Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option 373
Many readers have submitted news of a week-old announcement from Wladimir Palant, creator of Adblock Plus, about a change to the addon that will allow unobtrusive ads to be displayed. The change has been controversial because most people who run the addon strongly dislike seeing any ads. Palant hastens to point out that this is a toggle-able option, and by changing one setting, users can resume ad-less website viewing. Many are upset, however, that the setting defaults to allowing the display of "acceptable" advertisements. The description of "acceptable" ads includes the following criteria: "Static advertisements only (no animations, sounds or similar); Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images; At most one script that will delay page load (in particular, only a single DNS request)."
And money changes hands... (Score:3, Interesting)
Shady people, shady deals.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
People who aren't tech savvy aren't likely to be installing adblock, and those that are can handle the changing of a single option. The people that are likely to be the most annoyed though are either nerd raging or are in the habit of manually installing huge numbers of installs.
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People who aren't tech savvy aren't likely to be installing adblock,
I disagree. I point naive people to adblock plus all the time, I tell them just click the big green button to install it and then restart firefox. On restart it asks about adding extra subscriptions, but they can safely ignore that.
In the past it "just worked" - now it won't.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Naive people installing products they don't know anything about is why there's a thriving anti-malware industry.
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Naive people installing products wise people encourage them to install is why there's a little bit less malware out there than it ought to be. Sigh.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're speculating they're shady - you have no proof Google pays them. Besides, even assuming that they're accepting money from Google in the first place, offering a free add-on which users optionally install and run is hardly a problem, is it? Haven't Google been paying Mozilla to work on the browser this plug-on runs under? Is that shady too?
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Informative)
I remember NoScript, the other addon people install when they're trying to prevent large attack vectors, updating for very minor changes, and automatically loading their home page. Those loads translated to ad hits, which generated revenue. They eventually added an option for this, and I'm sure the people that cared enough turned it off.
However, I don't remember anything similar happening with AdBlock... Can you site a specific incident?
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TBH, most people that install noscript want bugs and functionality worked on regularly. Plus, I have a hard time imagining that they get much money like that as I don't recall ever seeing any ads on that page.
I'm personally more comfortable with that than silent upgrades and having to figure out why something is suddenly not working the way that it had been.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Informative)
TBH, most people that install noscript want bugs and functionality worked on regularly. Plus, I have a hard time imagining that they get much money like that as I don't recall ever seeing any ads on that page.
Then you have never looked at the page. It's full of ads. That's why the asshole that runs noscript silently killed ad-block without telling users, so that his ads would be seen.
http://www.schillmania.com/content/entries/2009/adblock-vs-noscript/ [schillmania.com]
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why the asshole that runs noscript silently killed ad-block without telling users, so that his ads would be seen.
"Asshole"?? That's an awful lot of hate for someone who's probably just trying to pay for his development time, and gives an excellent extension away for free. I dislike internet ads as much as the next guy, but come on -- was loading the noscript home page what, at most once every week, really going to hurt you in any way, shape or form?
Sheesh, sometimes I feel bad about not maintaining my own software projects, as I never have enough time and don't make any money from them; and then I read comments like yours and suddenly I don't mind as much. Some people feel way too over-entitled.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who screws with the configuration or other software on my system without my permission or knowledge deserves hate. If you feel otherwise feel free to support him, buy software from Tax-Cut, etc. If someone screws with other software on my machine without permission I'll boycott them and make sure to inform others of the issue. I've gladly unblocked ad sites to support Hulu, etc, because they asked. I've got no problem supporting folks who ask for it. I have a real problem with folks who muck with my machines without asking.
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I just went to noscript's page and disabled ad-block. There's one small, non-animated banner ad running down the right-hand margin of the page, for something called Babylon -- which appears to be offering an over-excited girl hugging a browser window. Beyond that, there are a few very small text ads for pieces of software, such as FlashGot. Slashdot has more ads.
Seriously, why lie about something like this? Did you think no one would check? Did Giorgio Maone kill your dog?
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Informative)
There was a big commotion about NoScript vs. AdBlock a few months ago, and the NoScript guy apologized profusely. He said it was partly an accident, partly a miscommunication, and partly him behaving badly. AFAICT it all got resolved in the end.
So, the GP was not lying. The present situation on the NoScript page is not the problem referred to.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Informative)
Google ads apparently aren't unblocked (yet), but someone on Hacker News asked the developer earlier and apparently monetization is part of the plan [adblockplus.org]:
I don't think that we get anything yet but we indeed hope to get some income this way to make the project sustainable. This doesn't mean that paying us is the requirement to be added to the exceptions list - the requirements a formulated here and they will probably become more precise as we gain experience (suggestions are welcome). As to Google: no, they have nothing to do with it. We didn't talk to Google, we didn't take money from them, there is no conspiracy here. We did look at Google Ads as a typical example (unblocking them is the most common request we get yet most people lack the knowledge for that) but they don't meet our requirements at the moment. Google's search ads are a different thing and they can meet our requirements depending on how the website configures them - and we did add an exception for them on one particular website.
