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> is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details) That's only if people agree with your ideology. Instead of making blanket statem

> is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details) That's only if people agree with your ideology. Instead of making blanket statements which are inherently subjective, just explain why you prefer Adblock Plus. Personally, I vastly prefer Adblock Plus. I have no ideological objection to advertising or tracking in general, I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filtering out intrusive ads while still allowing me to support the sites I like where advertising is minimal. I love the ad-supported web and strongly disagree with the notion that it's against users' interests. Getting free content and services in a competitive marketplace without switching costs is invaluable.

PerryCox 10y ago
Read the README. ABP sold out a while back and now shows ads on certain websites who pay money to ABP. uBlock Origin doesn't show ads on any website unless you specifically allow it.
- lttlrck 10y ago
  This was also mentioned in the article. ABP still allows you to block those whitelisted ads.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    Why use an extension that white lists ads by default when there's an open source alternative that you have full control over?
    - a3n 10y ago
      Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort. I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar. People differ.
      - Thrillington 10y ago
        You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site. uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this. ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I haven't considered.
        csydas 10y ago
        Theoretically, if the ads that were whitelisted were flagged enough or enough complaints were raised to ADP, this would be a financial signal to both ADP and the sites that the ads are unacceptable. I am not saying this is exactly how it goes as I haven't the slightest what goes on behind the closed doors at ADP (and use µblock0 myself); nor do I endorse the idea of using one company to coerce another, but I would imagine that it allows for at least a channel for more direct responses as to why an ad is not acceptable. That is, I do not believe that other solutions have a very clear way for advertisers to determine what is and isn't acceptable; for the sake of argument, this puts aside the fact that some unacceptable aspects of ads should be common sense (loud noises, pop-unders, fake download links, etc). Basically when an adblocking user reaches the site, they have no means of communicating why they dislike the ads on that site - most of the time, it's just a blanket block that users never think about. So even if you really like a website and would love to support it through the ad revenue, your current options don't send a very clear signal as to what was disruptive and dislikable. Again, I'm not saying I fully agree with this, but I think it's an argument that has some value, and reflects the greater difficulty with advertising in general; it's a one-way communication venue, and the few times that we as viewers are able to get a signal back to the other side, it's usually ignored until legislation gets involved. (See the CALM Act and it's overall ineffectiveness [1]) Basically there isn't really much control over what advertisers actually do, and even Truth in Advertising laws basically have no teeth except for extremely blatant falsehoods. Adblocking is the first major way that viewers have been able to push back against advertising, and I'm with that 100% since I just think it's pointless in and of itself - it's wasteful in my opinion how much infrastructure exists out there just for the sake of providing advertisements. But I also understand that likely advertising isn't going away, so having some method to signal back clearly and directly to advertisers what is wrong with an ad is good in my mind. Said signal having some teeth to make sure they get the message is also important, else it's not much better than before. But not giving any indication as to what's wrong doesn't really help either. (I'm not blaming anyone but stubborn advertisers here, but I think it helps us as activists if we can make it 100% what we don't like about specific advertisements instead of just doing a blanket block). [1] = https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials
- morgante 10y ago
  It's amazing to me that you can't even grasp that the point you're trying to make is ideological: that ads are inherently evil and should all be blocked. I'm fully aware of ABP's business model. I just happen to like it. Stop trying to present a difference of ideological opinion as a feature difference. You can make ABP work exactly the same as uBlock and (apparently) vice versa.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Ads are not inherently evil, the omnipresent associated tracking and surveillance is. Problem is almost all ads come with tracking nowadays which in turn makes them evil. That's another reason ublock origins is far superior to ABP: it blocks tracking by default. Of you can configure each one to mimick the other but users seldom change the defaults hence the 75% of german users subscribed to ABP acceptable ads program, (ratio is higher than usual because adblock are mostly used by tech savvy and privacy concerned users). Then again you can't make ABP uses a third of the resources it uses so you would have to find a way to make ublock origins use three times more resources to make it work exactly as ABP.
    - morgante 10y ago
