A few years ago, back when uBlock Origin was just uBlock, gorhill (it's sole developer at the time) entrusted the uBlock development to what was supposed to be a community effort. Instead a single developer took over and essentially did nothing with the extension except place donation links to himself in the extension and on the website.
It didn't take long until gorhill himself noticed and decided to pick development back up - under the new name of uBlock Origin. To this date uBlock has barely seen any development while uBlock Origin is actively maintained.
I rather doubt that, as much of uBlock non-Origin's userbase is comprised of people who installed it by accident instead of uBlock Origin. Its only real value is in its name.
That's not what happened. uBlock Origin was originally (heh) uBlock. Gorhill, the developer, got sick of endless hordes of people posting github issues about unblocked ads (an issue which should be directed at blocklist maintainers), so he gave the uBlock project away to some teenager.
It turned out that the kid didn't have the skills to continue the project. He basically ported the addon to Safari and put a donation beg message up on the website. Gorhill soon returned to the project, but was unable to get the rights to it back, so forked it as uBlock Origin. IIRC this was in 2015 or so. Ever since, Origin has been the only adblocker worth using.
> He basically ported the addon to Safari and put a donation beg message up on the website.
No, he _created_ the website. That’s why I wrote “scammy website”. The domain name was registrated on April 18, 2015 [1]. The homepage has since changed, but at that time, it was begging for donations [2]. It had a donorbox campain, since taken down, that asked for ridiculous amounts such as "$25: Covers hosting the uBlock website for one week".
There's no need for a new fork. uBlock Origin is the good adblocker, and it is not related to this announcement. It's still as fantastic as ever, and has not changed hands.
uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading:
https://www.ublock.org/announcement/
Because of the following filter
||ublock.org^$document
Found in: uBlock filters – Badware risks
There seems to be lots of confusion around this topic.
gorhill is the original author of uBlock, but when he handed the project off to someone else, he found that they didn't live up to ethical standards, which is why gorhill started uBlock Origin. That other person owns ublock.org, so it makes sense to filter that domain.
Thanks for the background. The relevant Wikipedia page doesn't provide detail beyond "a fork happened" and I was curious how the project creator ended up on the side of the fork with a different name and no access to the original domain.
Wasn't this the same asshole who hijacked gorhill's work 4 years ago and even asked for money for others' work? now he sold others' work? what a scumbag!
From Ublock Origin's github(https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock): uBlock Origin is (and has always been) COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the web site ublock.org.
The relevant question is whether it's 80% of people who are using pihole; that number is probably still pretty high, but lower than the average population I expect.
Sure, it would be chaos if you expect everything to just work out OK. But if you defang Windows 10 properly, it doesn't need to reach Microsoft servers. That is, blocking is a supplementary measure.
When I last used Windows, you could host updates locally. And I believe that Microsoft actually recommended that for large firms.
Yes, but the server that gets and shares those updates need contain no PII.
I do not trust Microsoft. And so, when I need to use Windows 10, I do it in a very careful way. I start with an anonymously obtained installer. I install and update in a VM, with Internet connectivity through a nested VPN chain. Then I clone the VM, and work in the clone, with *.microsoft.com blocked.
When necessary, I update another fresh clone. Then I clone that, and securely transfer files from the first clone. That way, Microsoft never sees anything except for a clean install, and has no PII to track.
pi-hole is worse at adblocking than browser based adblockers (ublock origin, abp, etc.) because they can only block on domains. so it can't block ads such as
somesite.example/ads/banner1.jpg
or
somecdn.example/adcompany/ads.js
it also can't block inline ads such as those in google search results.
Exactly. DNS-based blocking is basically using an oversize hammer to drive nails. It works in some cases, but eventually you're going to run in to either false positives or false negatives depending on how it's configured.
It's basically only actually useful for locked down platforms like certain fruit-flavored mobile devices that don't allow their users to install a proper ad blocker. If you use platforms that respect their users' choices of software you don't need it.
>It's basically only actually useful for locked down platforms like certain fruit-flavored mobile devices that don't allow their users to install a proper ad blocker
There appears to be so much confusion in this thread about whether or not this involves the open source uBlock Origin. uBlock Origin should seriously consider rebranding to distance itself from the commercial uBlock.
Anyone who wants a low overhead and trusted ad blocker should use uBlock Origin. The developer even refuses to take any donations (for some good reasons).
