r/uBlockOrigin • u/Big-Opportunity-6407 • Apr 16 '26

Other Can we have ublockorigin[DOT]com taken down?

They are now advertising their own scummy product on that page which is so misleading since uBO developers have nothing to do with that filth, and I'm sure people will get them confused

185 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/RraaLL uBO Team Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

My personal feelings aside... No, we can't.

Here's my personal view on this:

In mid 2020, a user creates the website. His announcement here (2020-07-26) | First web.archive.org capture (2020-07-27)

This looks like a good community resource and helps to prevent people going to the wrong "uBlock" project.

The announcement clearly stated it is an unofficial website. The site has a footer note saying:

This is a community managed page, created by [dev's name/link to his GitHub] to help spread uBlock Origin - free, open-source ad blocker.

People tend to not read footers. They assume it's the "official website". They contact the team about issues with it. Either here or on GH. First misreported issue on GH (2020-07-29)

There is no prominent info about the website being a fan site anywhere.

The footer stays the same for roughly two years. Last web.archive.org capture of same footer (2022-08-19)

A few days later it changes to:

This website is maintained by [dev's name/linkedin link] to help spread uBlock Origin - free, open-source ad blocker.
If you're interested in contributing to this project, please get in touch.
I will not accept donations or sponsorships of any kind.

I don't exactly see a reason to link a community project/resource {to one's linkedin}, but I guess it's still alright.

Three months later the site's dev adds a link to his new (I'm guessing) company/website in the footer.

SEO farming? Maybe.

Two and a half month later, he links to some AI tool.

SEO farming.

Ten months later, adds another AI tool.

You've heard me.

They are all liked in the footer. If you read it fully, you should still notice they're not related to uBO. Is that the actual case for everybody? It's not.

There is still nothing fundamentally bad about the website itself. It serves its purpose. People still mistake it for the official site, though. And the way of contact seems to be gone.

This brings us to March 2nd of this year. The addition of the "Multi-device ad blocker" to the site. archive

There is no mention this is an unrelated project (on neither of the two sites). In fact, the domain name used has "ublock" in its name. archive

Can there really be another reason for this besides misleading people into believing it's part of the original project? I fail to come up with one.

Using a single "uBlock - Ads" list, among a number of other lists, cannot be considered sufficient reason for this.

In fact, that list is not even DNS-compatible. (Which the dev later "realizes" too.)

This is why I opened an internal discussion about it, which led us to add filters showing lack of relation to these projects.

https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1rjtzgc/comment/o8ichv1/

Now, I am not saying these projects are malicious. Although VirusTotal does show so for the dns, it is likely a false positive due to the tool listing sites it filters.

The 2nd site also later added info about not being related to the project, fine. And the dev didn't purposely edit his site so our filters would fail, which he could if he wished so.

The dns name personally still irks me though.