AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment 351
Mark Wilson writes: Ad blockers have been much talked about since Apple opened up support for them in iOS 9. The now infamous Peace shot to the top of the download charts before it was pulled by its creator. Now AdBlock Plus has come out in support of Marco Arment, who developed something of a guilty conscience after his ad blocking creation proved so popular. Ben Williams from AdBlock Plus says "I really applaud this guy," going on to suggest that whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus epitomize the "more nuanced, complex approach" Arment called for. The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.
Support of what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Support of his capitulation to the status quo by pulling his app? Support for him clearing the market of a successful ad-blocker so they have fewer competitors?
Re:Support of what? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, this is really an attempt from ad-block pro to capitalize on the publicity he got.
Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the ad market policed itself, ad-blockers would not be necessary.
Since they are necessary, and since the "more nuanced, complex approach" is expensive and error-prone, rightly self-interested end-users have no choice but to resort to simple, effective, indiscriminate ad-blockers.
That is all.
Re: Yeah. (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. My bandwidth, my processor and my screen. If they want to implement paid services instead of ad supported ones, I'm happy to pay as long as I deem the service worthy of my money.
I miss the days when people shared thoughts and information with each others not out of financial gains but out of sincere interest into a subject. Collaboration, code sharing, tutorials -- all for free and for the mere expectation that if I share this, I know othera will share too and we all get something out of it. Respect was the currency back then.
Re:Yeah. (Score:4)
Agreed! We gave the advertisers a chance, and they blew it, over and over and over with ever-more obnoxious ads.
I really wouldn't mind seeing ads which are tasteful, non-obtrusive (e.g. not pop-ups, pop-unders, flashing colors, etc.), and are targeted to me. This is why I had no problem with Google's simple search ads; if I'm having a problem and type in some terms about that, and one of the results off to the side is an ad for a product which solves my problem, that's great. (Unfortunately this is the way it used to be, these days it seems like they just integrate the ads into the search results so you can't tell if they're genuine search results or paid ads.)
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Is there any possibility that Apple paid him money in order to reinforce his admirable principles? (Admirable for Apple, not the user)
Re:Support of what? (Score:4, Interesting)
What really chaps my hide on this issue is that now days we are mostly all capped and we have to pay to have this trash garbage ads shoveled in our face and they usually amount to more than half the traffic. Sorry, if the internet is coin operated I should be able to choose the content.
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No, "we" are not all "mostly capped". Some people are capped, many are not.
Almost everyone in the US on a cellular connection is capped in one way or another.
If the ads are more than half your traffic, or even close to half, then you're not even remotely close to hitting any caps unless you're browsing on a mobile phone.
Are you not paying attention to the article? This is about iOS devices allowing ad-blocking. We're all talking about mobile phones here.
Until then, quit being a dickhead. Use a script bloc
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I finally switched to Adblock Browser after holding out on my mobile after about the fourth or fifth time I got an autoplaying video ad on my 500mb cell plan.
That fish won't swim, monsignor.
Don't think so (Score:3)
Marco has sold a number of other successful apps, to the point where he's pretty much independently wealthy.
I'm sure his motivation is purely ideological. I just happen to disagree with the actions he has taken, even though I agree with him ideologically (I think anyway).
I'm just very disappointed Marco did not take the time to shift the app to be something he was happy with, instead of just giving up.
Re:Don't think so (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm just very disappointed Marco did not take the time to shift the app to be something he was happy with, instead of just giving up.
That does seem odd, doesn't it?
Re:Don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
How could he? His principle objection was that he did not want to become the gatekeeper of what was a "good ad" and what was a "bad ad".
He closed his app because he was unwilling to take responsibility for such a decision, yet was not comfortable with eliminating the revenue stream of all sites, regardless of their ad policies.
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What to block should be crowd sourced. Then the software author doesn't have to decide.
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Are you asking me to be sympathetic to sites that post "Doctors hate him! One wierd trick! Singles in your area! Etc!" ads with irrelevant misleading pictures and popups galore? Because if you are, you can go fuck yourself.
