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Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

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Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#111

Post by yorwba »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #104
patd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The target audience is website owners. If my users are all using list based blockers (adblock, uBlock, mobiles, proxies, ...) and those lists block my content, I'd like to know quickly so I can appeal to the list maintainers.

Even in the rare instance you convince a list maintainer, forking a list is trivial. If your content is being blocked, stop tracking your users.

What if it's a false positive due to overly-broad heuristics? For example, try looking at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ads with Adblock enabled. It shows a blank page for me. (Actually I just wanted to see whether "ads" might have a different meaning in another language.)

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#112

Post by MaxBarraclough »

leetcrew wrote: post #83
fjsolwmv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Users who refuse to think, work, or pay for quality, are not entitled to personally customized services. That would be an act of charity, which is affordable for the few who are far pooorer or sicker then the mainstream, but isn't sustainable for the masses.

i guess this is an unpopular position for some reason, but i'm inclined to agree. in pretty much every part of life you have to choose between effort and price. i can change my own oil or pay someone else to do it. i can cook myself dinner or pay to go out. why do people expect the internet to be different?

> why do people expect the internet to be different?

Wikipedia, Firefox, Linux, and Apache, are all freely available. Each of them is a far more challenging project than a list.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#113

Post by stu_k »

beaconstudios wrote: post #91
bluGill wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I maintain an open source project. It isn't my day job though. Sometimes I accept pull requests right away, sometimes it takes me months to get to them. One advantage commercial projects CAN have is someone paid to do daily work on it. (Can is key, sometimes that person exists, sometimes that person doesn't get time)

an open source project that takes donations/patrons can also do that though.

There are very few individually maintained OSS projects that would generate enough money from donations.

Henry Zhu, who maintains the massively popular Babel transpiler, only gets $2200/month in donations

https://www.patreon.com/henryzhu

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#114

Post by SilasX »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #26

The fundamental problem is that these filter lists are maintained by random volunteers, who everyone just assumes are trustworthy. The browser makers avoid the issues by having ad-blockers be third-party extensions. The extension makers don't make the filter lists either, they just import from EasyList and similar. It's surprising there arent't more cases of corruption and broken trust. I wish I could get ad-blocking…

Right, even well-run projects get occasionally compromised by ad-promoting jerks. Have we already forgotten about Admiral?

Some ad service made a pull request to exempt his ad service under the pretense of a DMCA claim.

Overview: https://adguard.com/en/blog/ad-blocking-is-under-attack/

Major HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14978228 .

Credit to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14989750

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#115

Post by beaconstudios »

stu_k wrote: post #113
beaconstudios wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an open source project that takes donations/patrons can also do that though.

There are very few individually maintained OSS projects that would generate enough money from donations. Henry Zhu, who maintains the massively popular Babel transpiler, only gets $2200/month in donations https://www.patreon.com/henryzhu

projects don't get donations just by existing and being used. They need to actively acquire donors/patrons just like businesses acquire customers. Asking for patrons for an individual is also a whole different thing from asking for patrons for a project.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#116

Post by Klover »

stevenjohns wrote: post #31

It's crazy that the maintainer of that list thought this would be a good idea. This is a huge breach of trust.

I would say it’s normal; bound to happen at some point. That, or a mistake. That’s why we have peer reviews even for maintainers of mature open source projects.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#117

Post by jccalhoun »

simias wrote: post #32
TekMol wrote: post #3

I found that for me a whitelist makes more sense then a blacklist. I use umatrix with these two default rules: * * * block * 1st-party * allow So by default a site can load whatever it wants from its own domain and nothing from 3rd party domains. Then I add rules as needed. The Umatrix interface makes this super easy.

Can you teach me this skill? I usually don't mind steep learning curves and taking a while to familiarize myself with a piece of technology if I believe that I'll end up benefiting from it (I type in dvorak, use a tiling window manager, I'm a shell power user etc...) but try as I might I just can't wrap my head around umatrix. I understand what it does, I just don't understand how to use it effectively. Like I just t…

uMatrix's gui is incomprehensible to me. I stick with noscript and ublock origin. It may be a pain but I understand how to use it.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#118

Post by INTPenis »

TekMol wrote: post #3

I found that for me a whitelist makes more sense then a blacklist. I use umatrix with these two default rules: * * * block * 1st-party * allow So by default a site can load whatever it wants from its own domain and nothing from 3rd party domains. Then I add rules as needed. The Umatrix interface makes this super easy.

This is what I've been doing but with noscript since I consider JS to be the number one delivery method of browser based exploits.

Side effect is that it also blocks most ads.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#119

Post by Bayart »

stu_k wrote: post #113
beaconstudios wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an open source project that takes donations/patrons can also do that though.

There are very few individually maintained OSS projects that would generate enough money from donations. Henry Zhu, who maintains the massively popular Babel transpiler, only gets $2200/month in donations https://www.patreon.com/henryzhu

At least there's clear progress. Things like Patreon are great for reach and engagement. It's a step-up from having to either work at a company directly using the tech, or keeping it as a "side-project" that either eats your life away or lags behind.

Re: Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland

#120

Post by fivefive55 »

yorwba wrote: post #111
boomboomsubban wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the rare instance you convince a list maintainer, forking a list is trivial. If your content is being blocked, stop tracking your users.

What if it's a false positive due to overly-broad heuristics? For example, try looking at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ads with Adblock enabled. It shows a blank page for me. (Actually I just wanted to see whether "ads" might have a different meaning in another language.)

I've been noticing this a lot more lately. Lots of websites have broken elements from my adblocker. I have to turn it off and reload the page to get those elements to load. A lot of the time they aren't even close to ads, it's like a drop down menu or button that doesn't render.
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