[HN Gopher] A curated list of uBlock origin filters
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A curated list of uBlock origin filters
Author : spacebuffer
Score : 218 points
Date : 2023-07-04 11:43 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (letsblock.it)
(TXT) w3m dump (letsblock.it)
| TekMol wrote:
| I wonder if uBlock origin has overshot the mark.
|
| It even blocks self-hosted analytics scripts from the same
| domain. By default.
|
| I don't see how that is a good thing. It just makes the lives of
| people who run websites harder. When I visit a website, I have
| some sympathy towards the person who runs it.
|
| Disabling scripts which talk to self-hosted analytics software
| makes it hard to figure out how users use a website. Especially
| when the site is using a CDN. So people enable tracking on the
| CDN level. Which means now CloudFlare, Amazon etc store that data
| again. Lose-lose for everybody.
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| I share this sentiment. I use content blockers to avoid
| annoyances and trackers, but I'm ok with _healthy_ ads and
| other local stats. The problem is not being able to distinguish
| them at scale.
| somsak2 wrote:
| > I'm ok with _healthy_ ads
|
| no such thing as a healthy ad!
| qingcharles wrote:
| It is frustrating. At the end of the day uBlock can only block
| what it can see. If I'm an asshole web host I can still take
| your IP and every other bit of data that I can gobble up from
| the HTTP headers and sell those off to the highest bidder and
| uBlock can't do anything about that. So, nefarious actors still
| be nefarious actors.
|
| Disclaimer: I use uBlock.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _It just makes the lives of people who run websites harder._
|
| _User_ agent. The browser is meant to serve the user 's
| interests. The wants or desires of people who run websites are
| their own problems, not the _user_ agent 's problems.
|
| I don't even run first party javascript by default, only on a
| whitelist basis. Most of the time, even first party javascript
| only makes the website worse from my perspective as a user.
| Javascript's most common purpose is to implement annoyances and
| spyware, legitimate functionality comes third.
| nathanlied wrote:
| It is an unfortunate reality of how the Internet is built.
|
| There's quite a few people like you, that are fine with self-
| hosted analytics, either because you believe the principles of
| the websites you visit, or because you've done so-called "good"
| analytics, and so disable that kind of blocking, hoping your
| trust won't be abused.
|
| Problem is, some of us don't believe those principles hold,
| and/or have seen people doing vacuum-style analytics. I've
| listened to conversations of otherwise well-intentioned devs
| who are otherwise anti-ads and anti-unnecessary data collection
| ask for more data to be collected in analytics because "we
| might need it". Leaves a very sour taste in my mouth. So I
| block it all - what I can, of course. If they find ways around
| it that I can't block, at least I've done my best.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Same domain doesn't always mean your information won't get
| leaked to wherever. For example, Sentry supports sending data
| through a proxy hosted on the same domain used by the website.
| If you don't block it, your data ends up on sentry.io anyway
| (in most cases; some users probably self-host their own Sentry
| instance, but how many? It's quite painful from my personal
| experience.)
|
| https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/troubleshooting/...
| jabbany wrote:
| > makes it hard to figure out how users use a website
|
| Isn't that the whole point? A user with the no tracking filters
| turned on in uBO is intentionally trying to opt out. I don't
| have much sympathy for site owners unless they also offer a
| first party opt-out option (which I've never seen so far even
| given the cookie banners). Site owners are no more entitled to
| track than a site user is to block even first party trackers.
| (Also wouldn't a site owner be able to use server logs
| anyways?)
|
| As for defaults, I think when it comes to the point that
| someone is installing uBO specifically, they're usually
| sophiscated enough to configure filters. Most of the people I
| know (even those in tech) don't use any form of adblock or
| tracking blocking. (I don't know how they can manage to always
| be vigilant and avoid all the dark patterns, but to each their
| own.)
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I think we put up with a lot because we give smaller businesses
| a pass on bad practices and focus our energy on the "bad"
| bigger players. But I don't think being an underdog means that
| society should accept PII surveillance - society is made up of
| underdogs.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I find it sad how many websites, or even programs have
| atrociously low information density. In our quest to flat and
| minimalistic design(tm), we have managed to lower information
| density so much that very simple websites require lots of
| scrolling and menu-opening just to get simple information.
| JTon wrote:
| I read a comment on a forum where the user had a job to audit
| google home voice command and search result alignment. Meaning,
| did the google home user get what they wanted or not. The forum
| user made a side comment on how a surprising number of people
| have horrible diction. Makes me think, maybe low information
| density is the optimal design for the majority of users.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Maybe it's users intentionally simplifying their speech,
| because google doesn't understand more complex sentances.
| martin_a wrote:
| I find myself doing this (and feeling stupid doing so) with
| my Amazon Echo Dots. They seem to understand very little,
| so I simplify and reduce like crazy. Nevertheless, lots of
| searches/commands go wrong.
|
| Good example probably: I've tried to play music from German
| rap artist "Disarstar" which is pronounced like "disaster".
