undefined | Better HN

0 pointssamatman6y ago0 comments

I haven't read the article, and I'm not what you'd call well-versed in the history of ad blocking.

But even I know that uBlock was bought out and introduced 'acceptable ads', and that uBlock Origin became the community fork which maintains the spirit of the original uBlock.

That deserves more than a footnote, imho.

0 comments

ripdog6y ago

Acceptable ads was introduced by adblock plus, and it remains their primary revenue source.

uBlock is the original version of uBlock origin. Both were started by gorhill4 (sp?). Gorhill got sick of the constant support burden of people coming into his repo and reporting unblocked ads, which he then had to redirect to the filter list repos.

He handed the entire project off to some teenager with little programming experience. Said teenager did little but make a new website and request donations, core work basically halted.

Afterwards, gorhill got sick of seeing his old project be abandoned and get a bad reputation, and forked it as uBlock origin.

Thus, uBlock origin is not a community fork.

ameshkov6y ago

Acceptable ads deserves being there, you are right.

This was the first attempt at finding a compromise with advertisers, hated by a huge part of users and advertisers at the same time. But it was launched by Adblock Plus in 2011, long before uBlock was developed.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse