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!

  • DharmaCurious@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    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?

    • poweruser@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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

      • DharmaCurious@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

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

        • 2014MU69@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          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 few issues showed up.

          1. If you’re adding addons to your collection for first time it only shows you mobile addons in the search results. To see pc 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.