Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
Wladimir Palant

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Wladimir Palant »

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fanboy
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Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by 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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Wladimir Palant »

fanboy wrote: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 blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results-part-2 - "Why do you use Adblock Plus?"
fanboy wrote: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.
fanboy wrote: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
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:58 am

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by 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
Posts: 1275
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:47 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Ares2 »

alberto wrote: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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Wladimir Palant »

alberto wrote: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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by 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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Guest »

fanboy wrote:
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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Wladimir Palant »

Guest wrote: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
Posts: 2743
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by lewisje »

Ares2 wrote:
alberto wrote: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 $sitekey to whitelist an ad-network is being used for Sedo domain parking, as mentioned in the exception list itself: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus. ... s.txt[code]! Text ads on Sedo parking domains
@@$sitekey=MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBANnylWw2vLY4hUn9w06zQKbhKBfvjFUCsdFlb6TdQhxb9RXWXuI4t31c+o8fYOv/s8q1LGPga3DE1L/tHU4LENMCAwEAAQ[/code]
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
na

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by na »

Sorry for the stupid question, will the white list be modified by third party software?
Ares2
Posts: 1275
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:47 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by Ares2 »

lewisje wrote:as mentioned in the exception list itself
Comments have indeed been added now (ask and you shall receive ;-) ).
na wrote: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 en/acceptable-ads
na

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by na »

Ares2 wrote:
na wrote: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 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

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by 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
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:01 pm

Re: Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus

Post by DaemonFC »

Wladimir Palant wrote:@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.
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