Re: [tor-bugs] #25959 [Applications/Tor Browser]: Add uBlock Origin to Tor Browser Bundle

["Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki" <blackhole@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

#25959: Add uBlock Origin to Tor Browser Bundle
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 Reporter:  tremvonk                  |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  enhancement               |         Status:  closed
 Priority:  Medium                    |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                    |     Resolution:  duplicate
 Keywords:  ublock origin, ads        |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                            |         Points:
 Reviewer:                            |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by cypherpunks):

 Replying to [comment:1 sysrqb]:
 > Replying to [ticket:25959 tremvonk]:
 > > I think that Tor browser bundle would benefit from including uBlock
 Origin as an adblocker by default. Consider the benefits:
 > >
 > > 1. **Ads waste bandwidth.** To see just how much I ran tests using Tor
 Browser at medium security level on two major news organizations' sites:
 [https://www.economist.com the Economist] and [https://www.nytimes.com the
 New York Times].
 >
 > But, remember, this is their business model. If you want to visit their
 website and view their content, then they can serve advertisements. We may
 not like it, but it is the price of the content.
 True, but TB users are a tiny statistically insignificant portion of the
 overall number of browsers users (think Chrome, Firefox, ...etc) so it
 doesn't matter if you break or don't break their ads. Also the OP
 should've said "trackers, ads, junk, rubbish, stupid-JS-Crypto-miners"
 instead of just "ads".

 > > 2. **It makes TBB more usable.** Blocking that many MB of ads can only
 make the webpage load faster and gives an overall nicer user experience
 (does anybody really want to see those ads?) which, in turn, helps
 encourage more people use TBB.
 >
 > In general, encouraging more people use the "safer" security setting
 seems more useful than including another addon.
 Do you mean "safest"? Since with "safer" it's actually worse since JIT is
 disabled, although it's effective against the audio/video annoyance.

 > 75% of users is a large set. If Tor Browser blocks ads then we give
 website operators one more reason for why they block connections from the
 Tor network. We're already fighting this fight for other reasons.
 That's true unfortunately :'( (By the way the 75% number is wrong since
 Chrome blocks some ads in some websites by default)

 -------

 Overall I agree that some form of blacklist should be employed in the Tor
 Browser against the various forms of junk (trackers, JS crypto miners,
 ...etc) that lurk on many websites to save bandwidth and for performance
 and security. I don't think the addon approach to such a blacklist can be
 accepted by the fine TB folks (from a fingerprinting approach uBlock is a
 disaster, what if someone has filter lists from a few months ago? What if
 someone tempers with the default filter lists and enables other ones?),
 however enabling the default Firefox' Tracking Protection list is a good
 approach and a good starting point and doesn't have the same problems as
 with uBlock. Also Mozilla announced that they'll take a more offensive
 approach to ads, "[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap in 2018,
 Firefox will get more opinionated. People on the web deserve a browser
 that represents people first, a browser that isn't neutral when it comes
 to advertising, tracking and other dark patterns on the web]".

 However, there's another bandwidth saving solution that I think doesn't
 conflict with the design document and can be accepted by the fine TB team
 which is the Decentraleyes addon which blocks requests to popular JS
 libraries from CDNs (jQuery, Modernizr, ...) and serves them locally,
 there's a ticket for it here: #22089. Your input(s) to that is welcome.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25959#comment:3>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online

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