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uBlock Origin Lite: Description

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Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#81

Post by icelancer »

sbarre wrote: post #75
von_lohengramm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how much money they receive and where they squander it all?

Can you share more information on this?

There are fast-growing sections of their budget slated for political-like causes, not technical ones that keep the website online and accessible. They call it the Thriving Movement and it's largely based around DEI-type initiatives.

"The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown from being 13.2% of the Foundation’s overall budget to 24.5%."

Not only is more money going into it, a larger share of their budget is being allocated to it, so a larger share of each donation goes into DEI initiatives. If you're the kind of person that does not think this is a valuable investment of your money, you might not be inclined to donate anymore (or to donate less than before).

I personally believe a 24.5% share of the budget for what are largely DEI initiatives is not something I'd prefer to support with increasing donations, so I have scaled back my donations to them (as well as Mozilla/Firefox for the same reasons). I am sure many people agree with DEI initiatives and donate more. That's fine. We all vote with our wallet.

Source: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-...

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#82

Post by staticassertion »

tyingq wrote: post #79
staticassertion wrote: post #37

I guess the biggest issue I have with V3 is I don't really "get it". The idea was initially that extensions have too many privileges and that malware can leverage those privileges for harm. I'd love data here! This is such a good area to share information on, as someone in security I'd really value that. I'd like to see case studies on malware, or even broad things like "malware uses these permissions X% of the time"…

The reason you don't get it is that taking away the functional part of onBeforeRequest() doesn't really help with privacy. Because extensions can, for example, still inject arbitrary javascript if those permissions are in the manifest. What it really does is ensure that adblockers can't do heuristics, and instead have to rely solely on semi-static lists of urls. That's a nice outcome if you're a company that makes mo…

Yeah, I said this in another comment, I don't really believe that to be the case. I'm not saying that a conflict of interest doesn't exist, I just don't believe that this move is part of an overall plan to have Google start bypassing adblockers.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#83

Post by capableweb »

icelancer wrote: post #81
sbarre wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share more information on this?

There are fast-growing sections of their budget slated for political-like causes, not technical ones that keep the website online and accessible. They call it the Thriving Movement and it's largely based around DEI-type initiatives. "The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown fr…

As someone who never heard of "Thriving Movement" nor "DEI-type initiaives" before, it seems to be around making the workplace (Wikimedia Foundation) more diverse, equal and inclusive. At a glance, those seems like good things to introduce to global organizations (especially foundations) that is supposed to be represented by the whole world. But I can agree that it seems like a large part of the budget, for being what it is.

But if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're saying it's a negative for them to put such a focus on it?

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#84

Post by tyingq »

staticassertion wrote: post #82
tyingq wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you don't get it is that taking away the functional part of onBeforeRequest() doesn't really help with privacy. Because extensions can, for example, still inject arbitrary javascript if those permissions are in the manifest. What it really does is ensure that adblockers can't do heuristics, and instead have to rely solely on semi-static lists of urls. That's a nice outcome if you're a company that makes mo…

Yeah, I said this in another comment, I don't really believe that to be the case. I'm not saying that a conflict of interest doesn't exist, I just don't believe that this move is part of an overall plan to have Google start bypassing adblockers.

It's not really unprecedented for them to offer up (often attractive and plausible) trojan horse reasons for why they do things that aren't the real reason. AMP, to me, is one good example. There are others.

I don't know what else they would really gain, or why else onBeforeRequest() was the most important thing to take away when extensions have so many other ways they can do harm.

Perhaps another way to look at it is not Google actively defeating adblockers, but giving a gift to their customers that pay for ads...making it easier for those customers to deal with the rising tide of adblockers, paywall end-arounds, etc.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#85

Post by staticassertion »

tyingq wrote: post #84
staticassertion wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I said this in another comment, I don't really believe that to be the case. I'm not saying that a conflict of interest doesn't exist, I just don't believe that this move is part of an overall plan to have Google start bypassing adblockers.

