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Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option
Many readers have submitted news of a week-old announcement from Wladimir Palant, creator of Adblock Plus, about a change to the addon that will allow unobtrusive ads to be displayed. The change has been controversial because most people who run the addon strongly dislike seeing any ads. Palant hastens to point out that this is a toggle-able option, and by changing one setting, users can resume ad-less website viewing. Many are upset, however, that the setting defaults to allowing the display of "acceptable" advertisements. The description of "acceptable" ads includes the following criteria: "Static advertisements only (no animations, sounds or similar); Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images; At most one script that will delay page load (in particular, only a single DNS request)."
Totally agree, and I'm sure someone will nerd rage and create the next adblock plus plus that will block all ads again until they decide to take the money and run. Kind of a vicious cycle but as long as someone picks up the torch I am happy. Hell I might even be motivated enough to get off my fat American ass and do it myself.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
The summary fails to cite some of the core reasons for the complaints, which are that this feature will be enabled by default as well as the fact that the Adblock project is hoping to make monetary agreements with advertisers.
I do wonder if it is the default, though.
Yes and no.
No as in when you first load up the new version, you get to choose whether you want the option.
Yes as in if you use EasyPrivacy it's enabled by default.
You're speculating they're shady - you have no proof Google pays them. Besides, even assuming that they're accepting money from Google in the first place, offering a free add-on which users optionally install and run is hardly a problem, is it? Haven't Google been paying Mozilla to work on the browser this plug-on runs under? Is that shady too?
I remember NoScript, the other addon people install when they're trying to prevent large attack vectors, updating for very minor changes, and automatically loading their home page. Those loads translated to ad hits, which generated revenue. They eventually added an option for this, and I'm sure the people that cared enough turned it off.
However, I don't remember anything similar happening with AdBlock... Can you site a specific incident?
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
I don't have a problem with this, even if Adblock is getting revenue from it. I want them to be able to continue to support the product, and I want the sites I go to to be able to afford to continue to exist, and I am happy if they are able to make a profit even. We all win. The only reason I started using adblock is because of all the disruptive, distracting, ads that interfere with the actual reason I came to a website in the first place. As long as they're able to keep blocking those, and sites that do tracking, I'm happy...
I'll turn it off and move on. Setting it to this option as default is a little shady, but I'll pick up my pitchfork when they remove the off switch entirely. Adblock is a wonderful plugin, I don't fault its creator for trying to make a little bit of money off of it. As long as the plug-in allows me to keep blocking any ad, I'm happy.
There's no such thing as "unobtrusive ad", just like there is no "unobtrusive DRM".
I disagree. You can have a small pic and a bit of text. That's pretty unobstrusive. I'm willing to put up with that in limited amounts (I don't klick on it anyways, but that's a different matter). Loading a huge flash animation is a completely different beast.
And I truly do not understand your DRM analogy. A pic with a bit of text to the left or the right of the main webpage is like DRM how?
My main reasons for using adblock+ is not to kill adds, but to protect my systems from hosts I consider hostile. Ad networks are a major malware vector because most ad network providers are mostly sleazy scum that can't be bothered to secure their networks. Either that, or they try to exploit javascript and other mechanisms to extract information I don't feel that they are entitled to. I'm sure as fuck not going to execute any script that comes from them.
Second comes browsing improvement, because some ad networks are so badly performing that they hinder the use of many web pages. I also found adblock plus the absolute best way to improve browsing performance on low-end netbooks. (Noscript helps a lot too)
Maybe this new option will enable a real no-bullshit way to enable advertisements that respect instead of exploit end users. I would would not mind that at all. Really, though, I don't want to execute any scripts from ad networks at all. I probably would not mind enabling Google's ad services either. As far as I know they're reputable as far as security is concerned.
