Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

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EnviroChem
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by EnviroChem »

andhrooy wrote:I once saw a website that did have acceptable ads it was very simple

If you hovered your cursor over a piece of text or picture a definition of the word would pop up.

If you double clicked on a piece of text or picture an advert would appear of a place where to purchase or find out more about the word you just double clicked on.

This was non intrusive and to me was very good.

These are the only kinds of advertising I consider acceptable. Any other kind, just adds more to the amount you download by viewing a web page.
Even these types of ads increase the amount of data downloaded when a page is loaded. Sometimes these types of ad scripts can actually require more bandwidth than a simple graphical banner ad. It all depends upon how efficient the JavaScript is that writes those links into the webpage. A well designed webpage makes sure that the content loads before the ads so that users can still fully use the content of a page even if there is a delay in loading ads.

Although there are exceptions (like smart phones) the vast majority of users do not pay for Internet service by how much bandwidth they consume. Instead they are on flat rate plans. Thus the biggest concern about bandwidth bloat is making sure that the ads don't negatively impact how long the content of a page takes to load. This includes causing the browser to redraw the page due to an ad object suddenly pushing content around.
Pete

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Pete »

LorenzoC wrote:@Pete:
The fact that ABP now partners with advertisers is not the end of the world.
That doesn't mean automatically it is also a good thing and we should party.
Like everything else in life, nothing is either black or else it is white. This is no different, not the end of the world, but hardly ideal. Then again, what is?
I ask you a simple question from the advertiser point of view:
It seems in the next future ABP will block ANY advertisement in the range of its subscriptions (as before) BUT those coming from the advertisers who are ABP partners (this is new).
So either all existing advertisers are going to submit a request of partnership and ABP includes them all in the whitelist, or some (most?) will be blocked, REGARDLESS if they are "acceptable" or not. Plus, if a site you want to support through advertisement is sponsored by one of those advertisers who aren't included, the whitelist does not make you any good and the advertisement is blocked (until you manually make exceptions, as before). Do you think this makes sense or it is just empty rhetoric?
I think that Palant needs to define his definition of 'acceptable'. If he is defining acceptable as 'non-moving ads from people who pay me a fee', then, yes, the above makes sense, but is not a very ethical position to take. If you want to earn from this, then say so, don't hide behind words.

If he is defining acceptable, as most of us would hope he would, as 'giving the public an Internet that is not flooded with intrusive adverts at every turn, but allowing advertisers in a muted form to still show the public what they have to offer'? Then no, your example makes zero sense.

What may have started as looking simple, is not. For example, the makes of ABP say that 'ABP is nothing with the filter lists' and yet I've noticed that the guys that maintain the filter lists do not seem very pleased by all this, judging by their reaction in this thread. So...bearing in mind their essential contribution to ABP - do the filter people get part of the fee and if not, why not?
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

andhrooy wrote:I once saw a website that did have acceptable ads it was very simple

If you hovered your cursor over a piece of text or picture a definition of the word would pop up.

If you double clicked on a piece of text or picture an advert would appear of a place where to purchase or find out more about the word you just double clicked on.

This was non intrusive and to me was very good.

These are the only kinds of advertising I consider acceptable. Any other kind, just adds more to the amount you download by viewing a web page.
These ads are horrendously confusing to experienced and average people alike. They are phony hyperlinks.

If I'm reading a tech review, and I see the words "Sandy Bridge architecture" hyperlinked, the natural assumption is that the link provides additional information on the Sandy Bridge architecture. Linking that information is helpful, whereas links to buy the processors are not. Why should something easily found via a visit to Newegg or Froogle masquerade as legitimate off-page information?

Hyperlink ads are very insidious. They slow down your reading and make it difficult to find the real hyperlinks once your brain has begun to subconsciously ignore the link ads.

Those who like to use a mouse wheel click to open up a new tab for later reading will find that some of these ads, which MW clicked, take over the current page via Javascript, causing the reader to lose his place, rather than opening the external content in a new tab as desired.
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

The in-text ads also make printing, copying, and pasting all horrendously difficult.

I've seen printed articles used in university classrooms contaminated with advertising right in the middle of a sentence.
LorenzoC

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by LorenzoC »

@Pete:
Lets say tomorrow I want to make a new business with advertisement.
There are two options, either ABP includes me in the whitelist just because I exist and I conform their "directives" (this BTW rises the question who are they to define the directive I should conform to make my business) or I must agree some partnership (which on top of the other question rises a new one about me being requested money to make my business).
Meanwhile in Metropolis, the first advertisers who get included see their ads get through ABP, while the others who aren't still included are blocked (which rises a question about fair competition). Lets say I see your ads getting whitelisted while mine are blocked. Then lets say I get a new idea for advertising, I must submit it to ABP for approval otherwise I don't know if it will be whitelisted or not. Etc.

