And it is in a very obvious place, even though I dislike the whitelisting, they did tell me about it and make it clear how to change it. I see it as the adware installers in legit software you can uninstall, it is there to catch the unwary and make money off of them.
Um, that's dumb unless you plan on clicking their ads. Seriously, just showing a CPC ad doesn't help them. Showing a CPM ad doesn't help much either if they are getting $5-10 CPM. You literally could just pay them $5 or $10 and be more valuable than whitelisting them.
I use a browser that blocks nothing and one that blocks almost everything. (when something breaks, sometimes it's easier to load it in a stock browser)
How exactly are ad blocking extensions a security risk?
Blocking at the domain level gives you no control. What if you need to see what a site looks like without ads blocked? I have a few of my own content sites that use ads. By blocking outside of the browser I wouldn't be able to see what they look like to other users.
There's nothing different from any other extension, so what you're saying nobody should be using extensions in their browsers. Good luck with convincing people not to do it.
Well, I for one don't use any extensions with Chrome. And not even from security concerns. Just from lack of any interest to do so. Why should I? For some marginal utility?
I'd take it more average people don't use extensions either -- if they know what they are in the first place.
Yes, this is the point of extensions. Extensions are help you and others do things with the browser that the vendor shouldn't really spend time on. Approaching them with the idea that they're useless doesn't really help your argument.
For example, I once wrote a browser extension that extracts class calendar info from the school website and automatically syncs it to the calendar application of your choosing. It turned my class scheduling process from an error-prone 2 hour process to a 3-click 10 minute step. You can label that as a useless, marginal utility, but that's being facetious at best.
Well, Stallman browses the web by sending emails[1], so he still has you beat :)
But you must realize 99.999% of the population would never do that, and for most people extensions are vital and useful. So giving them such security advice is like saying "oh, personal security is simple - just never have any money and anything valuable and never leave home". Not very practical.
>Well, Stallman browses the web by sending emails[1], so he still has you beat :)
Well, I browse with Chrome Canary (and when it's in it's weird days, Beta), so I'm not any kind of Luddite.
I just don't see any extensions that are that useful. After all, we managed to get by without extensions in the "not using Firefox" camp for ages, until Safari/Chrome introduced them and we could get a taste.
To me they are more like the BS browser toolbars of yore.
>But you must realize 99.999% of the population would never do that, and for most people extensions are vital and useful.
Most people? If anything I'd say most people don't use extensions. From those that use a browser that doesn't support them, to those that couldn't be bothered or don't even know what they are.
Do you have any numbers that "most people" use extensions?
Although I don't do this on regular basis, but I happen to read many browser extension sources. They're mostly relatively easy to understand and contain no unconventional clever hacks or obfuscated parts. The only obfuscated code in most extensions are minified third-party libraries (like jQuery).
Won't say ABE's code is compact or easy to read, but it's fairly comprehensible and reviewing it in reasonable time feels possible. It is well possible that some tricky security issue will slip under the radar, but code contains no tricky math or crypto stuff where every single point is crucial for security, and spotting malware/spyware code should be possible.
So, this is a rally against all extensions? Expanding this argument, we basically get to a point where we don't trust any software:
1. No more browser extensions.
2. Want ad-blocking in Firefox? Request feature.
3. Feature request denied.
4. Fork Firefox.
5. Add ad-blocking to Firefox fork.
This leaves us with a couple of issues:
1. The bar to adding functionality to a browser has now been raised significantly. With a larger barrier to entry, we will see fewer extensions for trivial things like 'adding collapsible threads to HN', which can make your life easier, but isn't worth a fork of the entire browser to achieve.
2. Trust. You still have to trust the developer of the browser fork that same way that you have to trust the developer of the browser extension.
Would you also be shocked if there are people who make no attempt to block ads at all? I would not be shocked by that, but I'd guess not blocking ads at all is a greater security risk than running ABP.
it's useful to have extension if you want to disable it and temporarily see ads; also it's easy to whitelist ads on particular sites/pages - there are non intrusive and useful ads.
