23 ms·

uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

858 points by nixcraft 5y ago

Larrikin 5y ago
I prefer Ad Nauseum (https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/) because I don't want to just block the ads I want to ruin the profile ad companies have on me by having all the ads clicked as well.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  I really like the concept but I would be concerned about having my Google account banned the instant it becomes popular
  - the_other 5y ago
    Time to diversify your supply chain then.
    - thatguy0900 5y ago
      I mean, I say Google but I can't imagine any website will allow a logged in user who is committing rampant ad fraud.
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        Don't give leverage to ad-supported websites? No site I use/rely day to day has any ads so those won't have a reason to ban me. For the rest, not only do they have very little to ban me on (no account, etc - best they can do is IP address?) but an IP ban would actually be beneficial as there's a chance it'll also propagate to their trackers and essentially mark my network as invisible or untrusted, not collecting/processing any data from it as it's considered fraudulent.
  - malka 5y ago
    This is one of the reasons I now use my own domain name
  - xdennis 5y ago
    That's the same concern I had. But after years of draging my feet, I've finally degoogled enough to not care if they banned my account. Time to install AdNauseam now.
- xigoi 5y ago
  Do you think they can't tell when a click is automated?
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    Google banned it from the Chrome store while leaving other ad blockers up, so maybe they can't?
    - malka 5y ago
      This is the strongest sign that it actually hurt their bottom line
  - ManlyBread 5y ago
    This gets brought up every time Ad Nauseam is mentioned but I have yet to see a proof of concept.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      I bet it could probably be done by doing statistical analysis or some AI technique to analyze one's browsing data, and maybe combining it with other information about you that they get from other sources (purchase history, social media participation, etc...). The problem for them is that even if it works this adds extra processing time, effort, and development time.. which can add up when aggregated over the many millions/billions of users they have. Much easier to just oppose effective ad blockers.
    - xigoi 5y ago
      A proof of concept that a site can tell whether you clicked something automatically? reCAPTCHA.
- wldcordeiro 5y ago
  Hah it'd be even funnier if it was able to use their "report" functions to report the ads as the spam they are.
- cjbgkagh 5y ago
  I have always assumed our future fascist overlords will use the curated ad profiles to bootstrap a social credit system. So instead of clicking on any ad I need one that only clicks on regime supporting, pro-social, good citizen ads.
  - jart 5y ago
    They probably don't have the data. Unless they started monitoring people for jaywalking, driving through crosswalks, smoking on trains, not cleaning up after dogs, buying junk food at 711, etc.
    - cjbgkagh 5y ago
      An efficient government could figure it out from proxy data, I’m sure I could do it. A corrupt and inefficient government wouldn’t care so much about getting it wrong. I suspect it’ll be the inefficient one. I can’t convince Google ads that I’m not 60 and not single and absolutely not into mature age dating. My non-ad blocked internet browsing experience is marred by pictures of leering grandmas. I expect my future in the fascist dictatorship will be an unpleasant one.
      - jart 5y ago
        If you enable ad personalization then they have an ad settings panel where they let you know what they think you're interested in. For instance, Google Ads thinks I'm a married disk jockey living in Orange County who listens to pop and hip hop and loves bread making, aviation, and environmentalism. They let us turn some of it off, but there's no option to tell them what we like.
    - JohnWhigham 5y ago
      You realize all that is coming, right? Health insurance companies would love to adjust your premium on the fly when they see you buy a 6 pack at the store.
      - jart 5y ago
- beardog 5y ago
  UBlock Origin is not just an adblocker though, in their own words it is a "wide-spectrum content blocker" capable of blocking things like malware, cookie consent popups, social media buttons, and outsider intrusion into LAN. If adnauseam did those things I would use it (I don't want to run both at the same time). edit: i'm wrong, it is a ublock origin fork, apologies
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    Ad Nauseum is a wrapper over Ublock Origin. It says so in the second sentence explaining what it is.
    - beardog 5y ago
      I see, I originally saw AdNauseum years ago and misremembered how it worked, I should have read about it again. Sorry!
- dorgo 5y ago
  Automated clicks on ads don't change anything. Even if everybody did this, over time the prices for ads would adjust and find a new equilibrium. Everything else would stay the same. If an advertiser pays $100 for 100 clicks today then he will pay $100 for 1000000 clicks in an ad click inflated world. Maybe slightly more for the additional energy burned to power all this madness.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Actually, this happens in close to real-time: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2459326?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2459326?hl=en
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  My main concern would be that that means loading enough for it to click on, right? Part of why I use uBo is to avoid loading any bytes over the network that I don't need, and avoid executing any JS that isn't useful.
  - mkbkn 5y ago
    In my experience, it happens in two ways. One is where ads are not displayed but AdNauseum tells me so and so ads are clicked. Second is where they are loaded (and hence additional bytes) and clicked as well. Sometimes, no ads and nothing in Adnauseum as well.
- mkbkn 5y ago
  How does it work in the front? Does it block ads and those blocked ads get clicked? Many times, it shows me no ads but it also displays 0 ads so nothing is clicked. Do we have to allow it to display all ads on the page to let it click? Sorry but it's somewhat confusing for me.
mancerayder 5y ago
What kills me is even paid subscription sites like WSJ, Bloomberg, Seeking Alpha, show you ads even when you're a paying member. Why is it a war on our attention?
- porcoda 5y ago
  They also include ads in print versions of newspapers and magazines that you subscribe to, and always have. Advertising has always been a component of making them viable businesses: the problem isn't the existence of ads in things you pay for as much as the obnoxious way they are implemented on the web.
- openplatypus 5y ago
  This!! For real. Paid subscription for Bloomberg and boom, there is huge banner on top. Takes ~10% of screen. Why?!
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  The fact that you're able and willing to pay is exactly what marks you as a desired target. You can't spend your way out of people wanting your money; they'll always want more.
- vehemenz 5y ago
  I find this ironic too. I get NYT via my institution, and on the actual app there are ads, but when I browse on the website, logged in with uBO, there is nothing.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Funnily enough, the only way to not get ads on those news apps is by using moded apks (unless you use root or dns adblock, but that usually messes with the layout) . There's no amount of money you could pay to remove them even if you wanted to, so the only way is to download apks that not only remove ads but also make all the articles free without paying anything. It's crazy because Bloomberg already charges quite a lot (40$/month?) if you don't get a discounted price, how much are they getting with those very generic banner ads? It can't possibly be more than a few cents, maybe a dollar or two per month for casual readers. It's so counterproductive if it makes them lose even just a few % of their subscribers.
lalaland1125 5y ago
I think it's only a matter of time until adblock is legally banned. The current situation, where the vast majority of the internet relies solely on ads and an increasing number of people use adblock year over year is unsustainable. The system can support a certain number of free riders (people who consume the product but don't contribute back in ad eyeballs), but at a certain point the math will no longer work. Eventually we as a society will reach a point with only two options: 1. Stop using ads to fund most of the internet 2. Ban adblock so our current ad funded internet can work.
- duxup 5y ago
  I keep wondering if / when we as users want to pay for more things…
  - bmicraft 5y ago
    I would pay for I the things I currently block. The problem is they usually want >5$/mo for things that would make maybe 10c/mo from ads otherwise which I don't find fair
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Option 3, let the ad funded internet die and keep the remaining good parts.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    The problem is that the most popular alternative, microtransactions, doesn't work. Turns out there is a big psychological barrier between free and literally any payment at all, even a few pennies. People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And that's before you get into the problem of how to set up a clearinghouse where you can handle microtransactions without being eaten alive by fees.
    - glenstein 5y ago
      I thought the porous paywall + subscription model is the most popular alternative?
Rafuino 5y ago
Great news! Adblock Plus has been compromised for quite some time. This means the pressure will definitely increase on uBlock Origin but I hope they stay strong.
alarmingfox 5y ago
I instantly install this extension whenever I work on a new machine as I could not imagine browsing the web without it. For that reason I just went looking for a donate button to help fund the project and it turns out they don't even accept donations https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...
- telchior 5y ago
  "Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough." So you can fund the project -- by donating to the lists it relies on.
  - frankharv 5y ago
    While I agree on supporting the things you use. I don't think "the lists are everything". Quite the opposite, Its the blocking features. For me I like uBlocks disabling Javascript with an easy click and the other granularity (popups, multimedia) it allows on a site by site basis.
    - telchior 5y ago
      I'm thinking of it this way. A guy builds a flamethrower to burn away the creeping slime that threatens to overtake your house. Someone else then supplies the fuel. You want to donate, but the builder says no. "The fuel is everything." That's pretty much correct from one perspective. The flamethrower is built, just needs a bit of maintenance now and then. But its everyday slime-burning power comes from the fuel.
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        The lists are more like an automatic targeting system for your world-saving flame thrower. Both are vital since the slime killed everyone who knew how to use it, so now you have to enlist average people who only use them to clear weeds and snow.
moneywoes 5y ago
As it should be
so_fruity 5y ago
I have a dream that some day all browsers come with builtin uBlock. I wish I could install it for everybody. Browsing the Web and watching Youtube is such a different experience with adblock.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  I think YouTube has an okay monetization policy, it's nowhere near as malicious as a random recipe blog with 19 ads and auto playing videos
  - 0des 5y ago
    Why is it that after 11PM YouTube will randomly show me ads that are entire movies long, like 90 minutes long? Do they think I am asleep and want to charge their ad client full price for the view?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  There's an inherent conflict of interest here - much of our computing tools today is built for "growth and engagement" which is why no mainstream browser has it - the only holdouts so far are Apple and Linux distributions.
openplatypus 5y ago
uBlock Origin, with CNAME uncloaking is the most powerful ad/tracker blocking tool. Browsing Internet without it is often time a scary experience. It does block our [Wide Angle Analytics](https://wideangle.co/documentation/track-with-custom-domain https://wideangle.co/documentation/track-with-custom-domain) tracker about which we are open about. And ... we are not against. Every user should have a right to self determination and control when browsing the Internet. Our tracker is not invasive. It does not spy on users across site. We do not facilitate user profiling and personalized Ads. So maybe we should be against? But we are not. It is your browser. It is your device.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I'd upvote more than once if I could! If every tracking / ad provider would like that the internet would be a better place!
- ksec 5y ago
  My experience with uBlock or in fact any Ad Blocker have been suboptimal. It sometimes uses a lot of CPU resources in places I dot understand and couldn't be bothered to figure out why. In the end I just switch to NextDNS.
  - freeAgent 5y ago
    NextDNS and uBO are complimentary.
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      Agreed
- 0des 5y ago
  This went from props to a sales pitch fast
  - copperx 5y ago
    I'm tired of the tech hustle culture.
dotcoma 5y ago
The most popular extension, and the 2nd most popular, just like the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th most popular, are ad-blockers. I guess it's only marketers that love targeted ads...
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I sometimes wonder if adtech devs also use adblockers.
  - irrational 5y ago
    I’m a web developer, but I use noscript, despite the sites I work on relying on JavaScript and the business not allowing us to make them work without scripting enabled.
  - runjake 5y ago
    It is a well-known fact they do. This is why adtech has gotten craftier about ads, and adblockers have had to respond accordingly.
    - onemoresoop 5y ago
      That case is to thwart adblockers abilities to block ads. I think the OP's question was more rhetorical, as in they don't eat their own dog food type of thing.
  - vmaurin 5y ago
    I have worked in the ad industry for 10+ years. Firefox, strict mode but no ad blocker for web. What I would not do though, is using an android or ios phone (or anykind of smartphone where I don't know what the system nor the application do). I am not sure that people realize how many power and data are used on these phones, for things totally unrelated to their personal usage
    - hn_version_0023 5y ago
      So you don’t use a smartphone at all? Or am I misunderstanding?
unglaublich 5y ago
The internet without an adblock is just a scary, misleading place that's trying to trick you into scams, echochambers, bad deals, bad advice, botnets and cryptolockers.
- Topgamer7 5y ago
  I haven't run without an adblocker for like 10 years plus. The odd occasion I have it disabled, I can't actually believe what a trash heap some websites I browse are... popular ones! The internet has become so user hostile, I don't want 10 popups or alerts for cookies, ads, newsletter subscriptions to read a 10 second article.
- gruez 5y ago
  >echochambers >bad advice I doubt ublock does anything about that
  - unglaublich 5y ago
    The biggest echochambers (like ultranationalist parties) and worst advisors (financial, political, social) try to recruit new members via targeted advertising.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  In 16 years on the internet with as blocking limited to manually blocked annoyances only I have never had any of those issues. I’m almost certain it’s just an argument to justify adblocking. I wish people had the ability to avoid all the motivated reasoning and just honestly admit the selfishness of their behavior.
  - robryan 5y ago
    Ad tech went too far and has driven everyone to blocking. If the extent of ads was a couple of Google style sponsored text based results a lot of people would probably be fine seeing those.
  - unglaublich 5y ago
boomboomsubban 5y ago
For the past five years it seems like any time I saw an adblocker mentioned you'd see someone replying that uBlock was better, and then another reply clarifying that uBlock Origin is the one you want. It's crazy that despite that it still took this long.
ayushnix 5y ago
I wonder how the post manifest v3 world will look like and how much it'll affect uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers. Even now, several features, such as CNAME uncloaking, happen only on Firefox.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Some Chromium based browsers plan to just continue supporting v2 extensions regardless what Chrome does e.g. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059
george0812 5y ago
If major browsers were 100% user-centric they would've built ad-blocking into the browser. Maybe make it opt-in, but it should be there as a built-in feature.
- bityard 5y ago
  All of the major browsers (except perhaps Safari?) are built to increase the control of the browser vendor (through profiles and tracking) and web developers (through increasingly intrusive hooks into the OS). All of this at the expense of the user. Users are _not_ given fine-grained control over what websites can do with their computer, and what control still remains is being slowly eroded by changes to APIs and intentional hiding/removal of important privacy settings under the guise of "not overwhelming users with too much choice." Extensions _should_ be able to help here, but browsers keep slowly marching forward with changes that take away extensions' ability to perform meaningful actions on behalf of the user. Extensions these days are pretty much only useful for turning the browser into an application delivery platform, like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Firefox switched to "web extensions" some years ago, neutering many useful extensions. Google is now switching to Manifest V3 (which Firefox has stated they will adopt), which means the days of effective ad blocking will soon be over.
  - vehemenz 5y ago
    Firefox are not blocking the limitations of declarativeNetRequest. They are picking and choosing the good parts of V3 and implementing those.
superkuh 5y ago
Too bad modern Firefox doesn't actually have the support to run full featured uBlock Origin since they moved to the Chrome extensions model and threw away the entire Firefox add-on ecosystem. Actual Firefox forks like Sea Monkey and Palemoon still support the fully featured uBlock Origin.
- jmkni 5y ago
  I had no idea SeaMonkey was still going, I remember using that +15 years ago!
- btdmaster 5y ago
  How? Mozilla has kept the old webRequest API: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-update/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...
  - px43 5y ago
    Back in the day, Firefox plugins were able to execute shell commands, and had complete access to the OS of the user. Some people apparently miss this, but it was a key reason why I moved to Chromium based browsers in the first place.
  - superkuh 5y ago
    I'm not talking about Google's Manifest v3 or anything recent. I'm talking about Firefox 57 (~2018) and onward when they abandoned XUL and all the extensions/add-ons had to be re-written as chrome-style web extensions. Unfortunately many of the most complex extensions could not and lost features at best.
    - throw872291 5y ago
      If FF didn't do that, it would still be a security nightmare. XULs are available in some FF forks, which are security nightmares.
      - 5y ago
mhanberg 5y ago
Recently, the uBlock Origin icon in my toolbar has just disappeared and doesn't appear in the overflow menu. Anyone else see this?
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  "The overflow" has been moved to the puzzle piece menu, I had to open that and manually pin the extension.
- neogodless 5y ago
  Windows 10 Was on 97.0.2 and did not have that issue. Just now updated to 98.0 and still do not have that issue.
runjake 5y ago
What do people use to block garbage domains from their Google results? Google results, especially for developer stuff, is so awful -- cluttered with junk sites ripping off content from blogs and Stack Overflow, etc. I've been trying to figure out some rules for uBlock Origin, but haven't gotten there, yet. Edit: Multiple fantastic options in the replies, below. Thanks, people!
- pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  ⠀
  - pseudostem 5y ago
    There was kagi.com here on HN a few weeks ago, I've been mighty pleased
- gzer0 5y ago
  I've started using https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ which is a programmable, custom search engine that Google provides. I only include sites that I want to. For news, I have a separate search engine; for programming, I include Gitlab, Github, and others. It's quite nice, and you can share your search engines with others via a public URL. Another example is creating a "social media" only search engine- I have over 50 social media websites in one of my custom searches, it makes it relatively easy to find another person this way.
