Wow, what an awesome dive into some of the technical aspects behind one of my favorite tools for using the web. And I do think of it that way these days, it's fairly stunning on some sites to switch off all the block and see how they become genuinely unbrowsable. I remember seeing Gorhill discuss a few times over the years some of the reqs for uBO during certain times (like why it could no longer work with Safari following changes Apple made a while back), but so cool to have it all collected in one place.
Having said that I've also been fairly stunned recently to see how much difference a simple DNS blacklist system can make too. Not because it's a big technical achievement but because it isn't and in principle seems relatively trivial to work around. But as I've been switching all my routing from UniFi to OPNsense, I've gone ahead and tried out Unbound's basic built-in blacklisting. While it's no uBO, it works on every single device and browser including in apps and it seems like it really shouldn't, that more parties would just be proxying ads through their own infra and DNS. Been kind of an interesting illustration of technical vs economic influences in an ecosystem. I can see how proxying would add complexity and cost to setup so it must just be that few enough people do it the ad industry can't be bothered.
But should that ever catch on (and it could, Raspberry Pi seems fairly well known) I expect uBO to be able to keep up with the cat-and-mouse long after DNS has been left behind. This piece helps underline how incredibly important maintaining a critical level of diversity in the browser ecosystem is. Just shortly ago there were a bunch of complaints again about Apple not allowing Chrome to be on iOS because it "holds back the web", but what "holding back the web" looks like is certainly a matter of perspective...
uBlock Origin comes close, and surpasses in some ways (I used both for that reason) but lacks separate control of cookies, images, scripts, etc. So you can't accept a particular third party's images without also accepting its scripts, cookies, etc.
I mention it mainly in the hope that we can popularise its maintained fork 'nuTensor'.
After trying uBlock (as in attempting to also cover what I used to use uMatrix for) for a few weeks I think it's insufficient and nuTensor is the better option for me, but it quickly won't be if ~nobody uses it and it falls by the wayside.
Alternatively uBO could support the few details it lacks from uM? It seems like the problem basically was difficulty/time constraints in supporting both.. but I don't know why they were ever separate? There's plenty of overlap. If uBO had uM's granularity in 'advanced mode', that'd be perfect.
I'm in the same boat. My main objection to uBO is the cryptic UI. I have no idea what the two columns to the right of a domain are as there's no column headings, or the two nested buttons in each column, one of which is grey (where I'd assume there'd be green to counter the red?), or the "+"/"++" that sometimes appear over said buttons... Or the green bars that creep in from the far left over the domain names, at staggering lengths.
The uMatrix UI on the other hand was incredibly intuitive, and more granular. Then again, maybe that comes down to me not understanding what the hell is going on with uBO's UI.
> So you can't accept a particular third party's images without also accepting its scripts, cookies, etc.
It's a clunky interface with poor discoverability, but with the uBO logger open in a browser tab you can click on any request right beside the timestamp and define a new rule with the desired granularity. In the URL Rule tab, the unmarked left column sets the allow/noop/block behavior.
I also wonder about this. I still run both side by side. (I haven't noticed any problems with uMatrix so far ...) All I really use uMatrix for is quick coarse grained 2D filtering of various content types. I don't understand why that couldn't be implemented as an optional "first pass" filtering layer in uBlock.
I realize uBlock can mostly already do what uMatrix does, honestly I just find the 2D UI to be incredibly convenient and intuitive.
I find ublock much more granular than umatrix. It can block all js and allow a particular one, block just a segment of inline scripts.
It can block separately a single script, image or any other request. I find it much better than umatrix which can't do many things that ublock does. If someone wantd to they can just install it and forget it also. Much more versatile.
>At browser launch, Firefox will wait for uBO to be up and ready before network requests are fired from already opened tab(s).
>This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers, i.e. tracker/advertisement payloads may find their way into already opened tabs before uBO is up and ready in Chromium-based browsers, while these are properly filtered in Firefox.
>Reliably blocking at browser launch is especially important for whoever uses default-deny mode for 3rd-party resources and/or JavaScript.
