A software developer made a Chrome and Firefox extension called Knockoff that automatically hides, grays out, or filters products from sketchy brands on Amazon, which highlights just how many shady brands are on the platform and how commonly they show up on searches for basic items. 

In just a few minutes of using the extension, Knockoff dimmed product listings for screwdrivers made by “SUNHZMCKP,” spoons made by “SACATR,” and a lamp made by “ROTTOGOON.” In a tweet announcing the extension, developer Josh Pigford wrote “Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY, and LUENX.” The extension can also hide all sponsored product listings. The extension quickly went viral as a much-needed filter for people who still use Amazon and, for those who don’t use Amazon because of its horrendous labor practices and other concerns, it is evidence of what an incredible wasteland the platform has become. 

In a video call, Pigford told me that he had been thinking about making Knockoff for a while but that he finally decided to do it last weekend. “I was cutting the grass and about to get my trimmer out to do some weed eating, and it wouldn’t crank. So I decided to get some specific tools, and I searched for them and was like ‘What are these brands? Am I going insane?’ I just wanted something from a common brand or something I was familiar with,” he said. “I was like ‘man, I’ve gotta build something.’”

Pigford said that Knockoff is essentially building a list of brands to allow or not allow, and that it uses several different criteria to do this, including looking at the names of the brands: “Basically number of consonants, number of vowels, how they are grouped together, whether they’re in all caps or not,” he said. This means that brands like “EHEYCIGA” will be automatically added to the filter list. But the list of blocked brands is intended to be determined by its community of users, and any user can ask the extension to allow or block any specific brand for themselves. The project builds on previous similar attempts to highlight sketchy brands on Amazon, including one called AmazonBrandFilter and The Markup’s Amazon Brand Detector. The extension also allows anyone who has downloaded it to report potentially sketchy brands and to report brands that have been accidentally flagged as knockoffs. 

The extension runs locally and doesn’t require an account to use, and doesn’t send data back to any server. It is free. “I stand to benefit nothing directly economically, it’s a nice little tool I wanted to make,” Pigford said.

Knockoff is pretty useful whether you use Amazon or not. For those who don’t use Amazon, it highlights a problem repeatedly shown by Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission in an antitrust lawsuit against the company, which is that much of Amazon is pay-to-play, with brands needing to buy ads or placement boosts in order to be featured at the top of search results. The platform has also become an algorithmic and financial race to the bottom, with companies stealing others’ designs, jamming their product pages with keywords that will perform well in search, and creating fly-by-night brands to try to end up at the top of search results.

“There was somebody who sent me a screenshot from using the extension and the first 20 items or something were all grayed out. Like there were all these knockoff brands before they could find a legitimate item,” Pigford said. “It’s like, OK, that about sums it up.” 

“I think people want control over what it is that they're seeing on the internet,” he added. “This sort of gives some control back to just getting everything shoved in your face. It’s like fighting back against the algorithm to some extent.”

Bonobo überrascht mal eben mit gleich zwei Singles, die heute erschienen sind. Zum einen „Drift“ mit offiziellem Video und „Fire on the Water“ (feat. Arooj Aftab) mit einem Visualiser. Beide Tunes sehr gelungen, das dazugehörige Album „Distance in Static“ erscheint am 11. September bei Ninja Tune.

(Direktlink)

(Direktlink)

A police officer speeds 70 MPH down a two-lane highway running over a bridge in the Florida Keys. He passes a dump truck in a no-passing zone, then immediately does it again, crossing over a double-yellow line to pass another truck. He passes a third vehicle, nearly causing a head-on collision with a white pickup truck that veers away from him in the oncoming traffic. The cop keeps driving, and sees the SUV he’s been in pursuit of. He flicks his sirens and lights on and pulls it over. 

The cop, Lamar Roman, wasn’t trying to pull over a suspected criminal. He was tracking and chasing a woman that he met and harassed on the set of the AppleTV+ show Bad Monkey, which he had worked a security detail shift on a few weeks prior to pulling her over. After meeting the woman, catcalling her and harassing her for her full name and Instagram details, the cop illegally looked up her vehicle information on DAVID, a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles database for law enforcement. He then put her license plate details on a surveillance “hotlist,” meaning he would get a notification in real time anytime she drove by an AI-powered license plate surveillance camera. 

Roman told investigators that he saw the woman as a “shiny thing” and knew that using surveillance tools to track her was illegal, according to police records. He told investigators that “I knew that when I put [her into DAVID], I’m like ‘fuck’ and that’s why I stopped right after and nothing else.” But that wasn’t the end of it; he investigated the woman then used a powerful license plate tracking database to find her location and chase her down. In doing so, he also “almost cause[d] a head on collision while passing as a white truck traveling northbound had to veer off the roadway to avoid a collision.”

The shocking and egregious incident highlights the fact that police around the country have abused their access to surveillance tools for their own personal stalking projects, and shows how different law enforcement databases and surveillance tools can be tied together to investigate and follow anyone. 

Gestern hier schon mehrfach gelaufen, was sich dann bis ins Heute gezogen hat. Eine ganz wundervolle Perle, die Isabeau Fort gemeinsam mit FROMM | NOW an der FreiKörperKüste des diesjährigen Fusion Festivals gespielt und aufgenommen haben. Nur keine Hektik und davon jede Menge. Toll!

Hello lovelies,
this is our Sunday morning opening set from FreiKörperKüste at Fusion. Opening this beautiful corner of the festival was such an honor for us.
When we arrived, people were scattered all across the beach. Curled up in the sand, floating in the water, wrapped in towels, cuddling, napping, quietly chatting. Everyone seemed happily exhausted after days in the blazing sun. There was something so intimate and peaceful about that moment, and being the ones to accompany it with music felt incredibly special.

It felt less like playing a set and more like becoming part of a moment that we all created together. Watching the beach slowly come to life over those two hours, little by little, was something we’ll never forget.

Hier war die Tage arbeitsbedingt einiges los. So ist es im Sommer kurz vor den Ferien immer. Ich komme daneben kaum zu irgendwas. Vorbereitungen für eine Ferienfreizeit für 100 Kids, Dorfbums-Sommerfeste, die mich gerade „kulturell“ hart fordern und die zu den Dingen gehören, die ich eigentlich nicht so besonders mag. Weiterbildungen, die vor der Sommerpause noch mitgenommen werden wollen und fast keine Zeit für irgendwas anderes. Ich kam bisher nicht mal wirklich dazu, die immer größer werdende Fusion Playlist angemessen hören zu können.

Aber heute ist ein Sonntag, an dem ich endlich mal wieder so gar nichts vorhabe. Es regnet und ist sehr, sehr ungemütlich vor der Tür. Also bisschen was kochen und Musik hören. In dem Fall die von Marius Nitzbon, der auf der Fusion die Seebühne bespielt hat. Mit Klavier bei 35°C – und alles daran ist schlichtweg wundervoll. Wer Niklas Paschburg und Nils Frahm mag, wird auch das hier lieben. So wie ich.

Nächste Woche dann noch jede Menge Schreibkram, Termine und Aufbau der Ferienfreizeit. Und danach Urlaub und viel Zeit für Musik. Land in Sicht.

Wednesday, 8 p.m. at the legendary Seebühne.

We showed up with a real piano in 35°C heat and were definitely pushing it. But with this crew, everything came together perfectly.

60 minutes of live piano, analog synths, and everything in between.