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I think it was immoral and dishonest to sneak in a whitelist feature into AdBlock, which is in direct opposition to the core product value. Imagine a firewall t

by znowi 13y ago

I think it was immoral and dishonest to sneak in a whitelist feature into AdBlock, which is in direct opposition to the core product value. Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks. And background updates add more networks that bought their way into your machine. Not a product I'd be willing to use.

Karunamon 13y ago
Agreed completely. For what it's worth, on Firefox anyways, there's a fork of Adblock Plus called Adblock Edge that has no such ethical issues, and as far as I can tell, works with all the addon plugins that worked with ABP like the element hider and popup blocker.
- wallunit 13y ago
  Why does somebody fork ABP, just to strip out a featere which can already be disabled in the options?
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Because that "feature" existing points to a serious ethical failing and conflict of interest on the part of the author (namely, taking money to help advertisers bypass the plugin) Firefox plugins auto-update, who's to say the next update won't have something more objectionable?
    - wallunit 13y ago
      I just noted that Adblock Edge is still based on version 2.0.4 of Adblock Plus, which is outdated for a while. It seems that Adblock Edge isn't maintained anymore and probably never was. So Adblock Edge will probably get incompatible with future versions of Firefox, anyway. And if there are security issues in the code, it is rather unlikely that they will get fixed, as fast as in upstream Adblock Plus, if at all. On the other hand I think it is way less likely that Adblock Plus will add a lot of features that wouldn't be in your interest, in the near future. Sure it is a change in the ethical background of the product. Adblock Plus isn't a hobby project anymore. It's a business now. That means that it has to be profitable. But on the other hand that also means that there are more resources available. So the product can be properly maintained, further improved, and ported to new platforms. I think this "ethical failing" (as you call it), isn't more or less serious, or unexpected, than when Google introduced in-app ads in Android. In the case of Adblock Plus, as well in the case of Android, I'm happy that the company behind the product found a way to make the product profitable. So they can maintain and improve the product.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        Few companies take money to help bypass the function of their product! This is analogous to an antivirus vendor taking money from malware authors to avoid detecting the worm of the day, the only difference being that a text ad isn't as likely to frag your computer. But hey, in both cases, they're getting money to "maintain and improve the product".
        wallunit 13y ago
        This comparison implies that everybody can get their ads on that white list, for money. But that isn't true. There are guidelines that define what is acceptable ad and what not. [1] Everybody that gets on the white list has to conform to that guidelines. So it would be rather like an AV software that lets by default, installers still change your default home page (or stuff like that), if the installer is fair enough to ask for, but would still block any real malware. [1] http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
        Karunamon 13y ago
        So great. I download a product who's stated purpose is to block ads, and I have to worry about their author's dealings with ad companies to decide if something will or won't be blocked. You have a disturbing amount of trust for someone with such an amazingly blatant conflict of interest.
        wallunit 13y ago
        Adblock Plus doesn't deal with ad companies. But with websites that have ads on their site. So if the kind and placement of ads on their website is "acceptable" they can get on the white list. The article in the link of this thread is a little confusing. It's not true that all Google AdSense ads are white-listed, but the ads on the Google search page are. By the way Adblock Plus has put Reddit and some other smaller websites on the white list for free to support them. But unfortunately Adblock Plus has also to cooperate with larger companies to make some money, themselves. But still, all ads that are getting on the white list are mild, and not the kind of ad that made once everybody of us that pissed off, that we started to use ad blockers. Another thing I would like to mention is that, around the same time Adblock Plus introduced "Acceptable Ads", a lot of websites at least here in Germany started to detect ad blockers and asked the user to disable his ad blocker. Otherwise the website refused to deliver content or provide functionality. With the increase of popularity of ad blockers, the people running websites driven by ads will no longer tolerate that their ads are blocked. And there will be probably nothing you can do against that. Considering that, it is actually great that those websites can just get on a white list used by the majority of AdBlock Plus users. So the websites can continue to make enough money from their ads and people that are smart enough to disable "Acceptable Ads", like you and me, still get all ads blocked.
chc 13y ago
It's not immoral and dishonest to have a different idea of the core product value than you do. Personally, I run AdBlock not because I break out in hives in the presence of advertising, but because a lot of advertising on the web is just awful, makes sites harder to use and wears down my battery. Whitelisting advertising that is actually consumer-friendly is not at all against the core value I derive from the product. (Though I don't think my AdBlock extension does this, honestly, but I wouldn't mind if it did.)
