PhobiaBlocker
Extension Actions
Enjoy a phobia free web. Block scary images from a large list of real-world objects (e.g., insects, animals, plants).
You're on your favorite chat or browsing social media when suddenly a wild and scary image of a spider appears! PhobiaBlocker lets you enjoy a phobia free web.
PhobiaBlocker blocks images related to your phobia. Choose what to block from a large list of real-world objects (e.g., insects, animals, plants).
Features
• Automatically block images representing real-world objects you have chosen
• Manually block or unblock images using the right-click menu
• Block all images across all websites
• Automatically block or trust (to improve performance) images whose src matches a specified regex (blocking takes priority)
• Add trusted websites (domain name with subdomain) to improve performance
Options
• Quick option to block spider-like and insect-like images
• Advanced selection from a long list of real-world objects
• Speed/Accuracy tradeoff of the automatic blocker
• Risk management of the automatic blocker
• Add or remove regex rules to automatically trust or block images using their src
• Pause the automatic blocker (manual blocking remains enabled)
• Enable dark or light mode (dark mode is enabled by default)
• Label trusted websites from the popup menu
Privacy
• No browsing data is sent to an external endpoint
• Images are analysed on your computer but they are not saved, except in a transformed form within a local cache that can be disabled in the options
Technical details and restrictions
• Machine learning models for ImageNet classification are used to analyse images. The list of things to block comes from ImageNet classes. This is why only real-world objects are supported. For instance blocking abstract phobias like heights or gore is not supported.
• The extension analyses <img> and SVG <image> elements. When a new image is added to the DOM or changes, the element is analysed as well. Images from <canvas> elements and the CSS background-image property are not supported.
• Images are temporarily blocked before they are analysed. Images can blink before being temporarily blocked in rare cases.
• Most of the extension's size is due to the machine learning models and the library to execute them.
• The automatic blocker uses a cache of decisions, which can be stored locally or used only temporarily. The cache contains non-cryptographic hashes of images. Both the cache and its persistence mechanism can be disabled in the options.
Latest reviews
- Goatman Brigance
- It's a step in the right direction for sure. But the time it took for the pictures to actually be blocked was too slow and I used it to block spiders and it would block other things such as Spider-Man. It needs to be more fine tuned so it can block only what I need to be blocked.
- Blu
- Perfect for arachnophobia and similar phobias Terrible for other phobias like Tokophobia.
- Blu
- Perfect for arachnophobia and similar phobias Terrible for other phobias like Tokophobia.
- Константин Балащук
- great idea! Useful tool. But more phobia categories required: blood, death, horror, medicine, garbage/trash, face/avatar etc.
- Константин Балащук
- great idea! Useful tool. But more phobia categories required: blood, death, horror, medicine, garbage/trash, face/avatar etc.
- Dean Wilson
- Its laggy so i just turn it off whenever i don't think i will see spiders (day to day work stuff). I switch it back on whenever i feel that i might be seeing some type of insect or spider
- Dean Wilson
- Its laggy so i just turn it off whenever i don't think i will see spiders (day to day work stuff). I switch it back on whenever i feel that i might be seeing some type of insect or spider
- Elias Foramitti
- I love the idea and I think it could help many people to make their online presence a little bit less anxious. However, the current version (1.2.0 from 10th of May 2020) is a huge performance burden on your browser and therefore probably only worth it for rather extreme phobias (or if you have a lot of performance to spare while browsing) (Note to the developer: I'm a data scientist myself, so I understand that you probably cannot do much about the network size and therefore this performance problem, but just be aware that this is probably your biggest problem here. I almost immediately uninstalled the extension after trying it out, since I am just not willing to give up all this performance for a little more comfort on the web) Another thing that is a major problem, but would fortunately be much easier to fix, I guess, is that images appear for a short flash before they are blocked. Of course some people, who are only discomforted *while* a phobia-inducing image is shown, probably prefer seeing all images instantly and the extension only blocking them one-by-one after it detects phobia content, but other people are probably too frightened even by a short flash of phobia content and therefore prefer the extension blocking all images by default and then only slowly reenabling them as soon as they are checked and confirmed to be harmless. A setting for this would be nice. The last major problem, which is probably almost impossible to solve, while maintaining a sensible performance cost, is that video material is not analyzed. Generally I love the idea and it is fairly well implemented here. The main restrictions are likely today's technical limitations, but if this extension is being kept up to date while PC performance increases and machine learning techniques are getting more efficient and/or some problem-specific, creative solutions are implemented to lower the performance cost, this might become a great extension and draw a large user baser (I know many people personally who would love such a tool)
- Elias Foramitti
- I love the idea and I think it could help many people to make their online presence a little bit less anxious. However, the current version (1.2.0 from 10th of May 2020) is a huge performance burden on your browser and therefore probably only worth it for rather extreme phobias (or if you have a lot of performance to spare while browsing) (Note to the developer: I'm a data scientist myself, so I understand that you probably cannot do much about the network size and therefore this performance problem, but just be aware that this is probably your biggest problem here. I almost immediately uninstalled the extension after trying it out, since I am just not willing to give up all this performance for a little more comfort on the web) Another thing that is a major problem, but would fortunately be much easier to fix, I guess, is that images appear for a short flash before they are blocked. Of course some people, who are only discomforted *while* a phobia-inducing image is shown, probably prefer seeing all images instantly and the extension only blocking them one-by-one after it detects phobia content, but other people are probably too frightened even by a short flash of phobia content and therefore prefer the extension blocking all images by default and then only slowly reenabling them as soon as they are checked and confirmed to be harmless. A setting for this would be nice. The last major problem, which is probably almost impossible to solve, while maintaining a sensible performance cost, is that video material is not analyzed. Generally I love the idea and it is fairly well implemented here. The main restrictions are likely today's technical limitations, but if this extension is being kept up to date while PC performance increases and machine learning techniques are getting more efficient and/or some problem-specific, creative solutions are implemented to lower the performance cost, this might become a great extension and draw a large user baser (I know many people personally who would love such a tool)