
Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus? - XzetaU8
https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adblock-plus
======
heromat
He surely just forgot to mention that Google allegedly payed 25 million € to
Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, in order to participate in the
"acceptable ads" program, a "feature" which is turned on by default and allows
users to "surf more comfortably". And that he is (or at least was) one of the
directors.

I'm most certain that there are people out there who would call this business
model "blackmailing", but I could also be wrong.

Source (in german): [http://www.welt.de/wall-street-
journal/article124441049/Goog...](http://www.welt.de/wall-street-
journal/article124441049/Googles-fragwuerdiger-Deal-mit-Adblock-Plus.html)

~~~
ntaso
Story behind it:

AdBlock Plus is installed on an extremely large sum of devices in Germany. I
read somewhere close to 25% with non-technical users (!) and 50% among
technical users.

What they basically did is to approach companies like newspapers (Spiegel
Online) and told them: Look, if you pay $LARGE_SUM, we will whitelist you.
Otherwise, since 25-50% of Germans use our software, your advertisement won't
make you much money.

I'm not a law expert and I guess technically, it isn't called _blackmailing_ ,
but then it is, sort of. It's a dark-grey zone which discriminates against
smaller companies that can't afford to pay and heck, who gives Eyeo the right
to decide over the business models of other websites?

If nobody was shown ads, then all would be in the same boat again. But this
way, there's a privileged class of companies that may have ads enabled.

~~~
lazyant
Not blackmail (threatening to reveal a secret, esp. to the police) but more
like extortion.

~~~
knowtheory
This isn't blackmailing or extortion. This is what monopoly on a group of
users looks like. Apple also charges 30% for anyone allowing in-app purchase
on their devices. Is that also blackmail or extortion? Sure made Amazon drop
in app purchases in a hurry (and yank them from comixology after Amazon
purchased them)

------
miah_
Adblock Edge, since it doesn't contain the 'paid for exemptions' (aka ads).

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-
edge/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/)

"Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for
blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features
as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature. Adblock
Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package
"[http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tg...](http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tgz")
created by Wladimir Palant."

~~~
mhaymo
There's a setting in Adblock Plus that allows you to turn the "unintrusive
ads" whitelist off. You don't need a separate add-on. I haven't felt the need
to change the setting.

~~~
Karunamon
As far as I'm concerned, this is like a malware author asking an antivirus
company to not detect some things. And the company acquiescing, because
there's no real harm.

But in the end, it's all still malware.

In other words, it's a pretty massive conflict of interest.

If I wanted to look at ads, I wouldn't have installed an ad blocking plugin.
Combined with the "private" list that nobody can see, there is plenty of
reason to use a fork that has no such conflicts.

~~~
mhaymo
It's not a private list:

[https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-
ads#list](https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list)

[https://easylist-
downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...](https://easylist-
downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt)

~~~
y4mi
as wreegab pointed out earlier

> So in fact there is really a public list and a private list it appears
> (through the x-adblock-key header), while the public list is presented as
> all there is to "acceptable ads".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8103119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8103119)

~~~
martin56
No, there is no private list, it's just the public one. You can check out the
key header whitelist here: [http://cheme.com/](http://cheme.com/) Visit this
site with "Acceptable Ads" enabled and disabled and you will see the
difference. Notice the "data-adblockkey" in the source. This was publically
announced in their "Acceptable Ads proposal" forum here and later added to the
public list:
[https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17699](https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17699)

~~~
wreegab
> Visit this site with "Acceptable Ads" enabled and disabled and you will see
> the difference

Nowwhere did I say pages with the x-adblock-key were not respecting the
"Acceptable ads" setting.

I said that there are more whitelisted sites than just what is presented as
the only list in the section titled "How can I see what you are allowing?" on
ABP's reference page regarding "acceptable ads" [1].

[1] [https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-
ads#list](https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list)

~~~
martin56
That's right, you didn't say that. You said there is a "public" and a
"private" list. To me this sounds like the "private" one is somehow hidden
from the public and cannot be seen which isn't the case.

~~~
Karunamon
There is no list of sites which utilize the header and do not appear on the
main allow list.

