Mozilla Sets Out Its Proposed Principles For Content Blocking (mozilla.org)

Mark Wilson writes: With Apple embracing ad blocking and the likes of AdBlock Plus proving more popular than ever, content blocking is making the headlines at the moment. There are many sides to the debate about blocking ads — revenue for sites, privacy concerns for visitors, speeding up page loads times (Google even allows for the display of ads with its AMP Project), and so on — but there are no signs that it is going to go away. Getting in on the action, Mozilla has set out what it believes are some reasonable principles for content blocking that will benefit everyone involved. Three cornerstones have been devised with a view to ensuring that content providers and content consumers get a fair deal, and you can help to shape how they develop.

Comments

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll block every single ad you force down my throat

Re:No thanks

[JMJimmy]

This. Even the courts agree - what comes onto my system is my choice. I can block whatever the @$#$ I don't want, i can twist and control the data that is on my system for personal use. Does this harm the sites I visit? Sure, they don't get the ad revenue. That's not my problem that's their problem. Not getting enough ad revenue? Find a different business model.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not getting enough ad revenue? Find a different business model.

Such as?

I'm asking a genuine question - people love to bash Internet advertising (and with VERY good reason) but then they state that a site should find a different business model to stay afloat, they very rarely suggestion what this business model could be. If they do, it's something like subscriptions which a site like ArsTechnica has but isn't enough to sustain it for the level of quality of its articles.

No-one has a good answer for an alternate business model. If there was one, most of the Internet would probably have switched to it by now, given the available and commonness of adblocking. But they haven't, because as far as a business model for supporting a site and paying the bills, nothing works as well as ads.

SO SHUT THE FUCK UP IF YOU CAN'T PROVIDE ALTERNATIVES!!! /sysadmin of major tech site... not ArsTechnica

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup.

Here's my principles for content blocking:

Is it an ad?

Okay, then block it.

My ipad is mother fucking unusable for web browsing, because of ads. You can't click on anything until the page has totally loaded, because you'll accidentally click on ads or they'll force the content to realign, meaning you click the wrong other thing. And even once you way fucking forever for shit to load, you often have obnoxious ads taking up whole areas of the screen permanently on the page.

No ads. I don't give a fucking shit about your justification for why they are there. Need them to survive? Tough tits - maybe your publication should die.

We managed for years on an internet without commercializing every mother fucking thing. We'll do so in the future, too.

Re:No thanks

[AmiMoJo]

I suppose efforts like this and Google's AMP, because while I do use multiple blockers I'd like to see the baseline shittyness of web sites decrease. With AMP, for example, they don't allow any non-library Javascript, so you get useful and vetted functionality but Javascript laden ads and annoyances are removed.

Unfortunately I'm not sure Mozilla has quite the right idea here. Take this principal:

Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).

Adverts are a category of content I want to block for my "user needs". They are distracting and annoying, waste my bandwidth and I never interact with them anyway. They almost all violate my privacy with tracking, and are a security risk. They reduce performance at no benefit to me.

Mozilla seem like they are trying to create rules that will get sites on-board by being fair to them, but I think in reality unless advertisers are willing to take a massive hit in terms of the tracking, the type of ads they use and the performance hit they create it won't work.

Re:No thanks

[dave420]

Well, if you like going to those sites, it does become your problem as the more people who block ads, the less revenue they generate, and then their content will start to get worse, and eventually they'll disappear. It's not that I don't generally agree with you, but that point is clearly false.

Re:No thanks

[TuringTest]

Not getting enough ad revenue? Find a different business model.

Such as? [...] No-one has a good answer for an alternate business model.

What's wrong with Blendle?

Re: No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one: don't have a fucking business model. Run a website you are passionate about for no other reason. I get it, you're a sysadmin for a large website that (almost undoubtedly) relies on ad revenue. What I'm proposing could well put you out of a job. I don't want to sound too callous, but I don't give a shit about your employment situation. I want to see the Web deflated to where it was years ago, before everything had to be monetized. This will cost jobs. No question. But the jobs it will cost aren't very meaningful in the first place. You are not entitled to employment. I want the Web to return to the way it was before the venture capitalists got involved, before stock valuation was a concern for a website. When people put shit out there simply out of passion for what they were doing, not because they thought they could make money off of it. We may be too late to realize this dream, having crossed some event horizon with the sheer amount of money involved, but I'd like to think it's still possible. There are plenty of sites out there operating on a free-plus-pay-if-you-want-the-good-stuff lot put-son -money-in-the-tip-jar model that survive. They are not game changing "market disruptors", but they manage to hit an equilibrium that allows stasis. They are not monstrous least common denominator websites; they are typically smaller, niche-oriented websites. That's where I hope things head once all this bullshit marketing nonsense implodes under the weight of its own greed. And I don't care if that leaves you unemployed.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If the site has anything of value, it will be replaced by someone else once it's gone; kinda like OSS that way.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and with respect to my home network, I will continue to blacklist these ad networks and servers, even though it's almost pointless as they keep changing. I'm not sure when this happened exactly, but at some point in history companies started believing they had a right to force feed me advertisements.

Sure, the TV show I'm watching was created specifically to get me to watch the ads they play during that show, but guess what? I have the right, and ability, to not pay attention to those ads. Is that stealing? Of course it's not.

Sure, you may FEEL that your site has the right to force feed me advertisements, but I sure as hell have the right not to pay attention. I sure as hell have the right to protect myself from half assed or nefarious code. I certainly have the right, scratch that, the DUTY to monitor and control the traffic on my network. And that's what this really is about, traffic. Well folks, since all of the ad blocking software is caving in and selling us out, it's up to us to block this garbage at the next level, your router. Don't have a router that allows you to create block lists and you can't or won't flash the firmware? build a linux box and make it your router/firewall or pirate a copy of windows ISA and setup your own filters.

We will always win this, no one can FORCE this junk onto your computer, not even your ISP has the right to do that, they have the right to try, but we have the right to stop them cold.

If your business model requires putting me a risk, fuck you and your "business". What has ad based revenue got us? All of the bullshit sites your peon facebook friends are sharing that have less than 3 paragraphs of content spread out over 15 pages of mostly ads. Fuck that, and fuck you for thinking this is an acceptable model.

Slashdot hasn't infected me, or spammed me, or even provided intrusive ads, yet the site is still here, full of comments and bickering. It's certainly not free to host that database of retardedness.... yet here we are.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

The you go out of business because people obviously didnt value your product as muchas you thought it was worth. That should be the free market people.

Unlesss your saying the government should intervene in the market and force us to view the adverts?

Re:No thanks

[FireFury03]

Adverts are a category of content I want to block for my "user needs". They are distracting and annoying, waste my bandwidth and I never interact with them anyway. They almost all violate my privacy with tracking, and are a security risk. They reduce performance at no benefit to me.

Ok, so your "user needs" are:
- Avoid annoyance and distraction
- Avoid bandwidth waste
- Protect privacy and security
- Maintain performance

These cover a wider scope than just adverts, and may not cover *all* adverts.

Personally, I have no problem with advertising so long as they don't break the above criteria. That means an unobtrusive text advert is fine (and who knows, I might even click on it is it's useful to me), a pop-up flash ad that plays music and has to be manually dismissed will be blocked.

FWIW, in recent times I've seen an increase in the number of pop-up ads which are getting through adblock plus. These generally take the form of "subscribe to the website you're currently looking at" rather than third party ads, but they are equally as annoying (and usually result in me hitting the "Back" button rather than reading and sharing the content on the site).

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Freemarket" assumes rational players. I don't know the last time you were outside, but most people are not rational.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this harm the sites I visit? Sure, they don't get the ad revenue.

I wouldn't say you harm them, you don't take anything away from them, you just don't give them anything either. They lose relative to their expectations, but they don't lose anything they actually had.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

What's it like to live in constant fear and insecurity that somebody else's opinion is going to rip away your self-control and willpower?

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

No one clicks on ads. Money is made from imprints. This is why news sites, which used to display articles on one page, now, quite unnecessarily, spread them across multiple pages for one reason -- ad imprints. More clicks, more eyeballs. It's disingenuous. Advertising is parasitic in nature. There is no obligation that visitors view the ads. None. The website owner may wish for this so he can make money by doing nothing, but if you want to make money, erect a paywall. If your content is compelling, people will pay a couple of dollars a year for your content. If you have enough users, you'll make come good coin. Failing this, don't blame me if I don't wish to have what has become the largest vector for malware presented to me.

Like you, I'm in IT for almost 20 years now. I know a thing or two about how the Internet works and better yet, how it should work. The desire to "monetize" everything is what is wrong with the Internet. Not everything has to be about money, nor should it be. If your living is your website, the content needs to be compelling enough to charge for it. Free anything is just that. Free is never the best unless it's love. Free is only good if it's given freely. Expecting users to allow the largest vector for malware in order to view your "free" website is not a bargain. You "metaphorically" are exposing users to malware and evil redirects for money. You may not be knowingly doing this, but ad networks are the darlings of malware authors because they are low-hanging fruit. No one secures their ad networks well. Ask me how I know this. Paid IT security analyst who has done more NIST 800-53 work than enough. I have scanned more networks for companies to show them how insecure they really are. I have pointed out, over and over again, that security is not a product -- it's a process -- one that ad networks couldn't care less about because they get no ROI from security measures.

Until ad companies wise us, stop tracking users, employ proper security processes, and stop selling and trading information, they are parasites and need to be treated as such.

-- Sysadmin, IT Security Pro, Concerned End User

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

You used "Arse Technica" and "quality" in the same sentence.

I think you don't know what you're talking about.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not my job to make your business viable. I don't have to provide alternatives, and I'm not going to.

But it's entirely on me when your shitty ads steal my time, annoy the hell out of me, and break my system. So since you don't take responsibility for your ads, and I block them, I don't take responsibility for inventing your new business model. And I certainly won't "shut the fuck up" any more than you're willing to "die in a fire".

Deal with it, you unprofessional ass.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Such as?

Such as, fuck off and go out of business. There are an infinite number of hobbyists willing to replace your content-farm bullshit with higher quality information for free anyway.

The sooner all the marketers and advertisers are lined up and shot, the better off society will be!

Re: No thanks

[Merk42]

Here's one: don't have a fucking business model. Run a website you are passionate about for no other reason. I get it, you're a sysadmin for a large website that (almost undoubtedly) relies on ad revenue. What I'm proposing could well put you out of a job. I don't want to sound too callous, but I don't give a shit about your employment situation. I want to see the Web deflated to where it was years ago, before everything had to be monetized. This will cost jobs. No question. But the jobs it will cost aren't very meaningful in the first place. You are not entitled to employment.

and you are not entitled to free content.

I want the Web to return to the way it was before the venture capitalists got involved, before stock valuation was a concern for a website. When people put shit out there simply out of passion for what they were doing, not because they thought they could make money off of it. We may be too late to realize this dream, having crossed some event horizon with the sheer amount of money involved, but I'd like to think it's still possible.

Even if one were to make the content only because they were passionate about it, there is the cost of hosting. The 'event horizon' as you put it, may have been the exponential increase in people getting onto the Internet. More traffic = more cost (this is also why cost would a be a factor as a site gets more popular).

There are plenty of sites out there operating on a free-plus-pay-if-you-want-the-good-stuff lot put-son -money-in-the-tip-jar model that survive. They are not game changing "market disruptors", but they manage to hit an equilibrium that allows stasis. They are not monstrous least common denominator websites; they are typically smaller, niche-oriented websites. That's where I hope things head once all this bullshit marketing nonsense implodes under the weight of its own greed. And I don't care if that leaves you unemployed.

Such as what sites? I'm not saying you're lying, I'd just like examples.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaaanhh gimme gimme gimme. I'm entitled to things for free!!!

Re:No thanks

[gnupun]

There are an infinite number of hobbyists willing to replace your content-farm bullshit with higher quality information for free anyway.

Fine, why don't you pay hundreds/thousands of $$$ for hosting/month and spent 20-40 hours a week running a website for free? Let's see some passion from the hobbyist freeloaders!

Re: No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Blasphemy is but one. You get a few free images, can preview all images, but if you want to download certain image sizes, you pay. I'm a subscriber. I've been admiring Ryan's work since 1999.

Re:No thanks

[KGIII]

Like Linux has supplanted Windows on the desktop? I think you're assuming rational people are in the majority. I don't think they are. I use Linux, it's clearly better, but I'm part of a very small minority.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If they do, it's something like subscriptions which a site like ArsTechnica has but isn't enough to sustain it for the level of quality of its articles.

And Ars's quality can't drop any lower without becoming Clickbait II: Son Of Buzzfeed

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

IT pro here... Hosting costs next to nothing. You can get a package from literally hundreds hosting providers offering unlimited space and bandwidth for less than $10 month. Unless your website is professional and seriously dynamic, it takes far, far less than 20-40 hours a week to maintain it. I used to work in the hosting industry so I know of what it takes to run very busy websites. I once managed several major sites, including one for a major mountain biking company. The webmaster spent maybe 4-5 hours week maintaining it.

Please don't let your desire for ad revenue force you to speak unfactually about issues.

Re:No thanks

[gnupun]

Please don't let your desire for ad revenue force you to speak unfactually about issues.

So why don't people like you spend 5 hours a week maintaining, as you claim, cheap hosted, ad-free websites?

You can get a package from literally hundreds hosting providers offering unlimited space and bandwidth for less than $10 month.

10 bucks gives a you really crappy hosting for small sites few people visit. You can get decent hosting starting at $50 and going to hundreds of $$$ per month. Unlimited bandwidth for $10? you're full of BS.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so your "user needs" are:
- Avoid annoyance and distraction
- Avoid bandwidth waste
- Protect privacy and security
- Maintain performance

Yeah, except all of these are subjective.

What qualifies as "annoying"?
What qualifies as "waste"?
How much privacy and security is "enough"?
How much performance are you allowed to degrade?

I could claim that downloading a simple text ad is "annoying", "wasteful" (since it's not anything I want on my screen and thus wastes bandwidth and screen space) and it degrades my performance by having to download it and render it to my screen. Technically those are all correct, even though realistically it isn't any of those things.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

You know not of what you speak. Put up "webhosting" in Google and view the deals you can get with BRAND NAME hosting companies. Hosting is a commodity now, no longer expensive. I personally know of several well-known, very popular sites using inexpensive hosting companies that get several million hits per week. It happens all the time. Please, do your homework before you speak.

The reason you are seeing a drop in pricing is because of sites like GitHub and others. People don't really host their own sites now. It's dropping off in favour of using Facebook, GitHub, and similar. Me? I'm old school. I prefer a website and old school HTML, no dancing baloney.

Re:No thanks

[AmiMoJo]

I see what you ate staying, but an unobtrusive text ad is not very effective. Even Google has to place them annoyingly so you have to scroll past them on mobile.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! The only side that matters at all is the side of the consumer! I paid for my computer, I pay for my (capped) internet bandwidth. Therefore I and ONLY I decide what is downloaded and displayed on my computer.

