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Changelog

All notable changes to Pixie's Filterlists, newest first.

Scope: 2025-09-09 → 2026-10-01 (251 commits).

A note on the automated commits: 45 of those commits are Automated filterlist update: …, generated by build_filterlists.sh when it pulls upstream sources and recompiles the metalists. They carry no hand-authored intent, so they're summarised as a count at the end of each month rather than listed one by one.

Categories used below:

  • Added — new domains, new lists, new files.
  • Changed — reorganisation, retuning, scope changes to existing lists.
  • Fixed — syntax errors, broken rules, sites that stopped working because of over-blocking.
  • Removed — domains or lists taken back out.
  • Tooling — build scripts, automation, docs.

Conventions that emerged in the lists themselves

Three habits developed over the year that are worth writing down, since they're not obvious from reading a single rule:

The sentinel-domain idiom. Blocklist entries in ublock/pixies_blacklist.txt carry a negated pseudo-domain that doesn't exist, e.g.:

||foxnews.com^$document,all,domain=~its-a-fascist-domain.*

Because ~its-a-fascist-domain.* can never match a real page, the exclusion never fires and the rule applies everywhere — the tag is purely a self-documenting category label that survives into the compiled output. Current vocabulary, by frequency: its-a-fascist-domain (88), scourge-of-society (30), its-a-racist-subreddit (17), mv3-bootlicking-file (10), its-a-terf-apologia-site (6), its-a-fascist-subreddit (5), its-a-terf-apologia-subreddit (4), mv3-bootlicking-site and mv3-bootlicking-alleged-extension (3 each), its-tabloid-gutter-trash (2), plus one-offs. This convention is local to the hand-authored blacklist — it doesn't come from upstream.

Version stamps. Hand-edited lists carry a ! Version: DDMonthYYYYvN header (e.g. ! Version: 31August2026v1), bumped by hand on each edit. It's a change marker for subscribers, not a semantic version.

Geo-spoofing via $replace=. Age-assurance walls are worked around by rewriting the JSON the site uses to locate you, rather than by blocking anything:

||ip.bsky.app/config$replace=/(?<="countryCode":").+?(?=")/US/
||ip.bsky.app/config$replace=/(?<="isAgeRestrictedGeo":)true/false/

These need Allow custom filters requiring trust enabled in uBO options, which is noted inline in the list.

2026-10

Tooling

  • .gitignore added (7f4cb8a).
  • CHANGELOG.md added (1b87eba).

Added

  • Added additional government sites including nasaforce.gov, ndstudio.gov, and other fascist sites (995fd1b).
  • WWE filtered out of search results under a new "Sites I just don't like" section (98b194d): wwe.com, WWE's YouTube channels, its Wikipedia page, and the WWE sections of Bleacher Report and CBS Sports.

Automation

  • 1 automated rebuild.

2026-09

The CloudFront month: lots of sites turned out to load their scripts, styles or video from cloudfront.net, which the upstream lists block. Each one got its own narrow exception scoped with from=, so CloudFront stays blocked everywhere else.

Added

  • america.gov blocked in the government-sites ublacklist list, the uBO blacklist (tagged its-a-fascist-domain) and the router blacklist (0e42094).
  • CloudFront exceptions, one site at a time:
    • Comet TV video (media, xhr, image), plus cdn.bitmovin.com, so NWA Powerrr plays (8967f0b).
    • The Stripe dashboard, along with r.stripe.com xhr (98c5f19).
    • Acquia and Slack (87085d0), and later CurseForge on the same rule (e00550b).
    • The Blizzard forums (b302bfd).
    • The Taylor Swift store, with Typekit fonts (338eaec).
  • Disqus comments on Mediaite. The embed sits inside a disqus.com iframe, so from= has to list both the host page and Disqus itself (1471def). The disquscdn.com font was added afterwards so the notification counter renders (017784c).
  • northsky.app added as a fourth Bluesky frontend next to mu.social, deck.blue and blacksky.community (10d9356).
  • YouTube API endpoints whitelisted, each scoped to domain=youtube.com: stats/atr, notification/, log_event, and ytimg.com (16b1cd1).
  • Health sites whitelisted: dcinetwork.org, bidmc.org, diabetesdefa.org (ff2d93a).
  • Router whitelist committed (cb42fa4): BBC analytics, the discovery+ API, and a batch of torrent trackers.
  • wowpedia.fandom.com filtered out of search results, because Wowpedia moved to wiki.gg. This is a new "Not bad, just outdated" section (03c94cf).