  - freediver 5y ago
    > I have over 50 social media websites What are the others besides the usual 2-3?
    - gzer0 5y ago
      https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock My list is based on this project. It has over 200 items, many of which I was unaware existed.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Nothing says "our entire industry[0] is a blight upon human society" like a thriving ecosystem of popular software existing for the sole purpose of shutting you the hell up. [0] advertising and marketing industry
- amartya916 5y ago
  I think I know why you are being downvoted, but I just wanted to chime in and say that I get exactly where you are coming from. On certain days, I cannot shake a similar thought from my mind as well. Today though, I'd recommend skimming through uBlock Origin's Github readme: https://github.com/gorhill https://github.com/gorhill. Note the "Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought." in the About section. Our industry reflects our collective condition: some good, some bad, and some in between. The oft used Mr. Rogers quote about "look for the helpers" seems particularly appropriate for uBlock Origin and its creator (and maintainers :)). P.S. In case this comes across as a lecture, I assure you that this was just as much for myself as a reminder, as it was for the community here :).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Oh, I think I see the issue. If your post is anything to go by then people think I'm talking about tech or even just the web. That's understandable since both are frequently the target of my ire, however in this instance I am specifically talking about the advertising and marketing industry.
    - brimble 5y ago
      I think it's fair, considering the sky-high salaries at the top end of our industry are almost solely due to ad revenue. We'd all see significant downward pressure on wages without that—we're basically accountants by social status already, but losing ad revenue would put us in the same area pay-wise, too.
    - amartya916 5y ago
      Ah sorry, I misunderstood as well. Makes sense!
toastercat 5y ago
How do ya'll feel about the idea that adblock can be morally equivalent to theft[1]? I see this argument pop up from time to time in relation to people who use alternative clients to services such as YouTube. But if you're using uBlock Origin, you are probably browsing many, many sites that rely at least partially on ad revenue, so it's a similar case. [1] https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632 https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632
- marssaxman 5y ago
  I am not responsible for the mistaken assumptions underlying other people's hopes for their business models.
- chii 5y ago
  it is no more theft than smelling the cooking of a restaurant.
  - sebastien_b 5y ago
    Obligatory: http://www.marilynkinsella.org/Fabulous%20Folktales/theft_of_smell.htm http://www.marilynkinsella.org/Fabulous%20Folktales/theft_of...
    - ask_b123 5y ago
      Nice website/stories.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    I don't think it's theft but I also don't think it's really equivalent to that either. After all 1,000,000 people can smell what the restaurant is cooking for another customer and it doesn't cost the restaurant any more than if 0 people did because the restaurant is letting the scent go out either way. On the other hand if 1,000,000 people watch a 100 MB video and block ads it certainly costs the content provider a lot more than if nobody did.
systemvoltage 5y ago
How do people reach technical audiences on Google search when the said technical audience has Adblock installed? Do any founders or tech startups use Google Ads? I don't know any tech person that doesn't use uBlock Origin. I've seen people recommending StackOverflow ads to reach exact people that might be interested in your product, but I've never ever seen ads on StackOverflow - thanks to uBlock Origin.
- px43 5y ago
  If you want to get the attention of technical audiences, create great technical content. Blogs, YouTube videos, conference talks, etc. If it's good, your audience will spread it among themselves using their existing social connections. If you don't have good content, then you don't get access to technical users who do everything in their power to avoid useless noise on the internet.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Youtube thing is being eroded. I just searched "Django tutorials" on YouTube and being spammed by boot-campish videos that show horrible coding practices. Blogs, especially the ones that upvoted here on HN, are very very good. Thanks for the info.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Really great on firefox for android too, along with YouTube background player.
- rinze 5y ago
  I use Firefox on Android as a background YouTube player. Just open Youtube on Firefox, select the video you want to watch, lock the screen. The video will stop, but if you press 'play' in the dialog you get in the lock screen, it'll start playing again.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    The issue is that the YouTube webpage video player itself tries to detect when it is backgrounded - seemingly via both APIs and usage patterns - and will stop playback when it detects that. This is true on desktops as well. There were extensions to disable this behaviour that thankfully work with Firefox for Android.
    - Liquix 5y ago
      NewPipe allows both picture-in-picture and background audio, no extension wrangling required :)
  - FreeFull 5y ago
    There is an addon available for Firefox on Android that stops the video from stopping, too, which makes this even easier.
CSMastermind 5y ago
It would be nice if browser makers started bundling ad block by default.
- gilrain 5y ago
  Those that aren’t financially supported by the blocked advertising often do.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and I'm sure others have built in ad blockers and even have it enabled by default. Firefox and Safari do not (they stop at built in privacy tracking). Of course every single built in blocker is vastly inferior, either intentionally (like Chrome) or just because uBlock Origin is that much better (like Vivaldi).
  - bradyd 5y ago
    Where is this built in ad blocker in Chrome? I have never seen this feature.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      It's on by default since 2018 and not very configurable, you can toggle it on a per site basis in the site settings of a site via the "ads" permission for that site. It of course exists to bolster the number of their ads that are viewed not actually block all ads https://blog.google/technology/ads/building-better-web-everyone/ https://blog.google/technology/ads/building-better-web-every...
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I have a website bringing a lot of money using ads. I don't attempt to detect adblockers, or deter users from using them, and use them myself. ublock origin is wonderful. If one day, everybody is using it and I can't make money from ads anymore, I'd say it would be a sad day for my wallet, but a great day for humanity.
hutrdvnj 5y ago
Let's make it a native Firefox feature.
- i67vw3 5y ago
  Librewolf (fork of firefox with privacy tweaks) comes pre-installed with UBO.
kerneloops 5y ago
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
I am frequently annoyed by FF but then I use Chrome. What capitalism has done to the internet... Long live Mozilla.
mariuz 5y ago
Dear Mozilla.org please add it as default in the browser if you care about privacy and the web in general, This is the first add-on that I install on all computers , mine or for friends
- brimble 5y ago
  That they've put off doing the obvious for so long ("obvious" because one of the key selling points of the browser at initial release was, de facto, a form of ad blocking—namely, popup blocking) makes me think we're more likely to see integrated ad-blocking in Safari than in Firefox. But probably neither is very likely.
pthread_t 5y ago
That makes perfect sense -- browsing the web on desktop without uBlock has become a nightmare.
wnevets 5y ago
It doesn't JUST block ads, it also blocks malware and other garbage. IMO Its not safe to browse the modern web without it
boplicity 5y ago
I really, truly, sincerely wish more developers put compatibility with adblockers at the top of their priority list. I have so many customer support issues to deal with because some of the SaaS platforms we use are not compatible with ad blocking software. Usually, the first thing I tell people is to turn off their adblocker. This almost always fixed the issue. Yes, I absolutely hate asking our customers to do this. If you want adblocking software to thrive -- then please make sure you test your software with adblocking software enabled. (Please!)
- LordHeini 5y ago
  Incopabiltiy can happen incredibly fast. One of our backends had a route called /statistics for showing application statistics to the user. Some Adblockers with some lists block routes named like that which caused a confused bug hunt.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > I have so many customer support issues to deal with because some of the SaaS platforms we use are not compatible with ad blocking software. That's amazing. I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin." I very much this is going to happen on a large scale unless there's legislation demanding it. Businesses want to serve up ads and track their users both because: 1 - it's profitable 2 - it gives them insight in to what their users want, so they can improve their products and come up with new ones Supporting ad blocking goes directly against these two motives, so for most business it won't be done voluntarily.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > for most business it won't be done voluntarily I'm okay with that.
pmontra 5y ago
I saw a comment more or less like "Please add more ads and make the x button to close them smaller" today on a website. I was seeing no ads and I never did see one there. I was about to reply to use an adblocker, then wondered if that could make me banned and the reply deleted (they have a moderator approve every single comment).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
uMatrix seems even better, but no uMatrix for mobile. Reasons.
Zachsa999 5y ago
My biggest issue with web advertising is placing video ads on a text website. Your eye is constantly flicking over to the flashing lights making the ability to focus impossible. Ad blockers are the only thing that makes most ad supported sites usable.
- criddell 5y ago
  The most irritating thing about that for me is that my device thinks I want to hear the audio so it will stop my music to play the ad audio.
Ansil849 5y ago
Good. Blocking ads is essential for... security reasons: to prevent malware from being installed via rogue ads; for privacy reasons: to reduce being tracked by corporations; and for mental health reasons: to reduce being bombarded with injunctions to buy things.
wesapien 5y ago
I still use a hosts file instead of pihole. The tool is called hblock. I'd use pihole if I can find a deal on a rapsberry pi.
Exendroinient00 5y ago
Surprisingly the adtech is by far the profitable industry including costs to operate comparing to any other industry. Ads are the biggest pillar on which most of the faang stands. Sadly most people don't even want to make a few clicks to download a browser extension.
deleted 5y ago
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t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
just installed it today on my father's partner's laptop. in my opinion ublock origin is by now an integral part of the internet infrastructure. it's also the only piece of software which I consistently install on every platform I use (Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS). Raymond deserves some sort of Nobel prize or something for this. The internet is not usable for me without it.
- chrizel 5y ago
  How do you install uBlock Origin on iOS?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Try AdGuard - not as good as uBlock but it's the best you can do on iOS given API limitations.
  - 2-718-281-828 5y ago
    damn, you're right. I repressed that. I would, though!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rnd0 5y ago
The bottom line is that the web is completely unusable without some sort of ad blocker. That's a pathological condition which speaks ill of the long term viability of the internet. When ublock breaks as it inevitably will, so does the internet (in terms of usability, not in terms of sending packets around).
OnionBlender 5y ago
Are there any add blockers for iOS? I want to get a tablet for reading on the couch but I assume I would need an Android or Surface tablet in order to install Firefox with uNlock Origin.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Not as good as uBlock Origin due to API limitations, but AdGuard is probably the best you can go for because it supports (and internally converts) uBlock-style filters as opposed to using its own, usually outdated filter list like other blockers do. Lockdown Privacy is also a good one to filter out malicious traffic across apps - this neuters the Facebook SDK malware present in many apps for example.
- akaij 5y ago
  Try Firefox Focus.
pavon 5y ago
I need to give uBlock another try. I use and love uMatrix, and was hoping someone would step up to maintain a fork of it, but six months later it is apparent that will not be the case (and is far outside my expertise). For some reason uBlock never clicked with me. The various global blocking settings I tried either broke too many sites or let too many annoyances through, and I found the process for allowing/blocking third-party resources on a per-site basis was clunkier than other blockers like uMatrix or Privacy Badger. I really respect what gorhill has done, and keep hearing great things about new privacy preserving techniques being adding to uBlock that go beyond what other blockers do, so I really want to like it. Given how so many people love it and don't have these complaints, I'm probably approaching it with the wrong mindset / usage model, that is causing me to fight against it rather than work with it, so I need to step back and try again with a blank mind.
- hnuser123456 5y ago
  I don't know how long ago you used it, but it's install and forget and works great. Maybe once every few months I'll use it to hide a frame on a random site.
- Arnavion 5y ago
  >I found the process for allowing/blocking third-party resources on a per-site basis was clunkier than other blockers like uMatrix or Privacy Badger. It's clunkier yes (requires editing the static filters list by hand), but you might get used to it. My own list is huge (~700 lines across 75 web properties) and took some time to create, but now I only have to touch it once a month on average.
linuxhansl 5y ago
It's simply the best there is. I had used various of the adblock** plugins until I came across uBlock Origin. Whatever it is you want to block, Javascript, fonts, ads, etc, it's just works, with global defaults and per-page exceptions.
- swarnie 5y ago
  I've just removed adblock and installed ublock origin. Having tested a few sites on my favourites bar the difference is night and day. Where has this been all my life....
tiffanyh 5y ago
Librewolf I’m surprised LibreWolf doesn’t get more attention. [0] It’s stock Firefox, with uBlock Origin preinstalled and a bunch of Firefox configs adjusted to more privacy oriented settings. It ranks as the most private browser experience, even better than Brave. [1] https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  They used a slightly tricked out version of librewolf on Garuda Linux as the default.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Entropy increase is bad for privacy, so using more obscure browsers would make you stand out more often right?
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Depends on the user agent. Maybe they appear as Chrome.
Melatonic 5y ago
uBlock Origin + NextDNS has been a pretty amazing combo for me. If you want to really take it even further you can setup pfsense or any other edge router that supports IP blocking and then (at least on your home network) block the IP's of common DNS providers other than the one you want your devices to use. This stops apps and devices that have hardcoded IP's trying to do encrypted DNS (DoH or DoT) to bypass your preferred DNS choices. Its a bit of a game of whack-a-mole but I find they do not change all that often. Unfortunately of course this does not do anything for when you may be walking around using mobile data on a phone (at this point now only NextDNS would be in play - still better than nothing) but I suppose you could run a VPN back to your home network if you wanted to.
pmoriarty 5y ago
Is there any reason not to enable all the blocklists and filters in uBlock Origin that aren't enabled by default? And why aren't they enabled by default? Finally, are there any other quick/easy things that can be done by users to improve uBlock's blocking... like maybe installing some other blocklists that aren't in uBlock Origin at all?
- rfgil 5y ago
  I usually add this list to uBlockOrigin to remove the cookies consent popup. https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
- ericra 5y ago
  The primary reason for not enabling every list is that some additional % of sites will "break" (although frequently, this will only be cosmetic). An example of this is that the lists can block very general class or id attribute such as #cookie-banner. While it's likely that you'll want this blocked in general, some small number of sites may have an element (unfortunately) named this that is functional and that you actually want to see. Because some of the lists have tens of thousands of entries, these edge cases can add up to break more sites than is actually desired. So there is a give/take there. Another point is that some of the lists are redundant but have different maintainers. So it may make sense to choose one of these, but you it would just be additional overhead to check them all. In my experience, running the default lists along with the "Fanboy's Annoyance" list and a few custom entries in "My filters" provides a good experience for me.
humanwhosits 5y ago
Why doesn't firefox build ublock origin directly into firefox
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fhd2 5y ago
Disclaimer: Former ABP developer. Mozilla worked surprisingly hard to make uBO number one - for years they've actively promoted it, marked it as recommended and similar things, added weird warnings for the unwashed masses of "unrecommended" extensions, made them harder or even impossible to install on some platforms. Generally incredibly shady practices I was shocked to see from Mozilla, who I thought had above average integrity - not in the last five years or so I guess. Not even Google pulls stuff like that from what I can tell. That said, uBO is cool and I'm happy it's still growing.
- throw872291 5y ago
  Whoa whoa talk about AdBlock Plus and integrity! AdBlock Plus seems to whitelist your ads if you pay them millions [1][2]. The euphemism ABP (and their parent company Eyeo) uses is 'acceptable ads'. Acceptable to Eyeo I guess. It's opt-out at the users end. OP knows all about this [3][4]. I'm not a fan of some of Mozilla's policies but I'm thankful if it's true that Ublock Origin is shown preference over the shady, user-disrespecting ABP. [1] Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995140 [2] gorhill, UbO developer on Eyeo https://nitter.net/gorhill/search?f=tweets&q=%22eyeo%22 https://nitter.net/gorhill/search?f=tweets&q=%22eyeo%22 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818307 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946892 [5] Eyeo on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22eyeo%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28746231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28746231
  - fhd2 5y ago
    I can't say much about recent years, given how I've left quite a while ago. But I do want to point out that ABP was always surprisingly upfront about Acceptable Ads (only users who cannot read could possibly miss it, it's prominent on every step of the funnel). And even though that may be hard to believe, they do take the criteria very seriously last time I checked, even doing a ton of user research, which surprisingly (to me) yielded back then that a lot of users feel bad about blocking all ads unconditionally and mostly care about not having stuff jump at them. The only possibly shady thing you point out is that it's opt out, I get that. Especially people who want to block everything unconditionally might feel cheated because it's not called Adblock Minus. What Mozilla did here, OTOH, I find shady because they're pretending to run an impartial addon store, when in practice some guy who wants to promote a specific extension (maybe that person feels like you, maybe he's a friend of gorhill - I have no way of knowing) can pull these kind of tricks. But I suppose it's a case for Hanlon's Razor: They probably just don't have their stuff together about running any type of store the way the big guys do. I'm still a proud Mozillian, I can find one thing they do shady without finding all of Mozilla shady, I realise it didn't sound like that above.