Oof. TIL. That makes blockers kinda crippled in chromes, if you expect them to actually block things.
I love Firefox and I use it on principle. I don’t think I have a worse web experience, although that wouldn’t stop me.
What does break websites is turning on anti-tracking measures. The number of times a site won’t work till I enable third party cookies shows the sad state of the web. Developers, do you only test in Chrome on Windows with default settings or something?
> The Firefox version of uBO makes use of WebAssembly code for core filtering code paths. This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers because this would require an extra permission in the extension manifest which could cause friction when publishing the extension in the Chrome Web Store.
Anyone know what this extra permission is and why requesting this extra permission would cause friction?
I can't live without uBlock Origin and uMatrix, and was sad to see uMatrix archived [0]. Still works great, but I'm wondering what will happen long term. Anyone also use both and since drop uMatrix for something else, or just uBlock? How is it?
I really, really wish Apple would update Safari for uBlock Origin. I’m about to publish a Safari extension (a NoScript equivalent) and the content blocking APIs are so limited. iOS is even worse than the Mac, too. On iOS AFAIK you can’t even reload the page for the user.
I've been a daily user and advocate of Firefox since Opera changed to using Chromium. But recently I've grown tired of their privacy hypocrisy and company decisions that I've uninstalled it and started to try out Edge/Brave/Vivaldi as my daily. It has pained me to do this as FF was my last safe haven away from Chromium.
If you dig into some settings and follow tech news, I have begun to question some of Mozilla's controversial settings, deals with 3rd parties and their political blog posts. I also have a problem with the CEO making $3m per year yet a continued market share decline since she came on.
Just a few of the things off the top of my head that I feel betray my trust of Firefox (all of these pertain to default Windows install):
1) Enabled by default all of your website DNS requests going to Cloudflare with a "promise" this information is not being used or sold. We all know how solid this promise has been for other large tech companies. All under the promotion that DoH protects you from your own ISP.
2) Upon install, FF installs a scheduled service that runs daily. From what I've found out, that service is sending back to Mozilla what your default browser is on YOUR PC (why is that their business). This scheduled service remains on your PC even after uninstalling Firefox and continues to run daily.
3) Enabled by default are Browser Studies and testing a clean install one is already installed and active called "F100 Snippets". Studies allow the Firefox team to install stuff right to your browser whenever they want, to gather telemetry .
4) "Recommended extensions" enabled by default. Got a nag for a recommended extension after few days of browsing. So FF must be scanning your browsing history in order for this to work?
6) Firefox on Android has a known tracker embedded and enabled by default called Leanplum. From Mozilla's own website they state "Leanplum is a mobile marketing vendor"
I'd love to support and use FF solely again, but I think they need some serious shaking up, starting with a new CEO (who allows this stuff).
I started using Brave in addition to Firefox recently and I was curious if it supports this. Seems like it does (https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/) and uBlock origin was the inspiration for that feature.
I never used uBlock, but I did use uMatrix (discontinued, but still working) which allows you very fine grained control over scripts and other resources based on the domain. Unfortunately it was a pain to get some things to work with that, especially online payments which use many subdomains and redirects. Paying for anything online was a game of enabling 10 domains on average, reloading the website, re-inputting payment info, etc. Some websites (like twitter) simply didn't work even if one enabled all the domains which appeared in the matrix.
Brave is pretty decent at blocking JS. Not as fine grained as uMatrix, and it apparently doesn't remember that you enabled things (at least in private browsing). I think it doesn't perform what uBlock calls HTML filtering, because it still makes requests to websites which were completely neutered by uMatrix.
All in all it's more pleasant to surf using Brave than Firefox, because fewer websites are broken by the blocking.
I wasn't pleased with Safari's native tracking protection + a simple Safari blocking extension which only looks at URLs. Websites work the best, but it's making requests to many unwanted domains still. Maybe it's blocking cookies and scripts, no idea, but I'm not happy even with the simple requests for resources going through.
Slightly off-topic, but it was Firefox's Total Cookie Protection recently that finally got to me to switch from Chrome as my daily driver.