Changed

  • Short-form option names adopted throughout the whitelist (eb62be5, 8967f0b): xmlhttprequest became xhr, and an invalid xmlrequest was fixed along the way. The README now has a short/long option-name table.
  • Analytics allowances consolidated (eb62be5). The separate $document,xmlrequest blocks for her own sites and for Democracy Now / Autostraddle / forthem were merged into one rule per tracker with explicit script,xhr,image types.
  • Bluesky allowances narrowed (dbed2fd, f938d3f). The blanket ||bsky.app^ exception was replaced with cdn.bsky.app, video.bsky.app and video.cdn.bsky.app, plus media/xhr only on bsky.app. All of them now use from= instead of domain=.
  • The YouTube stats/qoe exception was changed from $important to an $xhr rule (eb62be5).
  • List expiry raised: the whitelist went from 7 to 30 days (d705701). The government list and the blacklists went from 7 to 14 days (0e42094).
  • The Adobe unsubscribe-link exception was left commented out, with a note on when to re-enable it (d705701).

Fixed

  • The YouTube notification panel came back. A cosmetic rule in an upstream list was hiding ytd-popup-container (ff2d93a).
  • Filter syntax fixes (eb62be5).

Changed (earlier in the month)

  • uBO config refreshed across three files (ca8c374):
    • Whitelist: exception for www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/log_event, and autostraddle.forthem.com allowed.
    • Dynamic rules: cosmetic filtering disabled for www.wbur.org and a local spacecadetgrrl.me.test host; onetrust.com set to noop on watch.njpwworld.com; www.cbc.ca set to noop.
    • Trusted sites: added chrome-extension-scheme, moz-extension-scheme, the AWS console, and Google Calendar / Docs / Drive / Photos.

Automation

  • 2 automated rebuilds (d705701 also carried hand edits to the whitelist; see above).

2026-08

Added

  • Whitelisting for AEW streaming so the player loads (809f447).
  • Comet TV's NWA Powerrr player unblocked (c45e2b1).
  • Blacksky's web frontend allowlisted alongside bsky.app (8774331).
  • taylr's spies-dislike-us list added as an upstream source to the pro metalist (369ef75).
  • UK political party domains added to the ublacklist search filter — labour.org.uk, conservatives.com, reformparty.org, reformparty.uk, restorebritain.org.uk (bdb1f9a).

Changed

  • Existing blacklist entries retagged with sentinel categories (bdb1f9a): spacex.com, starlink.com and tesla.com moved under its-a-fascist-domain; jkrowling.com, mumsnet.com and harrypotter.com under its-a-terf-apologia-site.
  • Whitelist cleanup (92718b1): Google service exceptions (Calendar, Docs, Drive, Messages, My Account, My Activity, Photos, Translate) broadened from $document to $document,all; gemini.google.com and mail.google.com dropped; a local camp-registration site added; the Mozilla donor portal kept working, with an inline note that Mozilla is "on the shitlist right now for running back to Twitter."
  • Rules cleanup (401c3a6): metrics.brightcove.com broadened beyond player.stv.tv; live-events.workers.bsky.app allowed; Klaviyo click-tracking unblocked so Autostraddle newsletter links resolve; Google Analytics / Tag Manager / New Relic allowed but scoped by $domain= to her own sites (spacecadetgrrl.me, pixiekat.net, netkitten.net, integraldata.cc) and to democracynow.org, autostraddle.com, forthem.com; FundraiseUp allowed for Thunderbird and Mozilla donation pages.
  • uBO whitelist tidied (cadbd1a): 1337x.to broadened from the www. host to the bare domain, the two cargo.site subdomain entries dropped in favour of a TLD-level rule, and seg6.space added.
  • Router whitelist updated (64ee99c).

Automation

  • 7 automated rebuilds.

2026-07

Added

  • AI services filtered out of search results (112d9d1): Perplexity, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Copilot.
  • Crypto and crypto-media domains across three passes (fb1dfaf, ea706d3, 1d85c1a): bitcoin.com, coinmarketcap.com, decrypt.co, benzinga.com, tradingview.com, invezz.com, cryptobriefing.com, blockonomi.com, cryptoninjas.net, bitbo.io, icoholder.com, tradersunion.com, ainvest.com, web3.gate.com, and — inevitably — steaknshake.com.

Changed

  • Reddit moved to a harder blocking posture (d7def86).
  • Whitelist refresh (b71ee6e): the Bluesky $replace= geo-spoof extended to cover mu.social, and updated for Bluesky's newer isAgeRestrictedGeo / isAgeBlockedGeo boolean fields; bsky.app and bsky.network allowed as embeds on mu.social and deck.blue; the H&R Block tax-season exception retired.

