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Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

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Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#81

Post by ameshkov »

jiveturkey wrote: post #65

> 2015 — Content blocking comes to Safari and iOS typo. He means "Safari on iOS". Safari on desktop had normal extension-based ad blocking since day 1. Then the content blocking API came to iOS then later the same API in macOS. > • No debugging tools perhaps in 2015 -- I wouldn't know -- but today it's certainly debuggable with the help of a macOS host. Much like remote gdb. > The maximum number of rules limitation i…

1. The only debugging tool we have is the browser console, and the only thing printed there is the blocked URL, you cannot even find out what rule did that.

2. The maximum number of rules IS a problem and it is there only because the current implementation consumes to much memory and slow to compile a content blocker. WebKit devs may allow us to pull request an alternative implementation (there’s an ongoing discussion on bwo), and if there are no performance issues, the limit will be increased.

3. Regarding maintaining a filter list, traditional blockers do not use regexes unless it is really really necessary. What’s written in this post is by people who maintain filter lists for over 10 years.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#82

Post by samatman »

forkandwait wrote: post #56
reb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelp! Try clicking "read more" on any review in a mobile browser and see what happens.

So don't use yelp

This would be a more attractive option if it didn't amount to 'cede yet another part of the Internet to Google'.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#83

Post by tcberry »

reb wrote: post #54
bambax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many websites indeed pester us to download their mobile app but I have yet to find one that forces me to? Do they actually exist?

Yelp! Try clicking "read more" on any review in a mobile browser and see what happens.

You can get around that by selecting "View desktop site" on your mobile browser.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#84

Post by strbean »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #63
mrspeaker wrote: post #4

Great article! It's funny to finally see ad blockers go "mainstream". My dystopian-future fear is that that Web Assembly will be the end of ad blocking (and the end of a web of connected web sites). Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. Then ad blocking (and other customization) will be limited to "the…

Why WebAssembly? Just bake ad code into a SPA and that's it. Random elements with random names at random positions in the DOM, positioned using styles. Quite low-tech. If implemented properly, it cannot be blocked. At all. Except blocking all scripts of course, which means the SPA will stop working. And then I'll just stop visiting. (:

Nobody wants to host ad content / pay for the bandwidth themselves though. I think URL blacklisting will continue to work.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#85

Post by samatman »

ameshkov wrote: post #53
bubblethink wrote: post #47

So a survey article about adblocking without mentioning the main ad blocker in the world (and their competitor), ublock origin. Well played! As for the history lesson, the main meta lesson is that adblockers need to be completely detached from any monetory incentives. No company, however noble, should be trusted at all. Only open source + community ad blockers have survived and flourished. Time and again, people have…

Sorry for that, we don't mind mentioning anyone, it's just there was no historical event that we could tie to uBO. I'll ask the author to add a footnote about uBO and others we missed to mention, we love them all. upd: done

I haven't read the article, and I'm not what you'd call well-versed in the history of ad blocking.

But even I know that uBlock was bought out and introduced 'acceptable ads', and that uBlock Origin became the community fork which maintains the spirit of the original uBlock.

That deserves more than a footnote, imho.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#87

Post by virgilp »

e2le wrote: post #78
ayushgp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit forces you to download the app now. You can scroll like 2-4 pages worth of content and then it'll pop up asking you to open in app. On every page you navigate to from within the website you'll first get a pop up asking to choose between browser and reddit app.

I'm using old.reddit.com and wasn't aware they started doing this. Reddit is turning into a dumpster fire, it's bad enough I have to use the old UI so that it doesn't burn a hole in the cpu.

Forget the CPU usage, I only use the old UI because it's better/ I find it more usable.

Or maybe I'm just getting old :D

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#88

Post by mixmastamyk »

samatman wrote: post #82
forkandwait wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't use yelp

This would be a more attractive option if it didn't amount to 'cede yet another part of the Internet to Google'.

Reminds me of when Microsoft took over. Many of their competitors destroyed themselves in the 80s and 90s.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#89

Post by ameshkov »

samatman wrote: post #85
ameshkov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for that, we don't mind mentioning anyone, it's just there was no historical event that we could tie to uBO. I'll ask the author to add a footnote about uBO and others we missed to mention, we love them all. upd: done

I haven't read the article, and I'm not what you'd call well-versed in the history of ad blocking. But even I know that uBlock was bought out and introduced 'acceptable ads', and that uBlock Origin became the community fork which maintains the spirit of the original uBlock. That deserves more than a footnote, imho.

Acceptable ads deserves being there, you are right.

This was the first attempt at finding a compromise with advertisers, hated by a huge part of users and advertisers at the same time. But it was launched by Adblock Plus in 2011, long before uBlock was developed.

Re: Are ad blockers doomed or have we already won? A history lesson

#90

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #51
ukoki wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Big sites will eventually convert to essentially "a web browser inside a web browser" so they have total control over the content and how it's displayed. This has already happened: Just look at how many websites pester you to download their mobile app or even block content unless you access from the app. From a user functionality perspective the vast majority of apps do nothing a browser can't do. But the killer fe…

Many websites indeed pester us to download their mobile app but I have yet to find one that forces me to? Do they actually exist?

[deleted]
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