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.
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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.
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'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.
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.
Bro I thought this was satire!πThis is real???? I need this plugin!
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 donβt get the clicks they used to (if, i dunno, 30% of users use this extension).
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
I also have several projects where Iβm the only user, but I wouldnβt let that stop me from adding features for fun and exercise.
Itβs not for me though. But I want to stress itβs not because I dislike it, but I find that seeing something blurred almost highlights something thatβs 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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do celebrities please. I don't want to see a post about how stupid the Kardashians are every 5 mins.
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.
How about instead of blocking them it offers recipe and serving suggestions for rich people?
This is awesome. I made a block list for all the Trump domains for similar reasons.
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!
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
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.
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 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"?
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?
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?
Will you be providing how many times each rich asshole was blocked, perhaps a monthly report? Because that's the icing on the cake.
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.