Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/11/48-hours-later-adblock-plus-b.html
…
4 Likes
Oh yeah! I TRIPLE dog dare you! I just wrote an Ad blocker-blocker-BLOCKER!
31 Likes
Is Facebook staffed by creationists? Haven’t those people ever heard about the nature of evolutionary arms races?
30 Likes
Well, thank goodness that’s settled.
6 Likes
Didn’t Adblock Plus fall severely out of favor, due to apparently being more resource-hungry than alternatives like uBlock Origin? And also because they were apparently accepting payments to let some advertisers through?
14 Likes
The latter, certainly. It’s why i moved to uBlock Origin anyway even though it’s nowhere near as user friendly.
6 Likes
Yeeeep. Here’s Adblock Plus’ page about it. Switched to uBlock origin, and dropped Ghostery, Disconnect, Privacy Badger, and a number of other privacy plugins, as uBlock Origin does all that and more.
8 Likes
Blocking ads breaks the unofficial “deal” web sites make with readers. Content sites make money via advertising, paywalls, contributions, and/or subsidy by other parts of the same company. The first one is the only currently viable way for “micropayments” (advertisers are effectively making micropayments on your behalf). If ad blocking gets to a tipping point and advertisers start leaving (or paying much less), you’re going to see a lot of sites die…
Ads annoy me as much as the next person, but blocking them is the web equivalent of sneaking into a movie theater. It doesn’t “cost” the theater anything, but if everyone does it they’ll go out of business. If a site gets overzealous with their ads, I vote by taking my eyes (and pageviews) away from the site, not blocking the ads.
Forget the ads, can someone come up with an “inane inspirational quote from your aunt” blocker? Or “blindingly stupid comment from your Trump-supporting cousin” blocker?
18 Likes
The word “unofficial”, and the quote marks around “deal”, say it pretty clearly: nobody bought into this so-called deal.
And by reading this, you “agree” to everything I say, even if you stopped reading after the first word.
33 Likes
Personally, I liked the web more before ads and huge corporate sites became the norm. Let some of 'em die if they can only exist by filling half the page with ads and selling information about me as a commodity. You act as though the current state of things is the norm and must be preserved at all costs. It’s not by a long shot.
25 Likes
Considering that hacked ad servers are the prime delivery method for malware they get blocked. Even sites like the NYTimes have been hurt by that.
So it may break the deal but until the ad companies clean up their act with shitty scripts and lax security, fuck em.
34 Likes
Twice.
17 Likes
Why would Facebook dedicate engineers to fixing this when all it would take is a relatively small payment to Adblock Plus?
4 Likes
There’s no “deal” with the movie theater either, but most people wouldn’t evade the ticket taker either. Not every “deal” involves a written agreement. If you really wanted to take a stand, you’d stop visiting the site.
Along with uBlock Origin, don’t forget to install Greasemonkey plus the Anti-Adblock Killer script.
I just tried Facebook as a test - I usually have no reason to ever go on the site - and I haven’t seen any ads. As far as I know, neither addons were updated to specifically deal with Facebook.
1 Like
You act as though the current state of things is the norm and must be preserved at all costs. It’s not by a long shot.
WTF makes you think that? I gave a whole list of ways sites can cover their costs and I never even implied that list was exhaustive.
The movie theater isn’t going to download malware and fuck up my machine. Invalid comparison.
31 Likes
Plus, ads can be cumulatively tens of mb in size and when you’re on a 2-3mbps metered connection (as i am) the browsing experience is a damn chore.
14 Likes
They are just images from Facebook Content Farms. You can block them within facebook.
You can also not use Facebook at all. WhatsApp/iMessage has pretty much replaced facebook functionality, which is now just memes and spam.
1 Like
