Ask yourself this question: How many times has seeing a criminal’s face in the media actually done anything for you or anyone else? The answer is 0. Seeing the face of the person who committed a heinous violent crime or otherwise doesn’t do anything for anyone. The reason the media does this in the first place is for clicks. We understand reading the news and staying involved with the world today. But I think it’s time we stopped making celebrities of criminals and plastering their face everywhere, it does nothing for anyone. It promotes this type of behavior and makes the criminal feel as though they’ve impacted the world in the way they intended. The influence ends now.

The idea for DeFamer came to me years ago when I was reading news articles. I came across an article regarding a shooter at a theater and I saw his face, he had orange hair and wide eyes. This image stuck with me for many years, even today I can remember his face clearly. I started thinking about how media makes people like this so well known. You never read about the people who helped in the attack or the families affected, you only read about the criminal. I realized that someone should do something about it, I would be that somebody. The intention behind DeFamer is to make something the community can essentially run with mild moderator interference (to prevent abuse of the system) 

The structure for DeFamer has been created and outlined, but we have hit a financial wall in development, we need to hire additional IT professionals to smooth the edges on the Chrome App and the Mobile App. The money funded to this project will allow us to properly develop and maintain DeFamer and be confident in removing the face of criminals across the web.

DeFamer is unique because it is community driven and works a lot like Adblocker, we’re not asking anyone to remove anything, we’re just no longer providing media attention to those desperately seeking it. There have been others who have tried to ask media to remove the faces of criminals, and others have tried to make petitions. We’ve decided for those of us that want to put our foot down, we’ll do it ourselves and stop asking for permission. 

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