~~~
martin56
It's a whitelist for parked domains...

~~~
Karunamon
In what world is a page full of nothing but advertisements considered
"unintrusive" and deserving of whitelisting?

------
beaumartinez
I've posted this on previous ad blocking threads, and I'll post it again
because I think it's very relevant—

> "Adblock without the plus" isn't the original Adblock (from which Adblock
> Plus was forked), it's an extension created for Google Chrome once Google
> Chrome enabled support for extensions. Very disingenuous name. It piggy-
> backed on the work already done for Adblock Plus (for Firefox).

> Adblock Plus for Google Chrome came much later.

Nowadays, I use and recommend HTTP switchboard[0]. It's fully open[1], and
offers very powerful customization on what exactly to block on a site.

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/http-
switchboard/m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/http-
switchboard/mghdpehejfekicfjcdbfofhcmnjhgaag?hl=en)

[1]
[https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard)

~~~
aen0
I highly recommends HTTPS Switchboard or uBlock (same author). They are both
faster and better than any Adblocker out there.

~~~
wernercd
This looks like something worth playing with. How does this overlay with other
tools like Ghostery? Are there any other tools worth mentioning?

~~~
ac29
In my experience, you wont need other privacy/ad-blocking tools. See here:

[https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-
HTT...](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/How-does-HTTP-
Switchboard-compares-to-AdBlock-%2C-Ghostery-or-Disconnect-concerning-
privacy%3F)

------
wreegab
I pretty much all agree with all of Wladimir Palant's post.

But I also have one problem regarding Adblock Plus' "acceptable ads" openness.

When I read about their "acceptable ads" approach, I am led to believe the
"acceptable ads" list contains all the sites which are whitelisted for purpose
of "acceptable ads". I am invited to consult the list to see for myself which
sites qualify.[1]

Problem is, many web sites are not whitelisted through that publicly available
list, but through the x-adblock-key HTTP header (which is not something
disclosed up front to users).

So in fact there is really a public list _and_ a private list it appears
(through the x-adblock-key header), while the public list is presented as all
there is to "acceptable ads".

[1] [https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-
ads#list](https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list)

~~~
martin56
No, there is no private list. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8104070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8104070)

------
gorhill
I see Wladimir Palant has again commented on µBlock in his comment section
[1]:

> clear tendency to trade performance for memory use

This has been a pattern with Wladimir Palant with regard to my work. Outright
misrepresentation [2], or criticism through vague statements while never
specific enough to understand what part of the code he is referring to.

Nowhere in the code did I trade memory for CPU, both have always been of
highest concern. Given that my benchmarks show µBlock does significantly
better than ABP on both memory and CPU count, vaguely stating that "clear
tendency to trade performance for memory use" is just plain nonsense. [3]

I did ask him to be specific about his statement regarding how I implemented
element hiding without injecting gigantic CSS stylesheet in every page and
frame, but never received a response, and it is understandable why: he was
misrepresenting. [4]

[1] [https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-
adbl...](https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adblock-
plus#c000761)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Adblock-
Plus...](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Adblock-Plus-memory-
consumption) (bottom of the page)

[3] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-
vs.-ABP:-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-
vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared)

[4]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c39](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c39)

Edit: added reference to CPU/mem benchmarks

------
sogen
I'm loving ublock
[https://github.com/gorhill/ublock](https://github.com/gorhill/ublock)

~~~
sudorank
Sounds interesting, might check it out tonight.

~~~
sogen
really do, I've found it's the easiest to use, and lightweight too.

------
conesus
Adblock is the #1 culprit for bugs on NewsBlur. I get at least one report a
day where some functionality is broken (sharing stories, saving stories,
loading a user's feed list, etc). First thing I do now is ask them to disable
Adblock.

Doesn't even matter if they've told me if they have Adblock installed. I just
assume if some random functionality is broken on my single-page site, it's
Adblock's fault.

I suppose I should look for a way to identify if a user is using Adblock,
though I bet they've made that as difficult as possible. And if I identify a
user using Adblock, I should let them know it's the cause of any bugginess.

