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Adblock Plus now sells ads
- NosliwPilf 10y agoPretty soon competition in ad-blockers will result in advertisements. The first guy to invent the Ad-blocker-Blocker will be rich. That is, until someone creates the Ad-blocker-blocker-Blocker. Then that is the guy who will be rich. That is, until the....
- dexwiz 10y agoAdblock Plus sold out a long time ago. I switched to uBlock about a year ago, and haven't looked back.
- libeclipse 10y agoNote the difference between μBlock and μBlock Origins.
- kobayashi 10y agoThey've both dropped the mu have are now just uBlock/uBlock Origin
- Aardwolf 10y agoThis is so confusing, why do ad blockers do that? For adblock, there is "adblock" and "adblock plus" For uBlock, there is "uBlock" and "uBlock Origin" Are there similarities between both those cases?
- michaelbuckbee 10y agoIt might be helpful to think of them both as open source projects (though it's slightly murkier) where there have been forks and drama in both codebases.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoForks happen. Things don't always go as planned. The original author of uBlock handed over the project to someone else, who promptly contributed nothing to the project other than to slap a "Donate" button on the page. The original author then reasserted control over the project by making uBlock Origin. So to recap, uBlock is a stagnant branch of the project that has not been updated in some time and has seemingly been abandoned by the maintainer to instead work on a paid adblocker for iOS. uBlock Origin is actively being developed, and helmed by the original author. Use uBlock Origin. In a perfect world you wouldn't need to, but, it is what it is.
- wtbob 10y agoWhich I hate — it was so much cleverer when it was μBlock.
- zx2c4 10y agoUse uBlock Origin, not uBlock.
- oneweekwonder 10y agoWhat the diff?
- m3Lith 10y agoOne is in development, the other is not.
- antome 10y agouBlock was maintained by one person, but they wanted to move on to other projects, so they handed the project to someone else. The other person horribly mismanaged the project, and contributed essentially nothing. The original developer decided to return with uBlock origin.
- martiuk 10y agoThe other person also begged for donations while contributing nothing.
- charlesdenault 10y agoI'm still using uBlock for Safari until Origin is ported.
- synchronise 10y agoThe dev of uBlock directs users to download and use uBlock Origin instead. I can't understand why they couldn't transfer the name and put it all under uBlock again, that'd make it a whole lot easier.
- RubyPinch 10y ago> The dev of uBlock directs users to download and use uBlock Origin instead. They do? still doesn't seem like that, e.g. https://www.ublock.org https://www.ublock.org all links go to ublock, except for one link on the AMO site
- andreareina 10y agoFirefox Add-on page for uBlock says you're probably looking for uBlock Origin.
- hackernews2000 10y agoCute μs, but it was dropped out of the name a very long time ago. The official name is uBlock Origin with a u now.
- ptero 10y agoI hope their ads are small unobtrusive and easy to detect, so that another ad blocker can easily remove them :)
- Ninn 10y agoI'm not sure that I understand how exactly you imagine 2 AdBlockers being a good idea? Just use a proper one.
- barbs 10y agoI think his comment was intentionally tongue-in-cheek
- WireWrap 10y agohttps://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=45876 https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=45876 ||acceptableserver.com^ and might as well ||combotag.com^
- joelthelion 10y agouBlock Origin is where it's at nowadays.
- robert_foss 10y agoAt this point Adblock Plus is little more than a cheap money grab.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Zekio 10y agoReally should change the name something else at this point
- joelthelion 10y agoChange Adblock Plus to simply AdPlus
- rschuetzler 10y agoAdBlock Plus Ads
- happy-go-lucky 10y agoAd++ :)
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoWhy don't more people use hosts files and apps like gas mask to switch them?
- aikah 10y ago> Why don't more people use hosts files and apps like gas mask to switch them? how many people know what a host file is ? that will answer your question. ad-block is the simplest way to block ads for a non technical user.
- throwaway7767 10y ago> how many people know what a host file is ? that will answer your question. ad-block is the simplest way to block ads for a non technical user. An in-browser ad blocker is also more effective, regardless of your technical skill. Hosts blocks only work if the ads are served from their own server, which is certainly not always the case. Either you don't block the hard ads, or you block way too much and break a bunch of sites.
