uBlock Origin 1.53

[codeflo]

From the “uBO works best in Firefox” page, I found this gem:

> Firefox will wait for uBO to be ready before sending network requests from already opened tab(s) at browser launch.

> In Chromium-based browsers, this is not the case. Tracker/advertisement payloads may find their way into already opened tabs before uBO is ready, while Firefox will properly filter these.

That’s a hell of a “bug” in Chromium, that blocker initialization has a race condition with restoring the last opened tabs. What a weird little “accident” that Chromium just moves forward and loads all the trackers, “oopsie”. I wonder which kind of promotion the engineer who made that “mistake” has been awarded.

[Justsignedup]

Ad nauseum solves this. Sure you get tracked but you also send all the wrong signals.

[vietvu]

Anti ad block feature, not a bug I guess.

[zx8080]

I would expect nothing less than an immediate promotion to the next title. So cool.

[qwertox]

Thanks. Good to know. Solidifies my belief that additionally using Pi-Hole can only improve things.

[leloctai]

Which is a horrible design on Android. Firefox on my (admittedly relatively old) phone take 20s to load the first page when browser start with uBlock enabled. On desktop this is fine as it only happen once a day. But on the phone it happen a lot since apps getting killed is a normal thing.

[seethedeaduu]

I have experienced this on firefox as well but it is rare and don't know of a way to reproduce it.

[RileyJames]

I thought chromium was open source?

[rs_rs_rs_rs_rs]

> What a weird little “accident” that Chromium just moves forward and loads all the trackers, “oopsie”. I wonder which kind of promotion the engineer who made that “mistake” has been awarded.

This "bug" is in Safari/Webkit too, stop it with the conspiracy theory.

[flakes]

I've been using uBlock since shortly after it launched, and I'd rather lose access to all Google services than not have an ad blocker. I seriously question how people use a browser without one. Completely changes how the web feels.

[soultrees]

It’s crazy. Even with an adblocker you are subjected to a crazy amount of ads or hostile design. With ads, it’s just a free for all on your attention.

[all2]

This. I've pretty much stopped using YouTube since the adblocker blocker shut me out.

I figure it's a good time to kick a bad habit. :D

[Kate0CoolLibby]

A few years now since I have given up on (most) of Google's services. YouTube via Newpipe is the only exception I can think of.

But if it came between choosing between uBlock and anything? I choose uBlock!

[NelsonMinar]

Most people who work at Google use ad blockers. They agree with you that the web isn't usable without them. The hypocrisy is becoming unbearable.

[paganel]

I'm just visiting fewer websites/pages, i.e. those with no ads at all (like this forum) or those with less intrusive ones (such as old.reddit.com). As for websites like YT, I ended up just watching fewer videos (because of the ads).

All in all I see it as a net positive.

[nicbou]

I run a commercial website. I built it without ads of annoyances. That's just how the web looks and feels to me.

Even SEO spam is dealt with with uBlocklist, so that the main offenders are gone. I forgot about Pinterest and all the Stackoverflow clones.

Then I use my iPad in a pinch and remember that most people are used to a much louder, annoying web. I can't believe that people use Medium without an ad blocker.

I wonder if people notice that this website is much quieter, or just enjoy it more on a subconscious level. I like to think that it's a competitive advantage.

[thih9]

Living without YouTube can be hard though. Almost every online tutorial, product demo, music video, or other medium and long video material gets uploaded there.

[MattSayar]

DNS-level blocking is even better!

[Twirrim]

A nice little Quality Of Life improvement for me with uBlock Origin recently has been using it top block Confluence's pop ups when someone has commented on a page I'm reading.

We use Confluence to do document reviews at work, and sitting there attempting to read a document while Confluence is popping up that annoying dialogue box over and over again as people comment on the doc is insanely annoying. With uBlock Origin I was able to (after a few false attempts) sniff the specific element and filter it out.

[janpio]

GitHub notifications blue dot for me. Not seeing it makes me click that button much less, only when I _want_ to handle notifications.

