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

The sheer volume, intensity, and unaccepting nature of their fear and hatred is nothing short of hysteria. If you think my post was narrow, then you should read all the ones you're defending before it.

 

Perhaps this is semantics.

That implies that in order to move from ABP to ABE you must be hysterical, doesn't it?

However, perhaps I've taken it out of context? I thought your second sentence was referring to people in general. Now after your response I'm pretty sure you were talking specifically about the "unverified (and disproven) claims" that you were referring to in your first sentence.

If so then I misunderstood you.

 

I think that most of the times, it is about choice or about sending a message, and not about fear or hate. If you are using a product and it doesn't do what you want it to do, then you might be more inclined to change it, rather than tweaking it to suit your needs (yes, even if the tweaking means to click on a check-box). There is also the trust issue: I might want to check from time to time on a piece a software that I don't fully trust, but maybe I have too much free time on my hands; a perfectly normal attitude would be to switch to another software that I trust and forget about the issue completely.

 

Regardless of any claims, false or otherwise, there's nothing fearful, hysterical, or hateful about switching from ABP to something else because it has a feature that doesn't sit well with you.

 

Well, there's nothing fearful, hysterical, or hateful about disabling a feature that doesn't sit well with you with just one mouseclick, either.

It's not objectionable to move to something else but the question is: What happens if a large part of the ABP users does that?

A short trip through history: I remember when the old Adblock extension came out (developped by rue). It was slow, had a very simple filter syntax and didn't support filter list. And it didn't block content but rather hid it. Later came Adblock Plus, developped by mcm, which brought several improvements. But the big improvements came not before Wladimir Palant took over development in 2006: He optimized the code considerably and created a well-working infrastructure for the filter lists. Extensive research done by him revealed that the filters based on regex used until then actually slowed down your browsing. As a consequence he introduced many new elements for the filter syntax which were the precondition for re-writing the filter lists in order to make them more powerful, speedy and accurate. And that's why other adblockers (like Adblock for Chrome) are using exactly the same filter lists and exactly the same filter syntax - because there's nothing better right now.

I'm telling this just as a reminder that Wladimir was the driving force in the past years who has made adblockers as powerful as they are today. This doesn't mean that his historical merits will grant him absolution till eternity.

But what will happen if a massive exodus from ABP will cause Wladimir to stop his work out of frustration? Will someone else take on his role as a driving force? Will someone else introduce new technologies to adblockers to make them even better in the same way as Wladimir has done? Will the maintainers of the filter lists still be motivated to keep up their work in the same quality if the brace called ABP is no longer there?

I have no definitive answers. It could be that the further development would wane - to our disadvantage.

 

There was a time when a good adblocker was a tool that blocked ads. Now, the advertising industry is trying very hard to convince both consumers and regulators that a good adblocker is one that displays ads, or none at all.

We are currently seeing an industry-wide trend away from straightforward privacy and control (the kind that the original Adblock Plus used to offer) towards so-called consumer choice (privacy as a commodity, lots of ads).

The narrative is subtly being reversed. Here are two recent examples from our friends from Ghostery and the Association of National Advertisers:

On internet privacy:

On browsers building privacy protections into their software:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/turning-off-tracking-on-the-internet.html#

 

I would agree that building privacy protections into software is a "We'll decide for you" approach. The flip side of that is that if it doesn't happen, then ad networks get free reign over users. Most browser protections are weak as it is, and advertisers are finding ways around them. The issue with vendors like ABP is that profits and consumer protections are conflicting with each other. It's always going to be that way too. Donations can never be relied upon, and come on, these devs and their staff have to eat and provide for themselves and their families. It's nowhere near fair to say "screw what everyone else needs, I just want it my way". You do that long enough and you won't have an ABP nor others like it.

There has to be some compromise, but, just as it was with Do Not Track flags, the majority of the advertising industry wants it their way and their way alone. They aren't happy simply having their ads seen, they demand tracking, they demand the most annoying forms of advertising, and there just is no talking to them. On the other side, too many users want no ads at all, which won't work either. One of these days someone is going to have back off a bit.

 

I don't know of even ONE person Ever who has bought Anything from online Ads !

 

I've known many. Crazy as it may seem, not every ad is insidious and useless, and not every ad firm out there believes the same way as the overall ad industry does. Obviously you have to be mindful and do your homework, but that applies to everything online. I myself have seen an ad, headed over to the vendor and bought stuff at great prices. Like I said, you just have to watch what you're doing. Cheap as dirt iPhone ad from some vendor you've never heard of? Probably best to stay away from that ad. TigerDirect ad shows up offering a special deal on something? Check it out if you wish (it's good to hover over said ads to see what address pops up before you do).

