No Adblocker Detected
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
maurycyz.comTechstoryHigh profile
heatedmixed
Debate
80/100
AdblockersOnline AdvertisingWeb Development
Key topics
Adblockers
Online Advertising
Web Development
A website detects whether visitors are using adblockers and displays a polite notice asking them to consider using uBlock Origin, sparking a debate about the ethics of adblock detection and the role of online advertising.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
1h
Peak period
70
0-6h
Avg / period
17.8
Comment distribution160 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 8, 2025 at 9:09 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 8, 2025 at 10:38 PM EDT
1h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
70 comments in 0-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 12, 2025 at 2:59 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45176206Type: storyLast synced: 11/22/2025, 11:47:55 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
Instead of adblockers, I remember sites that are user hostile one way or another and just avoid those sites. Those sites that are heavy on ads usually aren't worth my time anyway, so the presence of those auto-playing videos in every corner ends up being a signal for me to go somewhere else.
I wonder if they actually watch the ads on purpose, even in private or if they turn their adblocker off just for the video, as not to give ideas to their viewers and potentially losing ad revenue.
The chance that he was using one the whole damn time? 100%
Perhaps only enables js when user clicks something.
By farbling I mean making the data look like it's the most common Windows configuration, for example.
You will have messed up layouts and unneeded quirks. Moreover, banks are using fingerprinting to detect fraud so you will have a hard time on those websites as well.
And more importantly.
https://xkcd.com/1105/
Of course I wouldn't farble on my bank's website, that would be pretty stupid.
But by default I would want trackers to get the farbled data, and only allowlist the websites I trust. Same trust concept as with uBlock Origin, NoScript and others.
I have been thinking about some kind of render proxy that runs all the JS for you somewhere else in a sandbox and sends you the screenshot or rendered HTML instead. Or maybe we could leverage an LLM to turn the Bloated JS garbage into the actual information you are looking for.
Nah, this is just straight up false. Many pages work fine with NoScript blocking all scripts. For those that don't, you usually only have to allowlist the root domain, but you can still leave the other 32 domains they are importing blocked. It's actually surprisingly common for blocking JS to result in a better experience than leaving it enabled (eg no popups, no videos, getting rid of fade-ins and other stupid animations).
I won't argue if you think that is too much work, and I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a non-technical user, but it's not nearly as bad as you described.
I wasn't clear, but this is about my experience. Maybe you are in a different bubble. But I'm not able to book a hotel, browse GitHub, file my taxes, make a bank transfer or even look up the menu of a restaurant.
The only exceptions for me are HN and a handful of news websites.
That’s a pretty crazy statement. How often do you see loading a CSS stylesheet fail to load? Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets and I don’t recall the last time I saw a stylesheet fail to load.
Often. It might have something to do with my adblock settings though...
> Most sites are completely unusable without their stylesheets
Those sites are generally completely trash anyway.
I wouldn't say often, but it certianly happens often enough that I make sure my own designs work well enough (the content is visible at least, even if it is hellish ugly) if external resources like that fail to load.
The most frequent cause is a site that is overloaded due to a hug from HN or similar, the main request going through OK but some of the subsequent ones timing out. It is getting less common with servers that support HTTP2/HTTP3 so pipeline better, as the usual failure point in these cases is in opening a connection not while reading the response (or the server generating that response).
It can also happen if static content is served from a different place, and that is down but the host serving the main content is not.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230219020056/https://www.ic3.g...
Malware is absolutely distributed through ads. In the case of more reputable ad platforms that don’t allow arbitrary scripts, it’s by linking to malware, but they’re also used to serve drive-by exploits.
> You have higher chance of getting a malware from `pnpm add` than seeing an ad on the web.
If you’re a normal computer user who browses the web without an ad blocker and never runs `pnpm add`, the relevant chance is a little different. (Fun side fact: current pnpm wisely doesn’t run install scripts by default.)
https://www.techradar.com/news/this-fake-gimp-google-ad-just...
Ads are basically running a program they wrote on your computer. If there’s any exploitable feature in your browser’s JS sandbox, count on someone sending you an ad that will exploit it.
I'm skeptical that inside counsel would really have an issue with adblock or a moderate approach -- whitelist a subset of a subset of sites like YouTube that they might see risk.
The benefits are tremendous.
I found the Orion browser and am never touching Safari again.
Banks, Defense, etc.
Do your part.
Of course highlighting this fact that the presence of an adblocker is detectable, unfortunately only results in escalating the cat-and-mouse game further.
I have also considered popularising a script that replaces the whole page's content with "JavaScript detected, please disable it to view this content and improve your security".
Find something off the beaten path that works for you and it will rarely need updates.
This is exactly what most dark net markets do.
Whether it is technically enforceable in your particular case may be the question. But historically, it has been enforced outside the EU.
As you live in the Bay Area - the CCPA and the CPRA, which are similar in many ways and seem to require an opt-out mechanism (e.g. if you operate a commercial website with >100k devices accessing it during a year).