[0xedb]

I used it to block Twitter's ad bugging me to pay. Funny thing is I can't use the paid version since it's not available in my country. However, the popup kept bugging me

[climb_stealth]

Agreed, I love it for things like this. Someone puts a big bright yellow and red banner on the top of confluence or Jira weeks in advance to notify about upcoming outages. I really couldn't care less about those and it's perfect to get rid of them.

[creatonez]

For anyone looking for up-to-date information on getting YouTube ad blocking to work: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/19976

[spartanatreyu]

In the last year, youtube anti-ad-block only ever occurred to me once and I fixed it in 2 minutes by reading the instructions on that github issue.

All I had to do was manually trigger an update for uBlock Origin's filter lists then restart firefox.

The filter lists update automatically, but a new youtube change got around them and the filter had a fix inside an hour (too short a time for my extension to auto-update it's filter lists).

[thomastsch]

For those who can't or don't want to install an ad blocker on their device, a youtube viewer bookmarklet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973944

[uoaei]

Ad-blocking never stopped working for me. I use a combo of uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and Unhook.

[hypertele-Xii]

AdBlocker Ultimate still works. I just blocked the nagging popup element.

[altairprime]

Note that this release is not, as of this comment, finished being published and approved in any of the four browser app stores, so you may not see the new version when using check for updates (if you installed the normal way) until they’ve finished the release process.

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17kw0vc/ubloc... has the usual “it hasn’t completed review yet” guidances as well how to rush ahead of the app stores for those that are impatient.

[beej71]

"uBO works best on Firefox". I can't say I'm totally shocked that getting it working better under Chrome is somehow more difficult.

[jchook]

Chrome now aggressively blocks ad blockers on YouTube.com

[archo]

uBlock Origin is a recommended extension[1]

Recommended extensions undergo full code review by staff security experts to provide a strong additional security check.

[1] - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/extensions-addo...

uBlock Origin – Wiki : https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki

[demondemidi]

I’m really surprised 1Password isn’t recommended.

[loughnane]

