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‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

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Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#11

Post by ziddoap »

luma wrote: post #6

This piece feels like it wants me to be upset about the maintainers of EasyList, instead of the people that created the content which has become so toxic that people are scrambling for ways to block it.

Indeed. Once I finished the article I sat there and had to think: "what am I supposed to be feeling after reading this?". I think they want us to be angry that EasyList is only maintained by 4 people. Or maybe just be angry that EasyList exists. I'm not really sure.

My takeaway was that it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests in a timely manner.

Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#13

Post by kgwxd »

gen3 wrote: post #2

> UBlock, another Adblock-owned blocking extension TIL According to Wikipedia: "In July 2018, uBlock.org was acquired by AdBlock"[1] This is not uBlock Origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin

uBlock Origin really really needs to do something to distinguish itself from uBlock. Every thread I read about ad blockers has a comment trying to clarify.

Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#14

Post by x0x0 »

ziddoap wrote: post #11
luma wrote: post #6

This piece feels like it wants me to be upset about the maintainers of EasyList, instead of the people that created the content which has become so toxic that people are scrambling for ways to block it.

Indeed. Once I finished the article I sat there and had to think: "what am I supposed to be feeling after reading this?". I think they want us to be angry that EasyList is only maintained by 4 people. Or maybe just be angry that EasyList exists. I'm not really sure. My takeaway was that it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests in a timely manner.

I was surprised it was that hard to change a route on autotrader. The article kept mentioning hundreds of thousands of pages, like they had some person editing each page in textmate.

Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#16

Post by eoShe7th »

hnaccy wrote: post #10

>“It’s crazy that more people don’t know about this,” said Marty Kratky-Katz, the founder of Blockthrough, which lets publishers monetize using Adblock Plus’s Acceptable Ads program. “I don’t think they mean any harm or have any malicious intentions. But it’s not like they were experts in balancing publisher monetization, or like they were elected. They’re just four dudes.” Why would you ever want your adblocking lis…

Sounds like they would be balancing publisher monetization and serving malware and intrusive ads to users. Exactly the right kind of people we need to be running a adblocker list.

Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#17

Post by Causality1 »

I fear that with adblocking nearing 25% market penetration we're going to see fundamental changes in the way ads are delivered in response. Maybe a transition from third party ad servers to locally hosted ads that have to be added to block lists individually. Maybe YouTube will start inserting unblockable ads directly into the video stream.

Fine people like Raymond Hill will keep fighting the good fight but I wonder if someday we'll look back on the era where web content was paid for by the 90 percent of people who don't block ads so the 10 percent could block them effortlessly as a sort of golden age.

Re: ‘Just four dudes’: Inside EasyList, a community-run ad-blocking list

#18

Post by merpnderp »

asaddhamani wrote: post #3
gen3 wrote: post #2

> UBlock, another Adblock-owned blocking extension TIL According to Wikipedia: "In July 2018, uBlock.org was acquired by AdBlock"[1] This is not uBlock Origin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin

AdBlock and uBlock are both sellouts. Long live uBlock Origin!

Wish a real version was available on Safari.
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