Talk to a lawyer, don't take advice from strangers on the internet.
Why don't we have a browser flag that sends a request header telling the site our preference automatically so we can avoid these popups?
This causes all the stupid GDPR popup sites to not "remember" my preferences because they ironically need to use a cookie to store the preference of declining cookies, so they appear again each time because my browser doesn't store that decline cookie between sessions.
I disagree with this. Tencent WeChat targets the entire world, including people living in the EU. They do not follow GDPR.
Likewise, Facebook targets people living everywhere, including in China. They do not follow Chinese laws.
Hence, China sets up a firewall and blocks Facebook.
EU can set up a firewall too if they don't like something.
"Oh but EU doesn't do firewalls?" Not my problem. Tough luck. China, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, all did it, you can too if you have beef with foreign websites.
But no, I do not need to follow EU law just because EU users use my thing. It's on them to firewall it if they don't like my website.
> CCPA and the CPRA
This is fine. I live in California, I need to follow California law, and I can choose to live somewhere else if I don't like it. What I'm not okay with is some distant jurisdiction thinking they can make laws that I "need" to follow.
The law is (paraphrasing) "You must use cookies or similar to be evil without permission". Advertising companies decided that instead of not being evil, they'd annoy users into giving permission.
And attention and privacy.
This notice is a great idea.
I might remove the "like" from the notice, since "uBlock Origin" is good, but some others are questionable or even outright malware.
BTW, note that the `ublockorigin.com` Web site that is linked to isn't by Raymond Hill, leader of uBlock Origin. It looks well-intended, and is nicely polished UX, but good practice would be to be careful (since it doesn't appear to be under Hill's control, and is an additional point of potential compromise in what would be very valuable malware). Hill seems to operate from <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock>. One link that isn't too bad to view <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md>. Another that isn't great but OK is <https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki>.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock?tab=readme-ov-file#ublock-...
The recent PuTTY domain squatting debacle has made me suspicious, and indeed... if you look closer, you'll notice that the owner of ublockorigin.com is also advertising his completely unrelated products in a "my other tools" section.
I knew they recently added a new official page under https://putty.software but was unaware of any squatting debacle. For those wanting to know more: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_cont...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
As for YouTube, blocking their ads is basically a part-time job at this point. On the desktop it breaks once a month, on Android NewPipe stopped working recently, and soon you won't be even able to install third party clients.
90% of my YouTube use is on my smart TV. There's not really a straightforward way to block ads there. Used to be many years ago that a PiHole or similar would work, but they clued onto that years ago.
There's also this email from YouTube support: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1gnaetv/paying_to_...
It reads:
> While YouTube Premium provides an ad-free experience for most content, promotional ads can sometimes appear for specific partnerships or limited-time offers. These promotions are often targeted based on various factors, including your location, viewing history, and account settings.
It periodically has issues loading videos when Google change something, but the app gets updated every time within a day.
I spend less in nominal terms, let alone inflation terms, for my tv entertainment now than I did 20 year ago, even with Disney, Netflix, bbc, Paramount and YouTube subscriptions.
I do not regularly visit such sites. I do unblock websites that I return to often.
I use uBlock Origin, plus I've configured my Firefox to open YouTube always in a dedicated container, that logs me out of any Google-related stuff as I never upvote or comment anyway. Browsing YouTube anonymously might have helped.
If that happens to you, this thread [1] is sometimes updated with manual workarounds that sometimes work:
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1jbv1xn/youtu...I would gladly pay for an independent alternative but I will never pay for Youtube Premium on principle [1]. If these workarounds stop working I'll just use third party clients all the time, I already use SmartTube on TV.
[1] If I give you my money, I want you to respect me as a customer. Google will continue tracking me, abuse my personal information, and almost certainly re-introduce ads at some point in the future in pursuit of infinite growth. It's never going to be enough, the only winning move (with them) is not to play.
Thanks, that explains a lot, why i sometime have trouble with youtube, while having perfectly fine internet connection.
I should sniff traffic to find out why, but my assumption is that it's a mix of CRL bloat and code bloat.
I don't mean this as an attack on you. I find it perplexing that this could be such a difficult thing. If a video isn't worth waiting 10-60 seconds for, is the video even worth watching? Consider a comparison to reading a book or watching a DVD. With the DVD you must stand up, walk to the DVD, remove the plastic wrap, turn on the DVD player place the DVD in the tray, wait for the tray to close, load the DVD, wait for the main menu to load, and finally press play to watch your movie. (potentially after navigating through settings to configure audio / subtitles / etc)
The DVD experience could obvious be _better_ (and if you don't care about picture quality you might be shocked how much more convenient a VHS tape is) but this hardly strikes me as any sort of real problem.
Youtube might actually be doing you an accidental favor here; it is the extreme reduction of friction which degrades your impulse control, and is part of what keeps you on the platform too long. By imposing an small but perceptible cost, they might actually keep from your zoning out and watching and instead intentionally watching only the videos you care the most about.
