41 ms·

UBlock Origin

415 points by grflynn 11y ago

mrmondo 11y ago
How is this different from the normal / existing uBlock? https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases
- silvestre 11y ago
  It's the fork developed by the original author. He transfered the main repository to another contributor for maintaining and then open-source drama ensued. I don't think they've diverged enough to recommend one over the other. I'm using Origin.
  - tuananh 11y ago
    i think the original author doesn't want to take such big responsibility. it's a hobby for him only. he only works on it for fun so he transfer to another, forked it and add features as he sees fit.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  The normal one is IIRC a fork when the original developer disappeared for a while. He's now very active again.
- fredwu 11y ago
  The original developer explained the situation here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38
- onestone 11y ago
  uBlock Origin is actually the "normal" one.
- mrmondo 11y ago
  Ah, gorhill's Github page sort of answers my question: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
- draugadrotten 11y ago
  Explained on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/reviews/712524/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gitaarik 11y ago
  From what I can tell it looks like the original author transferred his project to someone else, but then forked that to be able to add stuff without having to merge into the original branch. But the actual difference I'm not sure about.
- david_p 11y ago
  TL;DR: "uBlock Origin" (or "uBlock₀") is the version you want (maintained by the creator of the project, up-to-date) The original "uBlock" github repo was created by gorhill. Later, the repo was handed to a contributor of the project (chrisaljoudi) who did nothing good with it. Finally, gorhill forked chrisaljoudi's repo to create "uBlock Origin" and resumed development.
  - onli 11y ago
    I don't think that this is actually true. Yes, gorhill started ublock and then handed it over, but chrisaljoudi just continued development and made some changes (like a call for donations). I'm not aware he did anything bad, and in the video he put up sounded just a bit unlucky, not like planning to do bad things (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA). Or see https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/any_difference_between_ublock_and_ublock_origin/crwhmwt https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/any_differen..., where a made statement about feature-completeness caused a minor dispute. Which version to run probably more depends on whether you want that per-site switches feature.
    - david_p 11y ago
      chrisaljoudi is not pushing anything compared to gorhill, just compare the commit rates: - https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/graphs/contributors https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/graphs/contributors - https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/graphs/contributors https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/graphs/contributors I am not claiming that chrisajoudi did anything intentionally wrong, he simply does not contribute as much.
    - yathrowaway45 11y ago
      >I'm not aware he did anything bad I don't have a good overview, but there was some stripping of authorship of patches. E.g. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/69 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/69
      - onli 11y ago
- logn 11y ago
  Gorhill wrote uBlock. After the project took on a life of its own, Gorhill handed the primary repo over to the contributors so he could develop from a fork of it. The primary repo then introduced requests for donations, changed attribution/authorship, and ended some features. As a result of the feature set difference, Gorhill renamed his fork to "uBlock Origin" so the features he wanted would be available in the addons sites without conflicting with "uBlock". At this point given their divergence, both projects are fully maintained and developed in parallel, with relevant revisions merged to each other where possible. That's the neutral summary at least. (edited slightly for clarity)
Kurtz79 11y ago
Yes, it's great and I have been using it for quite a while (on Chrome as well), but it's nothing new, unless I am missing something. It would be helpful if the submitter also wrote a comment about the reasons of the submission, when they are not immediately apparent.
kissickas 11y ago
I've seen comments on reddit saying that often legitimate "Pay Now" buttons etc. are blocked by this add-on. Can anyone with recent experience weigh in? I don't really feel like switching from ABP which I'm perfectly happy with unless this is 99% kink-free.
- mziulu 11y ago
  The add-on shouldn't block anything on its own, so if there's a problem it's probably on some filter list that the user enabled. There's a pretty good way to debug these situations though, the network request log ( https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger ). It will let you see the history of requests for a given page, and one of the colums in the log lets you fine tune what uBlock should do for that particular request - so, if you see that something that you don't want to be blocked is filtered out, you can reverse that and reload the page. EDIT: in the latest release (0.9.9.0 at the time of this writing) the request log will also tell you which list provides the rule that blocks a particular request, it's pretty handy to debug this kind of issue.
- wooger 11y ago
  All the major ad blocking extensions work by applying various filter lists, all separately maintained. They may choose to enable different lists by default (uBlock turns on more than ABP for sure), but they can be configured in a few seconds to do the same thing. This extension is so much more efficient than ABP or any similar extension that it's a no brainer, and I've had zero problems with it when bearing the above in mind. 1/3 the total ram usage on both FF and Chrome, it makes it possible to use Chrome on a PC with <16GB of ram again.
decasteve 11y ago
