The logic behind the recommendation is twofold:
The main reason is because of research like this which has shown it’s possible for a compromised or malicious filter list to exfiltrate data from your browser:
Although the specific vulnerabilities in that post have been fixed, it’s still a potential risk to think about. Thus, as far as our recommendations go, we want to limit them to:
- Being from as few authors as possible, because that reduces the number of parties you’re trusting
- Being either as easily auditable as possible, or popular enough that many eyes are on the lists
The second (less important) reason is that your fingerprint can become more unique depending on what you block, since sites can detect what you block. I say this is less important because the likelihood of sites doing this seems small, and if you’re really concerned about fingerprinting you should use Mullvad Browser or Tor Browser, but it’s still something to consider.
You can install anything you want if you understand these two things and do your due diligence about the list’s author(s) yourself. As far as what we’re going to tell everyone to install, we’re going to stick with only the biggest ones that provide the most widespread benefit to most people, because we simply can’t continuously validate every niche filter list.