Advertising should be innocuous, relevant, and useful. Until then, they can also go fuck the
Re:Don't think so (Score:4)
Are you asking me to be sympathetic to sites that post "Doctors hate him! One wierd trick! Singles in your area! Etc!" ads with irrelevant misleading pictures and popups galore?
Wonder when people will see this one?..
A Housewife in Pennsylvania discovered this simple trick that all the web advertisers hate!
Move and die! (Score:3)
Any ads with flash, movement, glitz need to be crisped. Having whitelists, blacklists, preferences as to types and crowd blocking all help. Well behaved ads are not an issue.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well behaved ads are not an issue.
And that's the real problem that the AdBlock haters don't want to admit.
More and more pages crammed full of more and more annoying, distracting ads that are either (a) worthless shit that nobody would ever click on, except accidentally, or (b) outright scams and malware.
Clean up your shit and adblocking goes away.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Interesting)
(a) worthless shit that nobody would ever click on, except accidentally, or (b) outright scams and malware.
There's also a bunch that are somewhere between merely "worthless" and "malware". I've noticed a lot recently which seem to be targeted toward mobile devices, seeming to intentionally trick people on clicking. For example, I've noticed some which seem to load on a delay, either loading overtop of the page or causing the page to reformat itself when it loads, and loading itself directly when/where you would naturally click to begin scrolling down the page. On a technical level, I don't know what they're doing, but I've found myself more and more accidentally clicking on ads on my phone. Like a page loads, I start reading, and as soon as my thumb hits the screen, an ad appears under my thumb. I'm just trying to scroll, and suddenly it's loading some other page.
I wouldn't have gone looking for an ad-blocker in the first place if it weren't for those kinds of tactics.
App store switching! (Score:3)
The deciding factor on which browser I use on my mobile devices is now "Does it have an ad-blocker?" The mobile web is useless without it.
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I used to not be able to surf the web on my wife's iPad because it would always switch from Safari to the App Store, then it started happening on my Android devices, too.
On Android you have the option of whether you want to open Play Store links in your web browser or with the Google Play Store app. If it's automatically going to the app, that's because at some point you told the device you wanted all Play Store links to go there. To undo this decision, go to Settings->Apps, then open the menu and touch "Reset app preferences". Then, next time you hit a Play Store link, the device will ask you whether you want to open it in the browser or the app, and whether you want to
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This is not actually malicious, but an artifact of the rendering engines and the order in which they render things.
If they choose to wait for all of the external references to other JavaScript stuff and render when this is all processed, all pop-ups and other content will appear it their specified locations, but it often takes so long to do this, due to those ads, that some browsers are rendering as soon as the main script is processed and then "adjusting" positions or adding pop-ups late... often very late
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All I know is, it didn't used to be a problem, and then suddenly it was a major problem across a lot of different sites, and often sites where the ads were otherwise aggressive. So I don't believe it was purely accidental.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Insightful)
Clean up your shit and adblocking goes away.
Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Interesting)
Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.
Nonsense. Ad blocking also has ramifications for bandwidth use, so if it hadn't already become a thing before mobile became big, that's when it would have become relevant.
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Pretty much what phantomfive said - banner ads, and their size, isn't that big of a deal. You're probably looking at about 20kb for one of them.
Now, video ads, sound ads, active ads - those get huge.
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My university installed ad-blocking at router level to reduce bandwidth. IIRC it was Privoxy.
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Google has become abusive, in my opinion. (Score:3)
I just switched to DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]. Initial web page: 5,255 bytes.
Google has become an extremely abusive company. Many web pages load something from Google, so Google is tracking us wherever we go.
The Slashdot home page loads these from Google:
1) google-analytics.com
2) googleadservices.com
3) googletagservices.com
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You do have a point, but to play devil's advocate, Google's ad policies have been engineered from the start to keep advertisers (relatively) honest. Text ads, policies against misleading advertising, close attention to click fraud, etc. I don't mind seeing AdWords on a page, frankly.
No, they're not angels, but let's be fair.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.
I think ad-delivered malware probably plays a role too.
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It's fairly hard to deliver malware through images like jpeg, png, and gif compared to the ease at which you can do so via java and flash. Without punch the monkey stuff, they'd be stuck trying more more estoric hacks for their malware.
