Minimalist blocklist

Brave Feature Requests Desktop Requests
1

What is the request?

Option to disable the build-in BRAVE blocklists.

Why this feature request?

Advertising fuels the free internet and big data is a fact of life. Advertising is implemented wrong, Brave adds a new way of allocating and receiving advertising on the internet.

I am not against advertising, I just don’t agree on its implementation. Therefore I don’t use the thausend of nerdy block rules of EasyList. I use a small, but effective list.

I can add my own blocklist (which is great), but can’t disable the build-in blocklists

This is the tiny blocklist I use (based don W3Tech surveys on most used technology)
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kees1958/WS3_annual_most_used_survey_blocklist/master/Small_but_effective_blocklist.txt

Benefits of this request
Make Brave adblocker lighter, faster and more configurable

2

@Kees1958 you can change your global shield settings https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/categories/360001053072-Shields

3

@eljuno THX

Yep, but then I disable all tracking, I just want to disable the build-in blocklist Easy List (ads) and Easy List Privacy (trackers), I only want to run Brave Unbreak and my tiny list https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kees1958/WS3_annual_most_used_survey_blocklist/master/Small_but_effective_blocklist.txt

4

I have no issues with custom lists being an option.

Regarding “minimal lists”, people previously suggested minimal/cut-down lists in the past. If you’re trying to keep size down, what happens when adserver companies start just spawning random domains from other non-popular sites? Or just sites that aren’t that popular (not in W3tech) that have adservers? Just ignore it? #my2c

The better option is to remove dead filters and bring down the size of EL/EP, and there are plans currently to improve it.

5

@fanboynz

You need deep pockets (a lot of money) to setup a advertising infrastructure. The laws of business also apply to the internet. In many mature markets, there are only a handful or a dozen vendors dominating the market, either showing a Pareto’s (80-20) or ABC (60-30-10) market share. The iron laws of marketing also apply on digital/online marketing itself :slight_smile:

The W3Tech top200 list applies for people living in US-CAN-UK-AU-NZ-SA and the EU. So when you happen to live in one of those countries, for fun do this experiment.

Disable Brave tracking protection and install uBlock 0rigin and uBlock Scope. Enable every filter list uBlockOrigin lists in its user interface and run this setup (with over 300K rules) for a week. Reset the third-party tracking data of uBlock Scope and run uBlock ONLY with the W3tech top 200 list for a week also.

I am sure that when you live in US-CAN-UK-AU-NZ-SA and the EU, you will notice that with less than 1% of the block rules in w3tech top200, you achieve 80 to 99 percent (depending on your browsing habits) of the third-party blocking results.

6

There is many more trackers and adservers, and just limiting to this list and a certain segment of the web. you’ll be exposing a lot of users to ads/tracker from various regions.

Just look at just todays commits, and you’ll see the scale of ads and trackers;

7

@fanboynz

  1. The big advertising networks have 95% of the market,. Do the field test I suggested, that will change your view on this. Not much use discussion fiction when you can check the facts.

  2. I am asking for an OPTION to disable the default Easylist filters, not to ditch them.