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AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment
Mark Wilson writes: Ad blockers have been much talked about since Apple opened up support for them in iOS 9. The now infamous Peace shot to the top of the download charts before it was pulled by its creator. Now AdBlock Plus has come out in support of Marco Arment, who developed something of a guilty conscience after his ad blocking creation proved so popular. Ben Williams from AdBlock Plus says "I really applaud this guy," going on to suggest that whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus epitomize the "more nuanced, complex approach" Arment called for. The ad blocking software I'd like to see would detect and zap into a heap of ash those unrelated-photo clickbait ads; I'd rather suffer through some honest banner ads anytime.
(a) worthless shit that nobody would ever click on, except accidentally, or (b) outright scams and malware.
There's also a bunch that are somewhere between merely "worthless" and "malware". I've noticed a lot recently which seem to be targeted toward mobile devices, seeming to intentionally trick people on clicking. For example, I've noticed some which seem to load on a delay, either loading overtop of the page or causing the page to reformat itself when it loads, and loading itself directly when/where you would naturally click to begin scrolling down the page. On a technical level, I don't know what they're doing, but I've found myself more and more accidentally clicking on ads on my phone. Like a page loads, I start reading, and as soon as my thumb hits the screen, an ad appears under my thumb. I'm just trying to scroll, and suddenly it's loading some other page.
I wouldn't have gone looking for an ad-blocker in the first place if it weren't for those kinds of tactics.
Those are annoying but really it's the overall slowdown of websites caused by all those lousy ad networks downloads that sucks. Developers spend tons of time optimizing code, minifying javascript and css, using sprites and whatnot, all in order to restrict the number of connections per page to a minimum (the real killer on mobile internet) but then suckers from ad companies step in and cause browsers to download 50 different files.
Do it right without hurting performance and maybe people will stop hating ads.
lucm, indeed.
Some ads are ok. For example. there are ad paragraphs on the front page of slashdot that invite you to read the articles they summarize. We normally call them stories, but they are also ads.
So then it becomes, what is an ad? If I am on a web site, how can I complain -- or worse yet, want to block -- that site from promoting some of their other web pages. At the most, I can get upset if they are too flagrant in promoting other articles. But some promotion of other content is entirely reasonable.
So "other content" ads are ok, on some level.
At the other extreme, a site trying to sell someone else's random product is not something I want to waste time looking at. But what about a banner promoting some comparison of products? The hardware sites do this kind of thing all the time. I think it is fine if the comparison article is related to what I am looking at, and less fine if it is unrelated. But this sort of thing is a lot grayer.
My personal standard or measure is "Does the site host everything itself?" If so, it is reasonable for them to promote it. But if they do too much self-promotion, I will grow tired of their site and go elsewhere.
So, slashdot promoting their own stories/comment threads on their home page is reasonable and would't be blocked (if that was possible). Whereas, slashdot running ad text/graphics for random products is not something I want to read or look at and I will probably block, or try to block.
I come here for the love
Adblocking would never have become a thing if they had stuck to image only banner ads and such and never introduced 'punch the monkey' type ads.
Nonsense. Ad blocking also has ramifications for bandwidth use, so if it hadn't already become a thing before mobile became big, that's when it would have become relevant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I want an ad blocker that whitelists everything by default, so I can block sites I consider abusive. I tried them all, none do this.
To me, blocking everything by default is a reflexive overreaction. I agree that ads have gotten out of hand, but penalizing sites that use them responsibly is horrible.
Can someone point me in the direction of an ad blocker that lets me whitelist everything by default and has a simple "block ads on this site" button for the bad actors? (I'm looking at you, wikia!)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I'm just very disappointed Marco did not take the time to shift the app to be something he was happy with, instead of just giving up.
That does seem odd, doesn't it?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What really chaps my hide on this issue is that now days we are mostly all capped and we have to pay to have this trash garbage ads shoveled in our face and they usually amount to more than half the traffic. Sorry, if the internet is coin operated I should be able to choose the content.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Exactly. My bandwidth, my processor and my screen. If they want to implement paid services instead of ad supported ones, I'm happy to pay as long as I deem the service worthy of my money.
I miss the days when people shared thoughts and information with each others not out of financial gains but out of sincere interest into a subject. Collaboration, code sharing, tutorials -- all for free and for the mere expectation that if I share this, I know othera will share too and we all get something out of it. Respect was the currency back then.