4 ms·

Yeah, but silent tracking in the background does not seem obstructive by their definition.

by hnha 12y ago

coldpie 12y ago
Well, it is AdBlock, not TrackingBlock. There are other extensions out there to help with that problem. Popular ones are NoScript (which improves the web in many more ways, as well) and Ghostery.
- freehunter 12y ago
  From as often as I hear people complaining on forums like HN and reddit that a linked site doesn't work due to NoScript, I would question how many people would agree that it improves the web.
  - clarry 12y ago
    It's not "doesn't work due to noscript", it's "doesn't work because it requires javascript". The blame is on javascript, which degrades the web most of the time.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      It IS "doesn't work due to noscript". Browsers come with Javascript. Websites use Javascript. The owner of the site wrote the site using Javascript because browsers support Javascript by default. You specifically turned off Javascript, even though it's a default part of the web. You broke your experience. If you turn off your car's engine and the brakes and steering stop working, that's not the engine's fault, it's yours.
      - abdullahkhalids 12y ago
        I do remember a few years ago when everyone in web development talked about how your website has to degrade gracefully in the absence of some technology (JS, flash etc). Now nobody cares. I come across sites that won't even show me the text unless I allow fonts.googleapis.com (via RequestPolicy). The general point being the most websites I visit I am just reading text. Yet, I usually have to allow a few secondary domains (that serve JS and data), before the text gets into a form better than soup.
        MichaelGG 12y ago
        A few years ago there may have been a fair amount of users that legitimately didn't have capabilities to display such pages. Now they don't, so why spend a lot of time or change front-end development to accommodate a tiny number of users?
        abdullahkhalids 12y ago
        It takes about 10 lines of boilerplate css to turn soup into something readable. Which you can then modify via JS as much as you want.
      - clarry 12y ago
        I don't want to use these browsers. I don't want to run these scripts. I want text, sometimes images, maybe a video. If you are serving scripts instead of the thing I'm there for, you are hurting my browsing experience. You are trying to assume control over my browser and my browsing habits. Noscript can help my browsing experience in some cases, but not always. It's giving me back some control.
        MichaelGG 12y ago
        Sounds like you want to read documents, not use applications that people are making. That's fine, but it's not the modern web, not by a long shot. It's fine if you don't want to execute someone's app, but don't act as if it's some higher ground. Why should anyone spend time rewriting their entire UI to run on a server and hack up rendering for you because you don't wish to run their UI code?
        clarry 12y ago
        I'm not telling what people should or should not do. I'm just saying that they are ruining the experience for me by trying to shove unwanted apps down my throat when the thing that really matters is the text and images which can and traditionally have been done just fine without upstream apps. There is nothing for me in the "modern web", I don't want it if it doesn't help me. The web is not an end, it's a means. So when people show their work (implicitly asking for critique), I think it is perfectly appropriate critique to point out if the static content (information) that matters cannot be displayed without Javascript. You don't need to run an UI on the server for me. No, you don't need to hack up rendering for me. My browser renders things itself. I want the browser to render things for me, according to my preferences. I don't need your rendering. My browser is my UI. Just give me the content in the right format so it can present it for me, with the interface that I am accustomed to and in charge of.
        prodigal_erik 12y ago
        Incompetent and control-freak authors are making applications that do nothing more than force one bizarre rendering of their documents. We were naive enough to provide tooling to make that feasible, and now it's become a platform which is displacing the World-Wide Web of open hypertext which could be repurposed.
  - jdjb 12y ago
    And if more people were willing to use NoScript, forcing web designers to not make javascript a mandatory part of their content delivery, we'd all get a much more secure and private internet. But since those web designers probably monetize their content through the same ad networks we're trying to block it seems like a catch 22.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      And if we were willing to block HTML, we wouldn't need color monitors. Welcome to 2014.
      - clarry 12y ago
        There was a time when we could view html just fine and we didn't need color monitors. Then web developers happened. CSS happened, javascript happened..
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- 13throwaway 12y ago
  Or use the easyprivacy list. https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/ https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/

Yeah, but silent tracking in the background does not seem obstructive by their definition.

by hnha 12y ago

Yeah, but silent tracking in the background does not seem obstructive by their definition.

