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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.
Support of his capitulation to the status quo by pulling his app? Support for him clearing the market of a successful ad-blocker so they have fewer competitors?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Any ads with flash, movement, glitz need to be crisped. Having whitelists, blacklists, preferences as to types and crowd blocking all help. Well behaved ads are not an issue.
I use Ghostery because I think all ads are also tracker bots like Google Analytics, Facebook like buttons, etc. Even if you never use Google or Facebook they know almost every webpage you visit because most have Google Analytics or Facebook like buttons that load JavaScript from their servers.
Otherwise I block every ad and I sleep like a baby for it. I don't have a lot of power in this fucking society, if I can't even control where my attention goes to, then what the fuck can I control?
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
I decide what I want downloaded, because I pay for it and I fucking hate ads and that is why I use ad blocking software. If I want to buy something, then and only then will I look at some ads (maybe). If you want to run a business web site or your own web site then you pay for it. If you don't like me looking at your web site, fine I will go somewhere else, just don't expect me to look at ads.
The recent slashdot poll about ads said it all, 65% use ad blocking software and do not feel guilty about doing so.
Regards
Slashgotgirl
The more I know, the less I know
AdBlock Plus Defends Ad Blocking, Applauds Marco Arment
Try Adlblock Plus fellates self, applauds Marco Arment for fellating advertisers. Because of course AdBlock Plus would applaud Marco Arment for doing precisely what they do, and permitting some advertising content. But in the process, they're doing nothing but patting themselves on the backs... or as we often like to say these days, sucking their own dicks.
There is no "acceptable advertising", to many of us. We're tired of space in our brain being rented out, and we're willing to not consume content if only we don't have to encounter advertisements. I'd rather my ad blocker break a site than show me ads. Otherwise, I know not to go back there, and may that site die the death of a thousand dogs, amen. This is a war for control of your brain. Don't be a loser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Web publishers should get together to make a "Reader's Charter" that pledges to stop clickbait and intrusive ads. It's not that complicated. Here's mine
in 2008/2009. I bought a netbook and quickly figured out that rendering the webpages themself (news, technical stuff) was absolutely fine with a single core atom running for 4h on battery, but that playing the flash video in the ad in the background would render the site unusable.
i started ad-blocking and everything was fine.
Just make decent, maybe targeted ads, which are unintrusive and dont slow down my computer too much, and we can discuss that i change my behaviour.
If you have a valuable commodity then somebody will voluntarily support it. Wikipedia for example. Or you might find people want to buy what you have on offer. When I see people without ad-blockers I'm amazed at their crap experience, but they don't seem to know any better. If you want to see model this in print then buy Private Eye. Excellent Journalism worth paying for and ads at front and back which I skip over because I've got no money to spend, but presumably some people do because a lot are repeats.
Marco has sold a number of other successful apps, to the point where he's pretty much independently wealthy.
I'm sure his motivation is purely ideological. I just happen to disagree with the actions he has taken, even though I agree with him ideologically (I think anyway).
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nobody's forcing you to click on clickbait ads. Read the text, don't blindly click on pictures.
You do have to download them. If you're browsing from a phone, you are paying for the ads even if you ignore them.
I was surprised to find this out. I've had blockers on my stuff for the last, oh, five years. I got hit by a bad ad at one point, and realized it was just another attack vector. I'm sorry that the legit guys lost too, but it is kind of like 50 people pass through your house, one is a thief. None of them NEED to be there, so you can lock the door without feeling bad about it. Every time I have to de-malware someone's machine, it is left with full adblock on all browsers...and I'm not even a real geek.
I have no guilt about using Ad Blockers. Advertisements have become so pervasive and invasive that they are literally ruining any experience they touch. I got a TiVo so I could avoid spending a quarter of my TV time watching Ads I got an Ad blocker when web Ads started becoming obnoxious and distracting. I for one would rather not have any Ad supported services. I'd rather pay for services like YouTube and Facebook than have to put up with the Ads. If web services lose revenue over Ad blockers, they should offer users a way to Pay for the service in exchange for an Ad free experience. IMO "Ad supported" might as well be "supported by clubbing baby seals". Both are evil and should be stopped. Elon Musk would seem to agree with me. "he refuses to advertise for Tesla, something most startup car companies wouldn’t think twice about—because he sees advertising as manipulative and dishonest."
They all do it, it just isn't advertised how because few people want that.
Just install the ad-blocker, and then manage your own list subscription. Depending on the blocker, you might need an empty list file. Then nothing is blocked, because there are no blocking rules to start with. You'll still have all the normal tools like "select element to hide," etc.
If the ad market policed itself, ad-blockers would not be necessary.
Since they are necessary, and since the "more nuanced, complex approach" is expensive and error-prone, rightly self-interested end-users have no choice but to resort to simple, effective, indiscriminate ad-blockers.
That is all.
The deciding factor on which browser I use on my mobile devices is now "Does it have an ad-blocker?" The mobile web is useless without it.
Because there is no such thing as 'acceptable ads' on my internet*.
