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Great news: our #adblocker was added to the @humanetech list!🎉🎉

That's really motivating and encouraging, as well as our growing #community!

https://github.com/humanetech-community/awesome-humane-tech

GitHub - humanetech-community/awesome-humane-tech: Promoting Solutions that Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society

Promoting Solutions that Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society - GitHub - humanetech-community/awesome-humane-tech: Promoting Solutions that Improve Wellbeing, Freedom and Society
GitHub
@smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

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in reply to TBlock

Tio
Tio
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Does this have a GUI? Or is it terminal-based?
in reply to Tio

TBlock
TBlock
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it doesn't have a GUI yet but we plan to develop one in the future

Dr. Percy reshared this.

in reply to TBlock

Tio
Tio
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Oh that'd be awesome! I would consider adding it to our linux TROMjaro distro by default if it had a GUI. :) Thank you for your work!
in reply to Tio

TBlock
TBlock
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wow, well in that case we'll keep you notified :)
in reply to TBlock

Tio
Tio
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Please do! We already ship our distro with a tweaked Firefox to block ads, trackers, even sponsored content from youtube videos, and more. So a system-wide tool to block ads/trackers would suit better than just protecting the browser. One browser that is.
in reply to TBlock

Rokosun
Rokosun
• •
So I assume this is like a blocklist for blocking ad/tracker domains, right ?

I've once tried using the /etc/hosts file in linux to do this, you might be aware of this project - https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

But here's my question, where else would there be ads on your system except your browser ? If you're a Linux user then most of the programs you use would be FOSS and ad-free anyway. And we all know that ublock origin is better for blocking browser ads.
@tio@humanetech

GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: 🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories.

🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. - GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: 🔒 Consolidating a...
GitHub
@Tio @smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

Dr. Percy reshared this.

in reply to Rokosun

TBlock
TBlock
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well, that's a pertinent question. The point is that TBlock does indeed block ads, but not only. It can also block tracking inside software. For instance, even though uBlock Origin can block trackers *on web pages*, it can't block the telemetry that is built-in *in your browser* (such as Mozilla Telemetry or all this Google crap).

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in reply to TBlock

Rokosun
Rokosun
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I use librewolf so I'm not that worried about telemetry in my browser, but I do get your point. If I ever have to install anything that has telemetry or ads then having a blocklist can protect me from these, its nice that users have this option. I think @tio's point is relevant here, more and more FOSS programs are starting to use ads and trackers these days, audacity being a popular example.
@Tio

TBlock reshared this.

in reply to Rokosun

TBlock
TBlock
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exactly.
And to answer your previous toot, yes, StevenBlack hosts are officially supported by TBlock:
https://tblock.codeberg.page/repository/?filter=stevenblack-hosts (warning: unfortunately this link requires JS)

Filter list repository | TBlock - An anticapitalist ad-blocker that uses the hosts file

TBlock is a system-wide, platform independent ad-blocker written in Python and released under GPLv3.
TBlock

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in reply to TBlock

Rokosun
Rokosun
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That's great, I'll check this out. I use https://artixlinux.org with runit as my init system, it looks like TBlock doesn't support this currently. Will you be adding runit support soon ? If you tell me what the openrc init service does then I'll try to cook something up for runit that does the same thing.
@tio@humanetech

Artix Linux - Home

Artix Linux, a systemd-free linux distribution.
artixlinux.org
@Tio @smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
in reply to Rokosun

TBlock
TBlock
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I use Artix too :) Well, since writing a runit service doesn't seem too complicated, I can try to release a package that is compatible with runit before the end of the week👍
Basically, the service simply executes /usr/bin/tblockd --daemon --config /etc/tblock.conf

I just opened an issue for that: https://codeberg.org/tblock/tblock/issues/44

Add runit support

Add runit service
Codeberg.org
in reply to Rokosun

Tio
Tio
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Well think about the fact that all browsers will be protected by this. Plus more and more foss apps may start to use trackers and ads. I've seen this already.

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Unknown parent

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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On the first other motivations are e.g. more performance / speedier web and energy saved. Also your time.

The revenue is an eternal discussion. It's likely that without ads more services are paid, either as one-off or subscription.

That's nice if you have the money, less of if you are not that privileged. There are revenue models that take this into account e.g. "Pay what you want" and maybe with a minimum of $1 or something.

