If you're just starting out with Firefox within the past couple days or so, you'll notice another relevant result when you search for "uBlock Origin" on the Add-Ons page; a weird "Lite" version called, fittingly, "uBlock Origin Lite".
Why is there a "Lite" version of a free plugin? Has their download model changed? Do I have to pay for mainline uBlock Origin now?! No, nothing like that. Mainline uBO is still free and will likely remain free, given it's open-source software (i.e. no matter what Ray Hill does to it, the source code has still been copied onto thousands of computers and can be forked back into FOSS if the need arises). So, if not for financial gain, why make a "Lite" version?
The rationale given behind uBlock Origin Lite is that mainline uBO is too confusing for newcomers to fully grasp and/or too inconvenient to go down a list and check boxes. As a one-time uBO newcomer myself (migrating from that shady Ghostery plugin back in 2014), I don't know where he's coming from with this. I had no difficulty configuring uBO to do what I needed and I still consider it an indispensable tool in my advert-extermination toolbox. Especially since it uses the same codebase and is only missing a few features that are otherwise buried in settings menus. The idea was to have a "plug-and-play", "set it and forget it" version of uBO that someone could just download and not have to configure.
Well, if you've clicked around on my website here, you know I'm not a fan of "set it and forget it" technology; magical apps that work using supernatural forces, require no thought, and ask for none. That's how we ended up with Facebook, TikTok, and smartphones in general; we turned off our brains and downloaded things that crossed our field of vision, trusting that everything would work out to normal in the end. As a society, we need to have more intimate, if you like, interactions with our technology; changing settings here and there, maybe pasting in a new userscript; performing standard maintenance on our software so that we can tailor it to our specific needs, not make do with a "one-size-fits-most" plugin like uBO Lite.
I'm going to continue recommending mainline uBlock Origin to everyone I meet because uBO Lite has yet to demonstrate that I should adjust that behaviour. Partly because I'm a curmudgeonly old cuss who hates change, but mostly because I believe we need to stop putting so much faith in the "magic of technology". There is no magic, but we can't tell that when every process takes place behind locked doors and the most informative error message only tells us "Whoopsie! Something went kaput!"
--22 August 2023--