Don't get me wrong, I miss Chrome as it just felt like a_smoother_ user experience, and I fear for Firefox replaying Opera's history given that the rest of the industry has standardized on Chromium... but I love how pro-privacy Firefox is.
> after one year of Manifest V3 actually shipping to users in mainline Chrome:
> - Assuming that Manifest V3's declarative API is not significantly changed from its current implementation.
> - If you visit each of the top 10 publishers in the US (including open publishing platforms like Twitter/Facebook/Youtube) [...]
> - Firefox will block more web trackers (65% likelyhood).
> - Firefox will block more visible ads and popups (55% likelyhood).
It's debatable whether or not the December rollout of Manifest V3 "counts" because Manifest V2 is still going to be available for about a year, but it's also increasingly looking like it won't matter -- the prediction might end up being proven right regardless of whether or not Manifest V2 is removed.
I would probably raise these likelihoods if I were to revisit the prediction today. I think it's reasonably unlikely that CNAME masking is going to go down in popularity, and I think it's reasonably unlikely that Chrome is going to put in the effort to catch back up. The one thing that gives me pause is that the original prediction specified looking at the top 10 publishers, and I'm not sure if any of them are using CNAME masking yet.
Honestly, I can't really browse on my phone anymore. I'm... spoiled by FF + uBlock and I can't tolerate all the distractions.
Will we ever get enough traction on either blocking mechanisms or stop shoving ads everywhere? Will the general public experience the pleasures of an ad-less internet?
P.S. I'm on an iPhone, blockers failed me so far. Thanks for the suggestions fellas.
I can’t look up a recipe for boiled eggs without coming upon a 15 paragraph essay with ads in between each paragraph. It’s so obnoxious now. I don’t mind that people want to monetize, but it’s getting off putting when it is so obnoxious.
I host my own VPN on a raspberry pi at home so I can use my pi.hole even when I'm off my home wifi network. Unfortunately that seems to be the most comprehensive solution I can find for iOS, and sadly Android phones are pretty much all too large for me.
Anymore? I don't think browsing on a phone was ever viable. The problems changed over time, but I never found myself using the browser for anything other than absolute necessity. It's sad really.
Back in the day Opera with Turbo (or whatever it was called) was the peak of mobile browser usability for me.
On iOS, Safari with a couple content blockers (like Purify and/or 1Blocker) do a pretty decent job. Once in a blue moon something will get through, but the goal of dramatically improving load times and decrudding pages is accomplished well enough for me.
On Android, Firefox supports a subset of extensions that includes uBlock Origin. Chrome seems to be the dominant browser on Android but regardless of how good it is, I can't imagine not using Firefox there.
You can push to force Apple to allow other browser engines. Firefox on Android supports extensions including uBlock Origin. Firefox on iOS is only allowed to be skinned Safari
> Will the general public experience the pleasures of an ad-less internet?
Remember how cable was supposed to replace ads on over the air tv? It was about minutes before it was all ads too. Streaming services are starting to get there but then the shows themselves are ads. And you have a scenario where Netflix and YouTube couldn’t exist in scenarios that didn’t rely on our bandwidth models and massive anti-competitive models.
... so IDKMAN... I don’t know how we get to an internet where people making things aren’t expecting to get paid for their submissions, especially now that we’ve jumped in there with both feet.
I personally would pay for a no-bullshit internet, but it’s just cable tv’s promise all over again isn’t it? As great as something would start out, soon would come the influencers and the narrative pushers and the censorship and the “forum sliding” and the downvotes / echochambers / bubbles / power tripping moderation...
I’m wondering if the solution isn’t just to give it all up and use the tools only when you need them. A cabin in the woods, but a spotty dialup connection for when you need to find something.
If Mozilla can continue honing their mobile browsing team and keep alive a mobile web browser with pre-Manifest v3 WebExtension support, then maybe the status quo doesn't have to change. Advertisers can push whatever they want and the 0.1% of users that want to use uBlock can happily block them all. As far as the current landscape of adblocking goes, I have no real complaints.
