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Opera Browser adds integrated adblocker
- yev 11y agoif ((!!window.opr && !!opr.addons) || !!window.opera || navigator.userAgent.indexOf(' OPR/') >= 0) { throw alert('your browser is not supported'); }
- akerro 11y agoI stopped using at least 4 websites which I followed for years just because they tried to enforce on me turning off PrivacyBadger and uBlock. It will hurt only you in long term. It's more important for me to use my browser then you website that doesn't respect my choices.
- reasonality 11y agoHow does it hurt them? You stopped leeching their bandwidth without any opportunity for them to earn any ad revenue from them! Allowing leeches on your website doesn't seem that beneficial.
- akerro 11y ago>You stopped leeching their bandwidth without any opportunity for them to earn any ad revenue from them! I stopped adding comments, starting discussions, I allow some non-intrusive ads when I enable them, I have quite extensive whitelist in ublock.
- jinst8gmi 11y agoA site which eventually has no visitors will become irrelevant. Those with ad blockers will also often share links to said site which others without ad blockers will click on. If you block me on your website there are many others who will no longer be clicking through via the links I would otherwise have shared.
- moonchrome 11y agoLet's say two sites, A and B host similar content. The end user cannot see some content on site A because of adblock detection but he can see it on site B, he down votes the link of site A on sharing networks, he asks for a policy banning or advocates against linking to site A because content can be found on B. I've seen this play out many times, and at that point you're not just losing traffic from ad block clients you're losing traffic overall, have people actively promote your competitors and earn a bad rep (and that rep might not even be objective - in general if people remember anything it will be "don't use A" not the "why" of it)
- jinst8gmi 11y agoPerhaps we should add [adwall] to links similar to the way we include [paywall]?
- eva1984 11y agoThis won't work once more and more sites join the adwall band.
- moonchrome 11y agoCartel members always have incentives to cheat - if one site can become popular by not ad-walling like 90% of them do and regurgitate the content of 90% they will do it and disregard "the big picture" especially considering the low barriers to entry. They have no enforcement mechanism to keep everyone honest - the only way this sort of thing works is if you "outlaw" non-ad-walled sites - something like google not listing those sites - otherwise not happening.
- eva1984 11y agoA restaurant cannot beat other restaurants by making its meal free to all.
- _Understated_ 11y agoNo, but it can by offering better service, better food, better decor etc.
- aw3c2 11y agoIs bandwidth anything remotely worth "protecting" in this day and age?
- aikah 11y agoWell as a user I might share a link to a site that will be seen by 100 or 1000's of others, on Facebook, Reddit or whatever social network. If that website blocks me from visiting them at first place, they will also loose all the potential revenue from the viral effect. Is it what you call a leech ?
- reasonality 11y agoYou're assuming the set of people who dislike ads and actively block them, intersects with the set of people who don't mind ads. I'm not convinced that's the case. They're usually quite different demographics.
- eva1984 11y agoBut your friends have larger chance also being ad blocker users, right? In the end, the website just get more requests and a bigger bill from ISP without getting a cent from those.
- Kiro 11y ago> It's more important for me to use my browser then you website that doesn't respect my choices. Likewise I have the right to reject you if you can't comply with my terms.
- nobodyshere 11y agoThing is, who loses in such a case?
- mhaehnel 11y agoWell played.
- akerro 11y agoMy father doesn't even know what web browser is he using. He doesn't know how to install different one. He doesn't have permission do it anyway. You will ban him, he will stop coming there and start going to competitors. Who is lost is such situation?
- threatofrain 11y agoOf course, and I believe that the sum of actors exercising fair play in a generally free space will result in interesting market and social configurations. In this case, I see internet content divided in half -- content for those who can pay for it, and content for those who can't. Not all websites should survive. Not all users should be able to experience everything on the internet. "You get what you pay for" is not wrong. Exclusivity can lead to quality.
- nobodyshere 11y agoSomething new will appear, like pirated news aggregators. Maybe hosted in tor.
- threatofrain 11y agoSure, and I say let the games go on. I am eager to see what emerges.
- reasonality 11y agoOr just hide and obfuscate the ads better. Getting past ad-blockers isn't exactly rocket science. This is an arms race which will not end well.
