
Adblock filter rule list modified politically in Finland - Maakuth
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/285
======
occamrazor
Adblocking list should be what their name says: lists that match ads (and
advertising-related trackers). There is no place in such a list for
politically motivated blacklists.

Content based blacklists have their place too. Users are of course free to
create hate-speech-block, union-block, trump-block, liberal-block, nazi-block
or any-other-category-block, but if these lists are distributed through an
adblocker they should be off by default and clearly labeled.

~~~
VMG
I really wish the internet would be client-side filtered by default, instead
of centrally moderated.

We'll end up with filter bubbles either way.

~~~
Cyclone_
Adblock plus is a client side plugin, the issue was that the blacklist was
maintained by someone who wanted to block more than ads. Perhaps there needs
to be reviewers from multiple sources for when changes are made to these sort
of lists.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Requiring a review before release requires a rather large change to how the
current system works, adding more centralization, and slows down how quickly
new threats can be blocked. This event took two days to notice and be changed,
and that's for a list with a relatively low amount of users. The current
method seems fine.

------
TorKlingberg
The fundamental problem is that these filter lists are maintained by random
volunteers, who everyone just assumes are trustworthy.

The browser makers avoid the issues by having ad-blockers be third-party
extensions. The extension makers don't make the filter lists either, they just
import from EasyList and similar. It's surprising there arent't more cases of
corruption and broken trust.

I wish I could get ad-blocking some somebody I can trust. Unfortunately the
only way to turn ad-blocking into a business is to charge advertisers to un-
block them. That defeats the whole purpose of ad blocking, and is basically
blackmail.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I'm not familiar with it but aren't Apple doing things with built-in
adblocking these days?

As an aside (but still relating to your comment) I tend to trust my adblocker
based on the "many eyeballs" theory and I think the OP and ensuing discussion
here is proof that the system mostly works.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I know Firefox uses Disconnect.me's filter lists, which do have a company
backing them.

I trust gorhill to make the right decisions when it comes to uBlock Origin and
the filter lists it uses, based on his previous track record, his stance on
Adblock's "acceptable ads" and his refusal to take donations from anyone.

I don't necessarily trust the individual list maintainers[1], but I do trust
that gorhill will quickly purge any filter lists that try to put in shady
changes.

[1] I do trust the maintainer of the DNK list. He's a former colleague of
mine, and I know how strictly principled he is in regards to ads and tracking.

~~~
fjsolwmv
How much is gorhill paid, and by whom, and for how long can he be expected to
be The One?

~~~
KozmoNau7
As fair as I know, nothing and by no one.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-
accept-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-
donations%3F)

He'll work on it for as long as he feels like it. I've made sure to thank him
for his work and signal that I appreciate what he does very much indeed. All
in the hope that he will continue the good work.

Will the project die at some point? Maybe. Or maybe someone will take over.
Maybe another better adblocker will come along. The need is there, as long as
ads/trackers exist.

------
lolc
A volunteer abusing their position? You get that in the best of projects.

> Remove FIN-0 list due to breach of trust

Looks like u-block is handling this well.

------
TekMol
I found that for me a whitelist makes more sense then a blacklist.

I use umatrix with these two default rules:

    
    
        * * * block
        * 1st-party * allow
    

So by default a site can load whatever it wants from its own domain and
nothing from 3rd party domains.

Then I add rules as needed. The Umatrix interface makes this super easy.

~~~
simias
Can you teach me this skill? I usually don't mind steep learning curves and
taking a while to familiarize myself with a piece of technology if I believe
that I'll end up benefiting from it (I type in dvorak, use a tiling window
manager, I'm a shell power user etc...) but try as I might I just can't wrap
my head around umatrix.

I understand what it does, I just don't understand how to use it effectively.
Like I just tried it: I enabled uMatrix and went on the website of the NY
Times. I end up with a rather large matrix with a bunch of domains like
"a.nytimes.com", "api.nytimes.com", "samizdat-graphql.nytimes.com",
"optimizely.com", "js-sec.indexwww.com" and many others, includind a bunch of
google and amazon domains.

How am I supposed to figure out what I should whitelist in there? Trial and
error?

There are a few obvious candidates for blacklisting (amazon-adsystem.com for
instance) but I'm sure that those would already be blocked by my uBlock
filters. Actually so far uBlock with a few ad + privacy enhancing filters seem
to do a decent job which makes uMatrix even more frustrating because I feel
like I'm doing something by hand that uBlock does just fine automatically.

But at the same time I often see people praise uMatrix here on HN and that
makes me feel inadequate and noobish so I really want to understand what I'm
not understanding.

