"Block The Rich" is like an ad-blocker, but for obscenely wealthy people with overinflated egos.

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨aCosmicWave@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

About 8 months ago I got pretty tired of seeing billionaire spam online. I could not bear to read about yet another rich guy who launched themselves (or their $200,000 car) into outer space 🚀 . I did not care about their expert opinion on the latest meme coin back then. I do not care about their expert opinion on the dangers of AI today.

So… I developed a tiny, free, and open source browser add-on called “Block the Rich”. It is completely local and private. No data is tracked. No data is phoned home.

The concept is pretty simple: whenever I load a web page, the extension quickly analyzes the content and intelligently blurs out any references to the Forbes Top 10 Billionaires. Some former and wannabe billionaires are blurred out of courtesy as well (I’m looking at you Trump and Kanye 🙄).

This project is a very early prototype that I developed in the span of a few days. I have so many awesome ideas for enhancements but the truth is that the wind got completely knocked out of my sails when I put myself out there on Reddit many moons ago. There was absolutely zero public interest. To this day my wife and I are the only ones using the original prototype.

People of Lemmy, do you think there is a place on the internet for such a project, or is it time that I let it go?

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Comments

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Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’ve always believed it would be useful to have a thing like this but for brand logos.

But instead of blurring or blocking the brand logo like an adblocker what it does instead is show you the face of the top shareholder in that brand. Remove the brands and show the assholes that own them. Where it’s not a single person you replace that brand with the name of the hedgefund or bank that owns the investment.

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- Screwthehole@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  But then everything everywhere would look the same - whatever random picture it uses for Blackrock
  
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  - Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That’s kinda the point. Being able to see just how few people own literally everything and thus are influencing opinion through means that people currently completely overlook is powerful. Advertising is literally propaganda. Consumer culture is propaganda. When you cut through that and make people conscious of it on a constant minute to minute basis you will see rapid radicalisation occur. Our society relies on a system of carefully designed barriers that create separation between the people and the ruling class in a way that is unnoticeable to the average person without prompting.
    
    Think of it like pulling back the curtain in the wizard of oz for people.
    
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strangeAlpaca@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Bro I thought this was satire!💀This is real??? I need this plugin!

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Hazdaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
KNOW THY ENEMY

I think this project is a terrible idea (no offense OP, since I can see this comes from a level of frustration). Simply burying your head in the sand does not make these people go away. It doesn’t stop their abuses of power. It doesn’t make them any less of a bunch of douchebags. We the public need to know what they do.

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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I like the idea in principle, but I think it’s important to know what the most powerful people on the planet are doing for our own sakes. Admittedly, a lot of it is marketing bullshit, but it’s kind of important to see that so you can see through it and find the true motivations as well. Like their “effective altruism” bullshit.

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- vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’m actually ancap and all that, participating in barking contests over economics against those illiterate in it, sometimes, but:
  
  It does have the use you describe, like watching\reading\listening to propaganda to “read between the lines”.
  
  Only the fact is that this is expected, and such news are like a DDOS attack, you won’t preserve your sanity to make any use of them.
  
  The idea is good, and also maybe not using mainstream social media too.
  
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Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
not seeing does not equate to not existing.

let us not blind ourselves to their antics. awareness is key to prevent ourselves from being exploited.

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MisterMoo@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Back when Reddit was good because Apollo still worked, I had all kinds of keywords blocked (Trump, Elon, John Cena, Kardashian). The idea of being able to bring that to the entire experience of browsing the web is very appealing.

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gila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I get it, so I installed the extension and browsed with it today. My feedback is that I feel like blocking individual words like Elon or Bezos would be required to make this meaningful at all. I still saw a bunch of stuff about them that the filter didn’t catch because they are so ubiquitous that you don’t need to say their full name to communicate who you’re talking about.

At the same time, while I almost always don’t care and don’t want to hear about a piece of Elon news, it doesn’t mean I’m not interested in Twitter developments, but I think the filter will block most if not all links/info about Twitter since it’s intrinsically linked to Elon’s persona.

At the end of the day I think it’s a cool idea, but I don’t think you can effectively block these guys via this method without blocking any mention of any platform they’re associated with, which isn’t really what I want.

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- loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Doesnt work
  
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itsnotlupus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Instead of simply blurring them, it’d be technically possible to feed their images through a stable diffusion prompt, like “humanoid lizards” or “frantic lemmings”…
Also, I understand that a large language model could be made to rewrite articles about them with a matching prompt.