If people try to encourage too much radical change with how ads are distributed, I fear that the advertising agencies will panic and all start to do what YouTube does, which is to serve the ads from the same domain as the content, rendering all domain-based adblocking useless. At that point, the only thing between the general Internet and ads will be uBlock, and if Google obtains complete control of the WebExtension standards, I'm not sure there would be anything else we could do.
On iPhone you have Safari content blockers. Better Blocker and Firefox Focus are two popular ones.
There's also a Lockdown, an open source firewall implemented using iOS VPN capabilities (though it doesn't send your requests through an external server). Lockdown is able to block trackers in any app, not just Safari.
My iPad Air 1 is aging, slow, and I loved it but I simply won't replace a machine where a publicly-funded news/docs store app in particular gets laden with unskippable ads.
Half a thousand bucks for this frustration, no thanks! No amount of content/entertainment is worth this.
Posting this from my oneplus running firefox and ublock origin. Firefox has been my daily driver on mobile for a few years now (since before Quantum) and it's been reliably great.
I run NextDNS on my phone. It isn't perfect particularly because it is an all or nothing type thing which gets frustrating with URL redirects. But it is far better than not.
This is technical and interesting, but can anyone tell the difference between web browsing with FF/uBo and Chrome/uBo? I personally cannot, other than that the fonts render a bit differently. Webpages load fast and no ads get through in both cases.
I should note that, on iOS, it seems that Safari with a content blocker outperforms the brave skin by a little, which outperforms the Firefox skin by a lot, which outperforms the chrome skin by a lot.
I just tried FF again today for the first time in months and updated to the latest Mac version and...I found the Quit feature didn't work. Neither Command-Q nor Quit option from the menu...And it's something like this every time I try it -- there another wtf moment with the first 5 minutes.
I keep chrome installed as a backup because some sites are just plain broken. But 99.9% of my browsing works fine, and so I've made FF my default browser on both personal and work machines, and have not looked back.
Chrome is just too hostile to its users. Between incognito mode tracking users around the web, this extension/API hoo-hah, among other things, I'm just not excited about it as a browser anymore.
You did a lot for us, Chrome, but it's time to loosen your grip on the browser market.
Long-time monthly donor to Firefox here, and have been a Mozilla / Phoenix / Firebird / Firefox user for a couple of decades now. I still think their principles are worth supporting but I'm starting to question their choice of priorities.
IMHO they seem to be losing focus on their technical strengths - making a browser their audience wants to use. Over the past year I'm seeing a lot more problems with addons, specially on Linux. Several popular addons like umatrix and ublock origin make the UX sluggish, interacting with the addons UX are hit and miss, and such operations are often unresponsive for me. I'm seeing this on Ubuntu, PopOS and Mint.
Mac and windows variants work reasonably well for me, but it's come to a point where I've reluctantly switched to Vivaldi for day to day personal use.
My thanks and appreciation for Raymond Hill's excellent work. Though the technical aspects favor Firefox in theory, the extension / addon works far better with Chromium based browsers in practice for me.
This is honestly one of the first time I'm convinced in a technical sense to consider Firefox over Chrome. uBlock Origin feels as core to me to web browsing as Saved Passwords and Incognito Mode. That uBlock Origin can work better is like the browser itself being better.
Sucks, but I'm pretty locked into Chrome. I use GSuite for management, ChromeOS, etc. Maybe it means that uBlock Origin can't protect me as well, but it's pretty hard for me to give up the benefits from all of those other things.
I don't see Firefox competing. Mozilla doesn't seem to believe that monetizing a browser is possible, whereas I pay thousands of dollars a year at my company because of Chrome's integrations with these other systems.
Until Firefox can compete like that, and maybe they just can't, I can't switch.