- nwilliams 13y ago
  The article seems to imply(if my reading of the somewhat dodgy translation is right) that Google ads were allowed but Bing and Yahoo's weren't. Last I checked, both Bing's and Yahoo's ads were as "unobstrusive" as Google's text ads so unblocking only Google's ads because Google pays them does not follow from what you said about distracting and resource hungry ads. Perhaps Google's ads are less obtrusive because it has started disguising them from organic search results pretty well? http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/ http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... FTC recently ruled against this and said that 62% of web surfers studied could not even tell that there ads on the search results page! http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegeneralletter.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegenerallette...
kcbanner 13y ago
This is AdBlock Plus, not AdBlock. They are not the same.
mst 13y ago
I installed AdBlock Plus because of the addition of the whitelist. I want to encourage sites providing me with free content to show me adverts that don't annoy me. And it was announced well enough that I, a non-user, heard of it, so I think 'sneak in' is frankly disingenuous.
- tommi 13y ago
  The problem here is that the definition of annoyance is the amount of cash paid to AdBlock Plus, not the actual annoyance from user's perspective.
  - shawnz 13y ago
    While there is certainly a conflict of interest here, it doesn't mean that Adblock Plus wouldn't have whitelisted Google's ads anyway. The whitelist program has been going on for a while AFAIK.
  - chez17 13y ago
    Do you think Google ads are invasive or annoying? No sound ever, a limited amount of times they can be placed on the site, and they are obviously ads (unlike the "Download Now!" ads on download sites). Perhaps there was more to the transaction than money. You are jumping straight to a conspiracy that you have no proof of. Like the OP, I don't use ad block software because I, as an adult, know what it's like to pay bills and feed myself and I don't mind people who provide me with free services paying their bills and feeding themselves.
    - nwilliams 13y ago
      Are text ads on Bing and Yahoo searches invasive and annoying? The article appears to say they're still blocked by default while Google's are not.
      - chc 13y ago
        That hardly seems relevant. The fact that they do not unblock every ad you consider not to be invasive and annoying is unsurprising. They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.
Dylan16807 13y ago
Sneak? I don't know was for upgrading, as I've been a user on and off, but I can tell you that as of a few days ago it asks you upon installing if you want to turn this option on. It does so in clear language, and on a page that is not full of confusing options.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Exactly. It prompted about it, and users had a clear option to disable or enable this feature.
Ellipsis753 13y ago
Actually I don't mind the feature existing. Small clearly labeled text ads don't add much to the page loading time and can be clearly seen as ads. However I still normally disable the ads as I really enjoy the increased screen space gained by removing the ads. Asking for money to whitelist ads it rather poor policy however. If an ad is small and clearly an ad then whitelist it. If it's not then blacklist it. Having to pay to have your non-intrusive ads whitelisted is shitty. I hope they didn't have to pay very much.
wallunit 13y ago
1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results-part-3 http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads 3. It isn't even a secret that they get paid from larger companies, for putting them on the whitelist (they though have to conform to the guidelines for "Acceptable Ads"): http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements 4. Plus the source code is open source, that everybody can read it: https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/ https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/ So Adblock Plus couldn't possibly be more honest and fair about its "Acceptable Ads" feature. If you don't like it, it's just 3 clicks to disable it. I don't get why lately, everybody is so surprised about thatfeature and feels betrayed. The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.
  - shardling 13y ago
    wallunit's response was in direct response to someone who claimed this feature was "snuck in".
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    I feel some charge is acceptable as the ad network needs to be assessed against the whitelist criteria.
smsm42 13y ago
I have been using AdBlock for years, and I have no problem with this feature, provided that they select their whitelist carefully and enforce the rules aggressively. I wouldn't have any problem with ads if they weren't such a disaster. If there are providers that can do ads responsibly - no animations, no sound, no taking valuable space where content should have been, then I have no problem with giving them the edge. I'm not opposed to the idea of advertisement in principle, I use AdBlock because otherwise bad ads (which are on 99% of sites) make using the web extremely tiresome and annoying. If the Google leads the fight in making ads good citizens on the web and profits from it - fine, all power to them. If they would start abusing it - I'll turn off the whitelist and all their money would be spent for nothing.
oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
"Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks." er, you mean like a firewall? or is there some amazing new type of firewall that blocks ALL traffic, that I'm missing out on?

