Novelty Content Filters

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Updated Dec 31, 2015 at 04:53PM EST by Don Caldwell.

Added Dec 31, 2015 at 04:28PM EST by Don Caldwell.

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About

Novelty Content Filters are browser extensions that filter keywords, images or other web content from being displayed, which are typically created to black out mentions of controversial figures and ubiquitous celebrities.

Origin

On May 17, 2010, Greg Leuch from the Free Art & Technology released the “Shaved Bieber"^[1] web browser extension, which blacks out any mentions of Justin Bieber along with any pictures of the pop star.

Spread

On June 1st, 2010, Leuch collaborated with the interactive agency Jess3^[3] to launch the Oil Spill Plugin, which removes mentions of the oil company BP from websites. December 2012, Leuch released a follow-up app titled "Pop-Block,"^[4]which allows users to block custom keywords from appearing in their browser window (shown below).

In April 2015, entrepreneur James Shamsi released the Kardblock^[5] browser extension to block mentions of Kim Kardashian within web browsers.

On December 24th, programmer Rob Spectre released the Trump Filter^[2] Chrome extension, which removes mentions of "Donald Trump": from being displayed on various websites (shown below). According to Spectre, the extension received over 21,000 downloads with over 62,000 filtered Trump mentions in the first week.