- Nursie 10y agoElement hiding, selective re-enablement and the like. Not that the hosts file thing is wrong, it's a bit of a sledgehammer approach though.
- majewsky 10y agoAgreed. But I'm still using domain-based blocking on my router as an additional line of defense for clients that cannot malware-block.
- segmondy 10y agoBeen there done that, too much work.
- stephengillie 10y agouMatrix Origin does this really well.
- consto 10y agoJuts use μBlock Origin.
- oxhak 10y agoμBlock Origin is better.
- RubyPinch 10y agohttps://acceptableads.com/en/ https://acceptableads.com/en/ for anyone who was looking for it
- ildoc 10y agothere's no such thing as acceptable ads
- BenElgar 10y agoI disagree. See the Stack Overflow model: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-doesnt-care-about-ad-blockers/ https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/02/why-stack-overflow-do...
- therealdrag0 10y agoAds are a symbiotic relationship between content creators and salespeople. The viewer, hitherto had no voice. Many people are willing to put up with a certain level of acceptable ads in exchange for other's created content.
- chris_wot 10y agoAdblock needs an adblocker. An adblock-blocker, if you will.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoTo view this page, please disable your ad-blocker-ad blocker.
- efaref 10y agoWell, there is https://fuckadblock.sitexw.fr/ https://fuckadblock.sitexw.fr/ And, of course, https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock
- myf01d 10y agoI would like to see some examples of these new ads. I've seen some text based ads, which I think, are much better and cleaner than the early 2000s obtrusive style.
- jkot 10y agoOpera is surprisingly nice browser.. with adblocker
- favadi 10y agoThe builtin adblocker is slower than uBlock last time I try. And we can't add custom list.
- angry-hacker 10y agoEvery company wants to build their own racket e.g. Acceptable Ads manifestó.
- zxv 10y agouMatrix allows you to fine tune rules for each web site. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...
- gallerdude 10y agoIt's pretty despicable - let's block everyone elses ads so that we can put up our own and make money from them instead.
- theandrewbailey 10y agoThat sounds exactly like what browser based malware/adware does.
- lolc 10y agoI could live with their "acceptable ads" concept. What they are doing now is not what I want to support anymore.
- bluesign 10y agoI hate Adblock Plus, but this doesnt sound too bad '''which will allow blogs and other website operators to pick out so-called “acceptable” ads and place them on their pages. If a visitor using Adblock Plus comes to the page, they’ll be shown those “acceptable ads,” instead of whatever ads the site would normally run.'''
- shostack 10y agoThe question is, how do you ensure they are just swapping existing ads, that they are all not acceptable, and that they aren't inserting ads where there were none?
- thclark 10y agouBlock Origin it is! Extensions: Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge
- jeeva 10y agoThanks! Was just wondering about the availability for Edge. ...not that Edge isn't hilariously un-fun to use, even with an adblocker...
- cupantae 10y agoWhy even ask...
- amyjess 10y agoAs someone who regularly uses a Surface Pro 3 without the keyboard attached (it's become my default couch computer), Edge is the only Windows browser I've found that's touch-friendly, so it remains the main browser I use on that machine.
- jeeva 10y agoThat's fair - I just find it's horrendously unstable (often hanging or crashing) with only a few (under 8, generally) tabs open (also on an SP3), whereas Chrome / FF will handle up to hundreds with no issues.
- rloc 10y agoThe only thing to do if you haven't already. uBlock is open source and does the job. This all adBlock making money by blocking ads and then showing their own ads is becoming ridiculous and unethical. So what does Adblock stand for now ?
- cyborgx7 10y agoNo such thing as an acceptable ad.
- pc86 10y agoThen pay for content. Ads are how people who provide free content make money. Yes, they are often offensive (visually, not necessarily the content), slow to load, and contain or utilize some of tracker or retargeting mechanism. But if you can remove those and you basically just have a PNG telling you about a product or service, that is the very definition of acceptable. But to freely consume content from someone (whether a single blogger or a massive company) then bitch about unobtrusive, nontracking, inoffensive advertisements is a pretty good example of entitlement.
