Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
gabranth
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by gabranth »

anonymous74100 wrote:No one with at least a half of brain would use the word "cyber", especially when describing their line of work. Only marketing people use that word.

uk gov likes using that word XD http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resourc ... y-strategy
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EnviroChem
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by EnviroChem »

gabranth wrote:
EnviroChem wrote: Bull hockey.

First the biggest ad companies might be a big targets by those with malicious intent, but they also have the most at stake to make sure their networks do not become compromised. They also have the most resources to prevent their networks from becoming carriers for malware. If Google's ad network every became host to malware, it would be a major news event in the tech world, yet you never hear of an incident of Google's ad network distributing malware. It really is the small, not so scrupulous ad networks, where malware is more likely to show up simply because they are less likely to put the procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen. By far, the biggest source of malware on the Internet, probably come from people downloading and installing crap on their computers from sources they probably shouldn't be trusting.
google hasn't been targeted?? obviously you don't read the news http://www.h-online.com/security/news/i ... 42208.html
1) The linked article has nothing to do with Google ads, it is about bad websites in Google's search result.

2) I didn't say Google hadn't been targeted by those with malicious intent, they are targeted all the time. What I said was that they have very good systems in place to make sure their ad network doesn't deliver ads that try to install malware.

In regards to Flash, you'll get no argument from me about blocking Flash, I've already said I block Flash objects (all Flash objects not just ads). Flash is and always has been a horrible technology. In the early years, poorly written flash objects crashed my browsers on more than one occasion. Even today an occasional badly written Flash object could consume so much resources that it would grind my computer to a slow crawl. The sooner Flash dies the better. I will not shed a tear when it is gone. Flash is also the most pervasive privacy threat on the Internet, because so many sites use it just to deliver Flash cookies, which the average user has no clue how to delete.
anonymous74100 wrote:
SpaceFuzz wrote:So I went to the site to look for a donation button (which I now see is in the ABP dropdown menu as a "Contribute" button).
Since ABP is owned/developed by a company, is it even legal for it to ask/accept donations?
Yes, it is, the donations just get reported as revenue to tax authorities and the donations aren't tax deductible for whomever made the donation.
anonymous74100
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by anonymous74100 »

EnviroChem wrote:Yes, it is, the donations just get reported as revenue to tax authorities and the donations aren't tax deductible for whomever made the donation.
Is that just your opinion or have you actually read the German law that regulates it?
(Googling the location you specified in your forum profile reveals you're an American, so I feel compelled to question your knowledge of German law. Despite how much the the Americans want to write other country laws, that actually doesn't happen that often.)
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EnviroChem
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by EnviroChem »

anonymous74100 wrote:
EnviroChem wrote:Yes, it is, the donations just get reported as revenue to tax authorities and the donations aren't tax deductible for whomever made the donation.
Is that just your opinion or have you actually read the German law that regulates it?
(Googling the location you specified in your forum profile reveals you're an American, so I feel compelled to question your knowledge of German law. Despite how much the the Americans want to write other country laws, that actually doesn't happen that often.)
I don't see why it would be different. Wladimir is "selling" a product, only the consumer gets to set the price they are willing to pay for it, whether it be nothing or something. In the end it is up to Wladimir to make sure he is in compliance with local tax laws. It isn't something we need to worry about. If he is in violation with local laws then it will be him that gets in trouble, not those who donated to him. Just don't try to claim it as a charitable tax write off on your own taxes (if you have such tax write offs).
DeoDomuique
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 7:34 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by DeoDomuique »

Hey Wladimir, I'd like to ask... If I'm not mistakenly, when you update ABP and you've a Privacy-List already, it shouldn't opt you in for "allow non-intrusive ads", right?

Τhis applies only to normal 'EasyPrivacy' list? Because, I had 'EasyPrivacy without International Filters', but the feature was enabled by default on the transition 1.3.10 -> 2.0.1.

Also, I got a full backup of my lists. When I tried to restore the file on a new installation of 'Nightly', again, it got enabled ( while I had the feature clearly disabled )... For me it's not a problem, but I have 4 nephews and when I send them my backups to load them on their PCs, you understand... I manage their PCs. The first thing I do on all of them, I install a clean copy of Fx + ABP so far, nothing else. This makes it just a little more complicated.
Pete

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Pete »

anonymous74100 wrote:
SpaceFuzz wrote:So I went to the site to look for a donation button (which I now see is in the ABP dropdown menu as a "Contribute" button).
Since ABP is owned/developed by a company, is it even legal for it to ask/accept donations?
What fantasy legal system in the entire world are you basing this conclusion on?

Mozilla is a company and Mozilla ask/accept donations. So do 1000's of other companies.
anonymous74100
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by anonymous74100 »

Pete wrote:Mozilla is a company and Mozilla ask/accept donations. So do 1000's of other companies.
"Mozilla Foundation" accepts donations, not the corporate subsidiary "Mozilla Corporation".
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pirlouy
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by pirlouy »

anonymous74100 wrote:Since ABP is owned/developed by a company, is it even legal for it to ask/accept donations?
OMG. Of course, it's not provocation ?
You have nothing to care about the answer (or go ask on another specialist forum) so stop trolling please.
TomTrottier
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by TomTrottier »

I suggest good ads are:
- on far right side on landscape screens
- appear on bottom on portrait screens, then disappear on scrolling (eg, smart phones)
- use muted colours rather than primary

Rather than complicated discovery methods, i suggest AdBlockPlus prescribe exactly what ad methods are acceptable and easily recognizable and disallow all else.

tOM
TomTrottier
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by TomTrottier »

After reading a few of the pages, I realise that "unobtrusive" ads are determined by site rather than by method. GIven the millions of sites out there, I suggest this would become a LOT of work to both set up and monitor.

