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

aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 1916 points –

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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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.

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)
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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.

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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 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.

The headlines you so often see are driven by money and profits. When you see a headline you have no interest in, keep scrolling. It isn't much different than lemmy. Poor, repetitive content will eventually sink to the bottom.

Know they enemy for what? So we can continue doing nothing about it? This thread is full of lames.

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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.

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

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.

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."

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.

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 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?

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I feel like any time you're on establishment media, it's all just an ad for the billionaires who own and control the outlets.

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.

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.

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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?

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!

Well, while I acknowledge that it's important to know what the rich are doing to undermine society, I like that the app would give me control over what I'm seeing, and when I see it. I think if it gives the option to unhide stuff so that I can digest it when I am best able to, than it is a good thing. Like a NSFW filter. It could just have a "show billionaire related content" button on it. Besides, if their mucking about is impacting something that's important to you, it'll probably be referenced in content you're actively seeking.

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

If any one of these people actually goes to prison I promise to ship myself to you in a giant cake and let you know in person.

Haha... noting your response to hold you accountable.

It has got to happen some day. I just want it to be in this lifetime

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.

Except Musk. Musk loves any kind of publicity and he understands that people love to look at clown billionaires. It's a great disarming tactic. The public sees him as that harmless prankster and not a threat.

Nah that's alright. It's not like we can do anything about them anyway. I'm just going to ignore them.

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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.

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.

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?

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

You wouldn't be able to link me to a tutorial to do that, would you? I'm not trying most technologically inclined, tbh.

Not the person you're replying to but here's the tutorial

Btw the setup while completely doable is pretty convoluted. It's clear that Mozilla really doesn't want us to do it.

This option only exists to shut up a few loud nerds.

Edit: I actually tried to follow the tutorial and a few issues showed up.

  1. If you're adding addons to your collection for first time it only shows mobile addons in the search results. To see desktop addons you need to open the page in desktop mode and tell it to show desktop addons.

  2. Mozilla's addon search results are really bad. Searching "block the rich" only gives you bad results. "Block rich" or "the rich" aren't any better. Only search term that worked was "rich" and even then the addon was pretty far down in the search results.

Thank you. That is the same tutorial I used.

I too encountered those same stumbling blocks.

I found it was easiest to browse add-ons on my PC and save them to the list there, then subscribe to the list on mobile

Wow. Looks like that website is only usable in desktop mode. Thanks, that makes it a bit simpler.

Edit: Wait WTF I can absolutely just browse the website in mobile mode and add addons to my collection. The tutorial was pretty misleading. Searching for addons in my collection is worst way to get new addons.

I have been looking for this but for a customized list of celebrities and politicians whose opinions carry little weight in the real world.

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

Will you be providing how many times each rich asshole was blocked, perhaps a monthly report? Because that's the icing on the cake.

Isn't it important to keep tabs on what the obscenely powerful are up to? I.e. to try to hold them accountable, to be informed on what you're protesting and criticizing, to prepare for what they're going to do next that may affect you?

While I agree it, does get tiring to see it in my feed 24/7. I can see this being useful for people who need a break.

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.

I like the idea behind this extension and would love to use it. However, I would really appreciate the ability to tweak the blocklist. Not that I enjoy seeing or hearing about Trump everyday, but I do want to stay in the loop with the ongoing court cases he's getting rammed with. If I never hear or see Elon, Zuck, etc. again then I'd be happy.

It's in a bit of a strange position.

It blurs the Images, but doesn't block the article or text?

Maybe for some people it can mean something, tho for me it's a bit of a not interesting feature. Like what is the purpose of bluring the image if I still get spammed with the article?

And this may be the real issue where you didn't get traction. The feature pretty useless for the majority of people.

In the current form, it tries its best to blur the images and the parts of the article that directly reference the billionaire 😊. But I plan to add a whole suite of user options if there is sufficient interest!

Lolz, it is crazy what one needs to do to prevail sanity these days

i like this idea because when i go to read the news i do not care about what rich people are doing.

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.

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.

Or we could not let robots decide what is good or bad.

It's not robots though, it's math. Which, from having gone to public school... generally translates to "magic" <insert hand waving> to most people.

It's incredible. They claim freedom is what they want, but they crave "the algorithm"...

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

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.

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.

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.

Very cool add on. I don’t really browse on a standard browser usually, but this is something I would add to my browser if I did. I feel the same as you, tired of billionaires thinking their hoarded wealth makes their opinions more valid or worth hearing.

This is AMAZING! Thank you. Running it now :)

If this could be changed to add a UI element to identify self-proclaimed pundits I feel it would be better. I think just blocking people is not fair. But, being more aware of whom may help improve critical thinking.

This is fantastic. I have but one request: Allow us to block any word / string we want :)

Lots of people say that we shouldn't be ignoring troublesome topics. I disagree.

Exposure and anger won't fix anything. It'll only degrade our quality of Life. It's just like reading about plane crashes won't get us anywhere ( unless it's part of your job)

Sad that Google is implementing Manifest V3.

Then step away from Google. They might be a big player, but they don't own the internet..

I think they do own it. Dont underestimate google , they are bigger and powerful than some governments.

I have a handful of devices here. Some Googled, some not. Believe me, you can definitely use the internet without Google if you want to.

I am using Firefox but after installing Arrow OS without Gapps my banking apps won't work, work related apps like Teams, Authy didn't work and had issues with IM apps. So if I have to be completely isolated then sure I'll go your route but I have to use my phone for work and other stuff hence I NEED google.

I don't even have a bank account. Have you ever read the terms of service on paper bills?

"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"

Tell that to the food truck that only has a card reader plugged into their phone and no change for a 50$ anyways

That sounds like a you problem, move somewhere else where they don't do such jank.

We don't have that problem here on the Gulf Coast.

Read the terms of service on the bill, then demand they honor the terms literally printed by the government and the US Treasury.

I think it is a great idea. If this was an optional implementation to an adblock extension, I would totally use it. Just like I used to block nsfw content in my last phone with a custom ROM.

your list of aliases could be turned into regexp's couldn't they ? To shorten/simplify and then be turned into a config

Instant type addons.mozilla.org into searchbar

Can I get one that applies to millionaire celebrities?

Is there a Chrom[e/ium] version by chance?

Why not use Firefox?

Because they don't? There's FOSS Chromium-based browsers that respect privacy that would benefit from this.

I'm sorry I didn't realize you spoke for db2

Why not use [browser you don't use]?

Correct, that was my question. Why would you use a chromium browser instead of Firefox?
It's not like firefox is expensive or difficult to get/install.

Because I don't want to. I was somewhat involved in Gecko development, used Phoenix before it became Firefox, even compiled it on BeOS once or twice, I didn't like the direction it took when it broke compatibility with SeaMonkey and it hasn't gotten better from what I've seen. Is that enough answer?

I honestly don't know if that was enough answer. You're extremely defensive over a simple question.