A developer has released a Chrome and Firefox extension called Knockoff that automatically filters out products from questionable brands on Amazon. The tool grays out or hides listings from sellers like “SUNHZMCKP,” “SACATR,” and “ROTTOGOON,” revealing how frequently such names appear in search results for ordinary items.
Josh Pigford, the creator, announced the project on X. He wrote: “Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY, and LUENX.” The software can also remove all sponsored listings. It gained significant attention quickly as a necessary filter for current Amazon users, and for those who avoid the site due to labour concerns, it serves as proof of how degraded the platform has become.
During a video call, Pigford explained he had considered the project for some time but decided to launch 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 the extension builds a list of brands to allow or block using several criteria, including brand name structure. “Basically number of consonants, number of vowels, how they are grouped together, whether they’re in all caps or not,” he said. This logic flags names like “EHEYCIGA” automatically. The blocked list is community-driven, and any user can request to allow or block specific brands. The project builds on earlier efforts like AmazonBrandFilter and The Markup’s Amazon Brand Detector. Users can also report potentially sketchy brands or false positives.
The software runs locally, requires no account, and sends no data to a server. It is free. “I stand to benefit nothing directly economically, it’s a nice little tool I wanted to make,” Pigford said.
What it means
The tool is useful regardless of whether you shop on Amazon. For those who do not use the site, it highlights a problem repeatedly shown by the Federal Trade Commission in an antitrust lawsuit against the company. Much of Amazon operates on a pay-to-play basis, where brands must buy ads or placement boosts to appear at the top of search results. The platform has also become an algorithmic and financial race to the bottom, with companies stealing designs, stuffing product pages with keywords, and creating fly-by-night brands to rank higher.
“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.”
