Without ublock origin, the internet is simply unbearable. The result is one of the following two: migrate to Firefox, or the biggest web detox ever
I wonder how long they’ll maintain manifest v2 compatibility. Once they throw in the towel, Firefox will truly be the last stand.
Integration of Web3 features, including cryptocurrency wallets and NFT support.
Inclusion of Brave News and sponsored images on the new tab page.
Addition of a VPN service within the browser.
Feels very scammy and grifty for a project that's supposedly about user privacy.
2. Weird but not evil
3. 100% acceptable
4. Good, maybe. What vpn?
#2 opt-in only.
#3 agreed. annoying. can opt out.
#4 opt-in only.
#5 disagreed.
Happened before I even started using it, and I've been using it for a long while now. Probably time to let this one go?
> Integration of Web3 features, including cryptocurrency wallets and NFT support.
That's not a new feature, it's been in there since I started using it, and it's off by default and then easily hidden. It didn't turn up one day turned on.
> Inclusion of Brave News and sponsored images on the new tab page.
Yeah I'll give you this one. I've turned this off... I mean they're developing free to use software, so I feel bad about it. I'd probably pay for Brave at this point, but I don't want to see ads ever. At least it's easy to turn off.
> Addition of a VPN service within the browser.
I think this one is fine? I used it once when I was staying at a hotel, it was easy to use, other than that it's just hidden.
They implement compatible features in the browser itself.
Tried searching and I can't find anything about subscribing to lists on desktop either, only a few discussions about the default set of lists they use.
I actually like kiwi browser quite a lot on mobile. Extensions, Devtools(!!!) make it especially great. Try that if you want (it's on top of chromium android).
I use brave most of the time though, because I use their sync service across all my devices.
You don't think Google is spending all that money for nothing, do you?
But sure, let us do 5 minutes of research! So, this referral code injection was a mistake (that their CEO had to apologize for https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...)
Then there was the "donations for content creators" debacle, where they started gathering donations for various YouTubers, without.. actually talking to those YouTubers. But using their names and faces to promote the whole thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20181224011529/https://twitter.c...
Apparently, the original idea was that you could "contribute to any website you visit. The idea was that once a site reached a threshold, the potential owner would be notified. They could then authenticate (prove ownership, etc) and claim the donations." (https://old.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/1e9i5ls/how_...), which is mind boggling to me that somebody actually thought it's a good idea.
Anyway, they had to apologize for it, after hearing "important feedback": https://brave.com/blog/rewards-update/
They have also installed VPNs onto users machines without asking: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/18/brave-is-installing-vpn-se... I don't think they apologized for that one... But they did revert the decision.
Then there's Brave News, Brave Wallet, Brave Rewards, which is just completely unnecessary bloat IMO. You _can_ turn some of it off, still leaves a bad taste in my mouth though.
https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
They are going to keep it enabled until google removes the code from chromium in June. Then it sounds like they are going to try to use other means to offer "limited MV2 support" but there are some issues, including the fact that they don't have their own extension store (and presumably the chrome one won't allow mv2 extensions to be updated) so I'm not sure to what degree that will actually work.
As in, suppose your daily browsing generates about $3 of monthly ad revenue [0]. Instead, you have a (digital) wallet linked to your browser, which could be pre-loaded with credit each month. For each website you visit you may decide to opt-out of ads by paying a fraction of your credits.
You could even have a system where you could pay for a model with light-ads (i.e. at most 1 ad per page, 10 seconds of ads per 30min of video), or pay more for zero ads.
I understand it's a difficult system to organize and is dependent on a strong network. But I'd expect there to be a solid small market by now.
Lots of individual websites have this option (e.g. Netflix, newspapers, Spotify, Youtube Premium) but there's nothing overarching.
[0] https://thenextweb.com/news/heres-how-much-money-you-made-go...
Friction. The vast majority of people are not going to go through the effort of setting up a digital wallet to browse, when the existing system allows them to do it for free.
