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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#131
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing to do if you haven't already. uBlock is open source and does the job. This all adBlock making money by blocking ads and then showing their own ads is becoming ridiculous and unethical. So what does Adblock stand for now ?

Why is it unethical? What ethical principle is being violated? (These are not rhetorical questions.)

On the Internet, unethical = I don't like it

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived (and still do) in Canada and spent the past 18 years with access to the full suite of channels that American TV has to offer. It is largely the only TV I have access to (though not solely because I still have the internet after all). In the past couple of years I've limited my consumption to the point of avoiding it because it has become so bad.

Ok, your edit makes more sense. I agree that American TV has way too much advertising and is the worst on that front compared to many other countries. I think your original comment was downvoted because it was just a handful of stereotypes with not much relation to reality. Also, the shows themselves are generally quite good, it's just the networks that suck. When many Americans think of TV they're thinking of HBO an…

That's a matter of interpretation. HBO and Netflix aren't TV, and while perhaps many Americans may interpret these as TV, my perspective is that they're not TV shows, but movie formats.

My main point is that with "regular" TV, if you removed all of the flashback reminders and commercials, you've basically got a 15 minute TV show stretched over the period of an hour with as much drama as can be thrown in so as to keep you sitting there in front of as many commercials as they can squeeze in during that time. It's a disgraceful waste of your time as a viewer.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just say. Google offers and maintains reCapcha, while at the same time scrapes the internet using bots. Wedging yourself in the middle is an awesome business plan.

Google doesn't make money from reCaptcha[1], and reCaptcha isn't deployed to stop the kind of crawlers Google operates (you'd just add a line to robots.txt if you wanted to do this), so I'm not sure how this is relevant. [1]: OK, maybe in the extremely broad, indirect sense that reCaptcha helps Google solve image classification problems, which make Google products like Maps/Books/Images better, which increases traffi…

You could argue that Google is directly saving money by not paying people to train its ML algorithms (which I'm assuming they have a plan to monetize).

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On U.S. TV you can pretty much watch the first 5 minutes of the show and come back and watch the last 5 minutes without missing anything of consequence... everything you missed was flashbacks, bullshit and advertising. This describes 90% of all American TV content. Edit: I guess the truth hurts. Thanks for the downvotes. Whatever, I stand by my observation as a foreigner having watched TV in many other countries and…

Have you ever watched American TV? This reads like someone who turned on Bravo at 2PM one time and decided all TV must be like that.

I think what they're commenting on is the sort of editing time-line encountered on such shows in the genre similar to "greatest ice-road vintage trucker sale digger catch".

These tend to be, in a 30 minute slot:

Which gives 8 minutes of original footage stretched over 30 minutes, with 15 minutes of ads and 7 minutes of rehashing.

This format, although now popular in other countries, is a "modern-classic" of US television.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#135
post #36

uBlock Origin it is! Extensions: Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge

I've been using both for a while, just uninstalled ABP on this news. Unfortunately, uBlock Origin adds several seconds to Firefox startup time.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#136
What's next? Hijacking affiliate links?

I do use Adblock Plus because there's a nice fanboy annoyances list that kills the latest scourge of Web UI: the pop up, in particular the "sign up to our newsletter since you've been here for 2 seconds!" pop up.

Is there ublock origin equivalent for this?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#137
post #65
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the royal "we", perhaps :-) I started blocking ads because they dramatically slowed down my browsing experience. But I keep blocking ads because, fundamentally, I believe that advertisements are neurotoxins, and nobody has the right to poison me. The old Sean Tejaratchi quote - popularized by Banksy - applies here, I think - http://www.readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss

I agree! I appear to have formed selective blindness from long term exposure which is quite useful! My eye appears to skip over anything considered an ad on most static mediums. I just don't notice them and if I do, my brain appears to discard it.

Funny story about this: I was traveling back in February and returned home after about two weeks, during which my local Dunkin Donuts re-arranged their menu. I came in for my extra-large coffee but couldn't find it on the menu. I ordered a large, and mentioned that I used to order extra-large but it wasn't on the menu any more. The server pointed out that it was on the menu. I was bewildered for several seconds until I realized that the entire right-most column of the menu (the up-sell stuff) had a full-color background and different font. They did this in order to stand out, but now my eyes naturally skip over any such elements of a layout, apparently.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#138
post #136

What's next? Hijacking affiliate links? I do use Adblock Plus because there's a nice fanboy annoyances list that kills the latest scourge of Web UI: the pop up, in particular the "sign up to our newsletter since you've been here for 2 seconds!" pop up. Is there ublock origin equivalent for this?

You should be able to use all these lists with uBlock too.

EDIT: the specific one you mention is even offered (but not turned on) by default in uBlock origin.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#139
post #36

uBlock Origin it is! Extensions: Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge

I've been using both for a while, just uninstalled ABP on this news. Unfortunately, uBlock Origin adds several seconds to Firefox startup time.

I though uBlock point was to be CPU/ram efficient ?

That's even what they show in the chrome/firefox store images, it doesn't make much sense to me that it adds several seconds to Firefox startup time

Am I missing something ?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#140
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with them. To me, ads are unacceptable. They steal your attention and polute your mind with subtle signaling and behavioural patterns. I applaud iniciatives like São Paolo's outdoors ad ban [1], and wish it were implemented in many more cities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

Sure, it would be ideal to live in a world without advertising. But if advertising is the cost we pay to monetize content like news, well, I'd rather accept that than other content models like paywalls.

How about we as a society have the balls to put faith in certain principles and remove money's influence upon the domain of those principles? The free exchange of information could be based upon this foundation.

I think we're sorely lacking in visionary utopianism and balls.

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