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AdBlock Plus teams up with Flattr to help readers pay publishers

159 points by cpeterso 11y ago

a_small_island 11y ago
Haven't used ABP in years because of their white listing for ad providers that paid their ransom. uBlock Origin has better performance anyways.
- verganileonardo 11y ago
  Me neither. uBlock is much more efficient. Anyway, I still support the concept that AdBlock 'creating' here.
Animats 11y ago
The ad blocking business is getting too cozy with the advertising business. Time to disrupt it again. The Adblock people claim they're going to collect a half billion dollars a year in voluntary payments. Has anybody in the history of voluntary payments for software ever collected half a billion dollars? The American Red Cross collects about $700 million a year. Somehow, I expect that Adblock's system will not be "voluntary".
- Spivak 11y ago
  There's, at this point, nothing to worry about. The insanely dedicated people who maintain the ad blocking lists are the real heroes here, the client that uses them is completely replaceable. If/When ABP goes over to the dark side people will stop using it. There are plenty of replacements, uBlock Origin being the current winner.
  - Fundlab 11y ago
    Is it impossible to deliver ads natively ie serve ads directly from the publisher's platform instead of 3rd party? How do you skirts ad blocking applications without triggering an inconvenience on your readers?
    - ascagnel_ 11y ago
      uBlock and it's ilk let you flag pieces of the DOM to block. I use it to block clutter on webpages as well as ad slots. Compare [0] (with DOM-based blocking) to [1] (without). [0]: http://i.imgur.com/5hlPhqx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5hlPhqx.jpg [1]: http://i.imgur.com/TrxMlkz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TrxMlkz.jpg
      - paulmd 11y ago
        I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into. What the shit, that looks nothing like the Guardian that I am used to seeing. Youtube ads are a real shocker too. About the only time I ever actually notice advertising is when some site sets up an aggressive anti-adblock or airs 2 minutes of dead air where an ad spot would have gone.
        danieldk 11y ago
        I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into. Indeed! I got this experience every time I used Chrome (rather than Firefox) on Android. The web has become quite horrible. I am now back on iOS and the author of uBlock has made a great blocker for Safari on iOS: https://www.purify-app.com/ https://www.purify-app.com/
    - Raed667 11y ago
      It is possible, but it requires that ads people trust publishers. Otherwise publishers will just say they served a million ad that day, and cash on it without any proof. Everyone is putting their own tracker in the ads because they can't trust other people data (unless you're Google or Facebook, or other giant)
    - losteric 11y ago
      Ads themselves are an inconvenience on readers. It's possible for a website owner to directly publish ads, and those ads would be harder to block (but still trivial). Site owners trade screen real estate in exchange for ad revenue, just like billboards of old. This used to be the model in the early 2000s and I actually OK with it... though it probably wasn't the best model, a bit like running a diner on revenue from ads in the menu. The problem is centralized publishers. They offer higher revenue through highly targeting ads from thousands of advertisers. It's a race to the bottom where all websites are incentivized to use publishers and consumers are forced to use ad blocking tools against the publishers (hurting content creators)... undermining the long-term sustainability of the internet as a content publishing medium. As with many things, both consumers and producers are acting justifiably. It's the man in the middle that needs to go. He's just skimming a short-term profit and hurting both sides in the long-run.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    It is still not clear to me whether uBlock or uBlock Origin should be preferred. It seems that the original author of uBlock had a falling out with some contributors and decided to fork it and go do his own thing his own way with uBo. People assert that this makes it "better", but I'm not sure. I've tried both and they do appear to have substantially differing featuresets. Can anyone finally clarify the situation, and the pros/cons of each?
    - deprave 11y ago
      Use uBlock Origin, see my other post. The author of uBlock Origin makes it clear that no donations are sought for the development of the extension. That is not the case with the other version.
      - cookiecaper 11y ago
        Your post (here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11622316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11622316) seems to address ABP v. uBo, not uBo v. uB. Furthermore, non-solicitation of donations is a political reason to prefer uBo. I'm curious about the technical reasons. As a side note, I personally have no problem whatsoever with an extension creator soliciting donations as long as they're not doing so in a deceptive or annoying manner.
        AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
        The donations are what caused the rift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_.28ublock.org.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_.28ublock...
        cookiecaper 11y ago
        I understand that a political issue is what drove them apart originally. However, people continually assert that uBlock Origin is the better extension. Is there anyone who has done an objective, non-political comparison of their featuresets and/or technical properties to really evaluate which one is superior for end users? I can say anecdotally, that I found plain uBlock more featureful for everyday usage, but I haven't done a thorough review. I currently use uBlock Origin.
  - deprave 11y ago
    ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box. Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP. It's super fast, has a much smaller memory footprint, has a strict policy against "acceptable ads" (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md), licensed under the GPLv3, and hosted in a very active repository on GitHub (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock).