That's why I suggest prescribing Methods which any site can use should they want to escape the censorship that AdBlockPlus users want.

In fact, you could let users decide on various methods via checkboxes, eg:
☑ forbid bright colours
☑ forbid ads except in right column
☑ forbid over-bright images
☑ forbid ad images
☑ forbid any scripts
☑ forbid ...
depending on what methods you can easily recognize - and prescribe to advertisers. (yeah, harder than site filtering...)

As for the acceptability of ANY ads, I suggest that most people wouldn't mind pertinent ads, especially considering that:
- they may give useful access information for a purchase (or info) which otherwise would be tedious to find
- they finance the sites they are looking at! Many sites would not exist without ad revenue.
I often get a newspaper FOR THE ADS - ads can be useful information about prices and availability, especially locally.

Determined ad-blockers: turn the "acceptable-ads" checkmark off and have a good HOSTS file(mine has 36k entries on an XP system).

To help ad blockers, have a right click on an "acceptable" ad present the "acceptable-ads" preference checkmark box as well as file/site filter boxes, and also allow them to send apparent violations (yeah, list the rules) to you. You also need to separate Plus filters from personal filters so you can leave the personal filters in action - if this is not done already.

Instead of "acceptable ads" (who's accepting? why?), I suggest using the term "non-obtrusive" ads which describes what you really mean.

tOM
LorenzoC

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by LorenzoC »

@TomTrottier:
I guess you haven't got the point:
ABP have always allowed users to define their own blocking and un-blocking rules.
Then to decide what advertisement to allow and what sites to support through advertisement.
Nothing has changed so far.
The only difference is this new subscription which is enabled by default and contains some un-blocking rules.
Those rules are related to "partner advertisers".

So it is not a matter of giving people the chance to decide, they always had that chance.
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

LorenzoC wrote:@TomTrottier:
I guess you haven't got the point:
ABP have always allowed users to define their own blocking and un-blocking rules.
Then to decide what advertisement to allow and what sites to support through advertisement.
Nothing has changed so far.
The only difference is this new subscription which is enabled by default and contains some un-blocking rules.
Those rules are related to "partner advertisers".

So it is not a matter of giving people the chance to decide, they always had that chance.
That is not true.

What has changed is that the default behavior of AdBlock Plus no longer blocks out advertising.

This is a serious issue for those with limited technical experience or knowledge of the plugin.

Many non-technical people have enough trouble installing the extension and selecting one subscription. Expecting them to read the documentation and open up the preferences to make a change to the ABP configuration is beyond them.

Yesterday I spoke with one of these users who had been running an ABP install of mine for years. He was not happy about the advertising but his assumption was that advertising was getting better at sneaking through. His assumption was that the ads he didn't ask for were just something he had to live with.

The solution is for all users to gain a masterful level of technological competence and RTFM. That is not the real world.

The average person on the street expects a product with an intuitive name which just works. That is why Apple is worth $364 billion.
LorenzoC

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by LorenzoC »

@Anti-Ad:
ABP never had something like a "default behavior". If you leave it alone it does NOTHING.
You need to load one or more subscription(s) and then it is up to the subscription maintainer to decide what ABP does or does not.
The "acceptable advertisement" is just another subscription.
I could publish a "I love betting advertisement" subscription any time and let people who love betting to subscribe it.
Or a "I want to support site A, B and C" subscription, or even a "I hate Mario Bros" subscription.

So you should write "the default behavior of most popular/suggested subscriptions was to block any kind of advertisement, while now there is one, enabled by default, that allows some advertisement".

But you see, this happens for the same reason subscriptions exist.
People don't want to learn how to use ABP, then they need subscriptions, then they get whatever comes with subscriptions.

I could care less about it.
My only doubts are about the fact that supporting sites through advertisement is not a CHOICE, it is enforced over people right because they are dumb.
You can see it in two ways, some say it is meant to make the Web a better place, some say it is meant to exploit people's dumbness to rise money.
metaflesh
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 7:07 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by metaflesh »

It's called Adblock. There is no such thing as acceptable advertising. This feature should be removed immediately. Failing that, it be an opt-in option not an opt-out option.
tommorris
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by tommorris »

Just so everyone is aware, I've started a branch of Adblock Plus that will track developments but will have the "acceptable ads" feature removed by default. I've cheekily called it "Adblock++".

It's available at http://code.tommorris.org/adblock - it's literally just me taking ten minutes to undo the changes in source control that added the new bug/feature. There's an (unsigned) xpi in the Downloads section of the repository, but I haven't changed any metadata. I'm just testing it on my machines and if there's any interest, I'll try and keep it up to date. My intention is to just track Adblock Plus development and hopefully make an Adblock++ release shortly after each Adblock Plus release. But I don't really know anything about Firefox plugin development or publishing things on addons.mozilla.org, so I'll have to figure that out.

The nice thing with open source is that you can go from snarking about something on Reddit to removing the non-feature very quickly. :D

The reason I fixed it is because I don't like the fact that it is opt-out. Non-technical users like my parents are just gonna blast through the setup when they first install it without really reading it and then they'll start complaining to me when they see ads even though they've supposedly got an ad blocker installed. Not doing what it says on the tin, however you dress it up, is bad for users. I'm sad that Adblock team's response when presented with community feedback (even if it is strident and angry) is to cover their ears and write dismissive blog posts. Oh well. They are doing what they think is best.

I thank them for all the hard work they've done and all the bandwidth and privacy intruding crap Adblock Plus has saved me from so far, and I hope they carry on developing it in the future.
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