For those who want a lot more control and a content blocker, uMatrix would help.
Anything named as “Adblock” or “Adblock Plus” or similar is just a way for advertisers to decide what ads users see and don’t see, depending on how much they’re willing to pay and be held hostage to such extensions.
Yes, it's true that they don't block all ads by default; apparently this is a setting.
And in selective mode, they control the policy for which ads get displayed, which would be the whole point of installing a selective ad blocker. It's not inherently wrong to do that; if you more or less agree with their policy, maybe that's the setting you want?
Taboola is one of the companies that paid Adblock Plus millions of dollars to not block their ads[0]. Taboola is the billion dollar company shoveling the "mom's $5 wrinkle tip, doctors hate her" trash[1].
Adblock Plus plainly acknowledge that those aren't "acceptable ads"[2], but unfortunately they've handed over the whitelist to a completely, 100% independent committee. It's out of their hands now and they're "hopeful" that those people will remove Taboola soon. There's a thread from 2015 asking them to remove it[3]. Convenient.
We both know most people don't spend time reading the options page of their browser extensions. If you download an ad blocker it should block ads. Having to check a check box to get the functionality you paid for is unexpected. Adblock is able to make millions of dollars because most don't know to check it. Most people just want to not see ads, a "selective" ad blocker happens to be the most famous because it was the first popular ad blocker that pivoted into a lucrative rent-seeking operation after becoming a household name. I've heard the euphemism "default opt-in".
According to the author of uBlock Origin it uses less resources[4].
Unless you work for Adblock or Adblock Plus or the companies that paid the bribe there is no reason to recommend it.
re: "Adblock Plus plainly acknowledge that those aren't "acceptable ads"
That link goes to Adblock's page, not Adblock Plus.
Their explanation of why they can't block it ("whitelists always override blacklists") is purely technical and is of course something that could be changed in the code - but maybe their contacts with advertisers say otherwise?
I don't see anything particularly wrong with Adblock or Adblock Plus making millions of dollars, but customers who aren't satisfied with this should of course switch to something else.
Adblock Plus is not Adblock's independently acting "friendly rival". Adblock was sold to a "mystery buyer" in 2015[0]. The first thing that buyer did was turn on "acceptable ads". Come on. It's the same people.
I call "Adblock" "Adblock Plus" to avoid ambiguity with ad blockers in general.
I'm not making value judgments, I'm explaining why saying Adblock and Adblock Plus "is just a way for advertisers to decide what ads users see and don’t see, depending on how much they’re willing to pay and be held hostage to such extensions" is completely accurate and not "misleading". The site you linked that explains their policy is corporate propaganda.
There's no point in even acknowledging their "technical explanation". It's a <10 line change that calls String.prototype.replace() on instances of "taboola" in the whitelist before enabling it.
There are no "satisfied customers" of Adblock Plus. There are only people who heard about Adblock/Adblock Plus in the news or mentioned somewhere else or because it's the first google search result (the first mention of uBlock Origin for "block ads" is on page 11 and it's an unrelated reddit thread in the uBlock Origin subreddit) and don't know about these practices. If you showed them a screenshot of Taboola ads they would not think those are acceptable. That's is why everyone here recommends uBlock Origin.
If only gorhill made uBlock Origin for Safari. Safari's got a lot of content blockers but none of them seem to block as much (and well) as uBlock Origin did in Chrome, sadly.
When installed, under settings for that plugin Safari shows a warning saying, "This extension will slow down your web browsing." Other content blockers such as 1Blocker do not show that warning by Apple.
> If you’ve noticed recent updates to the product, that’s because uBlock has been acquired by the team responsible for AdBlock. We will be investing heavily into uBlock to help it deliver on the promise of being one of the best ad blockers available.
Why would they invest "heavily into uBlock" instead of improving AdBlock? It doesn’t make sense to maintain two different ad blockers.
Because they are more interested in profits and more subscribers than blocking ads. Also, Adblock is more memory and CPU intensive, so perhaps they are looking to fix those issues in Adblock.
I know what you mean because I have gotten te same screen, but if I hadn't I would have no idea what you mean by your comment. If it is your intention to be understood, try to add some context and full sentences.
From the same author I would also suggest uMatrix, sort of a NoScript on steroids which allows a much finer filtering literally ripping pages of a great deal of their junk more selectively, but be aware that it requires "training" (telling it this can be loaded, that cannot) which for some non technical people could be annoying.
Firefox does block auto playing videos and asks the user to explicitly allow it, in the same way access to the webcam / mic / location / notifications is managed.
So you’re saying that someone investing tons of free time in software that greatly benefits countless people, and then gives it away for free, has problems because of a minor update you don’t like and have absolutely zero right to complain about?
It seems like they are just trying to steal the name of uBlock. AdBlock CEO says they “do love the name” [0] and are "investing heavily" into the product, but the commits in the repo [1] are just cosmetic changes and rebranding. Oddly enough, the only active committer is anonymous.
I wonder if this will cause legal troubles to the true uBlock Origin.
Was a user of "Adblock plus". They partnered with ad agencies and started to whitelist ads. That defeted the whole purpose and also it became clear the for profit organizations can not fight against the ad agencies as they have to partner if they want to make profit.
Ublock origin is so much awesome.Its free software and also very easy to use and its actually much more than adblocker.
88 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threaduBlock was the AdBlock when AdBlock sold out. Now who will be the uBlock now that uBlock has sold out? And this is separate to uBlock Origin, right?
A few years ago, back when uBlock Origin was just uBlock, gorhill (it's sole developer at the time) entrusted the uBlock development to what was supposed to be a community effort. Instead a single developer took over and essentially did nothing with the extension except place donation links to himself in the extension and on the website.
It didn't take long until gorhill himself noticed and decided to pick development back up - under the new name of uBlock Origin. To this date uBlock has barely seen any development while uBlock Origin is actively maintained.
You can find gorhill's reaction on Twitter https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1019975271443771392
Basically what AdBlock bought is the technical right to say "this extension is the original uBlock project" which is a part of narrative on https://www.ublock.org/announcement/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock/epcnnfbjfcg... but as far as community is concerned it died when it was transferred over and resurrected shortly after under a new repo on Gorhils account
How do you know this? Is there a source?
It turned out that the kid didn't have the skills to continue the project. He basically ported the addon to Safari and put a donation beg message up on the website. Gorhill soon returned to the project, but was unable to get the rights to it back, so forked it as uBlock Origin. IIRC this was in 2015 or so. Ever since, Origin has been the only adblocker worth using.
No, he _created_ the website. That’s why I wrote “scammy website”. The domain name was registrated on April 18, 2015 [1]. The homepage has since changed, but at that time, it was begging for donations [2]. It had a donorbox campain, since taken down, that asked for ridiculous amounts such as "$25: Covers hosting the uBlock website for one week".
[1]: http://www.whois-raynette.fr/whois/ublock.org
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150601002655/https://www.ubloc...
[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150601002729/https://donorbox....
uBlock Origin has prevented the following page from loading:
https://www.ublock.org/announcement/
Because of the following filter
||ublock.org^$document
gorhill is the original author of uBlock, but when he handed the project off to someone else, he found that they didn't live up to ethical standards, which is why gorhill started uBlock Origin. That other person owns ublock.org, so it makes sense to filter that domain.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Which sinkholes every known ad/malicious domain. It's been pretty useful, and it hasn't broken nothing important yet.
(reading github description, seems it includes this as a source, but also others)
edit: and here is a commit blocking the site ublock.org - https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/commit/82067d1ef3370...
https://pi-hole.net/
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole
For instance, they randomly decided to block *.microsoft.com - you can imagine the chaos that caused.
so breaking 80+% (being a bit conservative here) of people's computers is okay?
Or develop for Windows, or have a client who uses Windows, or neer to access any of the documentation on MSDN, or...
When I last used Windows, you could host updates locally. And I believe that Microsoft actually recommended that for large firms.
Something has to get the updates in the first place, even with the local P2P sharing.
If you're one of those "I never update my Windows install" people at this point you're beyond hope..
I do not trust Microsoft. And so, when I need to use Windows 10, I do it in a very careful way. I start with an anonymously obtained installer. I install and update in a VM, with Internet connectivity through a nested VPN chain. Then I clone the VM, and work in the clone, with *.microsoft.com blocked.
When necessary, I update another fresh clone. Then I clone that, and securely transfer files from the first clone. That way, Microsoft never sees anything except for a clean install, and has no PII to track.
And yes, you do need a software rule based blocker to supplement IP blocking.
Most ads come from a few sources, that's why hosts based blocking has been effective since 2000s.
