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It is unfortunate that many people commenting here didn't bother to RTFA. In particular, from the FAQ: Are you stupid? Nobody wants this! The results of our u

It is unfortunate that many people commenting here didn't bother to RTFA. In particular, from the FAQ: Are you stupid? Nobody wants this! The results of our user survey say something different. Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising. They will disable this feature and that's fine. The other users replied that they would accept some kinds of advertising to help websites. Some users are even asking for a way to enable Adblock Plus on some websites only. https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads That page is the real article, linked from the first paragraph of the submitted article, which is more like a changelog. Please also note that Wladimir has been talking about this for years and didn't suddenly get this into his head. From a 2009 post: As I stated many times before, my goal with Adblock Plus isn’t to destroy the advertising industry. ... So the idea is to give control back to the users by allowing them to block annoying ads. Since the non-intrusive ads would be blocked less often it would encourage webmasters to use such ads, balance restored. http://adblockplus.org/blog/an-approach-to-fair-ad-blocking http://adblockplus.org/blog/an-approach-to-fair-ad-blocking

muppetman 15y ago
This comment says all I want to say in reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342514 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342514 edit: This comment wasn't supposed to come over as rude, but given the downvotes and rereading it, I guess it probably does. Apologies.
- notatoad 15y ago
  your comment, being a link to another comment, added absolutely nothing to the conversation. therefore, it was downvoted. if you don't have anything to add, don't comment. (and yes, i'm aware that this comment adds just as little or less to the discussion as its parent does.)
ch0wn 15y ago
Some users are even asking for a way to enable Adblock Plus on some websites only. I'd actually use a blacklisting mode for ABP where I could use the regular lists, but only for selected websites.
bonch 15y ago
Wladimir has stated on the Adblock forum that one of the goals with this move is for the project to receive financial compensation from advertisers. You tell me if that's a good thing for an ad-blocking project.
nupark2 15y ago
I've "read the fucking article", and my take-away is that Wladmir is, in effect, selling ads. In return for some sort of consideration and a pledge to only provide "acceptable" advertising, Wladmir will unblock your ads by default in AdBlock Plus: > We have agreements with some websites and advertisers that only advertising matching our criteria will be used, their ads will be unblocked then. We hope to grow our list significantly over time. Given that selling advertisements runs entirely contrary to the purpose of "Adblock", and that Wladimir's incentives are now inversely aligned with the user's incentives, I imagine we're going to see the same descent into increasingly obtrusive advertising that you almost always see once an organization heads down this path.
- ashconnor 15y ago
  I'd be really interested in knowing whether Wladmir benefits financially from these agreements.
- mst 15y ago
  Actually, Wladimir's incentives are now aligned precisely with mine - to provide a means for me to not have to see all the noisy, obtrusive crap but still support websites providing me with free content in general (note: this means whitelists are -not- sufficient for me, and blacklists would be overly irritating to maintain). In fact, as a result of this article I've just installed AdBlock Plus for the first time since it now does, by default, exactly what I've always wanted in a blocking tool - and I appreciate as a feature the fact that it required exactly zero configuration to do so.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    I think you misunderstand incentives. If Wladmir accepts money from advertisers, there's an innate incentive to accept more money from more advertisers, and to lower his standards for what makes an acceptable advertisement. He might want to support non-obtrusive ads, but the major incentive (money) is entirely contrary to that goal and your own preferences. That aside, I wish to address the "free content" dichotomy (either we accept ads, or we lose free content ). First of all, the content is not free; there are both tangible and intangible costs to you; advertising is funded through higher prices on the products we buy, and there are the intangible costs to being inundated with ads. Second, advertising is surely not the only viable model. If adblocking were to actually succeed in undermining the web advertising industry, it would also provide impetus for the development of low-resistance web payment mechanisms, similar to the app stores and in-app purchasing that have revolutionized content purchasing on mobile devices. In other words: 100% blocking of advertisements would not lead to the loss of "free" (but not really free) content, it would merely lead to the establishment of a more direct and efficient mechanism for funding that content.
tripzilch 15y ago
I encourage people to also RTFS (read the survey). Because there's more to it than just "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising"--which Wladimir Palant gladly ignores: * 43% (agree) to 70% (somewhat agree) believe ABP should block more ads * 54% (important) to 82% (somewhat important) use ABP because they care about privacy. Yet they do not require the whitelisted parties to have "Do Not Track" support because they "are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement"--of course they wouldn't because the first thing they whitelisted are Google Ads which will never support "Do Not Track". * his assertion that it needs to be default because the majority of users "never change any settings" is simply false: 63% of users already sometimes disable ABP all by theirselves on a website, 56% manage their filter preferences, 63% change the blockable items list and 60% adds or removes filter subscriptions. Really, I think it's absolutely awesome that a software developer holds a survey to find out which way future development of an open-source project should go, but he might just as well saved himself the trouble if he's just going to ignore the data he doesn't agree with. Finally, the result that "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising" is mentioned nowhere in either of the three posts about this survey. So there's no way to tell what question(s) this number is based on, what the alternative answers were or whether these other 75% of people consider SEDO domainsquatting ads "acceptable" or not. Finally there's Wladimir Palant repeatedly asserting he doesn't actually have any experience conducting surveys, as evidenced by the lack of methodology (while taking a rather negative defensive heels-in-the-sand position towards anyone who questions him, or comments on the survey), and especially the nearly unreadable pie and stacked bar charts (only the two worst choices for pretty much any kind of data visualisation and they make Edward Tufte cry). And then there's the "mysterious" case of the non-English users that got a translated survey selecting the "I don't know/What is this?" option much more often! Gee ..

