![]() This gets us to another problem: dynamic rules in Chrome are going to have a different priority compared to static ones. Ad blockers update the filters, and - boom! - the ad is gone. Based on such complaints, filter developers correct their filter lists. For example, AdGuard users have access to a special web reporting tool. Many ad blockers have tools to help users easily report any filter-related issues they face. EasyList and its regional filters subscriptions mostly get their feedback from the forum and it has tens of thousands of threads.Every week about 500 new tasks appear and approximately the same amount gets resolved. AdGuard Filters repository has over 40,000 closed tasks at the moment. ![]() Of course, filter lists' maintainers can't monitor millions of websites themselves. To fix what's broken (with the amount of rules in filter lists something's bound to break at some point).How filter lists are developedĪs we said, filter lists have to be constantly updated. Many filter lists we mentioned above don't fit this limit alone, imagine if you want to add multiple filter lists. You'd be able to modify it with a set of 'dynamic' rules, but the limit on those is ridiculously small, only 5,000. A plethora of language-specific filter lists: EasyList Germany, RUAdlist, AdGuard Turkish filter, and many, many more.įeel free to check out this website that has a huge filter lists database.Īnd here's the problem: the planned Google Chrome changes imply that there will be only one default filter list (so-called 'static' rules).things like cookie notices, online assistants and so on, AdGuard Annoyances - AdGuard's filter to block, well, annoyances.Fanboy's SocialList - a filter that blocks social widgets, 'Like' buttons etc.,.EasyPrivacy - another popular choice, serves to block online trackers,.EasyList - a base filter for many users, oriented solely to block ads,.Here are some examples of popular filter lists that illustrate just how diverse they can be: It takes daily work of thousands of volunteers and professionals to keep these filters updated, so that they are always relevant and don't mess up anything.įilters can do more than just block ads, and different people choose different combinations of filters to match their personal preferences. There are hundreds, if not thousands of filter lists: AdGuard Filters, EasyList, etc. If you'd like to know more about the technical side, check out our ad blocking syntax guide. Of course, in reality it's much more complicated than that, but you can see the general picture. Ad blockers can remove parts of the DOM, and filtering rules help them understand which parts are ads and should be removed, and which shouldn't be messed with. Of course, ads on the page are also elements and are reflected in the DOM. Cosmetic filteringĮvery web page has a DOM ("document object model"), basically an HTML document that contains the page's structure and all its elements. Filtering rules tell ad blockers which requests are trying to fetch an ad and not useful content and should be blocked. To do so, browser needs to send a web request. There are several different ways: Network filteringĪds on web pages don't appear magically out of thin air. Let's dive a tiny little bit into technicalities, since there are probably some people who'd like to know how things work on a deeper level. What matters is that now the ad blocker will start checking web pages' code against all these filtering rules. It can be any filter lists, downloaded from multiple different places, it doesn't really matter. First, an ad blocker download filter lists. How ad blockers workĪs it's been mentioned before, ad blockers are 'translators' that interpret filtering rules. That's why we find it absolutely necessary to describe in detail how it functions and what's wrong with the current implementation of Manifest v3.Īnd perhaps some of our readers would like to know how it all works, too. This article is aimed at Google Chrome developers: we want to believe that they don't have a goal of hurting this ecosystem, but rather simply lack a proper understanding of it. And these changes threaten to end the filters ecosystem as we know it. You may have heard of the upcoming changes in Chrome browser, also known as Manifest v3. Thousands of volunteers continuously work on keeping them up-to-date, making sure they block ads and don't break anything important. They understand this complex syntax and perform actions with web traffic based on what these rules tell them to do: block specific elements, change web pages in certain ways, etc. If we were to compress ad blockers' job into a few words, we'd say "ad blockers interpret filtering rules". How do ad blockers work? At the very core of any ad blocker lie filter lists (also called 'filters') - literally lists of rules written in a special syntax.
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