~~~
kozziollek
Not sure if you know, but you don't need uMatrix when using uBlock Origin - it
has build in the same functionality. You just need to tell uBlock that you're
advanced user by checking option in settings.

What TekMol is using sounds like Hard Mode. Personally, I chose Medium Mode
(blocking only 3rd-party scripts) as there isn't much difference between them.
[1]

[1]: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-
mode](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode)

~~~
phjesusthatguy3
Thank you for posting that, I had no idea it existed. I've been running both
but this looks like something I could get used to.

------
stevenjohns
It's crazy that the maintainer of that list thought this would be a good idea.
This is a huge breach of trust.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Just practically, anything that's going to have a political effect seems like
it would stand out and get your meddling noticed.

------
jarcane
That was fast. Not only has the list been yanked from hosting, but Juvander
Consulting, who was responsible for it, has deleted the Facebook page for the
list, and all mention of it from their site, even scrubbing old blog entries
about it.

~~~
JdeBP
In fairness, Ilpo Juvander's web log stopped getting AdBlock entries in 2015,
the same time as xyr Twitter account stopped getting entries, and the web log
ceased getting any entries at all in 2017.

~~~
jarcane
True, but that makes it all the more weird that they'd delete them in the
first place. It's like they wanted to remove any evidence they were involved
at all.

The only remaining indication is the domain, and their iOS app that's still up
on the App Store.

------
ezoe
I am becoming to doubt the value of adblock and the mindset of filter
maintainers these days.

It cause a lot of issues on their side but the customer blame the server.

I've heard a story that web-based game not working for some people for no
apparent reason.

The developer used their psychic power and change the file name of image files
which was something like "foo_ads_bar.png"(the user supplied error log
indicated they faild to fetch that resources which shouldn't happen) to not
contains the "ads". And he got less bug report.

The image file was not AD but a essential resource for the web-based game.
Blocking that, you break the game implementation.

Blanket blocking based on partial three-letter string match on client side?
Fine do what you want. It's your computer after all. But don't come toward us
crying for help because it's non of our problem.

~~~
sucrose
Similar situation: The company I work for uses the word "ads" in their
website's asset filenames, for all images. When uBo is enabled, their website
is basically text-only. They were oblivious until my first day when I
mentioned I reviewed their website from home.

------
patd
Shameless plug: I'm building BlockedBy.com, a tool to monitor adblock rules
that start blocking your content. Adding them is very quick but removing them
isn't and you start getting a lot of complains from your users.

I've had the issue at one of my projects where an overly broad rule blocked
all my images.

~~~
fjsolwmv
That's technologically cool, but isn't "switch from adblock to uMatrix" a more
direct and comprehensive solution?

~~~
patd
The target audience is website owners.

If my users are all using list based blockers (adblock, uBlock, mobiles,
proxies, ...) and those lists block my content, I'd like to know quickly so I
can appeal to the list maintainers.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Even in the rare instance you convince a list maintainer, forking a list is
trivial. If your content is being blocked, stop tracking your users.

~~~
yorwba
What if it's a false positive due to overly-broad heuristics? For example, try
looking at
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ads](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ads) with
Adblock enabled. It shows a blank page for me. (Actually I just wanted to see
whether "ads" might have a different meaning in another language.)

