Comment by thorax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thorax | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> It doesn't surprise me the extent some people go to to generate revenue in what I must think is a small market.

I agree there, but (and I'm in the minority here) it actually surprises me the extent the developers went to block ads in such a small corner situation.

NoScript's behavior started out shady, but it feels like Adblock developers escalated it into some sort of weird war. A war against ads that appear only rarely and that only a small number of people probably noticed? Was that really necessary?

It seems like you'd just uninstall NoScript if it was a major problem seeing their update pages. I mean, someone specifically installed NoScript and it could be serving ads from their local machine if it wanted, right? Do I really expect AdBlock to try to protect me from other extensions to such a level?

I don't use either extension, but it bothers me that extension developers are turning this into a one-up-man-ship for something so minor in the scheme of things.

> Adblock developers escalated it into some sort of weird war

Some hyperbole for sure. Nothing gets around the fact that NoScript overstepped very clear and natural boundaries.

If I had been the target, I would probably overreact as well. NoScript's behavior is nonetheless well worth pointing out and publicly shaming.

Not hyperbole-- it's very much in our interest for these guys to sort this out publicly before escalation. It's irresponsible to cause a technical fight on your users machines. Essentially what I said here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=590263

I don't think they did overreact. Noscripts function is to block scripts, Adblocks function is to block ads. They found a popular plugin that attacks their functionality and they took steps to combat it. I'm glad they did so.

The major point behind all of this is that extensions should be an island. You shouldn't be messing with the work of anyone else, especially for the reasons they had here.

Yeah, they overreacted. NoScript shouldn't have started out that way. AdBlock Plus shouldn't have forced the issue by making it even more of an "island" war. They should have started with this kind of blog in the first place before escalating on the technical side.

Note that NoScript could easily change their scheme to move further into their island where AdBlock Plus would be forced to invade fully-- it's in no one's interest to escalate before diplomacy has been worked through.

The last thing we need is the light-smattering of gray Firefox addons (who are at worst showing some adsense ads) to be forced to push things deeper into darker areas.

Imagine if this was Symantec and Trend? Microsoft or Apple? Do you really want them to be fighting technically on your machine? In principle, it's just fundamentally bad for us to encourage that kind of behavior. They should use diplomacy, and shine lights in the dark areas before escalating technically.

Yes, NoScript reacted to the escalation fiendishly. I just don't think it was responsible on AdBlock Plus's side to escalate technically on such a minor issue when diplomacy/communication is so much better for everyone.

AdBlock Plus shouldn't have forced the issue by making it even more of an "island" war. They should have started with this kind of blog in the first place before escalating on the technical side.

Okay, so, you do realize that Adblock faces spammers that are constantly trying to tweak the system to get through blockers like Adblock, right? It's a constant fight. How is what Noscript is doing any other than other spammers?

Adblock is simply treating them as any other ad company that's trying to sneak ads in. Given that that is the reason people install Adblock, that's a perfectly appropriate response.

The NoScript developers not only overreacted, they also acted incredibly against the wishes of the users installing both programs.

> How is what Noscript is doing any other than other spammers?

The whole reason we're even talking about this is because the situation is different than a normal spammer. NoScript is an extension and thus is doing things spammers can't do, and all on the end user's machines.

That's why it makes me sad that Adblock didn't play this more responsibly from the outset. I'm even more sad that everyone else is content in believing that Adblock was doing the right thing by escalating. What they did was less bad than NoScript, but it's still wild west gunslinging without exhausting more civilized options.

We need discussion/diplomacy between developers before people start fighting/warring using their customers' resources.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com