UBlock Origin • Hacker News Board

Re: UBlock Origin

#311

Post by baddox » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #310

baddox wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it outlines the contract, and you have the option of declining. By returning or otherwise disposing of the book. Do you genuinely believe that I would be obligated to return or dispose of the book in this scenario? If so, then I applaud you for consistency, and I can only say that I find that belief very bizarre. > I think it's a stretch to say only one party is aware and consenting. Well, I'm explicitly te…

> Do you genuinely believe that I would be obligated to return or dispose of the book in this scenario? If so, then I applaud you for consistency, and I can only say that I find that belief very bizarre. I believe we should . I think we rarely do (including myself). The terms were clear. I'm not arguing my point in the hope that we all stop using ad-blockers, I'm arguing my point in the hope that we we can realize th…

> The terms were clear.

But that's just it. The terms weren't clear when the transaction occurred. To me, temporal order is important. It's basically the concept of "informed consent."

> I have a problem with that consent being part of a deal and you withholding it while still accepting what it was being traded for.

Again, the order of events matters.

> I'm still not understanding your argument that you feel justified in taking something when you know you aren't supposed to have/use it.

I disagree about whether I'm "supposed" to have it. I don't have a problem with acquiring something in a transaction (and agreeing to all terms at the moment of the transaction) and then using it in a way the other party did not intend.

> I may have fruit in my hands at the store while approaching the counter, but they aren't mine until I've paid. If I choose not to pay, it's my responsibility to return ownership to the store (or in the case of a non-tangible good, to not utilize it).

But in your analogy, I bought the fruit at the time. The store teller told me the price, I paid it, and the teller sent me on my way. Then I got home, opened the bag of fruit, and found a note that says "the purchaser of this fruit hereby agrees to not bake this fruit into a pie." My position is that I simply do not care about this note. I acquired the fruit in a transaction which clearly did not involve that term. I will not return the fruit and I'll bake it into a pie if I please.

Re: UBlock Origin

#312

Post by manigandham » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #277

manigandham wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my point, there's no way to perfectly stop adblockers since they are part of the client. The only way to stop them is to paywall, which will start to become more common.

I think you might have lost track of the conversation. Paywalls were already suggested, and this subthread was talking about the problems of paywalls — e.g. they segment the Internet into inaccessible walled gardens, they're inconvenient, they exclude a large chunk of the world's population, they kill your readership. Somebody suggested that he thought the best approach was to just do ads, and if you really can't sta…

Those drawbacks to paywalls are only when compared to the ease and free approach of the ad model. When the ad model stops working, there wont be anything left but paywalls and they wont be "inconvenient" because there is no other way that is convenient.

The simple truth is that publishers need to make money to produce content. Ads were a way to allow free access while making revenue. If users keep using this blunt approach and taking just the content without letting the publishers recoup costs, there is an absolutely inevitable future ahead of paywalls and walled gardens everywhere.

We're already seeing it now where the open web is being destroyed by adblockers on desktop and now mobile, while Facebook has instant articles and Apple now has their official news app.

Everyone who uses adblock today better be prepared to have their content either funneled through certain major silos or pay up for their favorite sites.

Re: UBlock Origin

#313

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #311

kbenson wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you genuinely believe that I would be obligated to return or dispose of the book in this scenario? If so, then I applaud you for consistency, and I can only say that I find that belief very bizarre. I believe we should . I think we rarely do (including myself). The terms were clear. I'm not arguing my point in the hope that we all stop using ad-blockers, I'm arguing my point in the hope that we we can realize th…

> The terms were clear. But that's just it. The terms weren't clear when the transaction occurred. To me, temporal order is important. It's basically the concept of "informed consent." > I have a problem with that consent being part of a deal and you withholding it while still accepting what it was being traded for. Again, the order of events matters. > I'm still not understanding your argument that you feel justifie…

> Again, the order of events matters.

Only inasmuch as when you decide to continue or bail on the deal.

> But in your analogy, I bought the fruit at the time. The store teller told me the price, I paid it, and the teller sent me on my way. Then I got home, opened the bag of fruit, and found a note that says "the purchaser of this fruit hereby agrees to not bake this fruit into a pie."