muppetman 15y ago

This comment says all I want to say in reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342514 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3342514 edit: This comment wasn't supposed to come over as rude, but given the downvotes and rereading it, I guess it probably does. Apologies.

notatoad 15y ago
your comment, being a link to another comment, added absolutely nothing to the conversation. therefore, it was downvoted. if you don't have anything to add, don't comment. (and yes, i'm aware that this comment adds just as little or less to the discussion as its parent does.)

ch0wn 15y ago

Some users are even asking for a way to enable Adblock Plus on some websites only. I'd actually use a blacklisting mode for ABP where I could use the regular lists, but only for selected websites.

bonch 15y ago

Wladimir has stated on the Adblock forum that one of the goals with this move is for the project to receive financial compensation from advertisers. You tell me if that's a good thing for an ad-blocking project.

nupark2 15y ago

I've "read the fucking article", and my take-away is that Wladmir is, in effect, selling ads. In return for some sort of consideration and a pledge to only provide "acceptable" advertising, Wladmir will unblock your ads by default in AdBlock Plus: > We have agreements with some websites and advertisers that only advertising matching our criteria will be used, their ads will be unblocked then. We hope to grow our list significantly over time. Given that selling advertisements runs entirely contrary to the purpose of "Adblock", and that Wladimir's incentives are now inversely aligned with the user's incentives, I imagine we're going to see the same descent into increasingly obtrusive advertising that you almost always see once an organization heads down this path.

ashconnor 15y ago
I'd be really interested in knowing whether Wladmir benefits financially from these agreements.
mst 15y ago
Actually, Wladimir's incentives are now aligned precisely with mine - to provide a means for me to not have to see all the noisy, obtrusive crap but still support websites providing me with free content in general (note: this means whitelists are -not- sufficient for me, and blacklists would be overly irritating to maintain). In fact, as a result of this article I've just installed AdBlock Plus for the first time since it now does, by default, exactly what I've always wanted in a blocking tool - and I appreciate as a feature the fact that it required exactly zero configuration to do so.
- nupark2 15y ago
  I think you misunderstand incentives. If Wladmir accepts money from advertisers, there's an innate incentive to accept more money from more advertisers, and to lower his standards for what makes an acceptable advertisement. He might want to support non-obtrusive ads, but the major incentive (money) is entirely contrary to that goal and your own preferences. That aside, I wish to address the "free content" dichotomy (either we accept ads, or we lose free content ). First of all, the content is not free; there are both tangible and intangible costs to you; advertising is funded through higher prices on the products we buy, and there are the intangible costs to being inundated with ads. Second, advertising is surely not the only viable model. If adblocking were to actually succeed in undermining the web advertising industry, it would also provide impetus for the development of low-resistance web payment mechanisms, similar to the app stores and in-app purchasing that have revolutionized content purchasing on mobile devices. In other words: 100% blocking of advertisements would not lead to the loss of "free" (but not really free) content, it would merely lead to the establishment of a more direct and efficient mechanism for funding that content.

tripzilch 15y ago

I encourage people to also RTFS (read the survey). Because there's more to it than just "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising"--which Wladimir Palant gladly ignores: * 43% (agree) to 70% (somewhat agree) believe ABP should block more ads * 54% (important) to 82% (somewhat important) use ABP because they care about privacy. Yet they do not require the whitelisted parties to have "Do Not Track" support because they "are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement"--of course they wouldn't because the first thing they whitelisted are Google Ads which will never support "Do Not Track". * his assertion that it needs to be default because the majority of users "never change any settings" is simply false: 63% of users already sometimes disable ABP all by theirselves on a website, 56% manage their filter preferences, 63% change the blockable items list and 60% adds or removes filter subscriptions. Really, I think it's absolutely awesome that a software developer holds a survey to find out which way future development of an open-source project should go, but he might just as well saved himself the trouble if he's just going to ignore the data he doesn't agree with. Finally, the result that "only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising" is mentioned nowhere in either of the three posts about this survey. So there's no way to tell what question(s) this number is based on, what the alternative answers were or whether these other 75% of people consider SEDO domainsquatting ads "acceptable" or not. Finally there's Wladimir Palant repeatedly asserting he doesn't actually have any experience conducting surveys, as evidenced by the lack of methodology (while taking a rather negative defensive heels-in-the-sand position towards anyone who questions him, or comments on the survey), and especially the nearly unreadable pie and stacked bar charts (only the two worst choices for pretty much any kind of data visualisation and they make Edward Tufte cry). And then there's the "mysterious" case of the non-English users that got a translated survey selecting the "I don't know/What is this?" option much more often! Gee ..