Some people would for sure, but then you also need websites and creators to agree to participate in the scheme (or don't, and just unethically redirect ad revenue to yourself, like Brave used to).
Of course the best would be to let users pay for not seeing ads and then shove them in their face anyway for maximum profit.
By very definition 99% of ads that could be in the slot are not there because someone is not willing to pay that much to show that ad, except for the single one that won the auction.
Ads have a maximum cost at which they don't become viable/profitable anymore.
The only difference is that now the user could bid on that ad slot himself, to keep it empty.
If you look at the average ad revenue, that wouldn't be all that much money. Certainly a fraction of what it costs to become a no-ad subscriber currently in various platforms.
ApplePay is about as frictionless as digital payments can possibly be, and I still occasionally abandon a purchase because of some annoying authentication issue.
So, instead, we get companies like the New York Times thinking they're worth, what, $20/mo, per person, all by themselves?
People must be ultimately paying the money somehow. Otherwise advertisers wouldn't bother.
1. Free competition and lots of it.
2. No widely adopted standard for micropayment
3. Transaction processing fees often left very little for the site.
1) Consume more content -> More revenue -> Means more bloated content, esp. with LLM
2) They will simply re-introduce ads even though you're paying
I really don't mind ads, and I don't really mind ad-targeting, except for 'sensitive' topics.
But I despise animated ads, big walls of ads, interstitial ads, popovers, etc, etc, etc. Just be like google in the early '00s: I want content, and I'd be very happy to have non obtrusive relevant-to-the-current-topic ads on the side.
For more general pay-to-browse, it needs to have the friction of the user deciding to pay, or you still incentivize spam (maybe even worse than with ads). As long as you keep that friction, you don't really change much because most sites on the Internet aren't worth anything, especially the commercially motivated ones. The ones that are worth something already charge money (and people pay because it's valuable) or they're not trying to monetize (academia, free culture groups, hobby discussion groups, etc).
"How do we get people to pay fractions of a cent" is the wrong problem to solve. The correct related problem is "how do we filter out all the cruft that isn't even worth 1 cent?" Blocking ads removes the financial incentive for spam, and is therefore a socially positive action in addition to being prudent security posture. Assuming ads have an effect on your psychology (and we ought to believe they do), it also helps you to remain a more moral person by preventing you from receiving and internalizing constant messages to consume frivolously. With climate change being one of the most important issues of our time, cutting out such consumption is imperative.
Although I wish more browsers made it easier to selectively enable it per site, like Orion.
JS is a core part of the modern web experience. 10 years go MAYBE Noscript would work, I never bothered, you end up having to whitelist a bunch of sites anyway even 10 years ago.
And good riddance. I really don't get any personal value out of the vast majority of modern web apps. Much, but not all, of what we do on the web could be via a much more basic interface.
... but it won't be.
Delivering information and digesting it from users is the purpose of the web as the user sees it. HN is a good example of a website meant to do this. No ads, minimal algorithms, no feature creep beyond a traditional news-and-comment feed.
Only one problem: that doesn't drive engagement. I come to HN because I'm genuinely interested in the content and discussion here. Being interested in content and discussion, though, is not nearly as profitable as being addicted. A lot of the UI elements and behaviors of websites today are meant to drive addiction, and thus, engagement.
Hell, HN itself might not even be profitable or even break-even. It's the side-project of YC; something that exists to further the profit-building exploits of that organization.
Heck, stuff sometimes breaks without me even trying to disable anything, like airbnb login via facebook popup stopped working suddenly few months ago (biggest internet mistake I ever done many years ago, as a host I am locked to specific well-rated account and airbnb support told me they can't migrate my account to another form of auth).
Edit: just saw its 'per site' - that would work for me, but not for my parents who live far. But damn I don't want to do this active fight of cat and mouse with whole internet. Firefox/ublock origin user here, on both desktop and phone for many years. Internet looks utterly horrible when I open it somewhere without those, hell youtube with all those ads is absolutely ridiculous shit service. Apple devices I've seen aren't that good either, shame that would be a great selling point for me.