- jug 10y ago> Then pay for content. Hehe, I guess that's why one would use an ad blocker, right? I hear you, but this isn't about helping sites survive, it's about ads in an ad blocker that is keeping their money for themselves, and is used mostly by people who dislike ads.
- cyborgx7 10y agoI do actually pay for content. And I do so gladly. But the fundamental problem with ads is that, even when they are unobstrusive, don't invade my privacy and don't compromise my security, they still are inherently manipulative and therefore unethical. The Internet was designed to exchange information. How I then choose to display that information is up to me. Ad-based businesses are tolerated, but have no claim to the internet. I will continue to block every ad I can and businesses will have to adapt, or die. I won't shed a tear for them.
- witty_username 10y agoIf you don't like ads on a site, don't visit the site. Content creators need money. How are ads manipulative? What does "claim to the internet" mean? The internet isn't a piece of land.
- etatoby 10y agoI, for one, agree with them. We started blocking ads because they had become 1. obnoxious, interfering with the fruition of the actual content; 2. dangerous, being a vector for malware and disrespecting our privacy; and 3. costly, for those with a slow or metered connection. Most people accept ads, if they are acceptable. They are the first company to actually push through with a plan to restore this market to sanity, so it's only natural they would take a small profit from it. Other well-known technology companies grab well into the two digit percent off other people's earnings.
- jwise0 10y agoWell, the royal "we", perhaps :-) I started blocking ads because they dramatically slowed down my browsing experience. But I keep blocking ads because, fundamentally, I believe that advertisements are neurotoxins, and nobody has the right to poison me. The old Sean Tejaratchi quote - popularized by Banksy - applies here, I think - http://www.readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss http://www.readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss
- k-mcgrady 10y ago>> "I believe that advertisements are neurotoxins, and nobody has the right to poison me." And you have no right to the content you're viewing but blocking ads on. If you really consider ads 'poison' surely boycotting sites that use ads is the solution or offering an alternative solution this is actually viable.
- denom 10y agoThis is an ad-blocking arms race for sure, but sites like the Washington Post and NYtimes have done a good job dealing with the new ad-blocking 'normal'. The point is that there _are_ things sites can do to deal with this situation. However, the status-quo is not an option.
- k-mcgrady 10y ago>> "The point is that there _are_ things sites can do to deal with this situation." I agree. But that's no excuse for someone getting on their high horse but not offering an alternative and still accessing the content.
- luxpir 10y agoJust another anecdote to "ad" to the pile: In an effort to keep my Chromium/FF instances 'clean' I just use https-everywhere and uMatrix (since it came out - my trust in noscript and abp was waning a long way back). It's nice to block the vast majority of low-hanging trackers. I'm hoping that having FB, GA and myriad other tracking scripts auto-disabled circumvents some of their even smarter tracking methods (IP, cookie) but I'm always open to modify the setup, just not at the expense of my limited computing resources. Using 10 privacy extensions is a non-starter, for instance. Not to mention how little I trust most of the ad blocking efforts out there. At home I have a pi-hole set up (as well as the pi being a media centre, IRC, IM and NAS... so versatile!) to block the low-hanging scripts and calls on my family and guests' browsing. It's a shame it blocks Piwik by default, but I can understand the reasoning. Log-based analytics really should be the norm, anyway. The speed boost is non-trivial, as is the peace of mind that most of our private life is not being sold to the highest bidder. EDIT: I've just gone into the Privacy settings in uMatrix and checked everything on the basis of this post-as-reminder: Cookies, local storage, user agent, strict https... Don't think the last one allows me to drop https-everywhere yet though, only to avoid mixed content. I may end up unchecking that box if it gets too annoying... I know the risks!
- philbo 10y agoAs a NoScript user I'm curious what eroded your trust in it. Should I be looking at switching away from it for some reason?