From the horses mouth [1]: Main reason I published on AMO is because a feature which I think is important was removed from uBlock (per-site switches). That both versions diverged significantly enough so soon is not in my control. When ABP added "acceptable ads" in their fork, they also created a demand for a version uncompromised by the "acceptable ads" principle, hence ABE happened. When uBlock removed the per-site switches, a demand was created for a version of uBlock with the per-site switches. This is the reality of GPL: anybody can fork and create their own flavor if they disagree with the pre-fork version. This should not be seen as wrong when it happens, it's expected. In the big picture, users win. As far as trust is concerned, both versions can be trusted -- that should not be an issue in either case: the development and source code is public in both cases (every single code change can be easily browsed on github). Edit: Notice that I still contribute fixes to uBlock since the fork, and also try to deal with filed issues (those issues which are relevant to both versions), so it's not like I am ignoring uBlock to the advantage of uBlock Origin -- I also want uBlock to work fine for whoever uses it, I just strongly disagree with the removal of the per-site switches feature. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-96618444 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-966...
- pen2l 11y ago
  > When ABP added "acceptable ads" in their fork, they also created a demand for a version uncompromised by the "acceptable ads" principle, hence ABE happened. I wish they'll go one step further and add the "Please remove us from your adblock" notices to default blocking list
  - laggyluke 11y ago
    You might like these options: https://cloudup.com/cJeKg7Zljwa https://cloudup.com/cJeKg7Zljwa
    - rmxt 11y ago
      Maybe a little ironic that this linked page doesn't work unless cookies are enabled. For those unwilling to click, the screen shot contains a snippet of the Adblock filter selection, and "Adblock Warning Removal List"; "Anti-Adblock Killer I Reek"; and "EasyList" are checked.
nickysielicki 11y ago
You should all check out umatrix if you have 15 minutes to spare. Made by the same guy, it's adblocking and noscript done exactly how you want it done. Block pulled-in third-party sites by default, accept all on the primary domain you're looking at, and especially block from domains on a blacklist. It breaks on a few sites, but it's not in my way as much as noscript and it's a 5 second job to get most any website to work. If you don't know how the web works, you'll be frustrated. If you understand how the modern web works, you'll wonder how you ever did without.
- the8472 11y ago
  > it's adblocking and noscript done exactly how you want it done. it's good, but not exactly how I want it done. Namely, it's not hierarchical. E.g. I can say Site A may load frames from site B. But then site B tries to load stuff in its frame and I have to set additional rules for Site B. instead an forward pointer to "Site B default inclusion set" or something like that would be useful. Basically, hundreds of sites embed youtube. And on some (but not all) I simply want to apply a "load the minimal amount of stuff necessary to embed youtube" rule. If loads are conceptualized as a tree (A loads B loads C) a flat matrix is not powerful enough.
  - tasqa 11y ago
    All scopes import from higher level scopes. E.g. bl.com imports from * and www.bla.com import from * and bla.com. I've made soem modifications to the * (global) scope to allow the minimal version of youtube to load. So whenever I visit a new website youtube just works.
    - the8472 11y ago
      That's not what I want because I only want to apply that to some sites. I even wrote "And on some (but not all) [...]" to make clear that global rules are not the same as hierarchical matches.
  - anc84 11y ago
    Same here. I DO want to have to re-enable third-party sites on each site I am on. I hereby offer 10$ for someone to implement that. Yes, that is nothing for the work but that is what I feel having that feature would be worth for me right this moment.
gluegadget 11y ago
uMatrix for Firefox seems to be released as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ Policeman was the closest thing —that I know of— to uMatrix for Firefox users, but —at least for me— Firefox is always complaining that Policeman is slowing down the browser. And also, it's nice that you can easily import your Chrome uMatrix rules to Firefox.
skrowl 11y ago
Love uBlock Origin. I upgraded from Ad Block Plus to uBlock (and finally uBlock Origin) and was amazed at how much faster it is.
hnama 11y ago
i know ublock is on safari. but will we see a ublock origin on safari?(specially after per-site switches)
- ReddestDream 11y ago
  Same. I wish we could get a Safari version of uBlock Origin since it does seem like in time it will be the clearly superior version. Not to knock anyone working on mainline uBlock, but the frustrations of the original developer (justifiable or not) have led him to discontinue contributing code to mainline uBlock. That's a serious blow to its development . . . https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 FYI, I would just use Chrome if it didn't just kill battery life on OS X. Don't think I use Safari by choice here . . .
  - Nadya 11y ago
    You're in luck! https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/GpL63A1K2TF https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/GpL63A1K2TF
StavrosK 11y ago
I've tried uBlock a few times, but it's always been inferior to Ghostery. I want to choose what I block on each page, e.g. sometimes I want to load Disqus, sometimes I don't, etc. uBlock doesn't allow me to do any of that, does anyone know a lighter alternative to Ghostery that will still have sane lists and allow me to unblock elements on a per-page basis?
- 83a 11y ago
  i'm using https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/ (ghostery seems to phone home, requestpolicy not (afaik))
  - acheron 11y ago
    There's an opt-in option in Ghostery that reports usage info, but as far as I know it doesn't "phone home" if you don't opt in to that.
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      Yeah, seconded, AFAIK it doesn't phone home if you disable that.
      - colinbartlett 11y ago
        Privacy-advocating browser extension stops violating your privacy if you ask it to.
        Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
        No. Sending of usage info is opt-in, not opt-out.
  - benedikt 11y ago
    What about Disconnect or Lightbeam? (as alternatives to Ghostery)
fridek 11y ago
Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the devil and work on freemium, coins, exploit OCD and rich-parents kids, or host ads and risk not earning a dime because every single gamer I know is tech savvy enough to have an ad blocker?
- beagle3 11y ago
  How much do you think you'll make from ads? Chances are, much, much less than you expect. There are exceptions (e.g. plentyoffish.com), but people I know who run popular niche sites (in the low millions of page views per month, a few tens-of-thousands unique) are happy when they manage to make $1,000/month from ads.
  - h43k3r 11y ago
    I support your arguments of free content, but there are some sites on the internet that will serve you spam if you don't use a ad blocking software. I unblock ads on the free websites that I use frequently which present ads in a nice way. Some websites do show a popup that they earn from ads and it would be great if you could turn off your ad blocker and I mostly comply with that. The reason for this is that these sites know when and where to show ads.
    - beagle3 11y ago
      You probably wanted to reply to GGP. I am of the opinion content should be free or paid. I let ads through only if they come from the same website. My problem with the non-annoying ads is that they still enable tracking and lrofiling which I do not like. I think I've had Adblock+request policy/policeman running since forever - recently switched to ublockO+umatrix
  - fridek 11y ago
abrowne 11y ago
Another option for Firefox is the built-in "tracking protection". It is off by default, but can be enabled via about:config (set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true). Works on Android, too.
- HunOL 11y ago
  And it breaks a lot of web sites.
  - acdha 11y ago
    Have you reported those? I've only encountered one and it was apparently fixed awhile back.
  - abrowne 11y ago
    I've haven't noticed any problems myself. I run mostly Firefox Beta on OS X, Linux, and Android and have been using it since late May.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    Yes, the ones that track you. That's the point, isn't it.
fapjacks 11y ago
The amount of vitriol by pro-advertising forces in this thread are pretty hilarious. As if the planet would stop spinning if people used adblock.
snissn 11y ago
The eff released their own ad blocker type tool available here https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger and it's great. It doesn't come with a singular list of sites to block, but instead blocks domains that are seen across many domains.
Kiro 11y ago
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719926
tzs 11y ago
Is there a good ad blocker that can be set to NOT block by default, and that provides an easy, one button or so, interface to turn blocking on for the site currently being viewed? I want to operate under a policy of giving new sites I visit a chance to show me that they can advertise responsibly and blacklist them if they show that the cannot. All the ones I've tried so far (AB, ABP, uBlock) are strongly oriented toward blocking everywhere by default and whitelisting sites that you do not want to block on. I suspect that most people who use an ad blocker do so not because of some moral objection to the very concept of advertising to pay the bills so that a site can provide free content to the general public. They use an ad blocker because they got tired of sites whose ads do obnoxious things like block the content, move the content around [1], make noise, put distracting animation in your peripheral vision, and so on. By blocking all ads by default, the current ad blockers break the feedback loop that should be pushing sites toward ads that don't have the problems mentioned in the previous paragraph. [1] moving the content around is what got me to install an ad blocker. Gocomics.com started doing ads that slide in from the left side, pushing the comic you are reading to the right. If you have zoomed in to make the comic more readable, this could push the right panel of the comic off the screen. Since the slide in ads did not run on every page (and when they did run, it was with a delay of a few seconds), you could not anticipate them and position the zoomed comic appropriately.
- erikcw 11y ago
  What about removing the default filtering lists from ublock and then building it back up as you go using the "picker" ui?
- guelo 11y ago
  uBlock has a big on/off button. You can just leave it off until you want it on.
- bcoates 11y ago
  This is how I use uBlock, by disabling all the built-in filter selections and blocking ad providers when I notice them doing something shady/annoying, or going down in a way that hangs site loads. Spoiler alert: you wind up blocking all ads anyway. There aren't any ad networks that have anything approaching the standards and practices of late night cable. If you don't believe me please run this experiment yourself.
vladsanchez 11y ago
Revenge, at last! I was sick and tired of sites draining my machine with their js scripts and tracking tactics. Million thanks!!!
iamcreasy 11y ago
Why it removing the youtube logo on the top left corner? Just because it's showing that youtube is streaming E3? :/ How do I let the extension know that some adds are part of the page?
leke 11y ago
I have uBlock installed from Allex Vallat. What is the difference?
jedberg 11y ago
If people who made ad blockers were ethical, they would make their software easily detectable by the websites, so those websites could choose not to service those users.
- tho9Ohx1eo 11y ago
  If people who run ads were ethical users wouldn't resort to ad blockers. See how easy that was? It's called bullshit logic.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    Except that the people who are running the ads aren't hiding that fact. The people blocking them and stealing service are trying to hide behind their ad blocker.
DaFranker 11y ago
Heh. Gotta love how the default filter already blocks ||sourceforge.net^
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
of 11y ago
It's better to download ublock from their source repo here: https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases > Due to Mozilla's review process, the version of uBlock available from the Add-ons homepage is currently often outdated. This isn't in our control.
- luxflux 11y ago
  Actually, this is about uBlock Origin (by the original developer), so it should be: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock https://github.com/gorhill/ublock
alexnewman 11y ago
This is the main reason I've switched to Firefox on android