Blocking ads is self defence! Not only are advertisers trying to steal my bandwidth, my attention, my time, and my privacy, many ad servers are infected with spyware/malware and viruses that get spread along with the ads.

I really don't care if I can't see a site because they don't like me blocking ads...they are committing suicide in most such cases, and good riddance! Advertisers have no rights at all in this matter...they don't get to force their way onto my computer, they don't get to steal private information from me, they don't get to steal MY time, MY attention or MY bandwidth!!

The only question here is who controls what gets downloaded and displayed on MY computer...and there is really no question there, I control what gets downloaded and displayed on my computer.

I have the choice to choose Netflix over cable TV to avoid commercials (ads), I have the right not to look at ads in the newspaper. Don't want me to see your content for free? Make it worth it to me to pay a SMALL fee to see it. Or find another way to fund your web site.

Re:No thanks

[JMJimmy]

Well, if you like going to those sites, it does become your problem as the more people who block ads, the less revenue they generate, and then their content will start to get worse, and eventually they'll disappear. It's not that I don't generally agree with you, but that point is clearly false.

It's not false. They can change the way they do business. NYT has proven that other models work - people will pay for quality content, others will be happy with ads, and others will use the freenet.

Re:No thanks

[kmoser]

Not getting enough ad revenue? Find a different business model.

Such as?

Paid product placement: "Syrian rebels launched renewed attacks on the capital earlier today, while enjoying the cool, refreshing taste of Coca Cola."

Re:No thanks

[Anonymice]

Which would you prefer then?
a) Pay a subscription to every site you frequent? or...
b) Where the content becomes the ad & everything is sponsored?

Personally, I subscribe to all of the sites that I care enough about, and for the others, I prefer to have a degree of separation between the paid content & the impartial content.

Re: No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're seriously telling me that Linux on the desktop is better, you're clearly one of those irrational people.

Re: No thanks

[KGIII]

It is for me. It does everything I need, quickly and while being stable and secure. It's light, fast, and easy. I really think it's better - at least for me.

Don't RTFA

[American AC in Paris]

If you'd like to avoid the ad-infested miasma that is TFA over at BetaNews, you can go straight to the proposal here:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/07/proposed-principles-for-content-blocking/

Re:Don't RTFA

[musikit]

heart of text.

Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).
Transparency & Control: The content blocking software should provide users with transparency and meaningful controls over the needs it is attempting to address.
Openness: Blocking should maintain a level playing field and should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content. Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, instead of being placed in a permanent penalty box that closes off the Web to their products and services.

Re:Don't RTFA

[musikit]

to me adblock does all this.
1. content neutrality - it my have started as an "ad blocker" but now blocks so much unneeded web elements that it truely enhances performance. those things it is blocking are more then advertising, and also includes tracking information
2. transparency and control - user is able to blacklist/whitelist any site at any time
3. openness - user is able to view complete list of blocked elements at anytime.

so mozilla is ok with adblock/ghostery etc. IMHO anyway

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Its ok, with ublock none of the stinking ads show :3

Re:Don't RTFA

[PRMan]

I didn't see any ads...

Re:Don't RTFA

[Dutch Gun]

For me, the issue is safety. The rest of the issues, while not unimportant, are secondary.

I won't allow some third-party advertisement company to run arbitrary scripting on my machine - or more accurately, allow them to run scripting that allows someone else who allows some criminal to run scripting on my machine. Until these ad-serving companies can make firm guarantees about the safety of the ads they serve, I'm not going to allow them. This point is simply non-negotiable to me.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Dutch Gun]

Also, Mozilla, since when are advertisements called content? The content is what we're trying to get to. The ads are in the way of the content, sometimes literally.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

What really drives me nuts are the sites that set the body tag or div tag with all the real content in it to "display: none" or "visibility: hidden" until the ad script decides to show it.

Re:Don't RTFA

[jordanjay29]

Accepted Ads program and the mysterious new owner of AdBlock should make it completely fail Transparency and Openness.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Kinematics]

so mozilla is ok with adblock/ghostery etc. IMHO anyway

Sort of. Your summary misses a key point at the start of item #3:

Blocking should maintain a level playing field and should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content.

"Regardless of source" is a weasely way of implying, "no public blocklists that block based on the source domains and such". A "level playing field" that isn't biased by source would be allowing you to block 320x200 video (because perhaps those are typically ads), but not "everything from doubleclick.net".

Extensions like AdBlock and Ghostery explicitly block based on the source of the content, and that violates principal #3.

Principle #1 might also vaguely be problematic, depending on interpretation. However, "blocking advertising" can be categorized under "a specific user need", even though it's specifically excluded in the example list (implying that users don't 'need' to block advertising).

Principle #1 is really a guideline for architecting the software, not for use of the software. As a programmer, it's perfectly reasonable to have that guideline in place for how you design the code in general. However, for the purpose of actually using the software, it's not valid. Not all content is equal, even when it's of exactly the same type (just wander through YouTube comments for examples). The entire point of content blocking is content discrimination — you are explicitly not being neutral.

Even in their examples of appropriate use (performance, security, and privacy), there is no 'neutral' value. I may be concerned about privacy with respect to Doubleclick, but not, say, Amazon (or whatever other sites of your choice). I may be concerned about performance on some sites, but willing to give it a pass on others. This explicitly goes against principle #3, of being agnostic to the source, when in fact the source explicitly informs my choice of action. I cannot ignore the source, and there is no "content neutrality".

Of course this can be turned around. If Verizon offered an adblocker that they developed, that blocked all the ads they didn't want you to see (ie: competition), but gave you plenty of their own ads, that would definitely fail both the principle, and user expectations. So they could point at an example like that and say that their principals mean 'that'.

However that's not all that that series of words means, and based on the behavior of Mozilla over the last couple of years, I don't expect them to change their wording based on user feedback, because they want to be ambiguous about this; it gives them an out. They'll "listen", and then dump all the feedback in the trash bin.

Re:Don't RTFA

[narcc]

Since forever. Your narrow, undefined, personal definition means nothing to anyone besides yourself.

Re:Don't RTFA

[arth1]

The real problem with "proposed principles" is the same as the "Do not track". It assumes that the players will follow the rules. They won't. They will take whatever extra is given, and otherwise only follow their own rules, which are based on what gives the most profit.
This will only make it easier for unscrupulous advertisers, as they now have published guidelines for what to defeat.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads are only content to psychopaths like you.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Your narrow, undefined, personal definition means nothing to anyone besides yourself.

No, s/he's not alone, I'm with the parent on this one. The content is what I'm trying to access. The ads and malware are the flashing lights, loud horns and dancing elephants that are doing their damnedest to distract me from the content, slow down my content retrieval and use up my capped, overpriced, limited-bandwidth internet connection.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at the least, read the archived version, so they don't get any ad revenue for it:

https://archive.is/TJXtX

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

put it this way, are they paying you for the electricity and storage space, and waer and tear?

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

thats it, today you get the viruses surfing, infected ads are a big part of that, if they came here to fix what their ads broke it would be fine, if cortana could fix it by herself it would be fine, but both are useless and if im the one thats going to have to be dealing with it because no one is going to take responsability, im blocking EVERYTHING

put static shit on your websites
I
DONT
GIVE
A
FUCK

i will continue to block everything

Re:Don't RTFA

[Tom]

This is the most brilliant reply to the whole thing and deserves to be modded +10.

You spotted the fast one they are trying to pull. You are right, "content blocking" is a newspeak word. We are not talking about content, we are talking about the non-content bullshit that is getting in the way of the real content.

Good catch.

With that in mind, these "rules" are even more evil than I found them on first reading. In fact, they are a good sign that someone at Mozilla has his head on backwards, and I should really check out other browsers again. This is pure evil.

Re:Don't RTFA

[AmiMoJo]

This is actually one of Google's proposals with AMP. They only allow pre-approved Javascript libraries, no custom code. It's part performance (can be optimized, cached and pre-compiled) and part safety (no arbitrary code).

While I'm sure people like yourself will continue to block anyway, it would be a big win to get this principal into the mainstream so that everyone can benefit from it.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Accepted Ads program and the mysterious new owner of AdBlock should make it completely fail Transparency and Openness.

It seems that AdBlock has been bought by Adblock Plus.

Re:Don't RTFA

[cfalcon]

Advertisements are malicious. They are not content.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I find I'm increasingly selecting View -> Style -> No Style. Sometimes it's so that I can see the actual page. (Microsoft's new code is a good example.) Other times it's because the layout is so messed up that I can't read the page properly. (Ars Technica became black text on dark gray awhile back.)

It used to be that a primary rule in web design was that a page should "degrade gracefully", which means that it shouldn't depend on script, Flash, or new CSS options in order to function. Increasingly, pages are designed to fail without script. And not just script -- 3rd-party script, tracking script, ad-animating script and sneaky functionality-limiting script.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Blocking should maintain a level playing field and should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content.

I don't care whether or not ShadyCo thinks I'm being fair to them. I can view all their competitors' ads, and none of theirs. My computer, my rules.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a simple caveman. The modern world with its checkboxes and text that explain what the checkboxes do must frighten and confuse you.

(RIP, Phil Hartman.)

Re:Don't RTFA

[theArtificial]

It depends on the audience. Mozilla is backed by entities that are funded (massively) from advertising, the terminology is no surprise. If you're an advertising network soliciting eyeballs, hell yes your paying customers product is content!

Don't touch my uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all I need and less bloat while you're at it.

Is this really an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a browser doesn't let me block advertising and other annoying content then I'm going to switch browsers. If a website uses tracking, adverts, or anything else that cannot be blocked then I'm not going to that website ever again. Seems simple enough. What's wrong with what we have today?

Re:Is this really an issue?

[ancientt]

What's wrong with what we have today?

It's a battle rather than an agreement.

I don't mind some advertising, but I do mind scripting and video and bandwidth consumption. The state of the ad-supported web as it exists currently is a battle between the consumers who don't want to see advertising and businesses who want the consumers to see it anyway. What we have today is companies who insert their programming into pages coming from their own servers with little or zero oversight to make sure that what consumers get is safe or desirable, even tolerable. Consumers use Ad-Blocking software to filter out things that come from sites outside of the content desired. Advertisers can still get their advertisements to show, and I'm surprised more aren't by having the ads injected directly by content directors and by using URLs within the desired content providers' resources which are indistinguishable from the desired content. I'm surprised more aren't; it isn't that hard.

What we really want isn't the battle we have today. We want the benefits of cheap content, and we're willing to view safe and unobtrusive advertising or pay micro amounts to support our desired content but the way the ad-supported web is built today doesn't allow us to do that simply and reliably, so it's far easier to just block stuff and far easier to load web pages with crap. The problem with what we have today is that it isn't a long term sustainable solution.

There are two solutions that I think we're headed toward. The first is direct support. Google and others are recognizing there is money to be made in suppressing advertising, and the natural development of that is either paying consumers to allow ads or to consolidate enough advertisers who are willing to take payment in lieu of actual advertising. The other is building advertising systems that make it impossible to avoid and building better adblocking software to avoid what was previously impossible. One is a war, the other is a cooperative system. I don't know which will win, but I'm rooting for cooperation.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[cfalcon]

It's not a battle. The computer user determines what displays.

And that is NOT ads, thanks.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[ancientt]

Pretending I'm an advertiser for a moment: If you go to a page where I want you to see my ads, you'll see my ads, at least the first time you load the page, and probably ever time thereafter. Why? Because I understand how ad-blockers work and they're not hard to outsmart. Have you ever built an adblocker? I ask because you'd have to build your own, rather complex, adblocker to keep me from being able to show you undesired ads.

The computer user doesn't determine what displays, the programs running to display desired content determine what displays. Programs to force unwanted advertising don't have to be nearly as sophisticated as the ones that are designed to block them. Right now, advertisers and programmers haven't cared enough to change the way most ads are delivered, but that's changing. Eventually, the end user can win because they have the potential to control the computer that does the actual display but they won't anytime soon. The programming skills to accomplish that goal are tremendously sophisticated. No current adblocker is even remotely close to being that sophisticated.

Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have the programmers capable of writing adblockers that sophisticated, but none of them has the incentive.

I was blocking advertising and other junk before adblockers became something you could just add to a browser. I needed to learn how in order to effectively use the terrible bandwidth I had in those days, so I had to learn a lot about what can and can't be done. If advertisers get determined enough to outsmart the adblockers available today, my experience assures me that we'll start getting bombarded with crap again no matter what adblocker we try. I'm still hoping for an ecosystem change rather than that outcome, because if it goes that far, the money it will take to build a successful adblocker against that scenario will mean we'll have to pay out of pocket to fund it.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[cfalcon]

I agree with your points, but maybe not your conclusion. The computer user DOES determine what displays, because he will determine which programs are running. While an advertiser could absolutely push ads through the current blocking schemes (at relatively great cost), the amount of effort needed to remove that on the end users side will ultimately be feasible and worthwhile. The advertiser needs to get a return on investment, so any of his workarounds will be met with both user hostility and sophisticated solutions that will be disseminated rapidly.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[ancientt]

I heard a suggestion the other day. Someone speculated that content providers should distribute the desirable content through the same systems that distribute the advertisements. Personally I'd be more inclined as an content provider or an advertising distributor to incorporate an advertising module directly on the content server. Adblockers use pattern recognition and source recognition to determine which content components are advertising. Both strategies are defeated when the advertising patterns are randomized and coming from the same sources.

In order to block advertising in either of those situations, adblockers will have to evolve to be able to interpret the desired content and process and interpret the content displayed well enough to figure out which parts aren't related to the same subject matter. There isn't AI advanced enough to do that consistently anywhere yet, let alone in software you could run in your computer and it is a long, long way from being something you can put in a browser add-on. There are a couple things holding advertisers back from implementing more unavoidable schemes, but when they find their revenue dying due to widespread adblocking, they'll have the motivation.

Everybody wins if we can reach a consensus on what constitutes acceptable advertising. That's a big if, but I'm glad to see Mozilla making the attempt.

Another alternative I'm on-board with is a per-visitor micropayment system. Google's already offering that but until there is a common consensus, and some way to get payments exchanged between different middle companies, it's a partial measure only. It's been tried before and failed, but I but I still hold hope since that was before adblocking became commonplace.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

and we're willing to view safe and unobtrusive advertising

I absolutely am not. Advertising is a despicable and pernicious evil. It is in the same vein as lying and fraud.

You're basically saying "it's ok for people to lie to me and swindle me, as long as the lies aren't obnoxious, and I get to see what I want after they've swindled me."

No. Advertising is immoral, and has no place in civilised society. It's just a horrible sign of the times that our society is so far from civilised that we are innundated with so much swindles and frauds on a daily basis.