- luxpir 10y agoNothing major, beyond the controversies listed here[0] and the developer's more cavalier approach to whitelisting. Plus resource usage was double what was on offer by the much more fine-grained uMatrix. At the time at least. Maybe still. The Tor project still bundle NS in with their browser, hardened, I believe (stricter whitelisting, for one) but they clearly still trust it. Better than nothing, but far from perfect IMO. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoScript#Controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoScript#Controversies
- wtallis 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brentm 10y agoThis is nothing but a pirate business model, it's deplorable. Blocking ads alone is pretty bad but wedging yourself into the middle and then collecting a marketplace fee is nothing short of a pirate move.
- John23832 10y agoI'll just say. Google offers and maintains reCapcha, while at the same time scrapes the internet using bots. Wedging yourself in the middle is an awesome business plan.
- bjacobel 10y agoGoogle doesn't make money from reCaptcha[1], and reCaptcha isn't deployed to stop the kind of crawlers Google operates (you'd just add a line to robots.txt if you wanted to do this), so I'm not sure how this is relevant. [1]: OK, maybe in the extremely broad, indirect sense that reCaptcha helps Google solve image classification problems, which make Google products like Maps/Books/Images better, which increases traffic, which increases ad revenue
- John23832 10y agoreCaptcha definitely does contribute to google's bottom line. Google is involved in making it harder to scrape the web for the average person. They are involved in most web standards. If you go in to most robots.txt files, they have root forbidden for user-agent: *. But you can be sure that Google is whitelisted. Google has a vested interest in making it harder for the average person to scrap the web. This is because they position themselves as a repository of information. This is a clear case of wedging yourself in the middle.
- barkbro 10y agoYou could argue that Google is directly saving money by not paying people to train its ML algorithms (which I'm assuming they have a plan to monetize).
- the_af 10y ago
- b3lvedere 10y agoI block ads (and lots of other things) because i will block any network traffic i do not want on my own network infrastructure.
- lolc 10y agoCollective bargaining power is a nice thing to have. But it's also the question of who you're handing the power to. AdBlock Plus is out.
- gbin 10y agoIt is borderline malware at that point. I don't like ads but I still want to contribute to the sites so I just pay with contributor: https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/ Disclosure: I work for Google but those opinions are my own.
- misingnoglic 10y agoWow - it always amazes me when I see that Google has a fully fledged product that I've never heard of.
- tedmiston 10y agoFirst time seeing Contributor. This is interesting but… can you really use it everywhere, or do creators have to opt-in? I don't see pointed how Google sends money to authors.
- cbr 10y agoThe ads you see are generally the result of an auction. When you use Contributor it bids in that auction for you, and typically wins it for a small fraction of a cent. Publishers generally don't have to opt in: if you're a publisher advertising with AdSense, and a visitor shows up who uses Contributor, they'll see "thank you for being a Contributor!" and you get a micropayment from them into your AdSense account. (Disclaimer: I work for Google, on things completely unrelated to ads.)
- tedmiston 10y agoIf you think about it, it's like responsive design for your ads. The "responsive" case being to show the nicer ads and the default case being to show the normal obtrusive ads (depending on the user's level of ad blocking). I'm not saying I outright support, but some ads are useful — The Deck is one example. Amazon's "people who purchased this also purchased" is (kind of) another.
- majewsky 10y agoI wouldn't think of "people who purchased this also purchased" as an ad. An ad is characterized as not relevant to the current activity, but these recommendations usually are (except when they are hilarious, but that's another thing).
- tedmiston 10y agoYeah, the more I think of it, I tend to agree. Just because it's an unsolicited recommendation that influences your purchasing decision doesn't make it an ad. I'm not quite sure how to categorize their affinity analysis in general. Perhaps it could be thought of as a cross-sell / upsell / impulse buy, depending on the item recommended.
- te_chris 10y agoOh goodie, a new tech protection racket. Keep innovating, gents!
- Yuioup 10y agoThis is extortion, plain and simple. Essentially they're forcing advertisers to funnel all ad content through them. Good thing for uBlock Origin because otherwise they should be indicted to anti-competitive behavior. No, I don't like ads and I run uBlock Origin. I don't work for an advertising company and couldn't care less about ads. But what Adblock Plus is doing here is illegal.
- cordite 10y agoSounds like the analogy is gang "protection" money. However here it seems to come with additional behavioral standards to the public.
