
Opera: Introducing native ad-blocking feature for faster browsing - riqbal
https://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/03/native-ad-blocking-feature-opera-for-computers/
======
Touche
I think people are underestimating how big this is. When Brave did it you
could excuse it as the action of a startup looking for attention; Opera now
legitimizes ad-blocking as being a feature that should be on by default. This
is similar to what went down with pop-up blockers, it quickly became a must-
have feature.

I wouldn't be surprised if Safari was next and to ship their own content
blocker in iOS and have it on by default.

The question is, how much will this trend cost Google?

~~~
xjp251
Qihoo(360) will get all your privacy. A notorious and shameless company. Have
you ever think about why Qihoo made this dicision?

~~~
xjp251
I believe all the website will fight back soon, if opera is detected, then
display a message "opera is not supported"

~~~
pmalynin
Spoof the Chrome User-Agent.

------
Freestyler_3
I didn't minds banner ads and the one or two side bar adds. But then came the
between content adds and the clickbait. Also the tracking etc. Sorry, but when
adds look more like virusses and some are then I don't want to take the risk.
When a website however gives me a warning about my addblocker then I disable
it to see how it looks like without addblocker on that website. (I once had a
site ask me this and then I got horrible adds with sound and autoplay and
loops, that site went back to being blocked very fast)

------
raldu
I am not sure how to react. On the one hand, it seems like a good thing at the
first sight. On the other, with ad-blocking becoming more and more mainstream,
and the discussion looking more like clashes and agreements between companies,
wouldn't advertisements find new ways of seeking attention, eventually
evolving into something that we cannot escape?

What if they find a way to ban ad-blocking? What if web becomes completely
binary, somehow making ad-blockers obsolete?[1][2]

What do you think?

[1]: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/12/compiling-to-
webassembly-i...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/12/compiling-to-webassembly-
its-happening/)

[2]: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/google-microsoft-mozilla-
an...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/google-microsoft-mozilla-and-others-
team-up-to-launch-webassembly-a-new-binary-format-for-the-web/)

~~~
franciscop
That's highly speculative and phrased in a way impossible to answer:

> eventually evolving into something that we cannot escape?

What I think: if they find a way to block adblockers, we'll find a way to
block the adblock blockers! It looks like a fight that will keep going on for
some time. Until they make ads so good that they are indistinguishable from
good content, then we'd won [1]

I now block the blockers naturally, just not following those pesky links. I
would love some statistics for instance, from the times Forbes and others are
in the top HN page before vs after they completely started blocking adblock.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/810/](https://xkcd.com/810/)

~~~
untog
I think the "something that we cannot escape" the OP is describing is already
here in the form of "native ads", which are advertisements presented as
articles. Buzzfeed does a lot of them, and there's a non-zero cognitive load
in differentiating (since they look so much like articles).

I'm really not sure they're better than ads. They're certainly more deceiving.

~~~
wagglycocks
That's where curated media comes into play. No-one's going to upvote an
article that's literally just filler text.

------
unicornporn
Ironic, considering Opera has their own ad network[1]...

[1] [http://operamediaworks.com/](http://operamediaworks.com/)

~~~
outside1234
Its only ironic if its blocked as well. Is it?

~~~
iza
From the comments:

> _opera.com is whitelisted by default, but you 're free to remove it from the
> whitelist. There are no hard-coded exceptions to allow Opera or Opera
> Mediaworks ads through._

[https://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/03/native-ad-
blocki...](https://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/03/native-ad-blocking-
feature-opera-for-computers/#comment-2561805926)

------
rockdoe
"We are the first major browser vendor to integrate an ad-blocking feature"

Firefox had it first. Enabling it's tracking protection makes almost all ads
go away (because ads track you).

They're also forgetting Brave.

~~~
majke
Firefox's "tracking protection" only works in private mode, right?

~~~
dao-
You can enable it for non-private windows by setting
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true in about:config.

~~~
RodericDay
I hate that this is not more visible, like in the Preferences pane.

~~~
Etzos
It's not in the release channel, but for Nightly the option is there on the
Preferences page and has been for quite some time.

~~~
RodericDay
I use Firefox Developer Edition and it's not there.

------
Flimm
Interesting comment from one of the blog moderators:

> We don't prioritize in any way our ads network. The most important is speed
> and user experience. We are not in the extortion business model as ABP.

~~~
riledhel
Related, somewhat, but what are good alternatives to ABP??

~~~
ant6n
uBlock origin

------
JetSpiegel
No comparisons to uBlock Origin? That's the state of the art, no ABP.

