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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:43 pm
by LorenzoC
Till wrote:Yes, the average user wants to install ABP and have it configured automatically to block ads reliably based on filters created by people they can trust. Why shouldn't this apply to whitelisting a well? The majority of users want to support websites by accepting unobtrusive ads so we have to give them an automatic feature that does the job for them just like we do with the blocking rules. The same reasoning applies here due to the technicalities involved.
See, read here:
"Don’t get me wrong: Google Chrome is a great browser and it is easy to get excited about it, argue about benchmarks, brand-new standards and such. But sometimes you get a reminder: this is a Google product and it has to benefit Google. It isn’t merely about making the web better, it is also about promoting Google products and giving them an advantage over competing services. Google may speak out for net neutrality but with their browser the own services get prioritized. Even if it requires violating your privacy."
http://adblockplus.org/blog/google-chro ... d-web-apps
Now change "Google Chrome" with "Adblock Plus".

Chrome is very popular. Same ABP.
The "average user" seems to either don't know anything of the above or to not mind of it.
Do you think people's dumbness makes it "acceptable"?

Personally I don't see how a software that gets payed by advertisers can still be a tool for my own personal freedom.
Besides, how long before the advertisers get in control of ABP development so the "whitelist" becomes hardcoded and cannot be opt-out?

Now, all this plan makes sense only if you consider that there aren't real alternatives to your product/service, so you can enforce any sort of annoyance over "average users" and they must stay with you. Regarding this, ABP users are probably in a worse condition than Chrome users. When you are in a monopolistic position, it seems the way you look at things and "values" do change in order to "monetize" the monopoly.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the work made over ABP along the way. Thanks folks.
Pity life is taking this turn.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:06 pm
by Till
LorenzoC wrote:Besides, how long before the advertisers get in control of ABP development so the "whitelist" becomes hardcoded and cannot be opt-out?
Thats an easy question, it will never happen. For ideological reasons but also because ABP is too dependant on all the contributors (translators, filter list authors etc.), loosing their support would most likely lead to the failure of the project. Changes are necessary and sometimes controversial but the values that run this project will stay the same.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:18 pm
by LorenzoC
I have seen it happening several times already.
I have even been part of a beta testing group of a "free software" which I then discovered had been sold to a firm and had become a retail product as soon as the beta testing was over.
So sorry if I am skeptical about ABP remaining "free" after the "acceptable agreement".

About the failure of the project... I don't see it happening until somebody wants to put enough efforts in developing an alternative.
And I guess you know it.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:34 pm
by vinny86
LorenzoC wrote:I have seen it happening several times already.
I have even been part of a beta testing group of a "free software" which I then discovered had been sold to a firm and had become a retail product as soon as the beta testing was over.
So sorry if I am skeptical about ABP remaining "free" after the "acceptable agreement".

About the failure of the project... I don't see it happening until somebody wants to put enough efforts in developing an alternative.
And I guess you know it.
I still have complete faith in the ABP project and the people who run them.
Looks like you and the other concerned people, will just have to wait and see how this change pans out.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 7:59 pm
by Guest
LorenzoC wrote:I have seen it happening several times already.
I have even been part of a beta testing group of a "free software" which I then discovered had been sold to a firm and had become a retail product as soon as the beta testing was over.
So sorry if I am skeptical about ABP remaining "free" after the "acceptable agreement".

