uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#71

Post by bityard » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

george0812 wrote: post #43

If major browsers were 100% user-centric they would've built ad-blocking into the browser. Maybe make it opt-in, but it should be there as a built-in feature.

All of the major browsers (except perhaps Safari?) are built to increase the control of the browser vendor (through profiles and tracking) and web developers (through increasingly intrusive hooks into the OS). All of this at the expense of the user. Users are _not_ given fine-grained control over what websites can do with their computer, and what control still remains is being slowly eroded by changes to APIs and intentional hiding/removal of important privacy settings under the guise of "not overwhelming users with too much choice."

Extensions _should_ be able to help here, but browsers keep slowly marching forward with changes that take away extensions' ability to perform meaningful actions on behalf of the user. Extensions these days are pretty much only useful for turning the browser into an application delivery platform, like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Firefox switched to "web extensions" some years ago, neutering many useful extensions. Google is now switching to Manifest V3 (which Firefox has stated they will adopt), which means the days of effective ad blocking will soon be over.

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#72

Post by jmkni » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #46

Too bad modern Firefox doesn't actually have the support to run full featured uBlock Origin since they moved to the Chrome extensions model and threw away the entire Firefox add-on ecosystem. Actual Firefox forks like Sea Monkey and Palemoon still support the fully featured uBlock Origin.

I had no idea SeaMonkey was still going, I remember using that +15 years ago!

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#73

Post by packet_nerd » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

lalaland1125 wrote: post #2

I think it's only a matter of time until adblock is legally banned. The current situation, where the vast majority of the internet relies solely on ads and an increasing number of people use adblock year over year is unsustainable. The system can support a certain number of free riders (people who consume the product but don't contribute back in ad eyeballs), but at a certain point the math will no longer work. Event…

I had a good laugh when I saw my grandma using her iPad calculator app to do her finances. The app was displaying an an ad, she didn't want to see it and stuck a sticker over that part of the screen. :-)

Is my grandma's sticker going to be illegal in this forced advertising future? If not, where in the stack between the webpage and your eyes will it start to be legal to block? What about blocking in the graphics stack in the OS? The display? A sticker in front of the display? A smart film in front of the display? Smart glasses? Will it be illegal to avert your eyes from advertisements, à la Black Mirror?

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#74

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

aidanhs wrote: post #34

Buttons840 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option 3, let the ad funded internet die and keep the remaining good parts.

Ad funding would never stop because people wanting to make money off content would never stop - it just becomes more subtle. Think sponsored posts, product placement, added bias. Imagine a plain text blog run by an individual, good quality technical content, and a company comes and offers $10k to write a blog post about their product after trying it. If the author decides not to disclose the financial motivation, you…

[deleted]

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#75

Post by ManlyBread » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

toastercat wrote: post #62

How do ya'll feel about the idea that adblock can be morally equivalent to theft[1]? I see this argument pop up from time to time in relation to people who use alternative clients to services such as YouTube. But if you're using uBlock Origin, you are probably browsing many, many sites that rely at least partially on ad revenue, so it's a similar case. [1] https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632

No one on the internet is entitled to ad revenue, especially when it robs me of my right to decide what does and what doesn't get run on my own personal machine.

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#76

Post by flurdy » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

alarmingfox wrote: post #15

I instantly install this extension whenever I work on a new machine as I could not imagine browsing the web without it. 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-...

No post body was provided.

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#77

Post by ManlyBread » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

xigoi wrote: post #29

Larrikin wrote: post #7

I prefer Ad Nauseum ( https://adnauseam.io/ ) because I don't want to just block the ads I want to ruin the profile ad companies have on me by having all the ads clicked as well.

Do you think they can't tell when a click is automated?

This gets brought up every time Ad Nauseam is mentioned but I have yet to see a proof of concept.

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#78

Post by nobody9999 » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #22

jimbob45 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any ad-evasion technology was ever going to be banned legally, it would have been TiVo. The internet is far less reliant on straight ad revenue than TV shows were.

Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there.

>Did TiVo actually affect ad revenue? My understanding is that the revenue figures were calculated based on Nielson family scores, and TiVo ad skipping wouldn't show up in there.

Given that TiVo has been running "pre-roll" (i.e., when you start playing a recording) ads for a couple years now (they are skippable), they're certainly trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet ad revenue for themselves.

I have no idea whether that cuts into the existing pie or is additional ad spend.

That said, TiVo isn't as intrusive (in that you can skip their "pre-roll" ads) as YouTube, Amazon Prime, etc.

Really, the best thing about TiVo is their video Fast-forward/rewind. It actually scrolls the content as it does so. No other platform seems to support that, which really kills UX for me.

As for ad skipping, that's only supported for some shows, and even those don't generally allow it until at least a few hours after air time.

Of course, you can still fast-forward through the ads (made much easier by the TiVo video scrolling) which works quite nicely.

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#79

Post by btdmaster » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #46

Too bad modern Firefox doesn't actually have the support to run full featured uBlock Origin since they moved to the Chrome extensions model and threw away the entire Firefox add-on ecosystem. Actual Firefox forks like Sea Monkey and Palemoon still support the fully featured uBlock Origin.

How? Mozilla has kept the old webRequest API: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...

Re: uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

#80

Post by gzer0 » Fri, Mar 11, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #52

What do people use to block garbage domains from their Google results? Google results, especially for developer stuff, is so awful -- cluttered with junk sites ripping off content from blogs and Stack Overflow, etc. I've been trying to figure out some rules for uBlock Origin, but haven't gotten there, yet. Edit: Multiple fantastic options in the replies, below. Thanks, people!

I've started using https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ which is a programmable, custom search engine that Google provides. I only include sites that I want to. For news, I have a separate search engine; for programming, I include Gitlab, Github, and others. It's quite nice, and you can share your search engines with others via a public URL.

Another example is creating a "social media" only search engine- I have over 50 social media websites in one of my custom searches, it makes it relatively easy to find another person this way.