Why re-invent the wheel? The option of a full ad-block is within the program, you just have to tick one extra box to enable it, at which point it will most likely stay for every update until you chose to disable it. IMO this is not a horrible idea, The reason people started using ad-blockers wasn't because they abhorred the idea of their free sites having the nerve to post advertisements to fund themselves, it was because the advertisements kept getting more and more obtrusive as they went from small images, to large images, to images with popups to obnoxious sounds, at least a few people aren't opposed to a middle ground where they revert back to small banners on the page. One thing that would be nice is if ad-block could be designed to adjust the loading order however, IE the advertisement loads after the page.
It would be a bad move to make it the default. People download this add-on specifically to remove ads, the presumption should be that all ads should be removed.
The best way to handle it would be to just ask the user in plain-english, maybe even explain why they might want to allow such advertisement. Then once the choice is made, never bring it up again. (For example, I don't mind seeing ads for movies because I like to see movies. I don't watch network television, so I never get exposed to movie trailers and I don't know I am missing a movie that might be relevant to my interests. So there are indeed a few cases where I want to allow ads.)
I'm not opposed to non-invasive advertising, and on certain sites, I'll even click an ad from time to time on the sites which I've allowed to advertise to me(assuming the ad was of any interest to me). The ads support the site, and I want the site to continue. I like the idea of advertisers having guidelines to adhere to in order to avoid pissing off viewers. They should already know by now what will piss off viewers, but at least now there's a standard they can point to. For example, if the advertiser has an internal argument between someone who wants a more invasive ad, and someone who wants a less invasive ad, now the guy who wants to use less invasive ads has at least 1 more arrow in his quiver.
If "free" ad-supported content is to survive as ad-blocked viewing methods grow in popularity, somebody needs to keep looking at ads. For that to happen, ads need to evolve into something that gets the point across without pissing off viewers. I didn't mind the brief 15-30 sec Hulu breaks, especially when given the option to give feedback on what kinds of ads they should be serving me with.
Google ads apparently aren't unblocked (yet), but someone on Hacker News asked the developer earlier and apparently monetization is part of the plan:
I don't think that we get anything yet but we indeed hope to get some income this way to make the project sustainable. This doesn't mean that paying us is the requirement to be added to the exceptions list - the requirements a formulated here and they will probably become more precise as we gain experience (suggestions are welcome). As to Google: no, they have nothing to do with it. We didn't talk to Google, we didn't take money from them, there is no conspiracy here. We did look at Google Ads as a typical example (unblocking them is the most common request we get yet most people lack the knowledge for that) but they don't meet our requirements at the moment. Google's search ads are a different thing and they can meet our requirements depending on how the website configures them - and we did add an exception for them on one particular website.
People who aren't tech savvy aren't likely to be installing adblock, and those that are can handle the changing of a single option. The people that are likely to be the most annoyed though are either nerd raging or are in the habit of manually installing huge numbers of installs.
I agree with you. I don't hate advertisements in theory; I hate advertisements in practice. In theory, I'm quite happy to be informed of useful and pertinent products and services; but in practice, all I get is screaming, flashing, interrupting, annoying bullshit that blocks my enjoyment of the content I came for. There is an incredibly tiny minority of ads which I block, which I wish would come through (maybe 1 in 10,000 of today's ads), and if we can convince advertisers to conform to certain criteria, then that would make the world Better, and I support that.
But, I think that's pretty unlikely.
I use adblock because I don't like ads. Or the principle of advertising. If I need something, I look for it. If don't know about something, then I won't care if I don't have it will I? I'll be happy as a pig in shit. Yet somehow to support television, magazines and the internet we have to be fed an endless stream of trash that will invariably end up in the landfills that spoil the countryside after it is thrown away by the morons that actually buy it even though it has no relevance to what they were watching or reading or listening to just because someone somewhere has brainwashed them into buying it by showing it next to a nice pair of tits.
we wouldn't need AdBlock at all. For example, who complains about ads on the Google search page? The ads are highly relevant, and largely unobtrusive. If advertisers were smarter, they'd go one step beyond Google and give the consumer direct control of their ad placement. I don't mind ads when I'm buying, but when I'm not, I want them out of the way. Sounds like a UI problem to me. How hard would it be to solve?
