AdguardFilters VS uBlock

As far as Safari-compatible ad blocking extensions, I've been reasonably satisfied with AdGuard, and it's free with some paid nice-to-haves which I don't use, but hear good things about. It's available on nearly every browser and operating system, including Android and iOS. It's also open source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdGuard

https://adguard.com

https://github.com/AdguardTeam

uBlock Origin has a few lists for cookie banners that I always keep on [0][1]

[0] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/tree/master/easylist_co...

[1] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/tree/master/An...

! trusted filter (not sure if it affects the query part) ||amazon.com/*/ref=$urltransform=/\/ref=.*// ! does not require trust, but likely will break stuff (it's too broad) ! you can use "AdGuard URL Tracking Protection" - https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/blob/fff7e0702850ec9298e7825fc04563990bc40a2e/TrackParamFilter/sections/specific.txt#L1322-L1394 ||amazon.com^$removeparam

Keep in mind that neither of those lists are default lists and neither are maintained by the uBlock Origin team. Issues with those lists should be reported to their maintainers: - AdGuard URL Tracking Protection: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/issues - Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool: https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/discussions/163

Issue: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/issues/152943

No issues here on Firefox 128.4.0esr, even with uBlock Origin medium mode[1] blocking 31% of the page.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

uBlock Origin works best on Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

What power? There is no “the list”. Tons of people curate their own block lists and make them available. It’s entirely up to you to pick and choose which ones you want to use that most align with your views on SEO garbage.

For example, here is a list of the blocklists available in uBlock Origin: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Filter-list-licenses

uBlock does have some things that are pretty unique, and useful outside of ads for some websites. Element Zapper is a good example. https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Element-zapper

uBO has had this for awhile, since 1.34.0 (or 1.25.0 in advanced settings).

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...

I think that's around 2021 time frame.

To match such URL against the tens of thousand of filters, there is only a need to lookup filters for these nine tokens, and for most of these tokens there won't be any filters to test, such that in the end for any given URL only a few to no filters will end up being tested, and the majority of these filters are not regex-based, they are just plain string matching.

This is the overall simplified explanation of how it really works, in reality it's a bit more complex because there are a lot of other optimizations on top of this.

There is a built-in benchmark tool in uBO, accessible through the dashboard, _Support_ pane, _More_ button, _SNFE: Benchmark_ button[1].

When running the benchmark against a set of 230,364 URLs, I get an average of 11-12 µs per request to perform a match test against the default filter lists in uBO.

* * *

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Advanced-settings#ben...

Remember why uBlock Origin exists in the first place: Raymond Hill was fed up with the chore of all the administrative crap around the extension. They wanted it to be a hobby and it started feeling like a job¹.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/38#issuecomment-918...

So it’s predictable they’d get fed up with what the Mozilla review process and call it quits too.

Which led them to hand the project to an unscrupulous rando that immediately tried to monetise it, leading Raymond to hate the outcome and having to decry his own previous project and ending up essentially where it all started but with a bunch of extra work in the middle.

It works better in Firefox anyway. Use Firefox and be happy:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...