| I did not get Alexa to play music from this artist from
| Spotify, it only searched for "disaster" and played music
| it found... Not a good experience.
| xedrac wrote:
| My wife is one of these people - an artistic ADHD type whose
| brain bounces around in a very non-linear way. The commands
| she speaks to Google leave me completely confused.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Techmoan nailed it here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvNPMlATA9g
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Information density as we had it in the 90s and 2000s was far
| too dense, let's be real. _We_ might have liked it, but most
| people essentially saw an insurmountable column of text and
| immediately keeled over, eyes glazed. The response to reduce
| information density in and of itself is reasonable.
|
| What isn't reasonable is how low information density has
| gotten. Yes, information was too dense before, but now we
| have the opposite problem: It's not dense enough. There is a
| fine balance in density that designers seemingly can't seem
| to find.
| anthk wrote:
| Not too dense if you were used to read newspapers and
| magazines.
| nofunsir wrote:
| Or, ya know, books.
| anthk wrote:
| Magazines and newspapers interleaved articles and news;
| books were just either straight stories or short tale
| compilations, there were no short tales in the middle of
| a page or at the bottom/top/edge placed sides.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Now I wonder if that's the reason we ended up with 7-inch
| smartphone displays.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > YouTube: search interface cleanups
|
| Ah, finally someone has done it. YouTube search without the 'For
| you' and 'from your history' guff.
| vidyesh wrote:
| I have disabled YouTube Watch history and I really enjoy seeing
| YouTube struggle to provide me anything meaningful in the Home
| feed. Most suggestions are just based on my subscriptions and I
| see a lot of repeated suggestions as it doesn't know what I
| have watched.
|
| This keeps me away from the echo chamber that it creates for
| most people.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Why do you use YouTube while signed in ?
|
| All the past 12-14 years I've used YouTube, it was always in a
| private window. With or without login. Earlier I had an account
| but when google signup was mandated, I quit and since then I
| just manually go and search for stuff.
|
| I have newpipe and libretube on my phone so I have some
| semblance of "subscriptions and channels" but not much.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I've never gotten the hang of writing uBO rules for myself.
| There's a lot more to it than is in the tutorial. Learned about
| letsblock.it last week through a support request to the uBO
| project and it has been a great help. It is very good at
| filtering out low quality search results sites[0]. Additionally
| it takes the pain out of blocking sites or domains I don't want
| to see.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29794372
| dpifke wrote:
| I use uBlock Origin for a banlist of sites and keywords that are
| repeat offenders for off-topic[0] HN posts:
| https://pifke.org/hn.txt
|
| My rules hide the title line but not the number of
| comments/points, and sometimes I'll click through stories that
| have been highly upvoted, to see what I'm missing (rarely
| anything of interest to me).
|
| [0]: I consider "off-topic" to be anything "they'd cover on TV
| news," per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. A
| lot of the blocked sites are quite literally TV news sites.
| xvello wrote:
| Heya, you can take inspiration the rules I posted in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35676840 for hiding the
| second line and the separator. I messed up the last newline,
| the bottom block is the following two lines:
| news.ycombinator.com##html:not([op="item"]) tr.spacer +
| tr:not(.athing):remove()
| news.ycombinator.com##html:not([op="item"]) tr.spacer +
| tr.spacer:remove()
|
| I'll make it a letsblock.it template one day.
| OldManRyan wrote:
| I use the extension BlockTube to filter out videos by channel and
| I think it works pretty well since I only need to right click on
| a video and can block the entire channel. That means you have to
| trust another extension.
|
| That being said, it is an understatement to say I can't tolerate
| the internet without uBlock Origin. I get so much value out of
| this project I would donate 10-20% of my salary to the project if
| they allowed donations.
| small_coconut wrote:
| I can't use Youtube without Blocktube. Currently at 11,000
| blocked channels and still going strong - it's amazing how the
| same junk keeps cropping up just under different names.
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| I wish I knew about it sooner, it took me almost a year to
| "train" the algo to recommended me only certain topics of
| interest. I could've saved some scrolling time at the
| beginning.
| romseb wrote:
| For YouTube, I go the other way and instead of blacklisting
| channels, I use https://unhook.app to only see my subscriptions
| and nothing else. No Home feed suggestions, no sidebar, no end
| screen cards, etc.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| there are some gems the YT homepage can bring you. be sure to
| delete the dumb meme recap you watched at 3am from the watch
| history and the algorithm can work for you.
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| Oh, wow. Didn't know I can do that. Thanks, it was getting
| really hard to train the algo again with the things I want
| recommended on a certain account after accidentally
| searching for something of interest for another account.
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| Be sure to also mark videos as "Not interested" on your
| homepage, if you also did not know about that. You can
| even tell them not to recommend an entire channel.