    - coldpie 11y ago
      I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program. They state clearly what policies the ads must adhere to, and review them manually for compliance. Sure, if viewing absolutely no advertising is important to you, then you'll want to turn that feature off or use a different client. But why do you think they're part of the "dark side" for trying to encourage inoffensive ads?
      - deprave 11y ago
        Because of the default setting that shows ads in a program called "ad block."
        coldpie 11y ago
        Your definition of "dark side" seems borderline sociopathic.
        deprave 11y ago
        Both the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ghostery accused ABP of extortion due to their business practices. A program that labels itself as an "ad blocker" yet allows, by default, ads from companies who pay money, is part of the dark side.
        basch 11y ago
        good thing they didnt name it "completely ad block"
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    > The insanely dedicated people who maintain the ad blocking lists are the real heroes here, the client that uses them is completely replaceable. Who are these people and why do they do it? The wikipedia article on uBlock Origin didn't help much.
    - kozhevnikov 11y ago
      https://easylist.github.io/pages/about.html https://easylist.github.io/pages/about.html
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    The performance bump alone sold me on uBlock. Switched a year or so ago and never looked back.
  - coolsunglasses 11y ago
    ABP have been extortionists for years. They'll let anybody show the ads they want as long as they pay protection.
  - kobayashi 11y ago
    Who are those dedicated individuals?
- lintroller 11y ago
  "Voluntary" is all about definitions. I imagine they'll count an automatic opt-in as "voluntary".
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  I don't see the problem at all, or any need for disrupting it. If you don't like AdBlockPlus, then just switch over to uBlock Origin. It doesn't believe in "acceptable ads" and doesn't have a cozy relationship with the ad business. It even uses the same filter lists. All you have to do is switch. ABP isn't even installed by default anywhere, so you can't compare it to IE on Windows in the browser wars.
- kriro 11y ago
  The idea outlined in the article is actually good. I'm not a fan of AdblockPlus due to the "we'll let adds through for payments" and much prefer uBlock but I do think it's strategically smart to include content micro payment with add blocking. They vastly overestimate how many people will pay for it (imo) but the segment of customers who hate adds but don't mind paying for content is a bit under served. I am a very strong believer in good content being voluntarily rewarded if the business model is right (which includes strong price discrimination measures i.e. keeping the content free for a large chunk of people). It might be naive idealism (OpenBSD/OpenSSL, PGP not getting more donations has me scratching my head) but at the end of the day I think free (as in speech and beer) with optional payment to keep the excellent content creators in the business of creating content will work and should work.
aembleton 11y ago
This is similar to Google Contributor https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ except it will work with any advertising platform and hopefuly work outside of the US. I currently put €10 per month on Flattr and it would be great to not have to click each time I want to help out a publisher.
- vintermann 11y ago
  Don't you want at least that bit of explicit control? To avoid giving money to inane clickbait, etc.? I've used flattr in the past, but the main problem for me was that there was so much low-effort stuff fighting for clicks. Flattr has good reasons for their just share everything evenly default, but unfortunately it also makes low effort stuff a lot more viable relatively speaking.
  - aembleton 11y ago
    Nope, but if I click on something and then exit within say 5 seconds then no payment should be made. Yes, clickbait is a risk but there is an even bigger risk that I'll get engrossed in a long form article and completely forget to click some button. For a long form article where I spend a good say 30 minutes reading it there should be a much larger payout. Thinking about it, allowing me to configure these parameters would be good.
Raed667 11y ago
Honestly if I go to your website to read some "news" or whatever, and you ask me for money or to enable ads or-else you won't show me content. I'll just close your window and never come back.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  That seems to be exactly what they would want you to do. You're not generating any revenue for them and clearly have no intention of doing so.
  - Raed667 11y ago
    Their business model is broken and it is not my fault. Give me relevant ads that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my CPU every-time they load a piece of JS and we'll be fine.
    - k-mcgrady 11y ago
      Their business model isn't necessarily broken just because it doesn't suit you. They're clearly still generating enough revenue they can afford to lose you as a customer. >> "Give me relevant ads that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my CPU every-time they load a piece of JS and we'll be fine." Isn't this giving you EXACTLY what you're asking for? You donate a very small amount of money nautically by reading content you block the ads on.
      - rhino369 11y ago
        No you don't understand. Apple's business model is broken because the macbook is too expensive for my tastes.
  - mcbits 11y ago
