5 ms·

China forces Mozilla to remove adblockers from its store

35 points by ShowalkKama 5y ago

donkarma 5y ago
Mozilla should just stop operating in China then, it's not a business
- musicale 5y ago
  As I understand it, Firefox VPN extensions are popular in China for getting around the great firewall.
ratsmack 5y ago
I know it is not popular opinion, but it wouldn't bother me if all add blockers were removed. No web site has an obligation to serve pages outside of their intentions regarding advertising. If a website is too annoying and in your face with adds, I just move on and find a site that is more accommodating. Some sites only exist for the purpose of pushing adds using stolen content and they are fairly easy to identify, so I avoid them.
- rektide 5y ago
  It's a threat to http & services everywhere to take a simple static piece of content & words & insist that access must come with tracking far and wide by hundreds and hundreds of parties. The alternative to ad blockers are alternate transport mediums, is users sending raw static html bundles to each other directly. It sucks that we rely so heavily on this hostile monetization model. Agreed that sites have a right to not serve to folks who disable trackers. Yet... outlawing user agency, denying the web's nature as a medium for the user, that we have power over- that top down authoritarianism, is, however, completely bunk & stupid. The medium is malleable & that's such a huge feature versus the rest of computing. The Internet Is For End Users (rfc8890)[1] and the web is the most positive living breathing technology on the planet we have towards this end. Using the heavy dumb fist of the law to bludgeon the web into being a much lesser medium, into stiff rigidity that is apathetic to the user is such a stupid act for/by suckers. Absolutely 0% sense or morality in forcing top down desires onto the web, denying the user agency: this medium is a 2 way street and that's it's most hopeful, humanistic, positive aspect, so starkly visible in contrast to all the other shitty controlled proprietary unflexible experiences we are forced into unwillingly in the rest of computing. [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html
- derivagral 5y ago
  No client has an obligation to let a web site have control over their machine. The way I and many other got into our careers was being able to fiddle around, explore, and customize our own experiences (aka blocking stuff like this, fixing UI issues, etc.)
  - ratsmack 5y ago
    >No client has an obligation to let a web site have control over their machine. Web sites do not force you to load their content, so I must assume you feel entitled to what ever you want in this regard.
    - musicale 5y ago
      > Web sites do not force you to load their content Indeed they do not - you can choose to load whatever content you like. You can choose to load images. Or JavaScript. Or video. Or ads. Or not. > so I must assume you feel entitled to what ever you want in this regard Users should absolutely be entitled to decide what data they want to download over their network connection. It's essential for many reasons, including saving on metered data, saving battery life, improving performance, improving security, and improving privacy. Adtech is extremely detrimental in a variety of ways including data use, power use, speed, security, and privacy. For those reasons alone, it makes a lot of sense to block it whenever possible.
    - wewtyflakes 5y ago
      They do if their URL is misleading or is otherwise disguised. Also, it is common to click links without knowing ahead of time what the full content of the page is. That may not be ideal, but this is what it is. Ad blockers give users a layer of protection against malicious, lazy, or overeager websites. You seem to suggest users should just take it all or not visit, but that seems to only make sense if links advertised what users would be getting into (ex: visit this link and let us cryptomine you for content!"). Maybe that would be better and more honest, though I don't see how it would work with how people use the web today.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  With that attitude we wouldn’t just have ads but the pop-up hell of yesteryear, combined with unstoppable seizure inducing eardrum piercing video ads and all encompassing tracking with no way out. And because it’s a race to the bottom, on every site.
  - ratsmack 5y ago
    If people would simply not visit sites that are toxic, they would change or go out of business. I would be all for a site that tracked the toxicity of sites as a method of shaming them.
- neuralRiot 5y ago
  This is exactly what i do, your site forces me to disable the adblocker? Goodbye.
- akomtu 5y ago
  By this logic we should ban earphones, as those let people evade audial ads at gas stations, and also ban deaf people (the latter are bigger offenders). Otherwise how does it make sense, that the gas station is selling gas at a discount, hoping to recover the difference with ads, and those deaf freeloaders come over, simply grab what they need and leave, without paying their moral duty of watching ads?
  - ratsmack 5y ago
    I didn't say anything about banning. People should be able to use any mitigation method that they want. I just personally don't care to use any myself, hence my statement.
lazyeye 5y ago
Sidenote: Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders? Arguing that if we block them we are just as bad as them is niave to me. Like giving away all concessions in a trade negotiation to gain the high moral ground. Seems like such an obvious question to me.
- sfe22 5y ago
  Agreed, they probably laugh at us from time to time and rightfully so.
- haunter 5y ago
  >Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders I never understood why can CCTV, CGTN, Global Times etc. freely upload and stream on Youtube. Same level as RT or even worse. inb4 "FrEe SpEEch" + "they are a private company and they can do whatever they want"
- hker 5y ago
  Not to disagree, but if we go down this direction, we need to then ask [1]: - What about search? (Baidu vs Google or Bing) - What about news agencies? (CGTN and Xinhua vs BBC and The New York Times and The Guardian) - What about the Internet itself? (Great Firewall vs effectively none) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... "List of websites blocked in mainland China"
- musicale 5y ago
  What you're suggesting I think is a tit-for-tat strategy, which has game theoretic advantages, though I'm not sure what the eventual result would be in this case since it seems unlikely that China would allow Facebook, Twitter, NYT, etc..
  - lazyeye 5y ago
    It would put some constraints on Chinese surveillance and influence operations.

