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

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

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 180 posts

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

#121

Post by ds9 »

cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

I don't use Adblock Plus. I don't block ads as such, just because they are ads. I don't mind ads. I believe in supporting sites thru advertising.

However:

* I cannot tolerate anything moving on the page. It prevents me from reading text, and I'll do whatever is necessary to turn it off, regardless of the effect on the site's advertising schemes.

* Sites don't have any right to expect me to run their Javascript or other code. I'll turn it on only for functionality that I have a need for.

* I won't tolerate tracking, and therefore turn off requests to domains other than those necessary to read the content on the page.

So, again, I'm fine with ads - they just have to respect my reasonable limitations.

And the line about Google respecting privacy doesn't pass the laugh test. If I'm tracked across the web by Google includes, the privacy violation has already occurred at that point, regardless of what Google does with the data after they collect it (same goes for other data-miners).

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

#122

Post by pyre »

jimm wrote: post #115
ianlevesque wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Everyone needs to offer the option to pay in some way. If we could pay for a bundle of all sites even better.

If you're old enough to remember the start of cable TV, one of the promises was that it would have few/no commercials, because you're paying for it. I'd trust very few web sites to stay ad-free if they switched to a pay model. The money is just too good for them.

The ethics of Ad-Blocking when you were promised / sold on something that was "Ad Free" only to end up with ads is a different question.

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

#123

Post by angry-hacker »

dbcooper wrote: post #110
angry-hacker wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has something to do with their feature called typo corrections, only available for Firefox right now (I have only ABP for Chrome/FireFox). It has to be enabled, if it is enabled by default for all user or not, I'm not sure. typoRules.js downloads urlfixer.org/download/rules.json?version=2 where the redirect is made if you type for an example: amazon.comm, I get (FireFox only) redirected to their affiliate amazon.c…

reply to edit: If I change the .com to .comm it changes the URL to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374102414/reasonmaga... So this is only for mistyped (edit) manually typed referrer URLs?

I guess so. Here they even admit it's their revenue source and that it won’t be enabled by default....

https://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adbl...

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

#124

Post by gravitronic »

cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

Ads aren't just screen real estate. They're also bandwidth and CPU hogs.

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

#125

Post by ipsin »

gravitronic wrote: post #124
cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

Ads aren't just screen real estate. They're also bandwidth and CPU hogs.

And a security risk, to boot.

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

#126

Post by orclev »

caust1c wrote: post #61
zeckalpha wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do ad blockers affect revenue? Don't they still fetch the ads but just limit the presentation of the ads? So it would be indistinguishable from someone who just does not click on the ads?

Most block the loading of the url that contains the ad content. The website owners rarely host the ads they're displaying. In that regard, it's very easy to detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.

Only if you own both the site and the ad network otherwise you'll be unable to tell if they made a request for the ad or not. There are also ways of getting false positives with that sort of test, for instance if for whatever reason the server that has the ad on it isn't reachable from the client (say a problem in one of the major backbones, or a bad DNS entry).

The usual approach I've seen sites take is they have some sort of "Please disable your ad-blocker" image that they load everywhere ads go, and then just overlay the ad image on top of that one when it loads.

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

#127

Post by ianlevesque »

skue wrote: post #97
bad_user wrote: post #45

I cannot verify the claims, but I'll state the reasons once again about why I'm not using ad blockers: 1) free websites and web services need revenue and as long as the ads are tasteful, I don't mind them 2) I actually want websites to annoy me with lots of stupid ads, as I want to stop using such websites, because I want to reward publishers that don't do that Ad blockers are trying to fix a symptom of the disease a…

Not all of us block ads because they are annoying to look at. They are also a very real threat to privacy because ad companies track us across multiple websites (yes, I block Google Analytics and other trackers as well). OTOH, I also feel tremendous sympathy towards websites trying to survive on ad revenue. I'm actually the type of person who still buys music to support artists. I don't know what the solution is. We…

Would you pay to subscribe to a service that paid the sites you use instead of them showing you ads?

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

#128

Post by lifeformed »

ianlevesque wrote: post #88
mtrimpe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started blocking ads less than a year ago because of YouTube's pre-roll advertisements, since I'm perfectly capable of filtering out text based ads but a format that requires me to watch the ad to be able to view the content without letting me pay them is a deal-breaker for me. Is it really that hard to let me pay a monthly fee to turn ads off? Google is serving the vast majority of ads online and they already have…

Exactly this. Everyone needs to offer the option to pay in some way. If we could pay for a bundle of all sites even better.

Someone should make a paid adblocker service that shares revenue with site owners. Site owners can opt in to get a share of the revenue, so that each time a visitor using the adblocker visits their site, the site owner gets paid an amount equivalent to the potential ad revenue from that visit. That means they could serve up a custom ad-less page that's designed to look nice sans ads.

Users get a good adblocker that they don't have to feel bad about using, and site owners get to sustain the revenue they would've lost.

Maybe it could provide more benefits than just ad blocking? Perhaps it would just be a "premium membership to the internet". Site owners can take even more revenue if they implement even more features. More web app options, custom styling options, social badges, etc. The more a user pays a month, the more features he gets all over the internet.

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

#129

Post by JoshTriplett »

ianlevesque wrote: post #127
skue wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of us block ads because they are annoying to look at. They are also a very real threat to privacy because ad companies track us across multiple websites (yes, I block Google Analytics and other trackers as well). OTOH, I also feel tremendous sympathy towards websites trying to survive on ad revenue. I'm actually the type of person who still buys music to support artists. I don't know what the solution is. We…

Would you pay to subscribe to a service that paid the sites you use instead of them showing you ads?

No. Not because I won't pay certain sites for their content (I subscribe to LWN, for instance), but because I don't want to pay some aggregating middleman service that by necessity can then track across all the sites I visit.

In principle I like the concept of paying a fixed amount per unit time and splitting that across the sites I care about. In practice I don't see any obvious privacy-respecting way to do that.

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

#130

Post by skue »

ianlevesque wrote: post #127
skue wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of us block ads because they are annoying to look at. They are also a very real threat to privacy because ad companies track us across multiple websites (yes, I block Google Analytics and other trackers as well). OTOH, I also feel tremendous sympathy towards websites trying to survive on ad revenue. I'm actually the type of person who still buys music to support artists. I don't know what the solution is. We…

Would you pay to subscribe to a service that paid the sites you use instead of them showing you ads?

Sure, I was always intrigued by the micro payments idea. Heck, if that we're the norm I wonder if it wouldn't promote better web content. I'd be more likely to spend more time on sites I wanted to support than the sensational sites I may feel guilty about having clicked through to.

But I don't think most folks think this way, so practically speaking I don't see micropayments ever working. Would love to be proven wrong.

Post reply on HN