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Reminds me of the mob... (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblock developers have previously tried to monetarize the addon in very shady ways. I bet this is just another one of those.
*long whistle* Nice ads you have there! It'd be a shame if someone were to come along and block 'em. *extends hand*
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Interesting)
Shady people, shady deals.
... or it could simply be an acknowledgement that -- like it or not -- the web runs on advertising and allowing a bit of it in might not hurt you if you wanted to be more ethical. Ever thought about how small non-profit websites can afford to keep their domain names? In any case, the Adblock Plus devs have long been clear [adblockplus.org] that one of their aims was to change advertisers' behaviour. This is clearly a move to drive change to a point where advertising is present but less intrusive (and also more ethical, i.e. not using psuedo-OS dialogue boxes to fool the gullible).
Anyway, as long as the option to turn all advertising off is present (and it clearly is) then I can't see how this hurts you or anyone else. But hey, if you don't like it, don't use AdBlock Plus.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Informative)
No. It is clearly a move to attempt to make money [adblockplus.org] from what is perceived to be a captive audience that will not notice.
I don't mind people wanting to make money. However, I see a clear conflict of interest here, when then interests of the source of such money are orthogonal to the actual users of the product.
dZ.
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Personally I don't mind advertisements, what I do mind is having to wait for some third party site to deliver the ad before I get to view the page. I also hate the fact that advertisements aren't vetted by the site owner, thus allowing it to be a method of virus delivery etc.
Want me to view ads? Host them and vet them yourself, my adblock only blocks external sites (The daily wtf for instance shows ads).
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Ideally, they would have a number of ad categories and you pick which can load, that way it is up to the user to define "acceptable".
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I can bet that Google is directly paying them not to block their ads, but still keep continue blocking everyones else. This means increased income to Google, which now suddenly is the only provider whose ads aren't being blocked.
Wait, Those people who hate ads are not likely to click on any of them, so there is unlikely to be much increased income to google.
They don't get paid by impressions, only by clicks. This is probably more of an admission that content related ads are something user actually DO want and use, and flashy in your face display advertising is NOT.
But more importantly, if you install something that is supposed to block ads, and then find some getting thru even a clueless newbie will find that opt-out feature in n
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I know hardly anyone sees ads anymore, but Google has moved on quite a bit. While the original "list of links" ad is still in use, they frequently have big animated image banners now. These criteria cannot be applied without blocking a considerable part of Google's ads too.
And if the only ads not blocked are a subset of Google ads, then that is no fault of Google, but the fault of the other advertisers who are determined to abuse customer's computer resources and attention. I will most likely continue to bl
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
I use adblock because I don't like ads. Or the principle of advertising. If I need something, I look for it. If don't know about something, then I won't care if I don't have it will I? I'll be happy as a pig in shit. Yet somehow to support television, magazines and the internet we have to be fed an endless stream of trash that will invariably end up in the landfills that spoil the countryside after it is thrown away by the morons that actually buy it even though it has no relevance to what they were watching or reading or listening to just because someone somewhere has brainwashed them into buying it by showing it next to a nice pair of tits.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Online ads don't end up in landfill, but i fully agree there...
I hate unsolicited junkmail ads and will never buy anything advertised therein. They go straight in the recycling bag and are terribly wasteful.
I also detest people who cold call, either on the phone or in person and will never purchase their offerings.
If I want something, i will actively go and look for it.
Ads that include any form of sound especially irritate me, and are the main reason i installed adblock in the first place... I also dislike garish animated ads, and those that delay access to the content but nothing is worse than sound... Especially when you can't work out which of your many browser tabs is making the noise!
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was suggesting that the shit being advertised is what winds up in the landfill when the consumer eventually figures out he was sold shit.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Insightful)
I also blame blatant encouraged consumerism. and sites like fatwallet, slickdeals and their like.
go visit those sites and see how greedy people are. and how they'll throw money away at things 'because its a very low price!'.
good example: some crap company (meritline) sells chinese junk that is guaranteed to fail quickly. one day they have 1/8" stereo phono jack adapters for a dollar or something very low. people pounce on the site and china ships this crap over. the tip/ring/sleeves come apart, they flake off 'shiny bits' and your stereo gets ruined along with the cable. because the stereo is no longer fixable you throw them BOTH out.