Fixed

  • SiriusXM unblocked after over-matching (c3b9990).
  • Pinterest rule corrected (0cce1f8).

Automation

  • 2 automated rebuilds.

2026-06

Added

  • UFC and UFC-adjacent coverage, across three passes, filed under a "Sites that contribute to fascism" heading (d8999d6, 371b80f, 1afc2b9): ufc.com, ufcfightpass.com, the MMA sections of ESPN (US and UK), CBS Sports, SI FanNation, MSN, The Independent and TNT Sports, plus mmafighting.com, mmamania.com, mmajunkie.usatoday.com, wheresthematch.com, youtube.com/ufc, and Wikipedia's list-of-UFC-events pages.
  • Government domains: federalregister.gov, dol.gov, america250.org (a80e0d4, 1f6bc8b, 8cabc99).
  • factually.co (332f729); kenklippenstein.com (45cf5bb).
  • A YouTube exception rule (fc06231).

Changed

  • VPN exclusions reorganised as well as extended — this is where the vpn-inclusions-*.txt split (CA / FI / static-UK) settled into its current shape (2871930).

Automation

  • 5 automated rebuilds.

2026-05

Added

  • News Corp / Murdoch's newer mastheads (eb5ec93).
  • regulations.gov and aipacpac.org (e4e96dd).
  • WoW gold-seller spam blocked out of search results — guy4game.com, mmosavor.com, wowgoldfinder.com (58d9cdb).
  • opensubtitles.org whitelisted (0c807d2).

Removed

  • TikTok pulled out of the search-result blocking (1e33014).
  • infowars.com removed — The Onion acquisition made the entry moot (8b168ce).

Fixed

  • ublacklist syntax error corrected (2a52ff7).

Automation

  • 4 automated rebuilds.

2026-04

Added

  • Newly-registered far-right sites (ebbaf41): alexjoneslive.com, megynkelly.com, spectator.co.uk, spectator.com, thefp.com.
  • beacon.tv whitelisted (7cb5701).

Changed

  • Whitelist narrowed (a396313): the blanket $document,all allowances for analytics.google.com, AWS console telemetry and telemetry.mozilla.org re-scoped to fire only on their own domains, and the four separate Mozilla telemetry lines collapsed into one multi-domain rule.

Removed

  • The youtube.com/*&disableadblock=1 workaround, no longer needed (a396313).

Fixed

  • YouTube rules repaired after breakage (408c506).

Automation

  • 6 automated rebuilds.

2026-03

A heavy month for government-site tracking, and the month the sentinel idiom got debugged.

Added

  • Government domains in several rounds: fcc.gov, state.gov (588e896); cia.gov, commerce.gov, fbi.gov, freedom.gov (b4c18a8); aliens.gov, registered and blocked the same week (9931a96); the White House app (e53e24f).
  • Far-right sites (fc26db1): canadafreepress.com, reformparty.org, reformparty.uk, restorebritain.org.uk, nfarage.com, plus hhs.gov and usa.gov.
  • Prediction markets under the scourge-of-society tag — polymarket.com, kalshi.com, manifold.markets (a2bbc11).
  • VPN exclusions for Anthropic's asset proxy, battle.net, blizzard.com, ghcr.io, the VS Code CDN, and assorted Azure/Outlook endpoints (cf9beb2).

Changed

  • VPN exclusions pulled from the live router config and cleaned up (c688c65, a2cde5d, 86e3be2).
  • Whitelist rewritten to scope exceptions with $domain= instead of blanket $document,all (2194d76) — Anthropic's CDN and the Intercom widget pinned to claude.ai|claude.com, Google Maps and Search pinned by path, Disqus allowed so comment sections load.
  • Whitelist retuned again (784c36e): WBUR, WGBH, webkitten.net and Tuta/Tutanota mail added; the blanket claude.ai and copilot.microsoft.com allowances dropped; list expiry raised from 12 to 24 hours.

Fixed

  • The sentinel tags were missing their leading ~. Written as $domain=scourge-of-society.* rather than $domain=~scourge-of-society.*, the rules matched only a domain that doesn't exist — so they never fired at all. Caught and corrected over three commits (d29339c, 9aa64e2, 74e4dbe), which retroactively made the March 4th prediction-markets block actually work.
  • Router blacklist repaired (a80c2c9); miscellaneous fixes and a typo (2194d76, c018466).

