Never knew the name of the guy behind it. Nice! This is why Everybody Loves Raymond!
About
Free. Open-source. For users by users. No donations sought.
If you ever want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which are available to use by all for free.
That is some commit history!!
We let somebody pimp it out and now the internet’s just for whoring yourself. Shoulda stopped google from turning the most useful public utility into its bitch, shoulda stopped the telcos from adding obstacles to access (thus hampering innovation), and shoulda stopped letting these idiotic politicians work on behalf of these enshittifying capitalists instead of on behalf of our actual countries, world, and species a long fucking time ago.
And all the volunteers keeping those lists up-to-date.
Yea it’s mainly those that do the work actually
Still big kudos to Raymond for providing the foundations to make it all work too.
Aren’t most lists available on other browsers and ad blockers? Unless Raymond created the format
uBlock Origin explicitly says he refuses donations and to give it to the list maintainers instead.
A true hero acknowledging the other heroes on which his work rests.
The format currently used in adblocker predates uBO by almost a decade so no, but still, maintaining this add-on with how fast and often web browser changes, and keeping it performant must be quite the task.
I think performant is probably the key thing here. There were ad blockers before and there are alternative ones now, but the thing that sets unlock Origin apart is how light weight it is.
Don’t forget AdGuard for all those pesky smart devices!
It alone is blocking almost a 3rd of outbound traffic from TVs and such that unfortunately can’t use ublock
and when asked about donations, he instead asks to donate to those who maintain the lists.
Absolute gigachad
Can you imagine the amount of corruptive influences and persuasions he is resisting?
The VLC guy turned down what a quick search is telling me was “several tens of millions” to show ads. I can’t even imagine what getting people to drop ublock would be worth.
I wouldn’t blame him if he took it, but I greatly respect that he didn’t.
Raymond Hill: “Get behind me, Google.”
Pretty sure he has them blocked
Though you may be right, I have a feeling that he is facing formidable opposition. That may include anything from social engineering to full on psyops.
Bet he’s had people “happen” to bump into him IRL, and gets pull requests from bad actors that are very subtly trying to take the project in the wrong direction.
Dang, for real? Do you have some more details on this?
What’s “Mordor Intelligence” – is that a real thing, or a parody of the surveillance/‘defense’ industry companies that are coming up with names nicked from LotR? (‘Anduril’, ‘Palantir’)
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/ They appear to be a real thing. Though naming yourself after the most evil thing in middle earth is a bit in the nose lol.
I think he’s using old school speculative “bet”, not the new Gen Z meaning
Lol, it does read entirely differently in the gen z light… good eye! If you add a comma after “bet”, it completely changes the meaning. Fun
Yeah that’s funny :D
Bet
Your second point is especially interesting, considering the recent xz backdoor. The bad actors manipulated a poor burnt out maintainer for it. In comparison, I’m impressed with gorhill for his perseverance and mental strength. I would like to know how he avoids burn out with such negative influences.
Insightful point. And it does remind me of the corporate purchase of the Don’t care about cookies extension for Firefox (And the Simple Mobile Tools for Android). Luckily it was forked. https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies Open source FTW!
🙂 🐧Simple Mobile Tools was forked into “Fossify *” for anyone interested.
What is the decentralised solution?
There is and isn’t one. For the add-on itself, you just need forks and more forks. For the lists it pulls from, those are already decentralized, but you’re constantly going to deal with the issue of only the best are used and only the used are maintained and only the maintained are the best.
I hadn’t even thought about that. Thank you.
There’s a reason uBlock Origin overtook Adblock Plus in popularity.
Seriously. Says a lot about the modern internet, though. Both good and bad.
Provide source please: xkcd
If only, I know so many people who don’t bother with adblocking at all. I honestly have no idea how they use the Internet without going mad
I’m of two minds about people not adblocking.
On one hand: Ads are gross noise pollution, and people are increasingly unaware of all the noise around them (or the noise they’re generating) largely because they’ve been passively trained to “tune out” ads. Also consumerism.