    That's a tempting way to look at it. "Don't want to enable ads? I don't want you wasting my bandwidth!" However, outside of rich multimedia or unusually popular content, the marginal cost of serving a page view is peanuts compared to the hours (or days, or months) of human labor that already went into producing the content. Since creating quality content is the part that's difficult and expensive, it stands to reason that it's the part that should be monetized. It's really an accident of history that content creation was able to be subsidized by advertising or charging for distribution.
readams 11y ago
The system is also tracking everywhere you go on the web. Yet another entity that wants to track everything you do. Somehow I doubt they'll pass up the opportunity to monetize that data.
infogulch 11y ago
I've always liked the idea of Flattr and this is exactly what I've wanted to see from them since the beginning. It's like Spotify, generalized to the web: one monthly payment to support all the (web) content you consume in the month. But I prefer uBlock Origin to ABP for ideological and performance reasons, so I'm not sure if I'll use this yet.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Yes, I believe that a subscription platform like this is the way forward for web content. It's a project I'm interested in undertaking someday. Will be interesting to watch how this pans out.
  - 1_player 11y ago
    I'm working on this problem, want to shoot me an email and discuss it?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hartator 11y ago
After the deal they made with Google to allow their ads, I wouldn't trust Ablock Plus anymore. Just go uBlock Origin. It's one guy - not sure why you need a team in the first place -, better performance, more ads blocked, fully open source and no BS.
- kbenson 11y ago
  While I'm happy to see a way for people who don't want to see ads can contribute, I also vastly prefer uBlock Origin. Adblock left a bad taste in my mouth when they asked for money. Their entire product is based around denying content producers a way to monetize their own product. It felt sort of like a for-pay torrent site.
- intrasight 11y ago
  Agreed. But benefit of a "team" is continuity.
- deprave 11y ago
  Minor correction: uBlock Origin has the highest number of contributors (49). ABP has 13 and the fork-gone-bad has 40.
aw3c2 11y ago
The thing with all those payment services is that they are trackers. I would pay for so many things if there was something like untraceable, digital cash.
tobltobs 11y ago
Flattr, aren't this those guys who ask for a greedy 10% share. If Adblock and Flattr will work together there will be less to nothing left for publishers.
- infogulch 11y ago
  Yes, this terrible awful rate is completely out of the norm for the industry. For example, on AdSense, publishers get 68%-51% share! [0] Oh wait, 10% is the cut that Flattr takes, of which 90% is kept by publishers. Note, included in that 10% is the macro transaction fees paid to integrate with other payment providers. [0]: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    You are comparing apples with oranges.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  90% is a pretty good deal. I started down the path of doing something like flattr not too long before they came on the scene and I figured 5-15% would be a pretty fair amount to take because you have to pay a content provider and a potential group of middle men. You also have to cover transaction fees aside from just your own internal costs.
  - tobltobs 11y ago
    If I fill my flattr account I have to pay any transaction charges. Flattr payouts are via bank account where the charges are neglectable. Then there is only those mysterious "potential group of middle men" left who would get their share. Who are those middle men? And if 10% is ok, why does everybody say that paypal with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction is expensive?
    - dexterdog 11y ago
      That's a pretty standard CC fee which would be part of any flattr-like service as well. Somebody has to pay it. That's also why my ideal number was as low as 5%. If you have 3% or so coming out for the financial system you are then aggregating all of the stats to keep tabs on how is getting what at a very small transaction level. There is a lot of data to keep for the monthly roll-up. 2% would be a ridiculously cheap amount to take. Flattr is only keeping about 7% now, but their reporting is much simpler since they are not transacting on every impression and also because very few sites are using flattr.
tiles 11y ago
IMO, this looks like a reactionary move to Brave and a poor one at that: https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html Aside from AdBlock's nebulous ability to block ads except for the highest bidder, they're introducing workable micropayments (yay!) but with a heavily centralized entity (boo) that ensures tracking will now not be blocked, but actually become a core feature. Brave addresses this by citing https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/ as the backend for their micropayments architecture to remove this tracking vector. I loved Flattr a decade ago when it was released, but any model that actively relies on user identification (intentionally or not) is a threat in 2016. Caveat: Read about Brave, looks great, still too young as a browser to be my daily driver.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  I don't think micropayments are the way with systems like this. I think they need to just keep score and pay registered content providers based on traffic. With micropayments you need to have an action by the user which is even less likely if it actually costs them more money.
intrasight 11y ago
Publishers need to start treating their readers like customers. If they had a relationship with me, there's be no ad networks and no ad blockers.
- JumpCrisscross 11y ago
  The publications I pay for treat me like a customer.
manishsharan 11y ago
The 'main-streaming' of ad blocking has led to sites fighting back against ad blocking. I have been using etc/hosts from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ for past several years and I have begun to notice that I certain sites , such as wired and forbes, have blocked my access.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  These publishers are just signalling that their content isn't relevant. It's not "must-read" content, but features and editorials and other ways they try to differentiate themselves as an infotainment source. Actual news is posted without ads - by real people in comment threads, on social media, and at non-paywalled news sites & blogs. Don't see them as devils blocking you from content; see them as angels freeing you from having your time wasted with unimportant content.