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It's fairly hard to deliver malware through images like jpeg, png, and gif compared to the ease at which you can do so via java and flash
Not really. It's only possible to deliver malware via Flash and Java because of bugs in the implementation. If there's a bug in the JPEG or PNG library that allows arbitrary code execution, then the same technique will work. Search for arbitrary code execution CVEs in libjpeg and libpng and you'll see how common this is - they both have a fairly dire security track record, yet browsers will happily pass them untrusted data.
Re:Move and die (Score:2)
They can't have it both ways. They want to give me unlimited bandwidth that is limited and has a surcharge when I go over my unlimited limit. They want to shove malware at me through ads. They track me despite me saying they can't. They want me to trust anyone that they trust. No thanks. I'll use my adblocker and keep my internet to displaying only explicitly what I have asked it to display.
Re:Move and die! (Score:5, Interesting)
Those are annoying but really it's the overall slowdown of websites caused by all those lousy ad networks downloads that sucks. Developers spend tons of time optimizing code, minifying javascript and css, using sprites and whatnot, all in order to restrict the number of connections per page to a minimum (the real killer on mobile internet) but then suckers from ad companies step in and cause browsers to download 50 different files.
Do it right without hurting performance and maybe people will stop hating ads.
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Any ad that make a site to perform badly or change the page layout in an unsual way should be ban in first place by the website owner.
You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.
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You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.
Of course they do. The webmaster is a customer, too, and has choices on which ad delivery service to use. If he chooses one that doesn't vet for shit ads, then he doesn't deserve ad revenue.
Welcome to Chick-fil-a. I'm sorry that our sign-spinner vomited on you on the way in, but we're actually blameless because he way provided by our contractor. Why are you mad? Why are you leaving?
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You do realize that the ads are coming from a third party and the webmaster really doesn't have a lot of control over this.
Ahem. The webmaster is the only one who has total control over what appears, or doesn't appear, on the website. This is not complicated, folks. If you don't want shit ads appearing on your website, don't accept shit ads.
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Yes. Are you familiar with adult discourse?
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Well behaved ads are not an issue.
The problem I have is that no company has defined "well behaved ads" in a way that I agree with. For me, the #1 feature of a well behaved ad is that it does not track or otherwise spy on me. As near as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "well behaved" ad.
Defining a "well behaved" ad (Score:3)
The problem I have is that no company has defined "well behaved ads" in a way that I agree with. For me, the #1 feature of a well behaved ad is that it does not track or otherwise spy on me. As near as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "well behaved" ad.
I'd add a bit to that. No tracking of any kind unless explicitly opt-in requested with informed consent and respects do-not-track requests. No sharing of user information with other organizations. Minimal bandwidth. No animation. No flash or similar technology. No malware or ware of any kind. No redirects unless explicitly selected by user. No pop up/under/over of any kind ever.
And you are right, I don't think there is an actual "well behaved" ad these days.
It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Ghostery because I think all ads are also tracker bots like Google Analytics, Facebook like buttons, etc. Even if you never use Google or Facebook they know almost every webpage you visit because most have Google Analytics or Facebook like buttons that load JavaScript from their servers.
Re:It's not about ads, it's about tracker bots (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Ghostery?? It gets worse: http://www.reddit.com/r/firefo... [reddit.com]
Hint: "Allow Ghostery to show messages in my browser related to product features, updates, and promotions."
Re: (Score:2)
Privacy Badger is a better option. It's from the EFF, and works by looking for domains that track you are you move from site to site. No reliance on blacklists or ideology, and no profit motive.
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I've heard about this, but can't see any evidence of it myself. I just visited Ghostery's home page with Firebug switched on and the only domains it downloaded any content from are ghostery.com and fonts.googleapis.com.
I noticed a while back that after an update some of the 'trackers' weren't selected in the Options screens. I always just say "select all" on the trackers and cookies tabs, but I guess if you're not completely watching then things could slip by.
Apart from laziness, I suspect the EFF's tool is
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Do you have a solution? Change Ghostery configuration? A different plugin?
I heard (somewhere, not sure where) that you can use Hosts files for that.
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EFF's Privacy Badger.
If I want to buy something, I'll google it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise I block every ad and I sleep like a baby for it. I don't have a lot of power in this fucking society, if I can't even control where my attention goes to, then what the fuck can I control?