"but the cable was only a dollar! I could not refuse that!"
that's the reply I hear. its so cheap, what the hell. right? what the hell, its only a dollar.
and so the mind numbing goes. no thinking about how the dollars add up and who ships the junk where and where it ultimately ends up (our landfills). our dollars, one by one, end up overseas and we are HAPPY to feed that habit.
this whole cycle makes me sick. and its ingrained in our youth. go to the 'deals' sites and see the kids jump on all the stupid junk that's being advertised their way. and that's the tie-in to the parent post: if we were not so accepting of the very concept of advertising, we would not be making so many stupid short-sighted buying decisions. there really is such a think as too much buying. its destructive behavior in so many ways.
advertising is inherently evil, I think. we need to admit this and try to find other ways. to just say 'its how life is' is WRONG. its NOT how life is. its how we made life for ourselves in the last 50 or 100 years. before that, we did not have these notions at all and its not needed for man's survival or even happiness.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok. Devil's advocate. Say I invent a new product. I think it could really help a lot of people out, if only they knew it existed-- how do I tell them?
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And that doesn't count as advertising... how?
Look, I'm not saying "you're an idiot", I'm just saying sometimes things aren't as black-and-white as you seem to think. (Also the word "evil" is BADLY misused for things that are, at worse, annoyances.)
Bullshit. Tivo advertised the shit out of their product.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads that include any form of sound especially irritate me, and are the main reason i installed adblock in the first place... I also dislike garish animated ads, and those that delay access to the content but nothing is worse than sound... Especially when you can't work out which of your many browser tabs is making the noise!
And the thing is a lot of people get annoyed by obnoxious ads so they install an ad-blocker (usually ABP for firefox users) and end up blocking the non-obnoxious adds as a side affect.
The web is mostly funded by ads so IMO it's perfectly reasonable for an adblock vendor to seperate the descision of blocking obnoxious ads from the decision to block all ads.
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I'd add to the list of obnoxious ads: Anything which tries to track me. And that's unfortunately about 100% of all online ads.
If tracking were necessary, advertising would not have been survived on magazines, TVs, etc., where individual tracking has never been an option.
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Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Interesting)
Junk mail is marvelous. It pays for my local post office to exist and have enough people to serve us. It is energy in the form of paper which can be burned. By carefully soliciting the right sources I can get enough paper that can be safely burned to provide around 60 percent of my heating needs. I'd heat water with it but have yet to find an effective and efficient means to do so with wood or paper.
The other benefit is costing advertisers money. Money to pay my friendly postman and money to heat my home. It's a win for me.
Spammers, I'd burn those too if I could catch them thermally depolymerize them and put the biodiesel in my truck.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry.... the only part of the post I caught was about the nice pair of tits. Go on.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
I also use adblock because I also don't like ads, but you're missing an important piece of the principle of advertising. You hit on why advertisers are willing to pay for ads, but you ignored the reason why people let them place the ads on their websites, radio stations, etc. It's to pay for the service. Running a website may be cheap, but it's not free.
So here's their options: paywall or ads. We all know which one works, and which one doesn't.
We all like "free" stuff, and ads are what make the "free" world tick.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Long before paywalls, back even before ads became widespread, there was still an internet. If I was having trouble with something, I would use one of the primitive search engines of the time to look for help, and I would find a site or usenet post in which some academic or enthusiast had worked out the solution and shared it with the world.
Nowadays, that helpful site may still exist, but it's buried among thousands of ad-laden commercial sites - which won't help me with my problem, but are quite happy to try to sell me all sorts of junk that's vaguely related to it. Perhaps, if the advertisers gave up because everyone used an effective ad-blocker, and the search engines didn't index the paywalled material, we could get the old, helpful internet back.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
Websites like wikipedia, who have to beg for donations on every page for quite a while in spite of being one of the biggest and most used web sites in the world. And... no one else.
Personally I find myself more annoyed by wikipedia's begging (which is a huge ass banner on top of every page not blocked by adblock), then by small banners on my whitelisted sites.
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I don't know about you, but that massive fucking banner at the top of every Wikipedia page in existence looks A LOT like an advertisement with them begging for money to me.
But hey, common sense and intelligence isn't something that should be associated with someone talking about Wikipedia anyway.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess thats why all open source software, websites like wikipedia, are ad supported. Oh wait, they are not.
The vast majority of sites that do not charge users money are supported by ads. One example of a site with no ads (Wikipedia) is not an argument that all web sites have a moral obligation not to show ads. Don't want ads? Don't use sites that have them.
Open source software that requires more than one developer and does not suck genrally has a corporate sponsor that makes money on it somehow. For example:
* Linux: Most kernel committers work at companies that pay them to do it. (IBM, RedHat, Oracle, Google)
* WebKit: Mostly Apple, some Google engineers.
* Firefox: Google gives them over 80% of their revenue. Look at the commit logs: The vast majority of contributions come from people working on Firefox as a full time job at Mozilla.
* LLVM: Notice how the project really took off once Apple's gcc team started working on it? The GPL3 change pushed them from gcc to LLVM/clang.
