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I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.
by approxim8ion 5y ago
I can't think of too many pieces of software that have improved my life as significantly as uBlock Origin in the last decade. It's been an absolute godsend.
- baal80spam 5y agoI agree to the point that I can't imagine using the internet without uBlock installed.
- flatiron 5y agoI don’t install anything on my work computer that I can’t say 100% is used for work so I could never justify uBlock. It does make a HUGE difference. The web without it is a giant mess.
- cnasc 5y agoMy company installs uBlock on all laptops by default
- TylerE 5y agoIt's easy to justify as a security measure, given the amount of malicious ads trying to serve up exploits.
- sverhagen 5y agoMaybe they don't browse the web either, I mean... unless it's 100% justified for work...
- cable2600 5y agoMSDN used to be on the web and more updated than the CD-ROMS they mailed out for subscribers. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/ It is the help program of Visual Studio and other apps. Managers would check http://msn.microsoft.com/ http://msn.microsoft.com/ which had their stocks in it. I only used the web for work, nothing else. I didn't use my company email for newsgroups and website signups I used my Hotmail account instead that kept the spam there.
- flatiron 5y agoYeah I work from home and have a personal device on my desk. I wouldn’t even check the weather on my office device!
- benhurmarcel 5y agoMy company blocks addons on Chrome so I browse non-internal sites on Firefox just for uBlock.
- fm200 5y agoAbsolute true.If you are reading this, i want to say BIG thank you mr Raymond!
- asiachick 5y agoSadly on iOS there is no ublock
- quickthrower2 5y agoReader mode is good though, when available
- hansel_der 5y agoFF Focus or 1Blocker work fine thou
- VRay 5y agoI've had decent luck with Blokada The nice thing is that it's open source
- kingcharles 5y agoBrowsing the Web of 2021 with a mobile hotspot on a desktop is impossible without an ad blocker. There is so much shit on web pages now that: (a) site assume you're on a desktop and have infinite bandwidth, (b) on a mobile connection the pages take forever to complete, and (c) the pages use up all of your mobile data allowance. I'm ethically against taking money away from people who want to generate revenue through advertising, but I have no choice if I want to view the content at all.
- lars_francke 5y agoI'm with you on the last part. I've avoided using an Adblocker for years and finally caved in a few weeks ago. I've always wanted an opt-in blocker. One that is off by default but on the worst offender sites can be turned on by the click of a button. This has never been possible easily but I haven't looked in around five years.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> I'm ethically against taking money away from people who want to generate revenue through advertising Why do you say that? They're the ones who sent you HTML for free. They assumed you'd look at the ads, but you have absolutely zero moral obligation to validate that assumption. If you have a magazine, you can totally rip out the ads and throw them in the trash. If you have a newspaper, you can cut out the articles you care about and discard everything else. Use the ad blocker and be proud. If anything, you're helping free the web from the scourge that is advertising. If they want money, they're totally free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required instead of serving a free web page.
- skinnymuch 5y agoThe assumption is that most are not ripping the ads out of the magazine without seeing them at all. The assumption and social contract was the page is sent to you with ads and you take in all of it. You can make all sorts of loose statements like this then draw the line where you feel it’s wrong. It will still be arbitrary. To continue stretching examples. Developers chose to release software as is. Through some combo of your reasoning above, is it okay to pirate/crack software? Most of the time HNers will be against software piracy but for blocking ads. I care more about the obvious social contracts in place and the obviousness of creators are supporting what they created by showing ads or charging for their software. Another example was people getting mad at someone for wanting to split a Stratchery subscription. One big point was it’s against the TOS. Some of those people surely block ads and would not care if TOSs say you can’t. I actually find the Stratchery situation sympathetic because I believe the person was unemployed. Similarly if you have a super old computer or limited data dude to financial constraints. Yeah, that is an exception where the morals make sense. However going against Stratchery, a pretty small time operation by splitting the cost amongst some people for one login is obviously not cool for the average middle class on up person. > If they want money, they're free to return HTTP 402 Payment Required. This is not true in the real world. The amount of backlash you can get for doing that will almost never be worth it. False positives are an issue as well. Similarly, software that requires you to always be online and aggressively verifies you have paid for said software which ends up creating some friction, is frowned upon too. Or Stratchery suspending you or sending similar headers for logging in via IPs far from one another. The false positives would be lead to a Streisand Effect
- binwiederhier 5y agoI have never used an ad blocker and have resisted installing it many times. My thinking always was: I'd rather have a web with ads than a web in which I have to pay for content and sign up to 800 different websites with 800 different accounts. A website that I've frequented a lot, the German news website spiegel.de, has converted to pay only mostly, and i now can't use it anymore. I am not saying that's the fault of ad blockers, but it certainly didn't help.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI bet that website still has ads despite the paywall.
