
An Ad Blocker Opens the Gate, Ever So Slightly - webwanderings
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/business/media/adblock-plus-allowing-some-online-advertisements.html
======
jerrya
_The way “acceptable ads” works, Mr. Palant and Mr. Faida explained, is that
Web sites agree to publish certain advertisements that meet Adblock Plus’s
standards on intrusiveness — no beeping or flashing, nothing that slows the
computer’s operations. They are then added to the “white list” of acceptable
advertisements._

Well, I'm okay with this.

I don't block Slashdot ads, though Slashdot gives me that option. I don't
block ads at FARK because FARK enforces non-intrusive ads. There are other
sites that ask me not to block their ads, and I usually white list them as
long as their ads are not intrusive, and that follows what adblock plus seems
to be seeking:

no pop-ups, not flashing, no marquee, no flash crap,

I don't mind websites making money, I prefer the ones I like stay in
existence. I only ask that their ads let me read the damn site and not attack
my senses.

~~~
nostromo
I'm ok with that too, but not ok with this:

> Mr. Faida has left open the possibility that some big Web sites will pay his
> start-up as part of the new service

This sounds like a shake down; pay us or your ads will be blocked.

~~~
oldstrangers
I'm ok with it in the sense that someone else (Ghostery) will just come along
and replace ABP anyways.

------
ianlevesque
> Adblock Plus’s lead developer, Wladimir Palant, has tried to quell the
> anger, replying personally to the disappointed commenters and explaining
> that the introduction of “acceptable ads” is true to his vision for the ad-
> blocking project. The project was never meant to rid the Internet of all
> advertising, he says, but of annoying advertising.

This may have been his goal, but a lot of users (myself included) obviously
don't want ANY advertising. It's not that I don't want to support content
creation, I would just rather pay real dollars for the services I use than be
sold as a commodity to advertisers. I put my money where my mouth is,
subscribing to premium ad-free versions of music sites, and paying for online
subscriptions to news sites. I also donate to Wikipedia. These are all great
ways to support websites that don't involve being subjected to advertising. I
don't mind if website operators want to use advertising as a revenue model,
but they should be offering a "pay me to opt out". When this becomes
widespread, Adblock Plus will be unnecessary.

> “I just talked to a tech Web site here in Germany, they have seven employees
> and 40 percent of their users have ad-blockers,” he said. “There was a tech
> convention in America, and they couldn’t afford to send more than one
> journalist because so many of their ads are being blocked.”

They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users
would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases than
the highest CPMs.

~~~
avolcano
> They should charge for their site. Some nontrivial number of those 40% users
> would pay, and a paid user is ridiculously more profitable in most cases
> than the highest CPMs.

I don't think you understand why ads are the funding of choice for most of the
internet.

Imagine the last time you read a random article on a tech blog. You probably
were linked to it on HN, or a friend linked it on Twitter, or on Reddit, or
whatever. It's likely not something that is in your news feed.

For most people, that is how they find content. There's a minority of users
who will use RSS or follow specific sites on Twitter, but 99% of users will be
linked to it, or maybe Google it, or otherwise stumble across it. They have no
actual ties to that site, and will likely read what they are linked and then
leave the site until it shows up on HN/Reddit/Twitter again.

Now, there are a few sites that have loyal followings. I'm subscribed to
GiantBomb.com, for example, because I love its content. But for most sites,
putting content behind a paywall would destroy them. No one will pay to read a
random article they were linked - and people won't link articles that they
know their friends would have to pay to read.

Instead, sites must make money from incoming traffic - and thus, ads. If you
have 500 regular readers but see 10,000 coming in from a Reddit post, you'll
get money from those page views.

And, of course, this is also why "pay to opt out" is flawed: you're not going
to pay every site you visit over the course of the day (possibly 200+, if
you're an avid news/social bookmarking reader) to remove those ads, no matter
how convenient.

I know we like to pretend that web users will reward the best content by
paying, but that model ignores the way the web works. It's not like there's 20
sites we all read; there's a ton we see every day.

~~~
ianlevesque
Yeah, ultimately I'd love to see ABP offer a tip jar or subscription I could
pay that could then be distributed to the operators of the sites I visit.
Perhaps take all the sites I visited and divide out the subscription fee. This
way you could support even infrequently visited sites without resorting to
advertising.

------
HSO
_In an interview, Mr. Faida focused on the plight of those smaller Web sites
that had suffered collateral damage from ad-blocking programs. […] “I just
talked to a tech Web site here in Germany, they have seven employees and 40
percent of their users have ad-blockers,” he said. “There was a tech
convention in America, and they couldn’t afford to send more than one
journalist because so many of their ads are being blocked.”_

So? The very concept of ads is flawed. There are two things consumers want: a)
discovery, b) reviews. Both are best served by independent parties, filters,
“editors”, gatekeepers who earn the trust of consumers by doing, guess what,
good introductions and good reviews. Sometimes, consumers take it upon
themselves to spread the word or write good reviews. Other times, consumers
should pay for these things. And producers should concentrate on making good
products. Advertising is conscious, paid-for, explicit manipulation of other
people. Why is it so hard for some people to not whitewash it and see it for
what it is?

~~~
bad_user
Reviews done with the intention of earning money are going to be naturally
biased.

~~~
mseebach
That depends on where the money comes from. As long as the reviewed products
aren't the source of the money, there's no inherent risk of bias.

------
oldstrangers
As someone who relies on advertising for my livelihood, and as someone who
runs both ABP and Ghostery, I can awkwardly sympathize with both sides.
Ultimately though, I still 100% believe that the end user should have ultimate
say in what does and does not come across their computer. If they want to
block something, that's their right. It's my burden to create the value, not
the users.