But honestly as user I do not care, until I can still use ABP as I have been doing so far.
My concern is once ABP assumes the role of supervisor of both users and advertisers and even worse once it gets funded by advertisers, some optional settings could become hardcoded and some features removed.

@Anti-Ad:
Something that annoys you can be fun for me. I guess until we can choose how to use ABP to fulfill our own personal needs, everything is fine.
Guest

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Guest »

EnviroChem wrote: Agreed
The only way to stop the privacy abuse is to stop communicating with organizations whose entire business model is based on intrusiveness.

The only way privacy violations will go away is if we begin treating advertising networks like spammers, in that any communication between our systems and theirs is seen as undesirable.

Black hole lists are called black hole lists for a reason. They work because they dispose of all communication from an untrustworthy party.
EnviroChem wrote: Not as much as you think. As Wladimir found in his survey, only a small percentage of users who use ad-block are against all ads. They are simply trying to get relief from the worst ads. The thing is by the nature of who is willing to take the time to maintain filters, ad blocking tends to be an all or nothing affair.
No, he found that a minority hated the industry on matter of principle. The remainder doesn't like ads; the remainder might be willing to tolerate some. Tolerance is not the same as liking something.

The bottom line is that people who have chosen not to see advertising feel that advertising does not benefit them. They see the lost advertising as lost junk, not lost content.

ABP is like an online version of the do not call list. A person who signs up for the do not call list really does not want to be called, because that person is unwilling to buy from telemarketers. Do not call means do not call, not only call me with something good.

You have to understand that every advertiser thinks their campaign is wonderfully helpful and should always get through. Getting it through is their job.
EnviroChem wrote: If the goal is to change the nature of ads on the Internet, 3rd party ads have to be accepted or there will be zero buy in from websites to change behavior to get white listed.
Third party ads are fundamentally incompatible with a system which assures users of respect for their privacy.

Why should we care about "changing" bad behavior when we already have an effective tool to completely isolate ourselves from their bad behavior?

On a personal level, I don't care about the privacy practices of third party ad networks as it relates to myself, because I am not exposed to such junk. Their inability to weasel onto my system means that whatever privacy invasions they have in store for me are never executed.

That problem, for me, is solved. Why should we regress back to allowing an inch and hoping they don't take a mile?
EnviroChem wrote: For the most part you are correct. Ads can still be targeted contextually to the content of the webpage, with a certain degree of success, but these aren't as effective as microprobed ads.
The nature of intrusive advertising is not going to change. In fact, the direction of technological change, in better hardware, better software, and pervasive spying apparatuses (like Facebook) means that the problem will only grow worse.

Ad networks have to compete because the ad buyers demand it. Any ad network which truly believes in "don't be evil" will be run out of business because they can no longer compete.

We are witnessing a race to the bottom.

Intrusive advertising WILL NEVER go away. We cannot change the intrusive behavior. All we can do is lock out the intruders.
EnviroChem wrote: track" feature will eventually force changes within the ad industry. The tracking issue goes well beyond ads. Sites track users in many different ways. I'd bet most sites have Google Analytics code on them and bigger sites can track repeat users to a certain degree with internal cookies as well as server logs.
No, it won't. Privacy intrusions don't happen but for a fundamental lack of respect for users by advertisers.

Even if DNT gets legal backing from the government (or, more specifically, every government in the world, because the Internet is global), advertisers will still be looking for ways to game the system.

DNT operates on the honor system; the problem is that the counterparty has no honor.
EnviroChem wrote: Agreed.
If ABP is no longer loyal to users, first and foremost, and to the exclusion of other loyalties, then how can users trust it?

EnviroChem wrote: This goes back to what Wladimir's objectives are. If he is simply providing an addon to users, then you are correct. If on the other hand he wants to use ABP as a social engineering tool to clean up the Internet in general by giving websites a reason to use unobtrusive ads, then this option has to be opt-out in order to get the critical mass needed to provide sufficient incentive for advertisers to change. ABP also must have a big enough percentage of all users on the Internet for advertisers to feel the pain of being blocked. If only a few percent of all users are blocking ads, then this option might not have the critical mass to make it worthwhile for websites to use less intrusive ads.
Philosophical objectives should take second priority to meaningful, informed consent.

