It has been discontinued too early; from an AdBlock Edge comment, titled "uBlock may be fast, but is rubbish":
> I've been using uBlock now for a while and while it is
light and fast, it's is rubbish to use. Exclusions are
idiotic, context menu controls don't work, default
filters selection is idiotic, it doesn't sync settings
like Adblock Edge does, I'm just starting to hate it.
> I'd too like to see AdBlock Edge continue its own
development path even if it's not the fastest or
lightest. It's still better than all other ad blockers...
And don't forget that uBlock blocks Google Analytics, breaks most popular travel sites if you try to actually purchase, and also error reporters like NewRelix. Most of this is the fault of the default inclusion of EasyPrivacy I believe.
Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc and blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).
It's not like GA is the only way to gather statistics, there are other vendors and even the access logs for your server itself.
I'm not willing to let Google follow me everywhere on the internet and if that is detrimental to the sites I visit then they are welcome to block me if they detect that I'm blocking GA.
When you run a website, you have two choices: spend a bunch of time implementing log analysis and paying for all the storage necessary, or using GA, which already exists and is free. If log analytics isn't my core business, why should I spend time implementing it?
There is a very good reason why GA is free to use. It involves building profiles of your users for Google's benefit. Don't be surprised or upset if some of your users don't want to participate in that privacy shit storm.
I used one site which would throw an javascript exception and break because it called part of google analytics from some other function that was needed to make the site work. I ended up opening it up in a private browsing session, and I've got my script blocker disabled there.
Actually, because of this, I tend to temporarily disable blocking at the moment of payment, because there are too many redirects and reloads happening at that time to reliably use a blocker. It partially defeats blocking, but at least they aren't tracking me during regular browsing.
The travel sites I saw blocked didn't fail because of GA blocking I believe, but they were depending on various other scripts. I believe they just had messy code that relied on callbacks from third party scripts -- some of which were blocked by uBlock.
Many sites? I've been blocking GA through ghostery for years and haven't had any problem ever. Only problem with Ghostery i've noticed is blocking Adobe Typekit and some other UI-framework i can't remember the name of, and that is extreeemly rare. Besides, as many others have said, if a site is stupid enough to rely on a third party server for analytics that is their problem, not mine, there are plenty of good analytics alternatives that can be hosted by yourself easily, and there are plenty of good websites out there that i can visit instead if one is not working without GA.
>which is the only way they make money other than ads.
Yeah.
> So, you use the site resources
Yeah.
>don't see ads
Yeah.
> don't add to their user/page view numbers.
Yeah.
>Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc
Yeah.
Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse my trust and displayed popup ads. I wouldn't be doing this if ads were actually targeted (lol jk). Early ads providers fucked it up for everyone. Not only do I hate the very principle of ads, I go out of my way to avoid them.
And most of all, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't Google Analytics. Use piwik, use whatever you want as long as it's selfhosted and doesn't report to <gigantic database of users> and I will allow it. After all, I have no way of knowing if you're selling my data back anyways. It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. You want stats ? Use your own server.
Would you block any analytics tracker - even one that didn't share data with 3rd parties? (i.e. a tracker that was purely to enable to site owners to gain insight into their visitors)
Me too. If I'm visiting a website, I don't mind the operator of the site knowing about my visit or getting some basic stats about usage. It's when they compare notes to make a larger map of my visits across the web that I start getting nervous. And when they use that data to target advertising to me, I start blocking them.
The vast majority of people use ad blockers to block ads. That's why almost no ad blockers block GA, etc by default. Plus, from my other comment: "Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc and blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance)."
> By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor.
They can still use server analytics to see me as a visitor. I even show up on Cloudflare. I don't want them tracking what I do on their site, it should be enough to know I showed up and asked for a specific page. If their business model relies on knowing more, then they chose a lousy business model.
Why is there so much sympathy for ad-supported sites on HN but when other industries with obsolete business models are brought up (like record companies) it's all about "disrupting" them? Have we given up on finding better ways to support content online?
> If their business model relies on knowing more, then they chose a lousy business model.
I must disagree. I certainly understand a desire for privacy and it's definitely within your right to block GA if you feel so inclined, but to assume that sites using GA to track visitors is some sort of shady business model is simply not true.