It's not really unprecedented for them to offer up (often attractive and plausible) trojan horse reasons for why they do things that aren't the real reason. AMP, to me, is one good example. There are others. I don't know what else they would really gain, or why else onBeforeRequest() was the most important thing to take away when extensions have so many other ways they can do harm. Perhaps another way to look at it i…

> Perhaps another way to look at it is not Google actively defeating adblockers, but giving a gift to their customers that pay for ads...making it easier for those customers to deal with the rising tide of adblockers, paywall end-arounds, etc.

This assumes that Google's ads will start to bypass the V3 adblockers. V3 in and of itself does nothing, Google's ads are still blocked by the updated adblockers.

> I don't know what else they would really gain

Well that's what I'm asking haha I'd like to hear from them on this. Even if some people at Google are nefariously implementing V3 for some future plan to bypass adblockers, surely some people at Google believe that there are benefits to the work.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#86

Post by tyingq »

staticassertion wrote: post #85
tyingq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really unprecedented for them to offer up (often attractive and plausible) trojan horse reasons for why they do things that aren't the real reason. AMP, to me, is one good example. There are others. I don't know what else they would really gain, or why else onBeforeRequest() was the most important thing to take away when extensions have so many other ways they can do harm. Perhaps another way to look at it i…

> Perhaps another way to look at it is not Google actively defeating adblockers, but giving a gift to their customers that pay for ads...making it easier for those customers to deal with the rising tide of adblockers, paywall end-arounds, etc. This assumes that Google's ads will start to bypass the V3 adblockers. V3 in and of itself does nothing, Google's ads are still blocked by the updated adblockers. > I don't kno…

"Google's ads" is a broad category. I imagine there's many already defeating ad blockers. They wouldn't start with adsense or their ads on google search.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#87

Post by icelancer »

capableweb wrote: post #83
icelancer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are fast-growing sections of their budget slated for political-like causes, not technical ones that keep the website online and accessible. They call it the Thriving Movement and it's largely based around DEI-type initiatives. "The Thriving Movement budget has increased from $14.3 million last fiscal year to $36.7 million in this budget which represents an increase of $22.4 million or 157%. It has also grown fr…

As someone who never heard of "Thriving Movement" nor "DEI-type initiaives" before, it seems to be around making the workplace (Wikimedia Foundation) more diverse, equal and inclusive. At a glance, those seems like good things to introduce to global organizations (especially foundations) that is supposed to be represented by the whole world. But I can agree that it seems like a large part of the budget, for being wha…

I'm not morally judging them. If they think it's a good idea, good for them.

I'm just not interested in funding those initiatives at that percentage of budget and would rather send the money to other essential Internet companies who have lesser investments in those ideas. I still give some to Wikimedia, just not as much.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#88

Post by vuln »

sbarre wrote: post #75
von_lohengramm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how much money they receive and where they squander it all?

Can you share more information on this?

This is an interesting article and comment thread on wiki and their funds.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32840097

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#89

Post by behnamoh »

radlad wrote: post #63
baal80spam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bet he should! To me, there are 3 projects I'd throw my money to: - uBlock Origin - ytdl - The Internet Web Archive

SponsorBlock is on my list these days too.

+ Clickbait Remover for YT (removes the eye-catching thumbnails)

+ Dark Reader

Re: uBlock Origin Lite: Description

#90

Post by zamalek »

e40 wrote: post #38

What I don't get from this is how uBOL (MV3) compares to uBO (MV2). Anyone?

CNAME cloaking is one of the more significant differences. It's typically used for tracking (and is becoming increasingly common), but also works for advertising. Instead of linking images/scripts/etc. to ads.advertisingcompany.com you can simply set up a CNAME under your TLD that points to the advertising company. Now the domain no longer appears in the blocklist, so all the requests (uploading tracking data, or downloading adverts/scripts) work just fine.

With MV2, uBlock is able to inspect the DNS record while it is vetting the request, thwarting this workaround.

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