~~~
freehunter
As an Adblock user, I always assume that any errors on any site are the result
of Adblock, and my first troubleshooting step is to turn it off. It almost
always is.

~~~
GhotiFish
I'd recommend against this strategy, in general, why would some core
functionality of a website depend on the ability to contact ad servers? Sounds
like a way to pressure people into not using ad blockers, and the threat needs
to be responded to (and can be responded to) by that ad block.

It's a really shitty game they are playing, because content providers can't
win, but they can make the internet much worse.

~~~
freehunter
Adblock doesn't just block ads, it blocks based on a blacklist that sometimes
is a little overzealous. For example, I could block images.yahoo.com, but that
would block _all_ images from Yahoo. Maybe that's fine, since I never go to
Yahoo. Then a blog post I'm reading has a picture that is hosted at
images.yahoo.com, and suddenly Adblock is hampering my viewing of a site that
I want to see. I disable Adblock, find out what was being blocked and why, and
edit the filters to fix that (or completely whitelist the site, if the ads are
non-existant or non-intrusive).

------
diminoten
Ooh, whitelisting of ads via partnerships. That's shady as fuck for an ad
blocking company.

~~~
mhaymo
It does feel shady, but on the other hand I can't really argue with their
logic:

\- ads are an important revenue stream on the web, so allow
unintrusive/inoffensive ads by default

\- to do this, companies need to agree to keep all ads under a certain URL
pattern "unintrusive" by ABP's definition

\- investigating and enforcing the nature of the ads in the whitelist costs
money, so make this service free for "small to medium" businesses but charge
large ones.

Companies may be hurt by people choosing to block ads, but they're not hurt by
Adblock Plus offering them a chance to have their ads unblocked. And users
aren't hurt either, as if they don't like the whitelisting they can simply
turn it off. It seems to me that if you're ok with adblocking, there's no
reason to protest ABP's whitelisting practices.

~~~
schnevets
Agreed. Most countries have an organization to regulate broadcasts, removing
advertising that is too obtrusive, obscene, or otherwise unfit for mass
consumption. Likewise, filtering malware sites, porn ads (in improper places),
and flickering banners seems like a win to me. I am in favor of Adblock Plus'
mission, I just wish they were more transparent about their business practices
and revenue. This seems like the purpose of a non-profit organization moreso
than the job of a few developers.

------
modzoo
Reply from Wladimir Palant:

"whitelisting websites if they serve only acceptable ads turned out
unrealistic – nobody would do that right now. There needs to be more incentive
to use acceptable advertising first."

[https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-by-the-
numbers](https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-by-the-numbers)

