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Comment by jerrya | Hacker News Reader

The way “acceptable ads” works, Mr. Palant and Mr. Faida explained, is that Web sites agree to publish certain advertisements that meet Adblock Plus’s standards on intrusiveness — no beeping or flashing, nothing that slows the computer’s operations. They are then added to the “white list” of acceptable advertisements.

Well, I'm okay with this.

I don't block Slashdot ads, though Slashdot gives me that option. I don't block ads at FARK because FARK enforces non-intrusive ads. There are other sites that ask me not to block their ads, and I usually white list them as long as their ads are not intrusive, and that follows what adblock plus seems to be seeking:

no pop-ups, not flashing, no marquee, no flash crap,

I don't mind websites making money, I prefer the ones I like stay in existence. I only ask that their ads let me read the damn site and not attack my senses.

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I'm ok with that too, but not ok with this:

> Mr. Faida has left open the possibility that some big Web sites will pay his start-up as part of the new service

This sounds like a shake down; pay us or your ads will be blocked.

I'm ok with it in the sense that someone else (Ghostery) will just come along and replace ABP anyways.

Like Google shakes you down: pay us more than your competitor, otherwise we will rank him higher for selected search terms?

Like all bakeries conspire to shake you down: pay us, or you don't get any bread?

ABP is not a monopolist nor do they do anything illegal. Therefore, they are not 'shaking anyone down'.

I'd be fine with it if one of the requirements was "does not take more than 100ms to load." For me, the point of AdBlock is that pages aren't blocked from rendering by needing to pull down external dependencies. (Ads are one example, but analytics scripts and "like" buttons also count.)

Yes, that's an excellent requirement!

Sites need to load ads asynchronously, after content. When ads can't block the site from rendering, it doesn't matter how long they take to load.

They still allow ads with javascript, which means a major reason to block ads (rouge ads that deliver exploits and malware) are still an issue that their users are not protected against by default.

I don't know what's happening in adblock plus' forums, but the no javascript, and quick loading requirements are totally reasonable and very important.

I'd like to see a requirement about respecting the "Don't track me"-switch, and not collecting any personal details, as well. Privacy is one of the reasons, aside from the ones mentioned, as to why I block ads.

My biggest problem is quite simply that ads I see are never relevant. Hulu ads are dreadful - it is almost as if they deliberately tried to find the least relevant ads. Normal web site ads are just not remotely right for me. I would have no problem with ads being tailored for me by using additional information but every time I opt in to that kind of profiling it doesn't seem to make any difference.

The quality of targeting differs greatly depending on

a) the technology used b) how much exposure you have to technology that can capture your interests (or your socio-demographic profile etc.)

If you use Gmail you will find that their ads are usually quite a good match for your interests, because the amount of exposure with Google is huge for the average user, and because they can use semantic contextualization on your mails...

Gmail is not my primary email, and I access Gmail via IMAP only. In any event I don't think what they see would be that useful. My Google Reader usage is more closely aligned with my interests, but I rarely star anything so they won't know the difference between feeds/articles that are genuinely interesting to me, and those that I use just to ensure I am up to date.

The manufacturer of my car has never displayed an ad trying to get me to take it in for a service, or sing the merits of the newest model that hits home for an existing owner. The various credit related ads seem to think I don't know money is fungible, or that I can't count. The various health and beauty products are extremely misguided. The food related ads are beyond stupid. The cell related ones assume that ETFs don't exist. I can go on, and on ....

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