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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

Some interesting facts from the article

> As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet.

> About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the largest 10 percent make payments to Adblock Plus for the white-listing.

> While Adblock Plus users can easily turn off even those "acceptable ads," about 75 percent accept the default settings and allow the ads. Eyeo determines what is an "acceptable ad." It bars all moving images and many types of still images, allowing mostly for just static text ads.

I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that.

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I prefer something like ublock as well, but I wouldn't call what AB+ is doing a morally ambiguous question. I think this is actually pretty straight forward all around. I can install or uninstall software on my computer. Websites can serve ads. Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad blocker installed. AB+ can whitelist sites. A website can or can not pay AB+ to be whitelisted.

What you described isn't complex logic, it makes sense, but that's not where the moral ambiguity enters. Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals to slip through as long as they pay on the side... that's the moral issue.

Granting access for paying members simply means ABP has become a gatekeeper with its own power and it is now offering access at a price, unethically

as long as the ad lists are not kept private, but public/open and free, you as a consumer can always choose to use a different piece of adblocking software. This should create pressure where users decide what they would like their adblocking software to do (by voting with their feet).

> Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals to slip through as long as they pay on the side... that's the moral issue.

Only if ABP states that they block ALL ads, full stop. But their website doesn't say that, it says "Surf the web without annoying ads!" which wouldn't exclude non-annoying ads.

Maybe that's not how the extension/service was initially introduced but at this point they're not lying to new users. The website even explicitly calls out that they do let some non-intrusive ads through. https://adblockplus.org/

If they didn't have the qualification language front and center on their site but rather had a bunch of asterisks to tiny, tiny footnotes hidden on a different page I might lean more towards agreeing with your assertion. But this information isn't hidden, it's readily available.

I'd like to comment on the non-annoying part.

I use uBlock (and previously, ADP) because of the fact that parts of the Internet will give you ADHD, no matter if you started with it or not.

Parts of the Internet are quite literally unusable without ad blocks. This should be a much larger discussion than it is, given how shitty sites don't get lots of views, ergo, who's actually viewing the ads to begin with?

Ads apparently work. Either by impression (you notice the ad, and the brand gains a tiny bit of reputation in your unconscious mind) or by directly engaging you (“40% off on 'item'! That's actually a pretty good deal!”).

Large corporations wouldn't advertise online if they didn't have metrics that back up that claim. If advertising online in November meant a significant rise in sales, then apparently buying the ads worked. People are viewing them.

This doesn't mean that ads work equally well with every viewer, and it certainly does not imply that ads are beneficial to the viewer, but it does mean that ads do generate income.

I agree that ads can be part of a problem for a lot of folk, and I recommend anyone I see browsing without an ad-blocker to install one of course.

What you're describing here isn't unethical. It's a business. I think people like you and me are disappointed that they've gone from being a "good guy" to just another business. The veil is lifted and our super hero is just human.

90% of the whitelist doesn't pay, though. And all have to meet certain standards, like no video ads.

> Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad blocker installed.

They can try, but it's fundamentally impossible.

It's only impossible in a theoretical way that doesn't really matter. If it really does come to an anti-anti-anti-ad-blocker arms race it seems likely that the advertisers will win. The only reason they don't bother at the moment is that it isn't worth the hassle because not that many people use ad blockers.

There is no confusion as to what they are doing. That does not mean that there isn't any moral ambiguity.

What they are doing is akin to a racket protection. They place themselves in the position of deciding whether some ads are authorized or not, and of course some money can push them in the good direction.

The only ambiguity here is that they seem to at least respect a standard for the ads they accept. Beside that, this is racket and corruption.

I just modify my `/etc/hsots` and block the ad hosted domains at the source.

   cat /etc/hosts | wc -l
    34003

uuoc!

Did you automate that and how?

Here's how I automate that: https://github.com/majewsky/system-configuration/blob/cce258...

I use: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Works amazing.

It's a curation method where the cost of curation is paid for by the advertisers, as opposed to an independent group, an industry group or end users.

It seeks to solve the issue of people blocking ads for safety/security reasons or for crossing some threshold of reasonable annoyance.

I don't use ABP so I can't speak to whether they are good owners of that role, or whether they are corrupt.

I think the idea of curation is good, but it is a brutish hack around (perceived or real) poor self policing by the advertising industry.

>I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that. Adblock Plus has a really weird business model. Basically anyone can write an ad blocker, and they all use basically the same lists of rules anyway. So why would an entire company with 74 employees (https://eyeo.com/team) exist just to make an Adblocker? By adding a bunch of shady stuff on top to make money.

> Basically anyone can write an ad blocker

Did you ever write one that endures?

From first-hand experience, I spent so much time working on uBO in the last 2.5 years that I would appreciate the task to not be trivialised with such sentence as "anyone can write an ad blocker". Such trivialisation prevent those who don't understand software development from valuing all the work done, up to being told "F you!" when refusing to spend more time on the project than I already do.

Your efforts on uBO are strongly appreciated! It Just Works, it doesn't slow down my pages, and it's easy to use. I know exactly how hard that can be to achieve for even a moderately popular app; the "last 10%" takes a lot more than 90% of the time.

I've been using uMatrix and uBlock (for firefox on mobile) for years, I think not just for me but the prevailing sentiment among uBlock users is a great appreciation for your work. Thanks!

It's just another example of the "distorted bubble the typical HNer lives in" comment I made a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13112407). 95% of people can barely use a computer and I'm supposed to believe that anyone can write an ad blocker?

Anyway, thank you for your work. uBlock Origin is literally the first extension I install whenever I use a new browser/computer. It's lightweight yet powerful and your default lists remove a lot of the work involved in deciding what nonsense to block. Whenever I don't have it installed, I'm amazed at how user-hostile the web has become. We may have gotten rid of pop-ups but advertisers have reached new heights of annoyance with popovers and ads that push down the content you're currently reading. It's absurd that people actually endure 30 second video ads to watch a 1 minute YouTube clip.

You’re right, I take it back. But my greater point still stands, imagine how great uBO could be if you had 75 full time employees!

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