- ihsw 10y agoHow so? People have voluntarily installed Adblock Plus, viewers have no contract with publishers to view their ads, and ADP has no contract with publishers to keep their ads up.
- CaptSpify 10y agoHow is it illegal?
- CannisterFlux 10y agoHeh, advertisers are getting what they deserve for ruining the internet. I worry it will escalate the arms race and ublock origin users like you and I will be affected, though I tend to avoid sites that are ad-heavy anyway. As for being illegal? No idea, but Google are doing something similar - reducing the rank of sites that don't use Google as their source of advertising. More or less ;-) Google frame it the same way as Adblock Plus - only sites with intrusive adverts are going to be punished, while those with Google adverts are wholesome and pure. But it is a very similar technique to AP. It's not quite the same, as the adverts are not blocked "merely" the whole site is downgraded in Google's search. Ouch. Then there's Brendan Eich's Brave browser that follows exactly the same model as Adblock Plus. Remove sites' adverts and show Brave's in their place! It seems cheeky to me, but not sure what law it breaks. Is there are "don't be a jerk" law in the US? Maybe there should be :-)
- draw_down 10y ago
- runn1ng 10y agoAdBlock has: * AdBlock * AdBlock Plus * AdBlock Ultimate, now AdBlocker Ultimate uBlock has: * uBlock * uBlock Origin ...and I can never tell the difference.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y agoJust use uBlock Origin. These details don't really matter to most people.
- eloisant 10y agoActually AdBlock Plus was a fork of AdBlock, by a different person, because AdBlock was no longer maintained. I suspect AdBlock(er) Ultimate is yet another unrelated extension from completely different people. It's a similar story with uBlock. I think the uBlock dev wanted to stop, handed off dev to someone else who fucked up. So it was forked into uBlock origin. tl;dr they're all adblocking software from different people, who don't work together.
- tempodox 10y agoThat's how it goes. I bet the ads they get payed for are the least annoying to AdBlock. The “Plus” now stands for “More Ads”.
- cousin_it 10y agoPeople talk about the ad blocking arms race, but they forget that advertising itself is an arms race. Often it doesn't even benefit the advertisers! For example, everyone would buy food even if it wasn't advertised, so the food industry as a whole might well be losing money on ads. (If you're feeling nitpicky, substitute "cheap food industry" for "food industry".) It's a kind of prisoner's dilemma situation where each firm keeps spending money on ads to avoid losing market share to competitors, but all firms together would be happier with a blanket ban on advertising. I suspect that many online ads are also fighting for a share of a fixed-size market, and would benefit from a ban as well. Ad blocking is a gradual way to institute such a ban without requiring everyone's consent. It's probably already making many companies richer without them realizing it, by suppressing the ads of their competitors. In fact, these are the companies you want to get richer, because their products are spreading by word of mouth instead of ads.
- arjie 10y agoBlanket bans on advertising favour market incumbents. It's true that some companies will prosper through word of mouth but in the early adopter stage you need to reach those early adopters. If you're small and your early adopters are distributed, you'll die before you catch on through people talking about you. I'd wager the net effect would be to entrench big brands.
- Cyclone_ 10y agoI could see that being the case where the little guys aren't able to get the word out about their product, but keep in mind that big advertisers like coke use the "brand awareness" aspect of advertising to get their brand in your mind.
- Jordrok 10y agoI still don't see how this works out as an advantage for the little guy. At best, for every ad the new startup buys, the big incumbent buys two and you're back to more or less where you started. Worst case, the big incumbents and shady scammers buy up the majority of the advertising time, training consumers to ignore ads and making it even harder for a legitimate newcomer to get their foot in the door.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoI hate ads, absolutely hate them. I hate them on TV. I hate them on billboards. I hate them on the net. If I want something, I decide I want it. I research it, and I make my choices based on multiple sources. Dancing clowns and phony sales do nothing but waste my time and annoy me. Having said that, we need some way forward, even if it's nothing but a small step. I propose that all advertisers voluntarily place ads (and paid product endorsements) inside and <advert></advert> tag, preferably with an alt attribute. My browser could show me the ad or the text. It's up to me. Ad Blockers would no longer be a thing. Who would need them? And if advertisers really wanted me to see the full-bandwidth version of whatever schlock they're peddling, over time they'd develop a reputation for delivering funny/interesting/engaging ads. Then I might let some through. Hell, I might start following them on Twitter. But don't hijack my browser, track me against my will, and force me to look at things I don't want to simply to find out what kind of car accident happened outside last night. Content producers and consumers should not be in an adversarial relationship. Yet this is what they've created.
