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Adblock Plus now sells ads

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Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#371

Post by cptskippy »

xg15 wrote: post #358
cptskippy wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also make the argument that ads or ad networks are potentially dangerous. That doesn't make Ad Blocking ethical, just justified. The ethical thing to do would be to either not use an Ad Blocker or not visit sites that are ad supported, neither of which is realistic if I'm being honest. I think we're at a very Napster moment for content websites.

So ad-blocking is unethical. Not ad-blocking is dangerous. Not using the services is impractical. So which is it then?

That's a choice for the individual to make but lets stop pretending that Ad Blocking is ethical. It's about as ethical as Napster was, but given the alternatives it's the obvious choice.

Additionally you can use things like Patreon or Google Contributor.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#372

Post by JulianMorrison »

astrodust wrote: post #266
JulianMorrison wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a conflict of values between users and the devs. - Users want ads to just go away, period, the end. - The devs want ads to be nice . So they swat down the nasty ones and permit the nice ones. Ransomware was probably the wrong way to do that, but I can see why it was superficially appealing. "We check your ads for niceness, and then permit them. We won't give our effort away for free", being the idea behind it…

I don't want ads to go away. I want ads that are relevant, or at least aren't insultingly stupid. The utter shit people run on major sites these days is so patently offensive ("Single Mom's Weight Loss Trick!", "Get Government Money Tomorrow!") that I keep a blocker on for my own sanity. I'm consistently appalled at the extremely low quality advertising that supposedly reputable properties put on their sites. Give me…

They are optimizing their ads for effectiveness. Patently offensive garbage ads weed out all but the most gullible of customers. Show them to enough people and the idiots come flowing in, cards at the ready to buy miracles and snake oil.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#373

Post by tedmiston »

majewsky wrote: post #365
tedmiston wrote: post #69

If you think about it, it's like responsive design for your ads. The "responsive" case being to show the nicer ads and the default case being to show the normal obtrusive ads (depending on the user's level of ad blocking). I'm not saying I outright support, but some ads are useful — The Deck is one example. Amazon's "people who purchased this also purchased" is (kind of) another.

I wouldn't think of "people who purchased this also purchased" as an ad. An ad is characterized as not relevant to the current activity, but these recommendations usually are (except when they are hilarious, but that's another thing).

Yeah, the more I think of it, I tend to agree. Just because it's an unsolicited recommendation that influences your purchasing decision doesn't make it an ad.

I'm not quite sure how to categorize their affinity analysis in general. Perhaps it could be thought of as a cross-sell / upsell / impulse buy, depending on the item recommended.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#374

Post by Dylan16807 »

cptskippy wrote: post #330
godshatter wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 photogra…

I'm not having someone alter the web page on the server. I'm declining certain files. The original analogy is much better than your version. At most I have an assistant declining for me. But I didn't damage the displays or affect anyone else.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#375

Post by stincity »

Grishnakh wrote: post #368
stincity wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blanket block every ad (or whatever the list currently has). If a site has ads, I'll manually block those too. I'll go into their code and find their ad service url and add it into my list. I'll do whatever it takes to remove them, regardless if its simple or not. I do not want to see them and I will continue to visit those sites. I just wish a good adblocker would come to mobile because I'd use it there as well.

>I just wish a good adblocker would come to mobile because I'd use it there as well. That's been done for a long time: uBlock Origin for Firefox has been around for ages, and Firefox has had an Android version for quite some time.

I only ever used chrome, never thought about using a different browser on android.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#376

Post by gcb0 »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #360
gcb0 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except by nice ads they mean anyone willing to pay to get whitelisted

Is this actually true? Can you give an example of a dumb or distracting or obnoxiously obtrusive ad that got whitelisted for pay?

sadly no. i know NDA are void in california, but california also has employment at will.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#377

Post by blakeyrat »

detaro wrote: post #280
blakeyrat wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd support a tool which gave me the opposite of that: I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on , not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusiv…

You can do that with uBlock. Have blocklists configured and activated. Then you can set a global "allow all external resources" rule, which ignores the blocklists. You can then deactivate that global rule on a per-site basis, directly from the extension menu. (It's less confusing to use than it sounds ;))

What you're telling me is it's not designed around that use at all but it has a really strange and weird workaround that kind of does something slightly similar maybe...

No, how about I use an actual product that does what I actually need? Problem is: none exist. The kind of jerks who write ad-blocking programs can't even imagine a universe in which a person may not want to block every ad everywhere ever.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#378

Post by blakeyrat »

mikeash wrote: post #298
blakeyrat wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you eat a meal at a restaurant, they also cannot dictate that you must tip the waitstaff. But if you don't, you're a jackass.

That's only because it's a nearly universal social convention in places where tipping is expected. We don't tip because the business is set up to expect it, we tip because society expects it. Businesses are set up to expect it because that's the universal social convention, not the other way around. If suddenly a big social movement arose that condemned tipping, the landscape would shift, restaurants would stop accep…

In most places in the US, that is not true. The minimum wage of someone who receives tips is lower than the normal minimum wage, specifically because "the business" is set up to expect tips.

Now I don't know where you live, but. I was speaking from the US perspective.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#379

Post by Nadya »

blakeyrat wrote: post #247
yellow_postit wrote: post #223

Is there a middle ground between block all ads and each user individually white-listing sites? Anyone which produced a curated list of "allowed" ads would hit a similar narrative.

I'd support a tool which gave me the opposite of that: I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on , not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusiv…

>I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on, not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusive site.

If the ads are being served from the same ad network - then you will be served more or less the same shitty ads you didn't want to see on Site A when you visit Site B. Because it is the ad network tracking you and deciding which ads you see with very little, if any, input from Sites A or B.

Furthermore, since advertisements are a security risk they should be blacklisted by default and only whitelist sites you trust. Which is still no guarantee you won't get infected by the 3rd party Ad Network of that site.

Re: Adblock Plus now sells ads

#380

Post by blakeyrat »

Nadya wrote: post #379
blakeyrat wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd support a tool which gave me the opposite of that: I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on , not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusiv…

>I'd like to see the ads at first to give the benefit of the doubt, but then be able to blacklist the site if it turned out I didn't like them. When I say "blacklist the site" I mean the domain I'm viewing the content on, not the domain the ads are being served on. Otherwise you're "punishing" poor sods who just happen to be using the same ad network as an abusive site. If the ads are being served from the same ad ne…

> If the ads are being served from the same ad network - then you will be served more or less the same shitty ads you didn't want to see on Site A when you visit Site B.

Not true.

> Because it is the ad network tracking you and deciding which ads you see with very little, if any, input from Sites A or B.

I don't care about "tracking". I think that's extremely overblown paranoia.

> Furthermore, since advertisements are a security risk they should be blacklisted by default and only whitelist sites you trust.

That is your opinion; I do not share it.

Regardless of what you "think" I should be doing, the simple fact is that I want a program that does X, and a program that does X does not exist.

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