On the other hand, I'm really pleased to find that they're whitelisting some ads by default, although I'm disappointed that money factors into it.
I use ad blockers, because so much of the web is a hideous mess without them. But I'm somewhat conflicted about it, because I know that a lot of sites depend on ad revenue. I see this as a kind of collective agreement with advertisers: I don't mind adverts, but I don't want them flashing all over my screen when I'm trying to get stuff done.
I don't think that you have any reason to feel disappointed, unless you have donated a significant amount of money to Adblock Plus. And even then, just disable that feature.
After all that's the way Adblock Plus makes most of its money, needed to develop the browser extension, port it to new platforms, maintaining and hosting the filter lists (which by the way are also used by every other ad blocker). I doubt that if Adblock Plus wouldn't have done this step, it would have ever been ported to other browsers and platforms, and that the filter lists (as mentioned, also used by other ad blockers, like AdBlock), would have been that well curated as of today.
So I don't see anything wrong with that. Or does anybody complain, that most free Android apps show adds, and you have to buy the paid version, to get rid of them? No, everybody understands that this is the way they make money. The only difference in case of Adblock Plus is, that you don't actually have to give them money, but just have to disable a checkbox in the options.
By disabling that feature, he would block all ads. However, he did say that he wants to support sites who rely on ad revenue. I don't think supporting Adblock Plus was what he was really concerned about.
I might got his message slightly wrong. However white listing is is a feature in the filter list format itself, that is used ever since by every ad blocker. So you can include third-party white lists or maintain your own with every ad blocker, already before Adblock Plus introduced "Acceptable Ads" and its own white list.
The important point for me is that one of the major adblockers has enabled a whitelist by default, and is curating it to allow non-intrusive adverts. That can affect enough users to make a difference, which my setting up a whitelist myself wouldn't.
Very true. Imagine every commercial entity that delivered something to your place - would plaster some sort of advertisement poster.
Completely unacceptable. I think the answer is a permission based advertising. have a button on every website that turns on Ads. this way engagement would be higher at least IMO.
Combined with AdBlock, I use Ghostery[1], which is a nice add-on (Chrome/FF/Safari/Opera/IE) : it blocks any javascript from ads networks, but also from analytics, trackers, socials plugins (and more) , and also cookies from the same trackers. Everything is configurable per-tracker and per-website.
It's quite a must-have if you don't want to be the product on the Internet. And a good failover over Ad-block.
Another alternative is blacklisting sites via your hosts file, which means it applies to all applications and not only the browser. Also, it works in any UNIX-based OS:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
As long as they're only whitelisting text ads, I don't think I mind. Even image ads that aren't animated are okay with me if they aren't offensive. The only reason I have AdBlock plus installed in the first place is the really vile shit - noisy SWFs, scantily clad women, drive-by PDF 0 day exploits, etc...
I'm pretty sure it would require an extreme amount of subjectivity to find random noise blaring out of your speakers or drive-by trojan installs acceptable. But sure.
Those ads aren't vile specifically because they have an image of a woman in them; they're vile because they're psychological manipulation primarily based on the objectification of women and intended to funnel clicks to shady online game websites that basically operate as a mechanism for scamming as much money out of gullible players as possible.
Or to put it another way: Typically the ads that do the most annoying stuff are from advertisers that obviously aren't particularly legit. Microsoft and Apple aren't blaring noise out of your speakers or shoving pictures of scantily clad women in your face to get you to play microtransaction games and Amazon doesn't do it to get you to buy books or movies.
Of course the definition of taste and acceptability is subjective, but there is definitely a line between legit advertisers that aren't hostile to web surfers, and the advertisers who will do absolutely anything if it increases revenues - including tracking users or outright lying to them.
Fine, get rid of the image ads that offend even 0.1% of people. The general idea is that some people want to block 'ads', and some people only want to block 'harassing ads'. An ad being a clean, non-blinking, PG etc. experience is mostly objective.
Personally I want to try an ad blocker that only blocks video ads, that works in tandem with click-to-play flash, but I haven't found one.