------
emrikol
What I've wanted for some time, and it seems hard for me to find, is a good ad
blocker that only works on blacklists. I don't mind ads on some sites as long
as they're non-intrusive. Once they start getting in the way of the content
though, I want to blacklist the site. Everything I've seen so far (although I
haven't put a LOT of time into searching) only works on all sites by default
and you have to whitelist the ones you want to have ads enabled on.

~~~
walden42
This is the feature I'm missing from the Firefox Adblock Plus. One of the
Adblocks for Chrome has this (can't remember which one) and it was great. I
only blocked ads on the site I wanted to. Hopefully they'll make it for
Firefox.

------
bowlofpetunias
Adblock Plus is malware. Period.

Besides blackmailing advertisers into whitelisting their ads for money, last
year it added a "typo correction" feature that would intercept "mistyped"
url's and redirect you to the correct one.

Except it blatantly redirected existing domains to that of competitors, and
added referrer affiliate ID's to the URL so Palant could cash in.

Despite claims to the contrary, that "feature" was initially on by default.
That is pure malware, it has nothing to do with blocking ads.

Palant is someone who's words should not be trusted. He's basically a
successful malware blackmailer.

------
616c
If people prefer more extreme solutions:

I eventually moved to Conkeror (think Firefox, but with Emacs bindings and
Emacs-like extension via javascript; I know cue the egg throwing). I was
looking at other browsers to replace Firefox, as I got sick of it, and I
picked Conkeror.

Conkeror has a neat little feature called content-policy. I can block kinds of
crap per session or site (Flash, JS, Fonts, Object tags, Images, you name it).
I use this and by default all our blocked completely. I can reload a buffer
when I need it (even on HN I leave all this crap off). I used NoScript before
and I like this as more basic and defensive tool built into the browser core.
Check it out.

For when I do use Javascript (this is on Linux of course), I uses
hostsblock[0] to redirect all blacklisted sites in /etc/hosts to a local DNS
proxy on 127.0.01 on my laptop (dnsmasq, which we all probably know, and you
could set it up upstream on a router or server for a group of people). Then I
use kwakd as recommended to serve white space for all these redirected
domains.

The end result, now I open up JS when I need, and like 100,000 domains are
blocked. I check when certain shady domains are mentioned to look for stones
unturned, and I rarely see exceptions that are not listed (by default even no
cookie YouTube domains are blocked, so JS-less pages give you a blank YouTube
box on sites a lot).

So why all this effort? Because this is the second or third time I read "ad-
blocking company not as dedicated as you think to your principles" articles.
And people who argue "my website needs your ad revenue" you ask? Honestly,
fuck 'em. I can't be bothered. Be adults, as you do not believe in legislation
on Minority Report-like ads following me around in realtime while I walk in
public or forcing my eyes open to read newspaper and billboards just for ads,
I think I have the right to voluntarily ignore them as I will not buy your
shit or shill for you anyway and it is waste of both of our time. I do not
mandate everyone look away, but give me the privilege too thank you very much.
And I know a company cannot be trusted long term to defend this right as it is
not in their interest, especially if it is their core model ad companies (all
mentioned here Adblock, Ghostery, disconnect.me will change their tune if they
have not already say).

In short, do not use corporate-backed tools for this. Said companies always
change their mind.

[0] More info here:
[http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2013/12/28/hostsblock/](http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2013/12/28/hostsblock/)

UPDATE: Fixed cue typo. Thanks for pointing it out, Thomas, whoever you are.

~~~
fonosip
DNS based Adblock, profile and Malware block. Make your Internet Faster and
Safer with free [http://BA.net/adblock](http://BA.net/adblock)

~~~
616c
You do realize given what I wrote I would never use that, right? And for
others, if we cannot trust their ad-blocking, why we would trust them with our
DNS? If I wanted badly implemented filtering I would stick with: my own ISP,
OpenDNS, this, in that particular order.

------
callesgg
I have a long /etc/host file with many of the worst tracking/ad services that
i have found. Blocks of a very large portion of the stuff that i do not like.

~~~
freshyill
I would love to see this list! Could you post it in a Gist or somewhere?

~~~
mayneack
Here's one:
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

------
crb
Isn't Disconnect.me broadly, another "tracking-blocker"? How would Adblock be
able to 'monetize' through installing it?

------
rurban
"Privacy Badger" is the only option nowadays.

No whitelisting, and no corrupt companies behind, doing the whitelisting.

------
avani
Since a lot of people are running out to download Adblock Plus, you guys might
want to contact Google to try and get the spam app "Adblock Plus" from
exgam.com removed from the store. Apps typically show up above extensions, so
I've already seen several people download the wrong one :/ .

------
Vanayad
I keep seeing people complaining about some ads being not filtered by
ABP...why not just right click those ads and block them. No more ads. Haven't
had any with it on for some time (except on some sites where I want to see the
ads to help those specific communities)

------
junto
Although the naming of the two projects appears to be problematic at first,
I'm guessing that many users will pick the Adblock PLUS over the Adblock,
simply because 'Plus' feels like a superlative.

------
motters
Adblock Edge is the better version, since it genuinely blocks ads, whereas
Adblock Plus still lets some through by default.

------
e15ctr0n
AdBlock Plus also increases the amount of memory used by Firefox, to the order
of 60–70 MiB + about 4 MiB per iframe.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-
plus...](https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-
on-firefoxs-memory-usage/)

------
discardorama
I wouldn't mind ads if they didn't completely destroy the viewing experience
on many sites. From the long load times (oftentimes the browser rendering will
hang because some stupid JS from an ad server has trouble loading), to the
distracting ads, it's a huge mess. That is why I use Ad Blocking.

------
forgotAgain
Since Chrome added "click to play" in plug-in settings I haven't used an ad
blocker. With Flash ads no longer playing, my need for the blocker went away.

The changeover to canvas ads is happening quickly and that may bring back my
need.

When I don't want to be tracked I rely on incognito mode.

------
leephillips
Privoxy.