Name an open source project that has a large user base and no programmers paid to make it not suck.
Advertising is a sick cancer on the mind. ALL advertising should be banned, and we should move to an unbiased review model of product promotion.
You want ban me from hearing an ad? What sort of tyrannical, evil, control-freak are you? I will decide for myself what speech I choose to listen to. And if I have to water a metaphorical tree with your blood, so be it.
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Sometimes an Ad is just an Ad - A middle ground (Score:4, Insightful)
A few days ago, I just went on about how I block all ads, and don't see advertising. However... I'd allow "acceptable" ads.
Without ads, there would be no Google, no Facebook, no free internet. There would be 1,000 Wikipedias, begging for money. You can't build billions of dollars worth of data centers on sunshine and ponies.
I use Spiceworks [spiceworks.com]. It would be worth millions to their company, able to charge hundreds per copy if they chose. But it's 100% free. I specifically have enabled ads on their web based tools. Why? #1 - I want to support them. #2 - The ads aren't garbage, they are relevant. Very very relevant. I learn about new IT offerings and products through the ads.
Now granted, there are those who will never click an ad. And companies are learning, consumers want ads relevant to them and unobtrusive. I run ad blocking myself, but I'm not 100% behind the idea that I don't want to see any ads. Right now, it's an all or nothing, or manually turning on each site. I want to do the right thing AND have utter crap held at bay.
This is why I think this is a great tool. Rather than saying, "No ads, never, no way!" This is saying to advertisers, "Do a better job, and don't annoy the shit out of people or track them when they don't want to be tracked... and people are willing to see and click on those."
You can try to fight a war of attrition against ads. Or, they can be encouraged to be better.
And so I can't take the position that there's a vast conspiracy of subliminal trash being force fed into our minds by greedy corporations. I'm sure that's true especially in mass media.
But as Sigmund Freud might say, "Sometimes an ad is just an ad."
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:4, Informative)
I dunno about you, but some days I can think of nothing else.
Special Ad-Friendly Code vs. Subscription Lists (Score:5, Interesting)
There's already an obvious way to permit no-annoying ads while blocking annoying ones, which is to have the subscription blacklist you already use for AdBlock delete the entries for the annoying ads. No need to build a special whitelist capability, unless you want to prevent people from using alternative blacklists.
I'm not actually too bothered by having a few ads, as long as
Unfortunately, that kills off most of the advertising services that might be used to support web sites I like (especially the no-tracking features, because the ad services use those to prevent web sites from faking view data.)
The current advertising-like annoyance I still get is Disqus's takeover of the site-comments business. It thinks that I'm blocking its cookies (I'm not), so some combination of Linux, Firefox, NoScript, Ghostery, AdBlockPlus, FF's Don't track is breaking it. (Also, it has lots of other problems, like not being good at keeping track of multiple identities - my comment histories on BoingBoing and various newspapers aren't supposed to all get lost, which happens if they get mushed together into one Disqus ID.)
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Please forgive GP. Some people only have the attention necessary to read three sentences, and that detail was "buried" in the fourth sentence.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Informative)
I do wonder if it is the default, though.
Yes and no.
No as in when you first load up the new version, you get to choose whether you want the option.
Yes as in if you use EasyPrivacy it's enabled by default.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be a bad move to make it the default. People download this add-on specifically to remove ads, the presumption should be that all ads should be removed.
The best way to handle it would be to just ask the user in plain-english, maybe even explain why they might want to allow such advertisement. Then once the choice is made, never bring it up again. (For example, I don't mind seeing ads for movies because I like to see movies. I don't watch network television, so I never get exposed to movie trailers and I don't know I am missing a movie that might be relevant to my interests. So there are indeed a few cases where I want to allow ads.)
I'm not opposed to non-invasive advertising, and on certain sites, I'll even click an ad from time to time on the sites which I've allowed to advertise to me(assuming the ad was of any interest to me). The ads support the site, and I want the site to continue. I like the idea of advertisers having guidelines to adhere to in order to avoid pissing off viewers. They should already know by now what will piss off viewers, but at least now there's a standard they can point to. For example, if the advertiser has an internal argument between someone who wants a more invasive ad, and someone who wants a less invasive ad, now the guy who wants to use less invasive ads has at least 1 more arrow in his quiver.
If "free" ad-supported content is to survive as ad-blocked viewing methods grow in popularity, somebody needs to keep looking at ads. For that to happen, ads need to evolve into something that gets the point across without pissing off viewers. I didn't mind the brief 15-30 sec Hulu breaks, especially when given the option to give feedback on what kinds of ads they should be serving me with.
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People download this add-on specifically to remove ads, the presumption should be that all ads should be removed.