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
TBH, most people that install noscript want bugs and functionality worked on regularly. Plus, I have a hard time imagining that they get much money like that as I don't recall ever seeing any ads on that page.
Then you have never looked at the page. It's full of ads. That's why the asshole that runs noscript silently killed ad-block without telling users, so that his ads would be seen.
http://www.schillmania.com/content/entries/2009/adblock-vs-noscript/
Online ads don't end up in landfill, but i fully agree there...
I hate unsolicited junkmail ads and will never buy anything advertised therein. They go straight in the recycling bag and are terribly wasteful.
I also detest people who cold call, either on the phone or in person and will never purchase their offerings.
If I want something, i will actively go and look for it.
Ads that include any form of sound especially irritate me, and are the main reason i installed adblock in the first place... I also dislike garish animated ads, and those that delay access to the content but nothing is worse than sound... Especially when you can't work out which of your many browser tabs is making the noise!
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There's already an obvious way to permit no-annoying ads while blocking annoying ones, which is to have the subscription blacklist you already use for AdBlock delete the entries for the annoying ads. No need to build a special whitelist capability, unless you want to prevent people from using alternative blacklists.
I'm not actually too bothered by having a few ads, as long as
Unfortunately, that kills off most of the advertising services that might be used to support web sites I like (especially the no-tracking features, because the ad services use those to prevent web sites from faking view data.)
The current advertising-like annoyance I still get is Disqus's takeover of the site-comments business. It thinks that I'm blocking its cookies (I'm not), so some combination of Linux, Firefox, NoScript, Ghostery, AdBlockPlus, FF's Don't track is breaking it. (Also, it has lots of other problems, like not being good at keeping track of multiple identities - my comment histories on BoingBoing and various newspapers aren't supposed to all get lost, which happens if they get mushed together into one Disqus ID.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Many are upset, however, that the setting defaults to allowing the display of "acceptable" advertisements."
Considering the "acceptable" advertisement criteria (no animations, sounds or similar) I've no problem with that. Text or static ads are welcome, particularly if they are paying the bills for what I'm reading. I intensely despise video/audio ads, anything animated and will stop what I'm doing to kill them dead and do whatever is necessary to never see them again. Pretty galling what some people seem to consider acceptable advertising behaviour. It's really bad when you have two audio/video ads playing at the same time.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Adblock developers have previously tried to monetarize the addon in very shady ways. I bet this is just another one of those.
*long whistle* Nice ads you have there! It'd be a shame if someone were to come along and block 'em. *extends hand*
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I think he was suggesting that the shit being advertised is what winds up in the landfill when the consumer eventually figures out he was sold shit.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Sorry.... the only part of the post I caught was about the nice pair of tits. Go on.
I also use adblock because I also don't like ads, but you're missing an important piece of the principle of advertising. You hit on why advertisers are willing to pay for ads, but you ignored the reason why people let them place the ads on their websites, radio stations, etc. It's to pay for the service. Running a website may be cheap, but it's not free.
So here's their options: paywall or ads. We all know which one works, and which one doesn't.
We all like "free" stuff, and ads are what make the "free" world tick.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Shady people, shady deals.
... or it could simply be an acknowledgement that -- like it or not -- the web runs on advertising and allowing a bit of it in might not hurt you if you wanted to be more ethical. Ever thought about how small non-profit websites can afford to keep their domain names? In any case, the Adblock Plus devs have long been clear that one of their aims was to change advertisers' behaviour. This is clearly a move to drive change to a point where advertising is present but less intrusive (and also more ethical, i.e. not using psuedo-OS dialogue boxes to fool the gullible).
Anyway, as long as the option to turn all advertising off is present (and it clearly is) then I can't see how this hurts you or anyone else. But hey, if you don't like it, don't use AdBlock Plus.
Naive people installing products they don't know anything about is why there's a thriving anti-malware industry.
That's why the asshole that runs noscript silently killed ad-block without telling users, so that his ads would be seen.
