uBlock Origin 1.20

[aluren]

I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing, and one that makes millions of lives easier by making their web experience bearable at all, all of this depends on one single person, working for free.

Now there's also the list maintainers, who also work for free. Still makes you wonder about how the world works. There's probably many other similar instances. In any case, I think these people deserve more recognition than they currently do and we shouldn't take anything they do for granted.

[jannes]

We should also thank Firefox for having adblockers at the time when Chrome was released. Otherwise Google wouldn't have felt the need to add an adblocker extension API in the first place.

Having adblocker extensions was one of the things that allowed Google to get Firefox users to switch at the time.

Ever wonder why Mobile Chrome doesn't have extensions or adblockers? Because it didn't have to compete with Firefox to gain marketshare.

[panta]

Yes, this.

uBlock Origin seems to have ~15 million active users between Chrome and Firefox (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_Origin). If it only spared us 10 seconds a day on average (probably a super conservative estimate), it would save the equivalent of an average human life (~70yrs) every 15 days! (And given that probably at least 70% of users don't use an ad blocker, it's infuriating to think what's the "human" cost of ads on the web alone...)

[ehsankia]

There are definitely a few OSS that don't get anymore as much love as they deserve. VLC and OBS are two example of programs that are so damn good, even paid alternatives hardly can compete.

[sam_goody]

If I recall correctly, he trusted one of his maintainers too much, and that is the reason he no longer contributes to uBlock (his original project), but rather created uBlock origin.

The fact that there is no easy way to make this into a money project probably led to his relying so much on such a maintainer.

Part of the issue seems to be that the devs that actually value an OSS project don't have any way to persuade the company they work for to contribute to the project. If there was some way to be able to create a tier where a company would pay $12/month and be able to "something which benefits the company ?? bugfixes ??" - something support related or somehow, many of these projects (timezone, adblocker, ssh, even things like Matrix) could be funded.

[app4soft]

> I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing

Also it's recommended[0] to install uMatrix[1] or eMatrix[2] side-by-side with uBlock Origin.

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

[2] https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=21561

[foepys]

The biggest and most important lists (Easylist and its localizations) are heavily maintained by eyeo GmbH, the company behind AdBlock Plus. It might be a community project but in reality it's more like Chromium or Go.

[agumonkey]

First thing I install in any browser.

I always mention it to neighbors (who still don't use one..)

Massive thanks to everyone involved

[nocture]

I send a small mental thanks to Raymond almost every day - his impact is stunning when you think of it

[chongli]

Also keep in mind that the entire problem exists because it was created by thousands of people working in the advertising industry. It's frustrating how often people have to solve problems created by other people.

[lunchables]

Is there a way to donate to the uBlock Origin project? If you want to imagine what the world would be like without uBlock, just try turning it off for a day. That's horrifying.

[TheKIngofBelAir]

> and we shouldn't take anything they do for granted.

You can say that again

"Ublock collaborators gorhill and Deathamns leave the project" (2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308439

[tomc1985]

There used to be a rich history of one-man products maintained selflessly by their creators, even up until the early 2010's. Entrepreneurship and business assholes destroyed that -- we gave this up when we made tech so easy to use that every brother and their mother got on board. Now tech is too big, with too much money, that it cannot help but attract sharks that buy up these sorts of things and then destroy them

[Tepix]

My guess is if he were to start accepting donations he could do it full-time as his main job. Guess he doesn't want that.

[fanttazio]

Maybe a good start could be sponsoring the maintainer since GitHub added the feature?

[red_admiral]

For a while, openssl was maintained almost for free. That truly boggles the mind.

[MattyMc]

I'm hoping that Mozilla's upcoming paid browser will open a market for browsers and browsing software.

[de_watcher]

Well, if something is distributed for free but developed by someone who doesn't work for free then it serves the interests of the one who is paying.

[rvnx]

"for free".

There are at least two revenue sources on uBlock Origin... The software is free-to-use yes, but it doesn't mean that gorhill won't put money in his pockets.

[paul7986]

Just read Microsoft will allow ad blocker extensions (May build one in) in their new Chromium browser. Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again(IE of today).

Such a stupid move by the do no evil company! Now they do no stupid too.

EDIT: Here is link... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/06/16/micr...

[pmoriarty]

The bright side of Google's anti-ad-blocking efforts is that ad-blocking is clearly no longer just an insignificant blip on their radar. There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line.

There might even be a critical mass of people who are against advertising to attempt to make some legal headway on this issue in Washington. Just as there has been legal action against telemarketers, there might be something on the legal front that can be done against online advertisers, who could be considered just as much or even more of a nuisance than telemarketers ever were. In addition, online advertising has repeatedly been a vector of malware, and perhaps companies which try to circumvent or forbid ad-blockers could have some legal consequences -- and, if not, perhaps laws could be introduced to make such consequences a reality.