There's a range of other options to pick.
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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Though I dislike ads in general, there's also so-called Ethical Ads. The ones that don't track you. Like what @Mojeek is implementing in their search engine, that are based on your search query. Or I think it was Gitbook, based on what you are documenting.
@Mojeek
Unknown parent

Tio
Tio
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Ads means: buy this! And we live in a society where everything is going downhill. Just ask the UN. Biodiversity is lost at tremendous rates, people are exploited in masses, inequality is rising, waste is increasing by a lot, degradation of nature overall is increasing, climate change, and so on. And yet, ads are telling us we should keep on consuming endlessly. In 2019 humans spent double the amount of money on ads than they spent on renewable energies.

So I would argue the "tracking" is not the biggest issue with ads at all. It is the "ads" themselves, that are a result of our trade based society. A society that all it values is trading, this for that.

And yeah, on top of this all, ads encourage those who make them to hype anything, lie, deceive....

So, a lot of issues with a(i)ds.

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in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

TBlock
TBlock
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Yes indeed, and we don't say our users "should" block ads. We believe that users are free to choose what to block. If they don't want to be bothered at all, then they can block everything. They can also add exception for "ethical ads".
However, what we oppose to is targeted advertising and surveillance-capitalism. We don't believe ads are evil. But we think tracking is. Ads should never compromise the privacy of people. That's what we fight against.
in reply to Tio

TBlock
TBlock
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yeah, ads are clearly a product of our way to live in society. Users are often considered as a product, just as earth and its resources are. So, tracking is just a small part of the problem, you are right.
in reply to Tio

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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I agree with what you say. Though I'd like nuance (at least how I look at it) that we have the Ads model we so abhor. And then we have the innocuous verb 'to advertise', meaning: showing what you have.

The latter we can't do without. If you hadn't 'advertised' #TROM I wouldn't know about it.

If behind a door is a bakery but no indication it is there, then no one will get to their bread.

So I think not all advertising is bad. But the word itself we see as 'evil'.

TBlock reshared this.

in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

Tio
Tio
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To advertise, promote, showcase something, is different from the "ads" that we see today, at least most of them. Of course I am referring to the ads-industry. Not UN for example "advertising" (promoting/showcasing) their pledge to feed poor people. At times our words are not sufficient to distinguish such things.

So the ads-market is what I am talking about of course. The ads that are about consumerism.

Dr. Percy reshared this.

Unknown parent

TBlock
TBlock
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This discussion is really interesting, maybe we should clarify our opinions about it on our website (or at least in a blog post)
in reply to Tio

TBlock
TBlock
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Yes, consumerism is probably the most appropriate word for the problem we are talking about
Unknown parent

Mx. Savanni D'Gerinel
Mx. Savanni D'Gerinel
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Back when ads were nothing more than a static panel with text on the side, I was mostly okay with them. Now they are unbelievably invasive animations that dynamically reflow pages and work very hard to be in the way of content. They make pages incredibly unpleasant to read and slow everything down.
in reply to Mx. Savanni D'Gerinel

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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Long live the ad and tracking blockers 🎉

Still greatly enjoying an ad-free web :D
Unknown parent

teledyn 𓂀
teledyn 𓂀
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Advertising, or more properly #Marketing as it relates to Edward Bernays and his "#Propaganda" (1928) is all about manipulation, hence its long strong bonds to Psychology.

/Business/ on the other hand, is about conversations, about community interdependencies, about being useful. I have no problem with businesses being useful, even if I don't care for that use-case.

I'm not, however, fond of marketing. I'd so hoped #structureddata would obsolesce it.
#Propaganda #marketing #structureddata
in reply to TBlock

Martin Atkins
Martin Atkins
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I also find marketing in general to be of concern. I notice that I still recall marketing jingles I heard when I was 6 years old and worry about what other stuff might be living rent-free in my subconscious, influencing me in ways I cannot detect. I would prefer a world with less everyday exposure to marketing, regardless of surveillance.
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

Martin Atkins
Martin Atkins
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In another subthread I was bemoaning how marketing is designed to infect our subconscious minds with information going against our best interest, and I think that is what you mean by one of your uses of "advertising" here, and so I would propose the word "marketing" to describe the goal of subconsciously influencing future behavior, as opposed to just informing.
in reply to TBlock

www-gem
www-gem
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Coupled with ublock I can apparently block 94% of ads/trackers (better than what I get which each one individually). That's a good score. The amount of identifying information leakage remains the same though (I'm using librewolf BTW).
in reply to www-gem

Esi Jóhannes G.
Esi Jóhannes G.
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out of curiosity, What are the blocking scores of them individually?
in reply to Esi Jóhannes G.

