this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023

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

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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 Firefox 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 built 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?

Edit: I am blown away by the support from you all. Thank you! I am so excited to start polishing this baby up!

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[–] vd1n@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Great idea. Could be cool to blacklist people. Say you're reading an article and think to yourself "damn, that man or woman is a muthafucka!" Then you just highlight their name, right click, and bam! The summaremoved ain't to be seen agin.

[–] aCosmicWave@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I laughed out loud at this suggestion. Love it. I can imagine this could lead to some confusion if a user blocks a common name, like John Smith... but let me give it some more thought!

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of Black Mirror White Christmas episode. I could use that feature.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My only request would be to have a version that not just blurs the parts but completely removes the DOM elements where they are mentioned.

[–] inspxtr@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

maybe even integration with uBlock if possible?

[–] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wrote a plugin similar to this a long time ago because uBlock couldn't do it, at least not efficiently. I mentioned it in another comment already so I won't repeat everything.

The thing I made turned out to work better for getting rid of links you never want to see (facebook, twitter, quora, etc). You can apply whatever CSS you want to matches, so you can blur using a transform, redact (color: black; background-color: black), hide (visibility: hidden), remove (display: none), etc.

I even showed it to gorhill but I don't think he looked to hard at it and suggested I try something in uBO I already knew didn't work effectively.

Source - Add-on

[–] aCosmicWave@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

This is a great suggestion and is pretty similar to what some of the other commenters also requested. I am thinking to support multiple modes:

Blur The Rich (current prototype)
Block The Rich (your request)
Mock The Rich (replace the names of these billionaires with less flattering nicknames e.g. "Space Karen", etc)

[–] strangeAlpaca@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Bro I thought this was satire!💀This is real???? I need this plugin!

[–] MisterMoo@kbin.social 1 points 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.

[–] Stach@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Instant type addons.mozilla.org into searchbar

[–] JuliusSeizure@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

Amusing addon but I find not visiting corpo media at all solves the issue handily.

[–] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I get the sentiment but I more attribute it to giving a child too much attention. People keep clicking and talking about them so they stay relevant. Not only does this feed their ego it drives the hype machines ad revenue

[–] bonobo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly, you have to see what they're doing to know how to counter it (or even know that it exists). Living in a bubble isn't going to help us. Maybe you should install this on your kid's computer?

[–] Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

Can I get one that applies to millionaire celebrities?

[–] DaveNa@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But then you won't know how they are not paying taxes, or getting money from the government.

[–] nintendiator@feddit.cl 0 points 1 year ago

Isn't the answer, like, "always", anyway?

[–] JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is exactly what I need! Thank you. I'm sick of hearing about these few people, who think their word is better than ours because of their wealth and inheritance.

[–] slimsalm@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I was also thinking it, but the thought of "building your walls up so high, that you eventually don't know what is really happening around you" might become problematic. I am still thinking of how to implement it, I think such a projects is worth the effort, especially if you have full control of what you want to view.

[–] eendjes@feddit.nl 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also have several projects where I’m the only user, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from adding features for fun and exercise.

It’s not for me though. But I want to stress it’s not because I dislike it, but I find that seeing something blurred almost highlights something that’s gonna annoy me is here. Otherwise my brain would just kinda blank it. Good job tho, and I hope folks here are more interested.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

It's why I like RSS so much for article consumption since it renders everything into a single text feed. Visiting the actual site is too busy of a layout.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Please don't do this! Rich people love living in obscurity, it keeps attention and anger from their stupid decisions away from them and on to some scapegoat. This is like the opposite of the Streisand Effect and will only serve their interests. I know it's annoying to keep seeing the same billionaires in the headlines but the alternative is to be passive about their awful projects and the harm they're doing to the world. You'll only be doing them a favor with this addon.