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!
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.
maybe even integration with uBlock if possible?
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.
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)
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.
Reminds me of Black Mirror White Christmas episode. I could use that feature.
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!
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.
It would bring people’s attention away from brand consumerism and to a constant consciousness of the ruling class looming over them in everything.
But then everything everywhere would look the same - whatever random picture it uses for Blackrock
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.
Probably the ugly face of Larry Fink! 😬
The way I would like to see it done is that any company name can be hovered over and the top 5 shareholders pop up and if applicable it tells you who the parent company is.
This would be a useful additional feature, I think the shock value of the method I’m suggesting would have potential to interest at least some press outlets (probably not the major ones who would recognise it as damaging to the people they represent though). You need some novelty in this kind of thing to get it to spread.
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.
I can see a (theoretically) positive outcome in media realizing that these articles don’t get the clicks they used to (if, i dunno, 30% of users use this extension).
“The clicks” don’t matter when these individuals own the media outlets and the social media platforms.
Finding this information is tough, but I searched to see what the most popular extension installed in Chrome is. One of the top extensions is Google Calendar. Even with it’s popularity, it only holds a 20% stake in calendar apps, and even then that doesn’t tell you how many people have actually installed the extension for Chrome. Basically what I am getting to is that the number of people who install extensions is really small. Like way, way smaller than us tech-savvy people might imagine, so OP’s extension isn’t going to affect click-throughs in the slightest bit - it would be a rounding error for some of these sites.
Having to constantly see what dumb bullshit Elon is saying or doing isn’t going to change anything in this world except the quality of my mental health. Some of us are just tired
They are counting on you to be tired. That’s on purpose.
I’m old enough to know that the only way things are going to change is when we start shedding blood. That’s just the reality of how fundamental societal changes happen. Things are either going to get better or worse, it’s just a matter of whose blood is running, theirs or ours. The fact is I’m old and tired and have lost my will to fight.
No amount of getting angry on the internet is going to change capitalism. No amount of voting is going to change capitalism. Changing the system while participating in the system is a fools errand and exactly what they want you to spend your time doing so you become old and tired like me. If you want to get rid of the rich and the hellscape they’ve created, you eat them. Asking me to get angry and not enjoy what little life I have left in me isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference.
“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” ― George Carlin
Call to arms
…
Excuses as to why I myself am not taking up arms
It was not a call to arms, it was an explanation of why I think the demand to get riled up on an internet forum is futile 🤷♂️
I feel my comment was on your first paragraph, about talk getting is nowhere and how blood must be spilled
Yes, you were describing it as a call to arms, I’m saying it’s an inevitability and nothing in this forum will result in systemic change. I’m not going to keep discussing the issue further because I’ve already had one comment removed by a mod. If you think you can change things then go forth, I’m just trying to live my life without being told it’s good for me to pay attention to rich assholes.
You know market share, marketing tactics use “mind share”, this would work great against that.
I actually agree with you in theory! But in practice, the super rich seem to crave so much of our attention. We are are all being inundated with their daily stream of consciousness and that’s what I’d love to help put a stop to.
For example, I truly believe that a certain manchild destroyed nearly 2 decades of brand recognition (twitter) just so he could take over the headlines yet again. I do not use his platform anymore, nor do I really care what he chooses to call it tomorrow.
People like that are not worth our brain cycles.
If you already know you’re not going to/can’t directly do anything about what they do anyway, every shred of attention they grab from you is a win for them and a loss for you. That’s personal, and anything that can be done about it, should be done. You’re going to hear enough about them to know to avoid their products and vote against them anyway.
Know they enemy for what? So we can continue doing nothing about it? This thread is full of lames.
Amusing addon but I find not visiting corpo media at all solves the issue handily.
Yep, it’s an easy fix. There’s better ways to get information about events that matter to you than corporate sponsored fear-mongering… I mean “the news.”
I try to avoid corpo media as well! But still… if you sort this community by the Top posts in last 24 hours there are a handful of posts about Elon Musk and friends. At least those of us who browse the desktop version of Lemmy can ignore such posts.
Bro I thought this was satire!💀This is real??? I need this plugin!
I think you’re supposed to get angry, not ignore them.
Nah, let’s put our fingers in our ears while we get fucked in the ass.
I hope you stay up all night, every night, sitting around very very angrily. That’ll show them!
I like to get kissed first
Nah, let’s look at daily screenshots of Elon’s tweets while we get fucked in the ass. In the end, aren’t we still getting fucked?
I’d rather schedule the fuckings for 9pm Sunday evenings when I disable my plugin for 30 minutes and catch up.
Why can’t I do both? 😊
I am already protesting so many of their services and products.
I do not wish for their stream of consciousness to invade my internet 24/7. I can easily disable my plugin and get a general idea of what they’ve been up to whenever I feel like it.
Absolutely. No one has to be angry all the time.
But then you won’t know how they are not paying taxes, or getting money from the government.
Yeah, the anger is the fuel you need to take these fuckers down.
Isn’t the answer, like, “always”, anyway?
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.
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
But surely people who would consider installing this extension are not the same people clicking and talking about “them”? Or are people really addicted to reading and reposting Musk etc… and need an intervention?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I couldn’t agree more. Describing the billionaire stream of consciousness that we’re being inundated with as “a DDOS attack” is brilliant. That is exactly how I see it.
I want to take back some control over when I choose to read about these people.
what the most powerful people on the planet are doing for our own sakes
Ahahahahah hahhahahahaha hahah haha hah hahh…
Good one!
No, I mean that for our own sakes, we need to know what the most powerful people on the planet are doing.
They’re not doing anything for us.
Can we please not bring this type of reply over from Reddit?
This
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.
Do celebrities please. I don’t want to see a post about how stupid the Kardashians are every 5 mins.
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.
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. I don’t hear much about them anymore anyway. 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:
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.
Thank you so much for trying it out! This truly is a very early prototype I quickly threw together. Given how much interest Lemmy has for the extension I will keep actively developing it. Maybe someday I can reach a state where the extension will be actually useful to you.
Doesnt work
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.
Amazing. Love it!