[+] [-] xoa|5 years ago|reply
Having said that I've also been fairly stunned recently to see how much difference a simple DNS blacklist system can make too. Not because it's a big technical achievement but because it isn't and in principle seems relatively trivial to work around. But as I've been switching all my routing from UniFi to OPNsense, I've gone ahead and tried out Unbound's basic built-in blacklisting. While it's no uBO, it works on every single device and browser including in apps and it seems like it really shouldn't, that more parties would just be proxying ads through their own infra and DNS. Been kind of an interesting illustration of technical vs economic influences in an ecosystem. I can see how proxying would add complexity and cost to setup so it must just be that few enough people do it the ad industry can't be bothered.
But should that ever catch on (and it could, Raspberry Pi seems fairly well known) I expect uBO to be able to keep up with the cat-and-mouse long after DNS has been left behind. This piece helps underline how incredibly important maintaining a critical level of diversity in the browser ecosystem is. Just shortly ago there were a bunch of complaints again about Apple not allowing Chrome to be on iOS because it "holds back the web", but what "holding back the web" looks like is certainly a matter of perspective...
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
uBlock Origin comes close, and surpasses in some ways (I used both for that reason) but lacks separate control of cookies, images, scripts, etc. So you can't accept a particular third party's images without also accepting its scripts, cookies, etc.
I mention it mainly in the hope that we can popularise its maintained fork 'nuTensor'.
After trying uBlock (as in attempting to also cover what I used to use uMatrix for) for a few weeks I think it's insufficient and nuTensor is the better option for me, but it quickly won't be if ~nobody uses it and it falls by the wayside.
Alternatively uBO could support the few details it lacks from uM? It seems like the problem basically was difficulty/time constraints in supporting both.. but I don't know why they were ever separate? There's plenty of overlap. If uBO had uM's granularity in 'advanced mode', that'd be perfect.
[+] [-] Nerada|5 years ago|reply
The uMatrix UI on the other hand was incredibly intuitive, and more granular. Then again, maybe that comes down to me not understanding what the hell is going on with uBO's UI.
[+] [-] gxnxcxcx|5 years ago|reply
It's a clunky interface with poor discoverability, but with the uBO logger open in a browser tab you can click on any request right beside the timestamp and define a new rule with the desired granularity. In the URL Rule tab, the unmarked left column sets the allow/noop/block behavior.
Edit: Found the wiki page: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger#creating-f...
[+] [-] d110af5ccf|5 years ago|reply
I also wonder about this. I still run both side by side. (I haven't noticed any problems with uMatrix so far ...) All I really use uMatrix for is quick coarse grained 2D filtering of various content types. I don't understand why that couldn't be implemented as an optional "first pass" filtering layer in uBlock.
I realize uBlock can mostly already do what uMatrix does, honestly I just find the 2D UI to be incredibly convenient and intuitive.
[+] [-] birksherty|5 years ago|reply
It can block separately a single script, image or any other request. I find it much better than umatrix which can't do many things that ublock does. If someone wantd to they can just install it and forget it also. Much more versatile.
[+] [-] Demiurge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
Is this true or not?
wait, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=25920135
[+] [-] Arnavion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yborg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|5 years ago|reply
>This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers, i.e. tracker/advertisement payloads may find their way into already opened tabs before uBO is up and ready in Chromium-based browsers, while these are properly filtered in Firefox.
>Reliably blocking at browser launch is especially important for whoever uses default-deny mode for 3rd-party resources and/or JavaScript.
Oof. TIL. That makes blockers kinda crippled in chromes, if you expect them to actually block things.
[+] [-] pharmakom|5 years ago|reply
What does break websites is turning on anti-tracking measures. The number of times a site won’t work till I enable third party cookies shows the sad state of the web. Developers, do you only test in Chrome on Windows with default settings or something?
[+] [-] antattack|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bassdropvroom|5 years ago|reply
Anyone know what this extra permission is and why requesting this extra permission would cause friction?
[+] [-] podiki|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532973
[+] [-] apozem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scottn1|5 years ago|reply
If you dig into some settings and follow tech news, I have begun to question some of Mozilla's controversial settings, deals with 3rd parties and their political blog posts. I also have a problem with the CEO making $3m per year yet a continued market share decline since she came on.
