[znowi]

I think it was immoral and dishonest to sneak in a whitelist feature into AdBlock, which is in direct opposition to the core product value. Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks. And background updates add more networks that bought their way into your machine. Not a product I'd be willing to use.

[wallunit]

1. There was a user survey in 2009, whether users would like to have every ad blocked or would accept some ads to a certain degree. And the result was that around half of the users are fine with getting some ads: http://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-user-survey-results...

2. Adblock Plus has announced on their website that they have introduced "Acceptable Ads", and that it will be enabled by default: http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

3. It isn't even a secret that they get paid from larger companies, for putting them on the whitelist (they though have to conform to the guidelines for "Acceptable Ads"): http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads-agreements

4. Plus the source code is open source, that everybody can read it: https://hg.adblockplus.org/adblockplus/

So Adblock Plus couldn't possibly be more honest and fair about its "Acceptable Ads" feature. If you don't like it, it's just 3 clicks to disable it. I don't get why lately, everybody is so surprised about thatfeature and feels betrayed.

The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.

[nitrogen]

It's #3 that is evil. Unless there's a large print disclaimer sayong "notice: ad networks pay for whitelisting" in the extension description and next to thethe acceptable ads checkbox, Adblock Plus is being deceptive. The ad networks themselves should never be paying an ad blocker for special treatment. It's either bribery by the networks, or extortion by ABP.

[wallunit]

Ad networks doesn't pay for white listing! The article is little confusing (typical for German press). Certain ads on certain websites can get into the white list. So if somebody pays it is the company running the website. And smaller websites like Reddit got their ads even white listed for free. See my reply to Karunamon [1].

However the comment you replied to was about the accusation that Adblock Plus would be dishonest, which just isn't true.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5996565

[hcarvalhoalves]

This is basically the same industry spawned by spam. You pay to get your mailserver whitelisted, or risk it getting blacklisted (even if it's legitimate).

In other words, extortion.

[shardling]

wallunit's response was in direct response to someone who claimed this feature was "snuck in".

[pbhjpbhj]

I feel some charge is acceptable as the ad network needs to be assessed against the whitelist criteria.

[nitrogen]

But having the ad networks (or sites hosting ads) pay a charge creates misaligned incentives.

[pbhjpbhj]

It can. Arguably however if you agree with the premise of the whitelist as beneficial and there is a fixed schedule of charges (ie no company is preferenced in charging) then to me it seems OK.

You can't have the whitelist without having ads/networks assessed to see if they meet the criteria. Even if you crowdsourced that [which probably wouldn't be objective enough] you'd need to administrate the whitelist and so you need some revenue to cover the overheads at least. Even automating it there's a cost in creating the code. It seems right to pass that cost on and the networks are the ones holding all the money.

You could have users pay for the whitelisting to avoid "misaligned incentives".

Indeed charging the companies for assessment gives an incentive to reject them so you can charge to assess them again ... 4) profit.

[kintpuash]

Your comment sounds like astroturfing as it uses company talking points whether you intended to or not. An astroturf account was unconvered on reddit recently using nearly the same language.

http://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/1h3xdm/accoun...

[kryptiskt]

> The German media went completely insane over the past two weeks, and made a scandal out of that feature in Adblock Plus, which exists for quite a while now and was clearly announced and documented from the beginning by the AdBlock Plus Team, and can easily be disabled.

If you refer to the blatantly immoral and possibly illegal Amaxon referral substitution, that invalidates your entire comment. But I see that even the shills can't even bring themselves to actually describe the indefensible thing they are trying to defend.

"Easily be disabled" they say, safe in the knowledge that most don't know how.

[uwotm899]

What? It's not immoral and CERTAINLY not illegal to add referral tags to Amazon URLs, lol.

And stop calling people you disagree with "shills", it's obnoxious.

[mst]

I installed AdBlock Plus because of the addition of the whitelist.

I want to encourage sites providing me with free content to show me adverts that don't annoy me.

And it was announced well enough that I, a non-user, heard of it, so I think 'sneak in' is frankly disingenuous.

[programminggeek]

You aren't helping them unless you actually plan on clicking on the ads. Seriously, if you want to help out sites you like, pay them money.

[noneTheHacker]

That's not always true. Some ad models just care that a user may have seen an ad. A lot of sites you can't just "pay them money."