I imagine it has something to do with the fact Ghostery is owned by an advertising company. Not sure if that is this particular "attack", but a lot of people use it without understanding why it is made and it periodically gets widely reported to some backlash.
That they were/are being paid for sending analytics to ad companies. I actually don't mind, but it should be in red blinking 20 point script on the page where you download it.
I can't find the news.ycombinator threads, though.
Since it seems to be a common misconception, I'd just like to point out that "Adblock" and "Adblock Plus" are two different extensions made by different people.
Yeah, for the longest time I thought the latter was an enhanced (paid?) version of the former. I can't believe naming browser extensions in a similar manner like this is allowed. It causes nothing but confusion.
I feel really old now, but Adblock Plus was actually forked from the original Adblock. The "plus" part implied it was supposed to improve on the original project.
Although the ethics of paying as the method for being whitelisted can be subject to debate, IIRC Adblock states that whitelisted ads could be those that aren't animated, block access to content or distract the normal flow of browsing.
Adwords are just blocks of text. Ugly blocks of text, but they don't distract too much. And promoted search results are a fair tradeoff imo.
Anyway, disabling the display of whitelisted ads is not a complex task.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
I realize this is a bit late, but ABE is not unmaintained. It is based on an older version of ABP, yes, but it is under active development.
Last commit was in May, and besides, the nature of the product (single purpose app) is that it won't have a lot in the way of code changes aside from the odd bug fix. It doesn't need any other feature.
Most of the busywork is being handled in the block lists, and ABP and ABE use the same source (EasyList and others)
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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.
chez17's comment implied that the whitelist applies to non-invasive and non-annoying ads, while there are a number of new qualifiers here, including a payment which you have omitted from your post.
>They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.
..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.
The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.
> chez17's comment implied that the whitelist applies to non-invasive and non-annoying ads, while there are a number of new qualifiers here, including a payment which you have omitted from your post.
Because it is not relevant. What you said here is true, but no bearing on the thing chez17 and I are walking about (that the ads are not invasive or annoying). I don't have anything against them making money. As long as they are not letting through bad ads, why would I object to them profiting?
> ..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.
> The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.
And the relevance is…? Nobody said the transaction did not involve money. A whitelist can only include unobtrusive ads and also charge money for inclusion — those ideas are not at odds. The statement "they are charging money" is 100% compatible with "they are only whitelisting non-invasive and non-annoying ads."
I am using AdBlock with whitelist enabled, and I don't see any scammy ads on this page. So whatever Google and AdBlock agreed on, it does not include those scammy ads.
it doesn't have much with "being adult" so "copping with the crap".
It has to do with:
- morals. I don't think unsolicited ads are moral. I'd rather pay. But I generally don't get that choice without an adblocker.
- More choice and ethics. Again. I'm the one to decide what I want to see, not adblock people using a revenue model where they're in a position to force companies to pay them to be on a whitelist. That's extorsion.
And.. I'm pretty sure you get revenue from adverts.
Has there been any work done from an information-theoretic perspective on the effect of sponsored information added to a page of search results? There's gotta be an academic paper on this somewhere...
I'm particularly interested in the implicit information conveyed by the mere position of a search result on the page, and how that compares to the implicit information contained by the presence of sponsored content. I would think that sponsored content would on average contain maybe half the amount of information as an organic result, since the presence of the ad is partially a function of its relevance but also a function of the amount paid for its placement, whereas organic result position is a purely a function of relevance.
Then again, perhaps the amount paid could also be considered an implicit source of information on the content being offered, but that seems less reliable.
The whitelist feature isn't the issue here. You have always been able to whitelist sites in the "Custom Filter > Exceptions." The issue here is the addition of a built in whitelist subscription to a list controlled by the developers.
Yeah but CPM (cost per impression metric) is not a scalable business model alone -- CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per acquisition) metrics have arisen because sites will spam impressions to people in Malaysia who will never buy anything...cheap impressions don't power a site for very long unfortunately.
Many sites in the news media are still primarily on impression-based ad revenue. Often, a print advertising purchase comes with a certain number of impressions on the website.
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.
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.
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...
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
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
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.
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.