About the failure of the project... I don't see it happening until somebody wants to put enough efforts in developing an alternative.
And I guess you know it.
Adblock Plus is open source so developing an altenative is not so hard. Just fork the last good version.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:00 pm
by Guest
Wladimir Palant wrote:
Noyb wrote:Wladimir:- make this feature opt-in and you're ok.
Would love to do that. But that doesn't work, see en/acceptable-ads#default and a bunch of explanations in the forum. It's either opt-out or useless. What I did was to make opt-out as simple as possible. In particular, the UI rework was a major condition for this feature and also the reason why it was delayed like this.
Outcast wrote:You should quit the project and let others to pick it up.
Aha... I've been working on Adblock Plus for more than five years after picking up an essentially abandoned project and during all these years I got something like three minor code contributions. Please come back when you find somebody who wants to actually do some work rather than talking about "others" who should do it. One reason why I kept working on Adblock Plus was - if I didn't then nobody else would and the project would become abandoned again,
There are millions of installs of ABP in the hands of non-technical users who did not install it themselves. These people have no clue about the changes you are making nor that they have any ability to go into preferences and opt-out of the whitelisting.

Your change will deliver millions of people, unknowingly, into the hands of advertisers, privacy invaders, and malicious drive-by downloads.

The techies who installed ABP for the masses trusted adblock to actually block ads, which it won't. Updating the install base to another plugin will waste a tremendous amount of human effort and expose people to advertising in the meantime.

A clueless computer novice cannot give informed consent to your opt-out paradigm because he doesn't know what his options are.

The ad blocking world doesn't revolve around you either. ABP will be forked and this project will fade into irrelevance, because people who want to block ads expect their plugin will do exactly that.

The whole point of ad blocking is to put the user back in charge of what he allows to load on his computer. If he chooses zero advertising, that is his choice, and should be respected. If he chooses to whitelist certain sites on which he will accept ads, that is also his choice, and should be respected. Either way, the respect comes from the decision being made by the end user. You are not the end user. You have taken it upon yourself to decide what ads others should see on their systems unless they find your buried opt-out option. If you are selecting what ads will be seen by the user base, then each individual user is not in charge.

If you want retain a claim of good faith then you have to make the existing install base opt-in. If you want to default an opt-in in good faith then you need to do so, only in new installs, through a simple wizard which explains the consequences of accepting advertising.

All things being equal, a computer novice is safest on a system totally free of advertising, which is why it should be the default option.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:05 pm
by Anti-Ad
You can't promise your users that the "acceptable" ads will respect their privacy. In a world of extremely long lived residential DHCP leases and very rarely cleared cookies, even the loading of a static image from an ad server will expose the user's IP and cookies from that third party domain to the advertiser.

What they do with the data from there is unknown to everyone but themselves.

I don't know of any organization outside the government which actually follows its privacy policy, advertisers least of all.

If their server is compiling metrics you can bet that the person you're force feeding the ads to is being profiled in some way.

If the advertisers you allow are tracking or profiling people, there is no way for the end users to even know the damage has been done, nor can they do anything about it until it is too late and their profile is for sale to 8000000 other ad companies who also don't care about published privacy policies.

If a computer loads any ads, then they're watching, and no, they didn't ask anybody's permission to do so.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:12 pm
by Anti-Ad
From your own survey:

Close to half of users allows ads from their favorite websites. Those who want to see advertising on certain sites already know how.

This tells us the ABP user base already knows how to consent to advertising when running ABP.

Less than one third of users admits to ever clicking on ads.

This tells us that, by and large, the ABP userbase is not interested in engaging advertising messages. If the ads were getting through, they still wouldn't click (wasting resources in the process), and it wouldn't come out for the advertiser in the long run.

Advertisers run ads when they make a profit doing so. Less people clicking ads means less sales, and therefore, less profit for the advertiser. If ABP users start seeing some ads in the short run, publishers will see a spike in their impressions, but because ABP users want nothing to do with ads, the overall clickthrough and conversion quality will fall. Quoting advertising CPM makes things easy but if quality falls off that CPM will have to be renegotiated.

The whole point of advertising is to deliver customers.

Those who install ABP and don't whitelist any sites are not anybody's customers. They're not a lost sale because they wanted nothing to do with the advertising in the first place.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:43 pm
by Snesley Wipes
Wladimir:
- how do you propose to combat advertising networks which lie to you?
- how do you propose to prevent advertising networks having their credentials stolen by other networks and using them to bypass ABP?
- how do you propose to detect advertising networks selling their credentials to other networks for the same reason?

