Adblock Plus Developers To Allow 'Acceptable' Ads 247
First time accepted submitter Roman Grazhdan writes "Developers of Adblock Plus, an award-winning add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome boasting over 12,000,000 users, announced that starting from version 2.0 the extension would come with a white list of unobtrusive, privacy-respected ads. These will be allowed by default; users will still be able to block them by unchecking 'Allow non-intrusive advertising.' The developers say: 'Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising.' What is this — betrayal of ideals of annoyance-free web or birth of independent authority for standards for advertisement?" Ads are sometimes annoying, but they also make certain websites (like this one!) possible. Getting the balance right is tricky — I know I often avoid sites because of interstitial advertising, pop-ups, etc. Whitelisting sounds like a good way to reward sites that try to keep it subtle; offloading and generalizing the task of categorizing ads into annoying or acceptable gives sites and advertisers a good threshold to duck beneath. Next step I'd like to see: a sliding scale, so browsers can be set to zero, or eleven, for tolerable annoyance. Update: 12/13 14:54 GMT by T : My fault: I liked the story so much that I missed it the first time.
This is a duplicate. (Score:5, Interesting)
As I said before, though, I'm OK with this. I don't use ABP to stick it to The Man; I use it because a number of my ads either actually make my browser unusable or are annoying enough to seriously detract from my browsing experience. If ABP can block only these while letting more benign ads through, then I applaud them: it allows site owners who don't employ these ads to keep their revenue, and it provides a clear alternative for site owners who currently do employ these ads. That's the sort of thing that actually stands a chance of making some change.
In fact, I wish this weren't optional. There's a difference between protesting against certain odious forms of advertising and simply stealing content. The people who run this just to stick it to The Man are not allies in that fight.
Allow filtering by format details (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like separate options for suppressing:
- Pop-unders
- Pop-overs
- Ads emitting sound without being clicked on
- Ads that start playing video without being clicked on
- Ads that are sneaky (single-pixel, etc.)
- etc.
I unblock ads at webmaster's requests (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They got paid for this... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm one. I use NoScript rather than AdBlock because it blocks the kind of ads that make it hard to read what I'm trying to read. I don't mind the ads on Slashdot. I've been offered the option of turning them off, and I don't take it. I like the site and don't mind if that's what it takes to preserve it.
The internet existed BEFORE ads (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, it wasn't the internet YOU know and love, but in many ways, it was a better place. Now get off my lawn.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm going to *start* using Adblock Plus because of this. Advertisers need to be told where the line is, and this is the first practical way to communicate that too them. They should have even more checkbox options so users can decide what's acceptable rather than the devs. People don't use Adblock Plus often because they don't want to deny funding to websites, but a reasonable and practical compromise could kill intrusive advertising and tracking, just like popup blockers (mostly) killed popup adds.
As to Doublespeak, it's called Adblock *Plus* - it blocks adds plus tells advertisers what's what.
I want to publish my ad acceptance policy. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like say, "no sound", "no video/animated gifs", "no flash", etc etc.
Also I would like to specify what I am currently in the market for, "digital SLR", "Carib Cruise" etc
Also I would like to say what I would not click at "singles" "sexual stuff", "gambling" etc
I would like some site like Mozilla to offer me list of these choices in some web site. I go there and I check mark on or off of these items. That site hashes all these choices into a simple hash and gives it to me. I send that hash to all sites I visit. That site can use the hash fetch my ad acceptance policy and displays ads accordingly.
I would like the site that hashing my preferences into hash to make it available for others. So when I first visit the site, I get a choice of most popular policies number of people using that set of options. I clone one of the popular ones, make a few adjustments and get a new hash for myself.
Eventually the web sites would know what kind of ads would be accepted by majority of the users and what would not be. With this feedback we can give good guys some decent break. That is the only way to make the annoying irritants go away.