by znowi 13y ago

Karunamon 13y ago

Agreed completely. For what it's worth, on Firefox anyways, there's a fork of Adblock Plus called Adblock Edge that has no such ethical issues, and as far as I can tell, works with all the addon plugins that worked with ABP like the element hider and popup blocker.

wallunit 13y ago
Why does somebody fork ABP, just to strip out a featere which can already be disabled in the options?
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Because that "feature" existing points to a serious ethical failing and conflict of interest on the part of the author (namely, taking money to help advertisers bypass the plugin) Firefox plugins auto-update, who's to say the next update won't have something more objectionable?
  - wallunit 13y ago
    I just noted that Adblock Edge is still based on version 2.0.4 of Adblock Plus, which is outdated for a while. It seems that Adblock Edge isn't maintained anymore and probably never was. So Adblock Edge will probably get incompatible with future versions of Firefox, anyway. And if there are security issues in the code, it is rather unlikely that they will get fixed, as fast as in upstream Adblock Plus, if at all. On the other hand I think it is way less likely that Adblock Plus will add a lot of features that wouldn't be in your interest, in the near future. Sure it is a change in the ethical background of the product. Adblock Plus isn't a hobby project anymore. It's a business now. That means that it has to be profitable. But on the other hand that also means that there are more resources available. So the product can be properly maintained, further improved, and ported to new platforms. I think this "ethical failing" (as you call it), isn't more or less serious, or unexpected, than when Google introduced in-app ads in Android. In the case of Adblock Plus, as well in the case of Android, I'm happy that the company behind the product found a way to make the product profitable. So they can maintain and improve the product.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Few companies take money to help bypass the function of their product! This is analogous to an antivirus vendor taking money from malware authors to avoid detecting the worm of the day, the only difference being that a text ad isn't as likely to frag your computer. But hey, in both cases, they're getting money to "maintain and improve the product".
      - wallunit 13y ago
        This comparison implies that everybody can get their ads on that white list, for money. But that isn't true. There are guidelines that define what is acceptable ad and what not. [1] Everybody that gets on the white list has to conform to that guidelines. So it would be rather like an AV software that lets by default, installers still change your default home page (or stuff like that), if the installer is fair enough to ask for, but would still block any real malware. [1] http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
        Karunamon 13y ago
        So great. I download a product who's stated purpose is to block ads, and I have to worry about their author's dealings with ad companies to decide if something will or won't be blocked. You have a disturbing amount of trust for someone with such an amazingly blatant conflict of interest.
        wallunit 13y ago
        Adblock Plus doesn't deal with ad companies. But with websites that have ads on their site. So if the kind and placement of ads on their website is "acceptable" they can get on the white list. The article in the link of this thread is a little confusing. It's not true that all Google AdSense ads are white-listed, but the ads on the Google search page are. By the way Adblock Plus has put Reddit and some other smaller websites on the white list for free to support them. But unfortunately Adblock Plus has also to cooperate with larger companies to make some money, themselves. But still, all ads that are getting on the white list are mild, and not the kind of ad that made once everybody of us that pissed off, that we started to use ad blockers. Another thing I would like to mention is that, around the same time Adblock Plus introduced "Acceptable Ads", a lot of websites at least here in Germany started to detect ad blockers and asked the user to disable his ad blocker. Otherwise the website refused to deliver content or provide functionality. With the increase of popularity of ad blockers, the people running websites driven by ads will no longer tolerate that their ads are blocked. And there will be probably nothing you can do against that. Considering that, it is actually great that those websites can just get on a white list used by the majority of AdBlock Plus users. So the websites can continue to make enough money from their ads and people that are smart enough to disable "Acceptable Ads", like you and me, still get all ads blocked.

chc 13y ago

It's not immoral and dishonest to have a different idea of the core product value than you do. Personally, I run AdBlock not because I break out in hives in the presence of advertising, but because a lot of advertising on the web is just awful, makes sites harder to use and wears down my battery. Whitelisting advertising that is actually consumer-friendly is not at all against the core value I derive from the product. (Though I don't think my AdBlock extension does this, honestly, but I wouldn't mind if it did.)