That's not my analogy at all. I think my description fits rather well. When in the store holding the fruit prior to paying, is equivalent to the point you've retrieved content but have not yet viewed it. At the register is when you are presented with the choice, view with ads, or go somewhere else. By running an ad blocker, you skip the register entirely. You pick up fruit, and walk out the door.

> My position is that I simply do not care about this note. I acquired the fruit in a transaction which clearly did not involve that term.

In my example, the payment is at the register is the only transaction. If that's not money, then maybe it's the clerk saying "you can have that fruit free as long as you promise not to cook a pie with it." You've apparently convinced yourself it's okay to agree to this and then ignore the stipulation later.

> I will not return the fruit and I'll bake it into a pie if I please.

If you paid for it, yes. But somehow you've paid for it AND gotten a rider on it's usage, which has never entered our discussion until this point, and is not something I've been arguing.

Re: UBlock Origin

#314

Post by tobylane » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #300

tobylane wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one issue I've had with it is it won't hide the share feature on each link of Reddit.

try right clicking on the thing, click uBlock link, paste: ## .post-sharing-button[href="javascript: void 0;"] into the box (or delete the other text till you get that) and click create

When I refresh the page none of them are hidden, even the one I used to get to the box. Chrome 44, all other extensions disabled.

Re: UBlock Origin

#315

Post by karlzt » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 11:24 PM UTC

decasteve wrote: post #14

From the horses mouth [1]: Main reason I published on AMO is because a feature which I think is important was removed from uBlock (per-site switches). That both versions diverged significantly enough so soon is not in my control. When ABP added "acceptable ads" in their fork, they also created a demand for a version uncompromised by the "acceptable ads" principle, hence ABE happened. When uBlock removed the per-site…

"Edit (2015-06-15): Somewhere toward the end of May, I decided I will not contribute code anymore to https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock anymore. See top of README."

Re: UBlock Origin

#316

Post by effie » Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 11:41 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #260

effie wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. kbenson, you and many of your kind are trying to foist on the idea that people filtering the information companies give to them are doing something immoral. I do not think even you believe that, but perhaps there is a profit-seeking based incentive to seed a feeling of guilt in the people who avoid ads, or perhaps to make yourself feel good by verbalizing your frustration with decreasing profits from online ads.…

> Mr. kbenson, you and many of your kind are trying to foist on the idea that people filtering the information companies give to them are doing something immoral. That's a simplification of my argument as to be meaningless. The information was not given , it was traded . The consumer's portion of the trade is paid in viewing the advertising. > I do not think even you believe that, but perhaps there is a profit-seekin…

> The information was not given, it was traded. The consumer's portion of the trade is paid in viewing the advertising.

For something to be traded, there needs to be negotiation between the parties and agreement on the price. Ad hosts usually do not require any agreement from the consumer, they send the web pages anyway (with exceptions). The sole act of requesting the information (HTTP request for an URL) does not imply the requestor agrees with conditions the provider may store somewhere on his web. As far as I know, most ad hosts do not even ask consumers to agree with reading ads, far from requiring they comply. So not really - no trade is happening when I download a web page from an ad hosting website.

Re: UBlock Origin

#317

Post by quadrangle » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 12:20 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #289

quadrangle wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have an attention economy. You try to get my attention so you can sell it to advertisers. My attention is scarce, and I don't want to sell it so readily. I don't know whether your content is great until I experience it, and I have little power in negotiating my side of the bargain of what you do with my attention aside from taking more control over my attention. The practical side of it is this: You want as much a…

> We have an attention economy. You try to get my attention so you can sell it to advertisers. My attention is scarce, and I don't want to sell it so readily. I don't know whether your content is great until I experience it, and I have little power in negotiating my side of the bargain of what you do with my attention aside from taking more control over my attention. And yet, that's the deal which is on the table. Yo…

I didn't sell my attention so readily. I didn't sign any contract. My attention is constantly being asked for. It's a sellers market here, sorry. I choose to most readily give attention as a gift to those I like most and who respect my attention most. Wikipedia has no ads.