Tooling

  • Auto-commit and auto-push disabled in the build script — rebuilds now stage changes for review instead of pushing on their own (c795490).
  • Upstream list attributions documented in the README (705f23b).

Automation

  • 10 automated rebuilds.

2026-02 — the big restructure

The month the repo stopped being a pile of flat .txt files and became a build system. Everything below the "Restructure" heading is the same effort, in roughly the order it happened.

Restructure

  • Split the repo into adguard/, ublock/, and ublacklist/ trees, each with its own scripts/ directory (9b69863 onward).
  • Introduced the metalist concept: generated lists that inline upstream sources so a new device subscribes to one URL instead of a dozen (a809fc3, 077a714, 152c4db, 8bb9bf6, 1021f5e).
  • Added the tiered browser lists — base, pro, and extreme (6b838f3, dee3a25, 20c99b2, c47783a).
  • Added pixiekat_list_for_mom_and_dad.txt, the gentler inherited tier for family devices.
  • Added build_filterlists.sh as the single entry point, plus per-list create_*.sh generators and lib/filterlist_helpers.sh (f6d693d, b804d42).
  • Consolidated the old scattered whitelists into merged_allowlist.txt and moved uBO's trusted sites into it (9b69863, 703de26, ab8f8b2, 5a49637).
  • Combined the separate ublacklist filters into pixies_ublacklist_main.txt (b1cf60f, 111cd33).
  • Added a dedicated router blacklist and Elon-property list (d3bbd22, f905bb9).

Added

  • Upstream lists pulled into the metalists: DandelionSprout's Reddit Trash Removal Service (36c7fea), Anti-Trash YouTube (c7614d4), BadBlock's Facebook (ABP) list (bc7ccbb), and AntiAPKMirrorCountdown (4abf0c3).
  • Phishing and malicious-URL lists (ef6b6aa, bc22055).
  • News sites filtered from search results (c1c85a6): BBC News, The Economist, FT, Mediaite, NYT, Substack, The Conversation, The Guardian.
  • restorebritain.org.uk blocked on launch (32ff857).
  • Microsoft and additional Google domains whitelisted, including messages.google.com and remotedesktop.google.com (f2b4d97, ab6af47, bb70d7d, 28c1b18, cabcdf5).
  • Acquia domains whitelisted for work (0e24ab7); 1Password telemetry (8296e39); Autostraddle newsletter whitelisting (6202995).
  • VPN exclusions for Wowhead, Hearthhead, Intuit, Sectigo, tvchannellists.com, and a few billing portals (09e798e).
  • An "ethical whitelist" tier (eb3b34c); YouTube autoplay suppression (5b3e8e1).

Changed

  • Google advertising tracking selectively allowed where blocking broke the page, and torrent trackers (moonburrow.club, coppersurfer.tk, isk.richardsw.club) moved to the router list; BBC media endpoints (emp/r/static.bbci.co.uk) allowed so iPlayer content plays (40ddf13, 5711c8d, 234f092, 222d4bd).
  • VPN exclusions updated and de-duplicated (aa904d1, b1baee9, 88df59b, 8206ec4).

Removed

  • GDPR list dropped from the metalists — kept as an optional subscribe instead (3be428c).
  • Local !#include directives stripped from compiled output, since subscribers can't resolve them; documented in the README (e678841, c4dcee7, fa2de18).

Fixed

  • Long debugging run on the pro list failing to compile (bdffa17, 5f6be67, 15217c2).
  • Brave/Matomo blocking corrected (6357156).
  • Broken upstream URLs and include paths (cc7b671, 5b86400).
  • Output path and version string in the build script (d4b7648, 8a7b558, 5848e95).
  • Misspelled variable in a generator (63b2c6e).

Tooling

  • First README written, then expanded (ac228c5, c7614d4).
  • Auto-commit and push wired into build_filterlists.sh (e6541fc, 3c8dba9, 07295b9) — later reversed in March.

Automation

  • 8 automated rebuilds.

2026-01

Added

  • Local broadcast channels routed around the VPN — www.wcvb.com, www.boston25news.com (092293e, aaec070).
  • Meta-owned sites (9455938); trumpaccounts.gov (cdd3a66); realfood.gov (7b47832).
  • Spammy news sources filtered from search (7dfff6f): wabcradio.com, hindustantimes.com, Yahoo News, usatoday.com.
  • Everyday-service whitelisting: hrblock.com, homeagain.com, doordash.com, petsmart.com, tijuanaflats.com (33d1975, dbeacfb, 50a4a58, f9af40d, e157f79).
  • Adult sites added to the VPN exclusions to route around UK age verification — chaturbate.com, spankbang.com, playvids.com, lesbian8.com, tnaflix.com (19a66de); stale CW/Amagi CDN hosts removed in the same pass.

