We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the …

  • helloworld55@lemm.ee
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    2 hours ago

    Can I just add a different perspective on this?

    My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.

    Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on. Queue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.

    I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an “Acceptable ad standard”? Like, maybe even something within web specs?

      A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We’ve had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn’t pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.

      That is…perhaps a vain hope though. It’s just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.

    • derpgon@programming.dev
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      2 hours ago

      Buy a Raspberry PI, install PiHole or AdGuard, change router DNS, and you are good to go. Yes, not perfect, but doesn’t rely on a browser extension that can go extinct next time the browser decides it is time for a change.