Hate Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
I decide what I want downloaded, because I pay for it and I fucking hate ads and that is why I use ad blocking software. If I want to buy something, then and only then will I look at some ads (maybe). If you want to run a business web site or your own web site then you pay for it. If you don't like me looking at your web site, fine I will go somewhere else, just don't expect me to look at ads.
The recent slashdot poll about ads said it all, 65% use ad blocking software and do not feel guilty about doing so.
Regards
Slashgotgirl
Re: (Score:3)
See where the problem is?
Yeah, you want to make money off content, and don't have any content that either has value, or that you care about transmitting to the world. If you weren't making a buck, your website wouldn't have anything to say, and so it probably doesn't have anything to say.
Like slashdot. The website sucks. The editors aren't even very good. The reason to come here isn't to give them money, it is to interact with other users; who aren't getting paid for providing the content!
Get a real job. I run commercial websites,
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Slashdot wouldn't exist as it does today without ads. Look at Soylent News. Those guys are currently failing to raise $2000 to pay their costs. Slashdot costs many times more due to the much higher levels of traffic.
How would you fund a site like Slashdot? Or are you implying that sites like Slashdot should go away?
Sure, Slashdot's content is all user generated, but it still provides a lot of value simply by offering a high bandwidth host with a massive database supported by commercial grade hardware.
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How would you fund a site like Slashdot? Or are you implying that sites like Slashdot should go away?
Personally, I would be willing to pay a small fee for it. I recognized that not everyone would prefer that, though. What I would love to see is the standard behavior changing such that if a site runs ads, it also has an option to pay a small fee to remove the ads entirely. Note, though, that by "remove the ads" I mean more than just "I don't see the ads". I mean that all the tracking that comes with the ads stops as well.
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Advertising is an agreement between advertisers and authors. If the author does not get enough money from the advertiser, blame them. Do not blame a third party who has nothing to do with your deal with an advertiser.
Bullshit headline (Score:5, Insightful)
AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment
Try Adlblock Plus fellates self, applauds Marco Arment for fellating advertisers. Because of course AdBlock Plus would applaud Marco Arment for doing precisely what they do, and permitting some advertising content. But in the process, they're doing nothing but patting themselves on the backs... or as we often like to say these days, sucking their own dicks.
There is no "acceptable advertising", to many of us. We're tired of space in our brain being rented out, and we're willing to not consume content if only we don't have to encounter advertisements. I'd rather my ad blocker break a site than show me ads. Otherwise, I know not to go back there, and may that site die the death of a thousand dogs, amen. This is a war for control of your brain. Don't be a loser.
Re:Bullshit headline (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money.
That's not a problem. That's an opportunity.
Your options are a pay-wall or ads.
Your logical fallacy is the "false dichotomy". There's also the begging button, hobby sites, merchandising, product placement, and any number of other means of funding sites. Your lack of imagination does not reflect upon reality, just how far you're going to get in it.
You can get mad about it all you want, but shit isn't free.
I'm not mad, just bored with stupid comments like yours. You're a boring person.
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"Product placement" sounds an awful lot like renting out brain space for "acceptable advertising" to me...
And your begging button and merchandise will probably also have to be featured somewhere
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Given how badly paywalls work, I suspect the reality of the commercial market is that almost any site of any worth will have to migrate to Facebook, whose ads are pretty much unblockable.
This is the natural evolution of the Internet. Advertisers slowly made the web very difficult to surf, Ad blockers grew in response. Web sites die from lack of revenue. People drift to where content is still available - Facebook.
Those last two steps are a year or so away. But that's the way it's going. And no, there's
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There's also the begging button,
Unless you run a linux distro, begging rarely covers the sever bandwidth if anything else of any useful sites. There's a reason it went out of favour.
hobby sites,
Hobby sites survive by being unknown. I run one. I won't ever post the link on slashdot because the sudden influx of traffic would net me a stupendous bill from my host.
merchandising,
Great if you have the facilities and network to do it. And if you're quirky and interesting enough that someone seems to think affiliating with your website is worth their while.
product placement,
So instead of a
Re: (Score:3)
Open up this page [wikipedia.org] in a browser with no ad-blockers (don't worry, I just did it). Scroll down and find the ads. Do you see the precious revenue-generating ads? No? Well, that's because there aren't any.
