Can you imagine the amount of corruptive influences and persuasions he is resisting?
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.
There’s a reason uBlock Origin overtook Adblock Plus in popularity.
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.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. Thank you.
What is the decentralised solution?
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
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.
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.
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
My kid discovered that he can hit the “report” button on the YouTube app on the TV to skip the ads immediately. So now 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
And as a better option, use an actual device instead of a short lifecycle planned obsolescence embedded android device on a “smart” tv.
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.
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.
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.
At least the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is cheap.
AndroidTV also exists on Chromecast devices…
AndroidTV is not exclusive to TV manufacturers.
There’s also Playlet for Roku users, which is an Invidious client.
thanks for the link.
😀 👍
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
I just stay logged out of youtube. So far no ads and no nagware
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.
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.
Yeah, it’s shocking to see how many ads they jam in now. I felt so dirty.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
Huh? The point of this discussion is that I don’t need to block them to keep myself safe in sketchy corners of the web.
What would we do without ublock origin
Use vblock ingress!
You would use noBlock origin instead
I love posts like this. You get to discover new stuff 😂
In the 1999s-2000s we used WebWasher. It was basically a proxy server which you ran locally on your computer and it had all the filters. You just set up your browser’s network connection to point to WebWasher and it acted as the gateway to the Internet.
If browsers somehow decided to kill all their plugin support, you could still use that to filter your content.
Don’t forget good old hosts file. This file exists on both linux and windows.
Seriously. Says a lot about the modern internet, though. Both good and bad.
Provide source please: xkcd
It doesn’t say “xkcd” anywhere in their post except for the URL, and most people are not going to bother clicking on View Source.
So, that is a “citation” in the loosest possible sense.
Thank Raymond and the list maintainers, you keep the internet usable
Yeah, Raymond Hill made a great plugin, but the people maintaining the lists are the real MVPs
They’re all gods among men.
Amen to that
Invisible and nameless internet warriors. They stay eternal.
He’s far too kind of a person. He doesn’t accept any donations for the many years of a better and safer internet experience I’ve gotten from his work
When YouTube was blocking ublock people was surprised that they couldnt donate to the project.
All hail Raymond Hill :0
And the people maintaining the lists his work depends on.
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!!
Im genuinely so thankful for this project, the creator and maintainers. You are doing the lords work.
Gladly upvoted to
worshiphonor one of the open source heroes.Ad/content blockers of various types are the only reason the internet is still generally usable for me.
I’d otherwise have a meltdown and watch everything burn
There is something very wrong when deleting 50% of wep page is the least it takes to make the internet usable…
Messiah of the internet
