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

Post by mtberatwork » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #42

patd wrote: post #8

I did run into the same issue as mentioned in the article and the Easylist forum is full of publishers having complaining that their site doesn't work anymore. I started working on http://blockedby.com , a monitoring tool to warn you when a rule would impact your website. But after contacting a few websites that did have the issue on the forum, I couldn't find any that actually wanted to prevent this. A few discussio…

I had an issue with this recently, where buttons simply linking to our Twitter and Facebook pages were being blocked. I'm no fan of obtrusive, JavaScript laden ads, and have used adblockers myself for years, but why block "legitimate" content? I didn't know how to get removed from the list (and assumed it wouldn't happen anyway), so changed a couple of class names and it was working again. But I don't know how long t…

Post by tomc1985 » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #32

FussyZeus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also as a quick aside, they mention that AutoTrader would've had to fix "hundreds of thousands of pages" and I'm calling bullshit. No site of that magnitude is using straight up HTML pages. Even if it's a jekyll thing where you'd have to change a bunch of templates, I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the required changes could be done in a few seconds with any decent text editor.

I would not be surprised if they are telling the truth here. I worked on an early version of a big woodworking website and it was over six thousand static html pages. The group that acquired it needed to show progress asap, which meant simply updating the header to their new logo and footer nav. I had to write about a dozen sequenced find and replace routines with regex to do even basic changes. In some cases groups…

Post by hartator » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #56

hartator wrote: post #22

It always amazes me that journalists still have no clue how open source work. And also they should talk about uBlock Origin. Not AdBlock Plus or UBlock.

It's most certainly the work of more than "four dudes" too. Just by looking at the forum and contributors...

Post by hartator » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

grive wrote: post #26

hartator wrote: post #22

It always amazes me that journalists still have no clue how open source work. And also they should talk about uBlock Origin. Not AdBlock Plus or UBlock.

This is not journalism. This is a hit-piece on EasyList, with a clickbait and false title. It seems even plausible, reading it, that the author knows about uBlock origin but avoids naming it, instead listing the two sellouts that are morally shady.