35 points by ShowalkKama 5y ago

donkarma 5y ago

Mozilla should just stop operating in China then, it's not a business

musicale 5y ago
As I understand it, Firefox VPN extensions are popular in China for getting around the great firewall.

ratsmack 5y ago

I know it is not popular opinion, but it wouldn't bother me if all add blockers were removed. No web site has an obligation to serve pages outside of their intentions regarding advertising. If a website is too annoying and in your face with adds, I just move on and find a site that is more accommodating. Some sites only exist for the purpose of pushing adds using stolen content and they are fairly easy to identify, so I avoid them.

rektide 5y ago
It's a threat to http & services everywhere to take a simple static piece of content & words & insist that access must come with tracking far and wide by hundreds and hundreds of parties. The alternative to ad blockers are alternate transport mediums, is users sending raw static html bundles to each other directly. It sucks that we rely so heavily on this hostile monetization model. Agreed that sites have a right to not serve to folks who disable trackers. Yet... outlawing user agency, denying the web's nature as a medium for the user, that we have power over- that top down authoritarianism, is, however, completely bunk & stupid. The medium is malleable & that's such a huge feature versus the rest of computing. The Internet Is For End Users (rfc8890)[1] and the web is the most positive living breathing technology on the planet we have towards this end. Using the heavy dumb fist of the law to bludgeon the web into being a much lesser medium, into stiff rigidity that is apathetic to the user is such a stupid act for/by suckers. Absolutely 0% sense or morality in forcing top down desires onto the web, denying the user agency: this medium is a 2 way street and that's it's most hopeful, humanistic, positive aspect, so starkly visible in contrast to all the other shitty controlled proprietary unflexible experiences we are forced into unwillingly in the rest of computing. [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html
derivagral 5y ago
No client has an obligation to let a web site have control over their machine. The way I and many other got into our careers was being able to fiddle around, explore, and customize our own experiences (aka blocking stuff like this, fixing UI issues, etc.)
- ratsmack 5y ago
  >No client has an obligation to let a web site have control over their machine. Web sites do not force you to load their content, so I must assume you feel entitled to what ever you want in this regard.
  - musicale 5y ago
    > Web sites do not force you to load their content Indeed they do not - you can choose to load whatever content you like. You can choose to load images. Or JavaScript. Or video. Or ads. Or not. > so I must assume you feel entitled to what ever you want in this regard Users should absolutely be entitled to decide what data they want to download over their network connection. It's essential for many reasons, including saving on metered data, saving battery life, improving performance, improving security, and improving privacy. Adtech is extremely detrimental in a variety of ways including data use, power use, speed, security, and privacy. For those reasons alone, it makes a lot of sense to block it whenever possible.
  - wewtyflakes 5y ago
    They do if their URL is misleading or is otherwise disguised. Also, it is common to click links without knowing ahead of time what the full content of the page is. That may not be ideal, but this is what it is. Ad blockers give users a layer of protection against malicious, lazy, or overeager websites. You seem to suggest users should just take it all or not visit, but that seems to only make sense if links advertised what users would be getting into (ex: visit this link and let us cryptomine you for content!"). Maybe that would be better and more honest, though I don't see how it would work with how people use the web today.
tinus_hn 5y ago
With that attitude we wouldn’t just have ads but the pop-up hell of yesteryear, combined with unstoppable seizure inducing eardrum piercing video ads and all encompassing tracking with no way out. And because it’s a race to the bottom, on every site.
- ratsmack 5y ago
  If people would simply not visit sites that are toxic, they would change or go out of business. I would be all for a site that tracked the toxicity of sites as a method of shaming them.
neuralRiot 5y ago
This is exactly what i do, your site forces me to disable the adblocker? Goodbye.
akomtu 5y ago
By this logic we should ban earphones, as those let people evade audial ads at gas stations, and also ban deaf people (the latter are bigger offenders). Otherwise how does it make sense, that the gas station is selling gas at a discount, hoping to recover the difference with ads, and those deaf freeloaders come over, simply grab what they need and leave, without paying their moral duty of watching ads?
- ratsmack 5y ago
  I didn't say anything about banning. People should be able to use any mitigation method that they want. I just personally don't care to use any myself, hence my statement.

lazyeye 5y ago

Sidenote: Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders? Arguing that if we block them we are just as bad as them is niave to me. Like giving away all concessions in a trade negotiation to gain the high moral ground. Seems like such an obvious question to me.

sfe22 5y ago
Agreed, they probably laugh at us from time to time and rightfully so.
haunter 5y ago
>Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders I never understood why can CCTV, CGTN, Global Times etc. freely upload and stream on Youtube. Same level as RT or even worse. inb4 "FrEe SpEEch" + "they are a private company and they can do whatever they want"
hker 5y ago
Not to disagree, but if we go down this direction, we need to then ask [1]: - What about search? (Baidu vs Google or Bing) - What about news agencies? (CGTN and Xinhua vs BBC and The New York Times and The Guardian) - What about the Internet itself? (Great Firewall vs effectively none) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... "List of websites blocked in mainland China"
musicale 5y ago
What you're suggesting I think is a tit-for-tat strategy, which has game theoretic advantages, though I'm not sure what the eventual result would be in this case since it seems unlikely that China would allow Facebook, Twitter, NYT, etc..
- lazyeye 5y ago
  It would put some constraints on Chinese surveillance and influence operations.