While on one hand, the acceptable ads program does border on extortion, and them allowing Taboola is bullshit (and the reason why I no longer allow those ads),

While on one hand, the acceptable ads program does border on extortion, and them allowing Taboola is bullshit (and the reason why I no longer allow those ads), I think "acceptable ads" is a sane approach. I'm willing to tolerate ads to a certain extent. I'm not going to pay (in money, time, or looking at ads that I consider unacceptable) to sort the good from bad. Ad companies have consistently failed at avoiding bad ads. So some third party will have to do it, and either advertisers or publishers or platforms are going to have to pay for it. That's what Acceptable Ads is doing. Are they abusing their leading position with ABP to charge obscene amounts of money? Definitely. Could the ad industry have avoided it by introducing strict, technically enforced ads quality rules earlier? Maybe. (Depends on whether they could have convinced the early adblockers to not block those ads, which they might have been able if they enforced really strict rules instead of just banning the worst of the worst.) ABP allowed Taboola (fun fact: The Taboola ads you got with ABP are/were different, less obnoxious versions than the ones served to people without adblockers). I don't like that, so I no longer use ABP, so ABP gets less revenue. Maybe someone else will make a different "acceptable ads" system that I'll be willing to opt into - and I'm perfectly OK if they squeeze money from publishers/advertisers/platform to make it profitable to maintain such a list.