Is there a reason why uBlock Origin is still not included in the browser? In this day and age, you can't have privacy online without it, and claiming otherwise is misleading at best and maliciously deceptive at worst.
Not affiliated with Mozilla, nor do I know, but my thoughts:
A quick check reveals that while ublock origin seems to be the most popular, it's by far not the only popular add-on to block ads https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=adblock ; so why include ublock origin specifically? Especially since it has become much more than a simple adblocker (script blocking capabilities for example), why not something else? Why not integrate an ad-blocker developed completely by mozilla?
Why not include NoScript + Containers by default? And some UserAgent Switch capability? And more fine grained cookie storage options (currently available via add-ons), et cetera?
When you start integrating capabilities currently being offered by add-ons, the questions are :
- where to stop
- how to discriminate what to include, what not
- how will users and developers feel (for example the user who wants to use his favorite add-on, which now is not developed anymore because almost no one bothers to install it since functionality X has become part of the browser)
- how to deal with edge cases (the one site which breaks because of ad-block is the reason a non-technical person might simply install chrome and move on with their life)
- is the increasing complexity worth it? to what degree is it?
A lot of the other ad blocking extensions are malicious and collude with the advertising industry through some kind of whitelist program. Their license might also not be permissive enough to allow this.
> Why not include NoScript + Containers by default?
NoScript requires lots of manual intervention, uBlock Origin with the default lists is still seamless and rarely causes breakage thus very little need for manual intervention.
I am not convinced that Containers does anything at all. Browser fingerprinting & IP address tracking defeats it very easily.
> And some UserAgent Switch capability
This is absolutely needed and I'm baffled this isn't offered natively, though this would be less for privacy and more as a developer tool.
> And more fine grained cookie storage options (currently available via add-ons), et cetera?
I find the whole craze around cookies overblown. Your IP address is a relatively persistent cookie you can't clear. The only way is to prevent requests made to the malicious actors to begin with, with some kind of blacklist like what uBlock Origin provides.
> how to discriminate what to include, what not
I'd argue that if your mission is to make the web better and protect people's privacy then including a proper ad blocker is a no brainer.
> does it do any good
That is up to discussion with the add-on author (the author of UBO has repeatedly declined donations and seems to be doing his efforts out of passion and/or hatred for ads, so he should be onboard), but otherwise, the secret sauce isn't really the blocker per-se but the blocklists such as EasyList/Fanboy's lists, and Mozilla has enough resources to reimplement a compatible client from scratch if needed.
> how to deal with edge cases
Contribute back to the lists to fix any edge-cases by adjusting an over-reaching blocking rule, and offer an easy way for users to temporarily disable the blocking on a per-site basis.
> I find the whole craze around cookies overblown. Your IP address is a relatively persistent cookie you can't clear. The only way is to prevent requests made to the malicious actors to begin with, with some kind of blacklist like what uBlock Origin provides.
In my personal opinion, no one should be connecting to the internet in this day and age without using a VPN service wherever possible.
My preference would be to include the functionality of ad blockers but not include any of the actual lists. You would then be able to pull down the same lists that ublock origin provides by default and add any additional lists you want.
I'd argue that this is justified when it comes to misleading non-technical users about their privacy.
Mozilla plasters the word "privacy" everywhere and yet opens their own website on first run and after every update which includes Google Analytics, from the same company that's known to violate people's privacy on a large scale and profit from it.
Browser fingerprinting and IP-based tracking is reliable enough that blocking cookies is absolutely useless in this day and age against an omnipresent adversary such as Google & Facebook. Blocking their request uBlock Origin-style is the only way to go and claiming to protect your privacy otherwise is very misleading.