*The internet that was funded by a collaboration between federal and academic institutions for public--not commercial--enrichment.
Those who would prevent the use of ad-blockers need to consider where the logical path of their position leads. Advertisements also appear on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and on billboards along our highways.
Action to prevent ad-blockers must therefore also prohibit Mute buttons on TV remotes and prohibit me from running to the bathroom during long commercial breaks on TV. They must also prohibit me from switching radio stations or turning off the radio while driving They must force me me read every ad in my morning newspaper and make me stop my car to carefully read every billboard.
NO. I can choose to be deaf and blind to advertisements in other media. Why can I not choose to block advertisements on the Internet? What is it about the Internet that mandates its advertisements on me, something other media cannot do?
I'm a user and defender of ad-blocking (as you will see elsewhere in this conversation), but this argument is slightly fallacious.
The advertiser is compensating you for your attention and bandwidth by purchasing content that you wish to view/read.
In an non-advertising supported model, you would be required to pay something to get access to the content, in the advertising-supported model, this cost would be paid on your behalf by the advertisers.
There is an open question on whether the amount of content you are getting in compensation is in appropriate proportion to the amount of your attention and bandwidth (and security/privacy risk) being taken up, but the idea that there is no compensation provided is not quite right.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Why?
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
I find it very sad that anyone would take the side of advertisers. Advertising is now, and always has been a gangrenous cultural wound; a filthy puss filled carbuncle on the ass of capitalism. Advertisements not only manipulate the ignorant and the weak minded, they actively seek to produce ignorance and weak mindedness. Whether or not it moves, plays sound, or just sits there, advertisements are an evil that should be expunged by any means necessary.
whitelisting and the Acceptable Ads feature of AdBlock Plus
Never forget that ABP has been sold out to a company in the advertisement business, and has been repeatedly accused of cutting favors for a) other companies in their group and b) those who pony up the cash, no matter what kinds of ads they serve.
The solution to the advertisement problem is for advertisers to step back into the realms of civilized behaviour. The solution to theft is not to whitelist the guys who steal a little bit from the rich, it is to jail thieves, period.
Once that basic system is in place, we can think about exceptions, e.g. not jailing people who stole an apple because they were starving. Because we understand that the solution to hunger is food, and providing an alternative way of getting it is the better solution than jailing all starving people.
But before we talk about "acceptable advertisement", we need to arrive at the point where everyone - including the fuckers who made the mess - agrees that the current amount and style of online advertisement is not acceptable.
As long as you have people running around claiming that their particular style of stealing is fine, you shouldn't be talking about whitelisting thieves.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Wow! Google search initial web page: 177,128 bytes.
I just switched to DuckDuckGo. Initial web page: 5,255 bytes.
Google has become an extremely abusive company. Many web pages load something from Google, so Google is tracking us wherever we go.
The Slashdot home page loads these from Google:
1) google-analytics.com
2) googleadservices.com
3) googletagservices.com
but why should I waste my time to create my own list when I can start from a premade list and add my rules to that?
- Raynet --> .
Sorry, but if ads were simply generated on the webserver itself (in case of slashdot), with images that also come from slashdot itself, or - in case of something like wordfeud - the ads are simply proxied by the app's home base (apps also phone home for stuff, right?), then the ad-traffic becomes indistinguishable from other, necessary traffic and ad-blockers would be out of work, right?
Yet this doesn't happen. So apparently, it is still too easy to serve apps.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Look, if they kept their ads to non-blinking, non-animated, and non-offensive ads then I'd not use ad block.
On youtube DoubleClick keeps trying to sell me something to do with some horrible disease involving really gross looking parasites. And so if I disable adblock on youtube I see these really gross "something awful" type pictures of gross shit. That's on fucking youtube.
I go to some newsites and I get auto playing ad movies.
And then there are lots of sites that have nested javascript which is javascript inside of java script inside of javascript... and all of that makes the pages load slowly to say nothing of doing all sort of weird shit.
Look...
1. If you want ads... I want nothing beyond a jpg. No gifs. No Flash. Nothing that moves.
2. If you want ads... do not annoy me with offensive ads. If I see ads for penis pills, women showing me their vaginas as if I need an add to find porn, or whatever the fuck that image is that double click keeps throwing at me on youtube... I will enable ad block. No hesitation, no mercy, no remorse.
This is why people skip ads anywhere. They get too pushy and people respond "oh really!?"
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The problem I have is that no company has defined "well behaved ads" in a way that I agree with. For me, the #1 feature of a well behaved ad is that it does not track or otherwise spy on me. As near as I can tell, there's no such thing as a "well behaved" ad.
I'd add a bit to that. No tracking of any kind unless explicitly opt-in requested with informed consent and respects do-not-track requests. No sharing of user information with other organizations. Minimal bandwidth. No animation. No flash or similar technology. No malware or ware of any kind. No redirects unless explicitly selected by user. No pop up/under/over of any kind ever.
And you are right, I don't think there is an actual "well behaved" ad these days.