
UBlock vs. ABP: efficiency compared - diziet
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared
======
pilooch
Since deep learning is dominating the news these days, this might be the
opportunity to point to the potential new ways of dealing with ad blocking.
One is using character-based convolutional (or recurrent) networks that read
the URL characters and classify it as legit or ad.

The interesting gain here is that there's no more conflicting regex nor
optimization to work on huge lists of blocking rules. Instead, URLs can be
passed to the network in batches.

I have conducted my own set of experiments and a usable deep model is
available (see
[http://www.deepdetect.com/applications/text_model/](http://www.deepdetect.com/applications/text_model/)
).

This is kinda shameful plug, but I'm really interested in feedback on these
new ways of ad blocking with high accuracy.

For sure running a deep net service is not as easy as installing ublock but
there are ways. The whole source code is Open Source, as is the model. I have
more data at hand, and some larger models could be built. Performance
assessment would be a good next step as well.

EDIT: the linked page is rather long, lookup 'Novel task' to get to a quick
classification example

~~~
Pharaoh2
Part of the requirement of adblock software is to inject itself into the
request pipeline in realtime and reject ad requests while at the same time
causing as small a stall as possible and also using the least amount of
resources. NN's running inside a browser don't satisfy any of those criterias.

~~~
pilooch
Not inside a browser of course. If you consider enterprise-wide applications,
NN would be better and possibly faster (with GPU) than a bluecoat proxy.

~~~
Pharaoh2
I am still unconvinced if NN provide any advantage over regular expressions in
this domain since it's not a hard problem to solve. Also, the request needs to
be rejected before the connection is made so the only data to work with is the
HTTP request headers.

On an enterprise level, a better challenge to solve with NN would be to create
a asic accelerated neural net hardware to filter packets/connections of
IPS/IDS and firewall purpose with an extra ability of also possibly blocking
advert.

------
supersan
Apart from efficiency the most important difference between these two is that
Adblock has a default Whitelist which allows certain type of ads to pass (i.e.
by charging advertisers like Google and Taboola millions of dollars to unblock
their ads).

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-
taboo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-
adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2)

~~~
hrvbr
And reversely uBlock Origin doesn't block ads on Twitter and Tumblr, which
makes it much less useful to me than Adblock Plus.

~~~
sccxy
I don't see any ads on these sites using uBlock Origin. Maybe it is your
problem?

Time to update filter lists.

------
personjerry
Would there be a difference between the UBlock mentioned here and the UBlock
Origin that's notably separate?

~~~
bdz
Yes. This is Ublock Origin.

The other one is simply Ublock

[https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock](https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/ublock)

~~~
personjerry
Ah, the article itself didn't say origin anywhere. Thank you.

------
Nexxxeh
uBlock Origin is also available on Firefox for Android. It's by far my
favourite mobile browsing combo.

~~~
noir_lord
Agreed, Firefox for Android isn't quite as slick as Chrome (yet) but not
having to deal with obnoxious full page adds with tiny tap targets is a
massive win.

~~~
elinchrome
I use adguard vpn to add an extra layer of ad blocking on my phone. Also I
block ads at the router at home.

------
driverdan
This is from a year ago. It's most likely out of date.

~~~
yAnonymous
Yes. uBlock Origin wins by an even bigger margin now, because it's being
optimized further while the folks at Adblock are busy counting money.

------
sysret
Funny that they are using HN for an exemplary web page for their benchmarks.

HN does not require JavaScript.

Even without using an ad blocker, if the user disables JavaScript, a large
percentage of "ad tech" will not work. And ads will not be served.

Then the game becomes how to get the user to turn on JavaScript for some other
functionality.

~~~
mobiuscog
Mostly, the 'game' is the fact that the site just doesn't work without
Javascript.

HN is a very nice exception of keeping things simple.

------
netheril96
So, what is the cause of this improved efficiency?

------
alimbada
I use the original AdBlock for Chrome (not ABP). One of its features that I
find indispensable is the ability to sync custom filters, filter lists and
settings via Dropbox as I use Chrome on at least 3 different machines. I'd be
willing to switch to uBlock Origin if it had a sync feature.

~~~
agildehaus
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-
storage](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage)

It does.

------
a_imho
Efficiency as in resource usage, not in blocked items.

~~~
alimbada
Also, not in terms of speed; ad blockers tend to slow down web page rendering
especially on pages where there are a lot of ads.

------
ywecur
* UBlock Origin

------
XzetaU8
A bit more recent comparison

"10 Ad Blocking Extensions Tested for Performance"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10127971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10127971)

------
gumby
Why is blocking as a browser extension common but blocking with a proxy not? I
use a proxy[ _] which means I get ad blocking in my mail client, RSS reader
etc. Is a proxy too much work?

[_] I use glimmerblocker. It's OK, the biggest "problem" is that I had to do a
lot of tuning -- I think it's just one developer. And I had to write some code
to get it to support HTTPS traffic (basically my proxy on my own machine had
to perform a MITM "attack" on my behalf).

~~~
nfbush
Because there is more friction in setting up an ad blocking proxy, secondly
your usage patterns differ from the normal where a majority are almost
completely browser dependent

------
anonymousab
It would be interesting to see if ABP has improved since this benchmark was
done.

They seemed to be making honest strides to improve it.

------
kirk21
UBlock breaks Youtube for me.

~~~
sdfin
With UBlock Origin, I can see Youtube without problem.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I've started having this problem as well. YouTube videos with ads return an
error for about a minute, then start. I've started just disabling it on
YouTube.

------
SimeVidas
What are the findings?

------
d0100
UBlock Origin might be faster, but after I installed it, several websites lost
their css formating... ABP just works well enough.

~~~
degenerate
I've used UO for over a year and never had a single css file get removed. Any
specific sites you mind mentioning?

------
known
[http://www.alternate-dns.com/](http://www.alternate-dns.com/) can filter ads
at dns level

~~~
diziet
I would go with a hosts file solution as it is something you can control
yourself in case you need to.

~~~
SquareWheel
It solves a lot of efficiency problems, but is hell for debugging a broken
webpage. For that reason I feel the browser extension justifies its footprint.

