Summary

Gruber discovered that NetNewsWire's built-in CSS-based ad blocking was silently stripping text from his articles whenever the linked URL matched an `ads.*` domain pattern, making sentences appear truncated. He traced the culprit to a hardcoded rule in NetNewsWire's open-source `core.css` file. Rather than using URL shorteners to route around the problem, he refused on principle — calling it whack-a-mole that degrades link permanence. He extends the critique to any content blocker that removes hyperlinked *words* rather than merely suppressing a link, arguing this is uniquely pernicious because readers blame the author, not the blocker. He closes with a polite but direct appeal to whitelist DF's ads, making the case that they are minimal, first-party, and cookie-free.

Key Insight

Content blockers that silently remove hyperlinked words — rather than just suppressing the link — impose failures that look like the author's error, making them uniquely dishonest; the correct response is to hold editorial principles firm rather than obfuscate URLs to route around them.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 4

  I don't like playing whack-a-mole to work around bugs in other software. I have enough trouble fixing my own mistakes.

• 5

  I don't like the idea of showing everyone a 'Click it and find out where it actually goes' mystery URL from Bitly rather than the direct URL.

• 7

  What I really don't like about NetNewsWire's ad-blocking here is that it just omits the linked text. It doesn't remove the link but leave the words; it removes the words that are hyperlinked to the blocked domain.

• 6

  From the reader's perspective, it really just looks like an editing error on the part of the website, not a content blocker with an overzealous pattern-matching rule.

• 5

  Ultimately, though, when you install a content blocker extension, you take responsibility for any overzealousness in what they block.

• 4

  I actually like the ads in certain high-quality print magazines, like The New Yorker. My goal for the ads on DF is for them to be like that.

• 5

  If you are a reader and you really do want to block DF's ads, please, go right ahead. I find that an odd mindset, but it's your web browser and your call. No hard feelings.

Tone

principled, candid, mildly exasperated