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uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

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Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#391

Post by errantspark »

lazyweb wrote: post #384
errantspark wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely wild, I have Chrome Canary installed w/o any addons because of some bleeding edge WebBluetooth stuff I'm working on and occasionally I'll forget which browser I'm using and visit a site with it. The web without adblock is basically unusable, it's legitimately completely insane that people will put up with it.

I've said it before, but the entire ad business is a cancer. Every minute of the modern human experience is exploited for maximizing profits. I've read an interview recently with an journalist / documentary film maker (forgot his name) where he was talking about "bullshit jobs" and for most people, their actual function is to consume. That's why ads are penetrating every last part of our private lives, greatly accele…

Don't be sorry friend. You are correct and I hear your frustration, and while we're at it most SaaS is just as vile as advertising. I fear that this is the inevitable conclusion of unfettered capitalism and perhaps individual refusal to participate is one of the few ways we can begin to turn the helm on a world that worships unfettered greed.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#392

Post by arendtio »

antattack wrote: post #31

I would use Firefox + uBlock Origin over other browsers even if it was half as fast.

I can say, that is not true for me :-/

Since a few weeks I use two 4k displays with my work laptop running Windows 10 and I with 4k it seems that Chrome is quite a bit faster than Firefox on Windows. With the FullHD resolution I used before I never noticed a huge performance difference. I don't know what causes it and on my private PC (different hardware) running Linux I never experienced performance differences of that dimension, but currently I have fallen back to using Chrome on the work laptop :-(

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#393

Post by AlchemistCamp »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #388
dorgo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a browser bans ad-blockers and people start to fiddle with DNS, wouldn't it be easy for a browser to use it's own DNS system? If a browser turns hostile there is nothing you can do.

Yes. Golang actually encourages developers to use their own resolver in applications instead of the system one. Google itself uses its "Public DNS" cache addreses in software and hardware it distributes. Neither decision may have been made with the intent of thwarting DNS-based evasion of ad/tracking, however, the resulting consequences may well be the same. "... there is nothing you can do." I am typing this comment…

Is any browser written in Golang?

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#394

Post by Vinnl »

throwaway189262 wrote: post #327
xoa wrote: post #70

Wow, what an awesome dive into some of the technical aspects behind one of my favorite tools for using the web. And I do think of it that way these days, it's fairly stunning on some sites to switch off all the block and see how they become genuinely unbrowsable. I remember seeing Gorhill discuss a few times over the years some of the reqs for uBO during certain times (like why it could no longer work with Safari fol…

I think the future is machine learning based blocking. Ads are obvious, they have to be for users to see them. You could probably use text classification and object recognition to filter ads effectively. And you could do it from the view layer where nothing on the page can tell they've been blocked. This is also my tinfoily theory for why Chrome restricts the API's used by ad blockers. It's to prevent more effective…

> Ads are obvious, they have to be for users to see them.

I'm not so sure about that: https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/g...

(See also: "native ads".)

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#395

Post by Vinnl »

Scottn1 wrote: post #370

I've been a daily user and advocate of Firefox since Opera changed to using Chromium. But recently I've grown tired of their privacy hypocrisy and company decisions that I've uninstalled it and started to try out Edge/Brave/Vivaldi as my daily. It has pained me to do this as FF was my last safe haven away from Chromium. If you dig into some settings and follow tech news, I have begun to question some of Mozilla's con…

I don't have the background behind all of those and I'm sure not everything is rainbows and butterflies (especially Firefox for Android has some iffy stuff, I think), but for a couple of your points...

> 1) Enabled by default all of your website DNS requests going to Cloudflare with a "promise" this information is not being used or sold. We all know how solid this promise has been for other large tech companies. All under the promotion that DoH protects you from your own ISP.

AIUI, this is only in the US, where for practically everybody the alternative is indeed that they're going through your ISP, with a promise that the information is being used and sold. Kind of a rock and a hard place situation.

> 4) "Recommended extensions" enabled by default. Got a nag for a recommended extension after few days of browsing. So FF must be scanning your browsing history in order for this to work?

To clarify, it's not the extensions themselves that are enabled, but the recommendations, right? If so, yes, Firefox is analysing your usage, but that is your local Firefox install, i.e. the thing that already has and uses your full browser history. AFAIK the rules for when to recommend what are the same for everyone and run just on your computer.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#396

Post by favadi »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #382
Scottn1 wrote: post #370

I've been a daily user and advocate of Firefox since Opera changed to using Chromium. But recently I've grown tired of their privacy hypocrisy and company decisions that I've uninstalled it and started to try out Edge/Brave/Vivaldi as my daily. It has pained me to do this as FF was my last safe haven away from Chromium. If you dig into some settings and follow tech news, I have begun to question some of Mozilla's con…

Yeah that's all true maybe but the other vendors are far worse AFAIK.

> Upon install, FF installs a scheduled service that runs daily. From what I've found out, that service is sending back to Mozilla what your default browser is on YOUR PC (why is that their business). This scheduled service remains on your PC even after uninstalling Firefox and continues to run daily.

This is shocking to me. More information, if anyone is not aware yet: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/mozapps/defa....

> The Default Browser Agent is a Windows-only scheduled task which runs in the background to collect and submit data about the browser that the user has set as their OS default (that is, the browser that will be invoked by the operating system to open web links that the user clicks on in other programs).

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#398

Post by pmontra »

int_19h wrote: post #385
dreamcompiler wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic that the browser that presents the biggest red flag for removing user control of DNS is Firefox, with their push for DNS over HTTPS. It's true that you can turn it off (for now), but until Firefox baked DoH in, DNS was a sacrosanct user control switch mostly unimpeachable by corporate meddling.

So long as DoH servers are configurable, why is it a problem?

I use /etc/hosts daily to access computers with only an IP address and no DNS entry, or to override them for testing.

I don't want to have to self host a DoH server when it's so easy to edit a test file.

Furthermore, until every ISP has its own DoH server we are centralizing control of the basic internet infrastructure even more than now.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#399

Post by socceroos »

dash2 wrote: post #397

Tools like this are cutting off the branch they are sitting on. If you block all the ads on an ad-supported website, how will it survive?

Adapt? That's what most industries that face change do.

How did sites survive before the ad infestation business model?

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#400

Post by black_puppydog »

dash2 wrote: post #397

Tools like this are cutting off the branch they are sitting on. If you block all the ads on an ad-supported website, how will it survive?

The branch that uBlock sits on is not ad revenue. It's people's annoyance at constantly being subjected to intrusive user tracking, especially for sites that they have little choice to not use. Think social networks and banks. Sure you can refuse to use them entirely on principle, but it's not a practical approach if you want to actually have a life.

On top of that, much of the tracking that does go on is actually blatantly illegal in how it's done, at least in the EU. It's just too small-time to enforce at scale. Doesn't mean I have to take this as a given.

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