415 points by grflynn 11y ago

How is this different from the normal / existing uBlock? https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases

silvestre 11y ago
It's the fork developed by the original author. He transfered the main repository to another contributor for maintaining and then open-source drama ensued. I don't think they've diverged enough to recommend one over the other. I'm using Origin.
- tuananh 11y ago
  i think the original author doesn't want to take such big responsibility. it's a hobby for him only. he only works on it for fun so he transfer to another, forked it and add features as he sees fit.
rockdoe 11y ago
The normal one is IIRC a fork when the original developer disappeared for a while. He's now very active again.
fredwu 11y ago
The original developer explained the situation here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38
onestone 11y ago
uBlock Origin is actually the "normal" one.
mrmondo 11y ago
Ah, gorhill's Github page sort of answers my question: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
draugadrotten 11y ago
Explained on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/reviews/712524/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gitaarik 11y ago
From what I can tell it looks like the original author transferred his project to someone else, but then forked that to be able to add stuff without having to merge into the original branch. But the actual difference I'm not sure about.
david_p 11y ago
TL;DR: "uBlock Origin" (or "uBlock₀") is the version you want (maintained by the creator of the project, up-to-date) The original "uBlock" github repo was created by gorhill. Later, the repo was handed to a contributor of the project (chrisaljoudi) who did nothing good with it. Finally, gorhill forked chrisaljoudi's repo to create "uBlock Origin" and resumed development.
- onli 11y ago
  I don't think that this is actually true. Yes, gorhill started ublock and then handed it over, but chrisaljoudi just continued development and made some changes (like a call for donations). I'm not aware he did anything bad, and in the video he put up sounded just a bit unlucky, not like planning to do bad things (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA). Or see https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/any_difference_between_ublock_and_ublock_origin/crwhmwt https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/any_differen..., where a made statement about feature-completeness caused a minor dispute. Which version to run probably more depends on whether you want that per-site switches feature.
  - david_p 11y ago
    chrisaljoudi is not pushing anything compared to gorhill, just compare the commit rates: - https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/graphs/contributors https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/graphs/contributors - https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/graphs/contributors https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/graphs/contributors I am not claiming that chrisajoudi did anything intentionally wrong, he simply does not contribute as much.
  - yathrowaway45 11y ago
    >I'm not aware he did anything bad I don't have a good overview, but there was some stripping of authorship of patches. E.g. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/69 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/69
    - onli 11y ago
logn 11y ago
Gorhill wrote uBlock. After the project took on a life of its own, Gorhill handed the primary repo over to the contributors so he could develop from a fork of it. The primary repo then introduced requests for donations, changed attribution/authorship, and ended some features. As a result of the feature set difference, Gorhill renamed his fork to "uBlock Origin" so the features he wanted would be available in the addons sites without conflicting with "uBlock". At this point given their divergence, both projects are fully maintained and developed in parallel, with relevant revisions merged to each other where possible. That's the neutral summary at least. (edited slightly for clarity)