It can. Arguably however if you agree with the premise of the whitelist as beneficial and there is a fixed schedule of charges (ie no company is preferenced in charging) then to me it seems OK.
You can't have the whitelist without having ads/networks assessed to see if they meet the criteria. Even if you crowdsourced that [which probably wouldn't be objective enough] you'd need to administrate the whitelist and so you need some revenue to cover the overheads at least. Even automating it there's a cost in creating the code. It seems right to pass that cost on and the networks are the ones holding all the money.
You could have users pay for the whitelisting to avoid "misaligned incentives".
Indeed charging the companies for assessment gives an incentive to reject them so you can charge to assess them again ... 4) profit.
Ad networks doesn't pay for white listing! The article is little confusing (typical for German press). Certain ads on certain websites can get into the white list. So if somebody pays it is the company running the website. And smaller websites like Reddit got their ads even white listed for free. See my reply to Karunamon [1].
However the comment you replied to was about the accusation that Adblock Plus would be dishonest, which just isn't true.
This is basically the same industry spawned by spam. You pay to get your mailserver whitelisted, or risk it getting blacklisted (even if it's legitimate).
Your comment sounds like astroturfing as it uses company talking points whether you intended to or not. An astroturf account was unconvered on reddit recently using nearly the same language.
> 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.
If you refer to the blatantly immoral and possibly illegal Amaxon referral substitution, that invalidates your entire comment. But I see that even the shills can't even bring themselves to actually describe the indefensible thing they are trying to defend.
"Easily be disabled" they say, safe in the knowledge that most don't know how.
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.
"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?
There's no need to dig around in the source. AdBlock Plus is setting certain ad providers on its whitelist. In theory, the decision of who is whitelisted should be made by the community. But as a German blogger recently found out, Adblock plus owners and investors have connections to some AdProviders, and those are favored, while others are still blocked. The article in question: http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...
I defined an exception for AdWords when I first installed an ad blocker. I just want to block the annoying ads, but I understand that many sites have to advertise to stay online. I can live with text ads, but not auto-start videos with sound, animated banner ads, pop-ups, etc.
"...[P]ut a good deal of work into ensuring their ads behave better than most."
It's more like they have a lot more data and scale to target better ads at individuals. And when you have many many ads competing for X amount of spots, the average ad quality increases. Google doesn't really need to do anything other than create the platform that gathers lots of data on individuals and allow for appropriate targeting.
This whitelist was highly publicized, I even listened to a segment on NPR that interviewed an Ad Block Plus employee about it(Link below). For all you outraged individuals this was a very openly communicated addition and comes by default, but it can be easily turned off. Oh the outrage...
I understand the apprehension in this community about ads in general but when it comes to search engine ads, it does add value (and relevance improvement) to many "commerce" oriented queries.
Google also already knows categories that generally don't get high ad engagement and doesn't show them for those. An example would be "chuck norris biography" - the intent is clear that you're looking for information primarily and even though I'm sure Amazon or others buy tons of ads against "chuck norris movies", etc. Google is smart enough to know not show you those irrelevant ads.
I don't believe that I've ever clicked on a text ad. (That is to say, I had never clicked on one prior to starting using an ad blocker two years ago.)
If I'm attempting to research a product or product category, I'll go to an aggregator like Gdgt or an editorial site like The Wirecutter.
I can't comprehend why one would ever click on ads when intending to spend money. The last source I would ever trust to recommend how I spend my money is an advertising platform.
Except Mozilla doesn't try to hide that fact, and it can be argued to be in users interest by providing a search bar, instead of no search function at all. Here, someone who uses Adblock Plus decided to block ads. Adding them behind their backs is dishonest.
As others noted, AdBlock and Adblock Plus are two different companies.
I donated to AdBlock a couple years ago. Should have earlier. And should do again. Not claiming to be a saint. But I gave them some actual money. I'd like to think that enough people doing this, makes it possible for AdBlock to avoid doing what AdBlock Plus did.
I think this is a variation on the theme, "If you're not the customer, you're the product." Usually we talk about this WRT free web services. In this case it applies to what, back in the day, some of us would refer to as "shareware".