Google and others are recognizing there is money to be made in suppressing advertising

So a company that has built their entire business model on top of swindling and deceiving people now want me to pay them to not swindle me. So basically, they've decided to add extortion to their immoral and illegitimate business. Wow, colour me surprised.

that is either paying consumers to allow ads

And as for wanting to be paid for being swindled, you sure make no sense at all. The only reason people want to swindle and cheat you with their advertising is to take more than a fair deal from you, why would swindlers and cheats want to take you for less than all you are worth?

Re:Is this really an issue?

[cfalcon]

No advertising is acceptable. I will block all ads. You should too.

Speculating on how some particular pattern recognition versus spam war will go down is not easy. Certainly, the advertisers are doing all they can to force their bullshit into the eyes of those that don't want it, but ultimately, your PC, your rules.

Re:Is this really an issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Google and others are recognizing there is money to be made in suppressing advertising

There is, but this is insignificant compared to the amount of money to be made from advertising which is something google already does.

Maybe there is money to be made for a 3rd party software developer to work on the suppressing advertising, but don't expect google to get involved unless they are trying to direct the market from the consumer side into avenues that maintain their advertising revenue. Google are not in it for the money in suppressing, only the money in controlling you.

I can see a future where all scripting is finally signed (this is a good thing) make code have an owner and makes all the common stuff vettable (my version of jQuery is the same as another sites) and cachable (well we know the cryptographic hash of it, we have it on cache, there is no need to reload it from any server, 0 hits script catalogue). But the scripts now detect blocking better to sites stop working.

So queue a new industry of working around this matter by providing fake copies of the scripts (by replacing one signed script with another signed script) that provides same API calls and now the JS website knows no different. Of course to do this we need to build our own web-browsers, to allow the script substitution.

Fuck off, I decide what's fair

[swb]

Many websites only exist because of user generated content (like /.).

Don't impose your idea of what's fair to the content I provide for your site.

Web sites had the chance to go the NPR route and be low key about advertising but by and large they went the obnoxious way and embraced pop ups, pop unders, Flash, animation, and widespread invasive tracking.

Fuck that, I'm not participating in your scheme to get rich off my content, at least the part where I provide you with content and am then expected to be shouted at by ads and tracked. That's not even remotely fair.

Re:Fuck off, I decide what's fair

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I agree completely.

Furthermore, if Google decides they want to "charge" for software they're currently giving away as a result of dropping ad revenues, THEN I'll decide if I want to pay for those products on their individual merits rather than suffer from the constant ad bombardment.

Re:Fuck off, I decide what's fair

[Anonymous Coward]

/. should pay us, as should all websites that derive income from our activities

Re:Fuck off, I decide what's fair

[gnupun]

They should pay us, but many businesses are unethical parasites.

Re:Fuck off, I decide what's fair

[gnupun]

... just like the unethical, adblocking parasites many consumers are.

Lol, "guidelines"

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Here's my "guideline": I'll block whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want, for as long as I want.

"Guidelines? We don't have no guidelines...I don't need any stinkin' guidelines!"

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[AmiMoJo]

That is the same attitude that lead to the horrendous ads you want to block. Advertisers felt that they could do what they liked, serve any content they wanted, and to hell with your bandwidth and performance. I mean, fuck you right, freeloading scum trying to get valuable content for free!

If major browser vendors start introducing blocking as standard with some guidelines to follow if you don't want your ads to be culled, it will cut down on a lot of bullshit. You and I will continue to use ad blockers anyway, but everyone else will benefit too and maybe the web will become a little less hostile, and we will spend a little less time dealing with this crap.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that the GP owns his computer and his brain, the assets he is trying to defend. The advertisers do not own his computer or his brain, but they think they are entitled to use his computer to help brainwash his brain. See the problem?

If the advertisers want to use THEIR computers to brainwash THEIR OWN brains, while leaving the rest out of it, they can go right ahead, and I don't think that the GP will install even one ad blocker to stop them.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[KozmoStevnNaut]

You're getting it all mixed up. Ad blocking started being A Thing because of the obnoxious ads, not the other way around.

If all ads on the internet were simple, text based or at least not animated, didn't play sounds, didn't block the content I actually want to see, didn't use tracking cookies and didn't take up much bandwidth, I would be happy to switch my ad blocker off.

But since ad companies insist on pop-ups/unders, animation, videos, sound and a whole host of similar bullshit tactics in a desperate attempt to draw attention away from the actual content, I feel absolutely no obligation to waste time or bandwidth on their bullshit.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[Zontar The Mindless]

I generally agree with what you post, but this time I think you've confused cause and effect.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

That is the same attitude that lead to the horrendous ads you want to block.

This is the "wet streets cause rain" theory, and it's horsecrap. I'd tell you to shove your idea up your ass, but your head is in the way.

As someone commented below, ad-blockers were created because of obnoxious and malware-laden ads, not the other way around.

If ads had remained reasonable and SAFE, no one have bothered to write an ad-blocker.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I generally agree with what you post, but this time I think you've confused cause and effect.

Yes, it's like saying that "wet streets cause rain".

If ads hadn't been found to be a problem, no one have bothered to write an ad-blocker. AmiMoJo doesn't seem to get that.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[IMightB]

I completely agree, just like spam filtering got to be a thing, because of spam.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[Zontar The Mindless]

I don't use an ad-blocker, mostly because most of the sites I visit don't have that many ads. But occasionally I follow links from here or other forums to sites, usually based in the US, and I see what folks are complaining about.

Did anybody happen to see the travesty that took up about half of the main page yesterday on ArsTechnica? It made big multicoloured tracers follow your mouse pointer all over the freakin' page. AND it had a fake "close" button. What cocaine-encrusted marketing cretin thought that would be a nice thing to spring on people?

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Because I use an ad blocker I didn't see that craptastic load of marketing wizardry.

If I had seen it I probably would have installed an ad blocker right then and there.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[Blaskowicz]

I didn't use an adblocker till about last year. The death of the Flashblock extension played a large part but seeing as 2GB RAM can be too short for web browsing these days, ads have become too big for wasting CPU/RAM on.
The privacy implications have become more of a concern too (seeing as a site like f...book will log every click and mouse over for all of eternity!). Even taking a few vital and easy privacy steps the web is a privacy nightmare, like water that contains only 20% piss.

We had it better when the crap still needed to be compatible with IE 6.

Re:Lol, "guidelines"

[Zontar The Mindless]

And now that I'm thinking of installing one, it seems they're all getting co-opted by the people who make the ads... Might have to go with something like Privoxy instead.

Principle #1

[Anonymous Coward]

I decide what my browser requests and renders.

computing device performs optimization for user

[RichMan]

HTTP is a pull protocol. The client pulls data from the server. Bandwidth usage is a resource. The more that is required to download to render a page the longer it will take. And where users pay for usage, the more it will cost the user.
Page render time is a high end user criteria and end users should expect to be able to have the client pull only the content they want to improve performance.

The web site producers only have themselves to blame for creating sites loaded with massive visual and data bloat.

Using a computing device to perform optimizations for the benefit of the user is normal usage. Nobody should be surprised by the use of ad blockers.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[arth1]

HTTP is a pull protocol.

HTTP 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1 are pull protocols.
HTTP 2.0 has push too, inherited from Googles ad-centric SPDY protocol.
Both SPDY and HTTP/2.0 are abominations unto Nuggan.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[Anonymous Coward]

Not infinite, just (bandwidth * time). If I pay for 100 MiB/s, I should be able to get 8640000 MiB/day if I so choose. That's the amount I pay for unless I buy an otherwise restricted connection.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[AmiMoJo]

Can you describe, in technical terms, what is "ad-centric" about HTTP/2.0 and SPDY? Or is this just anti-Google FUD?

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[arth1]

It largely defeats proxy server caching, for one thing. Which is what advertisers want. Not only do they want people to see ads, but to be able to count exactly how many have seen it, and who.
And it provides push, which is also quite ad-centric.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[Reziac]

Saw an analysis the other day that boiled down to:

Site with ads: 5.5mb
Same site without ads: 50k

Yes, 90% of the bandwidth was used by ads. This was for some major newspaper or magazine on the order of Business Week, not a site that exists solely to serve content-free advertising.

How is this fair to people who pay by the byte? I've seen phone data usage rates as high as $100/GB!!! and even if you're paying a more reasonable $5 or $10 per GB... it adds up fast. I've found that just for ordinary browsing on my PC, I can easily use as much as 1GB/day even without visiting YouTube.

Methinks it's time to start metering and billing advertisers who consume bandwidth that users have to pay for. Surely someone can code a phone app to do this.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[AmiMoJo]

Proxy caches are going to have to go away anyway as the web moves to being encrypted by default. That was always on the cards and always the reason it was done.

Push is of little utility to advertisers. They prefer to use JavaScript to rotate ads. It is of immense use for apps though.

I really don't think you have an argument here.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[arth1]

What you think is irrelevant.
What advertisers like Google thinks is relevant, and they are pushing (no pun intended) for HTTP/2.0

If you think it's out of the goodness of their heart and concern for the end users, I have a bridge to sell you.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[AmiMoJo]

Of course they want it. It reduces their bandwidth costs and lowers latency, which means longer for then to run their auctions. That doesn't mean it was designed for them though. No need for conspiracy theories.

Re:computing device performs optimization for user

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually 99%, for what it's worth. I don't doubt it.

Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

What this is really about (and what a lot of people are finding hard to accept) is that for the most part, people don't want to see or consume ads. With TV, we never got the chance to opt out except for "ad skip" and "fast forward." The advertising industry never really took notice of that because the numbers weren't there. With the Internet, it is possible to both block ads and measure how many ads are accepted/blocked.

Now people that deliver advertising are starting to see what customers really think: they don't like advertising. This is proving hard for business folks, especially those whose business is advertising, to stomach. How do they sell products?

Sure there are a token few that say "I'll allow advertising to support this site" but if you look in slashdot polls, those people are not a majority.

But lets face it, if there was no impact to a website and people had the choice to either accept ads or reject them, most people are going to select reject.

The main problem with advertising is that it is given to us when we're not looking to buy (or rent) something. If I'm watching Star Wars then I really don't want to hear about your latest car. If I'm reading slashdot, I don't want to see an ad for your latest cloud offering.

When I want to see ads is when I'm shopping for something - specifically when I click on the "shopping" tab in Google search. Then and at no other time.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[cavreader]

The reason companies advertise is to generate name recognition and ultimately sales. And if advertisements did not increase sales or derivative income companies, both large and small, would not be spending billions of dollars a year placing ads. Google is an advertising firm not a technology firm. Their technology efforts are centered around increasing the number of users to feed advertisements to. Most of their attempts to generate revenue from other services or products do not even come close to the amount of money they generate by serving as a conduit for advertisements. There are already ways to block the majority of ads and unwanted content if that is your preference. However if Googles revenue starts declining don't be surprised when they start charging money for all of their current services which are currently offered for free to regular users. Every major browser and search engine also rely on advertising income to support their efforts.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[epyT-R]

Good riddance. Most of what's on tap these days is garbage.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Ol Olsoc]

The reason companies advertise is to generate name recognition and ultimately sales. And if advertisements did not increase sales or derivative income companies, both large and small, would not be spending billions of dollars a year placing ads. Google is an advertising firm not a technology firm. Their technology efforts are centered around increasing the number of users to feed advertisements to. Most of their attempts to generate revenue from other services or products do not even come close to the amount of money they generate by serving as a conduit for advertisements. There are already ways to block the majority of ads and unwanted content if that is your preference. However if Googles revenue starts declining don't be surprised when they start charging money for all of their current services which are currently offered for free to regular users. Every major browser and search engine also rely on advertising income to support their efforts.

Well, then they damn well better fix that eh?

I hate eating Pork bungs (The pig's asshole)

Now some advertiser really really wants me to eat pork bungs (the pig's asshole) I don't give a flying fuck if an advertizer will die if I don't eat pork bungs.

I won't do it, I don't give a damn if every provider of Pig's assholes (present day web advertisements) starves to death and goes out of business, In fact, I would be very pleased to find out that happened.

They caused this problem, and it is not my responsibility to eat a pig's asshole just so they can make me eat more Pig's assholes.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[HiThere]

I don't like ads, but before they got obnoxious, I didn't bother to block them. Then, for awhile, I just refused to have flash installed. Now I also use noscript.

If they make things obnoxious, I'll avoid them. It doesn't bother me to avoid sites that require flash...and I consider flash a security risk. It's easy to get me to avoid a site. Just ask me not to visit, and I'll leave and not go back. (It's been years since I've visited the New York Times site. They wanted more than I was willing to offer, so I just stopped visiting.) Really, about the only sites I feel I need to visit document programming languages, as for the rest, push me and I'll leave. But I won't come back later.

OTOH, other people have other priorities. My wife insists on having flash installed in her computer. And many people feel that way, too. One size doesn't fit all, and if Mozilla expects it to, they can expect resistance that will not end.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

With TV, we actually did have the opportunity to opt out of ads - it was called cable! We all see how that went.
Advertisers are relentless and greedy, and without pushback they will ruin everything they touch.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[0123456]

The reason companies advertise is to generate name recognition and ultimately sales. And if advertisements did not increase sales or derivative income companies, both large and small, would not be spending billions of dollars a year placing ads.

[citation needed]

The only thing we can really conclude is that people whose job is to convince people to buy stuff are able to convince companies to buy their services.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Dutch Gun]

When I want to see ads is when I'm shopping for something - specifically when I click on the "shopping" tab in Google search. Then and at no other time.

Even then, it can be annoying if it's done incorrectly. Amazon has been putting more and more ads inside their own web pages, and it's starting to irritate me. For heaven's sake, I'm already shopping with the intent to purchase something. Yet Amazon is still trying to monetize my eyeballs? Let's face it, they're simply cashing in on my bandwidth and wasted time that it takes me to skip over those "sponsored results". Why would I want to go to another website when I'm clearly intent on shopping at Amazon?

The problem is that it's clearly too tempting for the MBAs that make these decisions to turn down the extra cash this stuff generates for them. Unfortunately, they can't directly measure the ire it generates from their customers when they do this. It's that lack of consideration for the user experience (and safety) that's driving users to install ad-blockers.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

So they'd actually have to make a product people would pay for? Oh the horror!!

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Tom]

advertising are starting to see what customers really think: they don't like advertising

And that is putting it very friendly.

Yes, nobody except the advertisement industry likes advertisement. Consumers don't want to see them, and most companies see them as expensive bullshit they only do because they don't know how else to survive against their competitors, who do.

The main problem with advertising is that it is given to us when we're not looking to buy (or rent) something. If I'm watching Star Wars then I really don't want to hear about your latest car. If I'm reading slashdot, I don't want to see an ad for your latest cloud offering.

This.

I have a concept floating around in my head to fix this, to replace unwanted advertisement with wanted product information, but as I'm busy with one hundred other projects, I don't see an opportunity to make it happen.

But I strongly believe in some years we will look back at that time and go "what the fuck were we thinking?".