- threatofrain 11y agoWhatever end is reached, there's no intuitive or trending reason why it won't be any better or worse than not using ad + tracking blockers. The end result of any side winning is simply that they get what they want; it's not going to lead to some tragedy of the commons. Either advertisers get to track people or they don't. Either people get to block things or they don't. Once upon a time there was little attention to these things, and advertisers got to slurp up data en masse. That is still the case, just an inch less so today. Perhaps this is a bit cruel, but I believe in a divided web experience, one which is ad-supported and the masses browse and are tracked, the other which is curated, high signal, and directly paid for. Like with most things in life, you get what you have the leverage to get, and in general that means what you pay for. Scientific literature is run through this way, and I don't think they're hurting for ad revenue. I think exclusivity can protect quality. It's okay to have a paid-for news channel, and a free news channel for the masses, a paid-for Reddit, and a free Reddit. You get what you pay for.
- reasonality 11y agoWell clearly the experience for people not using ad blockers is substantially worse than it was 10 years ago. If the usage of ad blockers increases, you can bet that those not using ad blockers will be squeezed and exploited and have a thousand popups and intrusive ads thrown at them in order for the sites to recoup the lost money. So those using ad blockers are making the web worse for everyone.
- distances 11y agoI have no reason whatsoever to believe that the ads and popups would be less intrusive if there was a larger audience accepting them.
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- hathym 11y agoforbes did it, look what happened.
- distances 11y agoWell, what happened? I stopped visiting myself, but I have no idea what was the general reaction.
- digi_owl 11y agoSoon after they started, it was found that their ads were delivering malware...
- jacquesm 11y ago> I stopped visiting myself That's one data point that can give you an idea of what the general reaction was. Let's find some more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11258424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11258424
- jinst8gmi 11y agoNothing an in-place edit of the page source can't remove or a fake user-agent string can't work around.
- sergiotapia 11y agoPeople just stop using those sites, easy peasy. I've stopped browsing a few, and just close out sites that block me because I use ublock origin. No real loss to the consumer when almost every news story is syndicated and found elsewhere just as easily.
- dave2000 11y agoSpoof user agent for whitelisted sites. Your move.
- wimagguc 11y agoWebsites can try to block users with certain browsers or ad-blockers, but that's not going to work. With a very few exceptions, content is a commodity and portals are easily replaceable. Actually it feels like there are more people creating content than reading it these days. There is plenty of interesting content out there, so if people can't access something, they just move on to the next one and never return.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoOops, your script got eaten by the anti-adblock killer. Try again!
- jalfresi 11y agoPlenty more websites in the sea
- plorkyeran 11y agoA flashback to the 90s, when some websites blocked Opera because it had a built-in popup blocker.
- sccxy 11y agoI use Opera daily. I really like its "Opera Turbo" feature. It compresses images for lower bandwith. Also uBlock Origin for ads and blocking images larger than 200KB. Saves a lot of mobile data for me.
- runn1ng 11y agoSome people might think that Opera Turbo reduces privacy, since everything goes through a centralized proxy.
- uberuser 11y agoIn Russia, Opera turbo also useful when you want quickly see website banned by Roskomnadzor
- axelfreeman 11y agoI need this blocking images function for my smartphone.
- Moru 11y agoOpera is being bought up by a Chinese consortium. Will they be adding a new big firewall too? :-)
- aw3c2 11y agoAt least they were not bought by an US consortium. A firewall beats pervasive surveillance any time.
- Moru 11y agoWell the surveillance can't be any better in China. Mabe less covert but still there.
- Grue3 11y agoDon't know why you're being downvoted. The future of Opera is most likely this: [1] https://www.techinasia.com/360-safe-browser-malware https://www.techinasia.com/360-safe-browser-malware
- hoodoof 11y agoWhy would I want to deprive sites of their ad revenue? If you use ad blocking, just be sure that you and no-one you are close to depends on advertising - directly or indirectly - to get their bills paid. So damn childish to have such a sense of self righteous indignation that people turn off ads but expect the Internet to be free.
- aw3c2 11y agoTo protect yourself from tracking and malware. Being able to inform and educate yourself without several third-parties profiling you should be a cornerstone of our society.
- ekianjo 11y agoIn case you missed an episode, ads are not only used for revenues but also for user tracking. If you want to increase your privacy one bit turning ads off is an obvious first step.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pvdebbe 11y agoI turn off the ads, and I don't expect the Internet to be free.
- herbst 11y agoI earn good money with Ads, but i am very well aware how the Internet works. Block ads myself and would never be stupid enough to depend on ads for a income. Its extra more, and you should be handling it like that, else you will be fucked within no time.
