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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

"In any case since the sites are still able to use curated self hosted ads (ie not JavaScript redirects to externally hosted providers) they are able to sell static ad space to make money even with adblockers enabled."

Ad blockers don't just block external ads, they use CSS rules to block internal ads as well. So the only way to avoid ad blockers is to make advertisement completely indistinguishable from content.

Imagine if Google did that, if they made sponsored results competent indistinguishable from organic results. The uproar would be loud.

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In what ways do ad blockers block internally served ads? I'm perfectly happy with static ads served from the same site as the content. If seems adblockers should have an option to block only the "bad" ads, I.e anything referencing one of a list of known ad nets.

Go to the reddit homepage. Look at the very top link (that's highlighed with an outline). That's an ad, but it's hosted by reddit and contains no scripts or iframes, in fact doesn't even contain offsite images. Its div has the CSS class promotedlink. If you look in the default list used by Adblock Plus https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt you will see that it blocks this because it contains the line

    reddit.com##.promotedlink

But Adblock Plus actually contains a second list of "Non-intrusive advertising" that actually allows ads on reddit. Many people are very angry about this list because many companies pay to get their ads put on it and allowed.

Using an adblocker that takes money to whitelist seems like a bad idea.

In any case: I'll make sure that my ad blocker allows non intrusive ads. That said, "non intrusive" must not be deceptive either. It should be clear that it is an advert.

Yea it was after Adblock Plus was sold to an unknown 3rd party who refused to reveal themselves, obviously after the anger everyone switched over to uBlock Origin including me.

> because many companies pay to get their ads put on it and allowed

Is this 100% verified, or just speculation? AB+ has always stated that they whitelist suitable ads, not ones that are paid. In my experience, this is true; only static text and image ads ever get through, and it's pretty rare. I think this is desirable as it incentivises the use of better ads.

Small companies get on the list for free. Big companies have to pay. But they all get vetted by their "non-intrusive" guidelines.

https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization

This thread and the Reddit thread amaze me with the level of ignorance, but complete confidence in that ignorance, displayed in relation to how ads and ad blockers work.

Bryanlarson is correct. The adblock plus extension also will block any image file with "advertisement" in the filename for example.

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