If ABP is a social engineering tool then users have no reason to trust it.

If ABP exists to empower users to take back control of their own browsers then it must put user respect at the forefront of its principles.

Read the mission statements and manifestos from the big FOSS community projects.

You will find user control as the first and foremost goal.

The ABP project should adopt a policy of "do no harm." This means opting in to the ads, given the many examples in this thread of people who don't know enough to make an informed decision to opt out.

Expecting a computer novice to understand the dangers and pitfalls of advertising is like expecting an eight year old to understand the dangers of cigarettes. There is plenty of precedent for why it is right to protect individuals from harm they do not understand.
EnviroChem wrote: The vast majority of users don't understand how modern advertising works, nor of the privacy implications. Given the way people sign up for sites like Facebook they don't seem to care either. Nobody with the slightest bit of concern about privacy would ever sign up on Facebook, but it is the most popular site on the Internet.
This is why they should be protected.

The vast majority of eight year olds don't understand the harms of cigarettes or their addictive nature, thus we have determined it is a good idea to prohibit selling cigarettes to eight year old children.

Those who understand the issues at hand generally take a negative opinion. Some geeks suck it up and deal with Facebook anyway, but they aren't thrilled about how that company does business.
EnviroChem wrote: This could be changed legislatively and with massive social pressure with the help of organizations like Mozilla.
No, it won't.

They will never show respect for privacy.

The most we will get is a respect for the consequences of breaking the law, which means they will always be looking for loopholes and ways to return to the glory days of profiling people.

If they don't respect people now, when they have full power to choose between right and wrong, the respect will not be there even if the law forces them to behave differently.

The intrusive and aggressive nature of advertising doesn't come into being without the efforts of people who view users as some sort of undignified, depersonalized collective livestock (generally called "consumers"). Given the freedom to do what they want, they have shown that, in their hearts, they don't care about us, and only seek to profile and manipulate us. That is evidence of their fundamentally dishonest nature and utter lack of regard for the feelings of users.
EnviroChem wrote: Wikipedia is a bad example because for the most part its information was gleamed by contributors "researching" information from other sites. In my case I had to submit DMCA take down notices for several articles the Wikipedia contributors lifted from my site and submitted as their own work. Nonprofit sources still need a source of revenue to produce quality content. The Internet would be a pretty barren place if it could only rely on those who are willing to produce content and/or provide services without some form of compensation. The Internet is no different than the real world, people still need to be compensated for their efforts so that they can live. People will first spend their labor and efforts on endeavors that makes them a living.
Wikipedia is an excellent example, but that is beside the point.

Nobody is arguing for a communist Internet completely devoid of money and commerce. What we want is for the abuse to stop, and stopping that requires completely blocking out entities which are inherently abusive.

Just as perverts objectify women as being only useful for sex, advertisers objectify users as being only useful for money. They don't want to solve our problems, they want to empty our wallets. You are not a human being to them - you are a walking wallet.

The Internet has too much content, with most of that cheap, worthless, low-grade content having been produced to generate ad impressions. Google results are polluted. "Review" sites shill for the products they advertise. The quality of news is on the decline. Articles get broken into 8 pages and picture galleries which should be on a single page now require 25 different clicks. Idiots churn out garbage splogs to pollute our search results. Serious topics, like human sexuality, have become completely drowned out by commercialized noise.

You will need to search hard for objective advice on certain topics, like home loans, because the constant shrieks of marketers have come to dominate the conversation.

Objective reviews? Forget about it. There is much more money to be made hawking everything as the latest and greatest.

Email was the first casualty of the culture of advertising. Email began to wane in usefulness once advertisers figured out that a spam spewer could crank out 100,000 worthless advertising messages in the time it took a human to compose one meaningful email.

Advertising is the linchpin which holds all this together. If advertising takes a huge hit, the money which incentivizes much of the junk and noise dries up.

EnviroChem wrote: Unfortunately you are right about this. I'm sure I could be much more successful if I were willing to employ more dubious methods to monitorize my site and drive traffic to it.
This is a natural consequence of the culture of advertising.

The root cause is the advertising, not the people who use blockers to get away from it.

Sites will continue to write puff pieces hawking products on which they receive commission as long as that is a viable business model. The rest of us not participating in that racket must sift through the hopelessly biased sites to find a real review, which usually comes from a forum for enthusiasts. I have a lot more trust in a 16 year old kid posting his folding and encoding scores - because he loves his rig - than I do in a commercial site who gets free gear, sings the praises of their free gear, then collects a paycheck selling that gear to those without ad blockers.

