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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#261

Post by pavel_lishin »

etatoby wrote: post #40

I, for one, agree with them. We started blocking ads because they had become 1. obnoxious, interfering with the fruition of the actual content; 2. dangerous, being a vector for malware and disrespecting our privacy; and 3. costly, for those with a slow or metered connection. Most people accept ads, if they are acceptable. They are the first company to actually push through with a plan to restore this market to sanity…

Do they actually have a concrete plan for ensuring no malware is served over their ad network?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#262

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #215
M_Grey wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's happening, I doubt it's uBlock.

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

Have you thought about filing a bug report? gorhill (the author) is an active user on HN. I'm sure he would take a look if you provided some logs.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#263

Post by gcb0 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #176
jackhack wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust. Performing the exact opposite of the stated and expected purpose of the application, for money, is a violation of trust. There is an implied belief that a product should do what it claims (and its name clearly states a purpose -- ad BLOCK), and the plain English reading of the title makes that pretty clear. Imagine a virus scanner that only blocked those viruses that didn't pay up.

This is a conflict of values between users and the devs. - Users want ads to just go away, period, the end. - The devs want ads to be nice . So they swat down the nasty ones and permit the nice ones. Ransomware was probably the wrong way to do that, but I can see why it was superficially appealing. "We check your ads for niceness, and then permit them. We won't give our effort away for free", being the idea behind it…

except by nice ads they mean anyone willing to pay to get whitelisted

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#264

Post by jfoster »

chris_7 wrote: post #79
k-mcgrady wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I believe that advertisements are neurotoxins, and nobody has the right to poison me." And you have no right to the content you're viewing but blocking ads on. If you really consider ads 'poison' surely boycotting sites that use ads is the solution or offering an alternative solution this is actually viable.

Stop responding with 200 OK then. Remote servers don't get to configure my user-agent, they can only control their response.

How do you feel if they respond 200 OK the first time, and then when the code detects that you are blocking ads, returns 402 the next time?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#265

Post by doodpants »

cptskippy wrote: post #162
pythia__ wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blocking Ad is itself unethical. Ads are placed on pages to pay for the content. By blocking ads you are depriving the content creators of compensation for their work. Replacing Ads with other ads is worse because you're not only depriving a content creator of revenue but then profiting off of their work. You could argue that it amounts to theft.

Back in the late 90's and early 2000's, before it was possible or commonplace for ads to track whether they were being shown, plenty of web sites included text like: "Support this page by clicking on our ad banners!" Would you have argued back then that it was unethical to view a web page and not click on all of the ads displayed on it?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#266

Post by astrodust »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #176
jackhack wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust. Performing the exact opposite of the stated and expected purpose of the application, for money, is a violation of trust. There is an implied belief that a product should do what it claims (and its name clearly states a purpose -- ad BLOCK), and the plain English reading of the title makes that pretty clear. Imagine a virus scanner that only blocked those viruses that didn't pay up.

This is a conflict of values between users and the devs. - Users want ads to just go away, period, the end. - The devs want ads to be nice . So they swat down the nasty ones and permit the nice ones. Ransomware was probably the wrong way to do that, but I can see why it was superficially appealing. "We check your ads for niceness, and then permit them. We won't give our effort away for free", being the idea behind it…

I don't want ads to go away. I want ads that are relevant, or at least aren't insultingly stupid.

The utter shit people run on major sites these days is so patently offensive ("Single Mom's Weight Loss Trick!", "Get Government Money Tomorrow!") that I keep a blocker on for my own sanity. I'm consistently appalled at the extremely low quality advertising that supposedly reputable properties put on their sites.

Give me good ads, please. Don't give me garbage.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#267

Post by sathio »

pythia__ wrote: post #109
rloc wrote: 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.)

it is a man in the middle changing your DOM with stuff that profits them. how can you tolerate this?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#268

Post by IncRnd »

rloc wrote: post #83
thclark wrote: 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

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 ?

Not Adblock. Adblock Plus.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#269

Post by M_Grey »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #254
M_Grey wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

My pleasure, I wish you the best of luck with it.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#270

Post by jamiequint »

thclark wrote: 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

A great option for amoral people who want to see a free and open internet disappear.
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