[asperous]

Some ad companies pay per view

[s3r3nity]

Yeah but CPM (cost per impression metric) is not a scalable business model alone -- CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per acquisition) metrics have arisen because sites will spam impressions to people in Malaysia who will never buy anything...cheap impressions don't power a site for very long unfortunately.

[ceejayoz]

Many sites in the news media are still primarily on impression-based ad revenue. Often, a print advertising purchase comes with a certain number of impressions on the website.

[fpgeek]

Where did mst say that they didn't plan on clicking on any ads?

I'd imagine that most of the time people would only consider clicking on ads they found "not annoying" in the first place.

[ceejayoz]

Impression-based costing isn't unheard-of, even today.

[Hacktivist]

The whitelist feature isn't the issue here. You have always been able to whitelist sites in the "Custom Filter > Exceptions." The issue here is the addition of a built in whitelist subscription to a list controlled by the developers.

[tommi]

The problem here is that the definition of annoyance is the amount of cash paid to AdBlock Plus, not the actual annoyance from user's perspective.

[chez17]

Do you think Google ads are invasive or annoying? No sound ever, a limited amount of times they can be placed on the site, and they are obviously ads (unlike the "Download Now!" ads on download sites). Perhaps there was more to the transaction than money. You are jumping straight to a conspiracy that you have no proof of. Like the OP, I don't use ad block software because I, as an adult, know what it's like to pay bills and feed myself and I don't mind people who provide me with free services paying their bills and feeding themselves.

[gohrt]

Not that the '"Download Now!" ads on download sites' ARE published by google. Google text ads are just one part of Google's inventory.

The scammy fake-Download links on this famous page, for example, are provided by Google AdChoices

http://www.alternative.to/Google_Reader,29653017#nav-7647923...

[smsm42]

I am using AdBlock with whitelist enabled, and I don't see any scammy ads on this page. So whatever Google and AdBlock agreed on, it does not include those scammy ads.

[opinali]

I'm not using any adblocker and I see no scammy ads either.

[md224]

Has there been any work done from an information-theoretic perspective on the effect of sponsored information added to a page of search results? There's gotta be an academic paper on this somewhere...

I'm particularly interested in the implicit information conveyed by the mere position of a search result on the page, and how that compares to the implicit information contained by the presence of sponsored content. I would think that sponsored content would on average contain maybe half the amount of information as an organic result, since the presence of the ad is partially a function of its relevance but also a function of the amount paid for its placement, whereas organic result position is a purely a function of relevance.

Then again, perhaps the amount paid could also be considered an implicit source of information on the content being offered, but that seems less reliable.

[foobarqux]

Having to pay bills and feed yourself is not a justification to do anything or to compel someone to do something.

It certainly isn't a justification to coerce people and even less so to demand that people allow themselves to be coerced.

[zobzu]

it doesn't have much with "being adult" so "copping with the crap". It has to do with:

- morals. I don't think unsolicited ads are moral. I'd rather pay. But I generally don't get that choice without an adblocker.

- More choice and ethics. Again. I'm the one to decide what I want to see, not adblock people using a revenue model where they're in a position to force companies to pay them to be on a whitelist. That's extorsion.

And.. I'm pretty sure you get revenue from adverts.

[nwilliams]

Are text ads on Bing and Yahoo searches invasive and annoying? The article appears to say they're still blocked by default while Google's are not.

[chc]

That hardly seems relevant. The fact that they do not unblock every ad you consider not to be invasive and annoying is unsurprising. They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.

[nwilliams]

That is very relevant here.

chez17's comment implied that the whitelist applies to non-invasive and non-annoying ads, while there are a number of new qualifiers here, including a payment which you have omitted from your post.

>They entered into an arrangement with Google where Google agreed to meet certain standards and be vetted; Bing and Yahoo have not.

..and perhaps most importantly, have paid for it.

The whitelist standard is not just about non-intrusive ads as the title of the setting implies to users, it's about a payment too.

[shawnz]

While there is certainly a conflict of interest here, it doesn't mean that Adblock Plus wouldn't have whitelisted Google's ads anyway. The whitelist program has been going on for a while AFAIK.

[chc]

It's not immoral and dishonest to have a different idea of the core product value than you do. Personally, I run AdBlock not because I break out in hives in the presence of advertising, but because a lot of advertising on the web is just awful, makes sites harder to use and wears down my battery. Whitelisting advertising that is actually consumer-friendly is not at all against the core value I derive from the product. (Though I don't think my AdBlock extension does this, honestly, but I wouldn't mind if it did.)