EnviroChem wrote: At least the smaller sites have a means to survive. However, I agree that having the means to monitorize these small sites controlled by a couple big companies is not good for society. I sorely wished there was more viable choices of ad providers to choose from.
As I pointed out above, we're better off if a lot of the smaller sites don't survive.

The ones we want to survive are those written out of passion, not the need to churn out cheap content to make next month's rent.

Online advertising will always be dominated by big companies. The features demanded by ad buyers can't be efficiently delivered at smaller economies of scale.
EnviroChem wrote: Website hosting costs is not even a factor in running websites anymore. The biggest cost is producing good content and/or service.
What does it cost us to have this meaningful discussion about online advertising?

What does it cost an ad agency to have an intern write the top 20 reasons a business needs to advertise more?

Which contributes more intellectual capital to mankind?
EnviroChem wrote: This is a matter of opinion that could be debated. I personally love all the free content/services on the Internet that I'm able to benefit from thanks to advertising. Beyond the Internet, advertising provides free radio and TV programs, most newspapers are mostly funded by advertising. In fact our town has a weekly newspaper that is delivered to our doorstep for free and it actually has some pretty good local stuff in it. Without advertising local papers like ours could never survive.

Advertising is not good nor bad, it is simply a tool that can be, and often is, misused.
Meatspace media is a bad example due to the much higher overhead.
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

LorenzoC wrote: @Anti-Ad:
Something that annoys you can be fun for me. I guess until we can choose how to use ABP to fulfill our own personal needs, everything is fine.
Being deceived and misdirected by hyperlinks is fun?

To each his own, but that still doesn't make it a constructive behavior or good UI design.
LorenzoC

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by LorenzoC »

I haven't ever clicked on an ad in my whole life. And I am old.
But it seems people click on them all the time, otherwise the whole advertisement industry did not exist.
So I don't have any problem in admitting many ABP users or even the majority of them can be fine with some kind of advertisement or another.
I just don't want any choice to be imposed from above to me, you or anybody else.
vic

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by vic »

I am subscribed to "Adversity Complete" filter which is a merger of Adversity + Adversity Privacy + Adversity Adult + Adversity P2P + Adversity Antisocial into 1 subscription.

The authors of Adversity were the fastest to respond to "report issue" i.e. advertisements.

I mean when I reported a website that doesn't allow a person to enter when it realizes the user has Adblock Plus, he removed the Red color box which asks the user to disable ADP, thus allowing us to use adblock on their websites.

One could speculate that Google or some other top 100 website/corp threatened Wladimir that they would use the above techniques?

I hate ads. All kinds of them.

But there was a problem with my above subscription:
I submitted some reports via "Report Issue on this page..."

I am using Adversity Complete List only:
https://adversity.googlecode.com/hg/Adv ... mbined.txt

Just wondering if you have received any reports because you are the
author of the script?

Or maybe reports.adblockplus.org doesn't know that you are the author
and all reports are binned?
I got a response:
Subscription authors do not get issue reports in real time. They get sent out about once a week.

Having said that you might be right saying "adblockplus.org doesn't know that you are the author
and all reports are binned?"

Your best option until I officially release the combined subscription is to email me a link to the report.
The reason he created a combined list was because ADP was refusing to send reports:
Right now I cannot report issues using Adblock Plus if I have all your
Adversity subs (5 in total) enabled.

When I subscribe to all 5 of your lists (and no other list), and
select "doesn't block ad" it says "It seem that you are subscribed to
too many filters...We also cannot accept your issue because it is
unclear which author..."
I requested the author of Adversity to also merge his combined list with EasyList and EasyList's EasyPrivacy into 1 subscription.

Unfortunatly he refused to merge any other list:
One of the hardest (not so obvious) parts in maintaining an ABP list is removing old rules. It's easy enough to add them but a lot harder to go through and remove rules that are no longer relevant. There is also site specific rules vs generic rules which makes it harder to compare.

I'm sure EasyList would have rules for quite a few sites that I do not (what percentage of those are still required is anyone's guess) but having said that I regularly check suggestions in the EasyList forum and feel my list is quite comprehensive and stacks up very well.

As well as coverage you also have to take into account another very important aspect....broken sites (false positives). This is one area I have worked extremely hard on.

Having said that I am not going to go through the whole of EasyList and check for rules I may have missed, that would be quite time consuming (every list will take care of something the other does not).

