Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/13/adblock-now-selling-ads.html
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I am very happy to learn about uBlock (and Purify, for iOS) 
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And for control freaks who don’t mind the learning curve, uMatrix is great. (I’ve only used it for Chrome, but it looks like it’s available for Firefox and Opera as well.)
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Ublock Origin is the superior add on though.
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There are actually issues with uBlock. You can read about them at wikipedia. The original developer of uBlock left the project and started uBlock Origin to keep the original ideas and spirit of the project going. He’s also currently working on getting his Edge extension approved.
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Yeah, I mean ublock origin. Fixing.
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I can’t help but think there is a lot of drama left out of the description of events on Wikipedia.
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Ghostery has been good to me! I know they have some quasi-shady thing going on with their own analytics, selling info back to advertisers, but who cares? Web is faster, data is lower, and Target isn’t following me around the web because I bought a vacuum there one time.
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i’m curious about how people such as myself who use feedly or an RSS feed reader impact the blogs we read. For me an aggrigator is just an easier way to digest the blogs i read regularly. Do RSS feeds provide any ad revenue?
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I’m a little confused as to what kind of person adblock is trying to aim for here.
Whilst they may get a small short-term userbase from people who haven’t gotten around to uninstalling the addon yet, who are they aiming for long-term? I fail to see what userbase there is for an addon that changes adverts to adverts…
And echoing many other people here, ublock origin seems to be the best adblocker addon available that i’ve tried. Switched away from adblock a long time ago.
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And this is why I switched to Ublock Origin.
Edit: added a word
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Rob, you seem to have confused Adblock and Adblock Plus, two different projects/companies. The article is about the Adblock Plus software, not Adblock, but the title and your text simply says “Adblock” (the block of quoted text correctly says “Adblock Plus”). You also show the Adblock icon (hand in a stop sign) as opposed to the Adblock Plus icon (the letters “ABP” in a stop sign). You might want to fix this.
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Slightly O/T, I note that my favoured Podcast app (Overcast) has gone to an ad-supported system over the weekend.
Bit disappointed. There is a “Premium” monthly subscription to make them go away, but I don’t really understand why it would require an ongoing payment. I did pay some money for it, but I don’t like ongoing payments. For software like this I think a once-only payment makes sense, not an ongoing subscription. It’d feel odd to pay more for the software than the podcasts I listen to on it, too (which probably means I should throw more money at the podcast makers…)
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In theory, the idea was supposed to be that consumers are fed up with “bad” ads (popups, flash, sounds, redirects, etc etc), but still want to support the web sites they visit.
For that kind of person, the options are either
- Pay the websites directly
- Trust that the website will only allow good ads, and selectively unblock
- Force the website to only allow good ads
I’m actually totally in favor of #3, since I already do use #2, but would like it to be more automatic and safer. That’s why I was originally in favor of the idea of a good advertiser whitelist.
Of course, in reality, the thing is going to have to make money for ABP, which means they are no longer a neutral arbiter, and I no longer trust them. Oh well, maybe someone else will solve this problem in a real, open manner.
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As Cory says, every pirate dreams of being an admiral.
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There is a fourth kind of person vis a vis adds on webpages…
This person disallows all scripts and all cookies all the time, and has a firewall that blocks outgoing traffic that he didn’t initiate.
His webpages load lightning fast (if they load at all…) but much of the web is “broken” for him.
Every time he navigates to a web page that is not on his personal whitelist, he has to spend several minutes examining the scripts that want to run, and the outbound traffic that wants through his firewall, and then try to guess which are essential to the function he wants from that web page.
Full disclosure: I know exactly such a person, and yes, I do sometimes wonder what value he perceives from the $50ish/month he pays to his ISP.
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I’ve corrected the error. Thank you!
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Monetize. Ben Williams used the word monetize. Et tu, ABP?
I wonder how the people who’ve been volunteering to maintain the blocklists feel about this.
I don’t have to guess how users feel. I’ll be looking at uBlock Origin now.
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I’m OK with most ads (excepting those that pretend to be content and those that block the page and requires interaction). But I’m concerned with privacy/cookies/tracking and especially malicious ads that serve malware.
I’d be OK with a service that charges me a fee and distributes money to site partners to prevent ads. I’d be OK with a similar service that replaces ads with whitelisted ads that are known safe. These ads would be necessarily slower to refresh due to the vetting process, and probably more expensive.
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