TBlock
TBlock
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it probably depends on the blocklists you use with each of them, but it would be interesting to know, indeed
in reply to TBlock

www-gem
www-gem
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The lists used will indeed affect this score and I am using quite some lists... Anyway, the score for tblock only of 77% while ublock alone already scored 93%. Combining both tools affects the way that ads are blocked (i.e. placeholders visibility).
in reply to Martin Atkins

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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"Marketing" has gotten a real negative connotation because of the many malpractices we've come to associate with it. There are other words too, we've come to see as 'dirty' or 'evil', such as PR.

But marketing is a broad field. If you'd say "Writing is propaganda", that's also a non-match. Squeezing something broad into something narrow. Same with marketing. If I reach out to fine folks for my FOSS projects, then I do marketing and PR.
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

Martin Atkins
Martin Atkins
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agreed that the field of marketing includes other activities that aren't manipulative, such as performing research to learn what "the market" wants to buy. Fitting a product to market is a good and necessary activity; making the market fit around the product by manipulating people into behaving as the seller would like is the part I'm concerned by.
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

Tio
Tio
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Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Some marketing is done by affiliates on behalf of a company.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing.asp

I cannot see how marketing is a good thing overall. This is not a general term like "writing". It is specific to trading.
Unknown parent

p.l
p.l
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My opinion : Ads are basically a violation of our free will, it is not possible to fight against ads like it is not possible to really erase some memory from your brain. To be able to control your consumption, you have first to skip ads.
Tracking is a related issue since used to target adds mainly.
in reply to p.l

Rokosun
Rokosun
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I bet some of you will have that one TV commercial from your childhood etched into your memory, lol 😂

Rokosun reshared this.

in reply to Rokosun

Rokosun
Rokosun
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If I ask people to name 10 brand names they'll be able to do it in a minute, but if I ask them to name some volunteering or humanitarian projects, then I won't find many answers. So we make sure people know about a hundred different useless brands, but not the projects that actually cares about people. Believe it or not, but one important reason for many projects not having enough volunteers is because people don't even know they exist.

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in reply to Rokosun

The Ghost of Émilie
The Ghost of Émilie
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When an ad comes on, I mute my device and look away for a minute... Ads just... don't have any value to me.
in reply to The Ghost of Émilie

Rokosun
Rokosun
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Try to block ads if you can:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

GitHub - gorhill/uBlock: uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.

uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean. - GitHub - gorhill/uBlock: uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.
GitHub
Unknown parent

TBlock
TBlock
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If that's unusual, then it's kinda sad.
Because what you do is really generous, and it would be great if more people did it :)
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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Happy to hear that, people like you make the world a better place. And I know there are many good people in the world who're willing to volunteer if they get the opportunity, that's why its important to make it accessible. Like I said, currently people know more brand names than they know about such projects, in a sane world this should be the other way around.

Rokosun reshared this.

Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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Yes this whole thread was actually about advertisements :)
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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I'm kinda inspired by https://directory.trade-free.org, there are so many good projects out there, online & offline. But I get your point, in a sane world these projects would be more organized. I believe FOSS could play a big role here, since we now use the internet for global collaboration.

Trade-Free Directory

These goods and services are submitted and reviewed by people like you. We cannot guarantee that all of what you see here is trade-free, since at times it is very difficult to review them all and do so properly.
Trade-Free Directory

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Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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I'll have a look at the website you linked, anyway its good to know there are people trying to tackle this problem :)
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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That's good, I didn't know about @osarch, followed it now :)

It all ties back to my initial point about advertisement, I wish more people knew about projects like yours instead of these useless brand names and such. How can it be OK for us to show ads about commercial companies when there are lots of good projects out there that need our attention for good.
@tblock
@TBlock @OSArch - Open Source in AEC
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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I agree, volunteering should be the norm :)
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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The way I look at it is that consumerism itself is a problem and ads are just an extension of it, lol 😄

And I don't know if you need consumer magazines to get advice on purchases, if a product is good enough then people who use it will recommend others. And I believe there are some communities for this kinda stuff, like /r/buyitforlife on reddit.

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Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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If you trust your consumer mags to do a good job of finding you good products then you can use them. I would personally trust a community like /r/buyitforlife or something similar compared to a commercial magazine.
Unknown parent

Rokosun
Rokosun
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OK so maybe I misunderstood what you meant by consumer mag, sorry.
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