New recommended filter lists

Background / User story

We would like to offer our users more Filter lists in the settings, so they can improve their web experience.

We are renaming the Privacy & Security section in the general tab of the settings page to Recommended filters, and adding two new filter lists: Fanboy's Notifications and I Don't Care About Cookies. The latter will only be shown for non-FR and non-DE locales.

What to change

• Design: https://eyeogmbh.invisionapp.com/public/share/YA1CD4VKQB
• Research: TBD
• Spec: eyeo/specs/spec!345
• Legal: https://jira.eyeo.com/browse/ABPUI-37

Hints for testers

• In options page > general tab, "RECOMMENDED FILTERS" should appear as the first section's title (instead of "PRIVACY & SECURITY").
• "Block cookie warnings" and "Block push notifications" should appear with the tag "NEW" at the side and tooltips as described in the specs.
• "Block cookie warnings" should be hidden for FR and DE locales.
• Changing the state of the toggle button for any of those new filter lists should be reflected in the Advanced tab > Filter Lists table, making them appear/disappear there. Be aware that due to the time that a list takes to be installed, clicking the toggle button twice too fast could either not be reflected immediately or break momentarily (refresh to fix) the toggle status (see ui#853).

Hints for translators

• Changed description of string options_new_label.
• Replaced string options_privacy_header by string options_recommended_filters_header.
• Renamed string options_protection_privacy_tooltip by options_recommended_privacy_tooltip.
• Renamed string options_protection_social_tooltip by options_recommended_social_tooltip.
• Added strings:
  • options_recommended_notifications_tooltip
  • options_recommended_cookies_tooltip
  • common_feature_notifications_title
  • common_feature_cookies_title

Integration notes

Requires internal HD#1587, internal HD#1748, core#248.

Updates page (optional)

TBD

Correction, this isn't newsletter blocking. This stops website notification popup (like onesignal).

@ryanbr I see, sorry about the misunderstanding. So this list is specifically about blocking push notifications?

Yeah, targeting specifically sites that will use 1st-party or 3rd-party to push messages to the end user.

1. Annoyances factor is high, if you're getting prodding with website notifications
2. Privacy (especially when a site is using 3rd-party servers). Push script calls are also often tracked also.

We've been using it @brave https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust/pull/72 as its own list. With it now in Easylist, makes it easier to maintain and include in other projects.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

We'll have to look into how big of a problem it is and how many users it affects before we can decide whether/how to integrate it into the extension. Therefore I'm not assigning it to a milestone at this point.

Example of a push notifications (many servers just doing this..) They add little/no value and will track the users.

And commited; https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/ade95b739f9832ea28d9bf86efea52689aa31d54

@ryanbr Thanks for sharing. I've installed it and it's very nice 'feature' to have.

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@ThomasGreiner I leave it under 2020-2 but I want to promote it via the Teaser Footer with a link to the help center.

@lursachi What do you think? I don't want to host this page under the extension, but also not sure that we should work on another IDCAC page. Maybe we should create this on the help center

@erezson If this page is similar in functionality & scope with IDAC, we have to take into account:

Hosting the page under ABP.org:

• A template for the page already exists courtesy of IDAC landing page
• Hosting the page there would involve just changing the hero content and updating the screenshots in the bottom of the page: https://adblockplus.org/block-cookie-warnings
• It would entail: Create copy & new visual, provide new screenshots > translate copy > create new page with updated content > test > party

Hosting the page under the Help Center:

• The Help Center is eyeo branded, not ABP branded and users coming directly from the ABP extension might be a bit confused;
• The Help Center articles are currently available in English only
• We would have to write the same detection logic for the URL parameters and, traditionally, we didn't support installation buttons in the Help Center if I'm not mistaken
  • this is going to change in the future (supporting buttons for installing, adding features, etc) but for a simple page it might mean more work and overhead
• Likely to be moved as the Help Center will be changed in the future.
• Overall, it would entail: create copy & visuals, provide screenshots > ignore other languages or add support for them > create new page, add support for URL param detection, add support for buttons > test > party > probably move it later on

Given this, I would prefer hosting it under ABP.org for mainly 3 reasons:

• the web devs and QA will anyhow have to help us, regardless of where it lives, due to the functionality
• supporting additional languages
• the "template" already exists, we have to update the content (including visuals and translations)

Looping in @lisabielik in case she has other thoughts or additional feedback on this

@erezson I don't mind if we create a landing page for it on our website and if we promote the filter list in the Bubble UI. But why would we link to the web page, if we could just give users the option to directly install the filter list from within the extension?