858 points by nixcraft 5y ago

I prefer Ad Nauseum (https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/) because I don't want to just block the ads I want to ruin the profile ad companies have on me by having all the ads clicked as well.

thatguy0900 5y ago
I really like the concept but I would be concerned about having my Google account banned the instant it becomes popular
- the_other 5y ago
  Time to diversify your supply chain then.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    I mean, I say Google but I can't imagine any website will allow a logged in user who is committing rampant ad fraud.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Don't give leverage to ad-supported websites? No site I use/rely day to day has any ads so those won't have a reason to ban me. For the rest, not only do they have very little to ban me on (no account, etc - best they can do is IP address?) but an IP ban would actually be beneficial as there's a chance it'll also propagate to their trackers and essentially mark my network as invisible or untrusted, not collecting/processing any data from it as it's considered fraudulent.
- malka 5y ago
  This is one of the reasons I now use my own domain name
- xdennis 5y ago
  That's the same concern I had. But after years of draging my feet, I've finally degoogled enough to not care if they banned my account. Time to install AdNauseam now.
xigoi 5y ago
Do you think they can't tell when a click is automated?
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Google banned it from the Chrome store while leaving other ad blockers up, so maybe they can't?
  - malka 5y ago
    This is the strongest sign that it actually hurt their bottom line
- ManlyBread 5y ago
  This gets brought up every time Ad Nauseam is mentioned but I have yet to see a proof of concept.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    I bet it could probably be done by doing statistical analysis or some AI technique to analyze one's browsing data, and maybe combining it with other information about you that they get from other sources (purchase history, social media participation, etc...). The problem for them is that even if it works this adds extra processing time, effort, and development time.. which can add up when aggregated over the many millions/billions of users they have. Much easier to just oppose effective ad blockers.
  - xigoi 5y ago
    A proof of concept that a site can tell whether you clicked something automatically? reCAPTCHA.
wldcordeiro 5y ago
Hah it'd be even funnier if it was able to use their "report" functions to report the ads as the spam they are.
cjbgkagh 5y ago
I have always assumed our future fascist overlords will use the curated ad profiles to bootstrap a social credit system. So instead of clicking on any ad I need one that only clicks on regime supporting, pro-social, good citizen ads.
- jart 5y ago
  They probably don't have the data. Unless they started monitoring people for jaywalking, driving through crosswalks, smoking on trains, not cleaning up after dogs, buying junk food at 711, etc.
  - cjbgkagh 5y ago
    An efficient government could figure it out from proxy data, I’m sure I could do it. A corrupt and inefficient government wouldn’t care so much about getting it wrong. I suspect it’ll be the inefficient one. I can’t convince Google ads that I’m not 60 and not single and absolutely not into mature age dating. My non-ad blocked internet browsing experience is marred by pictures of leering grandmas. I expect my future in the fascist dictatorship will be an unpleasant one.
    - jart 5y ago
      If you enable ad personalization then they have an ad settings panel where they let you know what they think you're interested in. For instance, Google Ads thinks I'm a married disk jockey living in Orange County who listens to pop and hip hop and loves bread making, aviation, and environmentalism. They let us turn some of it off, but there's no option to tell them what we like.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    You realize all that is coming, right? Health insurance companies would love to adjust your premium on the fly when they see you buy a 6 pack at the store.
    - jart 5y ago
beardog 5y ago
UBlock Origin is not just an adblocker though, in their own words it is a "wide-spectrum content blocker" capable of blocking things like malware, cookie consent popups, social media buttons, and outsider intrusion into LAN. If adnauseam did those things I would use it (I don't want to run both at the same time). edit: i'm wrong, it is a ublock origin fork, apologies
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Ad Nauseum is a wrapper over Ublock Origin. It says so in the second sentence explaining what it is.
  - beardog 5y ago
    I see, I originally saw AdNauseum years ago and misremembered how it worked, I should have read about it again. Sorry!
dorgo 5y ago
Automated clicks on ads don't change anything. Even if everybody did this, over time the prices for ads would adjust and find a new equilibrium. Everything else would stay the same. If an advertiser pays $100 for 100 clicks today then he will pay $100 for 1000000 clicks in an ad click inflated world. Maybe slightly more for the additional energy burned to power all this madness.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Actually, this happens in close to real-time: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2459326?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2459326?hl=en
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
My main concern would be that that means loading enough for it to click on, right? Part of why I use uBo is to avoid loading any bytes over the network that I don't need, and avoid executing any JS that isn't useful.
- mkbkn 5y ago
  In my experience, it happens in two ways. One is where ads are not displayed but AdNauseum tells me so and so ads are clicked. Second is where they are loaded (and hence additional bytes) and clicked as well. Sometimes, no ads and nothing in Adnauseum as well.
mkbkn 5y ago
How does it work in the front? Does it block ads and those blocked ads get clicked? Many times, it shows me no ads but it also displays 0 ads so nothing is clicked. Do we have to allow it to display all ads on the page to let it click? Sorry but it's somewhat confusing for me.

mancerayder 5y ago

What kills me is even paid subscription sites like WSJ, Bloomberg, Seeking Alpha, show you ads even when you're a paying member. Why is it a war on our attention?

porcoda 5y ago
They also include ads in print versions of newspapers and magazines that you subscribe to, and always have. Advertising has always been a component of making them viable businesses: the problem isn't the existence of ads in things you pay for as much as the obnoxious way they are implemented on the web.
openplatypus 5y ago
This!! For real. Paid subscription for Bloomberg and boom, there is huge banner on top. Takes ~10% of screen. Why?!
0xcde4c3db 5y ago
The fact that you're able and willing to pay is exactly what marks you as a desired target. You can't spend your way out of people wanting your money; they'll always want more.
vehemenz 5y ago
I find this ironic too. I get NYT via my institution, and on the actual app there are ads, but when I browse on the website, logged in with uBO, there is nothing.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Funnily enough, the only way to not get ads on those news apps is by using moded apks (unless you use root or dns adblock, but that usually messes with the layout) . There's no amount of money you could pay to remove them even if you wanted to, so the only way is to download apks that not only remove ads but also make all the articles free without paying anything. It's crazy because Bloomberg already charges quite a lot (40$/month?) if you don't get a discounted price, how much are they getting with those very generic banner ads? It can't possibly be more than a few cents, maybe a dollar or two per month for casual readers. It's so counterproductive if it makes them lose even just a few % of their subscribers.

lalaland1125 5y ago

I think it's only a matter of time until adblock is legally banned. The current situation, where the vast majority of the internet relies solely on ads and an increasing number of people use adblock year over year is unsustainable. The system can support a certain number of free riders (people who consume the product but don't contribute back in ad eyeballs), but at a certain point the math will no longer work. Eventually we as a society will reach a point with only two options: 1. Stop using ads to fund most of the internet 2. Ban adblock so our current ad funded internet can work.

duxup 5y ago
I keep wondering if / when we as users want to pay for more things…
- bmicraft 5y ago
  I would pay for I the things I currently block. The problem is they usually want >5$/mo for things that would make maybe 10c/mo from ads otherwise which I don't find fair
Buttons840 5y ago
Option 3, let the ad funded internet die and keep the remaining good parts.
- jandrese 5y ago
  The problem is that the most popular alternative, microtransactions, doesn't work. Turns out there is a big psychological barrier between free and literally any payment at all, even a few pennies. People are sensitive to the danger of being nickled and dimed to death. And that's before you get into the problem of how to set up a clearinghouse where you can handle microtransactions without being eaten alive by fees.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    I thought the porous paywall + subscription model is the most popular alternative?