I'm not trying to tell you not to use EasyList (I used to use it my self many years ago) I'm just trying to present the facts !
I did try though:
When there is 1 rule for 2 same sites, then your rule would supersede
the other rule.

I don't care if there are rules that are no longer relevant.

I suppose you can call the rule Bloatversity and post in your website? Please?
I was an avid reporter of ads of any kind, but now I gave up, because even EasyList has specific rules for including new advertisements, and Adversity as mentioned above was not getting my reports (see above):
I will not add that to EasyList however, as the message is not really that annoying and it's our practice to allow sites to ask users to disable adblockers as long as the message isn't distracting and site functionality isn't limited.
So anyone here interested in creating a new filter which merges EasyList + Fanboy + Adversity into 1 huge list?
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EnviroChem
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by EnviroChem »

Some thoughts to bring this whole issue into perspective.
  • Firefox has somewhere around 400 million users with somewhere around 20% global market share.
  • ABP for Firefox has somewhere around 13 million daily users with ABP installed (or about 3% of Firefox users). This is not the same as active users as it also includes users who have disabled ABP so the percentage of users who are actively using it will be lower. Currently only the developers of ABP can see the stats for how many daily users have ABP installed and enabled (unless ABP developers choose to make these stats public).
This means that probably less than 1% of all Internet users are using ABP on Firefox. A few years ago I found that only a couple percent of all users are blocking ads that were on my website (regardless of method used to block ads). I'm sure the percentage of users who have my ads blocked for one reason or another is probably higher now than a few years ago, but still it is a small number.

For years I have tried to encourage fellow web publishers to use less obnoxious ads, so I applaud Wladimir's effort to provide an incentive for publishers to use less obnoxious ads. However, the numbers just don't add up. Even if all ABP users left the white list enabled, I just don't think that most websites would see enough benefit in getting white listed to be worthwhile to use less intrusive advertising. Maybe a few tech heavy sites that have a larger than normal share of ABP users would benefit, but for the average site, it is probably more profitable to use more obnoxious ads that continue to get blocked by the few ABP users who come along.

Again, I like the premise behind the white list, but maybe we all are making a mountain out a molehill in regards to this issue.
consumerfan
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:00 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by consumerfan »

A few years is a long time in browser terms. In July 2008, IE had just under 70% market share, FF just over 25% and Chrome did not exist. Now the split is 40:25:25.

Even if ABP's popularity remained constant over that time at 3% of available browser users, there's double the overall userbase just from Chrome's success.
If not for recent developments, I would have predicted further growth in ABP's popularity. And I still think IE's usage will continue to fall.

Ad-blocking will never be ubiquitous for two reasons. One is that novice users will only install and continue to use it if it works consistently, effectively and without significant interaction. The other is that users recognize that blocking ads makes it more likely that sitemasters will use other methods of generating revenue.
The more intrusive adverts become, the more popular adblocking becomes.
And the ad-blocking product which is most consistent, effective and requires least interaction will benefit most.
me

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by me »

LorenzoC wrote:I haven't ever clicked on an ad in my whole life. And I am old.
But it seems people click on them all the time, otherwise the whole advertisement industry did not exist.
So I don't have any problem in admitting many ABP users or even the majority of them can be fine with some kind of advertisement or another.
I just don't want any choice to be imposed from above to me, you or anybody else.
A common misunderstanding... You don't have to "bite" for the adds to work against you. It is enought that someone else bites.

The mechanic is simple. A customer walks in to a shop. He sees several products that match his requirements. Some are from the companies that are often being advertized, few are from companies none ever heard of, and those are probably cheaper. Most of the time a thought like "I'm not buying cheap no-name junk" or "those guys have been on the market for ages, they are a safe bet" races through the customers mind. A few minutes later a customer walks out with (rides on?) another "brand", the shopkeeper has sold one more "brand". Even if the products are identical in quality, even if a lot of customers didn't bite, as long as some did the brand sells better.

By the end of the month the shoopkeeper does his math. He sees that a "brand" sells better than a "no-name". What will he prefer to have on his shelves when it comes to ordering more stock?

If you don't belive me do a walk around your neighbouring stores. To keep it focused (and thus easyer to notice) pick a specific type of product for observation like chocolates or cleaning fluids or tooth paste. You'll notice that several brands dominate the shelves while "no-name" is in minority and what's improtant they "share" that minority. Make a list and count how often each specific "trademark" apears in a store. You'll notice that while brands are sold in almost every store "no-name" products are sold in one or two shops per trademark.