IANAL, and this is just a pipe dream of mine at the moment -- but plenty of pro-consumer legislation has been made over the years. Perhaps the dawn of an unsolicited-advertising-free world is upon us.

[bdcravens]

> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years

Well if you had asked your typical HN developer a few years ago whether they'd be using a Microsoft code editor ...

[vasili111]

It is not quit clear what exactly they think regarding ad blocking. Edge team AMA on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...

[ePierre]

> Looks like I’m going to rewind 13 years and use IE again(IE of today).

Why not using Firefox?

[taurath]

Google has every incentive to believe ads and user surveillance is not evil

[Yizahi]

Yes, but only for as long as Google allows them to do it in their Chrome mod. Microsoft will keep away from centain Chrome features in Chromium as long as all they need to do is to turn them off. i.e. stay on the same trunk but without certain optional element. Key here is - optional elements. If Google will change something that will require to branch Chromium (and I mean really branch, with internal changes) to stay away from such changes, I highly doubt that MS will do it. They don't wan't or can't to maintain a separate different browser as they already shown with Edge.

[jbigelow76]

I've been running it on the Edge Chromium Dev build for a few weeks now, works great!

[aepiepaey]

Since it keeps being misquoted: the motto was "don't be evil", not "don't do evil".

[finchisko]

Isn't Microsoft selling ads too? I believe they do (that's why bing was created). If so, I don't trust their ad blocking initiative any more then google's. Maybe in short term, as they want to steal users from Chrome, but in longterm, they'll in same position as google is now.

[Fat_Thor]

A little know fact about IE8 is that it came with a built in content blocking mechanism appropriately called Tracking Protection way back in 2009. IIRC it was the first browser to come with ad blocking built in, although not turn on by default. Opera came with content blocking a bit later.

IE9 improved on it with what I think is one of the most impressive feature to this day. It had a heuristic tracking protection that block trackers once it's detected at a certain re-occurrence counts that you can config. So in theory it doesn't need to subscribed to an ad list like all browsers do today.

IE took a lot of crap deservedly so, but that overshadowed a lot of pioneer works that later browsers adopted.

[joenathanone]

Link?

[vxNsr]

Do you have a link to that?

My only issue is that chrome is great bec I can have multiple profiles on the same windows user account, but that’s kinda anathema to the paradigm of how Microsoft wants us to use Edge.

I use chrome profiles the same way ppl use Firefox containers, my only hope is that edge builds something similar.

I’ve also been using Vivaldi, I love it but I’m worried about using duh a small project that is still dependent on chromium.

[kylek]

Thank you gorhill.

>> Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.

[vasili111]

After Chrome API changes announcement uBlock Origin news at HN became more popular than before. I like it.

[keyle]

I've just noticed Safari is stuck at 1.16 and I've been using a fork.

Anyone here uses Safari as their main browsing tool and has a good alternative? I mean 1.16 seems to do the job just fine, but if it falls behind too far...

[FabHK]

Does anyone know about the status of the Safari port?

That hasn't seen a release since 1.16 in April 2018.

https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/releases

[ec109685]

It's crazy how good uBlock is and everything it blocks.

What happens if more of the Internet learns about this extension? Subscriptions for all sites? Some other business model?

[Arbalest]

As much as Advertisers want to be able to use their own domains to be able thwart fake clicks, this approach leaves them open to ad blocking. At what point with the wish to deliver ads outweigh the want to measure user engagement? Once ads are slipstreamed, adblockers are going to have to get a lot more aggressive, more like antivirus scanning for code signatures.

Thanks to the team (and especially Ray) for keeping us free of performance bogging, malware delivering scripts.

[proszkinasenne2]

Is there a good short answer for why uBlock is using constructs like this:

if ( self.browser instanceof Object ) { self.chrome = self.browser; } else { self.browser = self.chrome; }

Instead of using a polyfill like that one https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill?

[mrsmee89]

This is great! Any plans for Safari support?

[jermaustin1]

I love uBlock Origin. I wish I could donate to gorhill, and I'm actually kind of annoyed he wont even put up a paypal me link or something.

That said, I've noticed more and more sites are starting to do the ad blocker detection and not allowing you to see the content until you white list them. It started with a simple body {overflow:hidden} and a modal box, but they are now truncating their content.

And I don't mind a site advertising, they have to make their money somehow, but I don't like how the modern ad-tech is so kludgy.

[6nf]

When will the planned changes to the Chrome API actually roll out to the public?

[geniium]

Thanks for the great work!

[deanclatworthy]

Has the author of uBlock origin said what the plans are post-this-change? Should Chrome actually follow through with what it says it will do, the performance of uBO will drop overnight. Is this acceptable? Will development continue?

[neonate]

If you already have it do you need to manually install the new version?

[Endy]

Cool. Is there a non-WebExtensions XUL version for us Pale Moon users?

[superkuh]

Too bad it only targets Chrome webextensions. No support for people still using the Firefox version of Firefox instead of the modern Chrome style Firefox.