1005
For-profit Pie Adblock (from the founder of Honey) called out for copying uBlock Origin open source code without credit (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
72 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 304 points 2 years ago (21 children)

Never use a "for-profit adblocker". Ublock Origin is free, open source and therefore won't fuck you over. You can guess where this "profit" is coming from when you're not paying for your "for-profit" adblocker

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 21 child comments
    •
  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    We have a problem. People have learned that they shouldn't use a free VPN. By that logic you shouldn't use a free ad blocker either. People don't understand the details enough so they operate on broad ideas.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    There is a difference between "free & open source" and "free because you don't pay with money".

    The first means it can be peer reviewed by anyone to make sure they aren't doing anything shady.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Yeah that's right. Really, the difference is between free software and free services.

    Software can be free and open source and that can be a viable model, even a preferable model. Services can not be free without some party being exploited. In the best of cases this means services are provided by volunteers (and they are being exploited), but more commonly in business, it's the users who are being exploited.

    But as a rule, you should be suspicious of free services.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I dunno if there's just a lack of education around what open-source means or what. Like jeez, you can contribute to unlock origin. You can study it and see if there's anything you disagree with. You can fork it and change it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    I agree, unless it's straight up paid software which I usually don't mind paying for if it's good and I need it. Although arguably uBlock Origin is so close to perfection that I can't imagine how a paid ad blocker would hold up.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    What software have you paid for? Over here, proud owner of (off the top of my head) Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, Shottr, and superwhisper for Mac.

    Would be hard to live without these automation/macro, screenshot, and dictation tools!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (6 replies)
  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    For-profit ad blockers make their money from either ad injection or extorting ad companies to whitelist their ads. This is why the original adblock plus fell out of use.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 163 points 2 years ago (19 children)

    "From the founder of Honey." Which means that stealing code and affiliate links is just the surface of shady stuff they are up to.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 19 child comments
    •
  • [–] 62 points 2 years ago (18 children)

    The founder of Honey no longer owns Honey, and hasn't for some time. It's owned by PayPal, a much more notoriously shady company that some people still use for some reason.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 18 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Now I feel bad. I use paypal because in some cases of purchases it is the only means I can use. What is shady about them?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Look up the PayPal mafia. Tldr: their founders are overthrowing the world's oldest democracy at the moment.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    It's the only means you can use because it's the only one the seller provides. Not your fault.

    What is shady? You name it.

    I mean first and foremost they're a public-traded company that you'll see on every storefront on the web, which together basically guarantees unethical business practices.

    They automatically enrolled users into PayPal credit without their knowledge or consent. They advertised $10 free credit for new members, then just...didn't give it. They charge late fees and interest when their shitty servers fail to process payments. They will almost always take the buyer's side in any dispute, regardless of provided evidence, they automatically opt users into data sharing, etc.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/paypal-pay-25-million-fines-deceptive-shady-business-001516273.html https://www.dailydot.com/debug/stop-paypal-data-sharing/

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    The founder still made it do what it does.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Depends when all of that functionality was added in. Honey started as a legit coupon scraping extension back in 2012, and was sold to PayPal in 2020. Somewhere in the last 12 years, someone got a bit too greedy.

    Reminds me of the story of AdBlock - helpful extension gets a huge market share, people get greedy, it gets sold to a for-profit, and starts doing shady deals with the people it's supposed to be "working against".

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Um, PayPal paid $4,000,000,000 to buy Honey. $4 billion. Now, think about how much profit Honey would have had to been generating for PP to look at the numbers and buy it for that much. However it "started", the functionality to steal was in there before they sold it to PayPal

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Companies that aren't profitable get bought all the time for ridiculous amounts of money not because they currently make boatloads of money, but because they have a huge userbase and brand recognition, and the buyer thinks they are the geniuses that can make it do that. Yahoo paid 1.1 billion for Tumblr - since sold to wordpress for 3 million - and Musk 44 billion for Twitter - now worth a fraction of that - for example.
    That is exactly why they often go to shit only after they have been bought.

    Fwiw, Honey did around $100 million in revenue back in 2018. That's 40 times less than what they were bought for, and that isn't even profit, but just how much money they received before all their business expenses were paid.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    load more comments (2 replies)
    • load more comments (4 replies)
    • [–] 117 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Who in their right mind would use this bootleg piece of shit when uBO exists?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 68 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    They're offering to pay you to watch ads, same as what Brave does.

    You're going to get people who fall for the "free money" aspect, same as always.

    (Also replacing a site's ads with their ads is exactly the same shit Honey is doing, so it's nice to see that the founder has a single idea and is going to keep going after it.)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (2 replies)
    • [–] 41 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I feel like the name of this product is a SEO manipulation to catch people trying to look for information on the Pi Hole. Overall shady manipulation on all fronts...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • [–] 30 points 2 years ago

    The GPL is enforceable, as far as the courts in the US are concerned, but the time and expense of doing so means such cases are rare. One such claim against Vizio, filed in 2021 by the Software Freedom Conservancy, is expected to be tried in September 2025.

    Hill pointed to a series of posts he made in June 2024 about "sleazy rip-offs in the Chrome Web Store" that simply rewrap "uBlock, uBlock Lite, or other content blockers with their own user interface," and some monetization scheme, often removing the copyright and licensing information

    If a pretty large project such as ubo doesn't have the means to enforce the GPL license, I think pretty much all open source projets, that are usually lacking funds, wouldn't be able to enforce their license either

    I didn't realize that before, I thought copyleft licences like GPL really offered something but unless the project is backed by a for profit company or has enough funding, permissive licenses like MIT/FreeBSD achieve kind of the same result in practice.. And all the contributions I did on copyleft projects could be (and probably were) stolen to make profits, while the maintainers of the original project struggle to pay for coffees.. I feel a lot less guilty for my media piracy

    But I wonder, are there means to enforce this license from outside the US ?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    [–] 25 points 2 years ago* (8 children)

    The majority of ads on YouTube for the last 3+ months have been Pie, even after blocking dozens of them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Huh… I’m never off YouTube but never heard of or seen ads for Pie. I wonder when they will start showing up.

    I still see a lot of Better Help ads and that sucks. I’ve gotten to the point where if it’s a YouTube Ad or sponsor, I ain’t buying it ever.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Isnt that a GPL violation?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Isn't that illegal? What kind of license is uBO under?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
    • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Guy belongs behind bars

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
    •
    load more comments
    view more: next ›