Yesterday I figured out how to block cards in my LI feed that contained certain words. Here's the one for things containing "excited to"

``` www.linkedin.com##.relative:has-text(/excited to/i)```

between that, blocking images, and user taglines my feed is much more concise and readable.

[lolinder]

This is cool, but sincere question: what is even left after you block all the fluff? I rarely bother to go to my LinkedIn feed, but when I do it's all fluff that I don't need to see. Is there actually value buried somewhere under there?

[iza]

Is there something significant about this release? I read the changelog but nothing really stands out to me.

[a2dam]

I was going to ask the same thing. Why is this on the top of the front page?

[saos]

Wondering the same. Will it bypass YouTube latest efforts

[bloopernova]

uBlock Origin can also be used to modify the DOM or CSS in specific URLs via its "My Filters" screen.

For instance, I use it to switch HackerNews to dark mode, and restrict the width of comments to about 10-12 words: https://gist.github.com/aclarknexient/c39c83f2f97c3c6b1c307c...

It's a great alternative to GreaseMonkey or other user style extensions.

[flutas]

Thanks for the gist.

I tweaked it a tiny bit since overscroll on FF on osx was showing as white, figured I'd share it back. It's not perfect, but the BG color differences are close enough to not bother me.

  ! Invert the colours of the site, making a dark mode that I like
  ! `invert(95%)` does most of the work,
  ! but you can tweak the hue-rotate value to fine tune the colours
  news.ycombinator.com##body:style(filter:invert(95%) hue-rotate(200deg); background: white)
  news.ycombinator.com##html:style(background: black)`

[shiroiuma]

gorhill should be given a Nobel Prize and a knighthood for contributions to humanity.

[radicalriddler]

How many Kilowatts has this man saved by computers not having to load trackers and render ad banners!?

[specialist]

Yes and: apparently the moderators on reddit's r/ublock have been having rough time. At least one has quit and deleted their account because of abusive users.

No good deed goes unpunished.

[ranting-moth]

I can't imagine browsing the internet without uBlock installed. I honestly don't think I could.

[UberFly]

No kidding. How do we thank this person? Compensate the effort?

[Jedd]

Unsure of provenance for this link, but it shows your browser's current success / failure state for blocking youtube anti-adware efforts.

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

[chii]

It's not actually showing success in blocking - it's showing whether uBO's filters are up-to-date with the latest youtube scripts. It is possible that youtube has updated, and none of the new ids are put into the pastebin yet, and thus, adblock fails.

[tedunangst]

"Do not add filters from untrusted sources." Interesting addition.

[kriro]

I have been hit a lot by the adblock-block and my default browser for youtube was Chrome with uBlock. There was some back and forth and it still worked around 50% of the time. I took the oportunity to try the youtube experience on a brand new clean browser, not logged in. My seed recommendations were 80% right wing and conspiracy material. I humored the algorithm a bit and after three days I was basically in a right wing/anti science/flat and hollow earth bubble. An interesting experience to say the least. It is basically the opposite of my real world interests. I'd describe myself as libertarian and love to learn about different cultures and I do work in academia.

I have since cut my youtube viewing by about 50-80% and am not using Chrome anymore (except for testing/security). Great success Google and thanks for all the idiotic brainwashing content.

I do get that youtube needs to make money somehow and adds are the way. Unfortunately the experienc is so bad, perormance is suffering etc. that I'd rather have no youtube than youtube with adds.

[nullandvoid]

I find YT is only useable via the following combination of extensions these days

- Ublock (still works for me, maybe it's a Firefox thing) - News feed eradictor (hides reccomended vids) - Pocket tube (how subscription management should have been) - Sponsorblock (auto skip sponsors which are typically gambling or predatory games)

[carlosjobim]

If you're having a bad experience, that is pretty much your own fault. Make a new account or refresh the history on your old account and then spend 10 minutes subscribing to quality channels and you will not have any low-quality recommendations from YouTube.

[unforgivenpasta]

I have almost 1500 rows in the "My filters list" (comments and blank lines included)

I couldn't think of how horrible the web browsing experience would be without uBlock Origin

[randomdev3]

never had an issue with YouTube. At least until now they only try to block blockers if you are signed in. And there really is no reason to login to watch videos.

[jchook]

Google's Chrome browser now aggressively thwarts uBlock on YouTube.com.

Since Firefox is not owned by Google, uBlock still works.

[cornedor]

Isn't this just asking for an antitrust case? There is no way I implement this for my own site.

[iamalchemist]

How is UBO on Google Chrome different than Brave browser?

Context - I've used UBO on Google Chrome in the past and now using Brave browser for the last few years. I don't see much difference how web feels with UBO and Brave.

[nextlevelwizard]

uBlock blocks ads while Brave deliberately shows you ads and gives you monopoly tokens.

[andirk]

Brave browser isn't necessarily blocking advertisements as much as it is blocking scripts that are naughty, and those naughty scripts are very popular in ads and ad networks.

And the Basic Attention Token concept is something I hope takes off since the current state of online advertising is pretty abysmal.

[arbol]

Brave ad blocker is not as good as UBO. You need to install UBO if you use brave.

[freedomben]

The one killer feature I hope for is feature parity with uMatrix. If advanced mode had the ability to filter based on type (CSS, XHR, script, cookie, image, media, other) it would be a glorious day!

uMatrix has completely changed how I use and experience the web, and going away from it (even to uBO) is such a big downgrade that I don't know what I'll do on the day it stops working D-:

[zare_st]

I run Firefox+uBlock origin on multiple computers and OSs and haven't been affected. I'm always logged into YT.

If it's true that YT is actively trying to avoid ad blockers then I guess I may have been pushed down their priority list because I occasionally run a video or two while logged in on my phone via official app where ads actually run.

[rrgok]

I wish for a law where it would make illegal to show/put ads on any product without the consent of the consumer/user.

The same should be applied to that cookie non-sense. Default: no cookies and website should ask for permission to enable them. Or make it an option in the browser setting to reject all cookies.

[Modified3019]

I currently use fadblock for youtube, which seems more resiliant against googles changes: https://github.com/0x48piraj/fadblock

[Qhai]

Haha