[Dylan16807]

Sneak? I don't know was for upgrading, as I've been a user on and off, but I can tell you that as of a few days ago it asks you upon installing if you want to turn this option on. It does so in clear language, and on a page that is not full of confusing options.

[shmerl]

Exactly. It prompted about it, and users had a clear option to disable or enable this feature.

[Karunamon]

Agreed completely.

For what it's worth, on Firefox anyways, there's a fork of Adblock Plus called Adblock Edge that has no such ethical issues, and as far as I can tell, works with all the addon plugins that worked with ABP like the element hider and popup blocker.

[wallunit]

Why does somebody fork ABP, just to strip out a featere which can already be disabled in the options?

[Karunamon]

Because that "feature" existing points to a serious ethical failing and conflict of interest on the part of the author (namely, taking money to help advertisers bypass the plugin)

Firefox plugins auto-update, who's to say the next update won't have something more objectionable?

[wallunit]

I just noted that Adblock Edge is still based on version 2.0.4 of Adblock Plus, which is outdated for a while. It seems that Adblock Edge isn't maintained anymore and probably never was.

So Adblock Edge will probably get incompatible with future versions of Firefox, anyway. And if there are security issues in the code, it is rather unlikely that they will get fixed, as fast as in upstream Adblock Plus, if at all.

On the other hand I think it is way less likely that Adblock Plus will add a lot of features that wouldn't be in your interest, in the near future.

Sure it is a change in the ethical background of the product. Adblock Plus isn't a hobby project anymore. It's a business now. That means that it has to be profitable. But on the other hand that also means that there are more resources available. So the product can be properly maintained, further improved, and ported to new platforms.

I think this "ethical failing" (as you call it), isn't more or less serious, or unexpected, than when Google introduced in-app ads in Android. In the case of Adblock Plus, as well in the case of Android, I'm happy that the company behind the product found a way to make the product profitable. So they can maintain and improve the product.

[Karunamon]

Few companies take money to help bypass the function of their product!

This is analogous to an antivirus vendor taking money from malware authors to avoid detecting the worm of the day, the only difference being that a text ad isn't as likely to frag your computer.

But hey, in both cases, they're getting money to "maintain and improve the product".

[wallunit]

This comparison implies that everybody can get their ads on that white list, for money. But that isn't true. There are guidelines that define what is acceptable ad and what not. [1] Everybody that gets on the white list has to conform to that guidelines.

So it would be rather like an AV software that lets by default, installers still change your default home page (or stuff like that), if the installer is fair enough to ask for, but would still block any real malware.

[1] http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

[Karunamon]

I realize this is a bit late, but ABE is not unmaintained. It is based on an older version of ABP, yes, but it is under active development.

Last commit was in May, and besides, the nature of the product (single purpose app) is that it won't have a lot in the way of code changes aside from the odd bug fix. It doesn't need any other feature.

Most of the busywork is being handled in the block lists, and ABP and ABE use the same source (EasyList and others)

[smsm42]

I have been using AdBlock for years, and I have no problem with this feature, provided that they select their whitelist carefully and enforce the rules aggressively. I wouldn't have any problem with ads if they weren't such a disaster. If there are providers that can do ads responsibly - no animations, no sound, no taking valuable space where content should have been, then I have no problem with giving them the edge. I'm not opposed to the idea of advertisement in principle, I use AdBlock because otherwise bad ads (which are on 99% of sites) make using the web extremely tiresome and annoying.

If the Google leads the fight in making ads good citizens on the web and profits from it - fine, all power to them. If they would start abusing it - I'll turn off the whitelist and all their money would be spent for nothing.

[kcbanner]

This is AdBlock Plus, not AdBlock. They are not the same.

[Ellipsis753]

Actually I don't mind the feature existing. Small clearly labeled text ads don't add much to the page loading time and can be clearly seen as ads.

However I still normally disable the ads as I really enjoy the increased screen space gained by removing the ads.

Asking for money to whitelist ads it rather poor policy however. If an ad is small and clearly an ad then whitelist it. If it's not then blacklist it. Having to pay to have your non-intrusive ads whitelisted is shitty. I hope they didn't have to pay very much.

[oneeyedpigeon]

"Imagine a firewall that whitelists certain networks." er, you mean like a firewall? or is there some amazing new type of firewall that blocks ALL traffic, that I'm missing out on?