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| The not interested button doesn't really work for me, it
| just blocks that particular video but other videos in
| that category still show up no matter what.
| [deleted]
| OldManRyan wrote:
| Didn't know this extension existed, thank you. I don't
| actually subscribe to any Youtube channels and mainly search
| for what I want at the time but this may be a healthier way
| to use Youtube.
| mistermann wrote:
| Any idea if this is smart enough to show all new content from
| your subscriptions or does it only show the select choices
| that YouTube makes for you (another infuriating YouTube
| design choice).
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| This is my standard response. Internet without ubo is like
| having unprotected sex
| Tao3300 wrote:
| while sandy
| somsak2 wrote:
| this is such a bad analogy, unprotected sex is objectively
| way better just riskier. ads on the web are in no way better,
| and maybe marginally riskier than no ads
| xpil wrote:
| Like, with another person?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| No, like digital stimulation of your member.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| So exciting and dangerous? I may have to give the ad infested
| internet a try /s
| rx_tx wrote:
| Another really useful rule I like is for disabling the
| recommendation overlay that shows up on youtube when you pause a
| video, which is really annoying. youtube-
| nocookie.com,youtube.com##.ytp-pause-overlay, .show-video-
| thumbnail-button, #rvid
| butz wrote:
| What sad state of internet are we in, when users have to jump
| through hoops just to make browsing websites a little bit more
| convenient.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Eh, for the vast majority of websites I'd say: "usable at all",
| not just "a little bit more convenient."
| somsak2 wrote:
| interesting point of view. i think content creators would look
| at it the other way -- never has it been so easy to steal
| content as it is on an ad-supported internet.
| anonymousab wrote:
| I wish there was a maintained filter of "video players on news
| sites".
| xvello wrote:
| Agreed! That would be a great template to have in
| letsblock.it's corpus! Contributions are welcome if you have a
| ruleset to get us kickstarted.
| xvello wrote:
| Project maintainer here, thanks for posting it!
|
| As described in https://letsblock.it/help/about, this project is
| a home for rules that cannot be included in the default content
| blocking lists, because everyone has their own definition of low-
| value content.
|
| Our goal is to curate a list of templates that allow you to tune
| up the signal/noise ratio and avoid distractions. You can just
| copy-paste rules in your uBlockOrigin / AdGuard settings, but the
| project is best used by signing-up to create your customized rule
| list. This gives you automatic updates when rules are improved
| and updated by the community, and the ability to use that list on
| all your devices.
| m3affan wrote:
| Awesome work. It's sad to see the internet being ridden by
| cancerous ads more and more.
| abwizz wrote:
| cancerous ads are an integral part of the internet since the
| dot-com boom
|
| so is ad-blocking
| amznburn wrote:
| [dead]
| yuumei wrote:
| In-case anyone needs it, the following uBlock blocks some of the
| changes Microsoft made to github, like the cursor and symbol
| viewer. github.com##.code-navigation-cursor
| github.com###symbols-pane:upward(1)
|
| Unfortunately searching is still broken. This greasemonkey script
| blocks the capture of keyboard shortcuts like / ctrl space:
| keycodes = [191, 17, 32]
| document.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) { if
| (keycodes.indexOf(e.keyCode) != -1) {
| e.cancelBubble = true;
| e.stopImmediatePropagation(); } return false;
| });
| ck2 wrote:
| I wish ublock could do basic url rewrites without having to use
| greasemonkey/scripts/plugins
|
| Things like rewriting www.reddit to old.reddit without anything
| extra.
| Grom_PE wrote:
| After switching browsers, I never actually reinstalled
| Greasemonkey as uBlock Origin has the capability to inject
| custom JavaScript.
|
| Check "I am an advanced user", then in "Advanced settings"
| set the parameter to something like:
| userResourcesLocation
| file://localhost/home/user/stuff/scriptlets.js
|
| And in the scriptlets.js file, text between the line "///
| ScriptName.js" and an empty line is considered a separate
| scriptlet, which you can add to an URL in "My filters" like:
| news.ycombinator.com##+js(ScriptName.js)
|
| The annoying bit is that scriptlets are cached, and to update
| them, you have to edit the "userResourcesLocation" setting,
| for that reason I made "scriptlets1.js" a symlink to the
| original file and switch back and forth whenever I edit it.
| ffpip wrote:
| Thanks for this!
|
| But is a file URL working for you on Windows? http:// URLs
| are working but file:// urls are not being parsed for me.
| Grom_PE wrote:
| It certainly worked for me when I used Windows. Try
| either of these:
| file:///C:/stuff/scriptlets.js
| file://localhost/C:/stuff/scriptlets.js
|
| I must say I wouldn't want to add a remote 3rd party URL
| to this setting, what if it updates with bad code?
| ffpip wrote:
| Are you using Firefox?
|
| Those URLs do not work for me when using Firefox +
| Windows. But the code works perfectly fine when I upload
| it to github gists and use the raw url.
|
| And yeah, like you said do not want to inject remote JS
| into every site I visit so won't be using a remote URL.
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(page generated 2023-07-04 23:03 UTC)