Changed

  • Monthly VPN exclusions refresh (d3de1e3): Hetzner, Linux Mint, MaxMind, Barnes & Noble, Poland Spring, water.com, Google Photos/Video, and a bare IP.
  • VPN exclusions updated (ba388a3).

2025-12

Mostly a whitelisting month — a lot of "this thing broke, let it through."

Added

  • CW channel domains (cf1e2b9, d608f33) and nbcboston.com (d278a4c).
  • Red Hat's knowledge base, which sits behind a login wall (7cbb764).
  • justice.gov, with a reorganisation alongside it (73e9fd8, 805d29a).
  • youporn.com and related hosts across three commits in response to UK age-verification breakage, finishing with the ypncdn.com CDN so video actually plays (ddd81a2, f8b6664, 46d6f02).
  • US-routed adult retail — adameve.com, adamevestores.com, bettystoybox.com (a8f7ff4).
  • Google Store domains and tv.youtube.com (c211cf1, cef4991).
  • signal.org, gitlab.com, autostraddle.com, Nerd Fonts, integraldata.cc, gp-mc.net (45a88d6, d6fc75e, 66fe52c, f31388a, 0df6c7a).
  • Copilot and Gemini domains (98c15ba); 1sixty8.ai (4d3e512).
  • trumpcard.gov (fa59025).
  • Misinformation sources filtered from search (dfd0633): breitbart.com, canadafreepress.com, conservatives.com, dailymail.co.uk, cbsnews.com, ai.gov.
  • Spam and low-quality sources (d4d2180): 4chan.org, dev.to, deepwiki.com, gitmemories.com, jewornotjew.com.

Changed

  • VPN exclusions list updated (4d54d02).

2025-11

Added

  • grok.com (71b8d4e); neowin.net (c70b2bf); trumprx.com (bb80ab4).

Changed

  • Weekly VPN exclusions refresh (3b756e2, 83efc3c): Jellyfin's repo, an AWS SMTP endpoint, an Acquia devcloud SSH host and progressivedirect.homesite.com added; a stale Acquia hostname and an amazon.com.lan entry removed.
  • Stray blank line removed from the clutter-free guide (87eb2ee).

2025-10

Added

  • vpn-inclusions.txt — new list, the inverse of the exclusions, for traffic that must go through the tunnel (7e93b3b).
  • router_whitelist.txt — new router-level allowlist (0d29fcf).
  • Far-right and crypto domains (317a746): binance.us, foxnews.com, foxbusiness.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, character.ai.
  • Government and campaign sites (2218c3e, 002b7ae): whitehouse.gov, doge.gov, dei.gov, waste.gov, ai.gov, war.gov, trumprx.gov, trumpmobile.com.
  • Grokipedia, Elon's Wikipedia clone (032ed02).
  • ai_sites_ublacklist.txt created as "Pixie's AI Slop Sites", then extended (92430ac, e187842): pieces.app, dev.to, topbusinesssoftware.com, quizard.io, geekpedia.com, and a couple of AI editor plugins polluting GitHub results.
  • Mastodon instances whitelisted (7d802db); esspots.com (9794c87).
  • YouTube Premium upsell blocking (86dda7a).

Changed

  • October refresh across four lists (67dfe22): washingtonreporter.news and thewashingtonreporter.com blocked; the first appearance of the Bluesky $replace= geo-spoof, then covering ageRestrictedGeos / ageBlockedGeos arrays; DuckDuckGo sidebar badge elements hidden; a stale Mediaite cosmetic rule and an internal IP dropped.
  • VPN exclusions updated (b67baa0); list dates bumped (3907cd7).

2025-09 (from the 9th)

Added

  • news_sites_ublacklist.txt — new list, "Pixie's News Blackout", for stripping news sites out of search results entirely (348a7a0).
  • Business Insider (c36374f); ollama.com whitelisted (5563d20).

Changed

  • VPN exclusions added/updated (6566062).

Conventions going forward

If you want to keep this file current without much effort:

  • Skip the Automated filterlist update: commits entirely — they're machine output.
  • Write hand-authored commit messages with the why in them where it isn't obvious (adding youporn.com because uk sucks is genuinely more useful a year later than adding domains would have been).
  • Group by month rather than by version — this repo has no release cadence, and the version string in the compiled lists is a build timestamp, not a semantic version.