I strongly believe advertisement as we know it will go the way of the Dodo bird, or of horse carriages and sail boats - maybe we will keep a little in museums.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[dave420]

True, consumers don't want to see ads, but if they are given the choice between "see some ads and get the content you want" and "see no ads and get very little content" their disgust of ads abates somewhat.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[dave420]

Easy Gramps. Seriously that does sound like something my grandfather would have said.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason companies advertise is to generate name recognition and ultimately sales. And if advertisements did not increase sales or derivative income companies, both large and small, would not be spending billions of dollars a year placing ads.

[citation needed]

The only thing we can really conclude is that people whose job is to convince people to buy stuff are able to convince companies to buy their services.

[citation needed]

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[FireFury03]

What this is really about (and what a lot of people are finding hard to accept) is that for the most part, people don't want to see or consume ads.

I don't think that's it at all. I think people don't want to see *obnoxious* ads and that most people simply don't care whether or not they see other types of ad.

Examples of obnoxious ads:
- Things that pop up when you're in the middle of reading an article, which you then have to dismiss.
- Things that play music without you asking for it.
- Things that you have seen a million times before - i.e. you're watching a series of 2 minute youtube videos and you have to sit through *the same* preroll ad before each video.
- Things that take a disproportionate amount of your time for no benefit - i.e. the aforementioned youtube ads where the time spent watching advertising is 25% of the length of the content you're actually trying to watch. Or TV ad-breaks, which take a significant amount of your time.
- Ads which show your significant other exactly what you bought them for Christmas (on several occasions I've found out what my wife bought for me through Facebook ads that are displayed when logged in as me, just because I happened to be using her computer).

Examples of ads that I find acceptable:
- Discrete, relevant, text adverts.
- Amusing TV ads (although these fall into the "obnoxious" category if they are shown too frequently, and there's often a fine line between "amusing" and "annoying"). You can almost forgive TV for showing the same advert to you many times, I can forgive youtube less since they *know* they already showed that same advert to you 5 times in the past 10 minutes.

The problem is that there's so much obnoxious stuff that it eventually becomes easier to say "oh sod it" and just block all advertising, which is probably counterproductive for everyone in the long run.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[FireFury03]

Google is an advertising firm not a technology firm. Their technology efforts are centered around increasing the number of users to feed advertisements to.

I think that's a very simplistic view. Google is _both_ a technology firm and an advertising firm. They are symbiotic sides to the same company - neither side can survive without the other (or at least, a replacement for the other).

If you're going to say "Google is an advertising firm, not a technology firm" just because they derive their income from advertising, you may as well say "Lego isn't a toy company, they are a sales company" because they derive their income from sales.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[FireFury03]

Well, then they damn well better fix that eh?

I hate eating Pork bungs (The pig's asshole)

Now some advertiser really really wants me to eat pork bungs (the pig's asshole)

I don't give a flying fuck if an advertizer will die if I don't eat pork bungs.

This simply means you aren't the target audience for the advert - if you liked pork bungs then an advert might increase the chance that the next pork bungs you buy will be that particular brand, or someone who likes pork bungs might say "you know what, I feel like having one now".

Now, showing adverts to someone who isn't the target audience is a problem for both you and the advertiser - it annoys you, because your time is being wasted seeing adverts for things you're not interested in, and it costs the advertiser to show you an advert that won't increase their sales. So advertisers then start tracking users to better target their ads - better targetted ads are good for both the advertiser and the end user. Unfortunately, tracking users is a massive can of worms with its own set of problems - now users are being asked to trade privacy for better targeted ads, and that's a trade that a lot of people aren't happy to make.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Cro Magnon]

Your grandfather was a wise man. Also, get off my lawn!

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Cro Magnon]

Another problem is that good tracking doesn't help if the advertiser is stupid. If I've just bought a car, it's probably a waste of time showing me a bunch of ads for the very car I just bought. Even if I like pig butts (to use the other guy's example), I don't want them shoved at me every time I get online!

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Cro Magnon]

The option for those without adblockers is "see so many ads that the content is drowned out". Disgust goes back up.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[FireFury03]

Another problem is that good tracking doesn't help if the advertiser is stupid. If I've just bought a car, it's probably a waste of time showing me a bunch of ads for the very car I just bought. Even if I like pig butts (to use the other guy's example), I don't want them shoved at me every time I get online!

Yep, my wife doesn't use an ad blocker and her facebook ads are usually showing her stuff she has already bought. This has also caused problems because apparently facebook tailors adverts to your computer, not just your login, and on a couple of occasions I have borrowed her computer and facebook has shown me what she just bought me for christmas, even though I was logged in to FB as myself.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[c]

When I want to see ads is when I'm shopping for something

What you want to see when you're shopping is truthful reviews and information like specifications and comparisons to competitors.

You want to see ads... I dunno. Superbowl? When you're watching live television and need to take a piss?

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[JohnFen]

True, consumers don't want to see ads, but if they are given the choice between "see some ads and get the content you want" and "see no ads and get very little content" their disgust of ads abates somewhat.

So it's a good thing that's not actually the choice we have to make.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[IMightB]

good thing your daughters not pregnant!

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[JesseMcDonald]

If you're going to say "Google is an advertising firm, not a technology firm" just because they derive their income from advertising, you may as well say "Lego isn't a toy company, they are a sales company" because they derive their income from sales.

On the contrary, Lego is a toy company because their customers (i.e. the people paying them money) are buyers of toys. They also happen to perform sales and many other tasks common to all businesses. I'm sure they have an accounting department as well, but that doesn't make them an accounting firm. Google's customers are advertisers; that makes them an advertising company. They also happen to dabble in technology, among other fields, but it's all to serve the one area which brings them an actual income: advertising.

A technology firm would be one that develops and licenses or sells technology for use by others, e.g. Intel, Freescale, Microsoft. Using technology internally, or providing it for free to the public as a way of collecting data to be sold to advertisers, does not make you a technology firm.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Tom]

Theoretically, yes.

In reality, the choice more and more becomes "run an ad blocker" or "drown in ad-crap while searching for the tiny bit of content you came for. Is it under this pop-up? Maybe under this overlay? Over here, between the banners?"

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to say "Google is an advertising firm, not a technology firm" just because they derive their income from advertising, you may as well say "Lego isn't a toy company, they are a sales company" because they derive their income from sales.

Lego is a toy company - they derive their income from sales of toys.
Google is an advertising company - they derive their income from sales of advertisements.

The toys and the advertisements are what determines the nature of the company - the product sold not the sales themselves. I can't think of an example of a 'sales company' - what would that be - a company that sells sales?

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

When I want to see ads is when I'm shopping for something - specifically when I click on the "shopping" tab in Google search. Then and at no other time.

Even then, it can be annoying if it's done incorrectly. Amazon has been putting more and more ads inside their own web pages, and it's starting to irritate me. For heaven's sake, I'm already shopping with the intent to purchase something. Yet Amazon is still trying to monetize my eyeballs? Let's face it, they're simply cashing in on my bandwidth and wasted time that it takes me to skip over those "sponsored results". Why would I want to go to another website when I'm clearly intent on shopping at Amazon?

The problem is the MBAs that make decisions.

FTFY

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[RavenLrD20k]

Sure... problem is that the biggest complainers against ad-blocking are the ones that have "In yo face shouting autoplaying video ads and ad images as far as your mouse can scroll on every page touting out 'This one neat trick...', 'The new rule in your state that insurance companies don't want you to know...', flash here, flash there, more flash than can be found in a comic book store... buy buy buy click click click $$$$$ $$$ $$ $ $... 4,000 pop-up windows ready to go with every click of the close button!!!!" and the actual content amounts to about ten lines per page...spread out over 20 pages of "In yo face shouting autoplaying video ads and ad images as far as your mouse can scroll on every page touting out 'This one neat trick...', 'The new rule in your state that insurance companies don't want you to know...', flash here, flash there, more flash than can be found in a comic book store... buy buy buy click click click $$$$$ $$$ $$ $ $...4,000 pop-up windows ready to go with every click of the close button!!!!" This is what takes whatever abated disgust from a site with well balanced content to ad ratio and makes it rage back with a vengeance to find the best Ad-Blocker to get that crap off their connection.

And if you don't like the format of my post and find it difficult to read, Dave...GOOD! This is what badly designed sites that give more credence to ads than content feel like. This is what makes people want to hit the nuke button on terrible ads. This is why many of us are beginning to say "see no ads and get very little content? What a refreshing thought! Still better than getting bombarded with ads and wondering where the real content was supposed to be."

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[cavreader]

The bulk of Google's revenue is generated from providing a conduit for spreading advertisements in front of as many people as possible. Google also includes SOE improvement services when making their sales pitch to prospective advertising customers. My whole point is that blocking all ads will force companies like Google to find another revenue model. And that new model will most likely include charging money to use their search engines and other online services such as Gmail. They could also start charging a licensing fee just to use their Chrome browser.

Re:Consumers reject advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

This simply means you aren't the target audience for the advert - if you liked pork bungs then an advert might increase the chance that the next pork bungs you buy will be that particular brand, or someone who likes pork bungs might say "you know what, I feel like having one now".

Well then, I'm not the target audience for any advert. As soon as some product starts advertising, it annoys me, and I no longer buy that product (within reason).

Advertising is an abhorrent immoral act. I'm not talking about matter-of-fact, "we have this product for this price" advertisements, but the current trend of trying to emotionally manipulate people by attaching irrelevant emotions, situations, associations and outcomes to a script that has nothing to do with the actual product they are selling.

It's just a soft form of lying. The fact that advertising is an accepted part of daily life now doesn't diminish its inherent immorality and dishonesty. It was immoral when it first started in the 1920s and it is still immoral today.

I block all advertising because it is immoral.

Hi Apple, welcome to 2001!

[scdeimos]

People like me have been using content filtering proxy servers like Privoxy for a very long time. What makes you think we'll trust a web browser (especially an Apple browser) to do the job for us?

Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[UnknownSoldier]

The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access that's when they can serve me ads.

My computer. My browser. My bandwidth.

Until then, they can FUCK OFF.

If you want to do ads "right", look at what Steam does. It shows me which games are on _sale_ and *I* get a say in what ads I see. i.e. None, Next, or Product Sale.

Re:Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[narcc]

The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access that's when they can serve me ads.

A long time ago, there lived a company called NetZero. They loved the internet and wanted everyone to have free access. They devised a plan by which users could connect to the internet for free, provided they were willing to allow an ad banner at the bottom of their browser.

All was well. Advertisers were happy, NetZero was happy, and (for the most part) their users were happy. But there lived an evil wizard who hated ads in all forms. He didn't like that banner ad. It made him very angry. He wanted free internet, but didn't think anyone should have to put up with an ad banner in exchange. With a wave of his mouse and a tap on his keyboard he made that ad banner vanish.

As word spread about the evil wizard and his dastardly spells, advertisers got nervous. The couldn't justify paying for ads that users wouldn't see -- and NetZero needed those advertisers to keep their magical internet service free to anyone who wanted it.

Sadly, no hero came to rescue NetZero from the evil wizard. It wasn't long before they became like every other ISP. Soon afterward, they died a quite death and were soon forgotten.

Re:Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Net Zero was from a time where ads on the internet payed quite well. Netzero died because the price of ads changed. Blockers didn't have much to do with that.

Re:Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Could not agree more!

Re:Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[Anonymous Coward]

netzero still going strong, 223 mill revenue as of 2013 ;)

Re:Only Reasonable = Block every dam ad

[Anonymous Coward]

The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access that's when they can serve me ads. My computer. My browser. My bandwidth. Until then, they can FUCK OFF.

Be careful what you ask for... you wouldn't like a future where personal computer possession is forbidden and we can only use computers "for free" from BigCorp or Gov.

Whatever I want to block is reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

The browser is my tool. It better does what I want it to do. To assume any other role is a mistake on the part of the browser manufacturer. If Mozilla decides they don't want to let me block something that I want to block, then they're out of a job.

The infamous Firefox PopUp blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't actually block any popup.... does that ring a bell?
Let Mozilla focus on taming their memory hungry beast and leave the ad blocking to people with true intentions of getting it right.
Who the F thinks it doesn't impact your system if an application uses up all free memory just because the OS says it's free for the taking?

The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[NotInHere]

1. Publish a product that's better than competitors'.

2. Open source it.

3. Earn the cheers from the free software crowd, and get the advantage from external contributors, as only large browser vendor.

4. Your users will love the freedom they have, and your product will be famous for its extendibility. They'll love ad-blockers as the web gets more and more annoying ads.

5. Get more and more market share by staying better than your shitty competitors.

6. Let other browser vendors copy your success by open-sourcing their browser as well, or giving up to EEE the WWW.

7. Start your downfall:
a) Require add-ons to be signed because we live now in a world of apps and every app is is signed.
b) Publish ads in your product's start page. Enjoy the annoyment of your users.
c) Integrate an useless closed source product. (Pocket). Enjoy the annoyment of your users.
d) Announce that your addon API will be locked down.
e) Publish your "principles for content blocking". <====== We are here
f) Enforce them. This is the point of no return.

8. Gently shove a Yoda Doll up your user's asses. Be careful, its larger than the dicks the other browser vendors ram up their ass as well. That's also the only reason your browser is still used.

9. Enjoy your 2% market share.

Re:The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[rmdingler]

Like a poor ribeye...

.

well done.

Re:The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, do things you personally like and agree with, then do things you personally dislike and disagree with, and those are the reasons? It has nothing to do with Firefox being locked out of major mobile OSes, Google and Apple coming up with competitive browsers, users holding Firefox back because shitty addons are more important than letting them fix things, and having a fanbase that doesn't care about the good you do, just what they perceive as bad? Yeah, you're probably right... Firefox surely just had to stay the course, and it would have been just fine. Ignore how Chrome is still rising steadily despite already doing all of the things you dislike. That would mean your argument is self-serving nonsense, and we can't have reality and logic in an emotional diatribe.

Re:The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[Zontar The Mindless]

Greased, or non-greased?

Re:The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[NotInHere]

Firefox being locked out of major mobile OSes

Then they should do things only for those operating systems, but not for all of them.

shitty addons are more important than letting them fix things

They aren't. Fixing things is important, but why do they announce to lock down their Add-on API _after_ they have implemented and 99% completed e10s support? I know, there is servo, and probably its right when they say that many of the functionalities of the old APIs are now possible with HTML5. But WebRTC simply doesn't replace an API to send raw udp data.

Firefox surely just had to stay the course, and it would have been just fine

They should be open to change, but they shouldn't abandon their old principles.

Re:The nine steps to raise and fall as browser

[NotInHere]

Ignore how Chrome is still rising steadily despite already doing all of the things you dislike

In some points, mozilla are so idealistic, they hurt themselves. They didn't chose to implement h.264 for HTML5, because to win the codec war. This just led to users switch to chrome. I know, google also did something very mean, they agreed to allow any video to be possible to be played back with ogv and remove h.264, both promises they didn't keep, at least the youtube promise hasn't been kept for a long time. But mozilla could have reacted earlier.