"Asshole"?? That's an awful lot of hate for someone who's probably just trying to pay for his development time, and gives an excellent extension away for free. I dislike internet ads as much as the next guy, but come on -- was loading the noscript home page what, at most once every week, really going to hurt you in any way, shape or form?
Sheesh, sometimes I feel bad about not maintaining my own software projects, as I never have enough time and don't make any money from them; and then I read comments like yours and suddenly I don't mind as much. Some people feel way too over-entitled.
Ads that include any form of sound especially irritate me, and are the main reason i installed adblock in the first place... I also dislike garish animated ads, and those that delay access to the content but nothing is worse than sound... Especially when you can't work out which of your many browser tabs is making the noise!
And the thing is a lot of people get annoyed by obnoxious ads so they install an ad-blocker (usually ABP for firefox users) and end up blocking the non-obnoxious adds as a side affect.
The web is mostly funded by ads so IMO it's perfectly reasonable for an adblock vendor to seperate the descision of blocking obnoxious ads from the decision to block all ads.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
No. It is clearly a move to attempt to make money from what is perceived to be a captive audience that will not notice.
I don't mind people wanting to make money. However, I see a clear conflict of interest here, when then interests of the source of such money are orthogonal to the actual users of the product.
dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Websites like wikipedia, who have to beg for donations on every page for quite a while in spite of being one of the biggest and most used web sites in the world. And... no one else.
Personally I find myself more annoyed by wikipedia's begging (which is a huge ass banner on top of every page not blocked by adblock), then by small banners on my whitelisted sites.
Long before paywalls, back even before ads became widespread, there was still an internet. If I was having trouble with something, I would use one of the primitive search engines of the time to look for help, and I would find a site or usenet post in which some academic or enthusiast had worked out the solution and shared it with the world.
Nowadays, that helpful site may still exist, but it's buried among thousands of ad-laden commercial sites - which won't help me with my problem, but are quite happy to try to sell me all sorts of junk that's vaguely related to it. Perhaps, if the advertisers gave up because everyone used an effective ad-blocker, and the search engines didn't index the paywalled material, we could get the old, helpful internet back.
Anyone who screws with the configuration or other software on my system without my permission or knowledge deserves hate. If you feel otherwise feel free to support him, buy software from Tax-Cut, etc. If someone screws with other software on my machine without permission I'll boycott them and make sure to inform others of the issue. I've gladly unblocked ad sites to support Hulu, etc, because they asked. I've got no problem supporting folks who ask for it. I have a real problem with folks who muck with my machines without asking.
I dunno about you, but some days I can think of nothing else.
I can see the fnords!
I guess thats why all open source software, websites like wikipedia, are ad supported. Oh wait, they are not.
The vast majority of sites that do not charge users money are supported by ads. One example of a site with no ads (Wikipedia) is not an argument that all web sites have a moral obligation not to show ads. Don't want ads? Don't use sites that have them.
Open source software that requires more than one developer and does not suck genrally has a corporate sponsor that makes money on it somehow. For example:
* Linux: Most kernel committers work at companies that pay them to do it. (IBM, RedHat, Oracle, Google)
* WebKit: Mostly Apple, some Google engineers.
* Firefox: Google gives them over 80% of their revenue. Look at the commit logs: The vast majority of contributions come from people working on Firefox as a full time job at Mozilla.
* LLVM: Notice how the project really took off once Apple's gcc team started working on it? The GPL3 change pushed them from gcc to LLVM/clang.
Name an open source project that has a large user base and no programmers paid to make it not suck.
Advertising is a sick cancer on the mind. ALL advertising should be banned, and we should move to an unbiased review model of product promotion.
You want ban me from hearing an ad? What sort of tyrannical, evil, control-freak are you? I will decide for myself what speech I choose to listen to. And if I have to water a metaphorical tree with your blood, so be it.
Junk mail is marvelous. It pays for my local post office to exist and have enough people to serve us. It is energy in the form of paper which can be burned. By carefully soliciting the right sources I can get enough paper that can be safely burned to provide around 60 percent of my heating needs. I'd heat water with it but have yet to find an effective and efficient means to do so with wood or paper.