Kurtz79 11y ago

Yes, it's great and I have been using it for quite a while (on Chrome as well), but it's nothing new, unless I am missing something. It would be helpful if the submitter also wrote a comment about the reasons of the submission, when they are not immediately apparent.

kissickas 11y ago

I've seen comments on reddit saying that often legitimate "Pay Now" buttons etc. are blocked by this add-on. Can anyone with recent experience weigh in? I don't really feel like switching from ABP which I'm perfectly happy with unless this is 99% kink-free.

mziulu 11y ago
The add-on shouldn't block anything on its own, so if there's a problem it's probably on some filter list that the user enabled. There's a pretty good way to debug these situations though, the network request log ( https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger ). It will let you see the history of requests for a given page, and one of the colums in the log lets you fine tune what uBlock should do for that particular request - so, if you see that something that you don't want to be blocked is filtered out, you can reverse that and reload the page. EDIT: in the latest release (0.9.9.0 at the time of this writing) the request log will also tell you which list provides the rule that blocks a particular request, it's pretty handy to debug this kind of issue.
wooger 11y ago
All the major ad blocking extensions work by applying various filter lists, all separately maintained. They may choose to enable different lists by default (uBlock turns on more than ABP for sure), but they can be configured in a few seconds to do the same thing. This extension is so much more efficient than ABP or any similar extension that it's a no brainer, and I've had zero problems with it when bearing the above in mind. 1/3 the total ram usage on both FF and Chrome, it makes it possible to use Chrome on a PC with <16GB of ram again.

decasteve 11y ago

From the horses mouth [1]: Main reason I published on AMO is because a feature which I think is important was removed from uBlock (per-site switches). That both versions diverged significantly enough so soon is not in my control. When ABP added "acceptable ads" in their fork, they also created a demand for a version uncompromised by the "acceptable ads" principle, hence ABE happened. When uBlock removed the per-site switches, a demand was created for a version of uBlock with the per-site switches. This is the reality of GPL: anybody can fork and create their own flavor if they disagree with the pre-fork version. This should not be seen as wrong when it happens, it's expected. In the big picture, users win. As far as trust is concerned, both versions can be trusted -- that should not be an issue in either case: the development and source code is public in both cases (every single code change can be easily browsed on github). Edit: Notice that I still contribute fixes to uBlock since the fork, and also try to deal with filed issues (those issues which are relevant to both versions), so it's not like I am ignoring uBlock to the advantage of uBlock Origin -- I also want uBlock to work fine for whoever uses it, I just strongly disagree with the removal of the per-site switches feature. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-96618444 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-966...

pen2l 11y ago
> When ABP added "acceptable ads" in their fork, they also created a demand for a version uncompromised by the "acceptable ads" principle, hence ABE happened. I wish they'll go one step further and add the "Please remove us from your adblock" notices to default blocking list
- laggyluke 11y ago
  You might like these options: https://cloudup.com/cJeKg7Zljwa https://cloudup.com/cJeKg7Zljwa
  - rmxt 11y ago
    Maybe a little ironic that this linked page doesn't work unless cookies are enabled. For those unwilling to click, the screen shot contains a snippet of the Adblock filter selection, and "Adblock Warning Removal List"; "Anti-Adblock Killer I Reek"; and "EasyList" are checked.

nickysielicki 11y ago

You should all check out umatrix if you have 15 minutes to spare. Made by the same guy, it's adblocking and noscript done exactly how you want it done. Block pulled-in third-party sites by default, accept all on the primary domain you're looking at, and especially block from domains on a blacklist. It breaks on a few sites, but it's not in my way as much as noscript and it's a 5 second job to get most any website to work. If you don't know how the web works, you'll be frustrated. If you understand how the modern web works, you'll wonder how you ever did without.