- ArtDev 11y ago
  Sounds like you need to block the blockers. I use anti-adblock killer by reek (a Greasemonkey script).
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  There's this GitHub repo with host files setups for exactly this need : https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
rayalez 11y ago
Finally! It was obvious that something like this needed to exist, and I think this is the most elegant solution. I'm extremely excited about it, I really hope this takes off. Probably in the future there will also be a system that allows websites with premium content make money the same way(some sort of universal paywall with one convenient payment method). People will end up paying $10 per month for access to a network of premium websites. I think that it is a good thing, because incentives will align in a way that encourages websites to focus on producing high quality content instead of clickbait and trying to manipulate people's attention.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  This system is just going to keep encouraging click-bait and tracking the same way ads do. If you want to encourage actual quality, real stuff people want, then funding has to be based on people actually wanting to reward something not just that they click and load a website.
chinathrow 11y ago
So flattr, which I deemed a nice and welcoming service, teams up with Adblock plus folks, known for their acceptable ads program, their millions of $ taken in by Google etc. Strange times.
smegel 11y ago
I'm really starting to think I chose the right path by just installing Flashblock and ignoring the remaining ads. The Ad blocking business is beginning to look awfully shady.
jalami 11y ago
I would prefer the hidden costs of using a service to vanish and for those costs to be replaced with explicit costs. I don't delude myself in thinking the majority hold my view on this though. I personally prefer $1/mo to Free* any day, but would only really do so without the explicit tracking involved. Sadly, subscription models are the way to mass adoption. People are lazy and want to make one explicit payment to some centralized authority that then grants them a theoretically unlimited, but practically and economically limited, selection. It's the retail store all over again, just on the web. Spotify, Netflix, Steam replaces craigslist. I see the perfect world being a super thin middle-man client(s) that exposes a protocol that the content producer/seller implements. Want to buy a song, a game, a movie, article? Use a client to access and pay for it then receive it. Still want a middleman to handle refunds, advice, suggestions, support? Go find a car salesman, Amazon or flattr thick client that'll add their markup for added convenience. I think this would shift the current problem away from "getting into Steam for a reasonable price" to "making a good game". There are abuse, censorship, maintainability, legal, adoption, discovery concerns, but I said perfect world. I'm just afraid for a future where DRM/EME and Webassembly obfuscation make it impossible to get quality content on the web when everyone flocks to these gatekeepers for everything. Cable companies 2.0.
mesozoic 11y ago
Good luck with selling something to people that they don't want.
ninjakeyboard 11y ago
If you want to pay publishers, why not just give them the impressions, instead of install sketchy ad blockers, have them handle your money, and then hope that they distribute it to publishers on your behalf. The article says ad block will tell publishers how much they COULD have made - what happens to that money?
pessimizer 11y ago
The worth of the metrics are questionable. Not only do I not want to send some company information on every page I visit, how long I look at the page, and how far I scroll; it's also irrelevant to who I want my money to go to. I wish I could take away money from some of the garbage I read, and I send money to things that I don't read (because I already know them) but I want to have available for other people to read. It seems like they're trying to closely imitate an ad model, and consequently the commensurate micromanaged loss of privacy for the web consumer.
charonn0 11y ago
I like the idea, but not the implementation: > Unlike Flattr, users don’t have to click a button to “Flattr” a website — instead, it will automatically track their browsing activity and distribute the money based on their engagement. One of my main objections to most forms of online advertising is the tracking/profiling. I don't see why there can't be a button unless they plan on selling the info; in which case it's hardly an improvement over ordinary web ads. I glanced at the website, and they say the info is stored locally and only the final results get sent back to headquarters, but there's no privacy policy or other detailed technical explanation of what this means. I guess that's understandable since apparently they're not sure how they can measure the worthiness of a given web page: > Plus, the question of exactly how to calculate engagement is a tricky one. You probably don’t want to reward a worthless article with a dumb-but-effective clickbait headline. You might also leave an article open for hours without actually reading it. Which just reinforces my notion that the user should have a button. Otherwise you're going to have situations where users are tricked into visiting worthless pages or end up paying to support website that they might not want to support. Can you honestly say that you would choose to support the people behind every website you visit?
Ameo 11y ago
I'm usually quite against ad-blockers, but this kind of thing could be a step in the right direction.
visarga 11y ago
Advertisers should pay the users to display ads to them. If the users think the pay is good enough, they will see them. If not, then they reject the ads.