I won't know that until the video starts playing. I'm not watching a 90 minute movie here and I don't know if the video I'm about to play is the one I want. Spending a minute setting up a 90 minute movie is very different than spending a minute waiting for a video to load that I'm likely going to spend <30 seconds on.
Maybe I'm learning how to use certain software and I'm trying to find a video that demonstrates how to use a specific feature. In that case I might be clicking through 10+ videos to find the niche thing I'm looking for. If I was just vegging out on Youtube this wouldn't bother me nearly as much.
And don't forget that the time penalty doesn't only apply to the initial load, it would pause and fake-buffer every time I jumped around the video.
I'm surprised they haven't gone for the "refuse to serve the video stream for 20 seconds or however long the ad would take" card yet, although it's probably a matter of time.
yeah, I often download things via yt-dlp to watch later and I'm encountering frequent failures that I assume are related to the whack-a-mole yt has been doing for the last two years or so.
NewPipe has been working for me as of late though, and I've not updated it in some time (although my use is infrequent)
Regardless, your argument surrounding the insult was well worn 20 years ago. And so was the first response; why would I pay into some nebulous system where I don't know how much is really going to whom?
One of the nicer things about the hellscape that is the modern internet is the low-friction ability to pay creators directly.
...oh, I know why! Because if I pay Google, then Sundar pinky swears not to mercilessly track and monetize everything I do on youtube. \s
> Are ad hominems back in vogue?
GP was simply mirroring the language of its parent post:
> Whenever someone just doesn't seem to care i'm concerned something is wrong with them.
Which IMO is indeed way out of line.
Speaking for myself, no, nothings “wrong” with me. I watch YouTube enough that I consider it a valuable service. So do what you may think is insane: I pay for it. And it gives me no ads.
I sat on calls with teachers at my previous job and they had no extensions installed. My own sister (a milennial) wasn't aware. Before that, I was at a place where devs could join UX interviews; it was even worse given the generational divide: older folks couldn't even tell when a link was obviously malicious.
We either install good browsers/extensions for our relatives, or let them be easy prey to the current state of affairs.
Mr Krabs voice: money!
No but seriously, if the FBI is telling you to use an ad blocker, use a fucking ad blocker.
My workplace doesn't allow ad blockers for security. Except ads are a MUCH bigger security concern and everyone knows it.
I'm so sick and tired of everyone playing dumb and acting like it's fine. No, it's not fine. Its not okay that Google is serving you a phishing ad that drains your bank account. They should be held liable. Why is everyone acting like their balls have been chopped off?
Do something about it. Minimum is run an aggressive ad blocker. MINIMUM!
> There's no insider trading angle at all
Such a blanket statement would definitely be wrong in the UK for example. Insider trading is defined at Section 52(1) of the Criminal Justice act 1993 as: "(1)An individual who has information as an insider is guilty of insider dealing if, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (3), he deals in securities that are price-affected securities in relation to the information."
Whether you trigger the offence depends on a number of factors such as whether the information is "inside" information and whether you were an "insider" (these terms are defined in subsequent sections of the Act). As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading.
I'm not particularly familiar with the US legal system so I can't claim you're wrong there.
> As an example, if you were an employee of a listed company (not such an unlikely scenario given the capital requirements to pull this off) that was about to engage in the proposed scheme (publishing pro-adblock adverts) and it wasn't yet publicly known (which would be necessary if you want the scheme to be fully effective), and you shorted Google shares, you could easily fall foul of insider trading.
Yeah, that isn't the scenario described earlier at all. Here's what was proposed:
> I wonder if you could spend a few million on promoting adblockers to justify a short position on Google or Meta.
In this sentence, the entity performing the short and performing the advertising are one and the same.
You're reading "you" to mean the reader (highly implausible), I'm reading it as the generic/impersonal "you" (as in "one could spend...").
So sure, there are a tiny percentage of people who might consider doing this themselves and they don't need to worry about insider trading (although we're still pretty close to market manipulation where the sole purpose of the adverts is to crash the share price and profit from that). A much larger percentage of people who might consider such a thing would need to at least examine whether they might trigger insider trading laws.
Blanket statements don't work here.
Pump and dumps are fraud because you lie about the target stock in order to achieve the pump. The lying is a crucial element to make it fraudulent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading
US law does not generally prohibit insiders from trading. It prohibits doing so only in breach of some obligation to keep that information private[2] ("in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence").
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45178318
[2]: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
That's not correct. I started this particular sub-thread, and in my original comment I specifically said that the answer is jurisdiction dependent. Your reply may have been US-centric but the overall topic was not.
i guess its also a bummer they are financially supporting facebook/youtube, but maybe the end result would be break even if they get enough people to utilize adblocking. thats pretty crazy compound interest over time for even just like 3 people
How people put up with ads is a complete mystery.
Picked up a nice cleaner and hiking boots that my ad blockers were denying me last month.
Life changing.
I didn’t need them. But it’s like walking on a cloud and the fit is perfect. Mostly chance, but that ad started the push.
Interesting choice of phrase
217 more comments available on Hacker News