You mean you’d like to use a web browser as a document viewer instead of an operating system? This ship has sailed a decade ago, at least.
Ads that previously were blocked at the HTTP Response level. ManifestV3 removed this API.
A world where the number of ad rules exceeds the new limit. Which is 500 dynamic rules, 50 static rulesets, 30,000 rules. This may sound high but its not.
I mostly use Edge for accessing the big streaming websites and Firefox for everything else. Video runs somewhat better on Edge for me.
I use NextDNS on both my phone and laptop. Much easier setup, and much more portable (e.g. it'll work on cafe wifi).
E.g., DNS-level blocking will not block the sponsored links in Google's Search or the ads on YouTube. And while my NextDNS has blocked ads on my Samsung TV, it was unable to block ads on the new Max streaming service (former HBO).
I guess it depends on why we're ad-blocking. If it's for privacy, I guess it's fine, but 1st party requests can and do share your data with first parties, with just one more level of indirection.
I, for one, block ads because ads can be dangerous for my family and even for myself. I don't want ads because I don't want behavior modification, or malware. I also don't want my son to watch ads for services that should be illegal, such as gambling services. And don't get me wrong, I'm one of those people that actually pays for subscriptions to avoid ads, I'm against freeloading as well.
So, DNS-level blocking is just not enough, unless you're happy that you're at least blocking some ads on the scum of the Internet, but then I'm personally not interested in those websites anyway.
"or the ads on YouTube" i use other methods for that on Firefox.
"I guess it depends on why we're ad-blocking." I do not need any reason to block or allow any form of communication on my own infrastructure. I get to decide what connects to it and what comes in and gets out of it. I am fully aware some info will always get passed because otherwise i cannot consume the things i want to consume.
"So, DNS-level blocking is just not enough, unless you're happy that you're at least blocking some ads on the scum of the Internet, but then I'm personally not interested in those websites anyway."
So far my list of 5 million blocked sites serves me quite well in pihole.
Firefox is debatably less bearable than a Chromium based browser with uBlock Lite at least on Windows.
I'm slowly thinking that this might be the correct way forward. It's difficult, at least for me, because I am addicted to the internet, but recently I realized that I need to be more mindful about my internet time, simply because it became shit, and using it actually has hugely negative impact on my life. I'm not sure how to phrase it, but it's not "ah yeah I'll do that someday", but rather "ok, things are getting serious, I am making a decision and starting to follow though right now".
Essentially, if I open 2-3 pages with these types of ads, I run out of RAM (16 GB) and the whole laptop slows down. I simply can't browse the web while working (which may be a good thing!).
Of course, part of the problem is Outlook and Teams and some other apps using a lot of RAM, but Chrome is the real bottleneck.
So no, not "just bearable". I couldn't even read this article. It's the norm that I just close the tabs without reading because I don't want a laggy PC.
My understanding is that adblockers: 1. block requests from certain domains 2. block elements matching certain criteria
Does this change just affect #1?
The current situation looks more like a deprecation brownout than a chance at continued support.
Huh? uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly fine.
I've seen absolutely no difference after switching.
I would encourage you to read their explanation.
For instance it doesn't block youtube ads. Arguably the single most important reason people have ublock.
Also, original uBlock Origin didn't always block YouTube ads.
Adblocking with YouTube has gone back and forth. It's not about original vs lite.
Oh please. Change your DNS to AdGuard or NextDNS and job done.
Point is that using any kind of DNS based blocking is far better at the router level but the above poster is right in that a lot of ISPs these days make it impossible to adjust your router level DNS and even for someone tech minded setting up some kind of downstream secondary router can be become so convoluted that they just give up.
Not exactly the simplest instructions, to your point, but you can still just do it once for them or get on a call and walk them through it. They might even notice that websites load faster when they don't make dozens of requests to advertisers and trackers.
If you are trying to intercept dns traffic that ignores your dns setting that’s a separate issue.
> NextDNS supports all 4 protocols. See the setup tab for more information on how to use them.