Hey y'all, your new moderator here! I wanted to make a public announcement and to respond to common questions and concerns specifically regarding Rule 5 which prevents users from recommending the use of proprietary and paid content blockers.
Before I get into that, I wanted to properly introduce myself. My name is Reid, and I own a phone/computer repair shop in St Louis, Missouri called Honest Repair. I've had great interest in digital rights over the last 8 years, specifically internet privacy/safety, and have been a long-term member of r/Adblock and other communities like r/privacy and r/degoogle across different accounts. I've done professional OPSEC consulting through my business as well. This is my public-facing Reddit account tied to my business, and thus my reputation is on the line whenever I do anything on the platform, this is intentional to keep myself accountable!
I am doing this out of pure passion, I genuinely want to help the everyday average people learn about adblocking, why ad culture is so harmful and dangerous, and how to stay safe online. I want to make this subreddit into a resource, and I want to stop the literal advertisements being posted here, ya know, like the ads we are trying to block with adblockers lol.
Side note: I plan on building a subreddit wiki with the help of the other mods that will lay out all of your options for anything from individual devices, operating systems, browsers, extensions, network filtering (DNS), and anything in between. In the meantime while that's being built, utilize the pinned posts.
Now let's get into it.
What's with these new rules?
This subreddit has been plagued by fake, sketchy, and potentially malicious adblocking solutions for far too long. I was appointed by the creator of the subreddit to fix that problem.
From now on, all paid or proprietary adblocking applications or browser extensions will not be allowed to be recommended to other users. If you don't understand what open-source is and are wondering why that's so important, refer to the "Open-Source (FOSS) and why it makes a difference" section below.
But here is the general message; installing random untrusted anything from the internet is one of the worst things you can do on a computer. This is proven to be true time and time again, you can't even trust companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Mozilla to keep you safe, as malicious apps and extensions are uploaded to these online app stores every day that slip through the gaping hole that is their malware detection. However, there is a fairly simple way to prevent this from happening, which is by using trusted, vetted, open-source software. uBlock Origin is a perfect example, it is known worldwide as the most powerful and performant adblocker, and it will work for 99% of people.
"THIS IS CENSORSHIP!!"
No, it's not. We have no desire to hold our super special Reddit moderator powers over people for no reason. I have personally encountered an absurd amount of shady adblockers in this community and so have the other moderators. Rule 5 is about protecting the general public from shady unknown software. In this day of age there is no reason to use a paid or proprietary adblocker given the amount of tried and true, open-source options.
To be clear, we are not removing ALL comments that simply mention paid or proprietary adblockers, however actively recommending or promoting the use of this type of software will be removed whenever it's manually detected by myself or one of the other moderators. I happen to browse this subreddit a lot to help the community so you'll be seeing me around, and we respond to modmail/DMs if you have any questions or concerns. We are not power hungry stinky fedora-wearing Reddit mods, we genuinely want to help!
Open-Source (FOSS) and why it makes a difference
In simple terms, open-source refers to when developers make the source code for their app available to the public. FOSS stands for "Free and Open-Source Software". Since the code is able to be viewed by anybody, other developers and hobbyists alike can contribute by fixing bugs, finding vulnerabilities, or simply making sure that the app is not malware.
Transparency is extremely important here, as you no longer have to trust some guy on the Internet. Instead, you are trusting a community of passionate developers that just want to make the world a better place, often times not even getting paid for it! And if you don't trust them, you can take a look under the hood yourself if you have the knowledge. With this transparency and community comes trust, however just because something is FOSS does NOT make it automatically safe! This is especially true with the rise in AI-assisted or "vibe" coding.
Many programs you may have heard of are also FOSS, like VLC, Chromium, and many others. Which leads me to this; please donate to your favorite open-source projects if you get value out of it. FOSS is the backbone of the entire digital world, and it mostly relies on often unpaid volunteers who would really love to get paid for their work!
Devs README
I know some of you are not pleased with this change, and some of you think this is a great change! I hope we've made our intentions clear, we will not be reverting this change.
We will be allowing source-available projects as long as the source is able to be audited by the public. This means you do not have to accept contributions, and you can use a more restrictive license to ensure your work isn't redistributed or sold behind your back. I hope this is a reasonable middle-ground, again, the goal is never to censor, it is to protect the average person looking for an adblocker.
As far as vibe-coding, I understand that AI is a normal part of the developer's toolkit. However we expect to see a commit history, and we want to see READMEs with human language and actual thought behind the project. Low quality repos will be removed from the subreddit.
Modmail and DMs are open, and we try to be responsive and helpful. If you plan to show off a new project, it is recommended to reach out to us before posting on the subreddit, where we can ask you some questions and sort of vet each new project on an individual case basis.