- witty_username 10y agoHow do ads hijack your browser and track you against your will? If you don't want tracking, don't visit the website. Ads don't force you look at things. You're looking at it.
- nercht12 10y agohttps://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/online-trackers-and-social-networks https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/online-trackers-and-so...
- hubert123 10y agoFor many people, ads are content. You didnt know that u wanted a new Intel CPU until you saw the ad that told you it's 100% faster.
- cletus 10y agoWhat's next? Hijacking affiliate links? I do use Adblock Plus because there's a nice fanboy annoyances list that kills the latest scourge of Web UI: the pop up, in particular the "sign up to our newsletter since you've been here for 2 seconds!" pop up. Is there ublock origin equivalent for this?
- detaro 10y agoYou should be able to use all these lists with uBlock too. EDIT: the specific one you mention is even offered (but not turned on) by default in uBlock origin.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoA missing factoid via the corresponding WSJ article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-is-launching-an-ad-exchange-1473768022 http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-is-launching-an-ad-... "Advertisers will not be able to target ads via the Acceptable Ads Platform using the granular behavioral data many have become accustomed too, however, to preserve user privacy and security. Rather, they’ll have a limited set of information with which to target their ads, including the domain on which an ad would appear; the device, browser and operating system on which it’s being loaded; and the geographical location it’s being loaded from." OK, so the "limited" set of information is already 5 pieces of information, and without specifics about the geographical location I am going to assume it can vary on any scale determined and changed by ABP at their discretion. In combination this is very likely to be a UUID for a vast majority of people (sorry, I don't have a reference, but that is what I have read somewhere). More pertinently, I have a vague feeling that this combination is enough for retargeting (people in adtech, please give us your input). Folks are mentioning uBlock Origin. But there is tremendous pressure from online publishers, who I expect are soon going to turn this into a game of Whack-a-Blocker.
- ilikepi 10y ago> OK, so the "limited" set of information is already 5 pieces of information... Ehh...it'll probably be the useragent string and the result of geocoding the client IP address. This is fairly narrow (especially for obscure and/or out-of-date browsers), but I think calling it "unique" might be a stretch. I guess it would be highly dependent on the population of your city or town and on the popularity of the site itself. I might be one of just a handful of people who reads HN while laying in my bed at night on an iPhone 6S, but I'd expect quite a few people in a major metro area are hitting big media sites from Chrome on Windows. EDIT: trivial wording tweak
- yellow_postit 10y agoIf it starts including things like display size, device, etc. then you get into the realm of browser fingerprinting which while maybe not truly unique does start to narrow the pool quite a bit: https://panopticlick.eff.org/about#browser-fingerprinting https://panopticlick.eff.org/about#browser-fingerprinting
- helthanatos 10y agoI am not particularly upset (besides they have been going this direction for a while) I just don't like obtrusive ads and, odly, some websites have so many ads that their styling is incredibly messed up without them. I may switch to another adblocker if I see too much stuff, but seeing some ads doesn't really anger me.
- andreareina 10y agoI agree with an acceptable ads program. It shouldn't be an ad blocker running it, not if it's monetized. Paid access onto the acceptable ads list is the reason I stopped using ABP in the first place; this just put the nail in the coffin.
- micro_softy 10y agoThere are other ways to block ads besides this one solution. The web ad delivery mechanism is brittle. But when will this game end? Advertisers should just pay consumers (users). Why bother with a middleman? Request for Project (RFP): Let all users sign up to be paid by advertisers. (This is not a new idea.) Sign up with enough advertisers and one can have "universal basic income". Users should not be giving away their time for free. Every time a web advertiser distracts a user, they are "stealing" the user's time. Advertisers pay for this privilege. But they do not pay the users. They pay off someone -- you know who -- to help them steal users' time. Just pay the damn users. Enough of this silly game. Added benefit: It would open up the search engine market and social networking (photo database) market to competition and innovation.