      > Ads are not inherently evil, the omnipresent associated tracking and surveillance is. Do you really not see how thinking "tracking" is evil is an inherently ideological statement? I do not care if Google tracks literally everything I do online. I don't consider it evil and in fact willingly opt-in to tracking.
      - bigbugbag 10y ago
        I admit I have made a mistake in following your choice of wording. The good/evil dichotomy is rather inappropriate as it is an ideological statement itself. Let me rephrase that differently: as a matter of fact privacy is a requirement for freedom. Tracking by definition destroys (or at the very least entails) privacy, thus effectively preventing freedom from emerging. Then it is a matter of personal preferences. Personal preferences may differ on the desirability of freedom of self or others. It is said that those who care for freedom will act in a way providing freedom for everyone, the others others will act selfishly and enjoy the freedom provided by those who care. Though it should be noted that ABP and UBO are two completely different things. ABP is an adblocker, it aims at making money filtering and selling ads. UBO is a general-purpose blocker, its main goal is to help users neutralize the privacy-invading apparatus of which the visible part is ads. That's why UBO features options to block webrtc, remote font, link prefetch, hyperlink auditing and beacon while ABP has none of this but features acceptable ads.
ryuuchin 10y ago
> That's only if people agree with your ideology. You don't even have to do that. It behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists. It's just also happens to be more efficient than ABP.
- skybrian 10y ago
  It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power
  - Zren 10y ago
    > behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists He mentioned that uBlock can use the same "reasonable" filter list as ABP, it's just better to use uBlock since it's more efficient.
  - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
    > Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be How they reconcile this with the name "AdBlock" I'll never know.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      Supposedly non intrusive ads that are out of your way
      - bigbugbag 10y ago
        Wladimir should rename adblock plus to addoesntblock- supposedly-non-intrusive-ads then ;) or maybe adsellads [1] [1]:http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-sells-ads http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-...
EpicEng 10y ago
Has nothing to do with ideology. Origin is simply a better blocker in that it more effectively blocks ads. Also has the bonus that it's not in bed with certain advertisers.
user5994461 10y ago
> I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filtering out intrusive ads while still allowing me to support the sites I like where advertising is minimal. I was also in favor of that... until I noticed that the google ads[1] were links to malware and adware sites at times. Now, I just block everything without distinction. And I make sure it's the same for every setup (i.e. rest of the family and friends who are not tech savy). [1] AdBlock Plus unblocked adds from google after they started paying them. They introduced an opt-in button to "block non intrusive adds".
paulddraper 10y ago
AdBlock plus is intrusive. We had sporadic user complaints of our web SaaS not working. They had AdBlock and couldn't download files from S3 with certain keys. They key was the hex encoding of the hash of the contents. f4/c0/34/ad/91/... Notice the ad
- alexpoulsen 10y ago
  Lol That's funny At least whitelisting S3 is probably fine I was QAing for a company. They had a link in an email go through a tracker as opposed to loading the tracker on another site. Obviously uBlock blocked it and confused me for a few minutes until I realized what it was blocking. They didn't like my suggestion to have the tracker be loaded externally so if it was blocked, no big deal.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Putting ideology aside, TheAceOfHearts is still right that ublock origin is better than adblock plus in all ways. Have a look at performance comparison between the two, ublock origin offers better speed with memory footprint a third of ABP while blocking more a.k.a. saner defaults. I don't care if ABP offers some mafia like option to deal with advertisers, I do care that my box stay snappy with memory available when I open 150+ tabs in my browser i.e. a regular day. Whenever ABP offers the same level of performances than ublock origin then I may base my choice on ideology, but the required rewrite doesn't seems to be on ABP roadmap.
alexpoulsen 10y ago
This was on HN a few days ago: http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/12/06/readers-popular-websites-targeted-stealthy-stegano-exploit-kit-hiding-pixels-malicious-ads/ http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/12/06/readers-popular-web... Basically ads that exploit you without you clicking on them. I don't know if it was on the acceptable ads list and you had a old copy of adobe acrobat, then you would be hacked. They didn't mention what sites but users in Central Europe got it on popular websites. Sites you'd probably trust. Other than static ads between the hosting site and the site that wants to advertise without a middleman ad network, I don't trust any ads. In the case listed previously, a human is more likely to review the ad, making it safer. Since I care about not getting hacked, the obvious conclusion for me is to block all ads.
- morgante 10y ago
  That definitely does not meet the standard of ABP's acceptable ads program and it would be banned if found.
  - feld 10y ago
    > if found Herein lies the problem
michaelmrose 10y ago
Ublock is objectively lighter on resources and you can either manually whitelist the sites you like or look into using Adblocks acceptable ad list with ublock.