I think I don't have to explain what advantage this gives, how the advantage leads to decline in competition, and how the lack of competition affects the customers and harms the economy.

Advertisements became a mandatory part of business, and also doubles up as an extra "entrance fee".
On top of that there is an industry in our society that eats it's bread solely for littering our minds and reinforceing financial empires (harming our economy in the proccess).

All "free" in life comes from altruism. Anything else has a price attached, it's just that buisness chooses a peculiar way to attach it.

We would be better of paying for our "free content" and banning ALL advertizement by law.
Initially that would strain the economy but that initial strain would iron itself out in time leaving us with more choice in products and more control over our money.

The above is an idealistic scenario that is ureachable, since it requres support by the whole society, but facts are facts - advertisement hurts society more than society notices.

From that viewpoint a step towards advertizement is a "deal with a devil" not as dramatic or damning, but still a close analogy.

But since noone is actively resisting anyway a lesser eavil is still better than what we have.

Does a silent majority agree with "acceptable adds"? (you do know that it never actually matches the poll's prcentage? It's silent unless something pokes it hard enough, mostly because it's conservative and passive, while while those active and vocal about their ideas are mostly reformators)
Will the difference in addblock users give a noticable impact for advertising? Is the experiment going to give fruit?
Does the carpet match the drape?

Time will tell.

P.S. One gets "free" news, another gets a "free" movie, yet another gets a "free" cartoon, but in the end they all share the costs of all their collective consumption. -- Funny thing "free with adds" was brough in by capitalism, but strongly reminds communism.
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

EnviroChem wrote: Again, I like the premise behind the white list, but maybe we all are making a mountain out a molehill in regards to this issue.
The change is a mountain for the novice users who will be subjected to whitelisted advertisements without informed consent and without understanding how to disable the behavior.

The change is a mountain for the IT professionals who have to deal with increased resource usage and vulnerability resulting from whitelisted ads slipping through.

It is a molehill to the advertising giants, regardless of whether the change happens or not, because ABP users are a small minority of Internet traffic and not the best of customers.
ray

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by ray »

Absolutely a bad move. Sure, people familiar with Adblock Plus can reconfigure the preferences, as I did. But when I got home, my parents asked me why ABP wasn't working anymore. The "We'll put some vague words on a page that pops up once, so it's ethical" logic is the same reasoning programs bundle with crapware toolbars. They know most people aren't going to opt-out, and prey on their lack of knowledge to make a quick buck. I wonder if next year ABP will have "optional" Ask or Google Toolbar. For "convenience" and "to help users out" of course ;)
Silico
Posts: 41
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:31 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Silico »

Guest wrote: As I pointed out above, we're better off if a lot of the smaller sites don't survive.

The ones we want to survive are those written out of passion, not the need to churn out cheap content to make next month's rent.
Great post Guest >> Fri Dec 16, 2011 6:18 pm.

I just wanted to respond to the bit I quoted above.

I don't think it's feasible for news and analysis to be only provided by amateurs. Good work needs time, so amateur work either has to be subsidised by a paying job, or must be copied from professional sources. Almost all paying jobs are dependent on someone selling something, including jobs funded by taxes. Except for a tiny number of businesses who get all the work they want through word-of-mouth and editorial, these companies which generate the jobs must advertise in some way, hopefully using less-intrusive methods like their own websites or targeted direct mail.

It's like free software projects: Except for some big projects which companies and other end-users are willing to support through donations and paid workers, because it's a core piece of software from which everyone benefits, developers of free software need to support themselves. Either they need to sell support services, or they need to be employed by, or attract employment by, a company that sells non-free products, who will usually have to advertise. Then there's companies like Mozilla who are funded by advertising via Google product placement. So even FOSS is heavily dependent on advertising.

So given that we need the professional media, how do we fund it if we want to minimize their dependence on advertising, which both intrudes and spins?

By allowing information to be easily published and copied, the Internet has made it much harder to charge for material up-front, including subscriptions and micro-payments. But more and more often this will be the way we pay for entertainment media, and less by surrounding it with ads that can no longer fund the good stuff because they're being blocked, skipped, and ignored.

For publishers of information I think that some sort of deferred-payment system is needed, where people who found their material helpful are given an easy way of paying for that help, and where companies who sold a product due to the help some professionals provided can reward those professionals. This can be done in a more arms-length way than affiliate links, which turn the media into sellers rather than helpers.
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