the8472 11y ago
> it's adblocking and noscript done exactly how you want it done. it's good, but not exactly how I want it done. Namely, it's not hierarchical. E.g. I can say Site A may load frames from site B. But then site B tries to load stuff in its frame and I have to set additional rules for Site B. instead an forward pointer to "Site B default inclusion set" or something like that would be useful. Basically, hundreds of sites embed youtube. And on some (but not all) I simply want to apply a "load the minimal amount of stuff necessary to embed youtube" rule. If loads are conceptualized as a tree (A loads B loads C) a flat matrix is not powerful enough.
- tasqa 11y ago
  All scopes import from higher level scopes. E.g. bl.com imports from * and www.bla.com import from * and bla.com. I've made soem modifications to the * (global) scope to allow the minimal version of youtube to load. So whenever I visit a new website youtube just works.
  - the8472 11y ago
    That's not what I want because I only want to apply that to some sites. I even wrote "And on some (but not all) [...]" to make clear that global rules are not the same as hierarchical matches.
- anc84 11y ago
  Same here. I DO want to have to re-enable third-party sites on each site I am on. I hereby offer 10$ for someone to implement that. Yes, that is nothing for the work but that is what I feel having that feature would be worth for me right this moment.

gluegadget 11y ago

uMatrix for Firefox seems to be released as well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ Policeman was the closest thing —that I know of— to uMatrix for Firefox users, but —at least for me— Firefox is always complaining that Policeman is slowing down the browser. And also, it's nice that you can easily import your Chrome uMatrix rules to Firefox.

skrowl 11y ago

Love uBlock Origin. I upgraded from Ad Block Plus to uBlock (and finally uBlock Origin) and was amazed at how much faster it is.

hnama 11y ago

i know ublock is on safari. but will we see a ublock origin on safari?(specially after per-site switches)

ReddestDream 11y ago
Same. I wish we could get a Safari version of uBlock Origin since it does seem like in time it will be the clearly superior version. Not to knock anyone working on mainline uBlock, but the frustrations of the original developer (justifiable or not) have led him to discontinue contributing code to mainline uBlock. That's a serious blow to its development . . . https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38 FYI, I would just use Chrome if it didn't just kill battery life on OS X. Don't think I use Safari by choice here . . .
- Nadya 11y ago
  You're in luck! https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/GpL63A1K2TF https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting/posts/GpL63A1K2TF

StavrosK 11y ago

I've tried uBlock a few times, but it's always been inferior to Ghostery. I want to choose what I block on each page, e.g. sometimes I want to load Disqus, sometimes I don't, etc. uBlock doesn't allow me to do any of that, does anyone know a lighter alternative to Ghostery that will still have sane lists and allow me to unblock elements on a per-page basis?

83a 11y ago
i'm using https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/ (ghostery seems to phone home, requestpolicy not (afaik))
- acheron 11y ago
  There's an opt-in option in Ghostery that reports usage info, but as far as I know it doesn't "phone home" if you don't opt in to that.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    Yeah, seconded, AFAIK it doesn't phone home if you disable that.
    - colinbartlett 11y ago
      Privacy-advocating browser extension stops violating your privacy if you ask it to.
      - Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 11y ago
        No. Sending of usage info is opt-in, not opt-out.
- benedikt 11y ago
  What about Disconnect or Lightbeam? (as alternatives to Ghostery)

fridek 11y ago

Honest question - what business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. At the moment I'm not hosting any content of such kind myself, but I wanted to publish a game and I'm facing the same question. Should I sell my soul to the devil and work on freemium, coins, exploit OCD and rich-parents kids, or host ads and risk not earning a dime because every single gamer I know is tech savvy enough to have an ad blocker?

beagle3 11y ago
How much do you think you'll make from ads? Chances are, much, much less than you expect. There are exceptions (e.g. plentyoffish.com), but people I know who run popular niche sites (in the low millions of page views per month, a few tens-of-thousands unique) are happy when they manage to make $1,000/month from ads.
- h43k3r 11y ago
  I support your arguments of free content, but there are some sites on the internet that will serve you spam if you don't use a ad blocking software. I unblock ads on the free websites that I use frequently which present ads in a nice way. Some websites do show a popup that they earn from ads and it would be great if you could turn off your ad blocker and I mostly comply with that. The reason for this is that these sites know when and where to show ads.
  - beagle3 11y ago
    You probably wanted to reply to GGP. I am of the opinion content should be free or paid. I let ads through only if they come from the same website. My problem with the non-annoying ads is that they still enable tracking and lrofiling which I do not like. I think I've had Adblock+request policy/policeman running since forever - recently switched to ublockO+umatrix
- fridek 11y ago

abrowne 11y ago

Another option for Firefox is the built-in "tracking protection". It is off by default, but can be enabled via about:config (set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true). Works on Android, too.

