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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#331

Post by Grishnakh »

jfoster wrote: post #264
chris_7 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If they want to resort to that, they're entirely within their rights to do so. I have no right to demand they serve me their content. However, I have every right to make a polite request, and to download the response they send to me. They, however, have no right to tell me what to do with that response. If they want to give me a content-free response (your 402), they can do that. But no one does (the closest is sites like Forbes which use JS to block the content if you're blocking ads; personally I just don't go to Forbes any more).

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#332

Post by Grishnakh »

stincity wrote: post #294
manigandham wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking on ads isnt necessary. A vast amount of ads are paid on an impression basis and I can guarantee that you've been affected by the advertising you've come across in your life. This is one of the most data-driven industries on the planet and there are petabytes of data generated every day showing how well it works.

That's cool. I never said I wasn't affected. Just that I don't click on them. Ever. Like I said, I'd go to amazon or drive somewhere before I click ANY internet ad. And thus far, I have never clicked on one... willingly.

I have. Back in the days when Google had those little unobtrusive text-only ads to the right of the search results, I clicked on those once in a while, and they were actually really useful! If advertising were all like that, we wouldn't be having these arguments.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#333

Post by gorhill »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #301
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It looks like another addon was phoning home to a blocked resource. I should've tried more combinations first. The best thing I can think of is that it would be cool if uBlock reported when a call from another extension has been blocked.

> it would be cool if uBlock reported when a call from another extension has been blocked

That is the purpose of the built-in logger[1]. By default uBO is not setup to block other extensions' network requests, or those made by the browser itself, one has to configure it explicitly for this to happen[2].

1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/The-logger

2. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Behind-the-scene-netw...

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#334

Post by wtallis »

philbo wrote: post #202
luxpir wrote: post #42

Just another anecdote to "ad" to the pile: In an effort to keep my Chromium/FF instances 'clean' I just use https-everywhere and uMatrix (since it came out - my trust in noscript and abp was waning a long way back). It's nice to block the vast majority of low-hanging trackers. I'm hoping that having FB, GA and myriad other tracking scripts auto-disabled circumvents some of their even smarter tracking methods (IP, coo…

As a NoScript user I'm curious what eroded your trust in it. Should I be looking at switching away from it for some reason?

As far as I know, there was a single incident where a version of NoScript put its own site on the user's AdBlock Plus whitelist. Other than that, NoScript has not done anything shady and continues to provide features that have no equivalent in any other browser or extension.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#335

Post by rootlocus »

noja wrote: post #279
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...

> uBlock Origin forked off of uBlock No, uBlock Origin was the original. The fork was confusingly also called uBlock. Origin==original. See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/06334a190ea9589e983... (or Wikipedia)

  > https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/06334a190ea9589e983
If you remove /commit/06334a190ea9589e983 and look at the actual README.md on the project page [1], you'll see it's called uBlock Origin =)

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#336

Post by cptskippy »

dsr_ wrote: post #165
cptskippy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you also think that leaving the room or changing the channel when the TV or radio plays an ad is unethical? Is using fast-forward on your DVR unethical? Is skimming past the ads in a newspaper or magazine unethical? Is it ethical to let your eyes glide past the ads shown in a browser? Is it ethical to read books from a free library rather than buying the right to read a copy from a store?

Suppose someone offered you a free TV to sit through a 2 hour presentation about a timeshare. Does that entitle you to just take the TV and leave without sitting through the presentation?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#337

Post by exolymph »

vegabook wrote: post #317
Animats wrote: post #312

Business plan: 1. Tell users you're doing something for them. 2. Get lots of users. 3. Change product to screw them. 4. Profit! This happens too often.

----------> erroneous comment deleted. Original suggested GPL was protection against dual versioning (Open Source/Enterprise) as opposed to permissive licences which enable @animats business model analysis.

AdBlock Plus is GPL: https://adblockplus.org/license-headers

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#338

Post by [deleted] »

exolymph wrote: post #337
vegabook wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

----------> erroneous comment deleted. Original suggested GPL was protection against dual versioning (Open Source/Enterprise) as opposed to permissive licences which enable @animats business model analysis.

AdBlock Plus is GPL: https://adblockplus.org/license-headers

[deleted]

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#339

Post by angry-hacker »

M_Grey wrote: post #154
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

I find that it goes very well with script blocker and ghostery; that handles most combinations of advertising, trackers, so on. You can add privacy guard if you feel like it as well, but I haven't' tried that and can't speak for it.

Why would you use it with ghostery?

It's like using two antiviruses to be more safe. I believe ublock already takes care of trackers by default, and if not, just add the tracking list.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#340

Post by dsr_ »

cptskippy wrote: post #336
dsr_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also think that leaving the room or changing the channel when the TV or radio plays an ad is unethical? Is using fast-forward on your DVR unethical? Is skimming past the ads in a newspaper or magazine unethical? Is it ethical to let your eyes glide past the ads shown in a browser? Is it ethical to read books from a free library rather than buying the right to read a copy from a store?

Suppose someone offered you a free TV to sit through a 2 hour presentation about a timeshare. Does that entitle you to just take the TV and leave without sitting through the presentation?

You chose a particularly interesting example: as far as I can tell, to a first approximation, all timeshares are scams designed to separate a fool from their money.

So if I had the free time, I would consider attending in order to ask pointed questions and warn other people away.

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