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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#321

Post by sintaxi »

yellow_postit wrote: post #227
snowfield wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is way too much content. If your company can't turn a profit without selling ads and selling user data. Maybe it shouldn't exist.

What do you propose - more sponsored articles and product placement? Paying per site will ensure I hear fewer points of view on the news and other topics since it doesn't scale well currently.

Why do you assume you only receive accurate news if news agencies have a revenue stream? I would argue the opposite is true. Advertising increases the likelihood that your news in not honest and accurate.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#322

Post by beefield »

Goronmon wrote: post #311
beefield wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contrary to what people on HN believe, advertising is not inherently evil. Most people are perfectly fine with ads so long as they're not invasive. I would guess most people have this idea (in most cases illusion) that advertisers are not able to manipulate them. I do not have that illusion, and I do not like people that are manipulating me for their own benefit. I do not know if they are evil, but I think it is fa…

I do not know if they are evil, but I think it is fair for me to try to avoid those kind of people. This is a fine stance to have, but I don't see how it relates to the context of ad-blockers. It's a simple enough just to not visit websites that display advertisements. Why would you need an adblocker for that?

> Why would you need an adblocker for that?

Because there are websites with content other than advertisements I am interested in.

Now, I think Facebook, Google, other advertisers and content providers using these ad networks have made the (moral) rules of the game quite clear. They try to extract as much net value from every transaction with me as is even remotely legally and technically possible. And they make massive investments on the technology that is trying to maximize this value extraction. Why should I feel bad playing by the same rules they have created?

(Note that in practice I am not as ideological as my arguments here are. I have e.g. chosen to disable the adblocker for some websites instead of paying for subscription to support them somehow. Reason for this is the fact that it is much easier to turn off the adblocker than hassle with payments.)

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#323

Post by ublockdrama »

Sargos wrote: post #235
KORraN wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, uBlock Origin comes from original author of uBlock. Some time ago he said that he doesn't have time to develop Origin and passed project to other guy. Unfortunately, that guy didn't make any big changes in code (except adding himself as an author) and asked for donations. After quite big drama, original author came back, but he wasn't able to get back his project so he called it uBlock Origin.

Your comment is super confusing. Do you mean that he didn't have time to develop uBlock so then we went to make Origin? You wrote it the other way around. Which one does the original guy work on now, Origin?

the real reason, imho, was that gorhill got fed up of crappy bug reports and all the issue management hell. he forked and continued working with his own repo without ability to make issues. he probably hoped that this teenager had more energy for communicating with users and skills to merge commits back. someone probably know relevant issue numbers where drama was happening...

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#325

Post by thomasthomas »

rloc wrote: post #83
thclark wrote: post #36

uBlock Origin it is! Extensions: Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge

The only thing to do if you haven't already. uBlock is open source and does the job. This all adBlock making money by blocking ads and then showing their own ads is becoming ridiculous and unethical. So what does Adblock stand for now ?

seems like ad ransom. "we will block your ads but if we get money we will show ads"

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#326

Post by therealdrag0 »

ildoc wrote: post #34
RubyPinch wrote: post #16

https://acceptableads.com/en/ for anyone who was looking for it

there's no such thing as acceptable ads

Ads are a symbiotic relationship between content creators and salespeople. The viewer, hitherto had no voice. Many people are willing to put up with a certain level of acceptable ads in exchange for other's created content.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#327

Post by gorhill »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #135
thclark wrote: post #36

uBlock Origin it is! Extensions: Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/ublock/ Microsoft Edge: https://github.com/nikrolls/uBlock-Edge#microsoft-edge

I've been using both for a while, just uninstalled ABP on this news. Unfortunately, uBlock Origin adds several seconds to Firefox startup time.

> uBlock Origin adds several seconds to Firefox startup time

It loads quite fast on Firefox, see https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Launch-and-filter-lis... -- see "Setup time" graph, typically less than half a second on Firefox.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#328

Post by Grishnakh »

jwise0 wrote: post #251
bargl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to go out there and say, they don't have the right to poison you, but you don't have the right to their content... I fall in this weird spot with ads. I don't like them, they slow down the experience, they can have PORN on them (this happened to my brother the other day), they have little oversight and track you. Many things I do not approve of. What I DO approve of is paying content creators. And unless…

I think I agree with at least some of what you say. I feel bad viewing content from small blogs without "paying" for it. My current best compromise is that I run uBlock Origin with an exemption for Google, and then I use Contributor. It's still not a perfect solution. I give up a lot privacy that way, and in order to use Contributor, I have to give up some of the other uBlock features that I really like (in particula…

I'm all in favor of ad-blocking, but how on Earth are you "forced" to use Facebook and Twitter?

I don't even have a Twitter account, and never did. I don't give two shits what some celebrity has to say in some 160-character burst of text.

I do have a Facebook account, mainly to keep someone else from making one in my name, and also because it's used as an authentication mechanism for some services (like Tinder), but I don't actually spend any time there at all. Why would I? I don't care about seeing family photos for distant relatives or people I knew in high school, and I sure as hell don't want to read a bunch of wacko political BS, which is what most people seem to use the site for. If I want to keep up with friends or family, I use my telephone, email, or I visit them personally.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#329

Post by gorhill »

maxencecornet wrote: post #139
thesmallestcat wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using both for a while, just uninstalled ABP on this news. Unfortunately, uBlock Origin adds several seconds to Firefox startup time.

I though uBlock point was to be CPU/ram efficient ? That's even what they show in the chrome/firefox store images, it doesn't make much sense to me that it adds several seconds to Firefox startup time Am I missing something ?

> Am I missing something ?

Be skeptical of claims which come with no technical details whatsoever to help you reproduce it?

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#330

Post by cptskippy »

godshatter wrote: post #318
cptskippy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Ad is itself unethical. Ads are placed on pages to pay for the content. By blocking ads you are depriving the content creators of compensation for their work. Replacing Ads with other ads is worse because you're not only depriving a content creator of revenue but then profiting off of their work. You could argue that it amounts to theft.

Ads are placed on web pages in the hope that people will click on them and make them money. It's not unethical to instruct my browser not to download them any more than it is unethical to avoid the lady giving out free samples at the grocery store. If it means we go back to the days where people spent their own money to create pages because they were passionate about a subject, I'm fine with that. I miss that era. It…

> It's not unethical to instruct my browser not to download them any more than it is unethical to avoid the lady giving out free samples at the grocery store.

The difference is that you're not having someone sweep the grocery store and remove all free sample ladies before you enter it. Ignoring a free sample lady is akin to ignoring an ad on page.

The primary difference though is that the lady doesn't take a photograph of you, follow you around the store noting everything you stop to look out or put in your cart, and then follow you out to the parking lot and go to the next store with you.

I'm not saying that what content owners or advertisers do is right or ethical, just that at it's core blocking the ads is unethical as well.

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