On the other hand: As long as there are a significant amount of people oblivious to the possibility of adblock, corporate ad mobsters and the other worst people in the world out there will largely leave those of us blocking their ads alone. If everyone ran adblockers, we’d definitely live in a world of WEI… and probably worse. So, maybe all those people are watching ads so that I don’t have to, as the YouTube thumbnails say.
If sites wanted to run ads and host them locally without tracking that would be fine. But since they’re tracking users it’s essential to block them for privacy and security, and if someone isn’t then maybe they don’t understand the level of tracking involved. We need a better name than adblocking.
I just don’t want to see ads.
Sure, that should be absolutely your choice, it’s your browser.
Yeah, it’s shocking to see how many ads they jam in now. I felt so dirty.
The way people talk about people who don’t block ads is so funny.
I understand and respect the reasons people choose to use blockers, but ads honestly just aren’t that problematic for me in practice and are easy to avoid and ignore.
Ads have been known to contain drive-by malware. Even if you don’t mind seeing ads (which personally I don’t mind unless they’re very intrusive), an adblocker is important for online safety.
Drive-by malware tends not to be zero-days though. I’ve stayed safe for decades just by keeping my software up to date.
There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.
Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:
The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock
That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.
If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.
Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.
There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.
You never visited the not-sheltered web…
You say with such confidence. Is it so hard to imagine people can defend themselves with means other than ad blocking?
Please tell me what other ways you can block ads other than ignoring them or not visiting the web at all.
Btw: Custom apps (like it was for Reddit) don’t count.
Ads are probably actually not that bad. But to me the massive stalking is unacceptable. So, uBO FTW!
Of course; I’m just a lot more worried about the systemic problems of mass surveillance than any practical risk to me individially.
I also don’t understand it. But now I am wondering if we would not have had those “careless” (indifferent ? ignorant ?) millions of people not blocking ads then Google and others may have started pushing anti-adblock measures years earlier, no ?
People just don’t know, I’ve been showing my wife the way little by little and she’s always blown away
I’ve shown a colleague after seeing him browse an horrendous fantasy football website. He couldn’t believe the difference between before and after.
My kid discovered that he can hit the “report” button on the YouTube app on the TV to skip the ads immediately. So how every ad gets reported as “inappropriate”.
I’m proud of him.
😀 👍
Tip: if you have an Android TV, you can install SmartTube as an alternative, privacy-friendly YouTube client. It has no ads and sponsorblock integration
There’s also Playlet for Roku users, which is an Invidious client.
thanks for the link.
And as a better option, use an actual device instead of a short lifecycle planned obsolescence embedded android device on a “smart” tv.
AndroidTV also exists on Chromecast devices…
AndroidTV is not exclusive to TV manufacturers.This is why I refuse to buy a “smart” TV. My old flat screen TV works perfectly fine with a Chromecast with Google TV. I can even use the Chromecast in my projector or any other device with HDMI input to make it smarter than most TV interfaces I have tried.
I do the same, I use kodi on a CoreElec box on my 10 year old dumb TV. It works great, but my issue is it’s going to be extremely difficult to replace my TV when it gets time to upgrade. (Eg, if I want to move to an OLED, or QD panel). Every new TV on the market is a smart TV. It’s getting to the point that you need to buy a very large monitor, rather than a TV, to achieve the same setup.
My cheapo dumb tv died a couple of years back, was a great bit of kit for $400au that gave me 10 years. I’ve got a “smart” tv at the moment which isn’t connected to the internet, and just serves as the display for my Shield TV.
I’d probably consider an LG commercial / signage display as my next device, some old work connections can get me one as a special purchase through their distribution channels it’s just waiting out the current panel dying.
At least the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is cheap.
I just stay logged out of youtube. So far no ads and no nagware
I found out this trick when I eating dinner once at my local library. Oddly, it was a kid came up and saw I was watching YT videos. Showed me the tactic, and now I rely on it lol
Messiah of the internet
All hail Raymond Hill :0
And the people maintaining the lists his work depends on.
There is something very wrong when deleting 50% of wep page is the least it takes to make the internet usable…
I only need the code.
Gladly upvoted to
worshiphonor one of the open source heroes.Im genuinely so thankful for this project, the creator and maintainers. You are doing the lords work.
