Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
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nowayout
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:47 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by nowayout »

By the way, what exactly is "acceptable" and "non-intrusive" advertising, what criteria are they based on, how is acceptance decided, on what sites is it accepted, how is non-intrusiveness decided, and what is the going rate to be acceptable and non-intrusive?

I mean, let's be serious. We're talking about little more than paid omission from the filters. "Acceptable" and "non-intrusive" are undefined, amorphous PR names for it.
Wyo

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Wyo »

I am Ok with this and unless it becomes a problem for me I will leave it enabled. if this leads to less intrusive ads whilst still
providing revenue to websites. What's the harm? If it fails to work out as hoped I will simply opt out. but I am willing to give this a try.

Wyo
tony72
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:25 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by tony72 »

I'd just like to say that I'm all in favour of allowing acceptable ads, so it's certainly not a myth that some users are happy with this. I already disable adblock on some of my favourite sites to help support the sites, but for more occasional sites I obviously mostly won't bother. I think it's absolutely the right move to encourage advertisers to produce less obtrusive ads, and to give them an alternative to entering an arms race against ad-blocking.
Bingo

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Bingo »

I'll give it a try, just know that I will turn off all ads if I see...
Political ads
Religious ads

I really don't want to see the first one, but if its an allowance, I won't see a second.
MonztA
ABP Developer
Posts: 3957
Joined: Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:18 am
Location: Germany

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by MonztA »

NOADS wrote:To get rid of the "acceptable ads", which sounds like a paradox to me btw, type about:config in your address bar and search for: [...]
Why don't you just untick the respective option in the preferences of Adblock Plus? :?
nowayout wrote:By the way, what exactly is "acceptable" and "non-intrusive" advertising, what criteria are they based on, how is acceptance decided, on what sites is it accepted, how is non-intrusiveness decided, and what is the going rate to be acceptable and non-intrusive?

en/acceptable-ads
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

Wyo wrote:I am Ok with this and unless it becomes a problem for me I will leave it enabled. if this leads to less intrusive ads whilst still
providing revenue to websites. What's the harm? If it fails to work out as hoped I will simply opt out. but I am willing to give this a try.

Wyo
The harm is that advertisers use their massive, cross-site infrastructure to compile a dossier of your activities and preferences, for sale to the highest bidder, be it a company, a political campaign, or another interest group. You have no idea what they collect, how they store it, or to whom they sell it, because privacy policies are completely and utterly worthless. You have no way to enforce privacy restrictions. You must assume that everything they can pull will be pulled and stored. Not only is the first party advertiser's privacy policy untrustworthy, the privacy policies of those who buy data down the line are even less so. Your personal information, browsing habits, and preferences will be passed around the ad industry like a joint at a Phish concert. Those who buy your information will cross-correlate it with information they already have. Just because the first party "acceptable" advertiser makes no attempt to identify you by name doesn't mean that others to whom they sell their data won't.

The harm is that if any Javascript can be called (as 99.99%+ of ad inclusions use) then your computer can get hit with a drive-by download.

These are practical considerations. I have left issues of consumerism out of this discussion.

The ad industry cannot be trusted to be well behaved, nor do you have any recourse against them if they break their policies, monitor you, or expose your computer to malware. Go ahead and complain to them. You almost certainly won't get a response, and if you do, it will be along the lines of "crap happens, deal with it." They can't give you your privacy back nor will they remove the malware from your computer.

The problem with data is that it is collected and retained forever, and very easy to sell. This is not like a loyalty card at your local, independently owned sandwich shop.

Once they have a hold on your data, you must assume that the profile will exist and be available for sale forever. Your advertising profile will probably outlast your natural life.

You can't negotiate with advertisers.
Kestrel
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:59 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Kestrel »

While I understand the rationale that some ads are more tolerable than others, and therefore should be permissible, I believe this latest update is a worrisome step in the wrong direction.

Adblock was (and still is, for now) an indispensable addon for those seeking to retake the web. Similarly, Arc90's Readability addon improved the browsing experience (for me anyway) in ways I cannot do without. Arc90's mistakes with changing the core-functionality of their addon ruined the experience entirely, and ultimately many users bailed and switched to alternatives.

I see Adblock on a similar trajectory. While I deeply appreciate the work the author has put into his fantastic addon, I find that these recent developments run directly counter to his own philosophy.

I'll continue to use this addon for now, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for alternatives.

My questions are:
  • What is the impetus for this latest change?
  • What are the developer's goals with future changes to this addon and how it permits certain ads?
Lastly, Wladamir, thank you for creating this addon. Please reconsider the course you've set for it.
Anti-Ad

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Anti-Ad »

The claims about 3 in 4 users being for this are ludicrous.

The survey was not publicized and the questions were not well formulated.

If the ABP project wants a valid result, they need to formulate proper poll questions and publicize the survey on Slashdot and other tech sites.

The ABP site and forum seems to have more casual users than the power user population who knows the addon by heart, installs it from memory, goes straight to their favorite subscriptions, and never has a need for the ABP documentation.

I never would have heard of this were it not for Slashdot, and that is because ABP has worked so well over the years. There is no reason for power users who aren't reporting a problem to ever visit the site.

Consider also that one IT support employee may be responsible for hundreds or thousands of ABP installations. These people also aren't visiting the ABP site.