~~~
Touche
No hard evidence, but in some light testing this morning Opera is blocking
more ads than uBlock Origin. They might calculate differently though.

~~~
gorhill
> Opera is blocking more ads than uBlock Origin

Source? Or at least some specific details on how I could reproduce myself
this?

In case the number of network requests was used to measure this (assuming
Opera reports the number of _network requests_ blocked), one must be careful
with this specific measurement.[1]

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/About-%22This-
other-e...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/About-%22This-other-
extension-reports-more-stuff-blocked!%22)

------
jdalgetty
Ad blocking is great but we are forgetting that most people will not pay to
use a website. Advertisers are going to figure out a away around these things
and we'll still end up with ads but at the same time we are going to see many
ad supported websites disappear.

~~~
oconnore
This seems like you're assuming the conclusion. When you say, "readers won't
pay for sites [and sites cost money]", there are only a few solutions, and
they all involve non-readers paying for the reader<->site interaction.

As a result, your only solution is hand-wringing about ad blockers, which
probably won't result in "advertisers are going to figure out a away around
these things", because browsers have __complete __control over what is
displayed.

If you don't do this, things get more interesting:

\- "People won't pay for sites" -> make sites that they will pay for.

\- "non-readers paying for the reader<->site interaction" -> how can this be
consensual, positive? (there are approximately seventy-three people, total,
who enjoy web ads. Superbowl doesn't count.)

\- "[ad supported websites are a good thing]" -> can they be supported
publicly?

\- "ad supported websites disappear" -> maybe in some cases that isn't bad.

\- "ad supported websites disappear" -> "most people will not pay to use a
website" stops being true.

~~~
adamredwoods
Some small websites won't survive, unless they create free content. Newspaper
sites will die, save one or two.

People don't want to have to subscribe to 10 different sites, so I suspect it
will go the way of a single pay network that owns several pay websites. It
will end up being Comcast of the internet, who controls which websites you can
access for $99/month.

------
threatofrain
While this may be nice for the end user, the fact that Opera is in the process
of being bought out by a Chinese consortium for $1.2B makes me think Opera
will soon block more than ads, and will also track users.

~~~
nononoxd
Yeah, right beacuse Windows, Chrome, Android don't track users /sarcasm

------
gorhill
Personally I will always be quite uncomfortable when the blocking of
ads/tracking/data mining is provided by those with (not necessarily direct)
links to the ads/tracking/data mining industry. My view on this is that this
is the least worse solution for them to deal with the reality of more and more
people using blockers, the worst being the solutions for which the
ads/tracking/data mining industry has no say at all -- rather keep _some_
control over none at all.

------
amelius
"It seems you are using Opera. Please use a different browser if you want to
view our content."

~~~
sean-duffy
To which the response should always be to use the same browser to view
different content!

------
kup0
On a brand new install, there are a bunch of whitelisted sites (news and
otherwise) I had to remove manually. I'm curious why they are allowing ads on
places like NYTimes by default?

~~~
dubcanada
Cause people need to make money? Most people don't have a problem with small
ads here and there, what people have a problem with is 75 ads on a page with 2
paragraphs of useful content and 17 download buttons that are ads and only one
small link with the actual download.

~~~
kup0
Yes, but I should be the one to choose, not Opera. They already have ad
blocking _turned off by default_ why make people turn it on twice (switch on,
then remove site from whitelist) and why decide FOR me which sites I'm
supporting by whitelisting?

(Not that I actually do that, but hey some people are nice enough to whitelist
so I'm making the argument for them. I block all ads and am fine with
businesses going under because of it)

------
chewyshine
Hmmm...Isn't Opera in the process of being taken over by China's Kunlun and
Qihoo? With their history, I doubt this will end up being in the users best
interest.

------
usharf
Biggest problem with with ads is tracking (privacy). Performance is an issue,
but I'm not surprised that opera is making it sound as that's really the
problem. Privacy concerns are mentioned briefly. Mozilla aporoach to ad
blocking is truly user/consumer oriented, not just a lame attempt to still
control and revenu from the whitelisting market.

~~~
matthewmacleod
That might be the case, but I don't think it is. In my experience, people
dislike adverts on the web because they are obtrusive, obnoxious, and slow.
Tracking is fairly low down the list of complaints.

------
cm3
For whatever the default exception list is quite large and clearing it
required pressing X for each list entry and the list shrinking in height
didn't help because one had to move the mouse cursor around after each delete.
Otherwise it seemed to work well. Good on you, Opera!

------
samfisher83
75% of opera revenue in the 4th Q came from ads. I mean it doesn't seem like
the best business move.

~~~
ianlevesque
So don't block their own ads? Admittedly the whole situation is clearly
devolving / heating up now. It's going to be interesting.

