AdBlock gobbled by 'mystery buyer ' – aka Adblock Plus

[Weishaupt]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/02/adblock_flogged_off_to_mystery_buyer/

One of the most bizarre transactions of recent times I must say.

[LimboSlam]

It's a 404 link.

[Weishaupt]

It's a 404 link.

Fixed

[Night Wing]

I clicked on the link and read the article. But I must say, I enjoyed reading the public comments more than reading the article. A lot of comments there expressed my sentiment about the "acceptable ads" program.

[intofix]

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/02/t ... block-ads/
http://support.getadblock.com/discussio ... t_36657836

Anyway "BetaFish AdBlocker" aka "Adblock" already sounded like malware, except they racket advertisers instead.

[LimboSlam]

So ABP is pushing their "acceptable ads" function into adblock (https://getadblock.com/) by bribing him? Am I right or did totally miss the point?

[intofix]

When their plan will be achieved they will kill all the sites which may not pay 30% of their income or will refuse to feed a bunch of gangsters. This is what i understand.

[CharmCityCrab]

Playing devil's advocate here, the widespread adoption of ad-blockers on desktop and now on mobile is something that ultimately big companies might have successfully fought against. Either they'd have found a way to render the ad-blockers impotent because of the way they started hosting ads or content (example: walled gardens where content is only visible in apps on platforms that protect the ads on them rather than on the open web), or they'd have used our broken campaign finance system to buy themselves a new law that would make using ad-blockers illegal in the United States and possibly some other countries as well.

By going to an acceptable ads policy by default, these ad-blockers are making blocking ad-blockers a less appealing money pit for big business, and making legislation to illegalize ad-blockers a harder sell in capitols around the world. Basically, people see all ads by default and must seek out an ad-blocker if they want to block ads. Then, according to some sources, 80% of people who do seek out an ad-blocker leave "acceptable ads" enabled. So, ads that aren't overtly obnoxious are probably still displayed to significantly more than 90% of web users now.

Because of all that, there is a greater chance that people who really want to block all ads will be left alone and allowed to do so- whether as an opt-in thing on mainstream ad-blockers, or by using less popular ad-blockers that block all ads by default. So, this whole thing may be providing people cover to keep doing what they want to do and not having to see any ads at all.

Though the specific element of accepting money from some companies to whitelist their ads is unseemly, the concept as a whole is not necessarily a bad thing. Part of this deal puts the decision on what constitutes an acceptable ad for the purposes of their option before what they claim is a non-partisan committee separate from each of the companies that own the ad-blocking software that uses the white list. And, of course, they've always said that they'll work with small to medium companies to help them make ads that conform with their acceptable ads policies and whitelist them for free- and only charge the really large businesses.

It's still not perfect, but not a straight forward cash for whitelisting scheme because they don't charge smaller businesses, they have standards that businesses must comply with for their ads to be acceptable. For example, no matter how much money some company gives them asking for their ads to be whitelisted, they've said they will only whitelist static ads (No animinations, sounds or similar). Here is a link to Ad Block Plus' list of criteria that "acceptable ads" must meet:

https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads#criteria

Personally, I don't find any ads acceptable right now. I like the Ad Block Latitude and UBlock approaches. However, I don't totally dismiss what's going on in the rest of this sector as intrinsically bad. It could potentially have some positive effects. In addition to those already mentioned like full ad-blockers being less of a target for businesses and lessening the chance of governments banning them, it also helps keep content on the web that otherwise might not stay on the web, and provides an opportunity for people who genuinely don't mind or even want to view ads to help support free content creation but are just sick of the annoying ads, to get exactly what they want.

I mean, there are definitely people out there who want no ads at all, there are others who view it as immoral to block any ads, and there are also people who just want ads to be there but be less disruptive and annoying. That third group is now able to customize their browsers to see the web the way they want to see it, which is hard to object to if it's their genuine preference, as long as the folks who don't want to see ads at all can also customize their browsers to see the web the way they want to see it.

I'm just saying, it's maybe a more complex issue than it seems in some respects.

[intofix]

Though the specific element of accepting money from some companies to whitelist their ads is unseemly, the concept as a whole is not necessarily a bad thing. Part of this deal puts the decision on what constitutes an acceptable ad for the purposes of their option before what they claim is a non-partisan committee separate from each of the companies that own the ad-blocking software that uses the white list.

Their German plan: "We want to make the internet better..."

- First contact the giants of the web in order to forge a nest-egg and buy an honorable reputation.
- Invade all platforms by different ways, even against the own opinion of the owner, such as Apple with iOS
- Lying about their true future intentions that nobody knows. Practicing opacity as in this case and many others.
- Buy or bribe or make pressure on any competitors (such with Adblock Edge?).
- Mount a special committee, an omnipotent court with some corrupt actors accompanied by puppets, like US consortiums do with chemical and oil industries etc, like Monsanto just as example, that came together to found a Special World Court to inflict huge amendes to refractory States, making their own courts incompetent.
- To finally become the incontournable procuress between all major web players and advertisers.
- All of this with respect of course.

If nobody resists, i let you imagine the consequences.
Les Maîtres Chanteurs: https://youtu.be/rf5Sm5vbqtU

[lyceus]

The whole thing of acceptable ads made me change from Avast AV to Comodo AV. Because for some reason the Avast people think that Ask.com network is trustable and good for you. This is a difficult time indeed, when you have a good product (free or paid) some company buys it and release crap instead.

[Omitooshi]

They can't censor P0rn.
They can't censor the internet.
They can't stop piracy.
They can't stop adblocking either.