- bern4444 5y agoIt would be a lot easier if websites and advertisers actually worked to naturally integrate ads in a way that wasn't obtrusive. Massive banners at the top, auto playing videos, throwing off the page layout etc are all terrible ad experiences that dominate.
- PandawanFr 5y agoI think carbon ads does it particularly well. Though I’m not sure this kind of ad would work in every case.
- fartcannon 5y agoGreed doesn't stop. It doesnt say, 'this, but no more. our shareholders have enough'. We'd be here with or without as blockers. It would just be worse without.
- dkdk8283 5y agoI liked the old internet where people posted content out of passion not for money. The quality has suffered and many think they have a right to get paid.
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- dr-detroit 5y agothey built adequate blockers into browsers but I dont expect your ilk to ever change your opinion or learn something
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah, it's one of those life-changing projects. It's so important and trusted that it should actually be integrated into the browsers themselves so that it can do its job even more effectively. Sadly, conflicts of interest prevent that. It should probably come pre-installed with every browser instead. I wish iOS Firefox had support for it. Seems Apple doesn't allow extensions. I told all my friends about uBlock Origin but so many of them use iPhones. I still install it on every browser I come across and everyone is happy with it.
- behnamoh 5y agoI wish there was a uBlock app for iOS, similar to other ad-blockers that are available on iOS. I'd be willing to pay for such an app and be able to use any browser on iOS (including FF) w/o worrying about ads.
- zebrafruit 5y agoThe new AdGuard iOS beta has a web extension component and it is now very close to ublock in terms of functionality. So it’s coming soon. Between AdGuard and NextDNS I don’t see hardly any ads.
- alentred 5y agoI use Firefox Focus and the Lockdown Privacy app on iOS. Not the same experience but achieves a good result.
- technion 5y agoIt's actually a substantive money saver in a shared compute environment. Running Windows RDS or VDA solutions, you can actually watch CPU and RAM reductions across the board by deploying uBlock Origin.
- adrianN 5y agoI wonder how much CO2 uBlock origin saved so far.
- pjc50 5y agoThe "this is a huge waste of energy in scamming people" argument deployed against cryptocurrency is also valid for traditional spam, and most web advertising, it's just that it's not so visible any more. Google must have a datacenter worth of computers doing classification on email.
- alcover 5y agoMe too. More broadly, I'd very much like an energy meter for web pages.
- agumonkey 5y agoCourthouse i'm in has obviously locked browser extensions but there's no adblock.. i can't help but see ublock's logo in the toolbar and imagine how much bandwidth that frail network would grab back if it was there.
- Krasnol 5y agoI'm honestly afraid what will happen if this project dies. And it will die...all good digital things die one day. We'll start again with all kinds of half broken forks and fakes....scarry..
- herbst 5y agoSome lists the project uses are maintained for longer than than ublock or even adblock extensions were a thing. I remember back when building your own pihole was the only way to go and opera just rolled out native link blocking. It won't die, only change maybe
- BatteryMountain 5y agouBlock + PiHole = dream team. I was surprised to see how crappy the internet has become when I accidentally left my pihole disabled the other day. Maybe we should just reset it (the internet)? Start over with a new kind of browser without ads, extensions, no JS, no CSS etc.. just a dumb renderer. The current bloat is getting embarrassing.
- herbst 5y agoThis is my stack too, at home. Pi-Hole is blocking so much telemetry in my phone that I am honestly afraid of using it outside my network. I don't even take internet with me, because I want my phone to be somewhat safe as the only reason I have one are banking apps and authentifications.