Well, kind of. I use AdBlockPlus as a security measure, because a depressing amount of malware is served via animated ads. I don't actually care about blocking ads as such; in fact I like the idea of sites I like receiving revenue for my pageviews. (As opposed to the site ducking behind a paywall.) A default option to allow static, text-based ads doesn't undermine my ABP use-case at all. I can on
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Why would you want to see ads for movies?
Can you not visit a site which explicitly lists current and soon to be released movies?
I was especially annoyed by some movie ads not so long ago, a site i visited to view some video clips made me watch an unskippable 30 second movie trailer before every single video... It was always the same trailer, and the movie it was advertising was not even released where i am so i couldn't have gone to see it legally even if i had wanted to.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
People download this add-on specifically to remove ads, the presumption should be that all ads should be removed.
I disagree. Although I've known about AdBlock for years, I only recently installed it (a couple months ago). I did not want to block all ads - only the annoying ones. I believe it was an ad that started playing a loud video when I accidentally hovered the mouse over it for a second at 5am that finally got me to install ABP.
As a small business owner who has to run at least some ads to get new customers, it was a bit disheartening to see that by default, every ad on every site is blocked with ABP. I still can't find an option to only block certain types of ads - only the option to block ads from certain hosts. Since most of my customers and potential customers are computer savvy 18-30 year olds, a large percentage of them use AdBlock. I don't want to annoy anyone with ads, but if all ads are blocked by default, 95% of people would never change that setting, even if they aren't bothered by static ads.
Re:And money changes hands... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Many are upset, however, that the setting defaults to allowing the display of "acceptable" advertisements."
Considering the "acceptable" advertisement criteria (no animations, sounds or similar) I've no problem with that. Text or static ads are welcome, particularly if they are paying the bills for what I'm reading. I intensely despise video/audio ads, anything animated and will stop what I'm doing to kill them dead and do whatever is necessary to never see them again. Pretty galling what some people seem to consider acceptable advertising behaviour. It's really bad when you have two audio/video ads playing at the same time.
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Reasons for negative response (Score:5, Informative)
The summary fails to cite some of the core reasons for the complaints, which are that this feature will be enabled by default as well as the fact that the Adblock project is hoping to make monetary agreements with advertisers [adblockplus.org].
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I rtfa and I could care less, noscript > adblock anyways, so if you like opting in to website, noscript still does this I hear, there's also other ad blockers out there. Can you really blame the guy for wanting to make money w his app? If you got a problem go make your own especially on something as trivial as this ad blocker that ppl seem to be bashing left and right.
bonch: consider your signature owned after reading:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/09/11/the-texas-sharpshooter-fallacy/ [youarenotsosmart.com]
is the real reas
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I've tried noscript a couple times, and each time it rendered the web useless. Almost all websites use Javascript to build the page or for the pages to function. Do you really use noscript without problem? Is there something I need to change (a setting, or an expectation) which could make it work for me?
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I'd recommend allowing scripts by default and using request policy to limit the scope of the jabascript. I can definitely understand the annoyance, I used to run noscript with scripts disabled by default, but most of the sites I'd go to would be completely broken unless I allowed a half dozen scripts from places that I'd never heard of. Most of them would turn out to be Content Delivery Network scripts, but annoying nonetheless.
If they'll allow only tasteful ads with adblock, I'm probably going to install i
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Lol, ya, it requires patience, if you keep browsing new websites say as with stumbleupon, your best bet is to temporarily disable it for your browsing session. If your like me and 90% of your browsing is done between 19-20 websites, I add exceptions for those websites and sometimes for the stuff that the website runs in the background to make it work. The last part is tricky and 99% of the time I just toggle the exceptions till it starts working, to test functionality I do disable all temporarily on this
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You can also use noscript in reverse and that is "allow all permanently" I believe and then block on a per website basis everything you don't know / want that website to access. So in this case I would blacklist google-analytics.com ONLY ONCE the first time I can across it, but something like 3cxxn.net, 3czxn.net, I'd have to blacklist individually also. This is why the reverse approach can get cumbersome, it's really [0-9][a-z][a-z][a-z][a-z].net that's running on the ad server probably. 100% depends on
Re:Reasons for negative response (Score:5, Informative)
"I've tried noscript a couple times, and each time it rendered the web useless"
Some websites are entirely reliant on scripts--poorly constructed websites, for the most part, but mostly because the website is trying to slip something past you.
If you pull up the context options for NoScript (right-click anywhere on the webpage) you'll see that you can allow scripts individually. Start with the script that looks like it applies directly to the website, usually a domain that matches the one in the address bar, and the page will automatically reload with that script running. Keep doing this, one script at a time until the page works. You can do this just for the browsing session, or set it to permanently allow those particular scripts. Keep in mind that at some point you may have to start allowing stuff that is bad or the website still doesn't work--this is the point I usually leave the site.
