this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 301 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 97 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

There is a difference between "free & open source" and "free because you don't pay with money".

The first means it can be peer reviewed by anyone to make sure they aren't doing anything shady.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah that's right. Really, the difference is between free software and free services.

Software can be free and open source and that can be a viable model, even a preferable model. Services can not be free without some party being exploited. In the best of cases this means services are provided by volunteers (and they are being exploited), but more commonly in business, it's the users who are being exploited.

But as a rule, you should be suspicious of free services.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

UBO is also free as in beer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

That's why we need to start using libre

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

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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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 163 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"From the founder of Honey." Which means that stealing code and affiliate links is just the surface of shady stuff they are up to.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Look up the PayPal mafia. Tldr: their founders are overthrowing the world's oldest democracy at the moment.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

they're up to something in Greece?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

What’s the worlds oldest democracy?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

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/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

The founder still made it do what it does.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Depends when all of that functionality was added in. Honey started as a legit coupon scraping extension back in 2012, and was sold to PayPal in 2020. Somewhere in the last 12 years, someone got a bit too greedy.

Reminds me of the story of AdBlock - helpful extension gets a huge market share, people get greedy, it gets sold to a for-profit, and starts doing shady deals with the people it's supposed to be "working against".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Um, PayPal paid $4,000,000,000 to buy Honey. $4 billion. Now, think about how much profit Honey would have had to been generating for PP to look at the numbers and buy it for that much. However it "started", the functionality to steal was in there before they sold it to PayPal

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Who in their right mind would use this bootleg piece of shit when uBO exists?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

More than that, they’re also hijacking affiliate links.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago

Probably people who see a big banner about uBO no longer being supported in Chrom(e)ium

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Old people who still believe that if you're paying for a product it must be better, right?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

I did a double take at first- PiHole, how could you!!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago

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 ?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

The majority of ads on YouTube for the last 3+ months have been Pie, even after blocking dozens of them.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

If you're getting ads for an adblocker, it might be time to get an adblocker (but not that one).

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

And then sell to a big company

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Isnt that a GPL violation?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, as mentioned in the first sentence of the article

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, it sounds like they were violating GPL.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Isn't that illegal? What kind of license is uBO under?

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The very first sentence of the article answers these exact two questions.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Guy belongs behind bars

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Totally foolish. Either don't use the code if the license doesn't allow commercial use, or leave the license notice in place. It's pretty straightforward.

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