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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

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.

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.