159 points by cpeterso 11y ago

Haven't used ABP in years because of their white listing for ad providers that paid their ransom. uBlock Origin has better performance anyways.

verganileonardo 11y ago
Me neither. uBlock is much more efficient. Anyway, I still support the concept that AdBlock 'creating' here.

Animats 11y ago

The ad blocking business is getting too cozy with the advertising business. Time to disrupt it again. The Adblock people claim they're going to collect a half billion dollars a year in voluntary payments. Has anybody in the history of voluntary payments for software ever collected half a billion dollars? The American Red Cross collects about $700 million a year. Somehow, I expect that Adblock's system will not be "voluntary".

Spivak 11y ago
There's, at this point, nothing to worry about. The insanely dedicated people who maintain the ad blocking lists are the real heroes here, the client that uses them is completely replaceable. If/When ABP goes over to the dark side people will stop using it. There are plenty of replacements, uBlock Origin being the current winner.
- Fundlab 11y ago
  Is it impossible to deliver ads natively ie serve ads directly from the publisher's platform instead of 3rd party? How do you skirts ad blocking applications without triggering an inconvenience on your readers?
  - ascagnel_ 11y ago
    uBlock and it's ilk let you flag pieces of the DOM to block. I use it to block clutter on webpages as well as ad slots. Compare [0] (with DOM-based blocking) to [1] (without). [0]: http://i.imgur.com/5hlPhqx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5hlPhqx.jpg [1]: http://i.imgur.com/TrxMlkz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/TrxMlkz.jpg
    - paulmd 11y ago
      I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into. What the shit, that looks nothing like the Guardian that I am used to seeing. Youtube ads are a real shocker too. About the only time I ever actually notice advertising is when some site sets up an aggressive anti-adblock or airs 2 minutes of dead air where an ad spot would have gone.
      - danieldk 11y ago
        I normally surf with uBlock Origin and most of the filters turned on (anything that's not experimental or a subset of a larger filter), and I get a shock every now and then when I use a browser without filtering and see what the internet has turned into. Indeed! I got this experience every time I used Chrome (rather than Firefox) on Android. The web has become quite horrible. I am now back on iOS and the author of uBlock has made a great blocker for Safari on iOS: https://www.purify-app.com/ https://www.purify-app.com/
  - Raed667 11y ago
    It is possible, but it requires that ads people trust publishers. Otherwise publishers will just say they served a million ad that day, and cash on it without any proof. Everyone is putting their own tracker in the ads because they can't trust other people data (unless you're Google or Facebook, or other giant)
  - losteric 11y ago
    Ads themselves are an inconvenience on readers. It's possible for a website owner to directly publish ads, and those ads would be harder to block (but still trivial). Site owners trade screen real estate in exchange for ad revenue, just like billboards of old. This used to be the model in the early 2000s and I actually OK with it... though it probably wasn't the best model, a bit like running a diner on revenue from ads in the menu. The problem is centralized publishers. They offer higher revenue through highly targeting ads from thousands of advertisers. It's a race to the bottom where all websites are incentivized to use publishers and consumers are forced to use ad blocking tools against the publishers (hurting content creators)... undermining the long-term sustainability of the internet as a content publishing medium. As with many things, both consumers and producers are acting justifiably. It's the man in the middle that needs to go. He's just skimming a short-term profit and hurting both sides in the long-run.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  It is still not clear to me whether uBlock or uBlock Origin should be preferred. It seems that the original author of uBlock had a falling out with some contributors and decided to fork it and go do his own thing his own way with uBo. People assert that this makes it "better", but I'm not sure. I've tried both and they do appear to have substantially differing featuresets. Can anyone finally clarify the situation, and the pros/cons of each?
  - deprave 11y ago
    Use uBlock Origin, see my other post. The author of uBlock Origin makes it clear that no donations are sought for the development of the extension. That is not the case with the other version.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      Your post (here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11622316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11622316) seems to address ABP v. uBo, not uBo v. uB. Furthermore, non-solicitation of donations is a political reason to prefer uBo. I'm curious about the technical reasons. As a side note, I personally have no problem whatsoever with an extension creator soliciting donations as long as they're not doing so in a deceptive or annoying manner.
      - AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
        The donations are what caused the rift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_.28ublock.org.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_.28ublock...
        cookiecaper 11y ago
        I understand that a political issue is what drove them apart originally. However, people continually assert that uBlock Origin is the better extension. Is there anyone who has done an objective, non-political comparison of their featuresets and/or technical properties to really evaluate which one is superior for end users? I can say anecdotally, that I found plain uBlock more featureful for everyday usage, but I haven't done a thorough review. I currently use uBlock Origin.
- deprave 11y ago
  ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box. Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP. It's super fast, has a much smaller memory footprint, has a strict policy against "acceptable ads" (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md), licensed under the GPLv3, and hosted in a very active repository on GitHub (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock).
  - coldpie 11y ago
    I've never understood the backlash against the acceptable ads program. They state clearly what policies the ads must adhere to, and review them manually for compliance. Sure, if viewing absolutely no advertising is important to you, then you'll want to turn that feature off or use a different client. But why do you think they're part of the "dark side" for trying to encourage inoffensive ads?
    - deprave 11y ago
      Because of the default setting that shows ads in a program called "ad block."
      - coldpie 11y ago
        Your definition of "dark side" seems borderline sociopathic.
        deprave 11y ago
        Both the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ghostery accused ABP of extortion due to their business practices. A program that labels itself as an "ad blocker" yet allows, by default, ads from companies who pay money, is part of the dark side.
      - basch 11y ago
        good thing they didnt name it "completely ad block"
- jessriedel 11y ago
  > The insanely dedicated people who maintain the ad blocking lists are the real heroes here, the client that uses them is completely replaceable. Who are these people and why do they do it? The wikipedia article on uBlock Origin didn't help much.
  - kozhevnikov 11y ago
    https://easylist.github.io/pages/about.html https://easylist.github.io/pages/about.html
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  The performance bump alone sold me on uBlock. Switched a year or so ago and never looked back.
- coolsunglasses 11y ago
  ABP have been extortionists for years. They'll let anybody show the ads they want as long as they pay protection.
- kobayashi 11y ago
  Who are those dedicated individuals?
lintroller 11y ago
"Voluntary" is all about definitions. I imagine they'll count an automatic opt-in as "voluntary".
Grishnakh 11y ago
I don't see the problem at all, or any need for disrupting it. If you don't like AdBlockPlus, then just switch over to uBlock Origin. It doesn't believe in "acceptable ads" and doesn't have a cozy relationship with the ad business. It even uses the same filter lists. All you have to do is switch. ABP isn't even installed by default anywhere, so you can't compare it to IE on Windows in the browser wars.
kriro 11y ago
The idea outlined in the article is actually good. I'm not a fan of AdblockPlus due to the "we'll let adds through for payments" and much prefer uBlock but I do think it's strategically smart to include content micro payment with add blocking. They vastly overestimate how many people will pay for it (imo) but the segment of customers who hate adds but don't mind paying for content is a bit under served. I am a very strong believer in good content being voluntarily rewarded if the business model is right (which includes strong price discrimination measures i.e. keeping the content free for a large chunk of people). It might be naive idealism (OpenBSD/OpenSSL, PGP not getting more donations has me scratching my head) but at the end of the day I think free (as in speech and beer) with optional payment to keep the excellent content creators in the business of creating content will work and should work.