Rafuino 5y ago

Great news! Adblock Plus has been compromised for quite some time. This means the pressure will definitely increase on uBlock Origin but I hope they stay strong.

alarmingfox 5y ago

I instantly install this extension whenever I work on a new machine as I could not imagine browsing the web without it. For that reason I just went looking for a donate button to help fund the project and it turns out they don't even accept donations https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-donations%3F https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...

telchior 5y ago
"Have a thought for the maintainers of the various lists. These lists are everything. This can't be emphasized enough." So you can fund the project -- by donating to the lists it relies on.
- frankharv 5y ago
  While I agree on supporting the things you use. I don't think "the lists are everything". Quite the opposite, Its the blocking features. For me I like uBlocks disabling Javascript with an easy click and the other granularity (popups, multimedia) it allows on a site by site basis.
  - telchior 5y ago
    I'm thinking of it this way. A guy builds a flamethrower to burn away the creeping slime that threatens to overtake your house. Someone else then supplies the fuel. You want to donate, but the builder says no. "The fuel is everything." That's pretty much correct from one perspective. The flamethrower is built, just needs a bit of maintenance now and then. But its everyday slime-burning power comes from the fuel.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      The lists are more like an automatic targeting system for your world-saving flame thrower. Both are vital since the slime killed everyone who knew how to use it, so now you have to enlist average people who only use them to clear weeds and snow.

moneywoes 5y ago

As it should be

so_fruity 5y ago

I have a dream that some day all browsers come with builtin uBlock. I wish I could install it for everybody. Browsing the Web and watching Youtube is such a different experience with adblock.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
I think YouTube has an okay monetization policy, it's nowhere near as malicious as a random recipe blog with 19 ads and auto playing videos
- 0des 5y ago
  Why is it that after 11PM YouTube will randomly show me ads that are entire movies long, like 90 minutes long? Do they think I am asleep and want to charge their ad client full price for the view?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Nextgrid 5y ago
There's an inherent conflict of interest here - much of our computing tools today is built for "growth and engagement" which is why no mainstream browser has it - the only holdouts so far are Apple and Linux distributions.

openplatypus 5y ago

uBlock Origin, with CNAME uncloaking is the most powerful ad/tracker blocking tool. Browsing Internet without it is often time a scary experience. It does block our [Wide Angle Analytics](https://wideangle.co/documentation/track-with-custom-domain https://wideangle.co/documentation/track-with-custom-domain) tracker about which we are open about. And ... we are not against. Every user should have a right to self determination and control when browsing the Internet. Our tracker is not invasive. It does not spy on users across site. We do not facilitate user profiling and personalized Ads. So maybe we should be against? But we are not. It is your browser. It is your device.

hef19898 5y ago
I'd upvote more than once if I could! If every tracking / ad provider would like that the internet would be a better place!
ksec 5y ago
My experience with uBlock or in fact any Ad Blocker have been suboptimal. It sometimes uses a lot of CPU resources in places I dot understand and couldn't be bothered to figure out why. In the end I just switch to NextDNS.
- freeAgent 5y ago
  NextDNS and uBO are complimentary.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Agreed
0des 5y ago
This went from props to a sales pitch fast
- copperx 5y ago
  I'm tired of the tech hustle culture.

dotcoma 5y ago

The most popular extension, and the 2nd most popular, just like the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th most popular, are ad-blockers. I guess it's only marketers that love targeted ads...

dvtrn 5y ago
I sometimes wonder if adtech devs also use adblockers.
- irrational 5y ago
  I’m a web developer, but I use noscript, despite the sites I work on relying on JavaScript and the business not allowing us to make them work without scripting enabled.
- runjake 5y ago
  It is a well-known fact they do. This is why adtech has gotten craftier about ads, and adblockers have had to respond accordingly.
  - onemoresoop 5y ago
    That case is to thwart adblockers abilities to block ads. I think the OP's question was more rhetorical, as in they don't eat their own dog food type of thing.
- vmaurin 5y ago
  I have worked in the ad industry for 10+ years. Firefox, strict mode but no ad blocker for web. What I would not do though, is using an android or ios phone (or anykind of smartphone where I don't know what the system nor the application do). I am not sure that people realize how many power and data are used on these phones, for things totally unrelated to their personal usage
  - hn_version_0023 5y ago
    So you don’t use a smartphone at all? Or am I misunderstanding?

unglaublich 5y ago

The internet without an adblock is just a scary, misleading place that's trying to trick you into scams, echochambers, bad deals, bad advice, botnets and cryptolockers.

Topgamer7 5y ago
I haven't run without an adblocker for like 10 years plus. The odd occasion I have it disabled, I can't actually believe what a trash heap some websites I browse are... popular ones! The internet has become so user hostile, I don't want 10 popups or alerts for cookies, ads, newsletter subscriptions to read a 10 second article.
gruez 5y ago
>echochambers >bad advice I doubt ublock does anything about that
- unglaublich 5y ago
  The biggest echochambers (like ultranationalist parties) and worst advisors (financial, political, social) try to recruit new members via targeted advertising.
KarlKemp 5y ago
In 16 years on the internet with as blocking limited to manually blocked annoyances only I have never had any of those issues. I’m almost certain it’s just an argument to justify adblocking. I wish people had the ability to avoid all the motivated reasoning and just honestly admit the selfishness of their behavior.
- robryan 5y ago
  Ad tech went too far and has driven everyone to blocking. If the extent of ads was a couple of Google style sponsored text based results a lot of people would probably be fine seeing those.
- unglaublich 5y ago

boomboomsubban 5y ago

For the past five years it seems like any time I saw an adblocker mentioned you'd see someone replying that uBlock was better, and then another reply clarifying that uBlock Origin is the one you want. It's crazy that despite that it still took this long.

ayushnix 5y ago

I wonder how the post manifest v3 world will look like and how much it'll affect uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers. Even now, several features, such as CNAME uncloaking, happen only on Firefox.

zamadatix 5y ago
Some Chromium based browsers plan to just continue supporting v2 extensions regardless what Chrome does e.g. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059

george0812 5y ago

If major browsers were 100% user-centric they would've built ad-blocking into the browser. Maybe make it opt-in, but it should be there as a built-in feature.

bityard 5y ago
All of the major browsers (except perhaps Safari?) are built to increase the control of the browser vendor (through profiles and tracking) and web developers (through increasingly intrusive hooks into the OS). All of this at the expense of the user. Users are _not_ given fine-grained control over what websites can do with their computer, and what control still remains is being slowly eroded by changes to APIs and intentional hiding/removal of important privacy settings under the guise of "not overwhelming users with too much choice." Extensions _should_ be able to help here, but browsers keep slowly marching forward with changes that take away extensions' ability to perform meaningful actions on behalf of the user. Extensions these days are pretty much only useful for turning the browser into an application delivery platform, like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Firefox switched to "web extensions" some years ago, neutering many useful extensions. Google is now switching to Manifest V3 (which Firefox has stated they will adopt), which means the days of effective ad blocking will soon be over.
- vehemenz 5y ago
  Firefox are not blocking the limitations of declarativeNetRequest. They are picking and choosing the good parts of V3 and implementing those.

superkuh 5y ago

Too bad modern Firefox doesn't actually have the support to run full featured uBlock Origin since they moved to the Chrome extensions model and threw away the entire Firefox add-on ecosystem. Actual Firefox forks like Sea Monkey and Palemoon still support the fully featured uBlock Origin.

jmkni 5y ago
I had no idea SeaMonkey was still going, I remember using that +15 years ago!
btdmaster 5y ago
How? Mozilla has kept the old webRequest API: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-update/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...
- px43 5y ago
  Back in the day, Firefox plugins were able to execute shell commands, and had complete access to the OS of the user. Some people apparently miss this, but it was a key reason why I moved to Chromium based browsers in the first place.
- superkuh 5y ago
  I'm not talking about Google's Manifest v3 or anything recent. I'm talking about Firefox 57 (~2018) and onward when they abandoned XUL and all the extensions/add-ons had to be re-written as chrome-style web extensions. Unfortunately many of the most complex extensions could not and lost features at best.
  - throw872291 5y ago
    If FF didn't do that, it would still be a security nightmare. XULs are available in some FF forks, which are security nightmares.
    - 5y ago

mhanberg 5y ago

Recently, the uBlock Origin icon in my toolbar has just disappeared and doesn't appear in the overflow menu. Anyone else see this?

wildrhythms 5y ago
"The overflow" has been moved to the puzzle piece menu, I had to open that and manually pin the extension.
neogodless 5y ago
Windows 10 Was on 97.0.2 and did not have that issue. Just now updated to 98.0 and still do not have that issue.

runjake 5y ago

What do people use to block garbage domains from their Google results? Google results, especially for developer stuff, is so awful -- cluttered with junk sites ripping off content from blogs and Stack Overflow, etc. I've been trying to figure out some rules for uBlock Origin, but haven't gotten there, yet. Edit: Multiple fantastic options in the replies, below. Thanks, people!

pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
⠀
- pseudostem 5y ago
  There was kagi.com here on HN a few weeks ago, I've been mighty pleased
gzer0 5y ago
I've started using https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ which is a programmable, custom search engine that Google provides. I only include sites that I want to. For news, I have a separate search engine; for programming, I include Gitlab, Github, and others. It's quite nice, and you can share your search engines with others via a public URL. Another example is creating a "social media" only search engine- I have over 50 social media websites in one of my custom searches, it makes it relatively easy to find another person this way.
- freediver 5y ago
  > I have over 50 social media websites What are the others besides the usual 2-3?
  - gzer0 5y ago
    https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock My list is based on this project. It has over 200 items, many of which I was unaware existed.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Nothing says "our entire industry[0] is a blight upon human society" like a thriving ecosystem of popular software existing for the sole purpose of shutting you the hell up. [0] advertising and marketing industry

amartya916 5y ago
I think I know why you are being downvoted, but I just wanted to chime in and say that I get exactly where you are coming from. On certain days, I cannot shake a similar thought from my mind as well. Today though, I'd recommend skimming through uBlock Origin's Github readme: https://github.com/gorhill https://github.com/gorhill. Note the "Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought." in the About section. Our industry reflects our collective condition: some good, some bad, and some in between. The oft used Mr. Rogers quote about "look for the helpers" seems particularly appropriate for uBlock Origin and its creator (and maintainers :)). P.S. In case this comes across as a lecture, I assure you that this was just as much for myself as a reminder, as it was for the community here :).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Oh, I think I see the issue. If your post is anything to go by then people think I'm talking about tech or even just the web. That's understandable since both are frequently the target of my ire, however in this instance I am specifically talking about the advertising and marketing industry.
  - brimble 5y ago
    I think it's fair, considering the sky-high salaries at the top end of our industry are almost solely due to ad revenue. We'd all see significant downward pressure on wages without that—we're basically accountants by social status already, but losing ad revenue would put us in the same area pay-wise, too.
  - amartya916 5y ago
    Ah sorry, I misunderstood as well. Makes sense!

toastercat 5y ago

How do ya'll feel about the idea that adblock can be morally equivalent to theft[1]? I see this argument pop up from time to time in relation to people who use alternative clients to services such as YouTube. But if you're using uBlock Origin, you are probably browsing many, many sites that rely at least partially on ad revenue, so it's a similar case. [1] https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632 https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632

marssaxman 5y ago
I am not responsible for the mistaken assumptions underlying other people's hopes for their business models.
chii 5y ago
it is no more theft than smelling the cooking of a restaurant.
- sebastien_b 5y ago
  Obligatory: http://www.marilynkinsella.org/Fabulous%20Folktales/theft_of_smell.htm http://www.marilynkinsella.org/Fabulous%20Folktales/theft_of...
  - ask_b123 5y ago
    Nice website/stories.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  I don't think it's theft but I also don't think it's really equivalent to that either. After all 1,000,000 people can smell what the restaurant is cooking for another customer and it doesn't cost the restaurant any more than if 0 people did because the restaurant is letting the scent go out either way. On the other hand if 1,000,000 people watch a 100 MB video and block ads it certainly costs the content provider a lot more than if nobody did.

systemvoltage 5y ago

How do people reach technical audiences on Google search when the said technical audience has Adblock installed? Do any founders or tech startups use Google Ads? I don't know any tech person that doesn't use uBlock Origin. I've seen people recommending StackOverflow ads to reach exact people that might be interested in your product, but I've never ever seen ads on StackOverflow - thanks to uBlock Origin.

px43 5y ago
If you want to get the attention of technical audiences, create great technical content. Blogs, YouTube videos, conference talks, etc. If it's good, your audience will spread it among themselves using their existing social connections. If you don't have good content, then you don't get access to technical users who do everything in their power to avoid useless noise on the internet.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Youtube thing is being eroded. I just searched "Django tutorials" on YouTube and being spammed by boot-campish videos that show horrible coding practices. Blogs, especially the ones that upvoted here on HN, are very very good. Thanks for the info.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

Really great on firefox for android too, along with YouTube background player.

rinze 5y ago
I use Firefox on Android as a background YouTube player. Just open Youtube on Firefox, select the video you want to watch, lock the screen. The video will stop, but if you press 'play' in the dialog you get in the lock screen, it'll start playing again.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  The issue is that the YouTube webpage video player itself tries to detect when it is backgrounded - seemingly via both APIs and usage patterns - and will stop playback when it detects that. This is true on desktops as well. There were extensions to disable this behaviour that thankfully work with Firefox for Android.
  - Liquix 5y ago
    NewPipe allows both picture-in-picture and background audio, no extension wrangling required :)
- FreeFull 5y ago
  There is an addon available for Firefox on Android that stops the video from stopping, too, which makes this even easier.

CSMastermind 5y ago

It would be nice if browser makers started bundling ad block by default.

gilrain 5y ago
Those that aren’t financially supported by the blocked advertising often do.
zamadatix 5y ago
Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and I'm sure others have built in ad blockers and even have it enabled by default. Firefox and Safari do not (they stop at built in privacy tracking). Of course every single built in blocker is vastly inferior, either intentionally (like Chrome) or just because uBlock Origin is that much better (like Vivaldi).
- bradyd 5y ago
  Where is this built in ad blocker in Chrome? I have never seen this feature.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    It's on by default since 2018 and not very configurable, you can toggle it on a per site basis in the site settings of a site via the "ads" permission for that site. It of course exists to bolster the number of their ads that are viewed not actually block all ads https://blog.google/technology/ads/building-better-web-everyone/ https://blog.google/technology/ads/building-better-web-every...

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

I have a website bringing a lot of money using ads. I don't attempt to detect adblockers, or deter users from using them, and use them myself. ublock origin is wonderful. If one day, everybody is using it and I can't make money from ads anymore, I'd say it would be a sad day for my wallet, but a great day for humanity.

hutrdvnj 5y ago

Let's make it a native Firefox feature.

i67vw3 5y ago
Librewolf (fork of firefox with privacy tweaks) comes pre-installed with UBO.

kerneloops 5y ago

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

I am frequently annoyed by FF but then I use Chrome. What capitalism has done to the internet... Long live Mozilla.

mariuz 5y ago

Dear Mozilla.org please add it as default in the browser if you care about privacy and the web in general, This is the first add-on that I install on all computers , mine or for friends

brimble 5y ago
That they've put off doing the obvious for so long ("obvious" because one of the key selling points of the browser at initial release was, de facto, a form of ad blocking—namely, popup blocking) makes me think we're more likely to see integrated ad-blocking in Safari than in Firefox. But probably neither is very likely.

pthread_t 5y ago

That makes perfect sense -- browsing the web on desktop without uBlock has become a nightmare.

wnevets 5y ago

It doesn't JUST block ads, it also blocks malware and other garbage. IMO Its not safe to browse the modern web without it

boplicity 5y ago

I really, truly, sincerely wish more developers put compatibility with adblockers at the top of their priority list. I have so many customer support issues to deal with because some of the SaaS platforms we use are not compatible with ad blocking software. Usually, the first thing I tell people is to turn off their adblocker. This almost always fixed the issue. Yes, I absolutely hate asking our customers to do this. If you want adblocking software to thrive -- then please make sure you test your software with adblocking software enabled. (Please!)

LordHeini 5y ago
Incopabiltiy can happen incredibly fast. One of our backends had a route called /statistics for showing application statistics to the user. Some Adblockers with some lists block routes named like that which caused a confused bug hunt.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I have so many customer support issues to deal with because some of the SaaS platforms we use are not compatible with ad blocking software. That's amazing. I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I hope this keeps happening until businesses are forced to fix their sites to make it work with uBlock Origin." I very much this is going to happen on a large scale unless there's legislation demanding it. Businesses want to serve up ads and track their users both because: 1 - it's profitable 2 - it gives them insight in to what their users want, so they can improve their products and come up with new ones Supporting ad blocking goes directly against these two motives, so for most business it won't be done voluntarily.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > for most business it won't be done voluntarily I'm okay with that.

pmontra 5y ago

I saw a comment more or less like "Please add more ads and make the x button to close them smaller" today on a website. I was seeing no ads and I never did see one there. I was about to reply to use an adblocker, then wondered if that could make me banned and the reply deleted (they have a moderator approve every single comment).

deleted 5y ago

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1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

uMatrix seems even better, but no uMatrix for mobile. Reasons.

Zachsa999 5y ago

My biggest issue with web advertising is placing video ads on a text website. Your eye is constantly flicking over to the flashing lights making the ability to focus impossible. Ad blockers are the only thing that makes most ad supported sites usable.

criddell 5y ago
The most irritating thing about that for me is that my device thinks I want to hear the audio so it will stop my music to play the ad audio.

