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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#251

Post by jwise0 »

bargl wrote: post #141
jwise0 wrote: 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 just want to go out there and say, they don't have the right to poison you, but you don't have the right to their content... I fall in this weird spot with ads. I don't like them, they slow down the experience, they can have PORN on them (this happened to my brother the other day), they have little oversight and track you. Many things I do not approve of. What I DO approve of is paying content creators. And unless…

I think I agree with at least some of what you say. I feel bad viewing content from small blogs without "paying" for it. My current best compromise is that I run uBlock Origin with an exemption for Google, and then I use Contributor.

It's still not a perfect solution. I give up a lot privacy that way, and in order to use Contributor, I have to give up some of the other uBlock features that I really like (in particular, element-based blocking).

I will note, though, that I don't feel in the slightest bad viewing Facebook or Twitter with ads blocked. Facebook and Twitter survive by network effects; I couldn't reasonably opt out of using their services even if I want to. Since I'm forced to use their services, then, I think it's reasonable that I do so on my own terms.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#252

Post by etatoby »

pmoriarty wrote: post #181
chii wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't have the right to their content... if they allow the public to view their content, they cannot dictate how the content is viewed. There's ways to block people from viewing content if ads are blocked - but a lot of sites don't do that, because they deem the traffic more important.

Forbes has started blocking their content if their site detects the use of an ad-blocker. Interestingly, their content is still viewable (though in raw form) when viewing the page source, at least for now, and there are extensions allowing you to view it anyway. The content-blocking / anti-content-blocking arms race has begun.

Forbes started by asking nicely for people to disable ad blocking on their site, stating that their ads were not obnoxious nor dangerous.

I complied, just to find myself overwhelmed by some of the most obnoxious, heavy, and dangerous ads around.

The solution? STOP VISITING FORBES. It's that simple.

It also shows that you can't trust the publishers themselves to rate their own ads, and that's why an initiative like ABP's one is a good thing.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#253

Post by mverwijs »

cmiller1 wrote: post #161
jagger27 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A word of warning about uBlock for those who aren't aware: uBlock Origin forked off of uBlock some time ago and left the Safari version behind. For Chrome and Firefox uBlock Origin is great, but for Safari I personally suggest Wipr[1]. 1: https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.giorgioc...

Wipr on Safari is great, it's super lightweight, probably the fastest ad-blocking experience on any platform. My only complaint is a lack of configurability, it doesn't seem to have any way to whitelist things etc.

Pointing ad host to 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file so no DNS resolving takes place. Nothing beats that as a baseline.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#254

Post by thesmallestcat »

M_Grey wrote: post #240
thesmallestcat wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tested it, it is uBlock. Very fast boot when disabled, several seconds when enabled.

That's bizarre! Have you tried disabling everything except uBlock and seeing if that persists? Maybe it's some kind of interaction with other addons causing the problem.

I think that's the next step, I've done things like this before but generally only to troubleshoot outright breakage caused by some addon. Thanks!

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#255

Post by chrismonsanto »

m0nty wrote: post #163
Someone1234 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a HOSTS file to block things while effective, is also a very bad user experience. For example, some sites won't let you in until you unblock ads. With an extension you can use the in-browser UI to whitelist that site, with a HOSTS file you'd have to figure out exactly which domains got blocked, then update the HOSTS file, and finally restart the browser & flush the DNS Cache Resolver for it to take effect. Agai…

> is also a very bad user experience I think I'll be the judge of that, given that I'm the "user" in this "experience" ;) It works just fine for me.

You can't recommend your solution to others and then say that they can't judge whether or not it is a good solution.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#256

Post by thatswrong0 »

themartorana wrote: post #220
thatswrong0 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand that previews are also commercials, but I've made an informed decision about which types of transactions I'm willing to engage in with theaters. You could also choose to "block" those ads by coming to movies late. That's what I do.. how is that different from blocking ads on the web? The theater is giving me advertisements + content, and I have the ability to ignore / block whatever I want by leaving /…

It's a loophole, but you're also not getting to see a movie for free. You paid actual money. You could also resize your browser to block ads in a side column, but it's not the same thing.

Let's assume movie tickets are free. Unless the ticket explicitly says, "You must watch the ads for this ticket to be valid", you're under no obligation to watch the ads before a movie, even if the theater's business model is dependent on your eyeballs actually seeing the ads. If that business model starts to fail because more and more people are realizing they don't have to watch the ads before a movie, you can't blame the people, you have to blame the business model. There's no reason to have a moral obligation to abide by some implicit non-legally binding contract, especially when that contract involves the invasion of my privacy and subjects me to potential violence.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#257

Post by Viper007Bond »

Sargos wrote: post #235
KORraN wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, uBlock Origin comes from original author of uBlock. Some time ago he said that he doesn't have time to develop Origin and passed project to other guy. Unfortunately, that guy didn't make any big changes in code (except adding himself as an author) and asked for donations. After quite big drama, original author came back, but he wasn't able to get back his project so he called it uBlock Origin.

Your comment is super confusing. Do you mean that he didn't have time to develop uBlock so then we went to make Origin? You wrote it the other way around. Which one does the original guy work on now, Origin?

Origin is from the original author. The original author passed the torch to someone else who then used it as a donation source. So the original author came back, forked it, and titled their fork Origin.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#258

Post by spoiler »

beefield wrote: post #232
morgante wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that everyone shares your world view. I'm a happy Adblock Plus user and I like this move. Advertising, in general, does not bother me. I occasionally even find it valuable. Ads on sites like Google and Facebook are perfectly fine by me—I just don't want big, animated ads or (more frequently) broken ones which prevent me from reading content. In fact, I already go out of my way to disable ABP on sites…

> Contrary to what people on HN believe, advertising is not inherently evil. Most people are perfectly fine with ads so long as they're not invasive. I would guess most people have this idea (in most cases illusion) that advertisers are not able to manipulate them. I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit. I do not know if they are evil, but I think it is fa…

I agree with what you say, but advertising (more specifically Google's Adwords) actually introduced me to a couple of interesting services/products! Was I manipulated? Definitely, because I clicked the ad, but I don't mind because I also benefited.

However, a lot of adverts are subterfuge these days and I did fall for one (to shame it, it was TrackR Bravo, which works nothing like its advertised, to make matters worse it was part of a present), so one does need to be careful.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#259

Post by [deleted] »

Sargos wrote: post #235
KORraN wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, uBlock Origin comes from original author of uBlock. Some time ago he said that he doesn't have time to develop Origin and passed project to other guy. Unfortunately, that guy didn't make any big changes in code (except adding himself as an author) and asked for donations. After quite big drama, original author came back, but he wasn't able to get back his project so he called it uBlock Origin.

Your comment is super confusing. Do you mean that he didn't have time to develop uBlock so then we went to make Origin? You wrote it the other way around. Which one does the original guy work on now, Origin?

[deleted]
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