The hard part is determining which scripts you don't need. This is something you learn over time (my youngest daughter has been doing this on her own since she was 12 yrs old). Does that Googlesyndication script REALLY have anything to do with your local newpaper? No? Then don't let it through. Some are obviously from 3rd parties. Don't let them through.
The biggest problem, you will come to see, is that sometimes allowing one script to run will trigger more scripts, and NoScript will simply block those as well.
I have a rule for myself that makes things pretty easy--I block any script that isn't obviously from the website I am visiting. If it breaks the site, I go elsewhere. Another good rule of thumb is the fewer scripts the website requires you to run, the better.
NoScript is no panacea--it is just a tool. Unlike AdBlock (well, as it is NOW), NoScript still requires user input to function according to the users preferences. I suppose the biggest difference between the two models is AdBlock uses a subscription to determine what to block and what not to block, while NoScript blocks everything and relies on YOU to decide what to let through.
A combination of AdBlock, NoScript and Ghostery seems to protect me, and my senses, pretty well. But, there are also a LOT of websites I cannot view as a result of those add-ons...a good thing, I am sure.
I, for one, will continue blocking all the ads I can, for numerous reasons--lower bandwidth usage, no unexpected sounds, no questionable embedding in ads, etc. When AdBlock doesn't allow me to do that anymore, someone will make another add-on that does and I will move to that add-on.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Few sites require javascript for basic functionality. Less than half easily. Of those, most are shit anyway. Of the few that remain, nearly all require only one domain to be whitelisted, the same one the page is on. That's got to account for at least 95% of the web.
That's about my experience, roughly one in 20 websites don't work readily with NoScript. For those, it does take some thinking to figure out which domains to whitelist temporarily. But once you figure it out you can make it permanent, a
Re:Reasons for negative response (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. I will criticize an ad-blocking project for making revenue agreements with whitelisted advertisers.
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I don't think his code is GNU licensed though? If it was his intent to keep it free, that would be the project's home.
It is open source though
http://adblockplus.org/en/source#build [adblockplus.org]
You can grab a build w/o the feature, build it ??? no more opt out. '
I can't help but compare the ethics of this case to that of firefox's and that's because we use it for free, what I learned from those threads is it's free, use it if you like, we aren't forcing you, you can bitch but you get no say in the features so just acce
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If said agreements result in a reduction in the number of increasingly ridiculous, full screen, flashing, animated adverts that people are using, then I don't really have a problem with it.
I'm not against advertising on websites, I'm against advertising on websites that's distracting, breaks up articles, makes noises, slows down page loads, etc.
My only suggestion would be to have the option to turn the feature off pop-up on first install of the addon, so that people are aware of its existence.
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Some control over what constitutes acceptable ads would be nice too. Personally running any kind of script is out for me (and anyone who runs NoScript). Cookies and tracking too, although I don't know how AdBlock can verify that the server isn't collecting your IP address and tracking your browser via HTTP headers.
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Also, it appears the main ads to be unblocked so far are Sedo domain-parking ones. You know, the annoying ones you see when a domain squatter has noticed a useful website's domain has expired and decides to make a cheap buck off their traffic by sticking up a content-free page of irrelevant ads. They technically meet Adblock Plus' new definition of "acceptable ads", mostly because they don't need to draw the viewer's attention - there's nothing else on the site for them to look at!
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Well, if you go to a page that contains nothing but ads, while using a browser that blocks ads, wouldn't you just see a blank page?
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fork time (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing as "unobtrusive ad", just like there is no "unobtrusive DRM".
With a toggle or not, it's the thought and default what counts, and we need something to recommend to non-technical friends to make their www browsing palatable. I for one go with several partially redundant layers of anti-crap defense and put some time into maintaining them, but ordinary people deserve to have something decent out of the box.
Re:fork time (Score:5, Informative)
There's no such thing as "unobtrusive ad", just like there is no "unobtrusive DRM".
I disagree. You can have a small pic and a bit of text. That's pretty unobstrusive. I'm willing to put up with that in limited amounts (I don't klick on it anyways, but that's a different matter). Loading a huge flash animation is a completely different beast.
And I truly do not understand your DRM analogy. A pic with a bit of text to the left or the right of the main webpage is like DRM how?
Re:fork time (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with you. I don't hate advertisements in theory; I hate advertisements in practice. In theory, I'm quite happy to be informed of useful and pertinent products and services; but in practice, all I get is screaming, flashing, interrupting, annoying bullshit that blocks my enjoyment of the content I came for. There is an incredibly tiny minority of ads which I block, which I wish would come through (maybe 1 in 10,000 of today's ads), and if we can convince advertisers to conform to certain criteria, then that would make the world Better, and I support that.
But, I think that's pretty unlikely.
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Precisely, I've had to block most advertising because it's a pain to block just certain types of ads. It's mostly those intelletext ads and the huge honking flash animations that cover up elements on the screen that I most want blocked. Sometimes a tasteful text only or simple GIF ad at the side of the screen does advertise something that I'm genuinely interested in.