That would be very silly, of course.

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chk232@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Do celebrities please. I don’t want to see a post about how stupid the Kardashians are every 5 mins.

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- bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s pretty easy to block the sources of such news. I certainly don’t see any of it. I operate on the assumption that the kardashians all died from full blown AIDS. I might not be right today or tomorrow, but soon.
  
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- jtk@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I made a plugin extremely similar to this about 7 years ago, it scans both text and links, Kardashian was the first text filter I applied :) It sometimes got overly aggressive and would blank out entire pages, so I don’t use that feature much anymore. However the link stuff works great. I don’t see links to twitter, facebook, instagram, etc on any page any more. If anyone is interested:
  
  Source Add-on
  
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WhatAmIdoingHere@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Can it auto unblock when the news is that they are going to prison? I want to read and re-read those types of stories

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metrolw@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Would be nice to use AI and determine whether the article youre blocking is positive about them or negative and only show the negative ones.

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- aidan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Intentional echo chamber moment
  
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- deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s incredible. They claim freedom is what they want, but they crave “the algorithm”…
  
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DharmaCurious@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I absolutely love this! God, I need it. There are several websites I have to use for school that have bullshit articles on the side bar that I would love to block these assholes from. And for the people talking about blocking them being ignoring the problem, you don’t have to keep it turned on all the time. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to scroll through something without having to know what the fuck warren buffet thinks, or how the emerald heir is going to cure cancer with the power of a truck that looks like a PS1 asset.

OP, I love this. Please tell me there’s a way to do to this from Android?

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- poweruser@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Firefox beta on Android can use extensions that are designed for desktop. Some only work in desktop mode but so far all the ones I’ve tried work. The setup is a little complex if the author hasn’t marked it as compatible with mobile, but it is possible
  
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  - DharmaCurious@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    You wouldn’t be able to link me to a tutorial to do that, would you? I’m not trying most technologically inclined, tbh.
    
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EnderWi99in@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have been looking for this but for a customized list of celebrities and politicians whose opinions carry little weight in the real world.

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RocksForBrains@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
You brilliant, brilliant person.

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Gorgonzola_Gams@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Count me in

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rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Create a filter for uBO maybe? I run a number of specialized filters in uBO. A “block the rich filter” would be good. The advantage there is content can be removed from view completely, not just blurred.

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alberttcone@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yes, dammit. In fact this is the final nudge I needed to reinstall Firefox after many years. Yours will be one of the first plugins in the install queue. Thank you, good sir.

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Grant_M@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is AMAZING! Thank you. Running it now :)

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realitista@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I love this! I also wouldn’t mind to never hear from many of these buttholes again. Though I don’t mind hearing from Gates, so maybe would be nice to choose which ones.

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Talaraine@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I need the opposite haha... Gimme content for !eattherich

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slimsalm@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Lolz, it is crazy what one needs to do to prevail sanity these days

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housepanther@lemmy.goblackcat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thank you for this, @aCosmicWave@lemm.ee ! I added this to my extension to my Firefox install because I am really sick of the same thing.

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Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
i like this idea because when i go to read the news i do not care about what rich people are doing.

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BadRS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think you should be able to block people and companies. I’m tired of hearing about Tesla, people hyping Tesla, people doubting Tesla, bragging, complaining, questioning. I’m just done hearing about it.

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freehand8776@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If you could find a way to funnel the blocked content’s address to pi-hole it would just never load which is better imo

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sab@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I love the concept!

For me, the button of the extension doesn't work to toggle it on or off, so I can't find a way to view the blurred text without disabling the extension completely. So that would be a bit frustrating - sometimes I might want to read it, as in this post. If it's upgraded with an easy on/off toggle I'll probably start using it. :)

Blurred text also makes me somewhat curious by nature - a feature request would be to keep blurring images, but instead of blurring the text just changing the name of the person into "some asshole" or something like that. So that you get the substance of the headline without having to deal with the people.

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Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Can I get one that applies to millionaire celebrities?

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Stach@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Instant type addons.mozilla.org into searchbar

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albert@lemmy.sysctl.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is fantastic. I have but one request: Allow us to block any word / string we want :)

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yoz@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Sad that Google is implementing Manifest V3.

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- over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Then step away from Google. They might be a big player, but they don’t own the internet…
  
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