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v0.1.0-theylive — first build

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@davmlaw davmlaw released this 11 May 14:01
v0.1.0-theylive
367088e

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite that, instead of hiding cosmetically-blocked ads, replaces them with a white box bearing rotating slogans from John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live: OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

Inspired by this 2015 blog post.

Install (Linux Chromium / Chrome / Brave / Edge)

  1. Download uBOLite_theylive.chromium.zip from the assets below.
  2. Extract it to a folder you'll keep around (e.g. ~/extensions/uBOLite-theylive/). The extension is loaded from this folder, so don't delete it after install.
  3. Open chrome://extensions in your browser.
  4. Toggle Developer mode on (top-right corner).
  5. Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder.
  6. The uBO Lite icon appears in the toolbar — pin it for convenience.

Make it actually replace ads

By default, uBO Lite runs in Basic filtering mode, which only blocks network requests — there are no DOM elements left to "They-Live-ify". To see OBEY tiles where ads used to be:

  1. Click the uBO Lite toolbar icon.
  2. Click the cog (⚙) icon to open the dashboard.
  3. For sites you visit, set the filtering mode to Optimal or Complete. Complete gives the richest cosmetic coverage.
  4. Reload the page.

What you'll see

  • News sites, forums, sites with banner-ad slots: white tiles with bold black phrases where ads used to be. Each tile picks a random phrase.
  • Sites where ads are network-blocked: empty space, same as vanilla uBO Lite. Network-blocked requests never produce a DOM element, so there's nothing to mask.
  • YouTube video ads: blocked at the network/scriptlet level — no visible They Live tile.

Caveats

  • This is a personal hobby fork, not an official uBlock Origin product. Don't file issues with the uBO project.
  • Forcing previously-hidden elements to be visible can occasionally cause layout shifts on pages whose CSS assumes the ad slot collapses to zero height. That's an inherent trade-off of replacing instead of hiding.
  • Custom user-defined cosmetic filters still hide normally (they don't get the OBEY treatment).

Source

Built from gorhill/uBlock MV3 source with patches to the cosmetic-filtering path. See the repo for code.

Assets 3
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