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AdBlock Plus wins in court

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Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#51

Post by d_theorist »

Kenji wrote: post #39
uxp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love Ghostery, until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. If you want a suggestion for an alternative, I really don't have one. I'm currently using µBlock, which isn't bad, but requires a bit more setup than Ghostery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock

I also use µBlock. It made me realize what a huge crapload of JavaScript the websites include. On most sites, you can have like 70% of the external-domain content blocked and the site keeps working as intended. Hackernews is beautiful in that regard, literally just stuff from ycombinator.com and news.ycombinator.com. I love this simplicity.

Yes. It is refreshing - and sadly rare - to see Ghostery tell me 'No trackers found'.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#52

Post by lagadu »

honest_joe wrote: post #17
struppi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you switch channels on your TV when the commercials start and switch back when the show resumes? Blocking online ads is basically the same. i.e. perfectly legitimate. Only you hurt the creator more online, since the advertisers can now measure the views+clicks. Which is also perfectly fair - They should not have to pay for ads nobody sees. This would also be fair on TV - But there it's impossible to measure.

First of all I do not watch TV. I assume that's why netflix is so popular. Please pardon me i am not sure if it has an ads in it or not but i assumed since it's a content on demand it does not. Also simply blocking something because you can but you should not is cheating.

Cheating? How is it that controlling what my software, running in my hardware, running on my power does or does not do is cheating? Should I not have control over what's mine?

If a website finds that their business model became unsuited for modern times, it's their responsibility to change it, not mine.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#53

Post by tracker1 »

honest_joe wrote: post #12

This is sad day for content creators. If the site is full of ads you are not comfortable to view do NOT VISIT such sites again. It's stealing, it's manipulating the statistics. We can't get good content because corporations taught people to not pay for content and now we will not get good content because people will slice the income of those who use ads.

How about, if you really want to deliver ads, then sell first party ads delivered from your own servers with the content... nobody is stopping that, and unless you use css classes like "ad" or JavaScript to deliver said ads, then it likely won't get blocked.

I worked on an SPA website a few years ago that used a time-based billing model for advertising, The three adslots for the given user session were for the same advertiser, this required locally delivered ads, and a JS/http ping to establish between min and max display time recording... It worked fine, and even got through the ad blockers.

There's no reason a publisher cannot do the same. Just like there's no reason a random website I visit should force me to download questionable content from third parties unknown to even the publisher.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#55

Post by tracker1 »

eli wrote: post #47
tracker1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put a div tag with a class of "ad" on it... then test it's display style property 100ms after the load event... For that matter, wrap your primary content in a div with a class of "ad" ... then users won't even see the content, and you can replace it with a notice to disable adblock and refresh the page.

I tried that: https://github.com/elidickinson/ad-block-test Much harder to get right than you'd think and if you're a big site it's worse: the block lists will be updated to "whitelist" your test ad. It's difficult for publishers to even accurately measure what impact ad blocking is having on their business.

Funny, I had no problem detecting this on a site with several million unique visitors a month... Of course I did the detection against my actual ad tags in the page...

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#56

Post by a3n »

roma1n wrote: post #25
eli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually not easy to detect adblock use. Popular ad blockers actively try to evade detection. If the intent is to let publishers decide whether to allow adblock users or not, it should send an easily detectable flag.

Why would a piece of software on my machine needlessly be under remote control ?

It wouldn't control anything on your machine. It allows the web site to control whether they send content to you or not.

I use AB Edge. I've visited Reddit, they posted a "we notice you use an ad blocker, if you like us, please think about whitelisting us." They could have just refused to serve the content. Either way would have been acceptable; it's my browser and I control what I see, it's their content and they control where it goes.

In that case I whitelisted Reddit. Nothing on Reddit remote-controlled my machine, it just initiated a brief "conversation."

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#57

Post by andreasvc »

uxp wrote: post #32
d_theorist wrote: post #7

Good. Although I prefer Ghostery. The main thing for me isn't even blocking ads as such. The main thing is blocking the absurd amount of crappy javascript that clogs up my browser, in which I have no interest. I find the unfiltered web insufferable these days.

I used to love Ghostery, until I learned that their business model is to resell your browsing habits and profile back to advertisers. If you want a suggestion for an alternative, I really don't have one. I'm currently using µBlock, which isn't bad, but requires a bit more setup than Ghostery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock

disconnect.me is an alternative. That in combination with a hosts file works very well for me; especially because it uses much less memory compared to adblock.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#58

Post by imglorp »

eli wrote: post #42
summerdown2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about disabling javascript by default, and making things click-to-play? I ask because I think the line between "advert used for site finance," and "drive-by malware" can sometimes be blurry. For example: http://www.cnet.com/news/malware-delivered-by-yahoo-fox-goog... I think that when I click on a link I agree to see the content they provide. I'm not sure I really want to agree to third-party stuff wi…

Fair enough, but if your browser is susceptible to drive-by malware, you're going to have a bad time on the internet whether you block ads or not. I think hacked sites are a far more common malware vector than ads.

Ad providers are prime hacking targets because it's a vector to deliver malware to reputable sites showing reputable ads.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ad+network+hacked&t=ffnt

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#59

Post by profinger »

eli wrote: post #36

I don't read German, but I believe the main complaint in the case was AdBlock Plus charging money as part of its ad "whitelisting" service. ABP said it was to cover the cost of verifying the ads are safe and responsible. Publishers called it extortion (e.g. pay us this money if you want your ad impressions back).

IMO, if I downloaded something that is supposed to block the ads, I don't want the damn ads. I've not used ABP in a while but I'd be pretty pissed if it started loading ads again just because the people had paid for it. They had to figure out some way to make money, though, I guess.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#60

Post by a3n »

baldfat wrote: post #4

Personally I don't use Ad Blockers just due to the fact my own personal ethics feels I am stealing when I do use it. When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube. AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.

It's not that simple. Except for the simplest ones that might just be an image, ads are not just ads like in magazines and on TV.

Ads use your resources to download more content. They use your resources for animation and sound.

They also track you.

Content providers are free to not serve you content if they detect ad blockers. If they have trouble detecting ad blockers, they are free to not be in business.

They are free to move to a subscription model.

They are operating willingly on the current open web. It's not your problem.

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