Ads aren't useless or evil, it's the methods and companies behind them that make the difference.

 

+1*2

Some folks seem to confuse their (godgiven) right to privacy with a (surely not godgiven) right to free programs enabling this privacy.
As if there should be some underclass of not-paid coders who shouldn't get funny ideas about turning the outcome of their slave labour into the devil's spawn by requiring 'a click'.
Sure one can argue about the prominence of Google ads when enabling the 'mini-ad demon' function and it's necessary to understand the relation of ABP and Google but everyone is free not to use it, either the option or the addon itself.
And as far as privacy is concerned, I use ABP not to ensure privacy, only to avoid advertisement irritation. Sites I appreciate get whitelisted, others go dark. Works well.

 

Not at all, as long as you're not using that reasoning as something that should be universally adopted by all parties and attempting to dismiss those that don't adopt it.

That of course goes both ways.

No one knows. It doesn't look to me at this point in time that this issue is enough to generate a mass exodus. That is unless more details emerge that show something a little more unethical in nature, details with some corroboration.

I don't think fear of this happening, or some other reason, should drive us to dismiss or try to disparage others who don't like the idea in the meantime, though. Not that I'm accusing you of this.

 

If you do a Google News search on what was published in the Geman media over the last few weeks, you'll find plenty of corroboration. Whistleblower Sascha Pallenberg:

http://www.horizont.at/home/detail/blogger-beharrt-auf-anschuldigungen.html

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netz...g-google-zahlte-an-adblock-plus-a-909659.html

http://newsticker.sueddeutsche.de/list/id/1468568

Witness accounts are starting to surface:

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/Hat_Ihnen_Adblock_Plus_ein_Angebot_gemacht_-Aufruf-8007435.html

The debate continues and there will most likely be more revelations in the near future. As always, feel free to do your own research

 

That's basically what I was reading months ago, except then the accusations were from anonymous sources. Now we are getting names involved.

And more revelations will need to turn up. We have accusations with some initial evidence and denial of those accusations, in a nutshell, from what I've gathered. The translations aren't always the best.

All I can say is keep us informed.

 

Ah - I see! It's the fault of Palant/Faida/Eyeo that 49,972,600 of their users never post in their forum. Yes - it's definitely an inexcusable negligence that they didn't add a binding commitment that every ABP user must participate, say, at least once a week

What That may be true for the "non-intrusive ads proposal" sub-forum but surely not for the other sub-forums like "Filters for Adblock Plus". Utter nonsense.

Bottom line: If those ridiculous allegations by Pallenberg are representative for the quality of the other ones, one cannot take them serious.

BTW: The Non-intrusive ads list is maintained by Eyeo. The other filterlists like Easylist are maintained by people like monzt and fanboy. As long as those guys are not corruptible (and no one has shown any evidence that they are) I don't see any reason why this thread has grown that long.

 

Well, I've removed Adblock Plus from Firefox and installed Adblock Edge.

With the extension about:addons-memory I checked the usage of MB in Firefox and Pale Moon browsers.

Fx with Adblock Edge: 15.43 MB
Pale Moon with Adblock Plus: 29.74 MB

I do have the same 3 subscriptions in above browsers. So I have no idea why the discrepancy.

 

You're comparing two different browsers, that would be a start.

 

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

Companies are given the choice. You -the user, are given the choice.

Let's look at this way - ABP is the most popular browser add-on.

Webmasters already acknowledge this and more are increasingly asking their visitors to whitelist them. Now, question is - how many does it? You may but can you say the same for the million others out there?

If ABP let their user-base increase without changing how the add-on works,
webmasters are going to be hurt even further. Well, if you're gonna say "that's not my problem" - well I have nothing else for you. Don't read further, you're just going to disagree with me and there's nothing I say that will convince you.

As for the rest who are still reading, unless you want the web to progressively change into a pay-wall, you've got to admit this fact (and suck up your ego if you are 1 of those who belong to the "that's not my problem" and disregard my warning earlier on)

Offering the larger properties the option to be included in the white list (which has criteria mind you) is fair game. It's a win-win-win situation (and like any other win-win-win situation, there is no doubt a loss, just that your loss is needed for all the other parties to gain by that deal. Basic rule of any business.)

How's is it a win-win-win, you ask?

1. Advertisers/web masters gains more revenue from the ads.
Compared this to letting visitors run ABP without white-listing their sites.

2. EyeO/ABP gets its funding and work can be done by developer full-time. Compared this to just hoping for donations and risk the project dying due to lack of funds.

3. Users get to enjoy "free" content and block "annoying ads" while still supporting the web model without having to do all the manual work of white-listing sites (which might include intrusive ads). Compare this to forcing web owners getting fed-up of adblockers and decide that it's time to use pay-wall system.

