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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]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 28 2017, @10:01PM (5 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @11:10PM (2 children)
In that case, then the users current response will be justified. Drop the browser, and move on to something else.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 29 2017, @12:59AM (1 child)
That's a lot easier if you get disgusted enough to start looking for something else ahead of time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:05AM
Right, so get back to me on which browsers currently respect the user's freedom more than Pale Moon:
Chrome? Firefox? Safari? Vivaldi? Brave? Hah!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 29 2017, @10:59PM
Here's how it's not a fallacy:
1) The people in control of Pale Moon can do a lot more than they have to this point. There's no clear limitations on what they can do to restrict use of particular extensions, but they clearly have the capability to block use of extensions.
2) It's not an extreme position to suppose that the extension may eventually be blocked using the same reasoning that led to this obstruction of its use.
3) My slippery slope is not presented as inevitable.