I am very much against tracking, and ads that track retarget and abuse me, so am very restrictive in terms of what I let near my browser.
I'd also be very happy to see ads on many sites (eg Stackoverflow style - respectful ads) if I could trust them not to track, retarget or drop malware. That implies either an ad network that's restricted to static pngs (and that they've developed trust), or going back to publisher hosting.
I think, there's the germ of a great idea here. But, rather than pushing people at uBlock (which is my preferred blocker) I'd try and educate on tracking and ad network abuse, then link out to several newbie friendly, zero effort options (that probably implies adblock and others). Why not uBlock? It's a LONG way from newbie friendly, but chances are that's your audience because they don't have a blocker already.
Educate to get some pushback against tracking and crapware ads, like was done to kill ie6 long ago.
If I gave uBlock to my mum's generation (generalisation) or neighbour I'd be fielding quite a lot more tech support calls. :p
> Why not uBlock? It's a LONG way from newbie friendly
How is this? It's an install and forget blocker, requires no fiddling out of the box/ You fiddle with its settings only if you want to, it has no install page.
Thanks for the feedback. Do you really think uBlock Origin is so different from other blockers in terms of usability? I don't see how. It relies on essentially the same set of filter lists that others like Adblock Plus use, but without selling out to big ad networks. I love that they don't give in to acceptable ads - I think that's a very murky area for ad blockers to be involved in.
The icons are non-obvious apart from on/off, settings icon is hard to find, and when in settings there's no easy mode wizard to keep you away from the list of 50 filters and just recommend easylist or fanboy's + a couple of other recommended defaults.
If I gave it to some of the folks I know they'd end up utterly baffled if they ever opened the interface (probably unlikely to be fair :D)
EFF's Privacy Badger does a brilliant job of first run wizard and UI for non techies. Adblock first run is 4 or 5 steps and steers away from the techie guts. uBlock just dumps you at the settings that are programmer friendly (far as I remember there's no first run anything).
For me and reasonably IT literate folks, uBlock is perfect. It's by far and away the best blocker I'm aware of right now though.
To be honest, I think when it comes to usability, most users of ad blockers aren't going to change settings. And having just checked it against Adblock Plus, I'm not so convinced that Adblock Plus is easier.
If we assume that most users will install an ad blocker and expect it to just work, then uBlock Origin and the filters it enables by default gives users much better protection than Adblock Plus. I think that's far more important than how usable the settings page is.
I installed ublock origin at school, no real problems, just showed one person how to click the big Off button to stream a show from a tv channel website that complained.
I am very much against tracking, and ads that track retarget and abuse me, so am very restrictive in terms of what I let near my browser.
I'd also be very happy to see ads on many sites (eg Stackoverflow style - respectful ads) if I could trust them not to track, retarget or drop malware. That implies either an ad network that's restricted to static pngs (and that they've developed trust), or going back to publisher hosting.
I think, there's the germ of a great idea here. But, rather than pushing people at uBlock (which is my preferred blocker) I'd try and educate on tracking and ad network abuse, then link out to several newbie friendly, zero effort options (that probably implies adblock and others). Why not uBlock? It's a LONG way from newbie friendly, but chances are that's your audience because they don't have a blocker already.
Educate to get some pushback against tracking and crapware ads, like was done to kill ie6 long ago.
If I gave uBlock to my mum's generation (generalisation) or neighbour I'd be fielding quite a lot more tech support calls. :p