If mozilla really wanted to develop the best browser, they should implement more web APIs. Just think of the still largely missing MSE, or the U2F (which isn't that of a priority, but is a good example of yet another API not implemented). They also could have implemented apple's HLS, in order to beat iphones on this. But rather they chose "no", and said "once we have MSE, this is all doable by js". This is vaporware speak, not how to make a browser that wants to be the most used one.

I don't like the idea of this getting to mainstrea

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always feared that AD blocking would get to be to mainstream. As long as it was on the fringes of the internet it was unlikely that content providers would do much to counteract it.

Static text or images only.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only ads I allow are static text or images. And video ads on, you know, a video site, like they should only be accepted in, and nowhere else, EVER.
Everything else is blocked.

Fuck gifs, fuck pop-anythings, fuck roll-overs, fuck plugin-ads.
Any site that uses them is blocked and the webmaster emailed and told to get fucked.

Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[rlk]

What does "[c]ontent blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)" mean? Most users *want* to block specific types of content, namely advertising (particularly obtrusive, bandwidth-heavy ads). People don't want to block something just because it's bandwidth-heavy, otherwise they'd be blocking videos and such that they do want to watch.

And how's this going to play with Firefox's mandatory extension signing that's scheduled to take effect with FF43? Will they refuse to sign extensions that don't follow these guidelines, thereby going beyond a model of simply ensuring that the extension isn't harmful? Will they get around that by defining extensions that don't follow these guidelines as "harmful", even if they're doing exactly what users want?

There's a really slippery slope Mozilla looks like it's heading down...

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slippery slope? They're already tumbling down it. Bottoming out is inevitable at this point unless there is a huge, major shakeup at Mozilla. Like letting about 50% or more of the management go.

They just can't stop shooting themselves in the feet. The very beginnings were when they started flaunting their outright refusal to fix some of the most highly voted bugs of all time (I'm looking at you Stuart Parmenter). To the point that they actively refused patches and refused to allow module owners who would allow the patch. They turned it into a pissing match and ego contest, and nobody at Mozilla stepped in to stop it. That was when anybody paying attention knew Mozilla was on the way to dying. It just takes time for the momentum to wear off, and now we're getting to the end of the ride.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[0123456]

Mozilla was screwed the day the SJWs took over.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want a fast efficient browser with controls to disable things like javascript not moved out of view. There's even some hidden tracking protection built in( http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-abandons-firefox-tracking-protection-initiative/ )Instead I get this messed up interface, some stupid add ons(chat, pocket) and why the hell would I want a pdf viewer in my browser? This is all very suspicious, in fact they've been acting suspicious for a couple years now.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[0123456]

Plus, with the amazing new settings interface, you can no longer open the 'cookies' window and the 'block cookies' window at the same time, to copy-and-paste hostnames from one to the other.

Incompetence or assholery? You decide.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Z80a]

The term SJW describe any person of low morale that spends his days on twitter and other media trying to "outprogressive" the hell out of his peers by complaining about issues and even inventing new issues out of thin air, and its not exactly automatically a project saboteur.

Probably "clique"/ mostly san francisco clique describes it better, as then you're talking about that specific mass of very corrupt hipsters that use their money and influence to infiltrate into projects and grab more power by imposing their rules,removing opposition with em etc..

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[dave420]

SJW to you means "someone who is against the deprivation of basic human rights", apparently. That speaks more of you than anyone else.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[dave420]

No, "SJW" is a term used by people to describe those who draw attention to fucked-up things they do. Instead of feeling bad and maybe reappraising certain held attitudes, one can simply call the other person an SJW and call it a day.

Complaining about a CEO personally funding an organisation which sought to deny basic human rights is supposed to be a good thing, or did I miss a memo?

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Zontar The Mindless]

IMNSHO, it's been the latter since they switched from cookies.txt to cookies.sqlite.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Unfortunately, it's a bit of both.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I jumped ship a long time ago because of the kind of insanity that Mozilla started forcing down users' throats. Pale Moon's dev has managed to do a great job, if you ask me. Only issue I have is many addons are incompatible, but most of the more popular ones (e.g. ABP) have alternatives that work on Pale Moon (e.g. ABL).

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[0123456]

No, "SJW" is a term used by people to describe those who draw attention to fucked-up things they do. Instead of feeling bad and maybe reappraising certain held attitudes, one can simply call the other person an SJW and call it a day.

No, SJW is a term the left use to describe themselves because 'Left-Wing Asshole' doesn't sound as cool.

When they infiltrate an organization, political beliefs become more important than talent, and people are promoted more because of nepotism than ability. Hence, any organization they infiltrate is looking at a downhill race to irrelevance and collapse.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla for espousing the same views as Barack Obama.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

A person used his own money and his own time to legally take part (on his own name) on the law making process of his local governement. That obviously make him unfit to be a project leader.

Re:Clear as mud, and what about signing?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use "basic human right" to describe marriage, do you expect people to not laugh at you?

the timing of this is suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, remember when you transitioned to requiring all addons to be signed, and then assured everyone you wouldn't use this as a mechanism to set policy on what addons can and cannot do? Well, you'd better have meant it, because this blog post looks very suspicious coming so soon after that transition.

Re:the timing of this is suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

"so soon after" ??? Why are peoples memories so short and people allow it. Anytime after making that statement would be a breach.

Mozilla is for luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern web users block content using apps. Apps that are for cows, that go moo.

Hope Adblocking goes mainstream

[Anonymous Coward]

RIP Google. Fuck you and your business model.

How about standardized content policies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want content-blocking software. I want a content-blocking standard instead.

Envisioned is something like this:

When I visit an unknown website, my browser should first download a standardized manifest file from the website which declares what may be found on the page returned by a given URL (such as images, movies, scripts, flash/unity/java applications, advertisements, third-party advertisements) and where the objects are sourced from. My browser should then use a policy (which I set for it) to determine whether to access a website or whether to tell me that the site claims to host content which violates my policy. Optionally, the browser should also be able to convey my policy to the website if the policy is violated, resulting in my disapproval or refusal to browse (or request a conforming page).

Re:How about standardized content policies?

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have this.

The HTML file is the manifest. True, it's not as efficient as it could be, but compared to the content, the size of the HTML file is small.

Download the HTML, parse it, then do as you suggest above. ....which is pretty much what having a browser with AdBlock and/or NoScript basically is.

But yes, the whole thing could be re-thought a little and the browser could have an interface to actually help the user to do this, rather than obfuscate the process or hide it behind "developer only" tools.

No.

[ArylAkamov]

I'll stop blocking everything when they stop tracking me, using ads that break the layout of the webpage, popups that take 10 seconds before you can close them, autoplaying audio and video, etc.

Like somebody else said in the last article about adblocking:

Users: Please don't track us
Companies: Fuck off

Companies: Please don't block our ads
Users: Fuck off

Security Now

[Thyamine]

Listen the last few SecurityNow podcasts. They've been debating tracking, advertising on sites, and content blocking off and on. They've had good talking points from both sides of the issue. Basically it comes down to the good sites who provide service needing ads to help pay the bills, and users not wanting to be tracked and preventing obnoxious, terrible, or even malicious content. It all makes sense, however right now the only way users can safely protect themselves ends up being content blocking.

Re:Security Now

[Tom]

good sites who provide service having no better idea than ads to help pay the bills

there, fixed that for you.

Re:Security Now

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, many of them have. Multiple sites I know of have people clear $50,000 a year from their various revenue models and one that is at least $100,000 a year. Sorry if you aren't one of the lucky ones, but just because you can't make money on them doesn't mean alternatives don't exist.

Content Blocking is wrong on principle

[Kisai]

Let's face it, if you're blocking any of the content, you're not viewing the content in the form it's intended.

It's unfortunate that some content production (eg newspaper sites and blogs) try to shove as many ads down the readers throat, it's a down right evil when they intercept the reader from the content.

How this needs to be solved:
1) Ads need to be served inside sandboxed iframes that has no access to the parent page save for knowing what page it is on.
2) Ads need to be prevented from "chaining" ads via document.write, exec, and innerHTML. They should only chain to another ad via another iframe.
3) Ad "depth" on ad chains need to be shallow before returning back to the content. eg website -> website's ad server ->Third party ad server ->website's end of chain ad placeholder. The current environment is a lot like the mortgage-backed securities, in which bundles of good and toxic ads are being sent to websites, eroding the trust of the website, and thus making more people block all ads.

How the web browser can help:
1) Hold iframes and XHR when the content does not originate from the same subdomain. If the web browser is to query a blocking plugin, it must have a fallback solution to tell the user that content is missing from the website. When some scripts are blocked, sometimes the functionality is missing, which the user is quick to blame on the browser or website, and not the fact that they haven modified the website.
2) The default operation of the web browser should be to not block anything, and the user should be reminded to whitelist sites before blacklisting content, and sites that have blocked content need an indication that objects have been blocked (see Ghostery as a good example.)
3) The web browser should suggest what content to block based on what scripts and content (eg video ads) are interrupted by the user with the stop/reload button and closing/navigating away.

On mobile devices we should go one step further and have mobile devices by default block all third-party scripts and content when not connected over WiFi and plugged into the mains.

Ads were never an issue before bandwidth limits started being imposed by ISP's. The last "ad crisis" was due to pop-ups/pop-unders which was an abuse of the "new window" function, and popup blocking continues to this day because of that. Some pop-ups were endless chains. This is the problem we are seeing under some circumstances with the iframe chains and document.write/innerHTML/exec chains. The web browser should add "chained iframes" to popup blocking, whereby an iframe is loaded by another iframe from a third party domain. It should never be the case where an ad chain continues for more than 3 seconds before dropping to the end-of-chain.

I have seen video ads constantly loop, as in not just go back to the beginning of the video, but reload the video entirely. I've seen websites that had "refresh" set to as short as 5 seconds on their ads. This kind of garbage should be blocked because it wastes the user's bandwidth.

Re: Content Blocking is wrong on principle

[Anonymous Coward]

As nice of an idea as this sounds, it's completely impossible to do the things you are talking about. Since JavaScript powers the web now and JavaScript has absolutely no notion of security, there is no way to completely stop only the bad scripts from having anything less than the same access any other JavaScript entity has. One could block third party scripts but that would instantly make so many legitimate things cease to function. Ever try using the Evernote web clipper in Firefox with third party scripts and cookies turned off?

Content blocking IS the only solution that will work. Because only when the content is blocked will they think they have to do anything at all. Otherwise it's a slow march to the bottom.

Re: Content Blocking is wrong on principle

[narcc]

Wow, you're ridiculously out of date.

Advertisers plan for us

[Ol Olsoc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

intro to Robot Chicken

There's one rule to ad blocking.

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

If(isThisAnAdvertisement)
Block();

Mozilla is seemingly saying:
if(isThisAnAdvertisement && !weveBeenBribed)
Block();

Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just the privacy concerns, ad servers are quickly becoming major distributors of drive-by-malware infections. Anyone who DOESN'T filter out all ads is either a complete newbie or a moron.

If any advertisers are reading this

[Anonymous Coward]

If any advertisers are reading this article, I have a message for you.

Advertisers: kill yourselves. No really, kill yourselves. This is not sarcasm.

Best Regards,

Everyone that browses the internet

does this mean that Pocket will be blocked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly hope so.

Um... then don't go to sites

[rsilvergun]

that you don't like. Not sure I see the problem. You decide what's fair. If it's not fair don't go to those sites. You don't have to participate. It's not like anyone (outside of malware authors) is forcing you. If a site does things you don't like, stop typing their addy into your URL bar...

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[0123456]

that you don't like.

Yes, exactly. By blocking ad sites, we automatically prevent our browser from going to those ad sites.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[goose-incarnated]

that you don't like. Not sure I see the problem. You decide what's fair. If it's not fair don't go to those sites. You don't have to participate. It's not like anyone (outside of malware authors) is forcing you. If a site does things you don't like, stop typing their addy into your URL bar...

It appears to me that that is what advertisers are actually complaining about - 1) we block their ads, 2) they attempt to bypass our blocks, 3) we move on to a different site, 4) the site complains about freeloaders.

It's really very simply - if buzzfeed and co. went away the world would be a better place. They know it. We know it. They know we know it. So now they're engaging in a PR war rather than the technology war to get us to view their ads.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[AmiMoJo]

Buzzfeed has found an easy way to get around ad blockers. Every single article is an ad. They are all sponsored. People love it, Buzzfeel is immensely popular at a time when traditional news outlets are dying.

You can't have it both ways either. If you want quality journalism it has to be paid for, either by adverts or by subscription. Subscripts are okay but if we want a plurality of news outlets that we can get a variety of views from and easily link to then putting them all behind a paywall isn't going to work.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[Anonymous Coward]

If sites don't want me to go to their sites and block ads, they should stop responding to my http requests.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[goose-incarnated]

You can't have it both ways either. If you want quality journalism it has to be paid for, either by adverts or by subscription.

I'm okay with that - the internet worked fine prior to the days of ads. It worked fine *for* *me*, though; viewers who want to simply see cat videos should cough up for their favourite cat video site. Those of us who wanted to discuss metalworking, or gardening, etc could do so both for free AND without advertisements.

In short - sites that cannot find enough paying customers *should* die. Sites that don't need paying customers will still survive.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[AmiMoJo]

Consider what you are arguing for. Get rid of free news sites with paid journalists, except for those funded some other way like the BBC or other state agencies. Many people will have to go back to getting news from ad supported TV channels or ad supported newspapers, so won't escape the ads anyway.

One of the reasons why newspapers are declining is the democratization of news. I think that's a good thing, it makes it harder to end up getting most of your news from a single (biased) source.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[goose-incarnated]

Consider what you are arguing for. Get rid of free news sites with paid journalists, except for those funded some other way like the BBC or other state agencies. Many people will have to go back to getting news from ad supported TV channels or ad supported newspapers, so won't escape the ads anyway.

One of the reasons why newspapers are declining is the democratization of news. I think that's a good thing, it makes it harder to end up getting most of your news from a single (biased) source.

I hear what you're saying and I have considered it: the internet was just as useful to me back when ads were not everywhere as it is now. I *prefer* having sites where people who share a common interest gather and share the cost.

The difference between what I'm saying and what you're hearing is this: I see the internet as a fount of useful information and a place to gather with other like-minded people. You see the internet as a place to read the latest news.

With no ads and only user-supported sites/forums I can still learn all that I want to learn. I get my news on the radio anyway. The majority of stuff I do on the internet is linked to non-news, non-facebook, non-twitter, non-social-media, non-cat-videos, non-youtube stuff and non-buzzfeed crap.

The stuff I *do* use the internet for are related to forums around auto repair, guitar playing, metalwork, carpentry, building/construction, fiction-reading/writing, watercolor painting, electronic circuits, software-writing (OSS contributions), pencil/charcoal sketching, cooking, exercise, mechanical design (building a mill in my garage)... and a lot more that I probably will only remember at some later time when I don't need to.