HunOL 11y ago
And it breaks a lot of web sites.
- acdha 11y ago
  Have you reported those? I've only encountered one and it was apparently fixed awhile back.
- abrowne 11y ago
  I've haven't noticed any problems myself. I run mostly Firefox Beta on OS X, Linux, and Android and have been using it since late May.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Yes, the ones that track you. That's the point, isn't it.

fapjacks 11y ago

The amount of vitriol by pro-advertising forces in this thread are pretty hilarious. As if the planet would stop spinning if people used adblock.

snissn 11y ago

The eff released their own ad blocker type tool available here https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger and it's great. It doesn't come with a singular list of sites to block, but instead blocks domains that are seen across many domains.

Kiro 11y ago

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719926

tzs 11y ago

Is there a good ad blocker that can be set to NOT block by default, and that provides an easy, one button or so, interface to turn blocking on for the site currently being viewed? I want to operate under a policy of giving new sites I visit a chance to show me that they can advertise responsibly and blacklist them if they show that the cannot. All the ones I've tried so far (AB, ABP, uBlock) are strongly oriented toward blocking everywhere by default and whitelisting sites that you do not want to block on. I suspect that most people who use an ad blocker do so not because of some moral objection to the very concept of advertising to pay the bills so that a site can provide free content to the general public. They use an ad blocker because they got tired of sites whose ads do obnoxious things like block the content, move the content around [1], make noise, put distracting animation in your peripheral vision, and so on. By blocking all ads by default, the current ad blockers break the feedback loop that should be pushing sites toward ads that don't have the problems mentioned in the previous paragraph. [1] moving the content around is what got me to install an ad blocker. Gocomics.com started doing ads that slide in from the left side, pushing the comic you are reading to the right. If you have zoomed in to make the comic more readable, this could push the right panel of the comic off the screen. Since the slide in ads did not run on every page (and when they did run, it was with a delay of a few seconds), you could not anticipate them and position the zoomed comic appropriately.

erikcw 11y ago
What about removing the default filtering lists from ublock and then building it back up as you go using the "picker" ui?
guelo 11y ago
uBlock has a big on/off button. You can just leave it off until you want it on.
bcoates 11y ago
This is how I use uBlock, by disabling all the built-in filter selections and blocking ad providers when I notice them doing something shady/annoying, or going down in a way that hangs site loads. Spoiler alert: you wind up blocking all ads anyway. There aren't any ad networks that have anything approaching the standards and practices of late night cable. If you don't believe me please run this experiment yourself.

vladsanchez 11y ago

Revenge, at last! I was sick and tired of sites draining my machine with their js scripts and tracking tactics. Million thanks!!!

iamcreasy 11y ago

Why it removing the youtube logo on the top left corner? Just because it's showing that youtube is streaming E3? :/ How do I let the extension know that some adds are part of the page?

leke 11y ago

I have uBlock installed from Allex Vallat. What is the difference?

jedberg 11y ago

If people who made ad blockers were ethical, they would make their software easily detectable by the websites, so those websites could choose not to service those users.

tho9Ohx1eo 11y ago
If people who run ads were ethical users wouldn't resort to ad blockers. See how easy that was? It's called bullshit logic.
- jedberg 11y ago
  Except that the people who are running the ads aren't hiding that fact. The people blocking them and stealing service are trying to hide behind their ad blocker.

DaFranker 11y ago

Heh. Gotta love how the default filter already blocks ||sourceforge.net^

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

of 11y ago

It's better to download ublock from their source repo here: https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/releases > Due to Mozilla's review process, the version of uBlock available from the Add-ons homepage is currently often outdated. This isn't in our control.

luxflux 11y ago
Actually, this is about uBlock Origin (by the original developer), so it should be: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock https://github.com/gorhill/ublock

alexnewman 11y ago

This is the main reason I've switched to Firefox on android