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Fuck Stylish

posted by PMYA on Whatever

For those who are unaware, Stylish is a browser add-on that lets you edit CSS. It is extremely useful and I have been using it to add custom CSS to multiple different sites for months now. The current Phuks dark theme and both of the New Layout™ themes were all edited with Stylish, as well as all of the custom CSS I have ever added to Voat and Phuks subs.

@pembo210 told me a few weeks ago that his Stylish had updated without his consent, but he had managed to restore an older version. Mine took a while, but it also changed without my consent. On top of this, the creator of Stylish decided that he was going to start selling user data to SimilarWeb, an analytics company. If there was some sort of notification about this, it would have been fine. I didn't uninstall Stylish because I was in the middle of doing stuff for the alt pages, and it was an inconvenience.

There was no notification about this. In fact, the only mention of it is a post on the UserStyles forum, a place where probably 5-10% of the people who use Stylish would actually see it. The only reason I actually found this is because I stumbled upon a Lainchan thread that linked it.

One of the replies there mentions that there is an opt out option, something which was conveniently left out of the announcement that almost nobody saw. Unless you read the entire privacy page, or happened to notice the small opt out box by chance, there is no way you would have known that Stylish suddenly started selling your data.

That's not all. Here is the opt out box.

Here is the pop up you get when you click on it. They are trying to get people to keep opting in for their data being sold by removing Stylish features if you opt out.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this. Here is a section from their privacy policy. As you can see, they are not allowed to sell user data if the user is under the age of 13.

Which is why I will be contacting them to explain that they have been gathering my non-existent 10 year old daughter's data for the past 2 weeks.

Fuck Stylish.

Edit: Fixed Lainchan link, it was the wrong one.

For those who are unaware, Stylish is a browser add-on that lets you edit CSS. It is extremely useful and I have been using it to add custom CSS to multiple different sites for months now. The current Phuks dark theme and both of the New Layout™ themes were all edited with Stylish, as well as all of the custom CSS I have ever added to Voat and Phuks subs. @pembo210 told me a few weeks ago that his Stylish had updated without his consent, but he had managed to restore an older version. Mine took a while, but it also changed without my consent. On top of this, the creator of Stylish decided that he was going to start selling user data to SimilarWeb, an analytics company. If there was some sort of notification about this, it would have been fine. I didn't uninstall Stylish because I was in the middle of doing stuff for the alt pages, and it was an inconvenience. There was no notification about this. In fact, the only mention of it is a post on [the UserStyles forum](https://forum.userstyles.org/discussion/53233/announcement-to-the-community), a place where probably 5-10% of the people who use Stylish would actually see it. The only reason I actually found this is because I stumbled upon [a Lainchan thread](https://lainchan.org/sec/res/4032.html) that linked it. One of the replies there mentions that there is an opt out option, something which _was conveniently left out of the announcement that almost nobody saw._ Unless you read the entire privacy page, or happened to notice the small opt out box by chance, there is no way you would have known that Stylish suddenly started selling your data. That's not all. [Here is the opt out box.](https://i.imgur.com/ToLnZAx.png) [Here is the pop up you get when you click on it.](https://i.imgur.com/oOrnWa4.png) They are trying to get people to keep opting in for their data being sold by removing Stylish features if you opt out. Fortunately, there is a solution to this. [Here is a section from their privacy policy.](https://i.imgur.com/nMLQTZu.png) As you can see, they are not allowed to sell user data if the user is under the age of 13. Which is why I will be contacting them to explain that they have been gathering my non-existent 10 year old daughter's data for the past 2 weeks. Fuck Stylish. Edit: Fixed Lainchan link, it was the wrong one.

5 comments

[–] Violentlight 4 points (+4|-0)

Your 10 year old has been doing the CSS for the site?

Explains so much now...

[–] PMYA [OP] 2 points (+2|-0)

Do you want to get shadowbanned?

Because this is how you get shadowbanned.

[–] pembo210 3 points (+3|-0)

I may have figured out how to block the autoupdate. I hate that this has to be done..

[–] Mastercat 3 points (+3|-0)

Fuck it, I had no idea this happened.

[–] PMYA [OP] 3 points (+3|-0)

Edited

There is a solution. I don't know which browser you use, but:

Go here and get the version 1.5.0 source code
Extract the folder somewhere you want to keep it
Open up the manifest.json file and delete this part.
Now open up Chrome - if you don't have Chrome and use Firefox, I think you will need to have the Firefox Developer Edition to do this. Idk about other browsers.
Navigate to your extensions page, look at the top right and tick the box that says "Developer mode".
Press the "Load unpacked extension" button in the top left.
An old version of Stylish should be installed, and it'll say something like "Loaded from: ~\Desktop\stylish-chrome-1.5.0" in the details.
Open stylish, go to manage styles, untick the box on the left sidebar that says "Send anonymous data to Stylish developers for determining user counts" - note that this isn't the same as the box in my screenshot. Version 1.5.0 of Stylish does not send the same info to the developers as the latest version.

Voila, now you have your own version of Stylish that won't send any data to anyone.

Edit: Or you can use this open source version of 1.4. It's only for Chrome though.