Well, it is AdBlock, not TrackingBlock. There are other extensions out there to help with that problem. Popular ones are NoScript (which improves the web in many more ways, as well) and Ghostery.

freehunter 12y ago
From as often as I hear people complaining on forums like HN and reddit that a linked site doesn't work due to NoScript, I would question how many people would agree that it improves the web.
- clarry 12y ago
  It's not "doesn't work due to noscript", it's "doesn't work because it requires javascript". The blame is on javascript, which degrades the web most of the time.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It IS "doesn't work due to noscript". Browsers come with Javascript. Websites use Javascript. The owner of the site wrote the site using Javascript because browsers support Javascript by default. You specifically turned off Javascript, even though it's a default part of the web. You broke your experience. If you turn off your car's engine and the brakes and steering stop working, that's not the engine's fault, it's yours.
    - abdullahkhalids 12y ago
      I do remember a few years ago when everyone in web development talked about how your website has to degrade gracefully in the absence of some technology (JS, flash etc). Now nobody cares. I come across sites that won't even show me the text unless I allow fonts.googleapis.com (via RequestPolicy). The general point being the most websites I visit I am just reading text. Yet, I usually have to allow a few secondary domains (that serve JS and data), before the text gets into a form better than soup.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        A few years ago there may have been a fair amount of users that legitimately didn't have capabilities to display such pages. Now they don't, so why spend a lot of time or change front-end development to accommodate a tiny number of users?
        abdullahkhalids 12y ago
        It takes about 10 lines of boilerplate css to turn soup into something readable. Which you can then modify via JS as much as you want.
    - clarry 12y ago
      I don't want to use these browsers. I don't want to run these scripts. I want text, sometimes images, maybe a video. If you are serving scripts instead of the thing I'm there for, you are hurting my browsing experience. You are trying to assume control over my browser and my browsing habits. Noscript can help my browsing experience in some cases, but not always. It's giving me back some control.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        Sounds like you want to read documents, not use applications that people are making. That's fine, but it's not the modern web, not by a long shot. It's fine if you don't want to execute someone's app, but don't act as if it's some higher ground. Why should anyone spend time rewriting their entire UI to run on a server and hack up rendering for you because you don't wish to run their UI code?
        clarry 12y ago
        I'm not telling what people should or should not do. I'm just saying that they are ruining the experience for me by trying to shove unwanted apps down my throat when the thing that really matters is the text and images which can and traditionally have been done just fine without upstream apps. There is nothing for me in the "modern web", I don't want it if it doesn't help me. The web is not an end, it's a means. So when people show their work (implicitly asking for critique), I think it is perfectly appropriate critique to point out if the static content (information) that matters cannot be displayed without Javascript. You don't need to run an UI on the server for me. No, you don't need to hack up rendering for me. My browser renders things itself. I want the browser to render things for me, according to my preferences. I don't need your rendering. My browser is my UI. Just give me the content in the right format so it can present it for me, with the interface that I am accustomed to and in charge of.
        prodigal_erik 12y ago
        Incompetent and control-freak authors are making applications that do nothing more than force one bizarre rendering of their documents. We were naive enough to provide tooling to make that feasible, and now it's become a platform which is displacing the World-Wide Web of open hypertext which could be repurposed.
- jdjb 12y ago
  And if more people were willing to use NoScript, forcing web designers to not make javascript a mandatory part of their content delivery, we'd all get a much more secure and private internet. But since those web designers probably monetize their content through the same ad networks we're trying to block it seems like a catch 22.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    And if we were willing to block HTML, we wouldn't need color monitors. Welcome to 2014.
    - clarry 12y ago
      There was a time when we could view html just fine and we didn't need color monitors. Then web developers happened. CSS happened, javascript happened..
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
13throwaway 12y ago
Or use the easyprivacy list. https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/ https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/