German blogger calls Adblock Plus 'a mafia-like advertising network'

Another unbiased, original and non-hypocritical opinion from another blogger who makes no money from advertisers on a website that is unsupported by advertising?

Thanks for trying to save the world from AdBlock Plus.

 

admuncher for the win

 

http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-zahltag-30-mio-von-amazon-ebay-google-und-yahoo/

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtscha...r-an-adblock-plus-gezahlt-haben-12778382.html

http://www.horizont.at/home/detail/google-25-mio-dollar-fuer-adblock-plus.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.de/2014/01/31/adblock-plus-werbeblockern_n_4694550.html

 

From a quick internet search:

http://lifehacker.com/5893411/adblock-plus-lets-you-allow-non intrusive-advertising

http://www.techspot.com/news/46638-adblock-plus-to-allow-non-intrusive-ads-by-default.html

http://siliconfilter.com/adblock-plus-will-soon-block-fewer-ads-by-default-allow-non-intrusive-ads/

I believe the "most users" are just the shrill users who have some kind of irrational reaction to a product giving them choice, as the Techspot article says. If you check the polls, AdBlock Plus is still by far the dominant ad blocker.

No one can show that AdBlock is doing anything illegal, as at least one article admitted, or even unethical, despite all the shrill charges against them. They just seem to be guilty of giving the both users and advertisers an OPTION. Not only that, they're making a profit from their efforts. GASP! I'm not sure why this angers some people so much that they make it their life's goal to run around screaming against AdBlock, and searching for articles to back up their shrill claims, even if they're written by those who market in obtrusive ads that they claim not to support. But there will always be the conspiracy theorists who operate on paranoia and personal vendettas rather than facts, and fancy themselves as some kind of super heroes who are somehow saving the world.

 

BTW, how much money do the above websites make? I'm especially interested in Horizont, the marketing and advertising website you seem to love, are they against profits?

 

Sadly, it usually pays to sell out. Especially when what you are selling is something that doesn't actually belong to you, if you know what I mean.

At the very least, remember to check systems and make sure that nasty "Filter Preferences -> Allow some non-intrusive advertising" feature is disabled and still keep an eye on network traffic.

 

Thanks for the advice, but if I choose to allow some advertising and support the sites I visit I will.

I'll follow your advice if AdBlock Plus proves to be as evil as you want to make it out to be, but so far I don't see the evidence behind the shrill claims against it.

 

That's the way things work.. Read Peter Dyson's book if you can find it.. When he was thinking of introducing his bagless vacuum into the USA he found out just how criminal this country, and it's corporatism are. At first they tried to buy him out, saying if they did - they would destroy the product. (they made a LOT of money on bags) Next they tried suing him out of business. When that failed, they tried threatening him, and 'strange' things happened to his home/family. So instead of having Dyson's in 1989, we were stuck with garbage Hoover and Eureka's until 2001. Thanks to your corporate overlords.

Only principled people of good moral fabric don't sell out.. Dr. Bronner, Dyson, Roshal Brothers - WinRAR (and Phil Katz before that), BillP, Admuncher, etc. When I find a company/person that refuses to sell out - I give them money - as much money as I can. If everyone did, we'd send a message to these corporate cartels..

As for Ads.. I block them - all of them, and will never click on one. They are bothersome, and intrusive. Some sites have over 100+ tracker/ads per page. This is out of control, and has to stop. I will never support a company that spams advertisements in such ridiculous ways. But I will gladly support folks who turn away from these advertising snakes.

 

Actually, I think it would be more sensible to use something else if you don't trust ADP. There are ADP knockoffs that some seem to prefer just because it doesn't give you an option. Most people seem to think AdMuncher is better than ADP or the knockoffs. I'll stick with ADP at least for now because I prefer the advertisers to pay for my ad blocker.

But again, thanks for the advice.

 

In the light of the most recent revelations by Sascha Pallenberg, Eyeo GmbH has a few questions to answer: How much money did the company make in 2013 with its selective blackmailing/whitelisting practices?

Why have they not published any financial data in the last three years? And why, as a community-driven, open source project (sic), are they being secretive about all relevant aspects of their business model, including their reported deals with Amazon, Ebay and Google?

