Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

[Wladimir Palant]

The feature announcement is here: https://adblockplus.org/development-bui ... block-plus

[fanboy]

Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising

Amusing, I'm surprised only "25%" is against ads, given the reason for using adblock in the first place. I'm not sure why this approach needed to happen in the first place. Given the high amount of people using the extension.. why would install an adblocker if it wasn't for its great blocking features.

However, advertisers will only be interested in switching to better ways of advertising if the majority of Adblock Plus users has this feature enabled.

Advertisers won't know the difference either way, having off by default would be better imo.. wouldn't make the slightest change for advertisers (and privacy within ads)

I fear the amount of Adblock plus reports that'll come in for missing ad requests, with this feature enabled.. With it being hosted on https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/ is it "supplement" to Easylist and maintained by Easylist? looks like a conflict of interest

[Wladimir Palant]

Amusing, I'm surprised only "25%" is against ads, given the reason for using adblock in the first place. I'm not sure why this approach needed to happen in the first place. Given the high amount of people using the extension.. why would install an adblocker if it wasn't for its great blocking features.

We have a very high number of users despising distractions through ads (animations and sounds). See https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-pl ... lts-part-2 - "Why do you use Adblock Plus?"

Advertisers won't know the difference either way

If this feature doesn't result in a measurable difference then it will simply die immediately - nobody will want to cooperate with us unless there are some measurable results. But I doubt that. Either way, we will know soon.

With it being hosted on https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/ is it "supplement" to Easylist and maintained by Easylist?

It is neither. easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org probably needs to be renamed given that is stands for our mirror network and is no longer used by EasyList exclusively.

[alberto]

How can I see what you are allowing?

In the interest of transparency, are you planning to describe the company / domains enabled via $sitekey at a later stage? e.g. as a comment in the file

Do you have questions or suggestions concerning this list? Feel free to contact us.

Out of curiosity, how much demand to whitelist ads are you expecting? Does this mainly rely on enabling advertisement networks that do not publish annoying ads, as opposed to enabling ads on individual websites?

[Ares2]

In the interest of transparency, are you planning to describe the company / domains enabled via $sitekey at a later stage?

This. Well, except for the "at a later stage", the intransparency must not be allowed in the first place, it will be even harder to get rid of it later (agreements, laziness, lack of pressure, ...).

[Wladimir Palant]

Out of curiosity, how much demand to whitelist ads are you expecting? Does this mainly rely on enabling advertisement networks that do not publish annoying ads, as opposed to enabling ads on individual websites?

We hope that the demand will be high

The problem when dealing with individual websites: there are lots of websites and particularly the smaller ones cannot control the kind of advertising that is being displayed. So it would obviously be easier to get agreements with advertising networks (ones that either aren't publishing annoying ads or are willing to try it). AFAIK we currently only have one such advertising network talking to us, rest of them are large websites. We'll see how it goes...

[Jan Schejbal]

Thank you for this feature! I was suggesting a self-enforced codex of "fair" (non-intrusive) ads for some time now (blog post in german), including a adblock white list.

The rules you suggested sound great (especially the mandatory DNT suggested for later) and cover most of my suggested codex (I assume that any kind of pop-up is also covered).

One of reasons why I use adblock is additional protection from malware spread trough malicious ads. Thus, I would suggest a rule that ad servers MUST re-encode all images (to prevent exploits against the renderers) and MUST NOT allow any active content (e.g. javascript) to be specified by the advertiser.

I would also suggest to add a limit on ad file size and formats (if not already done - allow only JPG, PNG, maybe GIF, never ever SWF). This would make it more probable that users with slow or pay-per-megabyte-connections will not disable the "acceptable ads".

All these rules do not need to be enforced by technical means - if the publisher/ad provider violates them, he gets reported and loses the privilege of being on the whitelist.

[Guest]

Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising

Amusing, I'm surprised only "25%" is against ads, given the reason for using adblock in the first place. I'm not sure why this approach needed to happen in the first place. Given the high amount of people using the extension.. why would install an adblocker if it wasn't for its great blocking features.

Yes I think it's a stretch to justify making acceptable advertising opt-out based on a claim that "only 25% of Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising".

I guess this 25% comes from the 24% of surveyed users who declared that an important reason they use ABP is "ideological reasons". Not only did another 24% state that this was a somewhat important reason, I don't think the ideological question truly captures the "against ads" sentiment.

Bold colors can be just as distracting as animation.

[Wladimir Palant]

I guess this 25% comes from the 24% of surveyed users who declared that an important reason they use ABP is "ideological reasons". Not only did another 24% state that this was a somewhat important reason, I don't think the ideological question truly captures the "against ads" sentiment.

No, that number is confirmed by answers to other questions (yes, I need to finally publish the last part of the results).

[lewisje]

In the interest of transparency, are you planning to describe the company / domains enabled via $sitekey at a later stage?

This. Well, except for the "at a later stage", the intransparency must not be allowed in the first place, it will be even harder to get rid of it later (agreements, laziness, lack of pressure, ...).

So far the only use of $sitekey to whitelist an ad-network is being used for Sedo domain parking, as mentioned in the exception list itself: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus. ... nrules.txt

Code: Select all

! Text ads on Sedo parking domains
@@$sitekey=MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBANnylWw2vLY4hUn9w06zQKbhKBfvjFUCsdFlb6TdQhxb9RXWXuI4t31c+o8fYOv/s8q1LGPga3DE1L/tHU4LENMCAwEAAQ

[na]

Sorry for the stupid question, will the white list be modified by third party software?

[Ares2]

as mentioned in the exception list itself

Comments have indeed been added now (ask and you shall receive ).

Sorry for the stupid question, will the white list be modified by third party software?

What do you mean by that? The whitelist is maintained by Eyeo/Adblock Plus. Also see https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

[na]

Sorry for the stupid question, will the white list be modified by third party software?

What do you mean by that? The whitelist is maintained by Eyeo/Adblock Plus. Also see https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

Oh I just think if the list is downloaded into computer, is it really safe?Maybe it's a weird question..

[Wladimir Palant]

@na: All your Adblock Plus preferences are stored on your computer and could theoretically be manipulated. Third-party software could also just uninstall Adblock Plus. Or kill your Firefox profile so that you are forced to use Internet Explorer. Please keep your computer safe or bad things will happen. I particularly recommend keeping your installed applications up-to-date.

[DaemonFC]

@na: All your Adblock Plus preferences are stored on your computer and could theoretically be manipulated. Third-party software could also just uninstall Adblock Plus. Or kill your Firefox profile so that you are forced to use Internet Explorer. Please keep your computer safe or bad things will happen. I particularly recommend keeping your installed applications up-to-date.

I decided to switch ad blocking to software you don't control. Once software gets away with attacking the user like yours has done, more is probably in the pipeline.

Someone please fork Adblock Plus.