Also, are you suggesting to do that instead of or in addition to recommending the filter list in the settings page alongside the other ones?

@ThomasGreiner In addition. The advantages of landing page are:

1. We can promote it on social media
2. When we promote it on the extension we can provide more information to the users before they install

@lursachi I don't want to put more stuff on your roadmap but I will be glad to have such page. So when you have time...

@erezson All I'm saying is, let's not overcomplicate things again, as we did with the cookie notification. As a first step, we could just add that option in the settings and set up a landing page. Following that, we can think about how we want to recommend the filter list to users.

Also, I'd say that whenever we can avoid using the notification system, we should, or otherwise we'll run into all sorts of problems yet again.

@ThomasGreiner Agree. this is why I asked Nas in the comment below to add it to the settings. But we do need to inform users about it some how

@erezson What I mean is that we don't need to work on both at the same time, because we can add the feature now and inform users about it later.

Even if we want to inform users right away, we could link to the settings page, for the time being, and replace it, as soon as the landing page is ready.

@nasserui Can you provide settings page design where we can promote this (and also the IDCAC list). I would prefer to see it in the General settings so users won't need to search for it.

assigned to @nasserui

@erezson How about recommending these filter lists in a new section, We can also call it one-click install.

I would also recommend adding a description under each recommended filter explaining what it does or why it's recommended.

Full page + undo remove screen (invision): https://eyeogmbh.invisionapp.com/public/share/GH17LZN94J

Any thoughts?

@nasserui Love it

Can you add the undo for the remove also here?

@erezson if you mean the undo (the one proposed to the unblocked list), then yes this should be widely used all over the settings

@nasserui Yes, I'm not sure which feature will be ready first and I prefer to avoid dependency. So it will be good for me if you can add another screen in this feature with the undo.

@erezson yes sure, will update the invision link above to include two screens instead of one

@ThomasGreiner What do you think about this place? I like it but it seems in the Spec the definition is a bit different from "recommendation" so I wonder about the background of it:

#### More filter subscriptions

All filter lists that a user subscribes to which are not one of Adblock Plus's recommended filter lists (i.e. not recommended within the Privacy & Security and Language sections) will be shown here.

@erezson Technically, we already have a section in the General where we recommend filter lists to users: Privacy & Security. So why not rename it to something like "Recommendations" and add "Remove website notification popups" and "Remove obtrusive EU cookie notices" to it?

It may also be worth noting that, when we first introduced the new settings page, we decided on not mentioning the filter list names in the General tab, as they seem only useful for advanced users. That's why we refer to "EasyList Germany+EasyList" as "German" and "EasyPrivacy" as "Block additional tracking".

in the Spec the definition is a bit different from "recommendation" so I wonder about the background of it

The "More filters" section is meant to show any filter lists that the user has installed which are neither a language filter list, nor some other recommended filter list. One of the reasons for that was that we wanted to allow users who added a filter list before we introduced the new settings page, to be able to see and remove them without having to go to the Advanced tab. However, it's also a useful place to show filter lists that users may have installed without going to the Advanced tab (e.g. by clicking on a subscribe link).

@nasserui What do you think? I like the idea and it will be much more simple to integrate at first step

@ThomasGreiner So you mean by that adding 2 more checkboxes for blocking notifications and IDCAC and then renaming the section to be Recommendations instead of Privacy & Security?

@nasserui Correct, we should merge them together. We can also look into redesigning that section or choosing a different headline, if we think it's necessary.

@ThomasGreiner @erezson We can do that + adding NEW label beside the newly introduced options

What do you think?