Dubious whitelisting practices and fake communities aside, if Adblock Plus are lining their pockets with venture capital and corporate money while posing as an open source community, I think their users have a right to know what is going on.

 

Their users have a right to use something else. As I believe others have pointed out, no one is forcing anyone to use ABP.

Has Sascha Pallenberg, or any of the other people trying to save us from the evils of ADP, produced their financial data? If so, where is it? Don't we have a right to know? Again, what laws are they breaking, and where is the evidence against them. I've already asked for the financial data of Horizont.

Pinga, please disclose what business you're in, and let's see your financial data, because I'm pretty suspicious about what your interest in ADP and what they're doing is, it seems to be more than casual.

 

I guess the only point of all this is just to say that, like a vacuum, ADP sucks?

 

It isn't just Horizont that has picked up the story. In fact, it's all over the German language media today:

http://business.chip.de/news/AdBlock-Plus-Was-zahlt-Google-fuer-die-Whitelist_66876558.html

http://onlinemarketing.de/news/google-25-millionen-dollar-adblock-plus-werbung

http://www.golem.de/news/adsense-go...io-us-dollar-an-adblock-plus-1401-104293.html

http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/digital/a...llenberg-till-faida-tim-schumacher-1.18232434

http://www.taz.de/Google-und-Werbeblocker-Adblock-Plus/!132081/

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/Adblock_P...n_Dollars-Durchgewunkene_Werbung-8439885.html

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...en-an-Adblock-Plus-gezahlt-haben-2103567.html

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/neue-freikauf-vorwuerfe-gegen-adblock-plus-a-950377.html

 

OH NOOOOOO!!!! It's all over the German media!!!!! (Note all the names like "onlinemarketing", "business". Undoubtedly unbiased sources, just like Horizont.)

You can't answer the questions, can you? Another question; how does the German media make it's money?

 

If you mean by the questions your questions, then no. Should you require further information on the media quoted here, feel free to do your own research. If on the other hand you mean the original questions as outlined in post #235:

then clearly the only ones who can answer these questions are the Eyeo GmbH management. They do have some explaining to do.

https://twitter.com/search?q=adblockgate

 

Yet another question; do any of these marketing and ad supported sources do any of their own investigation, or report anything original, or do they just repeat the same old unsubstantiated charges?

In case you don't know, it is very common for any story, true, false, or in-between to be found many places on the web. The more something is repeated doesn't make it accurate and unbiased.

 

So everybody should just be answerable to you, and you should be answerable to no one. Why don't you take it up with Eyeo GmbH, as they just owe you so much? You're not accomplishing much here.

 

Pretty much.. ABP has sold out, that much we seem to know.

Admuncher is my choice, in the future when it is less buggy - maybe Adguard.. But ABP has rarely, if ever been the one I choose, and I am glad for that now.

 

We're all entitled to our opinion, regardless of what facts you may "seem" to know, and what your perception of those seeming facts are.

 

To kind of summarize this bloated thread; what we "seem" to know is that ABP added an option that harms no one; and helps websites, advertisers, and even the users, and are making a profit for doing so.

What would turn me against it is some kind of evidence that ABP isn't following their own whitelisting policies and are favoring some companies over others, or are purposely allowing malware to be unfiltered. But I haven't seen evidence of that yet, despite some people complaining that they whitelist some companies they don't like. The easy solution is to block all ads, or at least block the ads you don't like. I'm not sure why the people here, who I would assume to be knowledgeable, are so against being given the choice.

The BIG problem seems to be that they are making a profit, therefore they have "sold out". I have to wonder if those making the charges have any income, or do they not want to sell out to an employer, or to customers, or anyone? I haven't paid anything to ABP, I admire those who claim to support the free products and websites they use, but I'd just as soon have the advertisers pay for my ad blocker. Seems pretty fitting to me. Unfortunately there are too many people who simply don't have the money, or inclination, to financially support everything on the internet they use, and the same people want to block all ads and get everything for free at the same time.