Just a few of the things off the top of my head that I feel betray my trust of Firefox (all of these pertain to default Windows install):
1) Enabled by default all of your website DNS requests going to Cloudflare with a "promise" this information is not being used or sold. We all know how solid this promise has been for other large tech companies. All under the promotion that DoH protects you from your own ISP.
2) Upon install, FF installs a scheduled service that runs daily. From what I've found out, that service is sending back to Mozilla what your default browser is on YOUR PC (why is that their business). This scheduled service remains on your PC even after uninstalling Firefox and continues to run daily.
3) Enabled by default are Browser Studies and testing a clean install one is already installed and active called "F100 Snippets". Studies allow the Firefox team to install stuff right to your browser whenever they want, to gather telemetry .
4) "Recommended extensions" enabled by default. Got a nag for a recommended extension after few days of browsing. So FF must be scanning your browsing history in order for this to work?
5) this result: https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff... . While it was from 2019 so needs to be updated, but upon first-run I was shocked at the results for FF here.
6) Firefox on Android has a known tracker embedded and enabled by default called Leanplum. From Mozilla's own website they state "Leanplum is a mobile marketing vendor"
I'd love to support and use FF solely again, but I think they need some serious shaking up, starting with a new CEO (who allows this stuff).
[+] [-] blub|5 years ago|reply
I never used uBlock, but I did use uMatrix (discontinued, but still working) which allows you very fine grained control over scripts and other resources based on the domain. Unfortunately it was a pain to get some things to work with that, especially online payments which use many subdomains and redirects. Paying for anything online was a game of enabling 10 domains on average, reloading the website, re-inputting payment info, etc. Some websites (like twitter) simply didn't work even if one enabled all the domains which appeared in the matrix.
Brave is pretty decent at blocking JS. Not as fine grained as uMatrix, and it apparently doesn't remember that you enabled things (at least in private browsing). I think it doesn't perform what uBlock calls HTML filtering, because it still makes requests to websites which were completely neutered by uMatrix. All in all it's more pleasant to surf using Brave than Firefox, because fewer websites are broken by the blocking.
I wasn't pleased with Safari's native tracking protection + a simple Safari blocking extension which only looks at URLs. Websites work the best, but it's making requests to many unwanted domains still. Maybe it's blocking cookies and scripts, no idea, but I'm not happy even with the simple requests for resources going through.
[+] [-] lenova|5 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, I miss Chrome as it just felt like a_smoother_ user experience, and I fear for Firefox replaying Opera's history given that the rest of the industry has standardized on Chromium... but I love how pro-privacy Firefox is.
[+] [-] prox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danShumway|5 years ago|reply
> after one year of Manifest V3 actually shipping to users in mainline Chrome:
> - Assuming that Manifest V3's declarative API is not significantly changed from its current implementation.
> - If you visit each of the top 10 publishers in the US (including open publishing platforms like Twitter/Facebook/Youtube) [...]
> - Firefox will block more web trackers (65% likelyhood).
> - Firefox will block more visible ads and popups (55% likelyhood).
It's debatable whether or not the December rollout of Manifest V3 "counts" because Manifest V2 is still going to be available for about a year, but it's also increasingly looking like it won't matter -- the prediction might end up being proven right regardless of whether or not Manifest V2 is removed.
I would probably raise these likelihoods if I were to revisit the prediction today. I think it's reasonably unlikely that CNAME masking is going to go down in popularity, and I think it's reasonably unlikely that Chrome is going to put in the effort to catch back up. The one thing that gives me pause is that the original prediction specified looking at the top 10 publishers, and I'm not sure if any of them are using CNAME masking yet.
[+] [-] cybert00th|5 years ago|reply
Our children have grown up on a, largely, ad-free Internet; and it's all thanks to people like him.
[+] [-] grenoire|5 years ago|reply
Will we ever get enough traction on either blocking mechanisms or stop shoving ads everywhere? Will the general public experience the pleasures of an ad-less internet?
P.S. I'm on an iPhone, blockers failed me so far. Thanks for the suggestions fellas.