(I have a lot of hobbies - very busy usually)

So you see, *my* internet will remain - those forums are mostly ad-free (and the people running them usually reveal how much they make off ads). If ads go away, it only takes a few tens of members chipping in a few cents a year to keep it going. Most forums have hundreds or thousands of members.

Like I said before, the internet was all fine and pretty useful before ads - it will be all fine and still pretty damn useful if ads were to go away :-)

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[AmiMoJo]

I see your point, but don't see why we can't have both. Usenet is still going, anyone can set up a free site and ad driven popular sites have pushed costs down for everyone.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[goose-incarnated]

I see your point, but don't see why we can't have both. Usenet is still going, anyone can set up a free site and ad driven popular sites have pushed costs down for everyone.

Actually we *can* have both, but not if the advertisers get their way. Usenet fell by the wayside due to the wall of spam that came about, so chalk that up to advertisers killing a perfectly usable medium. The web is going to go the same way if site owners insist on intersitials(sp?) and other such tomfoolery. If the advertisers don't want lose eyeballs they'd better start behaving better - the market has spoken and it has almost universally spoken *against* advertisers.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be true if 3 actually happened. Often the sites have a legitimate complaint about freeloaders, but it's difficult to care when you are a freeloader, and even more difficult when you aren't and just see the ads getting worse and worse.

Re: Um... then don't go to sites

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want a plurality of views from my news. I want factual information. I can form my own views given that.

Re:Um... then don't go to sites

[Blaskowicz]

It seems to me that newspaper decline is disastrous, as we're losing fact checking and long articles. We see more copy-pasting journalism (e.g. Reuters or AFP wire news) or not even that, as "retweeting" crap spares the effort. So, blatantly false news and outright fabrications get broadcast instantly all over the world, such as "Kim Jong Un killed his ex-girlfriend" ; then you get to choose from 1000 media sources to hear the same bad news, and the weakened newspapers can hardly check and balance as they used to.

You can find many alternative sources, but the general masses will not have been exposed to them and some of them will provide weak or fabricated news too. e.g. RT News may post things you can agree with but a lot of the content is likely made up. Then you can bury yourself in a filtering bubble, whether an algorithmic one or just frequenting the same circles and sites over again.
You may find the news more "democratic" and they may be somewhat but I feel like democracy is week at the moment. Biggest corporations and richest people have been continuously getting more powerful and dissent is locked away in social media posts or drowned into a see of crap.
Real journalists are still needed, news without journalists is like war without soldiers (blow stuff up from the air for a decade and watch everything go to shit)

Then you'll have paywalls

[rsilvergun]

and nothing else. Steam is showing you ads for stuff to buy. Very different than ads surrounding content you want to access.

Re:Then you'll have paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. If your content is so worthless that no one would pay for it you deserve to go out of business.

Re:Then you'll have paywalls

[goose-incarnated]

[Then you'll have paywalls] and nothing else.

Incorrect - the internet was filled with information even when no website advertised. It will continue being filled with information if ads go away. The ad-supported sites are no longer needed due to their decreasing signal/noise ratio. Even cracked.com has become pointless. Let them become paywalls and we'll pay for the ones that deserve to live.

Re:Then you'll have paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on! The vast majority of content created is shit, they're all copying each other in desperation for clicks. 99% of the content could disappear right now and no one would even notice. Paraphrasing PR puff pieces and bloggers' opinions is not content. It's shite. Good riddance!

Re:Then you'll have paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

[Then you'll have paywalls] and nothing else.

Incorrect - the internet was filled with information even when no website advertised. It will continue being filled with information if ads go away

You are massively distorting things and quite frankly I find you to be somewhat delusional. Let's put some things in perspective, the internet is no longer used for "information" you are right on that front there will definitely be information like wikipedia sites out there because that is all the early internet was. You know how much it cost me to provide you a wikipedia clone serving text based content all day? Almost nothing, I might even do that out of the goodness of my heart which is where your argument lies. However do you know how much it cost to bring you entertainment like youtube ? Hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth cost and hosting cost, do you honestly think ANY serious company would bother to provide you that service for free? Without any way whatsoever to monetize their platform and you know..be able to afford to provide that for you?

I don't see how any of you expect to actually have an internet that isn't full of paywalls if you dont allow any form of passive income generation for the content providers.

Re:Then you'll have paywalls

[UnknownSoldier]

> ... if you don't allow any form of passive income generation for the content providers.

Stop trying to hoist your broken business model onto users -- we're not falling for it.

The internet was founded upon the principle of freely sharing. Anything that involves money runs anathema to this (aside from selling an actual product or service of course.)

One of the principles is bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

From Mozilla's proposed principles:

Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem.

You can tell this "principle" is totally bogus -- here's how: A majority of the people on the Internet are content providers. For example, everyone with a Facebook page is a content provider. We obviously don't need some fancy-schmancy new "principle" that ensures that all one billion of us who provide content "should be given ways to participate". Just fucking use HTML5 -- that's how you "participate".

This nonsense "principle" was clearly added with the goal of providing something special for the people who want to monetize their content. But that goal directly contradicts another principle:

[It] should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content.

This principle means that all one billion of us content providers are equals -- we will all have the same restrictions imposed on us by the blocking controls. Anyone who wants money for their content is going to have to play by those exact same rules. There is no need to carve out a special "principle" just for people who want money.

Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ublock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dyndns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you by dns blocking
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded favs
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do those & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu + memory use

* ANSWER ="NO" to each on UBlock doing it as well or @ all!

APK

P.S.=> UBlock does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

Ublock's NOT as efficient:

Hosts @ 3mb-11mb w/ current data vs. threats + ads - test yourself using my program.

UBlock uses 63++ MB -> http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/...

SCREENSHOT -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

---

ClarityRay defeats it detecting it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods to do so!

---

UBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

What's better?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

Non-starter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).

You can't be this fucking stupid. Get rid of the middlemen between the publisher and advertiser, and most issues go away along with the ads. If the problem was really with the publisher, and I wanted to keep visiting that site, I'd grab the contact information from the site and contact them myself. I don't need you to dream this problem into other areas of interest. It really is that simple.

Transparency & Control: The content blocking software should provide users with transparency and meaningful controls over the needs it is attempting to address.

Like the meaningful controls you're been implementing over the past 10 years? I needed Lightbeam just to find the DNT button for a while there. You would have been better off to stick with the Navigator configuration notebooks.

Openness: Blocking should maintain a level playing field and should block under the same principles regardless of source of the content. Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, instead of being placed in a permanent penalty box that closes off the Web to their products and services.

Sure, Privacy Badger does this, other than for the yellowlist that keeps some sites in cookie-gobble mode instead of going to fully-blocked mode. Help those authors improve their algorithms so they no longer need the yellowlist. No need to reinvent the wheel, unless you want to re-invent the wheel using C and some hand-tuned assembly code.

"Other content providers" don't need to be placed in a penalty box, they need to be ejected from the game and perhaps fined by the commissioner.

Anyone but Mozilla

[Darinbob]

Seriously, Mozilla should stay out of this. They've already butted into too many things they shouldn't have with their attitude of trying to dictate how the web works. The whole reason for their breakneck release speed was to make sure customers adapt to their new whims as soon as possible. They should stick to making browsers instead of telling people how to make web sites.

Re:Anyone but Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing Mozilla with Google. They're the ones trying to dictate how the web works. You'll have to find a better argument against Mozilla than "don't do any of the things you've been doing all along, and just do the things I want you to do". If Mozilla hadn't been around to clean up the mess that IE5/6 was turning the web into, you wouldn't even be here discussing about an open web.

On one blog post

[Crypto Gnome]

Mozilla declares itself COMPLETELY out of touch with the vast overwhelming majority of the userbase.

Nice way to declare yourself absolutely irrelevant.

I've said it before and I've said it again, THIS IS AN ARMS RACE that the advertising industry started.

Live by the thermonuclear obliteration of your users rights, die from the thermonuclear backlash.

You made your choice long ago, and continue to poke the bear, be sure to enjoy the consequences of your obnoxious actions.

Re:On one blog post

[narcc]

So use Google Chrome. Surely, they'll act in your best interest.

Ads

[raal]

I have no problems with Ads. I totally understand sites need to make money. People do work to make sites exist and I totally get that. But really some of these Ads are totally insane and just a big pain in the butt!

If Ads were just part of the page and didn't run video, change like crazy, etc I would be ok heck some of them are actually interesting and I buy things related to them. Imagine that??

Re:Ads

[0123456]

Meanwhile, I was reading today about yet another group using ad servers to distribute their malware. This time, to Android phones.

APK: STOP! You are being annoying!

[Anonymous Coward]

APK: STOP! You are being annoying!

Re:APK: STOP! You are being annoying!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's annoying you's that you can't prove apk wrong so you troll off topic or downmod him. Apk beats it by reposting his posts unlimitedly.

Mozilla can't even block popups

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've ever visited any porn site, you'll know Mozilla can't even block popups and pop unders. They can't even get the basic features to work.

So who cares what Mozilla thinks they should block. BECAUSE THEY'VE LOST THE PLOT!

They can't deliver a popup blocker, they think there is a debate to be had as to whether adverts should be blocked or not.... THIS IS UP TO ME! I am the surfer, if I choose to block adverts then that IS MY CHOICE and MY CHOICE ALONE.

It's not a negotiation, and if my browser decides that it knows better than me, then it will be quickly replaced.

Mozilla dudes, you've really lost the plot here, and its clear from the market share you've long lost the plot. You keep putting 'CLOUD' features in when the basic privacy/speed/control principles that underlined Firefox are being weakened. pocket lists? sync? Unwanted features that were available as addons now get forced in the browser?

"Publishers and other content providers should be given ways to participate in an open Web ecosystem, instead of being placed in a permanent penalty box that closes off the Web to their products and services."

It's UP TO ME, if I decide I've had enough of Googles spyware, and I decide to block their ads, PERMANENTLY, that's MY choice. Get with the plot or fuck off Mozilla.

Re:Mozilla can't even block popups

[arth1]

You keep putting 'CLOUD' features in when the basic privacy/speed/control principles that underlined Firefox are being weakened. pocket lists? sync? Unwanted features that were available as addons now get forced in the browser?

Sync was great, back in the original Netscape implementation. You could sync to your own web server, configured with whatever security you wanted. No sending your bookmarks and passwords to someone else.
The sync functionality broke around Firefox 3 or so, and later it got removed instead of fixed. And then someone reinvented the wheel, but this time square.

Re: computing device performs optimization for use

[Anonymous Coward]

No, most people here don't believe this.

Wow

[firewrought]

Normally I just ignore all the Mozilla-haters because they're whining about stupid stuff (like Chrome-style versioning) or minor mis-steps (like Pocket) or things I find totally awesome (like Awesome Bar).

But if they go where I think they're going--banning ad-blockers--then I'm going to have to seriously re-evaluate my trust in this organization. Sorry Denelle: I'm not "content neutral". I want to maximize signal and minimize noise, especially in this overloaded information age, even if it's "just" the psychological noise of ads trying to manipulate me. I'm freaking tired of everyone thinking they can deceive me, play on my fears and doubts, tinker with my self image, and re-frame my perceptions to match their agenda... and advertisers are the worst of the lot.

there's really only one principle involved

[cas2000]

It's my computer, my browser, my bandwidth - *I* get to decide how it's used, no-one else does.

btw, one of my absolutely required needs is "blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)", and javascript.

another of my needs is to have my browser modify or override bits of CSS (e.g. fonts, font sizes, div widths, etc) so that the content actually displays on my screen in a form that is readable by my eyes.

And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll block every ad they "force" down your throat?

First off, no one is forcing you to access their content or their web server. You're there because you want something from them.

Second, you are pushing for a non-sustainable approach which ultimately destroys that thing you obviously want.

Third, the meteoric rise of AdBlock countermeasures like http://blockadblock.com is exactly what your approach begets: An arms race.

So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.

Re:And this is what that means:

[JMJimmy]

AdBlock has already won. The countermeasures do their job just fine. Many sites that used them did a serious about face when people didn't shutdown their AdBlockers they just went to another website offering the same/similar content. Adblock blockers are also trivial to block/circumvent.

Re: And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind ads, I don't mind relevant ads less. I'm upset by the new hostile add that hijack me out of my browser and into to the App Store. I can't stand ads that block content that I need to interact with on the site, like an ad over the submit button. Huge ads on each page of a 40 page blog post that has 100 words of content and 39 pictures are not cool. Irrelevant Ads on the top, side, bottom, and interweaved with content type sites are awful.

I find slashdots ads placement, relevance, and size to be wrong in so many ways.

I'm okay with watching a 20 second YouTube ad, but the multi minute adstravaganza is too much.

If I'm on mobile paying $9/GB, ads should be very small and text, not huge animated images plus JS library collection that is in style.

Re:And this is what that means:

[0123456]

So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.

I remember the horrible, awful, web before advertising brought us to the Brave New World of 'content' that exists solely to make money from ads.

I'd like it back, please.

Re: And this is what that means:

[0123456]

I don't mind ads, I don't mind relevant ads less.

Do you mind ads that root your phone, and send all your stuff to China?

Re: And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they could possibly create pages that are little more than large jpeg images with content and ads all in one with active areas that click links. Of course at that point, you would have to be rendering everything at the server end, and even then you could still block actually acting on recognized ilnks. The same thing could be done with video, while adding players that refuse to skip forward. Technically it would still be possible to work around, but if your streaming it and only feeding it at near real time, your still going to have to wait.

Of course the problem with the first design is you need to render different formats for different sized devices, and possibly mobile too. I think it would work, but it would be best if the ads linked to a page were fixed and not based on really complicated datamining.

Of course, I'd also mind those kind of ads much less, since it would still be a clean page load, and really little more than what you would get in any magazine. It is actually an interesting idea since a lot of basic content could be served that way. In fact it would be simple enough you might be able to have a provably secure web browser, if you limited it to only that very limited kind of content. It still probably would not work though, since you'd lose the ability to change font sizes and such which is key to mobile use.

The best reasonable compromise it to possibly make as I suggested pages such that content images are merged with ad images, that again are not based on datamining. The rest of the text would still be html. Even then you could still block the ad image, since you would just crop the content to what you want.

It really is a difficult problem, but then again, the best way to look at is to first make the ads less annoying, so it stops becoming worth the hassle to block them. Right now they destroy page load times and are likely ways to infest your computer with crap... The only way around the previous issue that comes to mind would be to have the embedded link destinations for the ad go to another web page on the content server. That way you couldn't tell them apart to block, at least the first level. Of course your web browser could automatically load destination links in the background and recursively check them for ad content, and use that to block the primary ad, but then your blocking is increasing load times, and it is likely not something anyone would bother with...

At any rate there are solutions out there that 5 minutes of thinking can figure out. They just aren't nearly as nice or as all powerful as the current system, and that might be a good thing....

