

New Freebox update censors ads by default for 5.5M users - mnml_
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/01/03/new-update-to-freebox-censors-internet-ads-by-default-for-5-5m-users/

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VeejayRampay
Good riddance though. I wish other ISPs would follow suit.

People do NOT like advertisements, the popularity of AdBlock shows that pretty
clearly.

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testimoney
Well we (web developers) are trying to make the ad experience as best as we
can. A lot of websites wouldn't even exist without ads (Google, Facebook
etc...). If ads are annoying you, use Adblock, but do not remove ads from
every user by default! I work for big startup in the US, and we wouldn't exist
without ads.

~~~
baby
I think they're just doing that to get good publicity (oh Free doesn't show
ads on internet? I think I'll sign-up at that ISP!) and also to piss off
youtube.

They will turn it off by default in a couple weeks/month for sure. Mark my
words.

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pavel_lishin
Without an option to disable this, or an option to white-list certain things,
this is basically just highly targeted censorship.

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mnml_
Its possible to disable it but it's enabled by default. Lets see how long they
last before Google strike back ! Free has always been in trouble with Google
because they don't want to pay for the peering.

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laurentoget
Knowing the reputation of Xavier Niel, he is gleefully waiting for Google's
counter attack.

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twiceaday
'Censorship' of spam emails is ubiquitous. How is this different from that for
an end-user?

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Lennie
Spam email do not contain any content you want to read.

Webdevelopers/contentcreators create content but use ads to fund development
of those works.

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jdangu
The flip side of net neutrality issues.

Don't tamper with my Internet please.

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actionthomas
They seems to only want to block Google ads. Free and Google have had issues
for a long time about 'who pays for bandwidth'. Google doesn't want to pay, so
Free blocks their revenues.

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chriscombs
Freebox Revolution = 2 M users only !!! 5.5 M users, but 3 M are using the
Freebox V5 (the previous version is unable to block ads).

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kondor6c
I'm sure that this would also reduce traffic on some of nosiest advertisements
which would benefit an ISP greatly.

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Lennie
ads don't add up to a lot of traffic for an ISP, video and so on does.

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martinced
This is huge news.

ISPs modifying the HTML served is a big issue. I'm not that much of a fan of
ads, but disabling ads is crazy.

It's not working that well apparently.

First thing is: a _lot_ of Google ads are served directly inside GMail (these
are the ones I notice the most) and at the top of the result from Google
search.

If that trafis is over HTTPS I've gat to wonder how Free plans to filter them
out.

But in any way: Free already wanted to throttle YouTube, which is not OK.

If I'm paying Free that much of an amount each month I want my bandwith. I
Free cannot provide me the bandwith I want, then I'll go to an ISP who can and
who doesn't throttle me.

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Nikkau
Free isn't modifying HTML, but filtering ads servers IPs.

