Rot-Stop — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-06-30

Rot-Stop is a browser extension that helps you reduce low-quality "brain-rot" content on YouTube. This policy explains what data it handles.

What Rot-Stop stores

All of your settings and data are stored locally on your device using the browser's extension storage (chrome.storage.local). This includes your settings, channel allow/block lists, channel reputation, goals statement, per-video score cache, and usage stats. Rot-Stop has no account system, and by default does not send any of this data anywhere. We do not sell it or use it for advertising.

Community channel ratings

Rot-Stop ships with, and periodically downloads, a community ratings dataset — a list of channels with a reputation score — which it uses to help rate channels. Downloading this dataset is a one-way fetch of a static file; it sends none of your data. This works whether or not you ever turn on the contribution feature below.

Optional community contribution

Rot-Stop has an optional, off-by-default setting, "Help improve community ratings." It is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time to stop all sending immediately. When (and only when) it is on:

• About once a month, Rot-Stop sends a small, anonymized batch of your channel trust/block decisions — a public channel handle plus a thumbs up/down — to the project's collector, for channels you have deliberately rated or that Rot-Stop has learned from your watch-page choices.
• The same batch includes coarse aggregate counts of the extension's own activity over the period — how many warnings were shown, how many you overrode, how many feed items were hidden or kept, Shorts removed, and pages where the filter couldn't read YouTube's layout. These are rounded totals only, used to measure and improve filtering accuracy. They are not tied to any video, channel, or moment in time, and never describe an individual action.
• It may also include a short list of channel handles you keep watching despite a warning — so the project can spot channels the filter is wrongly flagging. A channel is only ever acted on after enough independent people report the same thing.
• It does not send your viewing history, video ids or titles, watch timestamps, goals text, your Anthropic API key, or any account or personal identifier.
• Contributions are aggregated so that a channel only appears in the published dataset (or any review list) once enough independent people have rated it (k-anonymity); no single person's verdict is identifiable in the result. The collector does not store your IP address.

The optional AI scoring feature

Rot-Stop has an optional watch-page feature that scores how distracting a video is. It is off until you enter your own Anthropic (Claude) API key:

• When you open an eligible video, Rot-Stop sends that single video's metadata (title, channel, description, duration, and — if enabled — a short transcript excerpt, category, and channel age) to the Anthropic API (api.anthropic.com) using your own API key. This is governed by Anthropic's privacy policy and terms. Your API key is stored locally and is only sent to Anthropic as authentication.

If you do not enter an API key, Rot-Stop performs no network calls for scoring — Shorts removal and feed hiding run entirely on your device.

To read transcript/category/channel-age signals, Rot-Stop may fetch the relevant YouTube watch page and channel page directly from YouTube; this content is parsed locally and is only forwarded to the Anthropic API as described above.

What we do NOT do

• We do not sell or rent your data.
• We do not transfer your data to anyone except: the Anthropic API (only to provide the scoring feature you requested, under your own key), and — only if you opt in — the anonymized channel verdicts and coarse accuracy counts described above to our own collector.
• We do not use your data for advertising, creditworthiness, or any purpose unrelated to Rot-Stop's single function.

Your control

You can disable the AI feature (clear your API key), turn off community contribution ("Help improve community ratings" — off by default), clear your data (Options → Reset to defaults; Options → Reset stats; Options → Clear community data), or remove the extension at any time, which deletes all locally stored data.

Contact

Questions: gwchoward@outlook.com