AdBlock Plus To Introduce Independent Board To Oversee Acceptable Ads Program

Mark Wilson writes: Ad blocking has been in the news quite a lot recently, not least because of iOS 9's new support for advertising avoidance. Perhaps the most famous tool in the arena is Adblock Plus. It's something that many people have become reliant on for cleaning up their online experience but Eyeo — the company behind AdBlock Plus — has been keen to encourage people to permit the display of some advertising through its Acceptable Ads program. That companies can pay to bypass Adblock Plus is nothing new, although Adblock Plus insists that most ads that are deemed 'acceptable' are added for free. Today Eyeo announces that it is going to hand over control of the Acceptable Ads program to a completely independent board.

Comments

Acceptable ads?

[xenotransplant]

What are those?

Re:Acceptable ads?

[gstoddart]

I'll tell you my definition of them: If the host in question serves the ad from its own servers, and doesn't use any Javascript or Flash.

Anything which just links to external ad companies, analytics companies, and expects to run code on my machine is blocked. Because expecting me to trust code execution from a 3rd party is simply not happening.

If I can't do that, then I'll pretty much block every form of ads I can.

Re:Acceptable ads?

[TWX]

I'm willing to accept a couple of lines of small text on a page within a box labelled that it's an ad.

Come to think of it, had we not had ads with audio, ads that popped-up, ads that popped-under, ads that moved around on the screen to avoid the cursor, ads that spawned more ads, ads that hijacked DNS, ads that hijacked Windows Socket Services, I probably would have even been okay with a small number of appropriately-positioned graphical ads, basically the equivalent of a magazine or newspaper's ad content but with the potential for simple animated GIFs. Early on the advertisers fooled me once, I will not give them the opportunity to fool me again, as ad-blocking software, javascript-blocking software, and flash-blocking software will forever be used on any and all browsers that I run.

Re:Acceptable ads?

[rainmaestro]

How many ad-containing sites give you the OPTION to pay for the content? That's the real question. I'm perfectly happy to toss a few bucks to the site if I get value from their content, but damn few even give me the option. It is either fund them through dodgy third-party ads or don't support them at all. And when those are my choices, sorry, no funding.

Re:Acceptable ads?

[hairyfeet]

Exactly. During the early days most of us had NO problem with ads because they weren't being assholes. They had simple .txt, maybe a .jpg or if they wanted to be fancy a .gif, and since it was first party it was actually relevant to the site and usually the site host had good experiences shopping there.....then came the MBAs, Masters of Being Assholes.

First came the pop ups, then came the ads blocking content, then came loud as hell sound blaring, then Java (in fact the reason I originally started advising customers to remove Java was early Java ads) and then came Flash, now look at what we have...want to make a PC so safe you can remove the AV and be just fine? Block ALL ads and watch infections disappear. Last figures I saw had malware ads causing something like 96 out of every 100 infections, nothing else came close.

And to all those that say "we need ads to have the web, boo hoo" I'll say the exact same thing I said to Jim Sterling that got me banned from The Escapist when he was being their apologist, I produced links showing how many times The Escapist had shown malware ads and said..."are you gonna be responsible for the damage you cause? Are you gonna pay to clean their PCs, have a watch put on their CC numbers? Gonna pay them for the lost hours dealing with resetting passwords and cleaning up the messes YOU CAUSED with your ads?" You want to be treated like REAL journalists and stores? Fine and dandy because they pay when they are hacked sometimes to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars like TJ Maxx when their system got hacked.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too ad pushers, either you step up to the plate and claim responsibility and pay for the damages when YOUR ADS cause damage or you have a heaping cup of STFU when users do the only smart and sensible thing and block the largest source of malware their PCs can possibly see.

No. Give the control to the users

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Let the users define using AdBlock protocol what their individual ad acceptance policy is. "No video" "No audio" "Not more than 100% of the bandwidth of payload data." Whatever. Let the users also define keywords like, "Looking for: digital camera, used pick-up truck" "Interested in: traveling, wine, gadgets"

Take it as a browser agent string from the user, or as app setting from the user, and deliver it to the web sites. Let the web sites obey these policies and deliver ads.

Most uses would let unobstrusive ads through. I have had the privilege to block slashdot ads for ages. I never do. Same goes for other sites I support. Give us the control. Not some unelected third party ombudsmen.