The Alexa rank for wikipedia.org is #7 globally. If you want to read about their strategy, here is it [wikimedia.org].
So keep the list going. I've yet to see a suitable alternative.
Wikipedia's 14+ years aren't convincing you yet? You want to know what the difference is between Wikipedia and your own sites which you can't make financially viable without advertising? People actually
Re:Bullshit headline (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that having shit available for others on the internet costs money. Your options are a pay-wall or ads.
NO, there are other alternatives
you can sell stuff from your web site
you can host your own ads that won't be blocked
if you have a brick and mortar presence then the website will direct customers to your store
you can do it out of the kindness of your heart (if you have the money)
you can ask for donations from your dedicated fans
I'm sure there are many more ways to have a web site pay for itself.
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you can sell stuff from your web site
If you have stuff to sell. Most websites are not about physical product pushing.
you can host your own ads that won't be blocked
You need an incredible amount of infrastructure and support to be able to do something like that. Show me someone that will pay you for hosting advertising when they don't own the means of managing the analytics.
if you have a brick and mortar presence then the website will direct customers to your store
What is this the 90s?
you can do it out of the kindness of your heart (if you have the money)
This I actually agree with, but there's a risk. If you start actually attracting traffic you can end up with a very big bill. I fondly remember situations in the 90s where some poor guy would get sla
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Hey you know, your viewers pay for their connectivity and bw.. You can pay for yours. Don't waste theirs downloading megabytes of abusive javascript and crappy videos.
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Well, the "shit" is free for me, because I'm running an ultra aggressive ad blocker. :-)
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I'm a user and defender of ad-blocking (as you will see elsewhere in this conversation), but this argument is slightly fallacious.
The advertiser is compensating you for your attention and bandwidth by purchasing content that you wish to view/read.
In an non-advertising supported model, you would be required to pay something to get access to the content, in the advertising-supported model, this cos
Time for a Reader's Charter (Score:3)
Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges to stop clickbait and intrusive ads. It's not that complicated. Here's mine [newslines.org]
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Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges to stop clickbait and intrusive ads.
and remove their #1 source of income? those are the ads that pay the best. why oh why would they do that?
When did i start ad-blocking activel?: (Score:3)
in 2008/2009. I bought a netbook and quickly figured out that rendering the webpages themself (news, technical stuff) was absolutely fine with a single core atom running for 4h on battery, but that playing the flash video in the ad in the background would render the site unusable.
i started ad-blocking and everything was fine.
Just make decent, maybe targeted ads, which are unintrusive and dont slow down my computer too much, and we can discuss that i change my behaviour.
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Just make decent, maybe targeted ads, which are unintrusive and dont slow down my computer too much, and we can discuss that i change my behaviour.
See this advertisers? You don't need to fear the small minority of us who are allergic to your bullshit. You can ignore us, because all you have to is be minimally non-offensive and there is a large majority who will line up and bleet happily. No, you never had to resort to being obnoxious and toxic. You'd have been better off in the long run on the high road.
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It is kinda funny, but when I first installed an ad-blocker back in the 90s my main job was writing a website that generated banner ads. I was constantly white-listing and de-listing clients. What really disappointed me with the whole thing is that almost none of the people using my service cared what their ad looked like, if it had nice aesthetics, if people would enjoy seeing it. They just wanted to figure out how to make shit flash, or look like it was moving. A tasteful way of implementing a requested f
Ads are NOT necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
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The large amount of time and effort spent to create a meaningful review (rather than the more typical short-form PR puff piece masquerading as a review) costs a lot of money, and in some cases may actually require you buy the product in question *and* related accessories if the company creating the product doesn't want a critical eye cast over it.
Consumer reports [consumerreports.org] manages to make that work with a Paywall.
Is there any website you like that you wouldn't be willing to pay for?
I've thought through every place I visit on the web. There are some I'd rather pay than have advertising, and others I would rather disappear than have advertising, but overall the internet would be a better place without advertising.