aembleton 11y ago

This is similar to Google Contributor https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ except it will work with any advertising platform and hopefuly work outside of the US. I currently put €10 per month on Flattr and it would be great to not have to click each time I want to help out a publisher.

vintermann 11y ago
Don't you want at least that bit of explicit control? To avoid giving money to inane clickbait, etc.? I've used flattr in the past, but the main problem for me was that there was so much low-effort stuff fighting for clicks. Flattr has good reasons for their just share everything evenly default, but unfortunately it also makes low effort stuff a lot more viable relatively speaking.
- aembleton 11y ago
  Nope, but if I click on something and then exit within say 5 seconds then no payment should be made. Yes, clickbait is a risk but there is an even bigger risk that I'll get engrossed in a long form article and completely forget to click some button. For a long form article where I spend a good say 30 minutes reading it there should be a much larger payout. Thinking about it, allowing me to configure these parameters would be good.

Raed667 11y ago

Honestly if I go to your website to read some "news" or whatever, and you ask me for money or to enable ads or-else you won't show me content. I'll just close your window and never come back.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
That seems to be exactly what they would want you to do. You're not generating any revenue for them and clearly have no intention of doing so.
- Raed667 11y ago
  Their business model is broken and it is not my fault. Give me relevant ads that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my CPU every-time they load a piece of JS and we'll be fine.
  - k-mcgrady 11y ago
    Their business model isn't necessarily broken just because it doesn't suit you. They're clearly still generating enough revenue they can afford to lose you as a customer. >> "Give me relevant ads that don't spy on me and that are not benchmarking my CPU every-time they load a piece of JS and we'll be fine." Isn't this giving you EXACTLY what you're asking for? You donate a very small amount of money nautically by reading content you block the ads on.
    - rhino369 11y ago
      No you don't understand. Apple's business model is broken because the macbook is too expensive for my tastes.
- mcbits 11y ago
  That's a tempting way to look at it. "Don't want to enable ads? I don't want you wasting my bandwidth!" However, outside of rich multimedia or unusually popular content, the marginal cost of serving a page view is peanuts compared to the hours (or days, or months) of human labor that already went into producing the content. Since creating quality content is the part that's difficult and expensive, it stands to reason that it's the part that should be monetized. It's really an accident of history that content creation was able to be subsidized by advertising or charging for distribution.

