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UBlock Origin

addons.mozilla.org

81–90 of 333 posts

Re: UBlock Origin

#81

You should all check out umatrix if you have 15 minutes to spare. Made by the same guy, it's adblocking and noscript done exactly how you want it done. Block pulled-in third-party sites by default, accept all on the primary domain you're looking at, and especially block from domains on a blacklist. It breaks on a few sites, but it's not in my way as much as noscript and it's a 5 second job to get most any website to…

Is it supposed to run alongside uBlock Origin or is it indended as a replacement?

Not a replacement per se but they would conflict, yes.

Re: UBlock Origin

#82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget that uBlock blocks Google Analytics, breaks most popular travel sites if you try to actually purchase, and also error reporters like NewRelix. Most of this is the fault of the default inclusion of EasyPrivacy I believe.

Why is blocking Google Analytics bad? Isn't blocking spyware like GA the main purpose of ad blocking software?

The vast majority of people use ad blockers to block ads. That's why almost no ad blockers block GA, etc by default. Plus, from my other comment: "Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc and blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance)."

Re: UBlock Origin

#83
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget that uBlock blocks Google Analytics, breaks most popular travel sites if you try to actually purchase, and also error reporters like NewRelix. Most of this is the fault of the default inclusion of EasyPrivacy I believe.

Why is blocking Google Analytics bad? Isn't blocking spyware like GA the main purpose of ad blocking software?

No, its main purpose is blocking ads. Those visibly (and sometimes audibly) annoying flashy things. It's in the name.

Re: UBlock Origin

#84
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget that uBlock blocks Google Analytics, breaks most popular travel sites if you try to actually purchase, and also error reporters like NewRelix. Most of this is the fault of the default inclusion of EasyPrivacy I believe.

If I remember correctly, EasyPrivacy got removed from the default selection quite a while ago. But it was in it when that addon was first presented here, probably where that memory stems from.

EasyPrivacy is enabled by default in current installs of uBlock on Firefox.

Re: UBlock Origin

#85
post #35

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the…

The vast majority of games on either platform won't make enough money to matter either way at this point due to oversaturation. There's still a small chance for a moonshot with the right game and the right marketing and some luck.

Re: UBlock Origin

#86
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it for default browsing, if anything doesn't work I open it in an incognito window. Can't complain.

An incognito window doesn't use add-ins?

You can enable it per extension in Chrome, so if you want an ad blocker to work in an incognito window just go to chrome://extensions and check the box that says "Allow in incognito" (though allowing an ad blocker to work in incognito mode defeats the purpose of using that mode, at least in the context of this discussion).

Re: UBlock Origin

#87
post #35

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the…

I think we're ripe for some new business models becoming mainstream.

As I see it, ads just suck. I don't just mean suck as in "I just don't like them"; they're also just terrible at accomplishing what they want to accomplish, and they're getting more terrible, and because of this there's getting to be more and more of them everywhere. I get the impression (just an impression) that society is sort of 'wising up to' ads. (Admittedly, this may be because I've grown up and have personally wised up.) I personally have not clicked on an online ad in .. it's got to be at least a few years.. and I long for a day when everyone has wised up to the point where the model falls apart. (but I'm aware that ads can affect you by other means than having you click on them, such as by planting ideas in your head or making you gradually accustomed to company or product names.)

My big complaint is simply that I just hate having every second of my day filled with people trying to sell me crap! And more than anything, I hate when content is also an ad, or disguised as ads. I loathe product placements in movies and 'sponsored by' sections that play the company's commercials. I especially loathe when huge boardroom corporations task a bunch of advertisers to come up with an ads that will appeal to an 18-25 audience, and they crack their heads together and come up with a cute, ukelele-filled, animated skit that (literally) begs you to hashtag it. I want people to stop taking culture and trying to figure out how to manipulate it to sell their crap.

Like, it seems obvious that the fact that, in order to watch a TV show, you have to spend a quarter of your time watching (or ignoring, or muting and browsing the internet during) ads, is a completely terrible user experience! Imagine if every fourth page of a novel was an ad. Or if a fourth of popular websites were ads - oh wait, they are.

It's all monstrously unpleasant. I sometimes torrent movies and TV not because I couldn't pay for them, but because even if I use the right channels, the experience is awful (among other reasons). It's crazy to me that there's not yet an option to just pay more to disable all ads on TV. I guess it was technically infeasible for a long time, but, still.

Netflix is an example of someone figuring out how to take ad-supported things and turn them into a new model. That's a good thing. (Though I suspect a huge portion of their profits comes from it being so easy to ignore their bill because you sign up once and never get notifications about it?)

Ultimately I'd like to just pay for what I consume. I like Netflix because I give them money and I get service. I give Spotify money and I get service. I wouldn't mind a service that (via browser extension or something) allowed me to specify donations per month to various sites on the Internet that I visit - so I insert 100$ a month and it gets divvied up, and in exchange I have no ads. (With the caveat that if a site shows ads anyway, or tries to bait me into reading it, or is bullshit in some other way, I can revoke their piece of my payment..).

For creative work I think patronage is an underrated business model, largely because there's a high barrier to actually giving money to something. I'd love to just be able to say, I have 50$ a month for bloggers whose blogs I read - I don't want to push to "donate via paypal" button on every site; I just want it to get sent out by virtue of my being there and liking it. [Note: what doesn't work is paying proportionally to time spent on a website. That's how you get mindless Buzzfeed clickbait everywhere. Gotta figure out something else.] Twitch figured out how to get its users to actual donate money with minimal friction and that seems to be working well for them (though they're hosting a lot more ads lately, which is very tedious).

I'd also love to see a return of the renaissance style patronage of "rich people funding artists". Seems like funding happens mostly through grants and scholarships these days, instead of people just funding specific people who can do things they want to see in the world.

For your game, if it's multiplayer, the "cosmetics cost real money' model seems to work pretty well, and avoids you being resented requiring money just to access the whole game. As does just having the game cost money up front, but, that tends to lower demand. If you want to add content to the game after it's released, I think "expansions" are treated much more favorably by the public than "DLC" is: we feel cheated when we pay half as much as the game itself and get a single, probably crappy level. It's a lot nicer to get a large chunk of content with new mechanics and new stories that isn't just a tacked-in moneymaker level like a lot of games are doing.

Re: UBlock Origin

#89
post #23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: "uBlock Origin" (or "uBlock₀") is the version you want (maintained by the creator of the project, up-to-date) The original "uBlock" github repo was created by gorhill. Later, the repo was handed to a contributor of the project (chrisaljoudi) who did nothing good with it. Finally, gorhill forked chrisaljoudi's repo to create "uBlock Origin" and resumed development.

I don't think that this is actually true. Yes, gorhill started ublock and then handed it over, but chrisaljoudi just continued development and made some changes (like a call for donations). I'm not aware he did anything bad, and in the video he put up sounded just a bit unlucky, not like planning to do bad things ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA ). Or see https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/a…

>I'm not aware he did anything bad

I don't have a good overview, but there was some stripping of authorship of patches. E.g. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/69

Re: UBlock Origin

#90
post #35

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the…

This might very well lead to better content on news sites. Content that at least some users are willing to pay for, instead of link bait bullshit.

Premium user systems that offer full HD videos and other extra content to paying users seem to work well enough if the content is good.

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