Ask yourself this: If the content isn't valuable, why are you even reading it? Either read it without an ad blocker and support its creator, or GO ELSEWHERE if the ads are more offensive than you're willing to accept in trade for the content. Don't be disingenuous and claim the ads aren't needed, then steal the content anyway.
There is malware in all the major ad networks. If they don't want ad-blocking, they shouldn't be hostile. Right now, it's irresponsible to not blo
Really? (Score:2)
The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.
You mean like the Taboola crap my ad blocker is currently removing from the bottom of Slashdot pages (even though I have ads disabled on my account)?
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Came here to say exactly this.
There are ads on the internet ? (Score:3)
I whitelist nothing and have no remorse (Score:3)
Most ad blockers are a reflexive overreaction (Score:2, Interesting)
I want an ad blocker that whitelists everything by default, so I can block sites I consider abusive. I tried them all, none do this.
To me, blocking everything by default is a reflexive overreaction. I agree that ads have gotten out of hand, but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.
Can someone point me in the direction of an ad blocker that lets me whitelist everything by default and has a simple "block ads on this site" button for the bad actors? (I'm looking at you, wikia!)
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but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.
A perfectly competent and well-run web site can still be hosting malware from third-party web sites.
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They all do it, it just isn't advertised how because few people want that.
Just install the ad-blocker, and then manage your own list subscription. Depending on the blocker, you might need an empty list file. Then nothing is blocked, because there are no blocking rules to start with. You'll still have all the normal tools like "select element to hide," etc.
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This sounds like a good idea until you realize there is thousends of thousends of thousends of adds out there.
So every time you refresh a page, start your browser, or you go to the next part of a webpage, you would have to click everything. That adds up too a lot of time, compared to just blocking everything.
Adblock EDGE (Score:3)
Because there is no such thing as 'acceptable ads' on my internet*.
*The internet that was funded by a collaboration between federal and academic institutions for public--not commercial--enrichment.
The Logical Conclusion of Opposing Ad-Blocking (Score:3)
Those who would prevent the use of ad-blockers need to consider where the logical path of their position leads. Advertisements also appear on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on billboards along our highways.
Action to prevent ad-blockers must therefore also prohibit Mute buttons on TV remotes and prohibit me from running to the bathroom during long commercial breaks on TV. They must also prohibit me from switching radio stations or turning off the radio while driving They must force me me read every ad in my morning newspaper and make me stop my car to carefully read every billboard.
NO. I can choose to be deaf and blind to advertisements in other media. Why can I not choose to block advertisements on the Internet? What is it about the Internet that mandates its advertisements on me, something other media cannot do?
Slashdot take note (Score:2)
You know what kind of ads I really hate? The autoplaying video ads that have started appearing on Slashdot. Is there an ad blocker that will kill only those?
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You know what kind of ads I really hate? The autoplaying video ads that have started appearing on Slashdot. Is there an ad blocker that will kill only those?
Try one of the HOSTS file add blockers.
I don't see any of that on /.
All Advertising is Evil (Score:3)
negative on that (Score:3)
whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus
Never forget that ABP has been sold out to a company in the advertisement business, and has been repeatedly accused of cutting favors for a) other companies in their group and b) those who pony up the cash, no matter what kinds of ads they serve.
The solution to the advertisement problem is for advertisers to step back into the realms of civilized behaviour. The solution to theft is not to whitelist the guys who steal a little bit from the rich, it is to jail thieves, period.
Once that basic system is in place, we can think about exceptions, e.g. not jailing people who stole an apple because they were starving. Because we understand that the solution to hunger is food, and providing an alternative way of getting it is the better solution than jailing all starving people.
But before we talk about "acceptable advertisement", we need to arrive at the point where everyone - including the fuckers who made the mess - agrees that the current amount and style of online advertisement is not acceptable.
As long as you have people running around claiming that their particular style of stealing is fine, you shouldn't be talking about whitelisting thieves.
I really don't see the big fuss (Score:3)
Sorry, but if ads were simply generated on the webserver itself (in case of slashdot), with images that also come from slashdot itself, or - in case of something like wordfeud - the ads are simply proxied by the app's home base (apps also phone home for stuff, right?), then the ad-traffic becomes indistinguishable from other, necessary traffic and ad-blockers would be out of work, right?