- clouddrover 11y ago> depends on advertising - directly or indirectly - to get their bills paid A business model is only viable if the culture in which it is operated finds value in that model. If the culture no longer values an Internet advertising based business model, then they'll have to find a new approach to get their bills paid. This is neither good nor bad. It's just business.
- deprave 11y agoOpera has long been known for being ahead of the pack. Let's hope at least Mozilla and Microsoft follow suit...
- INTPenis 11y agoHow true you are, Opera was in fact the first browser forcing users to block Ads back in 2003 when it integrated the Ads right into the GUI. I had to create IPFW rules to block them back then, at least now that process is easier. :)
- rockdoe 11y agoFirefox already has tracking protection, which also blocks ads (because they almost universally track you). It's Opera that is following suit, probably as a reaction to the publicity Brave is getting.
- cataflam 11y agoOpera actually had an integrated blocker years ago in their previous engine. However, they scrapped most of the functionalities when they switched to Blink in 2013.
- sccxy 11y agoIf I remember correctly then IE9 had Tracking Protection which also blocked some ads.
- herbst 11y agoAs publisher, fuck you. As consumer, that was the original reason i used Opera years ago, the natively implemented blocklist was just amazingly fast, especially compared to the extension on the other platforms. Its a little sad that they changed so much that they have to reinvent the wheel now.
- marklgr 11y agoAs a publisher, you should say fuck you to the ads networks that pay you to track your readers, not to the readers trying to protect themselves.
- herbst 11y agoI dont. Its the decision of my readers if they want that. I dont care about adsense tracking at all, its not harming me, i am more afraid of other companies tracking which are not as secure and somehow privacy respecting as google.
- pdkl95 11y ago> its not harming me You're selling out your readers, who are harmed by that. The cross-site aggregation that Google does is far more harmful (see: "pattern of life" analysis) than a smaller tracker with bad security. This makes you just as responsible.
- herbst 11y agoIts how the internet works, i am not happy with it ether and tell anyone to use a AdBlocker plus something like PrivacyBatcher. Hence i am in the progress to block all this directly on my Firewall. My point is its the users responsibility to protect himself, if he goes on the Internet without any idea whats going on its just naive and my ads are the smallest of his problems.
- pdkl95 11y agoPlease stop blaming the victims. Yes, it's a good idea for people to defend themselves. That doesn't make publishers any less responsible when they betray their readers to aggregators like Google. > As publisher You're telling your readers they need to talk to some other host - which may be owned by Google or similar - to get part of the page. Then you claim that it's their fault for being stupid (really: ignorant) enough to listen to you?
- yjgyhj 11y agoWe are in the beginning of the end of the era of online advertising.
- INTPenis 11y agoNo, not a chance. We are in an arms race between the people and the corporations. As long as you can see content on a website, there will be corporations trying to monetize that fact. And as long as corporations have to operate within the borders of an open system there will be people trying to circumvent their methods.
- philipov 11y agoAn arms race like that will end with the richest corporations lobbying for an end to an open system. I'm sure we'll soon start seeing legislation attempting to criminalize ad-blocking.
- pdkl95 11y agohttp://boingboing.net/2016/03/02/uk-minister-compares-adblockin.html http://boingboing.net/2016/03/02/uk-minister-compares-adbloc... The UK is already moving in that direction. This is yet another battlefield in the War On General Purpose Computing; you either have the right to run whatever software you want on your computer, or someone else is the de facto owner of your computer through their ability to control what software is allowed to run. These battles need to be fought now, because it's hard to fight over property rights once someone else has already taken possession.
- fwn 11y agoI used Opera (v5 to 7) for a long time and it always had an internal URL filter I used to block ads. I guess they just reimplemented it with a different focus.
- tempodox 11y agoLogically, the new owners of Opera want to infect you with their own spyware. And then blame it on the ad blocker.
- jbmorgado 11y agoI understand that to some ads are an important revenue, but this idea that interesting content will stop existing if we greatly reduce advertising seems false. Just think, how many time do you spend sharing content in social networks for free? Most of the time it's uninteresting content it's true, but some people are actually interested in sharing highly interesting content made by themselves with the world for free, both in social networks and out of them. May it be due to personal promotion or just out of some societal need. True that the content provider (unlike the creator) will probably always want to be paid to provide it, but in that case, the monetization comes from other products and not from advertising. Think about GitHub personal pages for instance.