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

Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

palant.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#71

Post by brianwawok »

m12k wrote: post #61
Fnoord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

> ABP wasn't the first Sure, and the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone either, but it did bring the concept to mainstream attention. Same goes for ABP

No I think the Palm Pilot did that.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#72

Post by mistercow »

aphextron wrote: post #62

I'm confused as to what ABP does that is more useful than just adding a blocked list to your /etc/hosts file. Moreso, as to how someone could work on it for 12 years. Exactly what am I missing here?

I don't know much about the specifics of ABP's history, but there's an obvious arms race component to ad blocking that could keep a developer busy indefinitely.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#73

Post by Fnoord »

m12k wrote: post #61
Fnoord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

> ABP wasn't the first Sure, and the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone either, but it did bring the concept to mainstream attention. Same goes for ABP

We're discussing innovation versus invention.

You're sure that wasn't adblock? ABP is from 2006, and installing it wasn't easier or harder than adblock.

As for iPhone, that innovated the touchscreen, specifically it was the first (US-)mainstream application of a mobile device using a capacitive touchscreen. I wonder if we should also claim it innovated the removal of the user replaceable battery or the 3.5 mm jacket.

Furthermore, popularity isn't a good measurement of quality but that goes without saying.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#74

Post by djur »

aphextron wrote: post #62

I'm confused as to what ABP does that is more useful than just adding a blocked list to your /etc/hosts file. Moreso, as to how someone could work on it for 12 years. Exactly what am I missing here?

1) There's a lot of cases where blocking an entire domain is either excessive or insufficient -- important assets can be located on the same domain as ads. Adblockers can target specific files and specific elements on the page. They also provide much better ease of use for the average user than updating a hosts file.

2) The list of ad domains, URLs, and elements has to be constantly updated. The plugin has to be kept up to date with changes in browsers. Advertisers occasionally come up with new techniques to bypass or detect adblockers, so those need to be worked around.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#75

Post by digi_owl »

Ndymium wrote: post #45
digi_owl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also Vivaldi, funded by the same guy that formed co-founded Opera back in the day. https://vivaldi.com/ Sadly it is not much more than a reskinned Chrome, same with current Opera and Brave. BTW, Opera offered "tabs" before it was a thing by making use of MDI. And it carried forward until they scrapped Presto. Similarly Vivaldi right now offers to split the viewport into multiple areas to show tabs side by si…

Vivaldi is much more than a reskin of Chrome though. It has customisable UI (with color themes), vertical tabs, tree style tabs, tiled tabs, tab stacks, mouse gestures, tab hibernation, session saving for later, reader mode (and a bunch of others) builtin, speed dial, custom history page, web panels (a docked website on the side of the browser). Haven't used Chrome in a while though so not sure if some of those have…

I call them reskins because they can't really affect anything beyond the UI.

For example Google has implemented a more restrictive policy regarding Flash in recent Chrome releases, and it has found its way into said browsers basically unmodified.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#77

Post by munchbunny »

def_true_false wrote: post #37
Fnoord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

> doesn't have a shady track record Care to expand on that?

A couple years ago, on top of their acceptable ads program that was more or less pay-to-bypass, Eeyo announced that it was going to start an ad exchange to let people buy placements on spots that ABP blocked.

In effect ABP was forcing itself in as a middle man and taking a fee from both the site owner and the advertiser. As an example, if I, your local newspaper, sell a placement to your local car dealership, ABP comes in and says "people won't see the car ads, but if you split the revenue you were going to get with me, I'll sell those placements to someone else for you." So let's say 10% of my visitors use ABP. I can now either lose it or get back some smaller percentage of it by paying ABP.

That's one DDoS short of a digital protection racket.

In addition, when Eeyo made that announcement, they also announced that they were working with AppNexus and Google on the new exchange, which just wasn't true. Though I believe Google does pay to get some ads into the acceptable ads program.

If you're going to be in the business of blocking ads, stay out of the business of selling ads.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#78

Post by wnevets »

Fnoord wrote: post #28
mgbmtl wrote: post #21

Many comments are bitterly unfair against ABP. Wladimir/Eyeo changed how we use the web, gave us means to fight back against abusive advertising. They built a business model to make the extension sustainable and find a strategy to legitimate themselves, fight in the courts, etc. Not to mention that ABP never tried to close the market. Alternatives were easy to build thanks to EasyList. Today there are many alternativ…

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

It was the first meaningful adblocker for me.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#79

Post by squeaky-clean »

hood_syntax wrote: post #3
kleptako wrote: post #2

What is even the point of Adblock Plus now? uBlock Origin seems so much better

It's better than nothing for the non-expert users who don't know it's worse than other options available right now. Pretty much the only worthy use case for it

Yep, it just has a much better name than uBlock Origin.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#80

Post by squeaky-clean »

Jonnax wrote: post #4
kleptako wrote: post #2

What is even the point of Adblock Plus now? uBlock Origin seems so much better

You're asking what the point in developing alternatives are? Microsoft said the web was done at Internet Explorer 6. It looks like it was also rewritten for webextensions from that blog post.

> Microsoft said the web was done at Internet Explorer 6.

Yeah? And this is like OP asking "Now that Edge exists, what's the point of IE 6?"

Post reply on HN