PerryCox 10y ago

Read the README. ABP sold out a while back and now shows ads on certain websites who pay money to ABP. uBlock Origin doesn't show ads on any website unless you specifically allow it.

lttlrck 10y ago
This was also mentioned in the article. ABP still allows you to block those whitelisted ads.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  Why use an extension that white lists ads by default when there's an open source alternative that you have full control over?
  - a3n 10y ago
    Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort. I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar. People differ.
    - Thrillington 10y ago
      You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site. uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this. ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I haven't considered.
      - csydas 10y ago
        Theoretically, if the ads that were whitelisted were flagged enough or enough complaints were raised to ADP, this would be a financial signal to both ADP and the sites that the ads are unacceptable. I am not saying this is exactly how it goes as I haven't the slightest what goes on behind the closed doors at ADP (and use µblock0 myself); nor do I endorse the idea of using one company to coerce another, but I would imagine that it allows for at least a channel for more direct responses as to why an ad is not acceptable. That is, I do not believe that other solutions have a very clear way for advertisers to determine what is and isn't acceptable; for the sake of argument, this puts aside the fact that some unacceptable aspects of ads should be common sense (loud noises, pop-unders, fake download links, etc). Basically when an adblocking user reaches the site, they have no means of communicating why they dislike the ads on that site - most of the time, it's just a blanket block that users never think about. So even if you really like a website and would love to support it through the ad revenue, your current options don't send a very clear signal as to what was disruptive and dislikable. Again, I'm not saying I fully agree with this, but I think it's an argument that has some value, and reflects the greater difficulty with advertising in general; it's a one-way communication venue, and the few times that we as viewers are able to get a signal back to the other side, it's usually ignored until legislation gets involved. (See the CALM Act and it's overall ineffectiveness [1]) Basically there isn't really much control over what advertisers actually do, and even Truth in Advertising laws basically have no teeth except for extremely blatant falsehoods. Adblocking is the first major way that viewers have been able to push back against advertising, and I'm with that 100% since I just think it's pointless in and of itself - it's wasteful in my opinion how much infrastructure exists out there just for the sake of providing advertisements. But I also understand that likely advertising isn't going away, so having some method to signal back clearly and directly to advertisers what is wrong with an ad is good in my mind. Said signal having some teeth to make sure they get the message is also important, else it's not much better than before. But not giving any indication as to what's wrong doesn't really help either. (I'm not blaming anyone but stubborn advertisers here, but I think it helps us as activists if we can make it 100% what we don't like about specific advertisements instead of just doing a blanket block). [1] = https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials
morgante 10y ago
It's amazing to me that you can't even grasp that the point you're trying to make is ideological: that ads are inherently evil and should all be blocked. I'm fully aware of ABP's business model. I just happen to like it. Stop trying to present a difference of ideological opinion as a feature difference. You can make ABP work exactly the same as uBlock and (apparently) vice versa.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Ads are not inherently evil, the omnipresent associated tracking and surveillance is. Problem is almost all ads come with tracking nowadays which in turn makes them evil. That's another reason ublock origins is far superior to ABP: it blocks tracking by default. Of you can configure each one to mimick the other but users seldom change the defaults hence the 75% of german users subscribed to ABP acceptable ads program, (ratio is higher than usual because adblock are mostly used by tech savvy and privacy concerned users). Then again you can't make ABP uses a third of the resources it uses so you would have to find a way to make ublock origins use three times more resources to make it work exactly as ABP.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Ads are not inherently evil, the omnipresent associated tracking and surveillance is. Do you really not see how thinking "tracking" is evil is an inherently ideological statement? I do not care if Google tracks literally everything I do online. I don't consider it evil and in fact willingly opt-in to tracking.
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      I admit I have made a mistake in following your choice of wording. The good/evil dichotomy is rather inappropriate as it is an ideological statement itself. Let me rephrase that differently: as a matter of fact privacy is a requirement for freedom. Tracking by definition destroys (or at the very least entails) privacy, thus effectively preventing freedom from emerging. Then it is a matter of personal preferences. Personal preferences may differ on the desirability of freedom of self or others. It is said that those who care for freedom will act in a way providing freedom for everyone, the others others will act selfishly and enjoy the freedom provided by those who care. Though it should be noted that ABP and UBO are two completely different things. ABP is an adblocker, it aims at making money filtering and selling ads. UBO is a general-purpose blocker, its main goal is to help users neutralize the privacy-invading apparatus of which the visible part is ads. That's why UBO features options to block webrtc, remote font, link prefetch, hyperlink auditing and beacon while ABP has none of this but features acceptable ads.

