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by PhasmaFelis 3474 days ago
Can we stop the "sellout" business? Having a clearly stated and one-click reversible whitelist is neither dishonest nor bad for the user. I like having the option to support sites I enjoy without massively inconveniencing myself. You prefer maximum adblocking, and that's fine, but there's nothing at all wrong with giving us both the choice.
2 comments
Fnoord 3474 days ago
> Can we stop the "sellout" business? Having a clearly stated and one-click reversible whitelist is neither dishonest nor bad for the user.

It is dishonest and bad for the general public. Users expect their adblocker to block adds; not block 'some' adds because of Mafia practices, or corruption (ie. advertising companies paying large, inappropriate sums of money to the company behind ABP in order to be whitelisted by default).

> I like having the option to support sites I enjoy without massively inconveniencing myself.

You can still do this on a case-by-case scenario with uBlock Origin.

> You prefer maximum adblocking, and that's fine, but there's nothing at all wrong with giving us both the choice.

This is false dichotomy. You have the same very choice with uBlock Origin. And uMatrix for that matter. I'm also not taking away your choice; nothing prevents you from installing and using ABP. What I will not do is stopping calling what ABP does sellout. Because as I argued above it is corruption.

On top of that, uBlock Origin is performance-wise better than ABP [1].

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance

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PhasmaFelis 3473 days ago
> It is dishonest and bad for the general public. Users expect their adblocker to block adds

You still seem to be under the impression that ABP is deceptive. It's not. It explains the "acceptable ads" list and gives you the option to disable it first thing after install. It is not doing anything without the user's knowledge. They're providing a perfectly honest service that you aren't interested in, and you think they should feel bad for that.

> You can still do this on a case-by-case scenario with uBlock Origin.

I specifically said without inconveniencing myself. Building up custom adblock settings for various sites is a chore and I have better things to do with my time. I choose to use a product that takes care of that chore for me, for the most part. You choose to take the time to personalize things, and that's fine; I've done the same in other circumstances. But that's a personal choice, not a moral one.

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Fnoord 3471 days ago
Nice way of quoting specifically, ignoring the arguments your discussion partner made. I made the point regarding corruption from the company behind ABP. The sums they receive to put companies on white list, are inappropriate. They've also added harmful companies/providers to their white list. Sorry, I can't take that product serious.

> I specifically said without inconveniencing myself.

You said you wanted to support your fav site. That is not hard to do with uBlock Origin. You are actually supporting most sites.

You also make it seem like the ABP whitelist isn't inconveniencing. It is; see above.

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imagist 3473 days ago
> I like having the option to support sites I enjoy without massively inconveniencing myself.

So do I, which is why I use Patreon and subscriptions.

The side effects of viewing ads are that in addition to supporting the sites you enjoy, you're supporting malware distributors, and helping companies compete on ads rather than the quality of their products. Maybe you don't care about your own attention or data security, but your actions don't just affect you.

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PhasmaFelis 3472 days ago
> The side effects of viewing ads are that in addition to supporting the sites you enjoy, you're supporting malware distributors

No, I'm not, because I'm using ABP's vetted ad provider list. This risk of getting malware from one of those is greater than zero, but a whole lot less than the risk I accept by using the internet at all. I might get struck by lightning too, but I don't waste a lot of time worrying about it.

> and helping companies compete on ads rather than the quality of their products.

I'm sorry, you do not get to blame me for the continued existence of capitalism. That's just ridiculous.

> Maybe you don't care about your own attention or data security, but your actions don't just affect you.

Once again, you are trying to turn your personal software preference into a moral issue. My actions re:AdBlock affect you or anyone else exactly as much as my choice of desktop wallpaper.

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imagist 3471 days ago
> I'm sorry, you do not get to blame me for the continued existence of capitalism. That's just ridiculous.

If you choose to participate in harmful systems, you are in fact partially to blame for the harm done by those systems, and simply staying that I don't get to blame you for our doesn't change that.

Incidentally, criticizing ads isn't a criticism of capitalism: capitalism could exist just fine without ads, and in fact I think removing ads would make capitalism drastically more likely to yield the positive results capitalism purportedly yields.

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Fnoord 3469 days ago
> Incidentally, criticizing ads isn't a criticism of capitalism: capitalism could exist just fine without ads, and in fact I think removing ads would make capitalism drastically more likely to yield the positive results capitalism purportedly yields.

Indeed. Ask yourself the following question: say a user is not interested in advertisements. Is it therefore not a waste of the advertiser's time and/or money to force the ads upon this user?

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