So yes, ABP allowing ANY kind of advertisements kind of pisses me off. It's
like creating a safety switch for a gun that allows certain kinds of bullets
to be fired.

~~~
corin_
I don't use any adblocker software and also make a living from (good quality)
advertising, but yes I agree that users should have the right to chose.

However, two issues with your logic:

1.) Users have the right to install the ad-blocking plugins available, that
doesn't mean the ABP devs have an obligation to provide it. They too have
rights, one of which is to change ABP in any way they like, or to kill it off
alltogether.

2.) With this change, ABP users STILL have the ability to block all adverts,
so this ABP change hasn't actually prevented them from doing that if they
wish.

~~~
oldstrangers
ABP has the unique advantage of being one of the original ad blockers (or even
THE definitive ad blocker). People like me flocked to them for very specific
reasons. They are now fundamentally changing the way they do business;
alienating those of us that came calling in the first place.

Perhaps even doing "business" at all is now a problem. Offering to allow
advertisements for companies that pay enough money seems as shitty to me as
when No Script coded in ways to prevent Ad Block from disabling the ads on
their site. The internet flipped its shit over that, but somehow this same
practice seems ok when its carried out with large sums of money? Right.

There's a trust issue with ABP that seems to have been fundamentally ruined. I
wish them luck but I will personally be looking into other alternatives.

~~~
corin_
I completely agree that a business model based around companies paying to let
their adverts get shown is awful. If I used ABP, this would stop me using it.

I just disagreed with your opinion that this is bad because _"the end user
should have ultimate say in what does and does not come across their
computer"_ \- as they still do, even now that ABP is open to taking bribes.

------
mrobataille
Remember the people who thought music piracy was over after Napster got shut
down?

Once the masses get used to a certain convenience, and that convenience is
taken away, someone will inevitably spring up to provide it again.

So it really doesn't matter what direction ABP takes - just the fact that it
set a precedent for an ad-free experience is enough to ensure someone will
provide it in the future.

------
extension
Rather than whitelisting specific advertisers, why not come up with some
acceptably non-annoying ad templates and tell the filter to let through things
that match the template? Advertisers can just fill in the template and they'll
know their ads will be shown. Make the template invisible if there's no ad
blocker.

I think this might be the ultimate solution to the online advertising issue:
the advertisers provide abstract content and the users decide if and how they
want to look at it.

~~~
nas
Sounds like an idea. The security principle of "enumerating the good" rather
than "enumerating the bad" is an old one. You could define an HTML subset that
would be acceptable, perhaps putting total size limits on certain things. That
approach would also have effect of keeping the decision of what's acceptable
unbiased.

~~~
exolab
There are size-limits on ads. Actually there have always (read: for the last
10+ years) been limits. Also, ad servers are usually rigorously tested with
regards to performance, speed etc.

Not all sites enforce these limits, but major publishers are very aware of
users' interests.

The problem is that if you visit an average website, there will probably be
20+ servers involved in serving the page, the javascripts, analytics, ads,
etc.

One of those systems occasionally underperforms, which would not be a problem
if everything but the main content was simply loaded asynchronously, possibly
in the order of importance a website owner attaches to each content type.

------
thealistra
Well it's time to find good alternatives.

I'm personally using adsuck: <https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck>

It's a caching dns server with 'sucking out' ads. It's very nice, but has some
drawbacks. You have to kill SIGUSR1 the process to reread the file with
blocked sites, where in adblock you just added an exception.

~~~
greedoshotlast
I'm looking for alternatives as well for ad block plus. Anyone used Privoxy
before?

~~~
ortatherox
on OSX I use Glimmer Blocker

------
CurtHagenlocher
If it were possible for everybody to block all advertising all the time, it
would kill today's internet more effectively than SOPA.

~~~
naner
If all ad-supported sites went down tomorrow, the Internet would still work
fine and there would still be content.

Just not as much.

~~~
georgemcbay
Considering that both Google and Bing are "ad-supported sites", the _big_
problem for most people (including me) wouldn't be that there would be less
content but that it would be too painful to find.

~~~
kaybe
Well, search engines are singular sites, they could just ask for a monthly fee
or some cents per search. That or we could find some way to host a search
engine in a distributed way on private servers or even the clients. I'm quite
sure a way would be found.

------
tuananh
more revenue stream?

------
drivebyacct2
The glad for open source and love that someone can fork something if they want
to or feel they need to, but I have a hard time understanding bits like this:

> _While some have couched their concerns within long notes about their
> affection for the project, others, like “felix,” kept it short: “
> ‘acceptable ads’ is an oxymoron ... i accept no ads. you fail; goodbye.”
> There has been a movement proposing to “fork” the project — that is, run a
> version of Adblock Plus before the changes, as is allowed for open-source
> projects._

It sounds like the defaults are being changed and it's easy to switch back to
"block all". Seems like the "fork" would be a boolean value in a default
config file.

~~~
AndyKelley
Don't underestimate the power of defaults:

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/01/the-power-of-
defaul...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/01/the-power-of-
defaults.html)

~~~
fl3tch
Palant said explicitly in a blog post that he turned the whitelist on by
default because the vast majority of people don't change the default.

The forum has also been inundated by complaints (I've been following this)
from people who installed ABP for 4, 5, 6 of their non-tech savvy friends who
don't know what's going on, why ABP stopped working, and how to change it
back. Thus, Palant has unwittingly caused (perhaps) hundreds of thousands of
people to be inundated with tech support requests from their friends. That's
part of the backlash.

