

Adblock Plus for Safari released - wallunit
https://adblockplus.org/blog/adblock-plus-for-safari-out-of-beta

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roeme
On Safari, I prefer Adblock without the 'Plus'
([https://getadblock.com](https://getadblock.com)) not least because of the
shady stuff unearthed around ABP (See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting)).

Even if the allegations were completely untrue (which I doubt, since offline
articles read seemed quite well and thoroughly researched), the fact that
companies could buy a place on the whitelist seems the absolutely wrong
approach to solve the underlying problem to me.

Edit: Highlight platform issue.

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Angostura
Is fundamentally more shady than leeching off an ad-supported Web site in the
first place?

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kiiski
People who use adblockers probably aren't people who would click ads anyway.
Showing the ads to such people might allow the website owner to leech more
money from advertisers, but it wont actually provide any value to anyone. One
might even argue that if there were no adblockers, the views/clicks ratio of
ads would go down enough to make advertisers less likely to spend so much
money on them. Thus ad-supported services might not even make much more money
after all.

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izzydata
I find it hard to believe that there is anyone that straight up clicks ads.
I've absolutely never in my life seen an ad for something that I was actually
interested in buying. For a multi-billion dollar business it is seriously one
of the most useless things on the internet.

Oh well, adblock deals with it now anyway. In my opinion there is no such
thing as a good ad. All ads go on the blacklist.

~~~
greenpresident
Impressions create brand awareness. Those Amazon tracking ads, showing you
stuff you have looked at, might not make you click them but they serve as a
reminder that you might want to reconsider buying that roomba. There is also a
distinct difference between product and brand advertising. The latter is not
conversion oriented. They aim to add their brand to the relevant set for your
next purchase decision. So even if you don't click them, you are still being
affected. There is even evidence that you don't have to read them,
subconscious exposure suffices.

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dakotasmith
If you want to block all ads for any browser on OS X, I have to recommend
GlimmerBlocker, the ad blocking proxy.

[http://glimmerblocker.org](http://glimmerblocker.org)

In addition to blocking ads at the response level, GlimmerBlocker can be used
block ads on mobile devices, do string replacement in requests or responses,
keyword expansion, even entire page transformations w/ JavaScript.

It's not as idiot proof as ABP's "right-click and block", but nothing more
complicated than anything else we see on HN. Also unlike ABP, there is no
whitelist advertisers can buy into.

I set it up as a proxy for all known clients on my network, and it really
makes the Internet better.

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calvin_
Bit unrelated, but for IE, I'm using the TPLs, which are basically just
Adblock filters in disguise. Surprised they'd actually put that in.

([http://i.imgur.com/pJ26iSr.png](http://i.imgur.com/pJ26iSr.png) \-
screenshot of EasyList loaded)

~~~
vxNsr
Thanks! I was looking for such an option for IE.

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matthewmacleod
I normally use Ghostery and ClickToPlugin in Safari, which in combination seem
to block everything annoying.

Not wedded to the combination though - is ABP a better option?

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alayne
Ghostery used to enable "Ghostrank" by default which is analytics they sell to
advertisers. I think it may be off by default now, but it's at least an
appearance of impropriety to me.

~~~
charchari
Ghostery also blocks too many legitimate contents, which is annoying.

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scrrr
Is it possible to block all that crap using the hosts file? It would block on
all browsers that way. Or would it be way too long?

~~~
Grue3
Large hosts file can slow down your computer. At least Windows had issues with
that AFAIR.

~~~
gorhill
How many entries is "large"? (just curious, to relate to something I wrote
based on host files).

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tszming
One of the primary reasons I use Firefox Mobile on Android is because of the
Adblock Plus, as we all know that the Chrome team has no plan/incentive to
support extension on Android in the foreseeable future :)

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ulfw
Oh yay now I can use an ad blocker that doesn't block ads on Safari too! woot
woot