The other benefit is costing advertisers money. Money to pay my friendly postman and money to heat my home. It's a win for me.
Spammers, I'd burn those too if I could catch them thermally depolymerize them and put the biodiesel in my truck.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Regardless of the motives on the part of Adblock Plus or conspiracy theories in other postings- the whole reason I started blocking ads was EXACTLY because of ads that:
1) Contain animation (of ANY type)
2) Contain sound
3) Use Mouseovers or now page floating/etc
4) Are unreasonable numerous or large
5) Delay page loading
If I could use Adblock to stop only the above and allow reasonably sized and fast loading, relevant, text based, or static image based ads, I would do so. I have said that for years.
I am actually just as distressed now by things that are NOT ads, but contain constant or time delayed scrolling and other animations on sites. It is EXTREMELY IRRITATING while trying to read something (not to mention battery draining). But web designers seem to think it is cool and mandatory now. Used to be easy- turn off Flash and animated GIF. But since they are all Javascript now, there is no effective way to stop them without breaking the needed parts of pages (and don't EVEN suggest greasemonkey or the like... far to complex and/or time consuming). I wish there was a Firefox plugin that could auto detect Javascript animation or loops and just stop them.
People download this add-on specifically to remove ads, the presumption should be that all ads should be removed.
I disagree. Although I've known about AdBlock for years, I only recently installed it (a couple months ago). I did not want to block all ads - only the annoying ones. I believe it was an ad that started playing a loud video when I accidentally hovered the mouse over it for a second at 5am that finally got me to install ABP.
As a small business owner who has to run at least some ads to get new customers, it was a bit disheartening to see that by default, every ad on every site is blocked with ABP. I still can't find an option to only block certain types of ads - only the option to block ads from certain hosts. Since most of my customers and potential customers are computer savvy 18-30 year olds, a large percentage of them use AdBlock. I don't want to annoy anyone with ads, but if all ads are blocked by default, 95% of people would never change that setting, even if they aren't bothered by static ads.
While I agree most ads suck ass I don't think that just because something is cheap automatically means its shit. Sure meritline is trash but i buy cheap adapters all day long from monoprice and frankly I've never had one fail, and they carry the stuff most other don't which has actually let me save things from the landfill like those old classic claky keyboards with the big DIN plugs.
I think it all comes down to HOW you advertise. for example I was actually grateful when tiger sent me a "Hey since you bought a Thuban from us we thought you might need some stuff to go with it" ad because i was having a devil of a time finding a good cooler that would fit my case and the one in the ad they sent me was just the right size. Or the nice email that Newegg sent me when I was buying parts for my GF's new Xmas PC with 15% off the rest of the parts I was gonna have to buy anyway, that was nice.
I think its more the difference of someone whom you've bought from trying to sell you things that go together VS someone just cold calling and bugging the fuck out of you that makes the difference. take junk mail, which now that i think about it I'll have to go dump my mail straight into the trash again as i'm sure the poor mail guy is getting tired of trying to stuff that shit in the box. i never use it, never even look at it, its all crap you couldn't give me if you offered it free, its just a waste. Now compare that to the emails that mom gets from Amazon that many here would call spam that she frankly loves. She likes a bunch of weird horror writers so when one of her authors, or an author recommended by one of her authors, comes out with a new book Amazon gives her a heads up. she loves that as it lets her know when the next book in one of her serials is out, what books to put on her wishlist, and it makes things easier for her.
So i don't think ads HAVE to suck ass, i just think the douchebags that have been making the flashy bling bling bullshit ads are ruining it for everyone. I like to know when a new ATI GPU or AMD CPU comes out, so i don't mind hearing about that. I don't mind when monoprice sends me an ad telling me about a sale because hey, i may need an adapter and could save a couple of bucks. what I DO mind is these ads from left field about shit i don't care about like retirement homes or female products slapping me in the face when i'm just trying to read an article, thanks ever so.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.