[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.