `hacker-smacker`
- **Platform:** Firefox
- **Type:** Firefox add-on
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** Samuel Clay
- **Category:** feeds-news-blogging,social-communication
- **Daily users:** 34
- **Rating:** 2.50 / 5 (2 ratings)
- **Version:** 2.2
- **Last updated:** 2026-03-05
- **First published:** 2026-02-06
- **Size:** 100 KB
- **Data as of:** 2026-09-10
- **Store listing:** [Firefox Add-ons Store](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hacker-smacker/)
- **Website:** [https://www.hackersmacker.org](https://www.hackersmacker.org/)
- **Privacy policy:** [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hacker-smacker/privacy/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hacker-smacker/privacy/)

## Description

Hacker Smacker adds friend/foe functionality to Hacker News, inspired by Slashdot's classic system.

Three small orbs appear next to every author's name on HN. Click to mark someone as a friend (highlighted in green) or a foe (marked in red). Neutral authors stay unmarked.

The real power is friend-of-a-friend (FoaF): if your friends also use Hacker Smacker, you'll see their friends and foes too. This helps you quickly spot quality commenters when scanning long threads.

Features:
- Friend or foe any author with one click
- See friend-of-a-friend and foe-of-a-friend indicators
- Works on all Hacker News pages
- Profile pages at <a href="https://prod.outgoing.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/v1/643a76bef358a6fec0cbbd79eef6dca03ddf9b9d4df44ebd18fb4f30744ab3d1/http%3A//hackersmacker.org" rel="nofollow">hackersmacker.org</a> showing your network
- Open source: <a href="https://prod.outgoing.prod.webservices.mozgcp.net/v1/dad2af57a1584d6237be12a0c2959e9c4608a1858853668780c4cdb7e434f2a3/http%3A//github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker" rel="nofollow">github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker</a>

Privacy: Hacker Smacker only collects your HN username and your friend/foe ratings. No browsing data is tracked, nothing is sold, no ads.

## Rankings

- #19,293 — Overall
- #19 — foe
- #19 — hacker
- #45 — author
- #53 — cmd+m (mac)
- #83 — hack

## Permissions and access

### Permissions

- `https://news.ycombinator.com/`
- `http://news.ycombinator.com/`
- `http://www.hackersmacker.org/`
- `https://www.hackersmacker.org/`
- `storage`

### Content script matches

- `news.ycombinator.com`

## Safety

- **Risk impact:** Low risk impact
- **Risk likelihood:** High risk likelihood

### Analysis details

- Injects scripts into web pages, which may alter or extract site contents, resulting in a substantial risk.
- This extension has low user count. Unpopular extensions may not be stable or safe.

> Some risk analysis details are omitted from this free response. [Upgrade to view the full analysis](https://chrome-stats.com/pricing).

## Similar extensions and apps

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- [hcker.news helper](https://chrome-stats.com/d/hcker-news) — 7 users, 5.00 / 5
- [Refined Hacker News](https://chrome-stats.com/d/refined-hacker-news) — 315 users, 4.81 / 5
- [Hacker News Next](https://chrome-stats.com/d/hacker-news-next)
- [Miglior for Hacker News](https://chrome-stats.com/d/miglior-for-hacker-news) — 1 users, 5.00 / 5
- [Hacker News Comment Highlighter](https://chrome-stats.com/d/hacker-news-comment-highlight) — 7 users
- [Enhanced HN](https://chrome-stats.com/d/enhanced-hn)

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/hacker-smacker)