[Feature Request] Add domain information to the Advanced Pop-Up User Interface

[diogovieira]

Prerequisites

• I verified that this is not a filter list issue. Report any issues with filter lists or broken website functionality in the uAssets issue tracker.
• This is NOT a YouTube, Facebook or Twitch report. These sites MUST be reported by clicking their respective links.
• This is not a support issue or a question. For support, questions, or help, visit /r/uBlockOrigin.
• I performed a cursory search of the issue tracker to avoid opening a duplicate issue.
• The issue is not present after disabling uBO in the browser.
• I checked the documentation to understand that the issue I am reporting is not normal behavior.

I tried to reproduce the issue when...

• uBO is the only extension.
• uBO uses default lists and settings.
• using a new, unmodified browser profile.

Description

First of all, I'm sorry if this is not the place for feature requests, but I couldn't find anywhere else more appropriate. If there's a process for this, please point me in the right direction!

For as long as I've been using uBlock Origin (thank you!) and uMatrix before that (thank you!), I've enabled advanced mode with dynamic filtering with 3rd party resources blocked. It's been working great, but I've always struggled to understand what domains to allow. Sometimes it's pretty obvious (major CDNs, shopify websites, Cloudflare or domains that host javascript libraries -- even if it always irks me a bit allowing ajax.googleapis.com), but most of the time it's not, and there's a lot of trial and error to try to see what is fixed or not. Worse than that, I'm not sure, even if allowing a resource to pass fixes the website, if I would still prefer not to allow it because reasons (maybe they are tracking you, providing malware or adware).

I understand this is not really an easy task, and I'm confident that this would have to work off of some kind of community knowledge base. My thinking is that hovering or clicking in the domain in the popup could reveal lots of information on that domain, who it belongs to and what it is used for and where. It would make a decision on whether to allow or not much much easier.

I can even see this pushed downstream as well to static filtering filterlists, where they could provide info on why some given domain is on the list, and for that to be shown somewhere in the UI. It would give the user more knowledge and power to understand if it's something that they really want or not to be blocked. But that may prove to be a little challenging as it would require a lot of coordination between different projects.

So, this is just an idea 🙂

I think it would be immensely helpful but can understand if you kind of think it's out of scope or too difficult to implement.

Thank you!

A specific URL where the issue occurs.

Don't think this applies in this case.

Steps to Reproduce

Feature request, no steps to reproduce.

Expected behavior

When hovering or clicking a domain in the advanced mode popup, a lot of information on that domain shows up including, but not limited to, the owners, what it is used for and where it is used.

Troubleshooting information

Doesn't apply as this is a feature request.

[gorhill]

Declined, and this has been declined in the past.

[diogovieira]

Declined, and this has been declined in the past.

I'm not contesting the decision at all, but would be great to hear feedback as to why it won't happen. Happy to follow any pointers to discussions about this in the past (searched around but couldn't find anything) or, if you're willing to spare a moment, repeat the arguments against this.

Thank you for your work on uBlock!

[gothic-bum]

See: gorhill/uBlock#3596

[diogovieira]

I guess it would either need to work fully supported by uBlock, adding to scope creep, which I see mentioned as a problem, or relying on a 3rd party to host the community knowledge base, which is something you don't want. To be honest I saw it working more like a wiki, maintained by the maintainers of the most prominent filterlists, as I guess they're the ones with more knowledge on the matter. Certainly nothing like WOB, as, to be clear, I wouldn't want to have a safety checker for a domain. That'd be subjective. What I'd like is to easily see info on the domain.

Or if there's a way to add info from the filterlists directly that would be great! But I can see that's challenging.

Thank you!