Ansil849 5y ago

Good. Blocking ads is essential for... security reasons: to prevent malware from being installed via rogue ads; for privacy reasons: to reduce being tracked by corporations; and for mental health reasons: to reduce being bombarded with injunctions to buy things.

wesapien 5y ago

I still use a hosts file instead of pihole. The tool is called hblock. I'd use pihole if I can find a deal on a rapsberry pi.

Exendroinient00 5y ago

Surprisingly the adtech is by far the profitable industry including costs to operate comparing to any other industry. Ads are the biggest pillar on which most of the faang stands. Sadly most people don't even want to make a few clicks to download a browser extension.

deleted 5y ago

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t8e56vd4ih 5y ago

just installed it today on my father's partner's laptop. in my opinion ublock origin is by now an integral part of the internet infrastructure. it's also the only piece of software which I consistently install on every platform I use (Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS). Raymond deserves some sort of Nobel prize or something for this. The internet is not usable for me without it.

chrizel 5y ago
How do you install uBlock Origin on iOS?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Try AdGuard - not as good as uBlock but it's the best you can do on iOS given API limitations.
- 2-718-281-828 5y ago
  damn, you're right. I repressed that. I would, though!
deleted 5y ago
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rnd0 5y ago

The bottom line is that the web is completely unusable without some sort of ad blocker. That's a pathological condition which speaks ill of the long term viability of the internet. When ublock breaks as it inevitably will, so does the internet (in terms of usability, not in terms of sending packets around).

OnionBlender 5y ago

Are there any add blockers for iOS? I want to get a tablet for reading on the couch but I assume I would need an Android or Surface tablet in order to install Firefox with uNlock Origin.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Not as good as uBlock Origin due to API limitations, but AdGuard is probably the best you can go for because it supports (and internally converts) uBlock-style filters as opposed to using its own, usually outdated filter list like other blockers do. Lockdown Privacy is also a good one to filter out malicious traffic across apps - this neuters the Facebook SDK malware present in many apps for example.
akaij 5y ago
Try Firefox Focus.

pavon 5y ago

I need to give uBlock another try. I use and love uMatrix, and was hoping someone would step up to maintain a fork of it, but six months later it is apparent that will not be the case (and is far outside my expertise). For some reason uBlock never clicked with me. The various global blocking settings I tried either broke too many sites or let too many annoyances through, and I found the process for allowing/blocking third-party resources on a per-site basis was clunkier than other blockers like uMatrix or Privacy Badger. I really respect what gorhill has done, and keep hearing great things about new privacy preserving techniques being adding to uBlock that go beyond what other blockers do, so I really want to like it. Given how so many people love it and don't have these complaints, I'm probably approaching it with the wrong mindset / usage model, that is causing me to fight against it rather than work with it, so I need to step back and try again with a blank mind.

hnuser123456 5y ago
I don't know how long ago you used it, but it's install and forget and works great. Maybe once every few months I'll use it to hide a frame on a random site.
Arnavion 5y ago
>I found the process for allowing/blocking third-party resources on a per-site basis was clunkier than other blockers like uMatrix or Privacy Badger. It's clunkier yes (requires editing the static filters list by hand), but you might get used to it. My own list is huge (~700 lines across 75 web properties) and took some time to create, but now I only have to touch it once a month on average.

linuxhansl 5y ago

It's simply the best there is. I had used various of the adblock** plugins until I came across uBlock Origin. Whatever it is you want to block, Javascript, fonts, ads, etc, it's just works, with global defaults and per-page exceptions.

swarnie 5y ago
I've just removed adblock and installed ublock origin. Having tested a few sites on my favourites bar the difference is night and day. Where has this been all my life....

tiffanyh 5y ago

Librewolf I’m surprised LibreWolf doesn’t get more attention. [0] It’s stock Firefox, with uBlock Origin preinstalled and a bunch of Firefox configs adjusted to more privacy oriented settings. It ranks as the most private browser experience, even better than Brave. [1] https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/

stjohnswarts 5y ago
They used a slightly tricked out version of librewolf on Garuda Linux as the default.
cuteboy19 5y ago
Entropy increase is bad for privacy, so using more obscure browsers would make you stand out more often right?
- aembleton 5y ago
  Depends on the user agent. Maybe they appear as Chrome.

Melatonic 5y ago

uBlock Origin + NextDNS has been a pretty amazing combo for me. If you want to really take it even further you can setup pfsense or any other edge router that supports IP blocking and then (at least on your home network) block the IP's of common DNS providers other than the one you want your devices to use. This stops apps and devices that have hardcoded IP's trying to do encrypted DNS (DoH or DoT) to bypass your preferred DNS choices. Its a bit of a game of whack-a-mole but I find they do not change all that often. Unfortunately of course this does not do anything for when you may be walking around using mobile data on a phone (at this point now only NextDNS would be in play - still better than nothing) but I suppose you could run a VPN back to your home network if you wanted to.

pmoriarty 5y ago

Is there any reason not to enable all the blocklists and filters in uBlock Origin that aren't enabled by default? And why aren't they enabled by default? Finally, are there any other quick/easy things that can be done by users to improve uBlock's blocking... like maybe installing some other blocklists that aren't in uBlock Origin at all?

rfgil 5y ago
I usually add this list to uBlockOrigin to remove the cookies consent popup. https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
ericra 5y ago
The primary reason for not enabling every list is that some additional % of sites will "break" (although frequently, this will only be cosmetic). An example of this is that the lists can block very general class or id attribute such as #cookie-banner. While it's likely that you'll want this blocked in general, some small number of sites may have an element (unfortunately) named this that is functional and that you actually want to see. Because some of the lists have tens of thousands of entries, these edge cases can add up to break more sites than is actually desired. So there is a give/take there. Another point is that some of the lists are redundant but have different maintainers. So it may make sense to choose one of these, but you it would just be additional overhead to check them all. In my experience, running the default lists along with the "Fanboy's Annoyance" list and a few custom entries in "My filters" provides a good experience for me.

humanwhosits 5y ago

Why doesn't firefox build ublock origin directly into firefox

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fhd2 5y ago

Disclaimer: Former ABP developer. Mozilla worked surprisingly hard to make uBO number one - for years they've actively promoted it, marked it as recommended and similar things, added weird warnings for the unwashed masses of "unrecommended" extensions, made them harder or even impossible to install on some platforms. Generally incredibly shady practices I was shocked to see from Mozilla, who I thought had above average integrity - not in the last five years or so I guess. Not even Google pulls stuff like that from what I can tell. That said, uBO is cool and I'm happy it's still growing.

throw872291 5y ago
Whoa whoa talk about AdBlock Plus and integrity! AdBlock Plus seems to whitelist your ads if you pay them millions [1][2]. The euphemism ABP (and their parent company Eyeo) uses is 'acceptable ads'. Acceptable to Eyeo I guess. It's opt-out at the users end. OP knows all about this [3][4]. I'm not a fan of some of Mozilla's policies but I'm thankful if it's true that Ublock Origin is shown preference over the shady, user-disrespecting ABP. [1] Google paid AdBlock Plus to get its ads whitelisted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5995140 [2] gorhill, UbO developer on Eyeo https://nitter.net/gorhill/search?f=tweets&q=%22eyeo%22 https://nitter.net/gorhill/search?f=tweets&q=%22eyeo%22 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818307 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946892 [5] Eyeo on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22eyeo%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28746231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28746231
- fhd2 5y ago
  I can't say much about recent years, given how I've left quite a while ago. But I do want to point out that ABP was always surprisingly upfront about Acceptable Ads (only users who cannot read could possibly miss it, it's prominent on every step of the funnel). And even though that may be hard to believe, they do take the criteria very seriously last time I checked, even doing a ton of user research, which surprisingly (to me) yielded back then that a lot of users feel bad about blocking all ads unconditionally and mostly care about not having stuff jump at them. The only possibly shady thing you point out is that it's opt out, I get that. Especially people who want to block everything unconditionally might feel cheated because it's not called Adblock Minus. What Mozilla did here, OTOH, I find shady because they're pretending to run an impartial addon store, when in practice some guy who wants to promote a specific extension (maybe that person feels like you, maybe he's a friend of gorhill - I have no way of knowing) can pull these kind of tricks. But I suppose it's a case for Hanlon's Razor: They probably just don't have their stuff together about running any type of store the way the big guys do. I'm still a proud Mozillian, I can find one thing they do shady without finding all of Mozilla shady, I realise it didn't sound like that above.