Re:And this is what that means:

[Tom]

First, correct.

Second, bullshit.

Third, true. But until the fucking politicians wake up and declare this thing illegal and throw the fuckers in jail, that's all we can do. I'm still a big fan of that idea to turn off any and all spam filters for one week and show normal people what e-mail would be like if we didn't work so hard to make it halfway acceptable. After that week, either we can shut down all the SMTP servers because nobody is using e-mail anymore, or something would finally be done on the legal side of the problem.
(and to those who say it won't work: Fuck off, retard. We throw murderes and thieves in jail as well, and while the crime rates are not zero, they are a far cry from the ratio of spam, so apparently it does work if you snap out of your binary thinking.)

So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.

Biggest bullshit of them all.

How about we throw away advertisement as a model simply because nobody likes it, you know, like fascism and sacrificing babies to the gods - yes for a while we thought there's no alternative, but then we kind of realised that we were just being stupid.

Let's just throw it away, and I can guarantee you that we will come up with better answers.

Re: And this is what that means:

[jaklode]

Those are not ads, they're malware.

Re: And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind ads, I don't mind relevant ads less.

Do you mind ads that root your phone, and send all your stuff to China?

Google and Apple both do that already.

Only they don't limit sending all your stuff to China - they'll send it to anyone who will pay for it.

Re:And this is what that means:

[KozmoStevnNaut]

So if you want a content limited, pay-walled, countermeasure-riddled web -- just stick with that childish attitude. But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.

I remember the horrible, awful, web before advertising brought us to the Brave New World of 'content' that exists solely to make money from ads.

I'd like it back, please.

+1

I absolutely agree. Give me back the good old web where you didn't have to wade through tons of shovelsites full of bullshit "slideshows" made entirely to milk as much ad revenue as possible, and seriously annoy the users in the process.

My PC, my OS, my internet connection, my decision on how many ads I want to see (exactly none).

Re:And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still a big fan of that idea to turn off any and all spam filters for one week and show normal people what e-mail would be like if we didn't work so hard to make it halfway acceptable. After that week, either we can shut down all the SMTP servers because nobody is using e-mail anymore, or something would finally be done on the legal side of the problem.
(and to those who say it won't work: Fuck off, retard. We throw murderes and thieves in jail as well, and while the crime rates are not zero, they are a far cry from the ratio of spam, so apparently it does work if you snap out of your binary thinking.)

Hey, long time since someone dared to propose a solution to spam and make the following relevant again. With you low ID, you should know better.

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(X) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
() SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re: And this is what that means:

[sonamchauhan]

"Second, you are pushing for a non-sustainable approach which ultimately destroys that thing you obviously want."

it cuts both ways.

As website owners got greedy and began to occupy more and more of their precious pages with flashing banners, add popups, add popunders, they began to destroy the very thing they sought, that which had sustained them: user attention.

Adblocks have been a long time coming. We got to this point slowly

Re:And this is what that means:

[DrXym]

Has adblock "won". I think it's better to say its winning, but the more people use it the more likely that sites will develop effective countermeasures.

It would be relatively straightforward to circumvent adblock. All it requires is that the ads be delivered from the same domain for urls used to fetch the content and ads cannot be separated by pattern matching. This might be too much effort for some smaller websites but I see no reason that bigger sites couldn't do it. e.g. 3rd party advertisers could offer some kind of webapp that runs inside the host's DMZ and works in conjunction with some kind of frontend url resolver that sends requests one way to fetch content or the other for ads (and ad clicks) so they both appear to originate from the same host.

It would also be simple to block the adblockers by looking for page elements which should be there but aren't and blocking the user until they disable ad blocking on the site. Some sites already do this and more might do it in time.

Re:And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

And some sites require flash, thus blocking iPhone users. Didn't cause a great migration away from iPhones so far, but it has caused a great migration away from those sites.

If you don't have a monopoly, telling the customers "my way or the highway" results in customers picking your competitor.

Re:And this is what that means:

[JohnFen]

But if you want a sustainable, awesome web ecosystem -- then start proposing acceptable limitations that nurture the publishers we all love.

For me, this is easy: stop tracking me. I don't mind ads. I despise the tracking that comes with them. Until that stops (which will be never), I will continue to block all ads.

Re:And this is what that means:

[JohnFen]

I'd like it back, please.

Yes yes yes!! Me too. Every day I use the web, it makes me long for the days when it was better.

Re:And this is what that means:

[JohnFen]

An arms race.

Oh, I forgot to comment on this bit: For me, there's no arms race and never will be. If I can't block ads on a site, I simply stop going to that site.

Re:And this is what that means:

[DrXym]

If I were the site I don't think I'd be sad to see the back of freeloaders. But honestly I doubt many people would flee at all whether they were blocking ads or not.

Re:And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the previous AC, but I'm OK with that. If they don't provide something that's valuable enough to leave the ads unblocked, then why would I care what they think about me? Ads get blocked because they make the experience shitty. They spy on me, make the page slow to load, cover content or trick me into clicking the link.

I have no problem with ads being on the page, but when it takes several minutes to load a page because of the ads, that's ridiculous. I have a 40mbps connection, taking more than a few seconds to load a page is unacceptable. Many pages don't load any more quickly now than they did when I was on a 7mbps connection due to all the scripts to load ads.

If they want the ads unblocked, then they're going to have to make the ads acceptable. I'm wiling to sit through relevant and interesting ads on TV, I'm not wllling to sit through ads that advertise things I have no need for, make outrageous claims and generally behave like I'm a walking wallet.

Re:And this is what that means:

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be relatively straightforward to circumvent adblock.

Sure, which is why you've thought up an idiot-simple idea that eluded several billion dollar corporations that would benefit greatly from it.

Re:And this is what that means:

[DrXym]

Please explain why it's "idiot simple".

Re:And this is what that means:

[Tom]

Micro-payment, for example. There are a few prototypes out there already, sadly they don't have the reach they need. But I am absolutely willing to pay for things I like. If hitting a universal "I like this" button means an automatic, behind-the-scenes transfer of a few cents to the content creator, why not?

We don't notice that this "everything for free" attitude is also in parts a result of this advertisement poisoning the well. They've told us for years that we can get cool things for free, but they were lying to us. It's not for free at all. The price is just not in dollars.

The LotR movies made, according to a quick googling, a world-wide total of 2.9 billion $. Let's be honest with ourselves and say that a LOT of people saw them without paying. I know a bunch of people who did, because I bought the extended version DVDs and made a big home-cinema event for my friends.

I would dare to say close to a billion people probably watched these movies. That's $3 for everyone. Apparently, there is a lot of inefficiency in the system, because no legal source offers the movies for $1 a piece.

With less overhead in the system, we could bring these movies to everyone interested for a few bucks per person and without taking any revenue away from the creators. Sure, I didn't figure in the costs for operating a cinema or pressing DVDs. But I sincerely hope you are not trying to tell me that in those $15 cinema tickets only $1 is going to the studio?

My "I like" button is easily applied to media of all kinds. Duration of consumation is a perfectly good criterium. If I watch most or all of the movie, I pay a bit for it. If I watch it a second or third time, I pay less than for the first time, or not. Details TBD.

It is absolutely possible and normal to pay for content, and if it were priced correctly, I doubt so many people would opt out. We have seen it with iTunes already, which has made music reasonably cheap and comfortable to get and most people prefer it over hunting for a torrent.

We are beginning to see it with movies now with Netflix, and HBO and again iTunes / Apple TV.

We are beginning to see it with books as well. It won't work as well because physical books still have the better form factor, haptics and general appeal.

But the point is: People are ready to pay, if they don't feel extorted. People don't like to pay for movies because they are not priced fairly. 30 bucks to watch a movie with your GF? Seriously? For students, that's a lot of money. They could just pay the Hollywood stars a few millions less and make the movie half as expensive. Most people do not trick people of similar wealth, but when you see these guys driving to dream holiday locations in supercars, wearing designer clothes that cost more than you make in a month, there is much less of an ethical issue. That's just applied psychology. Heck, even Hollywood has understood this already and changed their anti-piracy messages to pointing out how many normal jobs depend on movies. It won't work if they don't make these normal people visible, though, but don't tell them.

Re:And this is what that means:

[Tom]

Hey, long time since someone dared to propose a solution to spam and make the following relevant again. With you low ID, you should know better.

So you didn't read what I wrote.

So, I repeat: No, it would not make spam go to zero. Just like making theft illegal has not eliminated theft. However, the fact that it is a crime and is prosecuted and people go to jail for it certainly contributes a lot to the fact that in general we don't have very much of it.

Sure, spam would come from Russia and China. So? Just because something doesn't work 100% doesn't mean we should give up. Oh yes, and a lot of spam does come out of the USA. And even more of the actual spammers (the people, not the mail servers) are in the US.

(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

Bullshit. Follow the money. What is being advertised, who runs that business and who did he pay for sending spam? Yes, a lot of the crap advertised is itself illegal, but again, doing something is better than doing nothing.

(X) Users of email will not put up with it

You just put crosses at random, yes? Users of email will not put up with spammers being put in jail? I very much doubt anyone would be sorry for them.

(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once

Absolute bullshit. It requires nobody to cooperate. If it is a crime I can take the spam I got today and go to the police and that's it. You don't have to cooperate and neither does anyone else.

(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email

Not necessary. I'll stop at this point because it's becoming apparent you just put crosses at random without actually thinking about it.

Zero rating

[tepples]

The day the content guys pay for *my* internet access

Isn't that called "zero rating"? I thought the Mozilla camp called zero rating initiatives, such as Internet.org, a net neutrality violation.

The concept of "legitimate pop-ups"

[tepples]

The Firefox pop-up blocker allows pop-ups only in response to a discrete user action, such as a click or keypress. This was intended to allow for pop-ups inside legit web applications, especially in the era before DHTML pop-overs became standard. But it ended up abused, as ad networks would just wait for any random click on the page before doing the same old pop-ups. And pop-overs have since also been heavily abused to nag viewers, usually into subscribing to a mailing list.

And CHIKIN is for cows

[tepples]

But can you block an ad with cows in it?

EAT MOR CHIKIN

Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

god SHUT UP already for FUCKS sake..

Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[amber_of_luxor]

>an ublock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

Yes.

Re:APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ does it for less

[narcc]

Can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit block forum spam advertising APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit?

No?

What a shame.

Re:APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ blocks the most

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I use it to block these annoying posts? Or is it not capable of that?

Ads: The new internet

[Stolpskott]

Personally, I have no problem with visiting a web site that has ads on it, within reason. That mainly applies to my home internet connection, but my mobile is a work tool and I rarely browse the internet on it anyway.
However, pages that load within a second or two, but then sit with a blank window "waiting for Adserve/Adsense/some-other-bullshit-3rd-party-ad-site" for a minute or so; or pages that have a tiny amount of useful content but which have 30-40 trackers on them, meaning that my (admittedly crap) home internet connection slows from a crawl to a coma-inducing slither; or sites that try to fetch ads from a third party which has been infected with malware which then tries to install on my system; ads that lead my technologically illiterate family members to call me in a panic because there is a thing on the screen saying their computer is infected; or ads that are so visually intrusive that I can barely see the information I am interested in; these are the main things that drive me to install ad blockers, script blockers, and privacy tools.
They also drive me to restrict access for user accounts to system resources, so if any of those family members want stuff installed, I have to go and install it for them (a pain in the ass and a time sink, but from experience I can say that it is less of a pain in the ass and much less of a time sink than the alternatives I have found).

If I was on a connection where I was paying for every megabyte of data I download, such as the typical mobile contracts, I would be even harder.

Advertisers want to paint this as me "stealing" from them, as if I have taken from them anything more tangible than the POTENTIAL to try and sell me something I do not want. But for me, loading a web page is akin to inviting someone into my house (I generally offer coffee, tea and cake to people I invite in) - I am inviting that information, that company, to make a connection to me. Just because I have invited that ONE connection does not mean that I am going to extend that invitation to their friends, friends of friends, neighbours and some drug-addled homeless psycho that is tagging along with them to come in, drink my coffee, eat my cake, piss all over the dining room and steal the painting on the wall. With allowing ads on my system, sometimes it feels as though that is what I would be doing.

So, umm, no Mr. Advertiser, sorry. I might trust the person or party that I have invited enough to load their web page, but I do not know you or any of your friends, and you are not accepting any liability for bad stuff that happens, so if you happen to cause me problems I have no recourse against you. That means you get left at the front door, and while I will not come out brandishing a shotgun shouting "Get off my lawn!", it is an awfully tempting thing.

I'm not paying for bandwidth for adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to see adverts, and I won't tolerate them.
The only fair amount of advertising for end users is none.
Advertising should be opt-in by law. It is highly offensive to me, to be fed commercial propaganda, in the assumption that it will influence me to buy something.
Messing with people's right to make objective purchasing decisions by allowing bigger players to advertise, is against the principals of a free market - so even the loony right, can't argue against this.

Sorry advertisers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not my fault you turned your well into a hog wallow. Kindly choke on your shit and die.

captcha is defunct, just like the web advertising business model.

fucking idiots

[Tom]

Content Neutrality: Content blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising).

Seriously?

Have you been on the Internet lately, like in the last five years? Have you been outside lately? Have you watched TV in the last 10 years?

Advertisement is not neutral content, so it doesn't deserve content neutrality. Advertisement is the heroin of communication. It is intentionally designed to attract, bind and consume as much of your attention as possible, and attention is a limited resource. Both in time and in total your attention is limited. If it is tied up by roadside advertisement, you cannot focus on driving as well. If it is busy processing the ad messages on the train, you cannot focus on the conversation with your lover as good. If by repetition it has entered your long-term memory, it impacts you whenever it is triggered, not just when it is present itself.
And we all know that if you have to focus for a long time, you feel exhausted. That is your mental battery running low.

This shit does not come for free. Advertisement, by its very nature, burns user resources and violates user needs. Anyone who doesn't understand that has no place writing rules about content blocking. Go back and take at least the 101 class before you write a textbook on the subject matter.

Re:fucking idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want Firefox without a lot of the missteps, try Pale Moon. Any enforcement of extension signing will result in less stuff being available for it assuming an average weight of inertia for the extension developers, though.

Re:fucking idiots

[Tom]

For the moment I'm happy ignoring the blistering idiots and running uBlock. If this stupidity makes into the code in any shape or form, I will jump to another browser. Fortunately, there are actually choices now.

Firefox is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Long live Palemoon!

Here are my guidelines

[Anonymous Coward]

My computer, my rules. I decide what I want to download from your server, not you. Fuck off.

Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[dave420]

And HOSTS files can't block the most pernicious advertising on Slashdot: your posts.

Please stop pretending to be some sort of security analyst - you wrote a shitty front-end which installs other people's hosts files. Get over yourself.