I can understand google trying to protect their revenue source, but actions like this undermine the openness of the platforms that they are trying to promote.
Open and free platforms need to allow people to say no.
I did notice this recently and have been having to uncheck the box on all the new PCs I install it on. While the ads are "unintrusive" I have a media PC where I've turned the font up to huge to be able to read from the couch. Some search terms will cause maybe up to 4 different text ads to show up and that will effectively block out the actual search results when your font is large.
I'm glad I found out about this though. I always felt vaguely guilty unchecking it, because I thought it was maybe AdBlock trying to support the "Good Guys" of online advertising, but if Google themselves are paying for it, I no longer care.
Many people love AdBlock being free (incl. myself) and many people would admit Google's Ads are comparatively less intrusive and comparatively more relevant.
I assumed this was the case when I installed it, similar to the situation with Firefox using Google search by default while being compensated to the tune of $1B[1]. Why is this surprising or upsetting?
241 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadFOR CHROME:
Go to "Settings"
Find Extensions in the list on the left
Find AdBlock, select "Options"
Click the tab "Filter Lists"
Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"
FOR FIREFOX:
Go to the Firefox menu in the upper left corner
Select "Add-ons"
Select "Extensions"
Find Adblock Plus, select Options.
Find the "Filter Preferences" Button
Select the tab "Filter Subscriptions"
Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"
If I am not blocking their ads, there is a chance I'll see something that interests me and click on it.
You don't need to explicitly state "I will click ads every day" to make it not "dumb".
someonewhocares.org/hosts_zero/
Save this hosts file in your house's router and be safely free of advertising, shock sites, tracking.... On ALL devices
With no added attack vector as with an extension and not limited to one browser in one device
Blocking at the domain level gives you no control. What if you need to see what a site looks like without ads blocked? I have a few of my own content sites that use ads. By blocking outside of the browser I wouldn't be able to see what they look like to other users.
This is how sites like Compete.com get their metrics.
I'd take it more average people don't use extensions either -- if they know what they are in the first place.
Yes, this is the point of extensions. Extensions are help you and others do things with the browser that the vendor shouldn't really spend time on. Approaching them with the idea that they're useless doesn't really help your argument.
For example, I once wrote a browser extension that extracts class calendar info from the school website and automatically syncs it to the calendar application of your choosing. It turned my class scheduling process from an error-prone 2 hour process to a 3-click 10 minute step. You can label that as a useless, marginal utility, but that's being facetious at best.
But you must realize 99.999% of the population would never do that, and for most people extensions are vital and useful. So giving them such security advice is like saying "oh, personal security is simple - just never have any money and anything valuable and never leave home". Not very practical.
[1] http://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
Well, I browse with Chrome Canary (and when it's in it's weird days, Beta), so I'm not any kind of Luddite.
I just don't see any extensions that are that useful. After all, we managed to get by without extensions in the "not using Firefox" camp for ages, until Safari/Chrome introduced them and we could get a taste.
To me they are more like the BS browser toolbars of yore.
>But you must realize 99.999% of the population would never do that, and for most people extensions are vital and useful.
Most people? If anything I'd say most people don't use extensions. From those that use a browser that doesn't support them, to those that couldn't be bothered or don't even know what they are.
Do you have any numbers that "most people" use extensions?
But "review the code"? You have no chance.
Won't say ABE's code is compact or easy to read, but it's fairly comprehensible and reviewing it in reasonable time feels possible. It is well possible that some tricky security issue will slip under the radar, but code contains no tricky math or crypto stuff where every single point is crucial for security, and spotting malware/spyware code should be possible.
Maybe I'm wrong about this.
1. The bar to adding functionality to a browser has now been raised significantly. With a larger barrier to entry, we will see fewer extensions for trivial things like 'adding collapsible threads to HN', which can make your life easier, but isn't worth a fork of the entire browser to achieve.
2. Trust. You still have to trust the developer of the browser fork that same way that you have to trust the developer of the browser extension.
Yes. So DON'T expand it. The thing is, third party updatable extensions are far less trustworthy than Firefox.