The poll suffers from poorly formulated questions and a strong selection bias.
Till
ABP CEO
Posts: 242
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:16 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Till »

Anti-Ad wrote:If the ABP project wants a valid result, they need to formulate proper poll questions and publicize the survey on Slashdot and other tech sites.
No, excatly that would make the results biased as this would lead to a high tech affinity of most of the respondents. Please read the selection criteria here: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plu ... lts-part-0
james_m
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2008 2:53 pm
Location: UK

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by james_m »

Anti-Ad wrote: The harm is that advertisers use their massive, cross-site infrastructure to compile a dossier of your activities and preferences, for sale to the highest bidder, be it a company, a political campaign, or another interest group. You have no idea what they collect, how they store it, or to whom they sell it, because privacy policies are completely and utterly worthless. You have no way to enforce privacy restrictions. You must assume that everything they can pull will be pulled and stored. Not only is the first party advertiser's privacy policy untrustworthy, the privacy policies of those who buy data down the line are even less so. Your personal information, browsing habits, and preferences will be passed around the ad industry like a joint at a Phish concert. Those who buy your information will cross-correlate it with information they already have. Just because the first party "acceptable" advertiser makes no attempt to identify you by name doesn't mean that others to whom they sell their data won't.

The harm is that if any Javascript can be called (as 99.99%+ of ad inclusions use) then your computer can get hit with a drive-by download.

These are practical considerations. I have left issues of consumerism out of this discussion.

The ad industry cannot be trusted to be well behaved, nor do you have any recourse against them if they break their policies, monitor you, or expose your computer to malware. Go ahead and complain to them. You almost certainly won't get a response, and if you do, it will be along the lines of "crap happens, deal with it." They can't give you your privacy back nor will they remove the malware from your computer.

The problem with data is that it is collected and retained forever, and very easy to sell. This is not like a loyalty card at your local, independently owned sandwich shop.

Once they have a hold on your data, you must assume that the profile will exist and be available for sale forever. Your advertising profile will probably outlast your natural life.

You can't negotiate with advertisers.
Sadly, I agree completely with the above, which is why I've felt compelled to untick the checkbox and set extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_exceptionscheckbox to false. It's also why I'm considering setting extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_exceptionsurl to a blank string, and why I use a Hosts file, NoScript, CookieMonster and RequestPolicy, plus an addon to allow me to disable referrers.

However, I don't want to join in the chorus of condemnation here. A lot of people don't seem to appreciate the work Wladimir's done over the years, and while I have no way of gauging the extent to which small website operators relying on advert revenue have been hit in the pocket by ABP, it does sound as if he's had some difficult decisions to make.

I'd be interested to know how much the issues above would be mitigated if the "acceptable ads" criteria included:
"must not use JavaScript or Flash/Silverlight/similar"
and
"adverts must not be hosted on a third-party domain or in any way access one unless the user clicks on the advert".

I suspect the extent to which Google Ads has become widespread would make this impractical, and I don't know enough technical details to know to what extent this would mitigate the privacy concerns, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing from someone who could offer some more insight into this.
Last edited by james_m on Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
adhater

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by adhater »

I find it funny that even after all this backlash some people still keep stubbornly citing this "survey", how 75% of users supposedly love this feature... :D

While I can understand that the developers want to make a few bucks from their add-on, I think the decision for a ad blocker to start making deals with advertisers is just a huge conflict of interest and having this whitelist enabled by default basically feels like a betrayal of the trust users have placed in the product.

As long as it's possible to opt-out (and there are no alternatives for Firefox), I guess I'll keep using it, but I can't help but think this will only get worse... :(
nowayout
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:47 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by nowayout »

MonztA wrote:
nowayout wrote:By the way, what exactly is "acceptable" and "non-intrusive" advertising, what criteria are they based on, how is acceptance decided, on what sites is it accepted, how is non-intrusiveness decided, and what is the going rate to be acceptable and non-intrusive?

en/acceptable-ads
Unfortunately, even lower standards than I'd thought. Not a good start. And the rest of the answers?
atenrok
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 8:19 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by atenrok »

adhater wrote:I think the decision for a ad blocker to start making deals with advertisers is just a huge conflict of interest and having this whitelist enabled by default basically feels like a betrayal of the trust users have placed in the product.

all my thumbs up. Adblock, as the name says it was about letting the user to block ads, and not certain ads but all of them. I have no respect to anybody who is in advertising business simply because none of them has any respect to me. Advertisers have no internal sense of reasonable limit. It always takes a controlling institution to pound that industry hard so they back off. And now the developer of only tool for rebels decided to to make a deal with the same fucking industry the invasion of which it was supposed to resist. What an ironic turn of event. Oh yeah, they came with a nice excuse "to support small websites". And because most users are passive and don't care about those "small websites" we are going to decide for them which ads they can see.

I'm looking forward for somebody to grab the sources of the previous decent version and simply support a functional product event without all those cosmetic improvements we were getting lately. I've already seen this happening to other extensions before, we'll get over this one as well. Keep me updated.
User avatar
TNTC4
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:43 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by TNTC4 »

I hate all Ads and I don't want to see any of them.
no only to "small websites", I don't want to see Ads anymore, anytime, anywhere.
so this option "Allow non-intrusive advertising" is pointless.
remove it and all functionality to Allow non-intrusive advertising, and let's block all Ads.
useforum
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:40 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by useforum »

Now this software is a JUNK!
Some sites DO able to block your access to them if you are want to block all kind of ads! Just try auto.mail.ru and you will receive a blocked window with "some" error message :evil: Try to disable Adblock Plus and it let you in!
I started to use Firefox because of Adblock Plus and that was the only reason!
Now it just another crap software!
Shame on you developers! You just gave another way to deploy unwanted ads and way to block access to FREE information over Internet! If they want money for information let they ASK about subscription, but not to BLOCK it! That's my opinion.

Regards,
Useforum
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