So the bottom line for me is if you can substantiate anything unethical or illegal about ABP then I'll look for something else. In the meantime, I'm not falling for the same hyperbole repeated over and over and over again. If you have a problem with ABP getting advertising money, by all means buy AdMuncher or something. If you think ABP is doing something illegal, take it up with them and law enforcement, and don't use it. If they really sell out to the point it becomes ineffective or other products are much better, people will quit using it. Some already have, and that's fine.

 

Since when has open source dictate that no corporate money must be involved? ********. Commercialization is allowed. Read up on the proper definition. Clue: Look at GNU and Open Source Initiative definitions.

*Look at Mozilla, Canonical and RedHat. Heck, even Google - Chromium and Android. These are companies that have contributed to open source more than people that just keep whining. The so-called evil money they make....part of it goes into hiring developers and making sure the
projects stay alive. Sustainability.

Fake communities? Oh please. We have people that takes care of the adblocking subscription lists. We have users that report false positives/negatives. These people are not related to EyeO. So there is a REAL community. Do not insult the hard work and contribution. Btw, most so-called lovely communities consist of people who take thins for granted. Users who want things free with no regards to anything else other than their own needs. Be damned with developers and bandwidth costs. So there yougo.

EyeO sold out? Another piece of FUD. The criteria
are clearly listed and it's pretty obvious why they ask money from the big guns like Google. It's called exchange, not extortion. Of course, people who despise anything 'corporate', 'commercialization' or remotely $$$-making would fail to understand basic economics and declare the world is evil. Splendid.

Has anyone whom complained actually bothered to try and see what 'allow those non-intrusive ads' allow? Try it and doba Google search. Browse the web. Are the ads allowed 'annoying'?

There are legitimate reasons to block ads. There are legitimate reasons to uncheck that option. Just don't shoot everyone else that thinks advertising has an economic value/role. Look at Distrowatch and Linux Mint. Even Mozilla partners up with Google to set it as main search engine. Softpedia needs the advertising revenue to offset costs for hosting downloads. Plenty of legitimate needs. Real-world we live in

 

Lets post a link to the list:

https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt

and encourage people to review that *before* running with the "feature" enabled (the default). Might as well include a link to the page that describes what Eyeo/ABP personnel and business partners consider to be "acceptable ads":

https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

So we discourage the "I don't block ads simply because some are visually annoying" crowd from exposing themselves to something they will likely decide they don't want to expose themselves to. As for those that do want such exposures... have at it!

 

@TheWindBringeth

I know about those. If you read my earlier posts on this thread, I have linked readers to it and a few other links.

I don't disagree with users unchecking the option. I do not oppose reviewing the Acceptable Ads (to see if it fits the criteria...because once you go beyond that it becomes muddled). It's obvious that the criteria focuses on ads being not visually annoying. It's obvious that it allows certain Google, DoubleClick ads etc. If one takes a strong view on privacy, then yes...one should uncheck that option and perhaps subscribe to EasyPrivacy.

What I disagree with is people discrediting the entire whole feature as 'selling out' or 'extortion', calling out EyeO as 'mafia' based on what the German media says. I also disagree with those that basically shows no or little consideration to those whom employ advertising as a tool for earning revenue.

 

Basically, there are two issues about ABP:

1. A technical issue: ABP makers choose to select the "acceptable ads" option by default. While for me and many others this is a non-issue because the first thing I do is to uncheck it, for a good majority of users it might be. People generally use the default settings; they install ABP in order to block ads, but they are not aware that a default setting gets in the way of achieving this objective.
2. A moral issue that derives from the first issue because ABP is tricking users that it will help them block ads and then it allows ads based on some agreements with the advertisers.

Again, the technical part is not a problem for me (that is the reason I keep using ABP), but the second one is.

@safeguy: Those sites using advertising online for earning money are selling me (along with my private data, browsing habits, etc.) to Google (and other advertising firms) in order to get themselves money. That means that they show no consideration for me and my private life either; I cannot stop them to do it (it is their choice), but I can reduce their income as much as I can, and I also deprive Google from getting their precious data in the process. For me, this is a win-win situation.

 

http://www.wuv.de/digital/vermarkter_klagen_gegen_adblock_plus

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...-offenbar-Adblock-Plus-verklagen-2104273.html