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Never use a "for-profit adblocker". Ublock Origin is free, open source and therefore won't fuck you over. You can guess where this "profit" is coming from when you're not paying for your "for-profit" adblocker
Never use a "for-profit adblocker".
Most prominently, this includes Adblock Plus, which functions as extortion-ware, extorting payments from ad-dealers to let their ads through.
We have a problem. People have learned that they shouldn't use a free VPN. By that logic you shouldn't use a free ad blocker either. People don't understand the details enough so they operate on broad ideas.
I dunno if there's just a lack of education around what open-source means or what. Like jeez, you can contribute to unlock origin. You can study it and see if there's anything you disagree with. You can fork it and change it.
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I agree, unless it's straight up paid software which I usually don't mind paying for if it's good and I need it. Although arguably uBlock Origin is so close to perfection that I can't imagine how a paid ad blocker would hold up.
What software have you paid for? Over here, proud owner of (off the top of my head) Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, Shottr, and superwhisper for Mac.
Would be hard to live without these automation/macro, screenshot, and dictation tools!
Shottr is legit. It's really amazing that there aren't more decent screenshotting tools when they're so incredibly useful. People would rather just take a picture of their screen and upload it that way :cringe:
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Shout-out to Beyond Compare! It makes my life as a many-hatted systems librarian much easier.
BC5 must be a huge upgrade for word wrap alone!
Oooh. I've not upgraded yet, but that looks exciting.
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For-profit ad blockers make their money from either ad injection or extorting ad companies to whitelist their ads. This is why the original adblock plus fell out of use.
"From the founder of Honey." Which means that stealing code and affiliate links is just the surface of shady stuff they are up to.
The founder of Honey no longer owns Honey, and hasn't for some time. It's owned by PayPal, a much more notoriously shady company that some people still use for some reason.
Now I feel bad. I use paypal because in some cases of purchases it is the only means I can use. What is shady about them?
Look up the PayPal mafia. Tldr: their founders are overthrowing the world's oldest democracy at the moment.
Fun fact: the founders threw out musk, before it became PayPal, he actually wanted it to be called X, he was hoarding that domain since then.
What’s the worlds oldest democracy?
Thanks I barely used them out of convenience and now I'll make a point to stop entirely.
It's the only means you can use because it's the only one the seller provides. Not your fault.
What is shady? You name it.
I mean first and foremost they're a public-traded company that you'll see on every storefront on the web, which together basically guarantees unethical business practices.
They automatically enrolled users into PayPal credit without their knowledge or consent. They advertised $10 free credit for new members, then just...didn't give it. They charge late fees and interest when their shitty servers fail to process payments. They will almost always take the buyer's side in any dispute, regardless of provided evidence, they automatically opt users into data sharing, etc.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/paypal-pay-25-million-fines-deceptive-shady-business-001516273.html https://www.dailydot.com/debug/stop-paypal-data-sharing/
I feel like the name of this product is a SEO manipulation to catch people trying to look for information on the Pi Hole. Overall shady manipulation on all fronts...
Considering the recent revelations about the shady, scummy and unethical business practices by Honey, I can't say I'm surprised that one of the co-founders is doing more shady shit with their new endeavor.
I did a double take at first- PiHole, how could you!!
Who in their right mind would use this bootleg piece of shit when uBO exists?
They're offering to pay you to watch ads, same as what Brave does.
You're going to get people who fall for the "free money" aspect, same as always.
(Also replacing a site's ads with their ads is exactly the same shit Honey is doing, so it's nice to see that the founder has a single idea and is going to keep going after it.)
More than that, they’re also hijacking affiliate links.
In the early days of brave it was glorious. Set up max notification on my phone, set to minimise notifications - profit.
Literally cashed out like $100 this way over the span of about 6 months, before the rugpull, I assume. Ads paying out way less now.
It was hilarious. For me. The ads were (and I believe still are) primarily advertising other shitcoins hahaha
Edit: I should note, I used Tasker and did not have to see a single ad.
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Probably people who see a big banner about uBO no longer being supported in Chrom(e)ium
Old people who still believe that if you're paying for a product it must be better, right?
The GPL is enforceable, as far as the courts in the US are concerned, but the time and expense of doing so means such cases are rare. One such claim against Vizio, filed in 2021 by the Software Freedom Conservancy, is expected to be tried in September 2025.
Hill pointed to a series of posts he made in June 2024 about "sleazy rip-offs in the Chrome Web Store" that simply rewrap "uBlock, uBlock Lite, or other content blockers with their own user interface," and some monetization scheme, often removing the copyright and licensing information
If a pretty large project such as ubo doesn't have the means to enforce the GPL license, I think pretty much all open source projets, that are usually lacking funds, wouldn't be able to enforce their license either
I didn't realize that before, I thought copyleft licences like GPL really offered something but unless the project is backed by a for profit company or has enough funding, permissive licenses like MIT/FreeBSD achieve kind of the same result in practice.. And all the contributions I did on copyleft projects could be (and probably were) stolen to make profits, while the maintainers of the original project struggle to pay for coffees.. I feel a lot less guilty for my media piracy
But I wonder, are there means to enforce this license from outside the US ?
Isnt that a GPL violation?
Yes, as mentioned in the first sentence of the article
Yes it is
Yes, it sounds like they were violating GPL.
The majority of ads on YouTube for the last 3+ months have been Pie, even after blocking dozens of them.
If you're getting ads for an adblocker, it might be time to get an adblocker (but not that one).
It's my work computer and extensions are blocked. 😔
Oof, you gotta find that FBI post (might have a different 3 letter agency) said that adbock is required for safe browsing. Tell them users can't click on malware ads if there's no malware ads to click.
Set your DNS to a pihole or some other ad blocking DNS server, that's about the best you can do on a managed system
Maybe they mean ads by the creators themselves, which I do understand. While my Freetube has Sponsorblock, I am still exposed to ads - Sponsorblock is not applied to downloads.
That seems to be this guy's MO, judging from Honey. Sell an invasive browser add-on via intensive youtube ads and convince gullible people they'll get free money from it
And then sell to a big company
Huh… I’m never off YouTube but never heard of or seen ads for Pie. I wonder when they will start showing up.
I still see a lot of Better Help ads and that sucks. I’ve gotten to the point where if it’s a YouTube Ad or sponsor, I ain’t buying it ever.
Isn't that illegal? What kind of license is uBO under?
The very first sentence of the article answers these exact two questions.
Closed-source browser extension Pie Adblock was this week accused of copying code and text from rival uBlock Origin in violation of the latter's software license – the GNU GPL version 3.
GPLv3
Guy belongs behind bars
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this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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