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!

    • @finkratEnglish
      3•1 year ago

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

    • db2English
      2•1 year ago

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

      • @[email protected]English
        0•1 year ago

        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.

        • db2English
          2•1 year ago

          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?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•1 year ago

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