Yet this doesn't happen. So apparently, it is still too easy to serve apps.
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'serve apps' must be 'serve ads'.
But the acceptable ads are NOT acceptable (Score:2)
So no, I don't think ABP's policy works, nor is it driven by conscience. At least the settings allow all ads to be blocked but I'd trust
The issue is not the ads but the obnoxious ads (Score:3)
Look, if they kept their ads to non-blinking, non-animated, and non-offensive ads then I'd not use ad block.
On youtube DoubleClick keeps trying to sell me something to do with some horrible disease involving really gross looking parasites. And so if I disable adblock on youtube I see these really gross "something awful" type pictures of gross shit. That's on fucking youtube.
I go to some newsites and I get auto playing ad movies.
And then there are lots of sites that have nested javascript which is javascript inside of java script inside of javascript... and all of that makes the pages load slowly to say nothing of doing all sort of weird shit.
Look...
1. If you want ads... I want nothing beyond a jpg. No gifs. No Flash. Nothing that moves.
2. If you want ads... do not annoy me with offensive ads. If I see ads for penis pills, women showing me their vaginas as if I need an add to find porn, or whatever the fuck that image is that double click keeps throwing at me on youtube... I will enable ad block. No hesitation, no mercy, no remorse.
This is why people skip ads anywhere. They get too pushy and people respond "oh really!?"
Re: Find a new way to make money (Score:4, Interesting)
Some ads are ok. For example. there are ad paragraphs on the front page of slashdot that invite you to read the articles they summarize. We normally call them stories, but they are also ads.
So then it becomes, what is an ad? If I am on a web site, how can I complain -- or worse yet, want to block -- that site from promoting some of their other web pages. At the most, I can get upset if they are too flagrant in promoting other articles. But some promotion of other content is entirely reasonable.
So "other content" ads are ok, on some level.
At the other extreme, a site trying to sell someone else's random product is not something I want to waste time looking at. But what about a banner promoting some comparison of products? The hardware sites do this kind of thing all the time. I think it is fine if the comparison article is related to what I am looking at, and less fine if it is unrelated. But this sort of thing is a lot grayer.
My personal standard or measure is "Does the site host everything itself?" If so, it is reasonable for them to promote it. But if they do too much self-promotion, I will grow tired of their site and go elsewhere.
So, slashdot promoting their own stories/comment threads on their home page is reasonable and would't be blocked (if that was possible). Whereas, slashdot running ad text/graphics for random products is not something I want to read or look at and I will probably block, or try to block.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. Putting in product placement, promoting a product, that's all well and good. But that's not how most of the web works. They want to automatically count views, then automatically pay out cash, and the web site owner wants to just sit back and collect the caps without thinking about how the sausage is made. Treat the ads like a tattoo; you wouldn't want a random tattoo that you had no choice over, so why have a random ad that makes your site look bad?
When ads on cable TV are less obnoxious than o
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Yup, after paying for the ISP, that should be enough, especially with some of those prices.
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Nobody's forcing you to click on clickbait ads. Read the text, don't blindly click on pictures.
You do have to download them. If you're browsing from a phone, you are paying for the ads even if you ignore them.
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AdBlock Plus is relevant because it is an company that is dedicated to ad blocking and they actually try to find some compromise between advertisers, users, and themselves. As such, they have some political presence that others adblockers don't have.
And what are the "superior forks"? AdBlock Edge? This is useless, it is exactly the same as of ABP with the "acceptable ads" checkbox unchecked, but with less support.
As for uBlock (which I am using), it is not a fork, it is a new product. And it is not specific
Re: What I wonder is... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
So they don't block 100% of ads. They do block 99.5% of ads though, and they're extremely popular, so they're the ones that scare the ad makers, not the 20 people using alternatives.
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Complaints about "acceptable ads" are merely hot air. I have Adblock Plus installed. I do not subscribe to any black lists or white lists. Instead, I create my own filters. Anyone who is intelligent enough to install AdBlock Plus is intelligent enough to create filters.
Re: What I wonder is... (Score:3)
but why should I waste my time to create my own list when I can start from a premade list and add my rules to that?