- test6554 10y agoWhy not keep adblock plus, but also install ublock origin and three other adblockers as well? Not only would they all have to sell out like adblock plus, but advertisers would also have to pay each of them before you saw a single ad.
- euske 10y agoI think the problem here is to leave decisions about what's good/bad ads to other people (e.g. EasyList). I believe blocking technology itself is a user's right and should be allowed, but deciding what's good/bad for others is meddlesome. Individual users should make their own decisions about what should be blocked and what's not, as easily as possible.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- yellow_postit 10y agoIs there a middle ground between block all ads and each user individually white-listing sites? Anyone which produced a curated list of "allowed" ads would hit a similar narrative.
- blakeyrat 10y agoI'd support a tool which gave me the opposite of that: I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on, not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusive site. I'm not sure any tool allows that right now. They all block-by-default and have a whitelist instead.
- Nadya 10y ago>I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on, not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusive site. If the ads are being served from the same ad network - then you will be served more or less the same shitty ads you didn't want to see on Site A when you visit Site B. Because it is the ad network tracking you and deciding which ads you see with very little, if any, input from Sites A or B. Furthermore, since advertisements are a security risk they should be blacklisted by default and only whitelist sites you trust. Which is still no guarantee you won't get infected by the 3rd party Ad Network of that site.
- blakeyrat 10y ago> If the ads are being served from the same ad network - then you will be served more or less the same shitty ads you didn't want to see on Site A when you visit Site B. Not true. > Because it is the ad network tracking you and deciding which ads you see with very little, if any, input from Sites A or B. I don't care about "tracking". I think that's extremely overblown paranoia. > Furthermore, since advertisements are a security risk they should be blacklisted by default and only whitelist sites you trust. That is your opinion; I do not share it. Regardless of what you "think" I should be doing, the simple fact is that I want a program that does X, and a program that does X does not exist.
- draw_down 10y agoI feel like there's a baseline assumption here that the people who make ad blockers would somehow be more ethical or "nicer" than the people who make websites that serve shitty ads that got us all to download ad blockers in the first place. But I don't see why that should be true.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWhat's their plan to prevent malware from coming through their ad network?
- matthewowen 10y agoyou either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
- dawnerd 10y agoI block ads primarily for privacy reasons. I don't mind ads in themselves if they're just static and not trying to track my every move. I don't want ads to be "relevant" to me. I find that not only is it just creepy but really useless to see ads for something long after I've purchased. I'd rather it be more of a discovery tool for new products (movie trailers for example).
- gravypod 10y agoI've got a deal for any company out there. Rather then spending millions on advertising provide to me a datasheet. Hell, pay for ad space where you can show off your datasheets. I'll buy the product with the best possible features for my use case. If companies start doing this, I'll exclusively buy provided products from them rather then from advertised companies. If the data sheet you provide lies, I'll never buy your products again, so keep that in mind. This is a simple and transparent way to get me to buy your products and it costs you less! Isn't that great!
- buckbova 10y agoYou can always edit the hosts file. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts
- Borating 10y agoInstead of hosts file, use dnsmasq that support wilcard extensions. See FreeContributor [1] [1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor
- Animats 10y agoBusiness plan: 1. Tell users you're doing something for them. 2. Get lots of users. 3. Change product to screw them. 4. Profit! This happens too often.
- vegabook 10y ago----------> erroneous comment deleted. Original suggested GPL was protection against dual versioning (Open Source/Enterprise) as opposed to permissive licences which enable @animats business model analysis.
- exolymph 10y agoAdBlock Plus is GPL: https://adblockplus.org/license-headers https://adblockplus.org/license-headers
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nsgi 10y agoThought the point of Acceptable Ads was to force publishers to self-regulate the ads that they publish to provide a better experience for all users and restore the balance of power. By allowing publishers to only provide acceptable ads to Adblock users, this seems to defeat the point.
- unfunco 10y agoWhat happens if I develop an adblocker that also blocks Adblock Plus ads, but then I start adding in my own ads over the Adblock Plus ads? Where does this end?