readams 11y ago

The system is also tracking everywhere you go on the web. Yet another entity that wants to track everything you do. Somehow I doubt they'll pass up the opportunity to monetize that data.

infogulch 11y ago

I've always liked the idea of Flattr and this is exactly what I've wanted to see from them since the beginning. It's like Spotify, generalized to the web: one monthly payment to support all the (web) content you consume in the month. But I prefer uBlock Origin to ABP for ideological and performance reasons, so I'm not sure if I'll use this yet.

cookiecaper 11y ago
Yes, I believe that a subscription platform like this is the way forward for web content. It's a project I'm interested in undertaking someday. Will be interesting to watch how this pans out.
- 1_player 11y ago
  I'm working on this problem, want to shoot me an email and discuss it?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hartator 11y ago

After the deal they made with Google to allow their ads, I wouldn't trust Ablock Plus anymore. Just go uBlock Origin. It's one guy - not sure why you need a team in the first place -, better performance, more ads blocked, fully open source and no BS.

kbenson 11y ago
While I'm happy to see a way for people who don't want to see ads can contribute, I also vastly prefer uBlock Origin. Adblock left a bad taste in my mouth when they asked for money. Their entire product is based around denying content producers a way to monetize their own product. It felt sort of like a for-pay torrent site.
intrasight 11y ago
Agreed. But benefit of a "team" is continuity.
deprave 11y ago
Minor correction: uBlock Origin has the highest number of contributors (49). ABP has 13 and the fork-gone-bad has 40.

aw3c2 11y ago

The thing with all those payment services is that they are trackers. I would pay for so many things if there was something like untraceable, digital cash.

tobltobs 11y ago

Flattr, aren't this those guys who ask for a greedy 10% share. If Adblock and Flattr will work together there will be less to nothing left for publishers.

infogulch 11y ago
Yes, this terrible awful rate is completely out of the norm for the industry. For example, on AdSense, publishers get 68%-51% share! [0] Oh wait, 10% is the cut that Flattr takes, of which 90% is kept by publishers. Note, included in that 10% is the macro transaction fees paid to integrate with other payment providers. [0]: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en
- tobltobs 11y ago
  You are comparing apples with oranges.
dexterdog 11y ago
90% is a pretty good deal. I started down the path of doing something like flattr not too long before they came on the scene and I figured 5-15% would be a pretty fair amount to take because you have to pay a content provider and a potential group of middle men. You also have to cover transaction fees aside from just your own internal costs.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  If I fill my flattr account I have to pay any transaction charges. Flattr payouts are via bank account where the charges are neglectable. Then there is only those mysterious "potential group of middle men" left who would get their share. Who are those middle men? And if 10% is ok, why does everybody say that paypal with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction is expensive?
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    That's a pretty standard CC fee which would be part of any flattr-like service as well. Somebody has to pay it. That's also why my ideal number was as low as 5%. If you have 3% or so coming out for the financial system you are then aggregating all of the stats to keep tabs on how is getting what at a very small transaction level. There is a lot of data to keep for the monthly roll-up. 2% would be a ridiculously cheap amount to take. Flattr is only keeping about 7% now, but their reporting is much simpler since they are not transacting on every impression and also because very few sites are using flattr.

tiles 11y ago

IMO, this looks like a reactionary move to Brave and a poor one at that: https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html Aside from AdBlock's nebulous ability to block ads except for the highest bidder, they're introducing workable micropayments (yay!) but with a heavily centralized entity (boo) that ensures tracking will now not be blocked, but actually become a core feature. Brave addresses this by citing https://anonize.org/ https://anonize.org/ as the backend for their micropayments architecture to remove this tracking vector. I loved Flattr a decade ago when it was released, but any model that actively relies on user identification (intentionally or not) is a threat in 2016. Caveat: Read about Brave, looks great, still too young as a browser to be my daily driver.

dexterdog 11y ago
I don't think micropayments are the way with systems like this. I think they need to just keep score and pay registered content providers based on traffic. With micropayments you need to have an action by the user which is even less likely if it actually costs them more money.

intrasight 11y ago

Publishers need to start treating their readers like customers. If they had a relationship with me, there's be no ad networks and no ad blockers.