@nasserui I like it.

@ThomasGreiner if we want to show it only at the first time user open the settings, do we need webext? Another option is to show the new for specific version of ABP

@nasserui +1

@erezson We would need to store persistent data which requires changes to WebExt code. We can show the label to all users and remove it again with a later update, which would require no logic whatsoever.

It is worth noting though that adding new recommended filter lists is done by modifying the subscriptionlist repository, based on which Core generates the list of recommended filter lists (that we're using) and Websites generates adblockplus.org/subscriptions. So while I wouldn't expect much trouble from that, we need to keep in mind that they will be impacted by this change in some way (see also trac#2821 and trac#6689).

Is the title of the cookie filter list "Block cookies popups" final? I was just wondering about the term "popups" doesn't fit imo.

@arthur10 it's not

@nasserui Can you please provide me invision link + new icons

@nasserui @aisha_sharipzhan We first need Aisha to confirm that New is the right wording. Aisha, can you please confirm or suggest another one?

@erezson Here you go! https://eyeogmbh.invisionapp.com/public/share/A81C1UTXCT#/screens/479651750

Also, we need a confirmation from @aisha_sharipzhan on Block websites notifications popups and Block cookies popups

@nasserui Yes, that will be part of the Spec, we also need tooltip content

@erezson @nasserui

New looks good to me.

Block websites notifications popups - I think Block push notifications makes it less likely to confuse for other popups like newsletter popups.

Block cookies popups - Let's go with Block cookie warnings

Let me know if you have other thoughts :)

@aisha_sharipzhan Thanks! I need also content for the tooltip that includes more details. The cookies list needs to include also link to the website of the list owner

@erezson Here's a new link for the last copy including the two tooltips: https://eyeogmbh.invisionapp.com/public/share/YA1CD4VKQB

assigned to @erezson

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changed title from Provide option for blocking non-critical notifications on websites to New recommended filter lists

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@aisha_sharipzhan You have some work to do here :)

We need copy for the new filter lists (include tooltip). We also need to rename the PRIVACY & SECURITY headline because we're going to recommend non privacy and security lists but more general lists that will improve browsing experience.

assigned to @aisha_sharipzhan and unassigned @nasserui

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New headline: Recommended Filters

Tooltips:

Block push notifications - Stop websites from asking you to allow push notifications that could track your online activity.

Block cookie warnings - Get rid of those annoying cookie consent popups. More info here: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

@aisha_sharipzhan Spec is up to date. Can you please check?

and provide LGTM if all good :)

LGTM :)

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unassigned @erezson and @aisha_sharipzhan

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@aisha_sharipzhan Can you please confirm the copy after the legal changes?

LGTM

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@ThomasGreiner @2alin @ursakacar I somehow missed the QA LGTM but that was a good thing for this ticket because we had a lot of feedback from legal. The Spec is not confirmed by Legal so if one of you gives LGTM, please move it directly to ~"State::Implementation (ABPUI)"

assigned to @ursakacar

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assigned to @2alin

mentioned in issue eyeo/auxiliary/python-abp#5

mentioned in merge request !552 (merged)

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@erezson To reassure, the "I Don't Care About Cookies" subscription will be hidden (for DE, FR) from the renamed "Recommended Filters" section, but is it okay if we display it in the "Built-in filter lists" menu (Advanced > Filter Lists) for all languages? (displayed there by default for Core recommendations). Or do we need to remove all kind of recommendations of such list in the UI for DE and FR?

@2alin I think it's ok to have it there for all the languages, but that's something that @lursachi needs to take care of as part of the website team

@ryanbr @kiboke Hey guys, due to stability of ABP and legal reasons, we will need to clone the list to our server. If you have any objections please LMK.

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mentioned in issue #786 (closed)

Please file a gitlab issue for adblockpluscore so we get these in subscriptions.json when you think it is time to have them.

@hfiguiere I had a ticket already created: https://gitlab.com/eyeo/adblockplus/adblockpluscore/-/issues/248. Now that everything is ready, I felt free to reopen it.

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