The stopRU extension automatically detects and “burns” suggested YouTube videos and Russian comments.
A Ukrainian programmer calling himself Pan Taras created an extension called stopRU to help major browsers get rid of Russian videos in their YouTube feed.
How does the stopRU extension work?
The expansion algorithm works very simply: it calculates the language of the titles and automatically removes them from the feed if they contain characteristic Russian letters (е, ъ, ы, е). They stay with the flow while the title of the video has Latin or Ukrainian letters (ґ, є, і, ї).
Pan Taras claims that if the title contains only words made up of common letters of the Russian and Ukrainian languages, the extension automatically recognizes such videos as “Russian” and deletes them. However, the user can immediately click the “Cancel” sign and the video will not be hidden from the stream.
It’s worth noting that the extension is still not perfect and will usually just skip titles in “generic” letters without removing it. In this case, you can hide this video from the feed yourself. So, after a while, you will train YouTube to show only Ukrainian or foreign videos in your feed, with or without Russian.
With its extension, the developer has automated the process of manually eliminating videos as “uninteresting”, adding to it beautiful “chips” that hide Russian content.
Pan Taras notes that even though the video was made by a Ukrainian, and his name is in Russian, Stepan Andreyevich would be “burned” with laser eyes. The developer is not looking for “good” Russians.
What else can the StopRU extension do and not do?
The extension has rich enough settings to let you set default actions: automatically click “I’m not interested”, automatically click “Recommend channels” and delete videos “without warning”. You can customize all of these to your liking.
In addition, the stopRU extension can even hide Russian-language comments, trends and videos in YouTube search results.
You can install the stopRU extension on any current and popular browser. All browsers based on Blink engine (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera) or Gecko engine (Firefox and similar) are supported.
Unfortunately, the extension does not work on smartphones. To watch YouTube, users usually open a separate viewer program.
Of course, you can try to “add” the extension to mobile browsers such as Kiwi Browser or Firefox, but in the first case, the installed extension did not work for us in the “mobile” or “desktop” viewing mode of YouTube. and the Firefox version for smartphones only has a specific list of available extensions and stopRU is not included.
future plans
The extension is completely free and contains no ads. You can support Pan Taras and his team by making donations from the website.
In the future, perhaps, the developer will create a system of “white lists”, in which the user will enter his favorite Russian-language channels in order not to be blocked. But this weakness of Russian content comes at a price.
Judging by the reviews, the Ukrainians are happy with the expansion and have been waiting for it for a long time. The stopRU extension has helped its users to delete over 150,000 Russian videos and never see them again.
The author of the article only hopes that the developer will add a language analysis, not a letter as another “chip”, so that the presence of common characters does not affect the “sweep” result.
Previously Focus wrote that our editors are testing the AI in the new Opera browser and find it working disgusting and weird.
Source: Focus
Ashley Fitzgerald is an accomplished journalist in the field of technology. She currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker. With a deep understanding of the latest technology developments, Ashley’s writing provides readers with insightful analysis and unique perspectives on the industry.