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I agree. I've taken to deblocking ads on sites I frequent and then only re-blocking if there's a really annoying ad, like sometimes comes up on Wikia with those full-screen slideovers.
At least that damned Evony ad campaign with the scantily-clad women advertising a completely unrelated game is over.
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There is such a thing as unobtrusive advertisement, because "unobtrusive" is a subjective term.
TANSTAAFL (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with this, even if Adblock is getting revenue from it. I want them to be able to continue to support the product, and I want the sites I go to to be able to afford to continue to exist, and I am happy if they are able to make a profit even. We all win. The only reason I started using adblock is because of all the disruptive, distracting, ads that interfere with the actual reason I came to a website in the first place. As long as they're able to keep blocking those, and sites that do tracking, I'm happy...
Re:TANSTAAFL (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think TANSTAAFL really applies. I mean, so my lunch isn't free. OK. What's the price? I suffer? Because, ads or no ads, no money is changing hands here. People who cry that Web sites get money from ads always make the false connection that merely by having me look at ads, the advertiser benefits. That simply isn't the case. That seems like the same argument as the people who claim that every time someone downloads a copy of CS 5.5 from BitTorrent, Adobe loses $1,200. No, it doesn't quite work that way.
Example: Car ads. I don't have a driver's license. No matter how many ads for cars they show me, I won't be buying a car. It might not even be legal for me to buy one (I'm not sure). So watching a 20-second video clip of a CG car driving around some fictitious Autobahn is not only wasting my time, it's also wasting the advertiser's money to show it to me.
Also, maybe I get so tired of seeing the same car ad every 10 minutes in a Hulu video that I start to hate that car and its manufacturer?
I'm sure some Web site owners say, "I don't give a shit about any of that. My contract just says I have to show you the ad." But to me, that's shortsighted thinking. In the long run, advertisers are only going to want to advertise where it's effective. If some people are so hostile to advertising that they use AdBlock, why not leave them alone? How is wasting that person's time and causing them more frustration going to pay for that Not-Free Lunch? The only people who really benefit are the middlemen -- the ad agencies -- and you know what Bill Hicks said about them. [youtube.com]
Re:TANSTAAFL (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, some of us hate most ads, but understand that something's got to fund the content. Still, I use Adblock Plus, and would welcome a way to have it allow non-obtrusive stuff through. I don't feel good about freeloading - I do it because I can, and because the ads tend to be overly distracting.
Google seems to have found the sweet spot in web advertising. Their text ads are unobtrusive, and in fact, can be quite useful. They mainly show up when I'm looking to buy something, and are profitable for both Google. What they don't do is try to manipulate my feelings - and that's the main reason I don't mind them. I guess Google's lucky to be in a business that lends itself to such a 'clean' ad-based revenue stream. I don't know if non-search websites can manage this.
Anyway, much as I hate ads, I'd rather control their methods than try to eliminate them. I pay for home delivery of the ad-stuffed New York Times and subscribe to Public TV and radio. Those are habits I made before the web and AdBlock and 'information wants to be free' came along - I'm not sure I'd make them today. And ultimately, that's a shame. I want there to be a New York Times, a PBS and an NPR - and a slashdot...
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I'm sure some Web site owners say, "I don't give a shit about any of that. My contract just says I have to show you the ad."
Actually, as far as I know virtually all ad networks have moved to PPC (pay per click), so showing the ad by itself gets them nothing.
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^ This.
It's incredibly arrogant of people to block ads simply because they dislike advertisements on an idealogical basis. They want free websites, but they don't want them to be able to make any money to pay for all the work that goes into it. Like it or not, advertising is the primary way websites fund themselves, and punishing all of them instead of targeting specific misbehavior (like Flash advertisements that destroy usability of a site or consume lots of system resources, or ad networks that track cro
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It's incredibly arrogant of people to block ads simply because they dislike advertisements on an idealogical basis.
I block each and every ad because I will *never* click on any of them. Serving them to me would be a waste of bits, and it would annoy me too. I don't buy things because they are advertised. I buy things that I need, and when I do my research I never ask the manufacturer about quality of his product.
Perhaps some people can sustain a thoughtful conversation while reading a newspaper while l
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You're certainly free to stop using this software that you're not even paying for.
Security? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with ads on web pages (hosting isn't free, y'know) but I don't like putting my systems at risk to plugin and browser vulnerabilities. If an ad company promised no flash or potentially dangerous scripts or images I'd add them to my whitelist.
