So you can fund the project -- by donating to the lists it relies on.
That's pretty much correct from one perspective. The flamethrower is built, just needs a bit of maintenance now and then. But its everyday slime-burning power comes from the fuel.
Once the 5 top menu icons are visible, click the one to the right that looks like </> to disable javascript for the site you're on.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325904/Water-stop-...
I think the internet without Adblock is more like these heinous digital video billboards in Los Angeles that appear above the road, directly in the line of vision of drivers. Why these are legal is incomprehensible to me.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/postwar...
We saw a lot of tricks like that related to covid and social distancing. Heavily zoomed pictures of "crowded" beaches, streets, etc... where in reality, it is far less dense than the photo makes it look like.
I think it's always ridiculously represented as "hurr this is what America is!"
It has every chain business there because it's the intersection of major highways where there's no other meaningfully-sized rest stops around for hours.
It's so big, that if you're driving long distances over the middle of the country you have to make sure you stop for fuel and food and a biology break whenever you get the chance, because there's no guarantee you're going to be able to find a place in flyover country.
I still don't understand why Firefox, champion of privacy, doesn't make a uBlock native.
In the "filter lists" tab, I would recommended enabling the "Fanboy's Annoyance" list. It's a huge list that focuses on removing various annoying, recurring website components, and it's created by the maintainer of Easylist (uBlock Origin's primary filter list).
The downside, of course, is that this may in theory break some additional % of websites, but this has not been an issue in my experience.
That's the best technological solution but there are inherent conflicts of interest since Firefox depends on Google for money.
Firefox has its own built in privacy mechanism that is enabled by default and don't prevent me to use uBlock together with it. I prefer that approach.
Mozilla's "commitment" to privacy is all talk and no action.
https://twitter.com/cookieshame
One interesting thing is that loads of sites use OneTrust to implement illegal banners. However OneTrust has a compliant banner on their own site.
So they can do it, but most sites deliberately configure it illegally.
The only people who think it's particularly hard or onerous are the people referenced by "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Did the law in anyway make my life better?
It's not the law's fault that companies would rather implement such detrimental UX than either give up the teat of personal data or give people their rights.
It is, however, the fault of regulators for not stamping down on such behaviour when it is against both the letter and spirit of the law.
And, honestly, I consider the fact that so many websites are forced to admit that they are trying to take and sell my data to be positive.
As Reagan said the most dangerous words in the English language “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.
After previous cookie banners, they really should've known better. (Or, let's be real, absolutely did know, but left it in for corporate interests anyway.)
in the abstract sense of course everyone has to know all the laws of society - the law in its majestic equality forbids unsafe construction practices from builders and greengrocers alike - but that's not a particularly interesting or insightful observation.
In fact, a confusing banner that makes you play a minigame to get the respect for your personal information that you have a legal right to (in the EU) is explicitly disallowed.
And if you don't want any banners, then don't collect any information you don't have to. If it's actually technically needed, you don't need consent. For example, Wikipedia has lots of cookies for things like UI elements and they don't need a banner.
It is. So are the ones defaulting to "yes". And the ones where there is just a popup telling the user to install some blocker in their browser without giving them a choice (like https://npr.org ). Or telling them to take a subscription if they don't want to be tracked.
All these things are illegal but unfortunately they are not enforced.
There are some big ones here: https://www.tessian.com/blog/biggest-gdpr-fines-2020. Ironically, that site also has a cookie banner that attempts to trick you into thinking that the highlighted button will save the default preferences shown (it won't, it'll turn them all in, then save that). This is illegal too.
They should have added a provision that if the user has Do Not Track turned on, the site may not present a cookie barrier and may not serve any cookies except essential ones. I know many browsers have removed DNT but they sure would bring it back in a heartbeat if it actually did anything.
This is what you get when corporate lobbying gets as big as it is in Brussels :(
Brussels might have a corporate lobby problem, but they did create the regulations in the first place, so they're already ahead of a lot of national governments (which run the regulators).
