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Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

extremetech.com

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Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#131

Post by atoponce »

aroch wrote: post #117
atoponce wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism

That's literally a rehash of the FUD in your parent post.

There's no uncertainty or doubt about it. Ghostrank reports back about how it has disabled tracking in your browser. It may be "anonymous", but Ghostrank tracks your web usage, and sells it to advertisers.

http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall...

http://www.informationweek.com/software/social/ghostery-make...

https://gigaom.com/2014/11/19/ghostery-uses-plugin-data-to-p...

Ghostrank tracks you. Plain and simple.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#132

Post by _asummers »

ugexe wrote: post #128
_asummers wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does uMatrix compare to something like Ghostery? Would it be redundant to have both?

Isn't ghostery owned by an ad company?

Yes, however the GhostRank feature that people don't like is opt-in not opt-out.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#133

Post by towelguy »

elvis635 wrote: post #11
shpx wrote: post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Together with umatrix ( https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/ ) are the best chrome extensions Since I went back to firefox those are the only extensions I really miss, there is policeman ( https://github.com/futpib/policeman/ ) but it's not as good as them yet To whoever develop extensions, please don't focus only on chrome, firefox during the last months has become must better that it was before, if developers only c…

I went back to Firefox in the last couple of months and I wholeheartedly agree. I used to use HTTPSwitchboard in Chromium (which divided into uMatrix and uBlock) and I miss it in Firefox.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#135

Post by psykovsky »

jacquesm wrote: post #84
sinemetu11 wrote: post #80

I use a modified hosts file instead which is much better. See http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ Remember the web is pull not push.

Hosts files only work when the ads and other trash are not served from the same domain, and of course the bigger operators do everything they can to make you lose some critical functionality if you block their ad serving IPs. So you'll need to go to the URL level at a minimum if you don't want to use some important functionality.

I never lost functionality on a site because of hosts file blocking of ads. And that is together with NoScript

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#136

Post by atoponce »

MikeKusold wrote: post #130
atoponce wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghostery is proprietary software, and it's reporting your usage back to trackers if you enable Ghostrank. You would be better protected running Privacy Badger by the EFF. It's Free Software, and it doesn't track you. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

> Although we like Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery and similar products (in fact Privacy Badger is based on the ABP code!) Privacy Badger most likely has the same issue that this article is talking about.

Privacy Badger isn't a recommendation to reduce CPU and memory usage. It's a recommendation to use in place of Ghostery. Because it is based on ABP, it may certainly have some of the bloat issues uBlock is trying to address.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#137

Post by personZ »

MicroBerto wrote: post #20

People aren't using Adblock to conserve resources. They're using it to block ads and most are willing to take a performance hit to do so.

Resource conservation is one of the primary justifications that people cite for why they block ads: many ads have high level of animation, auto-play videos, and so on, that it lags down the experience, especially when a single page has a number of them competing for your attention.

I would be surprised if many would agree with accepting a performance hit for what ostensibly is your browser doing much less.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#138

Post by w1ntermute »

ferrari8608 wrote: post #91
ianlevesque wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, having an option to pay for the site instead would just be crazy.

Having to pay to visit all of the sites out there which are currently using ads would pretty much ruin the internet for most people. Having a big banner at the top asking for donations seems to work rather well, though. See gnu.org and wikipedia.org for examples (though Wikipedia's donation campaign this year is a bit excessive IMO).

FYI, you can hide the Wikipedia donation campaign banners by putting this in a userscript that @matches http://*.wikipedia.org/*:

    setTimeout(function() {
        fundraisingBanner.hide();
    }, 1000);

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#139

Post by reledi »

shpx wrote: post #2

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Thanks, haven't heard of uBlock until now. Giving it a try.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#140

Post by gorhill »

Walkman wrote: post #126

There was a very good discussion [1] about this 8 months ago when I realized the same [2]. I suggest try HTTP Switchboard instead (see the previous thread). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765758 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7765904

I am not maintaining HTTPSB anymore. I refactored HTTPSB into uBlock/uMatrix. Many cringing usability issues[1] have been fixed with uMatrix, which is different enough from HTTPSB that I could not publish it as a newer version of HTTPSB.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Changes-from-HTTP-Sw...

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