Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

palant.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 124 posts

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#41

Post by Macha »

def_true_false wrote: post #37
Fnoord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

> doesn't have a shady track record Care to expand on that?

The eventual setup of their acceptable ads policy ended up being seen as pay-to-whitelist by users and advertisers.

It felt that way to advertisers especially when the fee was 30% of ad revenue rather than say, a processing fee for time spent verifying it met the criteria. A lot of them were more ok to ignore ad blocking before they were held to ransom.

Users were unhappy at an adblocker's default config allowing ads.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#43

Post by radley »

def_true_false wrote: post #36
paxy wrote: post #5

Adblock Plus sold out a long time ago by taking money from big players to let their ads through. I've been using uBlock Origin for a while and haven't looked back. Plus it's way faster and less buggy.

The ads still have to satisfy the Acceptable Ads criteria and they only have to pay when they exceed a certain volume (as in everyone besides the big players doesn't have to pay a cent). There is an opt-out checkbox in the settings.

Opt-out didn't actually opt-out of certain features of the ad deal. For example, YouTube's Up Next list contained risqué Sponsored videos at the top of the list. Prior to the deal they could be blocked. After the deal they couldn't, not even with AdBlock Extensions.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#45

Post by Ndymium »

digi_owl wrote: post #34
Fnoord wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Opera was proprietary with its own rendering engine (Presto) and you could buy a license or you could run it for free with an ad showing (back then, ads were more profitable as well). Bummer they never open sourced Presto. Maybe that inspired Brave. Though you can't "buy" Brave.

There is also Vivaldi, funded by the same guy that formed co-founded Opera back in the day. https://vivaldi.com/ Sadly it is not much more than a reskinned Chrome, same with current Opera and Brave. BTW, Opera offered "tabs" before it was a thing by making use of MDI. And it carried forward until they scrapped Presto. Similarly Vivaldi right now offers to split the viewport into multiple areas to show tabs side by si…

Vivaldi is much more than a reskin of Chrome though. It has customisable UI (with color themes), vertical tabs, tree style tabs, tiled tabs, tab stacks, mouse gestures, tab hibernation, session saving for later, reader mode (and a bunch of others) builtin, speed dial, custom history page, web panels (a docked website on the side of the browser). Haven't used Chrome in a while though so not sure if some of those have been added there.

Cons are that it's slower (not that noticeable for me anymore since latest stable) and doesn't have sync (is coming in next version).

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#46

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

Fnoord wrote: post #28
mgbmtl wrote: post #21

Many comments are bitterly unfair against ABP. Wladimir/Eyeo changed how we use the web, gave us means to fight back against abusive advertising. They built a business model to make the extension sustainable and find a strategy to legitimate themselves, fight in the courts, etc. Not to mention that ABP never tried to close the market. Alternatives were easy to build thanks to EasyList. Today there are many alternativ…

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

I remember using the Internet Junkbuster[1] and Privoxy[2] to block ads in the browser long before ABP. The novelty was embedding the functionality directly in the browser through the extensions.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/19980210082938/http://internet.j...

[2] http://www.privoxy.org/

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#48

Post by def_true_false »

Nadya wrote: post #40
def_true_false wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads still have to satisfy the Acceptable Ads criteria and they only have to pay when they exceed a certain volume (as in everyone besides the big players doesn't have to pay a cent). There is an opt-out checkbox in the settings.

>There is an opt-out checkbox in the settings. Which should be opt-in. And if nobody wants to opt-in there is the problem; it's going against what the users want. Most people never change default settings of software they install so "opt-in" may as well not have a way to "opt-out" except as a scapegoat to say you can.

> Most people never change default settings of software they install so "opt-in" may as well not have a way to "opt-out" except as a scapegoat to say you can.

You might as well just blame the browser vendor for not having a built-in ad blocker, URL rewriter (Google search results), not disabling 3rd party cookies or whatever else the flavour of the month in abusing-features-for-tracking is.

The people who never look into the settings probably didn't install the ad blocker themselves in the first place...

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#49

Post by def_true_false »

radley wrote: post #43
def_true_false wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads still have to satisfy the Acceptable Ads criteria and they only have to pay when they exceed a certain volume (as in everyone besides the big players doesn't have to pay a cent). There is an opt-out checkbox in the settings.

Opt-out didn't actually opt-out of certain features of the ad deal. For example, YouTube's Up Next list contained risqué Sponsored videos at the top of the list. Prior to the deal they could be blocked. After the deal they couldn't, not even with AdBlock Extensions.

Good to know. I can't remember the last time I've seen an ad on youtube that didn't go away after updating the block list. I've since switched to UBO for performance reasons, but as far as I can tell ABP always did exactly what it said on the tin.

Edit: I haven't actually spent enough time with the opt-out unchecked to come across one of these. I suppose it's the nature of the implementation - unless you have humans reviewing the ads or something of the sort, you'll never be able to filter them with 100% certainty.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#50

Post by j_s »

d3sandoval wrote: post #18
zerr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Ghostery?

Depends on your opinion of this decision: https://adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/ghostery-sheds-ad-tra...

Thanks, I hadn't heard about this. Per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1406647 where Firefox is tying in with Cliqz:

> Cliqz is a well-known Adware from Germany[1] and it was a plague

Not sure what data Ghostery is collecting now, or how opt-in vs. opt-out has changed (if at all), but it looks like based on the reputation of the new owners I will no longer be using it.

Edit: the small HN discussion seems to cover this a bit more evenhandedly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13652126

Post reply on HN