DNS filtering is weak and there are numerous bypasses [0], including ones you can never fix at the DNS layer [1]
This is a new framing for me...I don't think of ublock as impersonating me, but rather representing me, like an agent in a transaction. While it's true that agents that represent you need to be trusted, there is also a huge upside: ublock origin can do things that DNS blocking cannot. Given ublock's (gorhill's) track record, I think this is an excellent deal.
Can you imagine what a user agent to interact with Facebook would look like? Or Instagram? Or TikTok?
It shows how far we slid backwards for large, popular areas of user functionality, post-90s.
But browsers in 2022 are second class citizens, for business models that can generate positive ROI from developer time. They are at best dissuaded (e.g. Reddit, TikTok), and at worse actively crippled or prohibited.
The majority of users are on apps, and more users are moving to devices (e.g. Chromebooks, Portal). All of which are explicitly not user agents.
Also, Mozilla has a vetting process it puts a popular subset of extensions through.
>Due to the curated nature of Recommended extensions, each extension undergoes a thorough technical security review to ensure it adheres to Mozilla’s add-on policies.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
s/solve/transfer
I wouldn't trust Google to block its own ads, it is much harder for them to intentionally fuck up a generic API that can be used by others without raising suspicion. Hence why everyone calls them out on the manifest v3 changes.
I also wouldn't trust Mozilla to invest the manpower to keep the plugin running and with them already including ads in the browser itself I would see another acceptable aids policy on the horizon.
For a job like this in specific I would rather trust someone whose goal is to provide a great internet experience over making money, I couldn't name a single browser vendor who would qualify.
If you use Firefox, perhaps... They are becoming like the others in their quest to become a corporation. Driven by marketeers and telemetry, selling ads to get by, paying their C-suite millions of dollars...
So in effect, yes. Most people have already lost. The rest of us are on the way there.
This is why piholes are awful. I don't know why they get such high praise - it's just a crappy DNS filter that blocks like what 40% of the ads you see?
yes, it can block SOME ads in apps. it's also really good at breaking access to said apps too, then you must spend a great deal troublehsooting apps one at a time.
IMHO - ublock on the browser, pay for apps that have adfree versions, don't use apps that don't, and pirate the rest.
I have one ad supported app on my phone - the Overcast podcast player. That’s only because the author created his own non scummy ad network and I find ads on the podcast player that advertise other podcasts useful.
If I didn’t, I would pay him too to get rid of ads.
When I did buy Windows PCs, I either bought from the business division of Dell or the Microsoft store specifically because they weren’t bundled with adware.
On my Android I have Netguard[0] configured with a hosts file, Firefox with uBlock Origin and NextDNS with comprehensive blocklists.
uBlock Origin protects only one app — the browser.
It's just so faulty and pointless.
Pihole is great, but you have to maintain a pi. It's not hard, but the other issue is also training and education when users/family is not on it.
In the end, subscription purchases for youtube, help because the ads are really horrible on mobile platform and not blockable easily on iphone.
I went all over the place with this comment, but I agree DNS level is better then browser level. The IP is still enumerated on a browser adblock level, but not on a DNS level.
The advantage of DNS is of course that it will generally also work on things other than your browser which is a pretty huge win.
This resonates with me. I'm thinking about spinning up a new open source project, and I really want it to be default-alive. I know that I don't have infinite time and attention for it... I want it to be able to live without constant feeding.
I do think that donations will be part of the picture though. Similar to uBlock, the project will have some dependencies on upstream data providers. I would love to generate revenue and pass it to those upstream providers to support the broader ecosystem.
It's a great tool. But it's days are numbered. A couple more years and mark my words, things like ublock, will be defeated.
Most would rather die than trust the content provider with reporting their own statistics.
- vim c
- user agent switcher
are the big three for me.
"I had a great teacher at school" "Oh really, what was their name?"
etc
"that's a great point" would suffice
wouldn't you agree?
It's a weakness in English, lacking a unique indefinite pronoun - so we're probably stuck with "they" unless a neologism sticks.
i always call users "he" because user is, by default, male in my native language.
For that reason I just went looking for a donate button to help fund the project and it turns out they don't even accept donations
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...