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by rchmura 3903 days ago
Adblock is unfair because the "unintrusive ads" aren't that - they are just "companies who have paid more to have their ads shown - ads". I would say that's both unfair and terrible because a) it disavantages smaller players in the ad market (decrease in choice is bad). b) Who determines which ads are "unintrusive"? - that's a qualitative property. But then again it has become a product that does not do that - it's not actually blocking ads now.
1 comments
hahainternet 3903 days ago
> a) it disavantages smaller players in the ad market

How?

> b) Who determines which ads are "unintrusive"?

Adblock

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rchmura 3903 days ago
Answer to "How": (Copied from another comment of mine) a) The smaller company would have lower margins because they invest much more in superior materials, QA, R&D, etc. Where the larger company has an advantage because they invest more of their margin on ads

Regarding Adblock: b) I posted another comment elsewhere about how choosing which ads are "acceptable" or not presents challenges. There is a lack of objectivity. It should be a choice between ads or no ads.

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EStudley 3903 days ago
Adblock was recently sold to an undisclosed buyer[1]. They told users of the switch the same day they started the "Acceptable Ads" program. I don't want someone I don't know controlling which ads bypass my ad blocker..

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/adblock-gets-sold-acceptable-...

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username223 3903 days ago
To be precise, you don't want someone whose interests oppose your own controlling the ads. I don't use ABP, but paid "acceptable" ads make them a straightforward protection racket, beholden to advertisers who can pay. Google and the other big players can buy them off for pocket change, so they're useless.
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hahainternet 3903 days ago
> Google and the other big players can buy them off for pocket change, so they're useless.

Why do people post this nonsense. Their use is to block intrusive ads. They are very clear about it and every argument against this has been incredibly misleading.

Whether payment is required or not isn't even clear, because it is mentioned only as a potential.

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username223 3902 days ago
Like many others, I use an ad blocker at least as much to protect privacy as to reduce annoyances and malware. ABP's criteria for "acceptable" say nothing about tracking, so while they're a step in the right direction, they're mostly irrelevant to me.

The obvious conflict of interest from making payments even optional for advertisers makes them clearly untrustworthy.

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hahainternet 3903 days ago
> I don't want someone I don't know controlling which ads bypass my ad blocker..

Then I think your only option to remain logically consistent is to not install any ad blocker.

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jodrellblank 3903 days ago
Because what people want from an ad-blocker is an affirmation of their logical consistency, and not "blocked ads". Uh huh.
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rchmura 3903 days ago
I think there is a big difference here between distinguishing "is this an ad? y/n" vs "is this an allowed ad? y/n"
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