Now, despite all this, if you still think what EyeO is doing is 'mafia-like' - then I've got 1 thing to say - all of us are "mafias" because all of us have an agenda. Each and every single one of us here.

If anything, the entire whole advertising industry, especially the ones calling/singling out EyeO for this deserves that title even more. These guys have an agenda by calling it as such. That is to kill the trust in EyeO and ABP. If that happens and there's no decent alternative, you know what happens (and oh don't give me that "ABE is the rescuer" ****)

If anything, we the adblocker users, especially the ones getting all the "free" content and think we deserve to enjoy some sort of special rights at the cost of others (adblock dev working for free, webmasters/authors that write content, those others that do not run adblockers - thank goodness we still have some of them) - we all deserve this title even more. We claim our rights over everything and push the blame over to the other 2 parties. We're so convinced in our own innocence, we can't possibly see our fault. That's right - we are angels.

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@those criticizing ABP; AND going all the way out for ABE

Good job trying to diminish EyeO and ABP reputation so far.

Now, let's see who exactly ABE developer is:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/user/adstomper/

Great. His identity is a pseudonym. That's a good start. It instills trustworthiness in your user-base.

Next, his records:

He created 2 add-ons which were forked from ABP. 1 was previously named AdBlock Lite and then discontinued in favor of a new one named AdBlock Edge.

Did I mention that the modifications made are mostly removing certain lines of code, bump the version no, change the name and add a link to the homepage? Wow...impressive.

Don't believe me? Look at the source code for the latest version (as of time of writing this - V2.04)

Now let's look at the homepage of the add-on shall we?
https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/

Proceed to the issues and see the status and response:
https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/issues?status=new&status=open

Wow! Look at the status. Look at how many that are still unassigned. Look at how many that received response by the author so far. Damn....that's 1 hell heck of a good support

Finally, let's have a look at the Roadmap. I'm pretty sure there's something:
https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/wiki/Roadmap

Splendid!

Now, by all means call upon the community and hail the goddess of chaos and confusion!

P.S. Simply returning the favor. I really didn't want to critize ABE or it's developer because I think what adstomper does is fair. He is merely giving an alternative option. It's just that some of his user-base comments make me want to puke.

 

Since Pinga already shared with us the allegations in German media, inc. the ones made by Sascha Pallenberg, I thought it's only fair if we get the other side of the story (more so since we're invited to do research)

Here's what the ABP team has to say (take note that they are written in German so use a translation service if need be):

Our thoughts on the unity of German newspapers against ad blockers

The "secret" details of Adblock Plus

# Pallengate: Why Sascha Pallenberg consciously lie

As usual, the choice is yours. Tick or un-tick the controversial feature; use an alternative if it fits your needs, but please don't spread misinformation.

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Since we have already have a few posts that are against Acceptable Ads, I think it befits this thread to have are a few links to balance the argument:

Acceptable Ads Are Good For Everyone

Adblock Plus to Allow “Acceptable Ads” By Default, And That’s Not Terrible

Please Whitelist MakeUseOf In Adblock: A Plea From a Former Adblock Filter Developer

Once again, the choice is yours.

 

Thanks. Never crossed my mind because Pale Moon is almost a clone of Fx.

 

The forums I frequent have AdblockPlus/Adblock Edge disabled by me if their adverts aren't too overwhelming. Many other websites don't get that privilege. I'm a retiree in my seventies and those flashing ads etc. etc. disturb me way too much by getting on my nerves. Ten years ago virtually all ads were fine by me.

 

...That you just created

To most, it is clear that Adblock Edge is what it says on the tin:

You're making a few good points though. Such a vital piece of gatekeeper infrastructure should not be the project of one person or organisation. Hence my call for a truly community-based project

 

Guess what, I'd really love to see it. And I'd like to see how many users will accept to pay the "big players" if they start asking for money for a service that was previously free. But that is not going to happen, no matter how many ad blockers exist, because the big players I'm talking about (i.e. Google, Facebook, etc) are advertising companies.

 

Do you run an adblocker safeguy?

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/goog...by-paying-adblock-plus-to-show-its-ads-2013-8

 

ABP users are going to eventually lose trust in it if companies keep paying to avoid being blocked. The Google affair especially smells considering not that long ago they told ABP and others like it to go screw themselves..then come back with a handful of cash to get past being blocked. But has Google ever let ABP back in its store? Why, no. ABP should have made that demand before they ever took the cash. It's also incredibly weird that they aren't allowed back into GooglePlay, but they're welcome with open arms in the Web Store. I think that is my biggest reason for using alternatives, the company only cares about the cash now by doing business that way.