1446243 - [meta] SmartBlock Opt-in Embed Shims

Status: NEW

(Core :: Privacy: Anti-Tracking, enhancement, P3)

Description

[(no longer active)]

Privacy Badger yellowlists platform.twitter.com and syndication.twitter.com to make twitter embeds work.  Is it possible we do the same?

Comment 2

[François Marier [:francois]]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #0)
> Privacy Badger yellowlists platform.twitter.com and syndication.twitter.com
> to make twitter embeds work.  Is it possible we do the same?

We don't currently have a yellowlist in TP and since Twitter presumably uses these domains for tracking I assume we don't want them removed from the Disconnect list entirely.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

Is there a bug on file for adding a yellowlist like feature?  It seems like doing that could address this kind of breakage.

Comment 4

[François Marier [:francois]]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #3)
> Is there a bug on file for adding a yellowlist like feature?  It seems like
> doing that could address this kind of breakage.

I don't think so. It's been talked about a lot in the context of extending TP to have a "softer" mode, but it's never been prioritized or fleshed out.

Comment 5

[Luke Crouch [:groovecoder]]

Note as of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1425075 we will have separate block-lists available for social trackers.

Comment 6

[Asif Youssuff]

FWIW, Brave appears to do a form of "yellow listing" -- see https://brave.com/script-blocking-exceptions-update/ for an overview and rationale.

Comment 9

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

I will be migrating sub-bugs over here which could be fixed by yellowlisting, but may also have other work-arounds which are a bit more acceptable:

• providing a placeholder interface for the user to opt into viewing content which may be tracked
• proxying or locally-hosting such content, to avoid tracking where possible

Comment 10

[Takanori MATSUURA]

Does Yellowlist mean the “cannot allow but have no choice but to treat as exception” list?

Comment 11

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

It means "block, but give user choice to unblock this specific tracking content to view the embed without disabling all strict protections". You can take a look at Bug 1892176, that tracks the progress on the project.

Comment 12

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

(In reply to Takanori MATSUURA from comment #10)

Does Yellowlist mean the “cannot allow but have no choice but to treat as exception” list?

You can try it out on Nightly now: enable ETP-strict and visit the test page https://ruby-shimmering-hair.glitch.me/

Comment 13

[Takanori MATSUURA]

(In reply to Manuel Bucher [:manuel] from comment #12)

You can try it out on Nightly now: enable ETP-strict and visit the test page https://ruby-shimmering-hair.glitch.me/

Awesome!

Comment 14

[Takanori MATSUURA]

I am also interested in the name "Yellow List" in the sense of the inclusive naming.

Comment 15

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

Fair point. We use different terminology: "Allowlisting", "Denylisting" / "Blocklist" nowadays (See Bug 1642790). Therefore "Yellowlist" doesn't fit into the schema anymore. Might be good to figure out early, because we haven't even shipped in release yet. When looking at internal docs I see the feature referenced as "Smartblock" mostly. Might be good to make consistent with bugs on bugzilla. Will bring up with the team.

Comment 16

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

One clarification: This isn't a new feature. What is novel about Bug 1892176 is that we show a placeholder to opt-in into the specific tracking-content.

The list of current smart-block embed shims for fixing websites that break due to ETP-strict is at about:compat under "SmartBlock Fixes"