Description of the issue:
Website blocking not possible in Brave. As discussed in other posts.
UC Name
Web content blocking and filtering
Use case - generic
Block top level domain but allow certain URI paths to be viewed.
Use case - specific < UC realization >
Block youtube domain (blacklist) but allow certain specific youtube channels (whitelist) to be viewed.
UC Alternate flow, allow only videos from channels allowed by whitelist, not blocked i.e. on whitelist, to be viewed.
UC Alternate flow, allow only videos from channels allowed by whitelist, not blocked i.e. on whitelist, to be played.
UC Exception, stop from viewing any video from a channel not included on the whitelist
UC Exception, stop from playing any video from a channel not included on the whitelist. implied by stop from viewing but different .
UC Actors
Parent - to protect children from harmful internet content online.
Parent - to allow child age appropriate content.
General user - to protect themselves from harmful internet content.
Digital addict - to protect themselves from harmful internet content.
UC Scope
Safeguarding, Duty of care,
User centric experience, Client side first class not second class,
Web content control, Web content blocking, Web content filtering,
Epistemic reliability, Disinformation, Misinformation, False statements,
Policy adherence, Compliance, Risk management, Security,
Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
Recommended work around, by community user, was use of custom filters
brave://settings/shields/filters
Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
But the Ad Blocking option is not fit for purpose as a website blocking capability.
Further there does not appear to be any Ad Blocking syntax user manual . Selecting the link ‘Ad Block syntax’ resolves to a page with no useful content.
How do I manage Ad-Block filters in Brave?
Reproduces how often:
Every attempt to use Ad block custom filters for website blocking.
The following page is returned. But it still permits to proceed to the web site. This is not the behaviour required.
Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
Brave is up to date
Version 1.52.126 Chromium: 114.0.5735.133 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Additional Information:
Other users have made similar requests for website blocking capability.
How to block specific websites
Perhaps this should be raised as a feature request.
It might be possible to achieve required capability with Ad blocking custom filters but this does not look likely.
It might be possible to extend the Ad blocking custom filters as new feature request to achieve required capability.
It is impossible to assess if Ad blocking is currently fit for purpose for use case described as there is no publicly available Ad blocking syntax user guide available via the link provided.
The youtube specific use case is particularly difficult as the video is not played ‘in channel’ but external to the channel confines in the default youtube ‘video playing’ path.
The difficulty in this case of identifying a video from a specific channel in the default youtube ‘video playing’ path.
Note most users - UC Actors - are naïve. So even if an enhanced Ad Blocking capability were to meet all the requirements they might struggle with the ‘code’ aspect of the filter list expressions. But it would be a good place to start in the first instance.
While to meet full requirements of use case would likely require additional capability that is new feature request.
Meta data likely an option but would have to be in some way curated and likely on standards based ontology set. Each youtube video file has meta data definition. Server side blocking and filtering. Client side blocking and filtering. Associate with mime type.
Meta data server side. This is a server side asset/content/media/resource management issue too. As metadata would have to be part of file storage and retrieval. So client side request to server ‘don’t serve assets with M set of metadata’ instruction in request. If file has no metadata don’t serve it at all.
Meta data client side. Possibly with Lazy loading filtering in browser based on meta data as another plank in approach. Of the remainder assets/content/media/resource served did server side comply with request? Is server side channel reliable, trustable, … ? Only allow to load videos with youtube channel uid as metadata as per whitelist entry.
Machine learning AI server side metadata with curated metadata standards. Problem of built in AI bias. Trusted organisation adherence to Material Reality Charter in Public Discourse and Policy.
Creator asset/content/media/resource tagging creator/producer. problem of bad actors. problem of ignorance. tagging metadata. Trusted organisation adherence to Material Reality Charter in Public Discourse and Policy.
Client side asset/content/media/resource tagging user/consumer. problem of bad actors. problem of ignorance. tagging metadata. Trusted individual? how to assess?
GUID for agent/entity/enterprise across all internet presence. Whitelist or Blacklist all assets/content/media/resource for that GUID for all internet channels. GUID as metadata allocated to asset/content/media/resource or domain.
A requirement would be to have a web blocking/web filtering file external to the browser much like the hosts file. In this way all browsers would pick up the same whitelist/blacklist configuration from a single source. The file could include by reference other files created else where and not located on the host machine. In fact in some instances a default safeguarding instance might be entirely by reference. where reference might work similarly to xml schema not describing document structure but expression sets.
One implementation option for lazy loading might be to use JSON for metadata server response and XPath and XQuery in browser but that is in the weeds at this point and eventual product technical spec might well include entirely different standards.
Supporting this use case, with likely building in supplemental UC extensions and alternate flows and exceptions, would make Brave the most popular browser, bar none, for parents (mothers and fathers) planet wide.
See also
Browser Ontology - terminology and term relations
Links
Safeguarding, WP
Policy, WP
Risk management, WP
Compliance, WP
Security, WP
Media type, WP
MIME, WP
SMIME, WP
Meta data, WP
Asset management, WP
Records management, WP
Agent (REA ontology), WP
Event (REA ontology), WP
Resource (REA ontology), WP
Resource (internet), WP
Legal entity identifier, WP
Global Legal Entity Identity Foundation (GLEIF), WP
ISO 20275, WP, WS
Reference data, WP < classification and categorisation, weights and measures, calendars, country codes, corporate entity codes, … >
Master data, WP < business entities, business processes, six inquisitives, who, what, how, why, where, when, >
Metadata, WP < data about data >
Dublin Core, WP
IETF RFC 5013, WP
ISO 15836:2009, WP
NISO Z39.85, WP
W3C Data Catalogue Vocabulary, WP < RDF >