[+] [-] crocsarecool|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudosysgen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dont__panic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaik|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|5 years ago|reply
Back in the day Opera with Turbo (or whatever it was called) was the peak of mobile browser usability for me.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|5 years ago|reply
On Android, Firefox supports a subset of extensions that includes uBlock Origin. Chrome seems to be the dominant browser on Android but regardless of how good it is, I can't imagine not using Firefox there.
[+] [-] asiachick|5 years ago|reply
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
[+] [-] Svperstar|5 years ago|reply
I run FF+uBlock on my S21 Ultra. Works just like the desktop.
[+] [-] godelski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|5 years ago|reply
Remember how cable was supposed to replace ads on over the air tv? It was about minutes before it was all ads too. Streaming services are starting to get there but then the shows themselves are ads. And you have a scenario where Netflix and YouTube couldn’t exist in scenarios that didn’t rely on our bandwidth models and massive anti-competitive models.
... so IDKMAN... I don’t know how we get to an internet where people making things aren’t expecting to get paid for their submissions, especially now that we’ve jumped in there with both feet.
I personally would pay for a no-bullshit internet, but it’s just cable tv’s promise all over again isn’t it? As great as something would start out, soon would come the influencers and the narrative pushers and the censorship and the “forum sliding” and the downvotes / echochambers / bubbles / power tripping moderation...
I’m wondering if the solution isn’t just to give it all up and use the tools only when you need them. A cabin in the woods, but a spotty dialup connection for when you need to find something.
[+] [-] ub99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonbirithm|5 years ago|reply
If people try to encourage too much radical change with how ads are distributed, I fear that the advertising agencies will panic and all start to do what YouTube does, which is to serve the ads from the same domain as the content, rendering all domain-based adblocking useless. At that point, the only thing between the general Internet and ads will be uBlock, and if Google obtains complete control of the WebExtension standards, I'm not sure there would be anything else we could do.
[+] [-] jamesgeck0|5 years ago|reply
There's also a Lockdown, an open source firewall implemented using iOS VPN capabilities (though it doesn't send your requests through an external server). Lockdown is able to block trackers in any app, not just Safari.
[+] [-] mtone|5 years ago|reply
Half a thousand bucks for this frustration, no thanks! No amount of content/entertainment is worth this.
[+] [-] RGamma|5 years ago|reply
It's not perfect and difficult to customize but works well for the most part. It even gets rid of YT video ads (mostly anyway)
I also combine it with NextDNS
[+] [-] na85|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dobbs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsflover|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clircle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franklyt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwmcsween|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mentos|5 years ago|reply
If Firefox made their browser the best at ad-blocking instead of performance (which also might go hand in hand) I would consider using it again.
[+] [-] dlandis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MAGZine|5 years ago|reply
Chrome is just too hostile to its users. Between incognito mode tracking users around the web, this extension/API hoo-hah, among other things, I'm just not excited about it as a browser anymore.
You did a lot for us, Chrome, but it's time to loosen your grip on the browser market.
[+] [-] korginator|5 years ago|reply
IMHO they seem to be losing focus on their technical strengths - making a browser their audience wants to use. Over the past year I'm seeing a lot more problems with addons, specially on Linux. Several popular addons like umatrix and ublock origin make the UX sluggish, interacting with the addons UX are hit and miss, and such operations are often unresponsive for me. I'm seeing this on Ubuntu, PopOS and Mint.
Mac and windows variants work reasonably well for me, but it's come to a point where I've reluctantly switched to Vivaldi for day to day personal use.
My thanks and appreciation for Raymond Hill's excellent work. Though the technical aspects favor Firefox in theory, the extension / addon works far better with Chromium based browsers in practice for me.
[+] [-] sackofmugs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staticassertion|5 years ago|reply
I don't see Firefox competing. Mozilla doesn't seem to believe that monetizing a browser is possible, whereas I pay thousands of dollars a year at my company because of Chrome's integrations with these other systems.
Until Firefox can compete like that, and maybe they just can't, I can't switch.