Adblock Plus now sells ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#341

Post by M_Grey » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

angry-hacker wrote: post #339

M_Grey wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just uninstalled Ghostery earlier today, in part because of good advice such as that. Thanks

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#342

Post by moovacha » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #200

stincity wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I respectfully disagree. I don't enjoy ads, I never click on them even if the item is something I'd use at the time, I will not click on it. I'll just go to amazon or whatever and get it there. I will never, ever click on an ad. So I'd rather not even see them.

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.

oh really? there are petabytes of data proving ads work?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#343

Post by luxpir » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

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?

Nothing major, beyond the controversies listed here[0] and the developer's more cavalier approach to whitelisting. Plus resource usage was double what was on offer by the much more fine-grained uMatrix. At the time at least. Maybe still.

The Tor project still bundle NS in with their browser, hardened, I believe (stricter whitelisting, for one) but they clearly still trust it. Better than nothing, but far from perfect IMO.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoScript#Controversies

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#344

Post by kobayashi » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

4ad wrote: post #45

charlesdenault wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using uBlock for Safari until Origin is ported.

Don't, use an ad blocker that uses the native content block API, rather than JavaScript.

Why, though? I haven't found any content blockers to have done even as good a job as the unmaintained uBlock, let alone a better job.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#345

Post by Borating » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

mverwijs wrote: post #253

cmiller1 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See FreeContributor [1]

[1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#346

Post by Borating » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

m0nty wrote: post #113

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

Also, look at blocking DNS as an alternative to in-browser blocking: http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman

Instead of hosts file, use dnsmasq that support wilcard extensions. See FreeContributor [1]

[1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#347

Post by Borating » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

buckbova wrote: post #292

You can always edit the hosts file. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts

Instead of hosts file, use dnsmasq that support wilcard extensions. See FreeContributor [1]

[1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#348

Post by fl0wenol » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

blakeyrat wrote: post #216

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.

If you eat a meal at a restaurant, they also cannot dictate that you must tip the waitstaff. But if you don't, you're a jackass.

Except some restaurants choose to include it anyway (especially for large parties).

And if you don't tip then employees at that establishment may not meet federal minimum wage. While businesses are supposed to make up the difference, in practice they don't. So there is considerable social pressure to tip because of this situation, and because many of us have worked in the restaurant business and appreciate how hard it is or know someone who has struggled there.

There is no such social obligation or shared experience when it comes to web content authoring and site maintenance.

Everyone I know who makes web content is doing it for free or even paying for hosting because they are pursuing it as a hobby. They all make money in other industries. Or they do web development in a traditional business for internal consumption and are on salary.

So blocking ads is natural to us all. We can't imagine the motivations of people making web content, freely viewable, with the expectation that they will be paid by ad revenue at some later time.

I don't know who these people are, but if they banded together and maybe formed a union or released a documentary, they could get the rest of us to start a conversation to move the status quo.

In the meantime I'll continue posting to sites like this for free without expectation of compensation for my time, and donating money to the running of sites I value if that option is made available to me.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#349

Post by thesmallestcat » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

gorhill wrote: post #333

thesmallestcat wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-net…

Hm OK, must be something else then. Either way, uMatrix blows Ghostery away so this has been fortuitous.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#350

Post by cptskippy » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #340

cptskippy wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could also make the argument that ads or ad networks are potentially dangerous. That doesn't make Ad Blocking ethical, just justified. The ethical thing to do would be to either not use an Ad Blocker or not visit sites that are ad supported, neither of which is realistic if I'm being honest.

I think we're at a very Napster moment for content websites.