Comment by notriddle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notriddle | Hacker News Reader

This graphic from within the article

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*aXa0ZmMFzEgSxsOx....

is what drove me over the edge on the Acceptable Ads program as well, and I switched off of ABP and onto uBlock Origin for this same reason.

I get that it probably doesn't break the Acceptable Ads rules, since they are probably stuff like: your ad isn't allowed to talk, or to pretend to be someone like the FBI or the user's Operating System, or include a JS payload that tries to break out of the browser sandbox, or to break the page layout, or to move around or flash. Those "Around the Web" things break none of those rules, and from a technical standpoint I don't know of anything objectionable about them. Not to mention none of this stuff is any worse than the papers I see in the grocery aisle, and Eyeo probably doesn't want to enter the business of judging whether a headline is Truth or not.

But tabloids have done enough damage to our society without migrating them to the Internet. So off to UBO I go, and I'm bringing everyone else with me that I can. Also, you should delete your Facebook account and never go back, because there's tabloid crap in there, too.

How blatant bullshit from Taboola is "acceptable" is beyond me. Our standards are really, really low if an acceptable ad merely means that it doesn't install malware or do sneaky things to your browser window.

Even before I learned about uBlock Origin, I installed an extension dedicated to removing Taboola ads. It's shocking how many people willingly tolerate that garbage.

Taboola is generally known to be one of the less-shady ad platforms, amusingly enough. The fact you consider it to be particularly egregious, which I don't really disagree with, seems to reflect the state of affairs in the online advertising industry.

Not really, the whole industry knows Taboola and Outbrain are the lowest tier, barely above scammy affiliate links. There are of course worse networks like RevContent but nobody is mistaking Taboola for anything but shady.

I am so glad I have no idea what any of you are talking about. I have been using ublock origin from the day I heard of the possibility of adblock jumping shark.

I personally consider a native platform's shadiness by a mix of the kind of content they allow, the kind of content that ends up on there, and the amount of fraudulent traffic/clicks that advertisers get billed for.

Taboola and Outbrain at least have manual reviewers attempting to uphold a certain standard for content, though there is a ton of room for improvement. I've never noticed a lot of suspect traffic coming from these two, which is in stark contrast to networks like content.ad or adblade. Of course, Outbrain/Taboola don't compare to the big networks, but I've experienced a good balance of affordable and reasonable quality traffic, though this isn't always the case, as costs/quality can be quite variable over time.

Taboola, Outbrain and its ilk were what pushed me to install an ad blocker in the first place. I'd put up with ads for years, but these repetitive, misleading, intrusive ads were the final straw. The idea that they're "acceptable" is a joke.

I mirror this 100%. I really wanted to not use a blocker because I was trying to "support the industry". I even for a very short time attempted to build my own blacklist, but it quickly became easier to just block everything.

Now not only have I been using a blocker for a few years, I install one on any family/friends computers I am working on, and advocate for one whenever it comes up.

I don't know what it would take for me to come back now. Unfortunately it's a tragedy of the commons: a small number of sites/advertisers can completely ruin it for everyone -- and, I'd argue, already have.

taboola and similar are what's known as a "chumbox". here's a taxonomy:

https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...

This is why I have no qualms whatsoever about ad blocking or busting paywalls on mainstream news sites. If they have such poor editorial standards I doubt their own content is much more reliable.

Have a look at http://outline.com

This has been wonderful for me. Removes crap, kills paywalls.

That is so nice.

> Also, you should delete your Facebook account and never go back, because there's tabloid crap in there, too.

You can block those with UBO as well and use Facebook via the browser. There are reasons to get off of Facebook, but this is not worse than another random website really.

why not just disable showing of acceptable ads? i have always done this, since they introduced it.

Because Ublock Origin is more memory efficient than Adblock Plus.

The fundamental problem with defaults is that people do not change them, no matter what they say.

There might be a fantastically tiny fraction of people actually following through.

Eyeo even uses this behavioral insight to make a case that users like the acceptable ads program (since users don't change defaults)

The speaker was asked by the audience whether there is a control group in which the acceptable ad option is switched off and the speaker only grinned about it.

It's a dark pattern and Eyeo is fully aware of it.

It's still a little surprising here. Not having an adblocker at all is the default setting, users had to go out of their way to install it in the first place. Given that, you'd think that people would manage to turn off the 'allow acceptable ads' option too. (Perhaps it is well hidden?)

There is no dark pattern except for the cover up of what "acceptable" really is. The setting is prominent and clear, smack in the middle of the General panel. Moreover, I seem to recall, there is no default; you're prompted for this at install time. (Not going to bother reinstalling just to check whether this is true.) In any case, I do not remember at all that there is a situation that ads keep being shown after ABP is installed and having to hunt through settings. I was prompted to check my setting by this HN submission, and it feels like I've never seen that panel before, yet it shows that acceptable ads are off.

I think that people who are vehemently against ads are steered toward the setting which is right for them: and Eyeo probably wants it that way, because their selling point for the whitelisting is that they provide access to a segment of the population who are not vehemently against ads.

If enough people start doing this, AdBlock will somehow react to get people to see their ads again.

Just because you got rid of the problem doesn't mean the conflict of interest isn't there. And if there's a conflict of interest, it's just a matter of time before something happens. Having an extension in your browser that you can forget about is much easier on your nerves than an extension that doesn't do anything bad at the moment, but could.

> If enough people start doing this, AdBlock will somehow react to get people to see their ads again.

That's a hypothetical future problem, not requiring action today.

If ABP is blocking all ads for me, why would I care about a conflict of interest?

In fact, I agree with it; I like that advertisers are victimized, paying extra to be on whitelists yet still not reach people because of a simple checkbox in the settings. Are they victimized, though?

Users who install ABP yet say yes to acceptable ads are a special demographic. Why would the gatekeeper to that demographic give away free access to that demographic? If someone pays for that access, it probably means that they perceive value in it for them. Ads are more valuable if better targeted and all that.

> If ABP is blocking all ads for me, why would I care about a conflict of interest?

You might not care, but if you are recommending others an extension to use for blocking ads, you cannot do it solely on your own preferences.

Imagine being recommended as alternatives an adblocker that you can install and forget or an adblocker that you need to configure and keep on watch in case it starts showing ads anyway. Having no experience with adblockers before, which one would you choose?

I can't recommend based on my preferences? What?

> in case it starts showing ads anyway.

This hasn't happened with ABP, and could conceivably happen with any ad blocker, even one whose developers are saints (due to a bug).

Basically "might happen" is just FUD.

Reminds me of 1990's anti-Linux FUD. Don't use that, it might not support some sound card or video card you might want to buy later, even though it works now! You might run into a problem that needs support and then you're screwed. Etc.

So this discussion has devolved to the point of cutting out words from sentences to change their meaning and using the new sentence as a straw man. Here we go again HN.

At that point, why not just use ublock origin which is both faster and blocks more?

I'm not bothered by ads. I see them on TV, I see them on billboards, in magazines in the waiting room at my doctor's office and I'm fine with all that. What I don't want is the tracking.

So for me, acceptable ads are the ones that don't involve surveillance of my online activity in anyway.

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