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 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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 ๐Ÿš€ . 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 ๐Ÿ™„).

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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[โ€“] sab@kbin.social 3 points 2 years 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.