On a side note, if, as you say, you "don't have any meaningful ways of communicating with our entire user base", then what good is the first-run screen? I can only infer from this statement that you consider the rather tokenistic opt-out option you've put in to be meaningless.

This, if it continues, is a great shame, and a great victory for the advertising networks. You may not consider it a war, but make no mistake, they do, and they will have no compunction whatsoever about turning on you further down the line.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:46 pm
by LorenzoC
@guest:
Yes, grabbing ABP sources is easy.
But to maintain the project is not as easy.
Before Wladimir decided to took the project over, it stayed abandoned for YEARS.

@Anti-Ad:
Like I said above, the weak point of the whole reasoning is the fact that most users rely on subscriptions.
The same concept of subscriptions already includes both the blacklisting and the whitelisting.
All subscriptions have an huge list of "exceptions".
So here comes the idea, maybe people don't mind of having less intrusive advertisement allowed.
By providing the "official" whitelist ABP achieves control over what advertisement is allowed, overrides subscriptions and custom filters and can make the advertisers pay for it.
I am not happy with it because I am among those users who don't use subscriptions and so the whole thing doesn't make any sense to me.
It is still to be seen how the "subscribers" will react when they see the "acceptable advertisements".
Given the current dumbness of Internet users, I bet most will not opt-out.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:51 pm
by lulwut?
Palant mentioned a survey. I've been using ABP for 4 years straight and never saw this survey. I'm personally with the 25%. I don't mind the addition of another filterlist, but I do, STRONGLY OPPOSE, the decision to make it default. I'm not going to say much more, but I think somebody forgot about the NoScript debacle from 2009 or so. Remember *that* filterlist? Remember how *that* was default? Somebody just jumped over the shark, past the rainbow, and into the land of hypocrisy.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:10 pm
by MonztA
lulwut? wrote:Palant mentioned a survey. I've been using ABP for 4 years straight and never saw this survey.
See blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results-part-0

Are you seriously comparing that NoScript debacle with this 'acceptable ads' feature? This is an official feature, well-documented and optional.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:22 pm
by lulwut?
MonztA wrote: Are you seriously comparing that NoScript debacle with this 'acceptable ads' feature? This is an official feature, well-documented and optional.
Yes, I am. That was an official feature as well, and within a few days, it was optional as well. I dare say, it was also fairly well documented, by Maone himself. If Wladimir wants to help ad companies sodomize his users, fine, but make the sodomy opt in, not opt-out. Also, some lube (community involvement in the acceptability standards maybe?) would probably be a nice bonus.

Thanks.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:37 pm
by lulwut?
Additionally, "In particular, we want to require that user's privacy is respected (mandatory Do Not Track support). However, we are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement. " is a major problem. By that statement alone, I cannot reasonably agree with making this option available, let alone default. One of AdBlock's major bonuses has always been privacy. This change, if implemented will, at least for a time, destroy many people's personal privacy without their knowledge or permission. Hence my previous statement regarding hypocrisy.

Thanks.

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:41 pm
by LorenzoC
@lulwut?:
I am testing ABP 2.
When you install ABP it enables two subscriptions by default.
One is you regular subscription for blocking/hding content and the other is the "acceptable advertisement" subscription.
The second one is hidden so you cannot see what rules it contains unless you set the "about:config" preference on "true".
Wladimir states this is for "usability" issues but IMHO it makes it less "transparent" and should be avoided.

You can "opt-out" and opt-in" both subscriptions in the same way.
Like I said above, all this has always been included in the very mechanism of subscriptions.
No news from a technical stand point.

What is new here is ABP directly involved in agreements with advertisers and getting money for including them in the "acceptable advertisement" subscription.
IMHO the above procedure makes zero difference.