As long as it's toggle-able... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could go for this (Score:5, Informative)
My main reasons for using adblock+ is not to kill adds, but to protect my systems from hosts I consider hostile. Ad networks are a major malware vector because most ad network providers are mostly sleazy scum that can't be bothered to secure their networks. Either that, or they try to exploit javascript and other mechanisms to extract information I don't feel that they are entitled to. I'm sure as fuck not going to execute any script that comes from them.
Second comes browsing improvement, because some ad networks are so badly performing that they hinder the use of many web pages. I also found adblock plus the absolute best way to improve browsing performance on low-end netbooks. (Noscript helps a lot too)
Maybe this new option will enable a real no-bullshit way to enable advertisements that respect instead of exploit end users. I would would not mind that at all. Really, though, I don't want to execute any scripts from ad networks at all. I probably would not mind enabling Google's ad services either. As far as I know they're reputable as far as security is concerned.
Your Vote (Score:2)
I don't use an ad blocker. When I got to a site (usually via google), and I get confronted with an annoying ad, I click back ASAP, increasing the bounce rate for that site. Google DOES note this. Some might argue that a bounced visit is worse for a site than no visit at all. At least from an SEO point of view.
Would be nice if it works as intended/conveyed (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I try to filter my adds through adblock to not block the unobtrusive text based adds (which Google became 'famous' for). If this option is able to do the filter work for me instead of me opting out every single add I find annoying manually, I'd actually very much like the option. If it has this as intention, I'm willing to try it out, see if it can get the job done. I can always put back my original filter list, can I?
Dont take away choice (Score:2)
I don't like the incentive that the addon maker should decide what ads are "acceptable" or not. I will choose which sites to allow ads on, if they are in the way of content, I will get rid of them, otherwise I will usually allow them.
Heres an example: ads on youtube. I use noscript to block the in video ads, because I am not waiting through 15 seconds of wasted bandwidth and time to get to a video. Ads on the side? Those are fine, and I allow them under adblock. Does your site pop an ad up when I load
If advertisers were better at advertising, (Score:5, Insightful)
we wouldn't need AdBlock at all. For example, who complains about ads on the Google search page? The ads are highly relevant, and largely unobtrusive. If advertisers were smarter, they'd go one step beyond Google and give the consumer direct control of their ad placement. I don't mind ads when I'm buying, but when I'm not, I want them out of the way. Sounds like a UI problem to me. How hard would it be to solve?
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Quite true. The ability to control what ads I see would go a long way towards training the advertisers. If they learned that people will block you unless you play nice, they will play nice.
By-and-large, I don't mind a static picture that doesn't gobble up screen space. Animations I absolutely hate. Sound, I hate even more absolutelier. Tracking creeps me out. I usually run with flashblock and adblockers in place. On one lab system, I haven't bothered to install all that crap -- it is always jarring to
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we wouldn't need AdBlock at all. For example, who complains about ads on the Google search page? The ads are highly relevant, and largely unobtrusive. If advertisers were smarter, they'd go one step beyond Google and give the consumer direct control of their ad placement. I don't mind ads when I'm buying, but when I'm not, I want them out of the way. Sounds like a UI problem to me. How hard would it be to solve?
There are ads on the Google search page?
<Turns off adblock to check it out>
Hey, you're right!
Its good (Score:3)
Reasonable regardless of motive (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of the motives on the part of Adblock Plus or conspiracy theories in other postings- the whole reason I started blocking ads was EXACTLY because of ads that:
1) Contain animation (of ANY type)
2) Contain sound
3) Use Mouseovers or now page floating/etc
4) Are unreasonable numerous or large
5) Delay page loading
If I could use Adblock to stop only the above and allow reasonably sized and fast loading, relevant, text based, or static image based ads, I would do so. I have said that for years.
I am actually just as distressed now by things that are NOT ads, but contain constant or time delayed scrolling and other animations on sites. It is EXTREMELY IRRITATING while trying to read something (not to mention battery draining). But web designers seem to think it is cool and mandatory now. Used to be easy- turn off Flash and animated GIF. But since they are all Javascript now, there is no effective way to stop them without breaking the needed parts of pages (and don't EVEN suggest greasemonkey or the like... far to complex and/or time consuming). I wish there was a Firefox plugin that could auto detect Javascript animation or loops and just stop them.
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Have fun with a very non-functional web. I used to go that way, but turning javascript ON for sites I wanted to access it became more annoying than the ads I was trying to block. Plus, this brings the ads back on those sites.
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I wish request policy would add a black list functionality so I could block things like facebook even if I have the rest of the scripts on a particular site enabled. Request policy is nice in that it enables or disables scripts based upon the site you're visiting not the site that's serving the script so I can enable sites for my bank and have them disabled elsewhere or more commonly enable them elsewhere and disable them when I'm at my bank site.
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Then find another program to block your ads, Mr. Entitled, or switch to ELinks.
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Or just switch the checkbox on the preferences...
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NoScript itself blocks Flash (and all other plugins), so that second is redundant.