ryuuchin 10y ago

> That's only if people agree with your ideology. You don't even have to do that. It behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists. It's just also happens to be more efficient than ABP.

skybrian 10y ago
It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power
- Zren 10y ago
  > behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists He mentioned that uBlock can use the same "reasonable" filter list as ABP, it's just better to use uBlock since it's more efficient.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  > Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be How they reconcile this with the name "AdBlock" I'll never know.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    Supposedly non intrusive ads that are out of your way
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      Wladimir should rename adblock plus to addoesntblock- supposedly-non-intrusive-ads then ;) or maybe adsellads [1] [1]:http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-sells-ads http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-...

EpicEng 10y ago

Has nothing to do with ideology. Origin is simply a better blocker in that it more effectively blocks ads. Also has the bonus that it's not in bed with certain advertisers.

user5994461 10y ago

> I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filtering out intrusive ads while still allowing me to support the sites I like where advertising is minimal. I was also in favor of that... until I noticed that the google ads[1] were links to malware and adware sites at times. Now, I just block everything without distinction. And I make sure it's the same for every setup (i.e. rest of the family and friends who are not tech savy). [1] AdBlock Plus unblocked adds from google after they started paying them. They introduced an opt-in button to "block non intrusive adds".

paulddraper 10y ago

AdBlock plus is intrusive. We had sporadic user complaints of our web SaaS not working. They had AdBlock and couldn't download files from S3 with certain keys. They key was the hex encoding of the hash of the contents. f4/c0/34/ad/91/... Notice the ad

alexpoulsen 10y ago
Lol That's funny At least whitelisting S3 is probably fine I was QAing for a company. They had a link in an email go through a tracker as opposed to loading the tracker on another site. Obviously uBlock blocked it and confused me for a few minutes until I realized what it was blocking. They didn't like my suggestion to have the tracker be loaded externally so if it was blocked, no big deal.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Putting ideology aside, TheAceOfHearts is still right that ublock origin is better than adblock plus in all ways. Have a look at performance comparison between the two, ublock origin offers better speed with memory footprint a third of ABP while blocking more a.k.a. saner defaults. I don't care if ABP offers some mafia like option to deal with advertisers, I do care that my box stay snappy with memory available when I open 150+ tabs in my browser i.e. a regular day. Whenever ABP offers the same level of performances than ublock origin then I may base my choice on ideology, but the required rewrite doesn't seems to be on ABP roadmap.

alexpoulsen 10y ago

This was on HN a few days ago: http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/12/06/readers-popular-websites-targeted-stealthy-stegano-exploit-kit-hiding-pixels-malicious-ads/ http://www.welivesecurity.com/2016/12/06/readers-popular-web... Basically ads that exploit you without you clicking on them. I don't know if it was on the acceptable ads list and you had a old copy of adobe acrobat, then you would be hacked. They didn't mention what sites but users in Central Europe got it on popular websites. Sites you'd probably trust. Other than static ads between the hosting site and the site that wants to advertise without a middleman ad network, I don't trust any ads. In the case listed previously, a human is more likely to review the ad, making it safer. Since I care about not getting hacked, the obvious conclusion for me is to block all ads.

morgante 10y ago
That definitely does not meet the standard of ABP's acceptable ads program and it would be banned if found.
- feld 10y ago
  > if found Herein lies the problem

michaelmrose 10y ago

Ublock is objectively lighter on resources and you can either manually whitelist the sites you like or look into using Adblocks acceptable ad list with ublock.