No it is a rally against extensions which have a non-risky (and arguably) superior alternative.
Risk is a gradient and cumulative. The more risky things you do, the more at risk you are.
Host files: as secure as you can get. Whole network.
Browser extension: remote code exploit possibility. Probably not available for mobile. Trusting someone who takes money from Google...
And then they have even less community validation, rising the security tradeof even more
I'll pass this on.
I also use Fanboy's adblock list ( https://www.fanboy.co.nz/ ) in Opera which requires no browser add-on, it's a feature of the web browser (RIP).
I use ad blockers, because so much of the web is a hideous mess without them. But I'm somewhat conflicted about it, because I know that a lot of sites depend on ad revenue. I see this as a kind of collective agreement with advertisers: I don't mind adverts, but I don't want them flashing all over my screen when I'm trying to get stuff done.
After all that's the way Adblock Plus makes most of its money, needed to develop the browser extension, port it to new platforms, maintaining and hosting the filter lists (which by the way are also used by every other ad blocker). I doubt that if Adblock Plus wouldn't have done this step, it would have ever been ported to other browsers and platforms, and that the filter lists (as mentioned, also used by other ad blockers, like AdBlock), would have been that well curated as of today.
So I don't see anything wrong with that. Or does anybody complain, that most free Android apps show adds, and you have to buy the paid version, to get rid of them? No, everybody understands that this is the way they make money. The only difference in case of Adblock Plus is, that you don't actually have to give them money, but just have to disable a checkbox in the options.
Completely unacceptable. I think the answer is a permission based advertising. have a button on every website that turns on Ads. this way engagement would be higher at least IMO.
It's quite a must-have if you don't want to be the product on the Internet. And a good failover over Ad-block.
[1]. http://www.ghostery.com/
Or to put it another way: Typically the ads that do the most annoying stuff are from advertisers that obviously aren't particularly legit. Microsoft and Apple aren't blaring noise out of your speakers or shoving pictures of scantily clad women in your face to get you to play microtransaction games and Amazon doesn't do it to get you to buy books or movies.
Of course the definition of taste and acceptability is subjective, but there is definitely a line between legit advertisers that aren't hostile to web surfers, and the advertisers who will do absolutely anything if it increases revenues - including tracking users or outright lying to them.
Personally I want to try an ad blocker that only blocks video ads, that works in tandem with click-to-play flash, but I haven't found one.
With recent onslaught of attack on Ghostery and Ad-block, I wonder if these two tools are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: help people.
I can't find the news.ycombinator threads, though.
Adwords are just blocks of text. Ugly blocks of text, but they don't distract too much. And promoted search results are a fair tradeoff imo.
Anyway, disabling the display of whitelisted ads is not a complex task.
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.
Firefox plugins auto-update, who's to say the next update won't have something more objectionable?
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.
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".
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
You have a disturbing amount of trust for someone with such an amazingly blatant conflict of interest.
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.
Last commit was in May, and besides, the nature of the product (single purpose app) is that it won't have a lot in the way of code changes aside from the odd bug fix. It doesn't need any other feature.
Most of the busywork is being handled in the block lists, and ABP and ABE use the same source (EasyList and others)
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://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/2013/06/130625searchenginegenerallette...
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.
chez17's comment implied that the whitelist applies to non-invasive and non-annoying ads, while there are a number of new qualifiers here, including a payment which you have omitted from your post.
>They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.
..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.
The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.
Because it is not relevant. What you said here is true, but no bearing on the thing chez17 and I are walking about (that the ads are not invasive or annoying). I don't have anything against them making money. As long as they are not letting through bad ads, why would I object to them profiting?
> ..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.
> The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.
And the relevance is…? Nobody said the transaction did not involve money. A whitelist can only include unobtrusive ads and also charge money for inclusion — those ideas are not at odds. The statement "they are charging money" is 100% compatible with "they are only whitelisting non-invasive and non-annoying ads."
The scammy fake-Download links on this famous page, for example, are provided by Google AdChoices
http://www.alternative.to/Google_Reader,29653017#nav-7647923...
