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µBlock for Firefox

github.com

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Re: µBlock for Firefox

#141

Post by kbart »

danielsamuels wrote: post #108

I tried this out for a couple of weeks after the "Adblock makes things slower" article came out, and I found it was blocking more stuff - but not necessarily the right stuff. I was finding that sites were breaking, stuff was disappearing and it was because of uBlock. I think I was trying to log into Medium and the Twitter and Facebook had been hidden, literally breaking the functionality of the site. That's not what…

Can't find the article now, but it was posted on HN that these social sites' share/like/login plugins track your online activity, so blocking them is a privacy feature, not a bug. Ghosterity blocks these buttons by default too but allows them be enabled in settings.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#142

Post by ecaron »

Personally, I hope that this doesn't get added to addons.mozilla.org. Their arbitrary human-control editor policy would be the best thing to cause stagnation of innovative plugins such as this. If the author goes the self-hosted route, automatic updates are still achievable (and can even occur faster.)

+1 for not having this in AMO!

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#143

Post by phit_ »

losvedir wrote: post #137
gorhill wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, even with EasyPrivacy and "Fanboy's Social Blocking", you will find that blockers (ABP, AdBlock, uBlock, etc) do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot.[1] This is one of the reasons I see dynamic filtering as a key feature: users have the last word, not the filter lists.[2] For example, I currently block all Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, and any of similarly ubiquitous domains by d…

Oh, it's you! Great. I'm confused. I've been using HTTPSwitchboard now for the last several months and love it. Is µBlock the successor to that, or are they for different things? edit: Ah, I followed the link to µMatrix and I see now, I think. HTTPSB became µMatrix, and µBlock is the "easy" version of µMatrix. So I guess I should upgrade my HTTPSB to µMatrix, then. Is that right? Thanks for all your work on these too…

HTTPSB is discontinued since October last year, so yes you should upgrade to µMatrix.

https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/commit/b8a45e61d2...

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#144

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gorhill wrote: post #133
losvedir wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as the README says, it's not an "adblocker" but a generic blocker. Hiding Twitter and Facebook log-in functionality on Medium is a feature not a bug for me. By including those javascripts, both companies can build up a history of the sites I visit. So I gather this is more of a privacy+ad blocker rather than strictly ad blocker.

Unfortunately, even with EasyPrivacy and "Fanboy's Social Blocking", you will find that blockers (ABP, AdBlock, uBlock, etc) do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot.[1] This is one of the reasons I see dynamic filtering as a key feature: users have the last word, not the filter lists.[2] For example, I currently block all Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, and any of similarly ubiquitous domains by d…

>do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot //

Sounds like more of a job for a filtering proxy or hosts file.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj »

fpgaminer wrote: post #135
wampus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since most ads are effectively blocked at the domain level, I doubt your scheme would provide much bang for the buck.

The idea is that the ads would be served from the original host. Combined with encrypted URIs and the ad resources become indistinguishable from content resources. Thus thwarting blocking. As others have pointed out, yes this evil trick is incompatible with existing ad networks (which use their own domains). But it wasn't my intention to put forward a viable idea. Just an interesting one (namely, ciphering URIs to pr…

How would the ad network verify metrics under such a regime?

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#146

Post by colechristensen »

Beltiras wrote: post #100
colechristensen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like if you're interested in making money online with advertising with "journalism" there's strong pressure to turn yourself into BuzzFeed.... that is, low effort, cheap tricks, information pornography.

No, I am genuinely interested in how to fund real journalism. How do we go about getting money for people to expose the aggregation of wealth and power against the interests of the plebeians. (note: plebeians is used here not as a derogatory)

To fund real journalism for the filthy peasants you need to seek public and private funding for an endowment (not direct operational funding) combined with a small amount of tasteful advertising and merchandising, subscription fees, and a policy of graduating content to public domain after a certain short period (a few months and not much more).

Merchandising could be prints of artwork, cartoons, expanded versions of articles or source materials as well as branded things like coffee mugs.

The key is being lean to start and developing an endowment so you don't always have to be seeking dollars (NPR fund drives bad). Offer high value, medium to high priced merchandise, keep your journalistic standards high with a low supply of advertising (keeping demand high).

Endowment contributors will be motivated by a history of quality journalism and the fact that you open your content to the public after a certain reasonably short time. If you give people a way to buy it without abusing DRM or being otherwise obnoxious, people will pay.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#147

Post by hurin »

I'm curious as to what drives the creation of this multitude of add-blocking projects? What is their income model and what supports their development?

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#148

Post by tim333 »

slipstream- wrote: post #19
ramadarata wrote: post #8

Ad blocking is theft. Period.

Unfortunately, ad blocking has become a part of protection against malware -- especially for non-tech users. Blame malvertising that loads exploit kits, and ads (on search engines and elsewhere with fake download buttons, etc) that point to pay-per-install malware, the kind of spyware/adware that's super easy to install and monitor-smashingly hard to remove, now the creators of those have gone as far as adding ring-3…

Yeah it's kind of crazy. I just turned of ad block on download.com and there's like nine iffy download links for one real one.

Re: µBlock for Firefox

#149

Post by hullo »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #15
ramadarata wrote: post #8

Ad blocking is theft. Period.

That would be like saying a service that blacked out the ads in news papers is theft, its completely rubbish. Plus educate yourself on the definition of theft: "theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it." At best its unauthorized modification of a creative work without distributing it, which is not illegal and never…

Don't know why parent comment was killed when the article contains a similar assertion (the other way). While not a lot is gained by using loaded words like "theft", it is a simple fact that using ad blockers causes the owners of many of the sites that you visit to receive less revenue than they would otherwise. One can argue that one is perfectly justified in doing this (e.g. many typical examples of this are included below), but one can not truthfully say that they are not taking money away from the sites they visit. (Yes I know about PPC ads and how you never click them. Other than AdSense, the vast majority of advertising out there is sold on a CPM basis.)
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