Ad blocking not the answer, BUT

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think Ad Blocking solves the problem. But I get some are so annoyed they need some type of stop gap to relieve this growing problem. Certainly ad developers are not helping and some web sites when you block the ads you really see how little content their is. I do not like several technics for ads, such as auto start video, cursor triggers, full page overlays, auto run ads in key words and lots of annoying Flash ads that are not even relevant ads. I guess if ad blockers actually help create change in how ads are built into web sites thats a good thing. But I have my doubts that a significant number of users will use the blockers and all it will do is add to the problem of what to do with ads as they circumvent the blocking tools.

Re:I don't like the idea of this getting to mainst

[Anonymous Coward]

"one two three four, every day we pray for war"

how does it continue, again?

The war hasnt started today, it has been going since forever.
Escalation is a good thing, for it forces both sides of the conflict to do more. And more is less :D

Ad blocking is the answer, no BUT's

[Anonymous Coward]

its easy, just block all external javascript. and whitelist internal javascript. Oh and learn how to compile a browser, you'll need it later. Oh, you cannot program? No hope for you, then.

Online advertisings endgame is that javascript will be filtered with proxies, patched js engines, more proxies and all kinds of funny client-side tricks.

Advertising is praying on stupid and feeble. Dont be stupid and feeble...

Hey APK, add this to your list...

[cfalcon]

I'm sure everyone has seen APK ("crazy hosts guy") flooding pretty much any topic on this.

There's ups and downs to host based blocking. But one upside that I hadn't considered until reading the Mozilla statement is that the existing web browsers have a lot of pull- if these "guidelines" become enforced, then ublock origin would be removed from the firefox store. You probably won't see this until chrome and firefox can both do it at about the same time, but it definitely looks like we are seeing a slow moving attempt to try to stop actual adblockers from running.

A hosts method isn't subject to this kind of "guideline". In general, an external binary / firewall isn't.

Anyway, interesting. We may need to explore executable options in the future. This seems yet another push for "acceptable ads" being shoved in everyone's face.

Re:Hey APK, add this to your list...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

If uBlock et al. are blocked from the browsers, I will simply go back to using Privoxy or a similar proxy-based solution. Obviously that won't work on my Chromebook, but that's to be expected since it basically uses the Chrome browser as the OS. And I'm sure I will still be able to find a solution. If nothing else, a transparent proxy on my custom firmware'd router will solve the issue.

Re:Hey APK, add this to your list...

[JohnFen]

if these "guidelines" become enforced, then ublock origin would be removed from the firefox store. You probably won't see this until chrome and firefox can both do it at about the same time, but it definitely looks like we are seeing a slow moving attempt to try to stop actual adblockers from running.

No problem. A requirement I have for any browser I use is that it has the functionality that NoScript provides. If a browser doesn't let me do that sort of thing, then I don't use the browser.

Whether or not that browser is named "Firefox" or "Chrome" or "Jimmy-Bob's Awesome Browser" is irrelevant.

Re:Hey APK, add this to your list...

[cfalcon]

A fair response, but with DRM being added to firefox (and always present in Chrome) we're getting close to a place where Jimmy-Bob can't compile a version of Firefox or Chromium that does what you would expect.

Re:APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ rids all that

[dave420]

And yet your spamming will continue unabated with or without a HOSTS solution. With a client-side blocker, though, it can be removed trivially. I don't think advertising an ad-blocker through ads which it can't block is a good idea, but then I'm not off my meds.

HU????

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? I haven't seen an ad for years on the Internet!

Castle Doctrine.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You want to attempt to shove malware-infested shit into my system?

2. I'm going to shoot your fucking ads in their fucking face.

3. ???

4. Profit. For me, at least. Not so much for you. Get a real business model.

End of this discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

This is getting *really* boring so let me spell it out.

"Dear advertisers. You are not using *MY* bandwidth or *MY* computer resources to display your crap."

End of discussion. Move along now.

So what?

[sjbe]

Well, if you like going to those sites, it does become your problem as the more people who block ads, the less revenue they generate, and then their content will start to get worse, and eventually they'll disappear.

So what if they do disappear? I'll move on to something else. I have NO problem paying for content that I find valuable and I subscribe to several sites. The rest of them can dry up and blow away as far as I'm concerned. What they provide isn't valuable enough for me to care. I might miss a few for half a second but I'd get over it. If they want to PAY ME cold hard cash to look at their ads and track what I do then we can have a discussion about it. Until then their business model is stupid and I'm not about to give away my bandwidth and attention without what I consider adequate compensation.

Their bad business model is not my problem.

So you are willing to pay for SlashDot content?

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to get paid one way or another.

No, no, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not how the Internet works. The Internet is not like TV where broadcasters essentially decide what people watch. The Internet is a platform where people *themselves* choose what they watch.

That being said, a "guideline" might not encourage so many people to start using ad blocking software, but you know what? All you need is one bad apple on the advertisers' side and you can say bye bye to the whole idea of a "guideline". Since this is bound to happen with a 100% certainty and everyone knows it, nothing will change in the end.

This reminds me of what we saw a little less than a decade ago with music CDs. People didn't want to buy them anymore and yet the music industry did everything in their power to keep their dying business model alive and refused to realize that it's not about *how* consumers will want to buy their CDs in the future. It was in fact about them *not* wanting to buy CDs anymore.

In contrast to that, what we're seeing now is the exact same situation; the Internet advertising industry is in a crisis and instead of looking ahead, they're chaining themselves to the past and slowly dying out. The current Internet advertisement model is dead. Period. There's no going back, and no guidelines will ever save it. These "guidelines" are where the dinosarus go to die, remember that.

Only one Principle

[DarkOx]

There should be one and exactly one principle as far as content blocking:

Block any and only the content the user identifies to the best degree possible.

constant sales pitches

[SkunkPussy]

Mozilla want to focus on user needs instead of advertising. However a big user need for me is not to be the target of constant sales pitches. This means for me that the problem is advertising full stop, not the way that the advertising is carried out.

APK = OLDFAG

[Anonymous Coward]

Only THIRD post to a story about ads?

Hang it up, baby--you've obviously lost your touch.

Tracking and Bandwidth and Time

[sjbe]

If all ads on the internet were simple, text based or at least not animated, didn't play sounds, didn't block the content I actually want to see, didn't use tracking cookies and didn't take up much bandwidth, I would be happy to switch my ad blocker off.

The ads bother me for three reasons.
1) Bandwidth - if they want to buy me a gigabit fiber connection then they can talk to me about taking up my bandwidth. Until then then can fuck off.
2) Tracking - What I do on the web is my business and not theirs. If they want to track me then they can pay me cold hard cash and a lot of it. I'm NOT trading my privacy for a bit of ephemeral news content or articles about kittens.
3) Time - They are wasting my time which is the most precious thing I have. I have countless better things to do that engage in a war with self-entitled advertisers over whether they have a right to spew their ads at me and track my whereabouts.

Re:Tracking and Bandwidth and Time

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I feel the exact same way, which is why uBlock Origin and Privacy Badgers are the very first plugins I install whenever I configure a new browser. If those plugins (or equivalents) are not available, I will not use that browser.

Re:Tracking and Bandwidth and Time

[Blaskowicz]

Worst case, if WebGL ads ever become popular we might see browser freezes, computer crashes, overheating (already possible with a laptop that has dead thermal paste)

No free lunch

[Ayanami_R]

Do you want major Corporations and those with money controlling the content on the web? Because, "I will block all ads, even static images" is how you get Corporations control content.

Ready to pay for "packages of sites? The " war" here hasn't even started and people are acting like its over. Those that can, will go paid. Want it free, you will see something you don't want to to pay for it. Some sites would actually save money if ad blocking people stopped coming. See what Verizon is doing with unlimited customers. Turning people awy can save you money.Lets not talk about how this will disadvantage those already effected by the digital divide.

A lot of very cool things will disappear that are in between needing ads and surviving on paid.

Re:No free lunch

[stevez67]

Don't be naive, or foolish. It's the major corporations who are doing the tracking and pushing the ads. And I don't buy the "doom and gloom" forecasts of ad blocking. a) in comparison to total web traffic, not that many people will use ad blockers and b) frankly the effectiveness of internet ads is greatly exaggerated.

build content blocking into browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

when i visit example.com, I cant see why on earth the browser would even allow content from 3rd party sites!
not only adds but things like google analytics are plain and simple spyware!

if a page have 3rd party media like audio,video,flash and images, they should automatically be replaced by a placeholders with url info & click to play.
and links should be treated as special read only tags, just like file inputs, no more showing one url and redirecting to another!

they could start by having every page with 3rd party scripts show a red open padlock or stopsign in the adress bar.

Some friendly advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you really need to drop the LOH garbage. The next time you seriously piss off someone with that, they're liable to do something lots more up close and personal than posting the prayers for performing an exorcism.

Don't forget, you doxxed yourself years ago--anybody can go find ALL your info on arstechnica and several other places. Links to that have been posted here, and even though a lot of that stuff mysteriously disappeared from /., the admins here can't do anything about what's on archive.org.

Didn't one of the old-timers here send you a postcard a while back to prove it? I think I saw where you even admitted here on /. that you received it.

content neutrality my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

my first and foremost reason for using an adblocker is to block the fscking ADs. if i get other benefits as well that's all fine and good but it had damned well better block every fscking ad.

Too late

[JohnFen]

I couldn't care less what principles Mozilla comes up with. I will continue to block all advertising no matter what.

If they've taught us nothing else over the years, advertisers have taught us that they are entirely untrustworthy, and so it's reasonable to avoid trusting them with data about me to the greatest degree I can.

SPH

[Anonymous Coward]

SPH. You know it's for the best.

Three words

[sootman]

Three words: etc fucking hosts.

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ blocks more than

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: ...ads only. It blocks other threats online too-> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

Use what you have natively in kernelmode

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

Answer to your question: It means this

[Anonymous Coward]

"What does "[c]ontent blocking software should focus on addressing potential user needs (such as on performance, security, and privacy) instead of blocking specific types of content (such as advertising)" mean?" - by rlk (1089) on Thursday October 08, 2015 @08:45PM (#50690535)

See subject & this link -> http://news.slashdot.org/comme... as it does ALL that & far more, for far less than any other "so-called 'solution'" out there, + more efficiently...

* :)

Simply by using what you already have in kernelmode natively, it gives you more speed, security, & reliability + anonymity - between hosts & firewalls, you really can't do better to get BOTH 'warp 10++ speed' online & 'deflector shield' level security... & makes it easy to do + work with.

APK

P.S.=> It works for all of that... apk

I built this vs. ad slowdowns/infections

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ does it better

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talkback
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talkback
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talkback
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (for reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past dns blocks
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = already on every device natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).

---

ClarityRay defeats it dumping addons in use in browsers via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s paid to not do its job by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overhead vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER vs. hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ublock do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C communique
3.) Protect vs. dyndns botnets + stop C&C communique
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C communique
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you by dns blocking
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded favs
14.) Work on anything webbound (ie email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Do those & block ads better than addons more efficiently in cpu + memory use

* ANSWER ="NO" to each on UBlock doing it as well or @ all!

APK

P.S.=> UBlock does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

Ublock's NOT as efficient:

Hosts @ 3mb-11mb w/ current data vs. threats + ads - test yourself using my program.

UBlock uses 63++ MB -> http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/...

SCREENSHOT -> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

---

ClarityRay defeats it detecting it by dumping addons in use in a browser via native browser methods to do so!

---

UBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

What's better?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

Ghostery = 'souled-out' & inferior vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ghostery do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop communique to C&C servers
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop communique to C&C servers
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop communique to C&C servers
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. bandwidth caps
11.) Get you by a dns blocking
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound (e.g. stand-alone email programs) multiplatform.
15.) Give you easily controlled data
16.) Block ads more efficiently in cpu + memory use vs. addons

* ANSWER ="NO" to each on Ghostery doing all that let alone as well as hosts do!

APK

P.S.=> Addons do FAR less than hosts do & FAR less efficiently - hosts by way of comparison, do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse" -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

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Addons add complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

ClarityRay DETECTS browser addons like Ghostery & blocks them (not hosts) via native browser methods.

---

What's better than ghostery by FAR?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talkback
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talkback
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talkback
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (for reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past dns blocks
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = already on every device natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).

---

ClarityRay defeats it dumping addons in use in browsers via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s paid to not do its job by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overhead vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER vs. hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ does it for less

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject - It uses what you already have natively vs. bolting on more-> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

Re:APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ does it for less

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you prove what apk said's incorrect? No. Can you write a better program that his? No. What a shame. Get on topic.

Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut apk up by proving him wrong. Oh, that's right: You can't do it as all apk uses is truth and fact from reputable sources.

Re:Ublock = inferior & inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

No ublock can't + ublock's less efficient. Hosts speedup by hardcoded favorites + vs. dns security issues ublock can't do.

You've written a BETTER one Dave420?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: No. You can't even validly prove my points on hosts adding speed, security, reliability & anonymity wrong.

* :)

APK

P.S.=> I'm not pretending anything like you troll - I actually DO great things in security, including write OR FIX tools security people actually use (for decades now) - you? ZERO, lol... apk

"Oh, I'm SO scared" (lmao)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject pussy - TRY it: You'll end up in a morgue.

APK

P.S.=> I'm not kidding... apk

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ blocks the most

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject - Vs. ads & online threats APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

Re:APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ rids all that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you can't validly technically ever prove apk wrong on hosts doing more with less for more speed, security and reliability.

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ solves that

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I never see ads (or malicious threats of all kinds)-> APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

FREE & not 'souled-out' to advertisers + adds speed, security & reliability & does FAR more w/ FAR less more efficiently vs. redundant browser addons & locally installed DNS servers @ home + fixes DNS' many security issues!

It obtains its data vs. many types of online threats & for adbanner blocking from 10 reputable sites in the security community!

It SPEEDS YOU UP 2 ways (adblocking + locally cached in RAM favorites placed @ the TOP of hosts for fastest resolution speed vs. remote DNS) vs. other "so-called security 'solutions'" SLOWING YOU!

It does all that via something you already natively have vs. "bolting on browser addons 'MOAR'" that's usermode slower & increases messagepassing, cpu + ram overheads!

* :)

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe proven by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

---

"The premise is quite simple: Take something designed by nature & reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it..." - Dr. Alice Krippen: "I am legend".

APK

P.S.=> By "yours truly" - "The Lord of Hosts" so-to-speak:

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"The image this title brings to mind is of a mighty military commander, one who can at a mere word summon rank upon rank of protective power" from https://answers.yahoo.com/ques... & THAT WORD = hosts!

(Accept NO substitutes!)

...apk

AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talkback
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talkback
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talkback
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (for reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get you past dns blocks
12.) Keep you off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Easily controlled data
16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently in cpu cycles + memory usage

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = already on every device natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less than hosts & less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s 128mb memory inefficiency http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts consume 3-11mb using my program initially).

---

ClarityRay defeats it dumping addons in use in browsers via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s paid to not do its job by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overhead vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER vs. hosts: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

... apk