nwilliams 13y ago
The article seems to imply(if my reading of the somewhat dodgy translation is right) that Google ads were allowed but Bing and Yahoo's weren't. Last I checked, both Bing's and Yahoo's ads were as "unobstrusive" as Google's text ads so unblocking only Google's ads because Google pays them does not follow from what you said about distracting and resource hungry ads. Perhaps Google's ads are less obtrusive because it has started disguising them from organic search results pretty well? http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/ http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentional... FTC recently ruled against this and said that 62% of web surfers studied could not even tell that there ads on the search results page! http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegeneralletter.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/os/2013/06/130625searchenginegenerallette...

kcbanner 13y ago

This is AdBlock Plus, not AdBlock. They are not the same.

mst 13y ago

I installed AdBlock Plus because of the addition of the whitelist. I want to encourage sites providing me with free content to show me adverts that don't annoy me. And it was announced well enough that I, a non-user, heard of it, so I think 'sneak in' is frankly disingenuous.

tommi 13y ago
The problem here is that the definition of annoyance is the amount of cash paid to AdBlock Plus, not the actual annoyance from user's perspective.
- shawnz 13y ago
  While there is certainly a conflict of interest here, it doesn't mean that Adblock Plus wouldn't have whitelisted Google's ads anyway. The whitelist program has been going on for a while AFAIK.
- chez17 13y ago
  Do you think Google ads are invasive or annoying? No sound ever, a limited amount of times they can be placed on the site, and they are obviously ads (unlike the "Download Now!" ads on download sites). Perhaps there was more to the transaction than money. You are jumping straight to a conspiracy that you have no proof of. Like the OP, I don't use ad block software because I, as an adult, know what it's like to pay bills and feed myself and I don't mind people who provide me with free services paying their bills and feeding themselves.
  - nwilliams 13y ago
    Are text ads on Bing and Yahoo searches invasive and annoying? The article appears to say they're still blocked by default while Google's are not.
    - chc 13y ago
      That hardly seems relevant. The fact that they do not unblock every ad you consider not to be invasive and annoying is unsurprising. They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.

Dylan16807 13y ago

Sneak? I don't know was for upgrading, as I've been a user on and off, but I can tell you that as of a few days ago it asks you upon installing if you want to turn this option on. It does so in clear language, and on a page that is not full of confusing options.

shmerl 13y ago
Exactly. It prompted about it, and users had a clear option to disable or enable this feature.

Ellipsis753 13y ago

Actually I don't mind the feature existing. Small clearly labeled text ads don't add much to the page loading time and can be clearly seen as ads. However I still normally disable the ads as I really enjoy the increased screen space gained by removing the ads. Asking for money to whitelist ads it rather poor policy however. If an ad is small and clearly an ad then whitelist it. If it's not then blacklist it. Having to pay to have your non-intrusive ads whitelisted is shitty. I hope they didn't have to pay very much.

wallunit 13y ago

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results-part-3 http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results... 2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads 3. It isn't even a secret that they get paid from larger companies, for putting them on the whitelist (they though have to conform to the guidelines for "Acceptable Ads"): http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements 4. Plus the source code is open source, that everybody can read it: https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/ https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/ So Adblock Plus couldn't possibly be more honest and fair about its "Acceptable Ads" feature. If you don't like it, it's just 3 clicks to disable it. I don't get why lately, everybody is so surprised about thatfeature and feels betrayed. The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.

nitrogen 13y ago
It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.
- shardling 13y ago
  wallunit's response was in direct response to someone who claimed this feature was "snuck in".
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  I feel some charge is acceptable as the ad network needs to be assessed against the whitelist criteria.

smsm42 13y ago

I have been using AdBlock for years, and I have no problem with this feature, provided that they select their whitelist carefully and enforce the rules aggressively. I wouldn't have any problem with ads if they weren't such a disaster. If there are providers that can do ads responsibly - no animations, no sound, no taking valuable space where content should have been, then I have no problem with giving them the edge. I'm not opposed to the idea of advertisement in principle, I use AdBlock because otherwise bad ads (which are on 99% of sites) make using the web extremely tiresome and annoying. If the Google leads the fight in making ads good citizens on the web and profits from it - fine, all power to them. If they would start abusing it - I'll turn off the whitelist and all their money would be spent for nothing.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago

"Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks." er, you mean like a firewall? or is there some amazing new type of firewall that blocks ALL traffic, that I'm missing out on?