UBlock Origin vs. Adblock Plus – Poll | Hacker News Reader

UBlock Origin vs. Adblock Plus – Poll

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4 pointsABP_Becky4 comments

Help us show everyone that Constructive Adblocking beats Destructive Adblocking by casting your vote!

...You're not going to like the results.

Edit: A glance at said results is making my point fairly well. It would appear that when you try to make money blocking only some ads, people... don't like that in their ad "blocker". When that blocker is a bloated CPU/Memory hog compared to the competitor which doesn't show you ads...

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You can see how this is going right? Maybe your strategy would have worked 5 or 10 years ago, before malware, loud ads, endless tracking and other miserable practices burned us all so thoroughly out on ads. When those practices had us by all by the balls, "This is unfair!" "This will end badly!" was roundly ignored.

Now that people have options, suddenly it's, "We're all in this together guys! Lets be cool about this."

As you mentioned we are indeed making money, after all, we’re a normal business! However, 92% of all websites get to implement our solution entirely for free, and we’re taking a cut from the earnings of the remaining 8% (the really big ones) based on what they earn via Acceptable Ads as those require a lot of work.

Tests were carried out on older versions of uBlock and ABP, so there’s no telling if what you mentioned is still the case. For us, it’s not all about a couple of seconds saved per year (this would be all you’d ever possibly save).

I'm sure we can both agree that there are many unacceptable ads - like some of the ones you mentioned - but as you mentioned people have options, which is exactly why users will always have the option to turn everything off if they don't agree with us on acceptable ads!

You are a normal business, monetizing users for a slice of dwindling ad revenue, but you're competing with something that isn't a business and doesn't monetize its users. That's... kind of the problem right there. People who use ad blockers are not looking for a compromise by committee which is out of their control, and people who don't use ad blockers don't even know you exist. Worse, new users of ad blockers are inevitably told to look into options such as your competitors, because they offer a more complete service without monetizing you. The only market for your product is defined by its desire not to use a product like yours, and the rest don't know you exist.

So, I understand your position... namely that someone lacking in foresight probably "suggested" that you engage on some social media platforms, with predictably tragic results. I'm sure there's a slice of the market that still uses IE or has really bought into the notion of a "community spirit" around advertising, but that is not a growing market.

Frankly I'd just keep a low profile and hope that existing users don't realize that they have options.

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