4 ms·

I cannot tell from the announcement whether ABP is now getting paid to allow some ads, but if it is, that looks like a textbook conflict of interest. Wikipedia

I cannot tell from the announcement whether ABP is now getting paid to allow some ads, but if it is, that looks like a textbook conflict of interest. Wikipedia has a list of ways to mitigate such conflicts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest#Ways_to_mitigate_conflicts_of_interests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest#Ways_to_mi... , maybe adopting some suggestions from there would help? Also I'm a little confused by the talk of "making small websites unsustainable". Do ads really make small websites sustainable, or is the mention of "small websites" just an applause light?

corin_ 15y ago
It depends how you define "small". My company runs a few content sites that are primarily monetised through advertising. They're not small as in "some guy updating them in his free time", but they're small as in a few paid members of the editorial team, a few million pages a month. For us, yes, advertising is the difference between us being a profitable company and us not being a company at all. That said, a.) we are doing OK before this adblock change and b.) our adverts don't fit what are being defined as "acceptable" here. We do make sure we never get too obtrusive, we don't do automatic playing videos, we don't do roadblocks, we don't do anything with sound, we don't do anything that covers content or expands when you mouseover... but some of the banners we serve are flash with basic animations. We, and the majority of our users, are happy that this is a good way to advertise without letting it become an annoyance, but we wouldn't make it onto ABP's whitelist.
- cynwoody 15y ago
  I don't run AdBlock Plus, but I do use FlashBlock, mainly to cut down on fan noise. I also have a few entries in my /etc/hosts ... 127.0.0.1 googleads.g.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ak.p.openx.net 127.0.0.1 tags.expo9.exponential.com 127.0.0.1 resources.infolinks.com 127.0.0.1 resources.intextscript.com 127.0.0.1 kona.kontera.com Google ads was simply responding too slowly. Too many pages were not rendering correctly or at all, pending a response from them. That's probably the fault of web authors not embedding the Google ads correctly. But not to worry. Now I just see error IFrames. As for the others, the damned double-underscore spam links were getting to be just too annoying while reading text — especially the ones that would react to mouseovers.
arnorhs 15y ago
Not sure about the first half of your question, but on the second part, it would probably depend a lot on your definition of a "small website" (as well as abp's)

corin_ 15y ago

It depends how you define "small". My company runs a few content sites that are primarily monetised through advertising. They're not small as in "some guy updating them in his free time", but they're small as in a few paid members of the editorial team, a few million pages a month. For us, yes, advertising is the difference between us being a profitable company and us not being a company at all. That said, a.) we are doing OK before this adblock change and b.) our adverts don't fit what are being defined as "acceptable" here. We do make sure we never get too obtrusive, we don't do automatic playing videos, we don't do roadblocks, we don't do anything with sound, we don't do anything that covers content or expands when you mouseover... but some of the banners we serve are flash with basic animations. We, and the majority of our users, are happy that this is a good way to advertise without letting it become an annoyance, but we wouldn't make it onto ABP's whitelist.

cynwoody 15y ago
I don't run AdBlock Plus, but I do use FlashBlock, mainly to cut down on fan noise. I also have a few entries in my /etc/hosts ... 127.0.0.1 googleads.g.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ak.p.openx.net 127.0.0.1 tags.expo9.exponential.com 127.0.0.1 resources.infolinks.com 127.0.0.1 resources.intextscript.com 127.0.0.1 kona.kontera.com Google ads was simply responding too slowly. Too many pages were not rendering correctly or at all, pending a response from them. That's probably the fault of web authors not embedding the Google ads correctly. But not to worry. Now I just see error IFrames. As for the others, the damned double-underscore spam links were getting to be just too annoying while reading text — especially the ones that would react to mouseovers.

arnorhs 15y ago

Not sure about the first half of your question, but on the second part, it would probably depend a lot on your definition of a "small website" (as well as abp's)