It's basically only actually useful for locked down platforms like certain fruit-flavored mobile devices that don't allow their users to install a proper ad blocker. If you use platforms that respect their users' choices of software you don't need it.
not even.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aitunes.apple.com+adbl...
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-Be...
For those who want a lot more control and a content blocker, uMatrix would help.
Anything named as “Adblock” or “Adblock Plus” or similar is just a way for advertisers to decide what ads users see and don’t see, depending on how much they’re willing to pay and be held hostage to such extensions.
Amusingly, trying to load the uBlock website was initially blocked by uBlock Origin!
https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads#criteria
I mean, sure, uBlock origin is most often recommended around here. But let's not be misleading about products we don't like.
Adblock Plus does not block all ads and they control which ads are displayed and which aren't. If anything the name Adblock is miss leading.
And in selective mode, they control the policy for which ads get displayed, which would be the whole point of installing a selective ad blocker. It's not inherently wrong to do that; if you more or less agree with their policy, maybe that's the setting you want?
Adblock Plus plainly acknowledge that those aren't "acceptable ads"[2], but unfortunately they've handed over the whitelist to a completely, 100% independent committee. It's out of their hands now and they're "hopeful" that those people will remove Taboola soon. There's a thread from 2015 asking them to remove it[3]. Convenient.
We both know most people don't spend time reading the options page of their browser extensions. If you download an ad blocker it should block ads. Having to check a check box to get the functionality you paid for is unexpected. Adblock is able to make millions of dollars because most don't know to check it. Most people just want to not see ads, a "selective" ad blocker happens to be the most famous because it was the first popular ad blocker that pivoted into a lucrative rent-seeking operation after becoming a household name. I've heard the euphemism "default opt-in".
According to the author of uBlock Origin it uses less resources[4].
Unless you work for Adblock or Adblock Plus or the companies that paid the bribe there is no reason to recommend it.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-tabo...
[1] https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
[2] https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/60000...
[3] https://adblockplus.org/forum/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&keyw...
[4] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
re: "Adblock Plus plainly acknowledge that those aren't "acceptable ads"
That link goes to Adblock's page, not Adblock Plus.
Their explanation of why they can't block it ("whitelists always override blacklists") is purely technical and is of course something that could be changed in the code - but maybe their contacts with advertisers say otherwise?
I don't see anything particularly wrong with Adblock or Adblock Plus making millions of dollars, but customers who aren't satisfied with this should of course switch to something else.
I call "Adblock" "Adblock Plus" to avoid ambiguity with ad blockers in general.
I'm not making value judgments, I'm explaining why saying Adblock and Adblock Plus "is just a way for advertisers to decide what ads users see and don’t see, depending on how much they’re willing to pay and be held hostage to such extensions" is completely accurate and not "misleading". The site you linked that explains their policy is corporate propaganda.
There's no point in even acknowledging their "technical explanation". It's a <10 line change that calls String.prototype.replace() on instances of "taboola" in the whitelist before enabling it.
There are no "satisfied customers" of Adblock Plus. There are only people who heard about Adblock/Adblock Plus in the news or mentioned somewhere else or because it's the first google search result (the first mention of uBlock Origin for "block ads" is on page 11 and it's an unrelated reddit thread in the uBlock Origin subreddit) and don't know about these practices. If you showed them a screenshot of Taboola ads they would not think those are acceptable. That's is why everyone here recommends uBlock Origin.
[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/02/adblock_flogged_off...
Why would they invest "heavily into uBlock" instead of improving AdBlock? It doesn’t make sense to maintain two different ad blockers.
By uBlock Origin
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/17/028245
tl;dr: the real one is Ublock Origin, get it here: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock
From the same author I would also suggest uMatrix, sort of a NoScript on steroids which allows a much finer filtering literally ripping pages of a great deal of their junk more selectively, but be aware that it requires "training" (telling it this can be loaded, that cannot) which for some non technical people could be annoying.
Ublock & umatrix still don't block autoplaying videos. You should still use NoScript.
IMHO if you push small cosmetic changes in the UI in every update, like Gorhill does, there's a problem.
He has a poor attitide IMHO.
https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-users-finally-get-option-t...
I wonder if this will cause legal troubles to the true uBlock Origin.
[0]: https://twitter.com/judemaier/status/1020034358558670848 [1]: https://github.com/uBlock-LLC/uBlock/commits/master
WE SOLD OUT.
Ublock origin is so much awesome.Its free software and also very easy to use and its actually much more than adblocker.