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Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

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Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#21

Post by miah_ »

Adblock Edge, since it doesn't contain the 'paid for exemptions' (aka ads).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

"Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature. Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package "http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tg... created by Wladimir Palant."

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#22

Post by mhaymo »

diminoten wrote: post #3

Ooh, whitelisting of ads via partnerships. That's shady as fuck for an ad blocking company.

It does feel shady, but on the other hand I can't really argue with their logic:

- ads are an important revenue stream on the web, so allow unintrusive/inoffensive ads by default

- to do this, companies need to agree to keep all ads under a certain URL pattern "unintrusive" by ABP's definition

- investigating and enforcing the nature of the ads in the whitelist costs money, so make this service free for "small to medium" businesses but charge large ones.

Companies may be hurt by people choosing to block ads, but they're not hurt by Adblock Plus offering them a chance to have their ads unblocked. And users aren't hurt either, as if they don't like the whitelisting they can simply turn it off. It seems to me that if you're ok with adblocking, there's no reason to protest ABP's whitelisting practices.

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#23

Post by mhaymo »

miah_ wrote: post #21

Adblock Edge, since it doesn't contain the 'paid for exemptions' (aka ads). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/ "Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature. Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 s…

There's a setting in Adblock Plus that allows you to turn the "unintrusive ads" whitelist off. You don't need a separate add-on. I haven't felt the need to change the setting.

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#24

Post by leephillips »

Theodores wrote: post #15
leephillips wrote: post #4

Privoxy.

I think you are right. However not a lot of people use privoxy compared to the many users of adblock-whatever. Also there aren't many people putting together their own squid3 build with custom list of sites to block. Neither of these tools take that much effort to setup on a linux machine if you know what you are doing and have a rough idea of how the internet works. Consequently, for people that cannot be bothered t…

Everything you say is quite sensible. I mentioned privoxy here because obviously a large fraction of the HN audience would be comfortable setting it up.

It's worth at least knowing about because of its generality: it filters and transforms the incoming data before it gets to your browser, so it's irrelevant which browser you're using. It can run on your local machine or you can put it on a server and connect through an ssh tunnel, bypassing web filters and snooping (very good for frequent travelers). When used remotely it can compensate for slow local connections by, for example, compressing images.

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#26

Post by miah_ »

mhaymo wrote: post #23
miah_ wrote: post #21

Adblock Edge, since it doesn't contain the 'paid for exemptions' (aka ads). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/ "Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature. Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 s…

There's a setting in Adblock Plus that allows you to turn the "unintrusive ads" whitelist off. You don't need a separate add-on. I haven't felt the need to change the setting.

Ya, I'd rather not give them money if their policy is to allow some ads if given $.

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#27

Post by wernercd »

aen0 wrote: post #11
beaumartinez wrote: post #5

I've posted this on previous ad blocking threads, and I'll post it again because I think it's very relevant— > "Adblock without the plus" isn't the original Adblock (from which Adblock Plus was forked), it's an extension created for Google Chrome once Google Chrome enabled support for extensions. Very disingenuous name. It piggy-backed on the work already done for Adblock Plus (for Firefox). > Adblock Plus for Google…

I highly recommends HTTPS Switchboard or uBlock (same author). They are both faster and better than any Adblocker out there.

This looks like something worth playing with. How does this overlay with other tools like Ghostery? Are there any other tools worth mentioning?

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#28

Post by WorldWideWayne »

Oh, I heard something like this on Reddit and I still got them confused because I started using "Adblock" instead of "Adblock Plus". Reading this today I realize that I should have been using "Plus".

I think I'm going to abandon both of them and try out some of the alternatives listed here (ublock, http switchboard).

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#29

Post by valarauca1 »

nkozyra wrote: post #20
diminoten wrote: post #3

Ooh, whitelisting of ads via partnerships. That's shady as fuck for an ad blocking company.

The argument is that they're not blocking all ads, but they're blocking ads of poor quality, are overtly disruptive (ostensibly the name of the game in advertising) or are potentially harmful to users. Which is why you can opt in/out of things like Google Adwords.

They aren't is the problem.

Adblock Plus has created a group of 'guide lines', companies who agree to follow their guide lines will have their ad's hosted.

The problem is every company does not want to work directly the Adblock Plus. So a company (Pagefair) created adblock plus get around as a service, where if you work with them they get your ads around adblock by registering with Pagefair and adblock plus signing off on 99.5% of all all pagefair ads.

Basically adblock is attempting to create a standard for ads, or at least sells that they are. The problem is the volume of ads that PageFair hosts are beyond the review of single entity. There is no intensive to review these ads, as it would hurt their income AND require more labor (or at least require an analytic investment).

Ultimately all that Adblock Plus does is give Eyeo a monopoly on ads.

Re: Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

#30

Post by wernercd »

freshyill wrote: post #10
callesgg wrote: post #8

I have a long /etc/host file with many of the worst tracking/ad services that i have found. Blocks of a very large portion of the stuff that i do not like.

I would love to see this list! Could you post it in a Gist or somewhere?

http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman

Good tool for adding lists to your hosts file.

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