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

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.

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.