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The biggest and most important lists (Easylist and its localizations) are heavily maintained by eyeo GmbH, the company behind AdBlock Plus. It might be a commu

by foepys 7y ago

The biggest and most important lists (Easylist and its localizations) are heavily maintained by eyeo GmbH, the company behind AdBlock Plus. It might be a community project but in reality it's more like Chromium or Go.

feanaro 7y ago
How would this make the uBlock Origin project like Chromium? The lists work and if the bigger lists choose not to block everything you'd like, you can simply enable additional lists. It's just a data source.
- louiz 7y ago
  It makes the list like chromium, not ublock origin.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    Okay, sure. I interpreted it as the OP referring to the extension itself since the grandparent post was primarily talking about being impressed with it being run by a single person.
earenndil 7y ago
Not really, no. The lists themselves are ultimately less interesting than the technology used to run them; there are other lists, and if easylist soured, a community-sourced alternative could be made relatively easily.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Doesn't that argument work for the plugin too. I mean most people using uBlock Origin probably started with Adblock (and maybe moved to ABP), or uBlock. You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. Back in the day I used a local proxy tool, Proximator or something. AFAIK uBo isn't doing anything particular unique technologically (which doesn't mean I'm not grateful, nor that anyone could make it).
  - gorhill 7y ago
    > You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. You can't. uBO has contextual information for each network request, something not available to external content blocking solutions. For example, many filters are meant to apply only on specific domains or whether they are 1st- or 3rd-party, and for this to work you need to know from which origin a network request is fired. Also, uBO has an advanced-user mode that let you create rules to override filters in static filter lists; allows to work in default-deny mode; or even allows to work with no static filter lists at all. Contextual information is key to advanced-user mode features.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    I use element filtering to strip Google News links off of the search page on the offhand chance I can't find something on DuckDuckGo and have to go back to it. www.google.com/search*tbm=nws^$document www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Top stories)) www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Videos)) www.google.com##div[role="tab"]:has(a:has-text(News)) It's a great feature that would be impossible with something like pihole. `has-text` is very powerful.
- foepys 7y ago
  I actually doubt that. Finding the right rules is quite a bit of work and hobbyists will only look for such stuff for so long until they get bored. Programming can be fun but adding the nearly but not exactly the same rule to a filter list for the 2,000th time will eventually get tedious. Especially if you are playing a cat and mouse game and you are the (unpaid) cat and the mouse has quite strong incentives to get paid.
gorhill 7y ago
EasyList/EasyPrivacy and other lists are maintained by volunteers, not by Eyeo GmbH.

by foepys 7y ago

feanaro 7y ago

How would this make the uBlock Origin project like Chromium? The lists work and if the bigger lists choose not to block everything you'd like, you can simply enable additional lists. It's just a data source.

louiz 7y ago
It makes the list like chromium, not ublock origin.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Okay, sure. I interpreted it as the OP referring to the extension itself since the grandparent post was primarily talking about being impressed with it being run by a single person.

earenndil 7y ago

Not really, no. The lists themselves are ultimately less interesting than the technology used to run them; there are other lists, and if easylist soured, a community-sourced alternative could be made relatively easily.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Doesn't that argument work for the plugin too. I mean most people using uBlock Origin probably started with Adblock (and maybe moved to ABP), or uBlock. You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. Back in the day I used a local proxy tool, Proximator or something. AFAIK uBo isn't doing anything particular unique technologically (which doesn't mean I'm not grateful, nor that anyone could make it).
- gorhill 7y ago
  > You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. You can't. uBO has contextual information for each network request, something not available to external content blocking solutions. For example, many filters are meant to apply only on specific domains or whether they are 1st- or 3rd-party, and for this to work you need to know from which origin a network request is fired. Also, uBO has an advanced-user mode that let you create rules to override filters in static filter lists; allows to work in default-deny mode; or even allows to work with no static filter lists at all. Contextual information is key to advanced-user mode features.
- danShumway 7y ago
  I use element filtering to strip Google News links off of the search page on the offhand chance I can't find something on DuckDuckGo and have to go back to it. www.google.com/search*tbm=nws^$document www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Top stories)) www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Videos)) www.google.com##div[role="tab"]:has(a:has-text(News)) It's a great feature that would be impossible with something like pihole. `has-text` is very powerful.
foepys 7y ago
I actually doubt that. Finding the right rules is quite a bit of work and hobbyists will only look for such stuff for so long until they get bored. Programming can be fun but adding the nearly but not exactly the same rule to a filter list for the 2,000th time will eventually get tedious. Especially if you are playing a cat and mouse game and you are the (unpaid) cat and the mouse has quite strong incentives to get paid.

gorhill 7y ago

EasyList/EasyPrivacy and other lists are maintained by volunteers, not by Eyeo GmbH.