Adblock Plus 2.2 Released... With a New Feature

New typo correction feature helps avoid landing on malicious web pages (not enabled by default) - see https://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adblock-plus.

In other news, https://adblockplus.org is down.
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/adblockplus.org

 

Cheers for the info.

 

Changelog: https://adblockplus.org/en/changelog-2.2

 

The site is working intermittently now vs. being down and out as it was last night.

 

I have noticed that after applying the update in SeaMonkey (portable & normal install) the ABP icon disappears from the status bar & is not in 'Customisations'. Only a restart of the browser brings the icon back.

 

Autoupdated

 

I'll definitely enable this for support.

 

Yes, I hope that ABP can do well with this, it seems like a clever way to support them. Advertising is important, but there are security issues with flash & some ads can really be intrusive & annoying. Which is why I use ABP.

 

Great, more middle men trying to weasel their way into the middle of online transactions so they can take a slice. Which will of course drive prices up one way or another. If not for the individual via concurrent and/or future dynamic pricing adjustments to the items they shop for, then certainly for people in general. Possibly both.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If it is legitimate for one software developer to do this than it is legitimate for all software developers to do this regardless of whether or not the software product has a purchase price. Arguably, so to by extension would be ISPs taking a slice of online purchases, telcos taking a slice of over the phone purchases, etc.

Please, do everyone in the world a favor and *don't* support such forms of compensation. Send the developer a donation if that makes you feel better.

 

I don't understand your complaint. The way this works leaves you completely out of the equation if I understand it correctly. If you buy something at a major retailer online, they forward a little income to the developer, not you. Prices jump up because of economic reasons, not something like this, especially considering I would be comfortable saying the amount the developer will get from each transaction will be rather pathetic. I find it far, far better than the normal methods of money-making via bundled junk and such. The guy wants to profit a little from his work and wants to do it in the least invasive way he can think up. I see nothing at all wrong with that. By the way, donations are generally an unreliable way to stay afloat.

 

It's always easy to say "take donations" when it isn't your project.

 

Here, I updated ADB+ to version 2.2 yesterday, and closed the browser. Today I read this thread, and so I opened the browser with ADB+ to find the check-box about this new feature. I found it and it wasn't marked, meaning this new feature defaulted to "disabled" here. Great!

If it defaulted to "enabled", I would still not switch to Adblock Edge - mainly because its developer isn't keeping up with ADB+ updates as fast as desired. But I would complain and rant until Palant answered. At least an alert (like those of NoScript's updates) is necessary if features like this start defaulting to "enabled". lol

 

I just read Palant's blog. He implemented it in a way that address my potential concerns:

https://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adblock-plus

 

It is we, the consumers, that pay the retailer's expenses including any/all affiliate cuts. That which creates upward pressure on those expenses creates upward pressure on the prices we must pay. We don't know how much upward pressure there will be because we don't know what the future holds. We just recently saw the Canonical clowns pull the Home Lens affiliate search & stuff. Shortly after that I saw one or two industry articles mentioning that example and discussing such opportunities for generating revenue. Now we have this. I think it reasonable to assume that if consumers tolerate such things, particularly if they actively use/support them, there will definitely be additional examples of it in the future. Seeing as how the affiliate fees could range from small fixed fees to significant percentages of significant transaction amounts, I don't think it wise to assume that the implications for prices would be dismissible.

I also think it generally risky to allow revenue generating schemes to be built into the software running on our platforms. Simply put, once the software developer adopts the mentality that it is OK to modify the software to behave in ways which generates income for them, they become less trustworthy and more likely to cross additional lines. Mr. Maone's past transgressions for example. Furthermore, I think those who are privacy conscious should be extra concerned about such revenue generating mechanisms for at least two reasons. One, even if the design isn't inherently bad for privacy like Canonical's Home Lens mod, it is likely to make the developer want to add user activity tracking/reporting for purposes of checking their affiliate income. Firefox, Firefox Health Report, and search engine usage reporting for example. Two, given that the destination is a merchant which will have or receive personal information for the user, there is the potential for that personal information (and possibly purchase related information) to be fed back to the monetization-inclined developer. I don't know that either one of those concerns would apply to this Adblock Plus feature. I'm leaning towards assuming they don't. However, those are reasonable possibilities in general.

If you want to use/support it and encourage other software developers to insert themselves into transactions as fee gathering affiliates, then by all means do so. Just make sure that is the basis on which you are making your decision.

 

I still cannot access it, at all. I keep getting Error 118 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT): The operation timed out..

 

Adblock Plus 2.2 Released.

No problems with the Adblock Plus site.

 

I've noticed the same thing. It's still there and operational, just invisible.

 

It does come back, well it did for me, after restarting the browser, both in 'Customisations' & the status bar. Must be a gremlin I suppose.

 

Exactly. When the company behind Adblock Plus starts promising us 'Better Advertisements' (sic) it is perfectly reasonable to assume that money, not privacy, has become its main driving force.

http://eyeo.com/#Mission

See also

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=333283

 

God forbid the fellow wants to see a little return on his investment of time into keeping the project running, right? Come up with your own version, work on it week after week, keep a forum going, answer questions and solve problems if you're adamant about not making a nickel off your work. I'm sorry that sounds harsh, but some of you are grossly over-thinking things and have way too high expectations.

 

Or perhaps yours are too low?

 

Do you really think you have the right to have others serving you for free? This is not "morally acceptable" IMO.

Stop trying to turn software devs into slaves of your wishes and flawed idealisms.

 

There's a donation link: -https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

15,062,018 users have downloaded it so far. I suppose no one is contributing to it, then?

I used ABP very shortly, because it actually makes my browsing experience slower (ironically) with Chromium. It also did with Firefox (Nightly builds). I do check things out once in a while, when a new version comes out. I just use Chromium's built-on --host-rules switch. But, if I were happy with it, then I'd donate those $5.00.

I wonder if those who are in favor of the new ways of getting revenue, ever donated? I also wonder how many of you would actually pay for it, should the guy opt to make it a paid for extension? Mostly likely, most of those who are criticizing those who don't like the new approaches, would be then praying for a free fork to come out... or actually thank for other forks to exist.

 

The issue is not whether or not developers should be reimbursed for their software - we have a free market and everyone is free to charge, to pay or to do neither. It is the deception that comes with it in this particular case. Mr Palant wants us to believe that

As if thousands of users would say 'Hey, Vladimir, you write extensions, right? I'm so messed up that I can't even type a URL straight. Can't you write one that will fix that for me?'

Adblock Plus started out as an excellent extension - it still is. What's new is the deceptive spin around it, 'features' nobody asked for and the inappropriate claim to deciding unilaterally what constitutes 'acceptable' advertising.

This is the moment when questions are being asked about Mr Palant's integrity. It is also the moment that Adblock Edge came out of nowhere and has become hugely popular. And indeed the time has come to look at, or develop, alternatives.