- morals. I don't think unsolicited ads are moral. I'd rather pay. But I generally don't get that choice without an adblocker.
- More choice and ethics. Again. I'm the one to decide what I want to see, not adblock people using a revenue model where they're in a position to force companies to pay them to be on a whitelist. That's extorsion.
And.. I'm pretty sure you get revenue from adverts.
I'm particularly interested in the implicit information conveyed by the mere position of a search result on the page, and how that compares to the implicit information contained by the presence of sponsored content. I would think that sponsored content would on average contain maybe half the amount of information as an organic result, since the presence of the ad is partially a function of its relevance but also a function of the amount paid for its placement, whereas organic result position is a purely a function of relevance.
Then again, perhaps the amount paid could also be considered an implicit source of information on the content being offered, but that seems less reliable.
It certainly isn't a justification to coerce people and even less so to demand that people allow themselves to be coerced.
I'd imagine that most of the time people would only consider clicking on ads they found "not annoying" in the first place.
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.
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
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
4. Plus the source code is open source, that everybody can read it: 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.
You can't have the whitelist without having ads/networks assessed to see if they meet the criteria. Even if you crowdsourced that [which probably wouldn't be objective enough] you'd need to administrate the whitelist and so you need some revenue to cover the overheads at least. Even automating it there's a cost in creating the code. It seems right to pass that cost on and the networks are the ones holding all the money.
You could have users pay for the whitelisting to avoid "misaligned incentives".
Indeed charging the companies for assessment gives an incentive to reject them so you can charge to assess them again ... 4) profit.
However the comment you replied to was about the accusation that Adblock Plus would be dishonest, which just isn't true.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5996565
In other words, extortion.
http://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/1h3xdm/accoun...
If you refer to the blatantly immoral and possibly illegal Amaxon referral substitution, that invalidates your entire comment. But I see that even the shills can't even bring themselves to actually describe the indefensible thing they are trying to defend.
"Easily be disabled" they say, safe in the knowledge that most don't know how.
And stop calling people you disagree with "shills", it's obnoxious.
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.
https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...
On the other extreme, I've actually found myself right clicking into an organic search because I feel bad for charging UPS for my laziness.
(Yes I do realize how ridiculous this is on so many levels. However, do not assume that well plassed text ads do not get click thrus)
It does seem to have a lot of google.
It's more like they have a lot more data and scale to target better ads at individuals. And when you have many many ads competing for X amount of spots, the average ad quality increases. Google doesn't really need to do anything other than create the platform that gathers lots of data on individuals and allow for appropriate targeting.
http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/may/10/adblock-plus-internets...
Google also already knows categories that generally don't get high ad engagement and doesn't show them for those. An example would be "chuck norris biography" - the intent is clear that you're looking for information primarily and even though I'm sure Amazon or others buy tons of ads against "chuck norris movies", etc. Google is smart enough to know not show you those irrelevant ads.
If I'm attempting to research a product or product category, I'll go to an aggregator like Gdgt or an editorial site like The Wirecutter.
I can't comprehend why one would ever click on ads when intending to spend money. The last source I would ever trust to recommend how I spend my money is an advertising platform.
I donated to AdBlock a couple years ago. Should have earlier. And should do again. Not claiming to be a saint. But I gave them some actual money. I'd like to think that enough people doing this, makes it possible for AdBlock to avoid doing what AdBlock Plus did.
I think this is a variation on the theme, "If you're not the customer, you're the product." Usually we talk about this WRT free web services. In this case it applies to what, back in the day, some of us would refer to as "shareware".
Open and free platforms need to allow people to say no.
I'm glad I found out about this though. I always felt vaguely guilty unchecking it, because I thought it was maybe AdBlock trying to support the "Good Guys" of online advertising, but if Google themselves are paying for it, I no longer care.
I assumed this was the case when I installed it, similar to the situation with Firefox using Google search by default while being compensated to the tune of $1B[1]. Why is this surprising or upsetting?
[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2398046,00.asp
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiob...
Source: https://code.google.com/p/adblockforchrome/