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posted by Fnord666 on Monday August 28 2017, @04:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-browser-my-way dept.

It's being reported on HackerNews that the Pale Moon Browser is blocking the AdNauseum extension, an ad blocking extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from tracking by advertising networks.

The main story link is to the Pale Moon Forum which summarises the issue as follows:

After investigating the AdNauseam extension's behavior and the results for web publishers, the extension has been added to the Pale Moon blocklist with a severity level of 2 (meaning you won't be able to enable it unless you increase the blocking level in about:config to 3). For those unfamiliar with this extension: it generates false ad "clicks" to ad servers in an attempt to generate "noise" for the ad networks in a protest against the advertising network system as a whole.

While the premise behind this is similar to poisoning trackers with false fingerprints (which we are proponents of, ourselves), and we normally let users decide for themselves what they want to do with their browser, we are strictly against allowing extensions that cause direct damage (including damage to third parties). There is a subtle but important difference between blocking content and generating fake user interaction.

[...] Because this extension causes direct and indirect economic damage to website owners, it is classified as malware, and as such blocked.

From the forum threads this decision has been slightly controversial with some users.

If you're not familiar with Pale Moon, it is an Open Source web browser, forked from a mature Mozilla code release, and has been covered on SN before.

[Update: Added text re: blocking level; bolded text that was bold in the original posting. --martyb]


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Monday August 28 2017, @06:11PM (5 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @06:11PM (#560367) Journal

    As a Pale Moon user, I expect the development team to be somewhat hair-trigger emotionally brittle and over-activist over-sensitive. It is these qualities that caused Pale Moon to come into existence, for which I am grateful.

    What has happened here?
    A. Pale Moon is forcing a choice on me
    B. Pale Moon has a slightly different way to do a certain uncommon action

    The answer is B. Shrug. Whatever. I am still a happy user.

    Thank you, Pale Moon developers.

    Peace.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Interesting=2, Underrated=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @06:34PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @06:34PM (#560386)

    What makes you so sure we won't see what happened to Firefox happen with Pale Moon?

    Firefox's decline started with minor things like the status bar being removed.

    A lot of Firefox users just shrugged it off.

    But that set the stage for every awful change that followed.

    It set the stage for the Firefox developers doing whatever the hell they wanted, even if users did not want it to happen.

    In just a few short years these users had to flee to Pale Moon because of how their Firefox user experience had been destroyed.

    Now they're seeing the same thing happening again...

    • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 28 2017, @10:09PM

      by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 28 2017, @10:09PM (#560553) Journal

      What makes you so sure we won't see what happened to Firefox happen with Pale Moon?

      Well, of course, no one not directly involved can ever be 100% sure, but I feel pretty good about it because:

      1. Firefox's problems are the reason Pale Moon exists, and

      2. "a slightly different way to do a certain uncommon action" != "status bar being removed." / "every awful change that followed"

      3. An Internet mob angry on an Internet forum != Legitimate problems with Firefox's discontinuation of any remotely popular feature

      4. Pale Moon's user surveys of what features they want/don't want drive development in a public way (vs. Firefox driving itself in whatever the opposite direction might be)

      5. No "stage" is being "set" to self-destruct as the Firefox stage is designed to do.

      6. "their Firefox user experience had been destroyed. Now they're seeing the same thing happening again..." is the dumbest thing I have ever read. No one familiar with the situation would say such a thing.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:19AM (#560698)

      Pale Moon Doom has not begun. Should it begin, users can jump ship again, just like they have in the past. If there is no good ship to jump to, we'll just fork the software again.

      Much ado about nothing.

  • (Score: 2) by GlennC on Monday August 28 2017, @10:13PM

    by GlennC (3656) on Monday August 28 2017, @10:13PM (#560555)

    I am still a happy user.

    And you're certainly welcome to that. As for me, I tried it, wasn't happy with it even before this kerfuffle, and uninstalled it.

    Different people have different use cases and requirements. The Pale Moon team made their choice.

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
  • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:29AM

    by digitalaudiorock (688) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:29AM (#560634) Journal

    Thank you, Pale Moon developers.

    As someone who just started using palemoon (under Gentoo) I have to agree. There are sites that are literally 10x faster for me in palemoon as with FF.

    I tend to agree that the block was a bit of an over-reaction, but it's not a total block and can in fact be overridden. I'd never heard of the extension but I have serious doubts that it will ever accomplish it's intended goal. All a little strange frankly. I'd sure never have any interest in it.