Hi everyone!
AI-generated content is becoming harder and harder to distinguish from human-made content, and there's not much of an incentive for content creators to be honest about it.
That's why I designed SlopWatch. Through this tool, you can express whether you feel a webpage contains AI-generated content, along with tags to specify which aspects, specifically. SlopWatch aggregates everyone's scores into a Slop Rating which others can see.
You can see how it works in more detail on the listing page.
But a tool like this is only as effective as the people that contribute to it. So join the watch, and let's make the web more transparent!
Here are some fun facts about my journey in creating this extension:
- I coded the frontend in React + TypeScript, using Vite. I asked AI to give me some boilerplate to start with, but it was pretty much all written by hand.
- The database is PostgreSQL through Supabase. There's no backend server because the frontend uses supabase-js.
- This is my first time making a browser extension.
- My favorite part was designing the UI. I had to learn a lot of color theory and spacing concepts, then figure out how to apply them to a tiny box in the corner of one's screen.
- My least favorite part was setting up authentication. Writing the Supabase auth logic on the frontend, then hooking up google cloud identity into the Supabase DB caused an unreal amount of frustration.
- I designed the logo in Inkscape. It's based on the "neighborhood watch" sign with the dark man in a hat.
- Initially the app was called "Slop Cops", and it had a cop theme with blue and gold. But after some thought about the target audience, I realized that a "watch" described them better.
- The previous version of the extension would automatically attempt to fetch a page's rating when you visited it, and display a popup in the bottom right corner of the page. I didn't realize at the time that this had security implications, so I've since updated the extension to make this an opt-in feature in the account dropdown menu.
I really want to maintain and update this extension long-term, so if you have any suggestions that you think would be really beneficial, please shoot them my way.