~~~
fivefive55
I've been noticing this a lot more lately. Lots of websites have broken
elements from my adblocker. I have to turn it off and reload the page to get
those elements to load. A lot of the time they aren't even close to ads, it's
like a drop down menu or button that doesn't render.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Though false positives happen, an ad can also contain the code for another
part of the site. Most common is a site using some kind of Google script that
could be an ad or tracking.

~~~
patd
The goal of the service is not to be an anti adblock tool. It's futile and
publishers I've discussed with start to realize this more and more.

The goal is to let you know if you're about to be impacted by a false
positive. I've been there and it sucks as your users leave your site or
contact your support team.

------
sharpneli
This is not precisely about the filter list but the whole shenanigans that led
to it. Persons from other countries might be interested in this little quirk
of Finland. Especially as it relates to workers rights in general.

In Finland, unique among Nordic countries, political strikes are allowed. What
does this mean? Let's say you're not happy about a decision made by Trump you
can go to a strike. Sure the company doesn't have to pay you but they also
must allow you to come back to work without repercussions when you decide.
It's basically unlimited unpaid holiday. Or alternatively keeping the employer
hostage in order to affect the behavior of an unrelated third party.

So obviously we as a country are bit torn on the issue as what can the
employer do about it? Go to white house and take Trump as hostage so that he
would change his decision? It is also questionable from democratic
perspective. Why should a subset of population have more saying than the rest.
Shouldn't everyone have a single vote and based on that decisions are made.
Instead of a minority having a vote + a veto right.

Similar overreactions like this adblock may come as right now bunch of major
unions are protesting against government and that has brought political
strikes back into limelight.

~~~
ahje
The fact that people are abusing tools for ad-blocking to achieve political
goals is a major breach of trust. This is the main issue.

For the record, political strikes happen in the other Nordic countries as
well. According to a quick search on the Internet, the only Nordic citizens
who are _not_ allowed to partake in a political strike are public servants in
Sweden.

~~~
Jolter
Correction on that: any employee in Sweden is forbidden from striking if they
are currently bound by a collective bargaining agreement. This means strikes
are only legally recognized as strikes in the period between the expiry of an
agreement, and the signing of the next one. This is generally every three
years.

In other words, political strikes are effectively banned i Sweden.

I'm not aware of any exception to this rule for public servants but I could be
wrong.

~~~
jahaja
You're not bound by the CBA if you're in another union that has no CBA with
the company. Sadly, there are ongoing attempts to stop this.

~~~
ahje
Ah, that's it -- I remember now. Basically you're free to go on strike unless
you have agreed not to. If you do, it will simply be treated as a breach of
the agreement and the other party will be able to sue for damages.

So yeah, strikes are perfectly legal.

------
teknologist
I’m eagerly waiting for the Brave AI-based blocking to be rolled out. That
will hopefully be a start to the end of unwieldy and hard to maintain filter
lists in general. I know there are lot of good people who put time into these
things, but the blacklisting techniques these extensions use seem rather
outdated in 2018.

~~~
cirenehc
ML is not magic, it's just statistics.

~~~
teknologist
Thanks for that input. Fully aware of that. Just saying that using a
statistical model would be much better than huge lists of URLs.

------
xte
IMVHO this is the umpteenth sign that WE MUST GO NOW for distributed or if not
actually possible for decentralized tech. NOW. Sorry for the caps.

It go nice with
[https://lwn.net/Articles/768483/](https://lwn.net/Articles/768483/) in FOSS
world we must understand actual IT evolution path and know how we work freely
in the past.

So please reconsider Usenet, advertise it, enforce email instead of ANY actual
"communication platform" from WhatsApp to Slack passing trough Reddit,
StackExchange etc. We know that finding past information on usenet for
newcomers it's not as easy as these modern platform, but we have wiki's,
blog's for that. We need to act now us all, anybody who understand because
tomorrow it will be too late.

------
AdmiralAsshat
This isn't the first time bad-faith alterations have been made to filter rule
lists. The maintainer of a popular porn site (can't remember off the top of my
head which one) famously requested a special exemption for the ads on his
site.

------
vbezhenar
Adblock broke websites more than once for me. `.btn.btn-primary { display:
none }` and similar things. They are fixed relatively fast, but if user uses
adblock, he must be aware that this addon can and will broke websites, so he
must know how to disable it if something doesn't work. Not saying that
politics has place in adblock, of course, but worse things happened.

------
islandowl
I run a Raspberry Pi/Pi-hole along with uBlock Origin w/ all filters enabled,
Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, Webmail Ad Block, Tracking Token Stipper, Neat
URL, and No Coin. I also have about:config set to disallow referers,
fingerprinting, sites reading history, no geo location, etc. Works a treat.