~~~
samfisher83
I wonder if they do. Maybe someone who uses opera can comment.

~~~
alanh
Elsewhere in this discussion, an Opera blog moderator was quoted as saying
they "do not prioritize their own ad network in any way."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11258292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11258292)

------
LeoNatan25
> A smarter approach to ad-blocking

> Opera’s ad-blocking feature is deactivated by default.

Not so smart, it seems.

------
gorhill
Opera 37 dev version is available for linux, so I installed it to perform my
own measurements.

The example given in Opera's blog post is not very useful, they tested a
lightweight page with only one network request blocked. That page loads fast
even without a blocker. I preferred testing high-traffic, heavy front pages.

The tool to benchmark page load speed is the one I wrote, found at:
[http://www.raymondhill.net/ublock/pageloadspeed.html](http://www.raymondhill.net/ublock/pageloadspeed.html)
(available on GitHub[1]).

Settings:

Chrome 50 + uBlock Origin 1.6.4 with default settings.

Opera 37 in ad-blocking mode, I did not touch the built-in whitelist.

For both browsers, click-to-play was enabled. I disabled the blocking of 3rd-
party cookies for both browsers, this is necessary for the page load speed
tool to make benchmarked web pages render properly sometimes.

For each site benchmarked, I opened a new tab for the page load speed tool.

I also tested a web page with nothing to block at all, to test for a case
where the CPU cost of the blocking engine can't be offset by the gain of not
loading blocked resources.

I did not interact with the pages once they loaded, to be sure I benchmarked
exactly the same thing. Sometimes merely hovering the mouse over a page can
cause javascript code to execute, etc. I didn't want this to happen. From what
I could observe, pages looked similar in both browsers, except that there were
Taboola ads on Business Insider with Opera, not present with Chrome+uBO
(taboola.com is blocked by Peter Lowe's filter list, which is selected by
default in uBO).

Results:

[http://cnn.com/](http://cnn.com/)

\- Chrome 50: Average (valid): 351.65 ms (11/17 iterations)

\- Opera 37: Average (valid): 409.94 ms (11/15 iterations)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/](http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

\- Chrome 50: Average (valid): 933.18 ms (11/14 iterations)

\- Opera 37: Average (valid): 1115.15 ms (11/14 iterations)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/](http://www.businessinsider.com/)

\- Chrome 50: Average (valid): 1188.54 ms (11/14 iterations)

\- Opera 37: Average (valid): 1494.69 ms (11/17 iterations) (had clickbait
Taboola ads)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

\- Chrome 50: Average (valid): 258.51 ms (11/14 iterations)

\- Opera 37: Average (valid): 281.82 ms (11/12 iterations)

Note that if you run your own benchmarks using above tool, you can't compare
results with someone else's results, as your connection speed may vary with
each computer. The results are comparable for the same computer+site with
different browsers, or same browser but different blockers, or same browser
same blocker but different blocker settings, etc.

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

~~~
amk_
What about the same Opera build with uBlock Origin vs the built-in blocker?

~~~
gorhill
Here:

[http://cnn.com/](http://cnn.com/)

\- Opera 37 + uBO: Average (valid): 2280.89 ms (11/16 iterations)

\- Opera 37 + built-in: Average (valid): 2113.47 ms (11/12 iterations)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/](http://www.washingtonpost.com/)

\- Opera 37 + uBO: Average (valid): 1135.04 ms (11/15 iterations)

\- Opera 37 + built-in: Average (valid): 1072.35 ms (11/12 iterations)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/](http://www.businessinsider.com/)

\- Opera 37 + uBO: Average (valid): 1517.48 ms (11/15 iterations)

\- Opera 37 + built-in: Average (valid): 1489.73 ms (11/17 iterations)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

\- Opera 37 + uBO: Average (valid): 304.43 ms (11/13 iterations)

\- Opera 37 + built-in: Average (valid): 274.84 ms (11/16 iterations)

------
jkot
I would argue /etc/hosts based blocking is faster

~~~
dexterdog
When you need a hosts file as big as you need for good ad blocking it can get
pretty slow.

~~~
kup0
I think this is the case on older Windows versions but is negligible now on
most systems (and apparently fine on Linux, etc., going by replies to a
similar post I made a while back)

------
codefightclub
How are these websites supposed to make money without ads? Most of them rely
on ads to stay afloat, and have been denied from adsense. Whats the plan?

~~~
sdoering
What does give a website the right to include adware or malware and the like
into the legitimate UseCase of viwing it? Even if it is just the Ad Network
isn't it neglect on the websites part?

~~~
tn13
All ads are not adware malware and ad blockers aren't blocking just the bad
ads.

~~~
xiaoma
_Some_ ads are not malware.

