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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

#101

Post by eswat »

CivBase wrote: post #85

> the change would have involved fixing hundreds of thousands of pages Even if these pages are static files (although any site opetating at that scale should have some kind of page-generation system), this still sounds like it could be resolved with a simple find-replace using . EasyList is definitely in the right here. Adding an exception results in an unnecessary performance penalty and creates more complexity for…

Several years ago I worked on a monolithic website that used static files with no templating engine. The problem is they had so many contractors working on changes for specific ranges of content that there were a variety of ways that even a mundane meta tag with the same content value was written (is the tag self-closing, is the value placed before the property, are certain characters in the value encoded, etc.). Find & Replace can quickly end up becoming a bigger game of Trial & Error especially if there are no standards in place.

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

#102

Post by henry_flower »

orliesaurus wrote: post #71

I don't get the title - Just four dudes. What if it was four dudettes/chicks? Maybe it's because they started the project and they have the right to be in charge? Also, you don't have to use EasyList if you don't like it.. FYI those four dudes are whats keeping me from disabling javascript and images from every website on the face of the earth. Thank you EasyList maintainers!

I suspect that the editor didn't actually read the text but nevertheless chose the most obnoxious title possible (as they often do)

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

#103

Post by auslander »

ziddoap wrote: post #82
auslander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests They responded and removed amp-analytics. I'm not that impressed. https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/8311

Impressed that they respond in a timely manner , as per the article. The part you excluded from the quote is sort of the crux of my statement. I made no comment to the how they respond.

It wasn't my intention to exclude it, fat fingers.

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

#104

Post by Mathnerd314 »

unnouinceput wrote: post #94

Quote: "In the past six months, EasyList changes have broken the buy buttons on commerce site The Inventory, the video player on Animal Planet, disrupted site navigation on Fandom, and disrupted the style and CSS loading process on job search site Indeed." Good, very good. Break them all. Learn to go back to basics, use TABLE, not gazzilion of nested DIV's for what should be a single BUTTON element instead. I run uBl…

> Amazon devs test ad-blockers

No, for big sites the adblock users report issues, or more likely the adblock list developers just fix the issues right away. The issue is small sites with no sizeable adblock-using population.

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

#105

Post by SilasX »

Raed667 wrote: post #20

This is basically a hit piece on Easylist. My take after reading this, is that the author wants EasyList to either not exist or to be run by "experts in balancing publisher monetization" (aka adman)

It reminds me of the famous spam form letter [1], where one of the standard objections is "Why should we have to trust you and your servers? [to identify which domains should be blocked]"

[1] https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

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

#106

Post by gmanley »

derefr wrote: post #93
papln wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it distinguish itself without giving up the name that Aljoudi (and not AdBlock) has been hijacking? Imagine if a company launched a (non-Google) "Chromium" browser or non-Microsoft "Explorer" or "Edge", how would the authentic developer defend against that? (Probably with a trademark suit, which is a dificult strategy for a tiny open source project). gorhill could create a brand new name to replace Origin, bu…

> uBlock Official I’m pretty sure Eyeo did register the uBlock trademark, and has a good case to sue for someone implying through their product’s name that it’s “the official” uBlock.

There definitively isn't a good case for Eyeo. See: First To File vs First To Use. The US is a First to Use country for trademark law. I'm not saying it's a clear and cut case at all but I'd actually bet on a Judge siding with uBlock Origin if it ever went to court, which is unlikely.

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

#107

Post by OrgNet »

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.

makes me want to avoid Autotrader... where did this /advert/ come from anyways...

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

#108

Post by lunchables »

Causality1 wrote: post #17

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…

>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.

Yes! I think what has staved it off is the lack of adblocking on mobile devices. I use uBlock on every computer I have, but on my iPhone? Not so much. I think as more traffic moved to mobile it has offset ad blocking to some degree. I can't imagine that 25% of people are blocking ads on mobile?

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

#109

Post by dole »

simias wrote: post #39
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

I really think it was a mistake not to rename the project completely after the Origin fork. It's super confusing, especially since most of us still refer to Origin as "ublock" for short. On both Google and DDG ublock.org is still the first match when you search for "ublock". I wonder how many people install this crap extension by mistake every day.

I almost did just a few hours ago because of the above and luckily noticed the difference before pulling the trigger.

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

#110

Post by jarofgreen »

OrgNet wrote: post #107
ziddoap wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

makes me want to avoid Autotrader... where did this /advert/ come from anyways...

I haven't looked, but I'm guessing ... When you list a second hand car for sale, that's an "advert". Sometimes the adverts are the content you want :-)
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