this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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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 πŸš€ . 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 πŸ™„).

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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[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 51 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 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

maybe even integration with uBlock if possible?

[–] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 8 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 6 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)
[–] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

[–] fing3r@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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).

[–] KonQuesting@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 year ago

"The clicks" don't matter when these individuals own the media outlets and the social media platforms.

[–] Hazdaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Zetaphor@zemmy.cc 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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

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[–] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago

You know market share, marketing tactics use "mind share", this would work great against that.

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[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] Screwthehole@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But then everything everywhere would look the same - whatever random picture it uses for Blackrock

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 26 points 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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[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] JuliusSeizure@lemmy.sdf.org 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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[–] vd1n@lemmy.ml 35 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.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

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

[–] aCosmicWave@lemm.ee 6 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!

[–] salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think you're supposed to get angry, not ignore them.

[–] bonobo@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nah, let's put our fingers in our ears while we get fucked in the ass.

I like to get kissed first

[–] BraBraBra@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I hope you stay up all night, every night, sitting around very very angrily. That'll show them!

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[–] DaveNa@lemmy.ml 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] MercuryUprising@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the anger is the fuel you need to take these fuckers down.

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[–] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 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 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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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[–] chk232@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do celebrities please. I don't want to see a post about how stupid the Kardashians are every 5 mins.

[–] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 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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[–] gila@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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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Bro I thought this was satire!πŸ’€This is real???? I need this plugin!

[–] ChiselerNeil@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can understand where you're coming from in terms of PR circle-jerking, which I am beyond over, but it keeps getting pushed at me for some reason by content ~~aggravators~~ aggregators. But sometimes we need to know when the ultra-privileged are actively undermining things the rest of us depend on, or might depend on if they were ever allowed to exist. Those issues need as many eyeballs as possible. So how would you separate the one from the other?

[–] aCosmicWave@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

My solution is to block them from my consciousness by default. Then when I feel like catching up I'll temporarily disable the plugin (I just added this feature). This way I can have the best of both worlds!

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[–] Someonelol@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] marmo7ade@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The issue is context and nuance. You can't set binary rules around what content you want to see, unless you do want to be willfully ignorant of the world around you. Which is what it seems OP wants to do.

Do I want to know when Elon Musk names his 23rd child a random string of characters? No.

Do I want to know when Elon Musk buys a company and runs it into the ground? Yes.

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[–] eendjes@feddit.nl 13 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 7 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.

[–] MisterMoo@kbin.social 12 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.

[–] DharmaCurious@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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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[–] bonobo@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I can see where you're coming from, but at the same time; did you get this idea from "Brave New World"?

[–] norske@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 1 year ago

Hell yeah there is. The only billionaire news I care about is some future article that talk about how they lost all their wealth because they finally had to pay their taxes or some shit.

[–] itsnotlupus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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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[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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