~~~
Theodores
I think you are right. However not a lot of people use privoxy compared to the
many users of adblock-whatever. Also there aren't many people putting together
their own squid3 build with custom list of sites to block.

Neither of these tools take that much effort to setup on a linux machine if
you know what you are doing and have a rough idea of how the internet works.

Consequently, for people that cannot be bothered to invest the 10-20 minutes
to get privoxy working, the less than perfect solutions offered by the
adblock-whatever freebees are okay by me.

~~~
leephillips
Everything you say is quite sensible. I mentioned privoxy here because
obviously a large fraction of the HN audience would be comfortable setting it
up.

It's worth at least knowing about because of its generality: it filters and
transforms the incoming data before it gets to your browser, so it's
irrelevant which browser you're using. It can run on your local machine or you
can put it on a server and connect through an ssh tunnel, bypassing web
filters and snooping (very good for frequent travelers). When used remotely it
can compensate for slow local connections by, for example, compressing images.

------
leeoniya
i havent used Adblock Plus in some time. A combination of Noscript blocking
third party js (with some domains/cdns whitelisted) and Ghostery takes care of
90% of annoying stuff without bloating mem usage and improving page load speed
drastically.

------
cubbage
Gabriel from AdBlock here.

Here is AdBlock's response to Wladimir's post:
[http://blog.getadblock.com/2014/07/adblock-and-
privacy.html](http://blog.getadblock.com/2014/07/adblock-and-privacy.html)

------
nimish
Use HTTP Switchboard. Faster, more powerful, and honest.

------
msoad
Maybe it sounds stupid, but I have both on my Chrome so whichever whitelists
the other will remove. Problem solved!

I have never ever seen ads since then

------
ksec
Are there any other reason to use Ad Block software other then privacy and
speed of surfing the internet?

------
recursive
I don't have this problem because I just choose not to use sites that have
disrupting advertising.

------
dbg31415
Changing your hosts file will work great.

* [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts)

------
WorldWideWayne
Oh, I heard something like this on Reddit and I still got them confused
because I started using "Adblock" instead of "Adblock Plus". Reading this
today I realize that I should have been using "Plus".

I think I'm going to abandon both of them and try out some of the alternatives
listed here (ublock, http switchboard).

------
andyl
A great solution is to run DNSMASQ on your local network, and configure it to
block unwanted domains. That way it works on any connected device
automatically, with no plugins or browser overhead.

There are plenty of guides - google it!

------
plicense
Without a doubt, Adblock.

------
rkrkrk21
I use both of them so i wont care reading this post. All that matters to em to
me is the I should not be wasting 15 seconds of my life in watching ads on
youtube videos and the combo of ad block and ad block plus does it well for
me.

------
dudus
<rant>

Blocking ads is such a dick move. This should be made illegal. You are not
entitled to change a website to your contempt and cut their main revenue
source. If you want to use a website/app and it was made available with the
Ad, then just suck it in or use a different one.

To my eyes this is not very different than piracy. Where you use a software
without paying for it's price.

Advertising is the price you pay to use a service. Targeting is a technology
to make that Ad as much relevant to you as possible. And yet there's a lot of
negativity in here towards both. It's supposed to be a win-win-win solution
for advertisers, publishers and users and yet are met with negativity and FUD.

If you are here in HN you should think the same, because advertisement is what
funds the industry you are in.

</rant>

~~~
wreegab
> Blocking ads is such a dick move. This should be made illegal.

A law to enforce one very specific business model is a terrible idea.

If only I could tip $2 the author for that video I watched and liked (like
say, 10,000 other viewers) with as little overhead as possible... No
donations, no subscriptions, just a tip with no further obligations. You think
ad brokers would welcome this business model?

~~~
takeda
You probably were implying this, but just in case you didn't, this might
actually be quite possible right now through crypto currency.