I've used GA and Heap (Analytics) to obtain extremely granular information about how users traverse a website. This information can be invaluable to businesses in order to understand the thought process that people go through on a website. The underlying goal may be more conversions (sales), but simply using and analyzing data from GA or any other analytics platform isn't going to magically force you to purchase my product/service. These types of insights help identify critical issues with your website - issues such as pages with information that isn't as clear as it could be, or other possible barriers preventing users from signing up. This can be purely technical (i.e. a bug on a specific page), or it could be a lack of information/understanding about your product or service, or many other possibilities.
If you don't trust Google or other similar companies with your data, then you're welcome to block them from tracking you. But I personally don't believe that you should equate the use and analysis of such tracking data as evil in every instance, because it's not.
Yes, ads remain the major e-business model till date (and will probably remain for a long time to come). I guess one of the problems is, everyone needs money to maintain a website and to make a profit, but not everyone has content (or products) that could sell. It's a difficult problem to solve in theory. I think simple text based (or even small images based) ads should be fine .. it's the flashy ones or the ones that delay my workflow that I hate to the core.
"Disrupting" is about replacing an old business model with a _better_ business model. You don't disrupt the old one until _after_ you find a better one.
Ads are not a bad business model. They allow free access to websites, while still allowing websites to pay for hosting costs. They don't discriminate between rich users and poor users. You may be able to afford subscription costs, but children and people in third world countries often can't. Subscriptions _are_ the old business model we're disrupting, anyway. Elsevier wants you to pay $50 to read a paper; Google wants you to have free access to the world's information.
Micropayment systems are hated on mobile games, where they exploit addictive behavior and ruin the experience, and tend not to earn much money if they don't. Donations generate very little money.
Ads are also very easy to set up, which selects for website creators who are passionate about making good sites and other things. Higher-effort business models select for website creators who are passionate about making money.
I will admit that ads are not great. But so far, we've been unable to find anything better.
Many sponsors and partners will not accept log-based self-hosted stats as they can be easily faked. Many will only accept a 3rd party stats site like Google Analytics as they can be provided with a read-only view into it and know that the underlying data isn't faked. It could be gamed, of course, with some effort (botnet of IPs loading pages from the site, etc) but it's much more involved than faking a Piwik report. Of course, many of the blocklists that block GA also block self-hosted Piwik anyway.
There's sympathy for ad-supported sites because that's the vast majority of the internet's content. And micropayments, paid memberships, etc have almost universally failed with the exception of a few very large publishers and a few very specific niche publishers.
> Why is there so much sympathy for ad-supported sites on HN but when other industries with obsolete business models are brought up (like record companies) it's all about "disrupting" them? Have we given up on finding better ways to support content online?
Because there are a lot of users here who run websites and see the business model 'from the other side'... and almost none who work for record companies.
I have no problem with ads per se, only with:
1. any form of tracking across sites, and
2. any unnecessary animation or other movement on the page,[0] and
3. malware.
I will do anything to block these things, ruthlessly.
For #2, I actually still have to use ABP, although most are already blocked by RequestPolicy or NoScript, which I use (combined) for #1 and #3 (combined).
[0] In my opinion, even animation necessary for the main content should be click-to-start, but I cannot currently completely achieve this. But disabling GIF animation plus click-to-activate for plugins gives me most of what I want. NoScript also helps.
I am well placed to speak about the main purpose of uBlock Origin. Here, from front page of the project:
> uBlock Origin (or uBlock₀) is not an ad blocker; it's a general-purpose blocker [...] Ads, "unintrusive" or not, are just the visible portions of privacy-invading apparatus entering your browser when you visit most sites nowadays. uBlock₀'s main goal is to help users neutralize such privacy-invading apparatus [...]
You can enable it per extension in Chrome, so if you want an ad blocker to work in an incognito window just go to chrome://extensions and check the box that says "Allow in incognito" (though allowing an ad blocker to work in incognito mode defeats the purpose of using that mode, at least in the context of this discussion).
I enjoy how efficient Chrome has become as a result of uBlock, but it has a couple niggling issues. The most prominent of which is that embedded videos on a page (like those made on Reddit comment threads via RES) will display the ads, and there's nothing I can really do about it.
If I remember correctly, EasyPrivacy got removed from the default selection quite a while ago. But it was in it when that addon was first presented here, probably where that memory stems from.
> I've been using uBlock now for a while and while it is light and fast, it's is rubbish to use. Exclusions are idiotic, context menu controls don't work, default filters selection is idiotic, it doesn't sync settings like Adblock Edge does, I'm just starting to hate it.
> I'd too like to see AdBlock Edge continue its own development path even if it's not the fastest or lightest. It's still better than all other ad blockers...