JumpCrisscross 11y ago
The publications I pay for treat me like a customer.

manishsharan 11y ago

The 'main-streaming' of ad blocking has led to sites fighting back against ad blocking. I have been using etc/hosts from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ for past several years and I have begun to notice that I certain sites , such as wired and forbes, have blocked my access.

stephengillie 11y ago
These publishers are just signalling that their content isn't relevant. It's not "must-read" content, but features and editorials and other ways they try to differentiate themselves as an infotainment source. Actual news is posted without ads - by real people in comment threads, on social media, and at non-paywalled news sites & blogs. Don't see them as devils blocking you from content; see them as angels freeing you from having your time wasted with unimportant content.
ArtDev 11y ago
Sounds like you need to block the blockers. I use anti-adblock killer by reek (a Greasemonkey script).
Raphmedia 11y ago
There's this GitHub repo with host files setups for exactly this need : https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

rayalez 11y ago

Finally! It was obvious that something like this needed to exist, and I think this is the most elegant solution. I'm extremely excited about it, I really hope this takes off. Probably in the future there will also be a system that allows websites with premium content make money the same way(some sort of universal paywall with one convenient payment method). People will end up paying $10 per month for access to a network of premium websites. I think that it is a good thing, because incentives will align in a way that encourages websites to focus on producing high quality content instead of clickbait and trying to manipulate people's attention.

quadrangle 11y ago
This system is just going to keep encouraging click-bait and tracking the same way ads do. If you want to encourage actual quality, real stuff people want, then funding has to be based on people actually wanting to reward something not just that they click and load a website.

chinathrow 11y ago

So flattr, which I deemed a nice and welcoming service, teams up with Adblock plus folks, known for their acceptable ads program, their millions of $ taken in by Google etc. Strange times.

smegel 11y ago

I'm really starting to think I chose the right path by just installing Flashblock and ignoring the remaining ads. The Ad blocking business is beginning to look awfully shady.

jalami 11y ago

I would prefer the hidden costs of using a service to vanish and for those costs to be replaced with explicit costs. I don't delude myself in thinking the majority hold my view on this though. I personally prefer $1/mo to Free* any day, but would only really do so without the explicit tracking involved. Sadly, subscription models are the way to mass adoption. People are lazy and want to make one explicit payment to some centralized authority that then grants them a theoretically unlimited, but practically and economically limited, selection. It's the retail store all over again, just on the web. Spotify, Netflix, Steam replaces craigslist. I see the perfect world being a super thin middle-man client(s) that exposes a protocol that the content producer/seller implements. Want to buy a song, a game, a movie, article? Use a client to access and pay for it then receive it. Still want a middleman to handle refunds, advice, suggestions, support? Go find a car salesman, Amazon or flattr thick client that'll add their markup for added convenience. I think this would shift the current problem away from "getting into Steam for a reasonable price" to "making a good game". There are abuse, censorship, maintainability, legal, adoption, discovery concerns, but I said perfect world. I'm just afraid for a future where DRM/EME and Webassembly obfuscation make it impossible to get quality content on the web when everyone flocks to these gatekeepers for everything. Cable companies 2.0.

mesozoic 11y ago

Good luck with selling something to people that they don't want.

ninjakeyboard 11y ago

If you want to pay publishers, why not just give them the impressions, instead of install sketchy ad blockers, have them handle your money, and then hope that they distribute it to publishers on your behalf. The article says ad block will tell publishers how much they COULD have made - what happens to that money?

pessimizer 11y ago

The worth of the metrics are questionable. Not only do I not want to send some company information on every page I visit, how long I look at the page, and how far I scroll; it's also irrelevant to who I want my money to go to. I wish I could take away money from some of the garbage I read, and I send money to things that I don't read (because I already know them) but I want to have available for other people to read. It seems like they're trying to closely imitate an ad model, and consequently the commensurate micromanaged loss of privacy for the web consumer.

charonn0 11y ago

I like the idea, but not the implementation: > Unlike Flattr, users don’t have to click a button to “Flattr” a website — instead, it will automatically track their browsing activity and distribute the money based on their engagement. One of my main objections to most forms of online advertising is the tracking/profiling. I don't see why there can't be a button unless they plan on selling the info; in which case it's hardly an improvement over ordinary web ads. I glanced at the website, and they say the info is stored locally and only the final results get sent back to headquarters, but there's no privacy policy or other detailed technical explanation of what this means. I guess that's understandable since apparently they're not sure how they can measure the worthiness of a given web page: > Plus, the question of exactly how to calculate engagement is a tricky one. You probably don’t want to reward a worthless article with a dumb-but-effective clickbait headline. You might also leave an article open for hours without actually reading it. Which just reinforces my notion that the user should have a button. Otherwise you're going to have situations where users are tricked into visiting worthless pages or end up paying to support website that they might not want to support. Can you honestly say that you would choose to support the people behind every website you visit?

Ameo 11y ago

I'm usually quite against ad-blockers, but this kind of thing could be a step in the right direction.

visarga 11y ago

Advertisers should pay the users to display ads to them. If the users think the pay is good enough, they will see them. If not, then they reject the ads.