There are cases where the business model of ads has near monopoly. I use Pump.io but most people and connections are on Facebook / Twitter etc. — it's completely unacceptable for those entities to demand that they have power over censoring my access to interact with my friends who those companies have captured into their system. I don't want Facebook or Twitter at all, I want to interact with other regular people in the world. I'd prefer to do it outside those platforms and do when I can. Blocking ads on those sites is perfectly reasonable, a tiny defense against powerful offensive entities — this is not an exchange between two parties with equal power making an agreement.

Meanwhile, efforts like https://snowdrift.coop are in the works to fund creative work from reasonable and respectful people.

Re: UBlock Origin

#318

Post by baddox » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 12:31 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #313

baddox wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The terms were clear. But that's just it. The terms weren't clear when the transaction occurred. To me, temporal order is important. It's basically the concept of "informed consent." > I have a problem with that consent being part of a deal and you withholding it while still accepting what it was being traded for. Again, the order of events matters. > I'm still not understanding your argument that you feel justifie…

> Again, the order of events matters. Only inasmuch as when you decide to continue or bail on the deal. > But in your analogy, I bought the fruit at the time. The store teller told me the price, I paid it, and the teller sent me on my way. Then I got home, opened the bag of fruit, and found a note that says "the purchaser of this fruit hereby agrees to not bake this fruit into a pie." That's not my analogy at all. I…

> When in the store holding the fruit prior to paying, is equivalent to the point you've retrieved content but have not yet viewed it.

That's not correct. Retrieving content over the Internet consists of explicitly requesting a resource and the server explicitly returning the resource. This isn't some technicality. It's how computer networks are deliberately designed. There are plenty of ways to control access to a resource if the content owner so desires.

If you go into a store, ask the store owner if you can take the fruit without paying, and the store owner obliges, then I think it's acceptable to do so.

Re: UBlock Origin

#319

Post by click170 » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 12:40 AM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #293

click170 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. What you've just described is me, taking the content from your site, stripping out the ads, and re-posting it on the Internet for others to consume sans advertisements. This is very clearly different from a single person using ad blockers on their own computers, and you know it. However, thi…

No, the difference is we're distributing devices that, at no effort whatsoever, strip out all the ads. An ad blocker is literally a few clicks away on google chrome to never see ads again. His analogy is pretty solid compared to that. It's so easy to use an ad blocker that there's no reason not to, no matter how low impact the ads are. And no single user can make a measurable impact on a website's revenue through adv…

Me using an ad blocker on my computer is in no way equivalent to me reposting that content, and trying to claim it is causes me to lose respect for the person who holds that opinion.

I get the tragedy of the commons, but far as I'm concerned the impact on content producers is not my problem, the abusive ads they used to employ are. I now have protections against such abuse and I will not feel sorry for them for it.

They chose to use abusive ads. They made their bed, now they get to sleep in it.

Re: UBlock Origin

#320

Post by darkmighty » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 1:20 AM UTC

click170 wrote: post #319

darkmighty wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the difference is we're distributing devices that, at no effort whatsoever, strip out all the ads. An ad blocker is literally a few clicks away on google chrome to never see ads again. His analogy is pretty solid compared to that. It's so easy to use an ad blocker that there's no reason not to, no matter how low impact the ads are. And no single user can make a measurable impact on a website's revenue through adv…

Me using an ad blocker on my computer is in no way equivalent to me reposting that content, and trying to claim it is causes me to lose respect for the person who holds that opinion. I get the tragedy of the commons, but far as I'm concerned the impact on content producers is not my problem, the abusive ads they used to employ are. I now have protections against such abuse and I will not feel sorry for them for it. T…

It's just a matter of semantics. It's a "device" that strips all ads at no effort, by default everywhere, forever. It's definitively not equivalent to cutting out the ads yourself since that requires significant effort. If you don't like the phrase that "someone is redistributing the content without ads", just replace it with "someone is distributing a device that strips all ads as soon as you see the newspaper". Semantically different, effectively the same.