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Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

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Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#31

Post by jrabone »

Hopka wrote: post #22
SifJar wrote: post #19

I'm struggling to fully understand the article due to the poor Google Translation. Anyone offer some concise clarification as to what ABP is actually doing? Is it "just" that they are changing Amazon referral links on websites to their own referral links so they get money instead, or is there more to it than that? Are they even actually doing that? (Or is it just that they aren't blocking referral links made with sof…

They are also allegedly not filtering a set of white-listed ads, most of which come from companies that pay 30% of their ad revenue to the company behind AdBlock Plus.

ABP has had an option to enable some white-listed ads for a while. It's ticked by default, but it's not exactly hidden...

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#32

Post by SifJar »

Hopka wrote: post #22
SifJar wrote: post #19

I'm struggling to fully understand the article due to the poor Google Translation. Anyone offer some concise clarification as to what ABP is actually doing? Is it "just" that they are changing Amazon referral links on websites to their own referral links so they get money instead, or is there more to it than that? Are they even actually doing that? (Or is it just that they aren't blocking referral links made with sof…

They are also allegedly not filtering a set of white-listed ads, most of which come from companies that pay 30% of their ad revenue to the company behind AdBlock Plus.

I came across this article which seems to back that up: http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/adblock-plus-accused-of-sha...

(from a few months ago)

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#33

Post by jrochkind1 »

JonnieCache wrote: post #24
asb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghostery users should be aware of: http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to... (no judgement on the practice implied, just flagging it as something for potential users to consider).

Ghostery alternative: https://disconnect.me

Disconnect has generally been working better for me than Ghostery did too; although some parts of the Disconnect UI I still find more confusing and harder to use than analagous parts of ghostery.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#35

Post by radiospiel »

The original, german text does not state that ABP actually rewrites amazon affiliate links. It mentions "Amazon" once, in a sentence which could be translated at "..how to justify drying up financial base (which are amazon links) for thousands of small blogs.."

(That doesn't mean ABP does not change amazon referral links, though)

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#36

Post by Uchikoma »

From the article: Investors in Adblock Plus / Owners of the company behind Adblock Plus also invest/own ad-network companies, which they put on the white list while they keep out competitors. The article claims one can buy oneself onto the whitelist.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#38

Post by mjn »

sdfjkl wrote: post #3

So what's a good alternative (Firefox)? I'm using GlimmerBlocker, but due to being a proxy, it can't filter HTTPS pages. Adblock Edge looks like a decrapified fork of Adblock Plus.

I use the venerable (but still actively maintained) Privoxy, which is a proxy but still does most of what I want on HTTPS pages. It can't examine the page contents themselves, but it can block 3rd-party requests by hostname, which gets most of the web-bugs and such.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#39

Post by edwintorok »

radiospiel wrote: post #35

The original, german text does not state that ABP actually rewrites amazon affiliate links. It mentions "Amazon" once, in a sentence which could be translated at "..how to justify drying up financial base (which are amazon links) for thousands of small blogs.." (That doesn't mean ABP does not change amazon referral links, though)

Could it be a typo, i.e. that adblock plus charges (money) for allowing people's amazon refs through the filter? Although if you check exceptionrules.txt there are only 3 domains that have amazon links whitelisted.

EDIT: apparently the 2nd page of the article writes about the possibility of changing links.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#40

Post by rmk2 »

> Fuenfzehn Mitarbeiter, davon zwei Geschaeftsfuehrer, weitere Stellenanzeigen sind geschaltet, Bueros im Koelner Clusterhaus? Und das einzige Produkt ist eine kostenlose Browser-Erweiterung? Wie kann das funktionieren?

Fifteen employees, two of those managers, further job ads are taken out, offices in Cologne's Clusterhaus? And the only product is a free of charge browser extension? How does that work?

Additionally, this part seems important as well:

> Viel wichtiger: das ist also Till Faidas Verstaendnis von akzeptablen Werbeanzeigen: gefakte Testberichte und Auszeichnungen, pseudoneutrale Bewertungen auf anonymisierten Blogs. Artikel, geschrieben von der PR-Abteilung und Geschaeftsfuehrung eines Unternehmens, suchmaschinenoptimierter Content-Dreck fuer das eigene Produkt. Scam nennt man sowas in Fachkreisen!

More importantly: so this is Till Faida's understanding of acceptable advertisements: faked test reports and awards, pseudoneutral ratings on anonymised blogs. Articles, written by the PR-department and by the management of a company, search-engine-optimised content-dreck [i.e. crud] for their own product. Expert circles tend to call this scam!

[the translation isn't the prettiest but hopefully quite close to the original in both meaning and intent]

[edit] The whole "mafia" argument seems to stem from these questionable practices of "anonymous" and thus seemingly neutral feedback, originating from within the company itself.

[edit 2] fixed first translation, since I forgot the half-sentence "weitere [...]"

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