Adblock Plus: the tiny plugin threatening the internet's business model

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/14/the-tiny-german-company-threatening-the-internets-business-model

by jonathansizz • 13 years ago

26 57 13 years ago

susi22• 13 years ago

There is a HUGE controversy about Adblock plus. One blogger uncovered some of their business methods. They have Mafia like structures and extort businesses. Unfortunately it's only in German and I have yet to find an English site report about it.

Main article (very detailed):

http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...

They've been trying to cover up their methods and simply lied about it. Stay away from Adblock Plus.

Some shorter article:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Adblock-Plus-Weitere-...

dhimes4• 13 years ago

Is there an alternative?

jfb2• 13 years ago

To Adblock? I use a system level HTTP proxy (Glimmerblocker [1] on OS X, Privoxy elsewhere [2]) because I don't want to encounter ads in e.g. my RSS reader.

To an advertising-based business model? Unclear.

[1] http://glimmerblocker.org [2] http://www.privoxy.org

frankblizzard• 13 years ago

The problem / article is about ADBLOCK PLUS - not with the normal Adblock. Two different beasts.

BIair• 13 years ago

MVP hosts file blocks ads on Windows machines by editing the hosts file. No 3rd party software needed. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

andyn• 13 years ago

I use "Adblock Edge" as an alternative. It's basically a fork of adblock plus but without the "acceptable ads" feature.

phorese• 13 years ago

Thanks, that first link is awesome! Well, at least if you can look past the boatload of sarcasm :/

mratzloff3• 13 years ago

Use Adblock instead. Adblock Plus is another product entirely, unrelated despite the name trading on the popularity of Adblock.

nathan_long4• 13 years ago

Yes, they are separate, but the history of the names is complicated. See "why are the names so similar?" on https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

levesque• 13 years ago

Alright, that's enough, I don't trust these guys to tell me which ads should be blocked and which shouldn't. Uninstalled.

Nursie• 13 years ago

I don't like the implied threat stuff going on here. I may look for a different ad blocking solution. But that article was pretty shrill.

As far as I'm concerned, most online advertising is malware.

tekmate• 13 years ago

if you don't want to support eyeo there's a fork of ABP called adblock edge.

works just as well, without the acceptable ads racket

cstross2• 13 years ago

Frankly, I hate advertising -- ALL advertising, not just web advertising -- and want the advertising industry to die in a fire. I recognize this is a bit controversial, especially with Americans (who seem unable to conceive of content industries that can exist in the absence of advertising: the BBC and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot), but advertising is mostly oriented around selling us stuff we don't want or need, and as such it shares many characteristics with spam; it's insidious, intrusive, tries to steal your attention, and works by instilling uncertainty and self-doubt.

Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising -- but I think we'd be better off with just the 10% left over, because it'd be the best 10% (the stuff that has a viable business model that works without advertising).

iambateman2• 13 years ago

I don't think you really hate advertising as much as you say.

You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention.

Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

lazyjones3• 13 years ago

But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

There are websites out there that do not rely on ads and do not require a paid subscription to be used (I built one, a CSE).

pacala3• 13 years ago

The people of ADVERT_CO work hard to distract and confuse my attention such that I overpay for the products they push. For every ad-supported site out there, I'd be better off by directly paying them money for their service. This is basic economics, if it weren't true then ADVERT_CO would be out of business.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

Considering how little money sites get per advert view, (not even whole pennies IME,) I'd happily just pay them double the money not to advertise to me. Remove all the ads, all the associated tracking shit - keep the prices per view at double advertising sort of prices. Yeah, I'd pay. Happily.

What we really need is a way to do secure efficient micro-transactions - I don't want to be having to enter my card number every time I view a page. Or have some sort of trusted intermediary so we can tally up the pageviews and pay everyone appropriately at the end of the month. But the no-advertising model needn't be a bad thing.

lucaspiller• 13 years ago

I think your point is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree about all advertising. I think it can be useful in some cases, say IKEA open a new store near you (and you were already planning to renovate your home), you would find out a lot quicker if they had advertising on billboards around town or in newspapers, than if you slowly found out by word of mouth.

tomp• 13 years ago

There is a difference between pure advertising and informative advertising. While I'm completely against the former, I support the latter, but in a severely limited format (i.e. such ads can appear only on special billboards, e.g. one for concerts, one for art exhibitions, one for new restaurant openings; that people can only see on purpose (not just by driving by), and without any extra information (i.e. without semi-naked women enticing you to "need" the product)).

betterunix• 13 years ago

"Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising"

I doubt that very much. I think it would be more accurate to say that 90% of the web would change without advertising revenue. People will still want social networks; they will still get social networks, and it is likely that those social networks will be more distributed as the money for big, centralized services will be gone. News will still be distributed, some behind paywalls, much not behind paywalls. Search engines will still exist, some charging a fee, some run by their users (imagine a distributed web search system i.e. a P2P network of people who index the web and respond to searches made by other users).

jfb2• 13 years ago

Yes, but. Having a non-offensive business model guarantees nothing about the quality of the services provided -- they are orthogonal concerns. I would be very happy to pay for what I like, rather than be subjected to the grotesqueries of advertisers (still less to be packaged up and sold on like a shitty mortgage), but a lot of good would be lost in that 90%.

DanBC• 13 years ago

and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot

Books have tried it, and ebooks may well have ads at some point. Luckily, the experiment for print books failed.

I wonder how you'd react if someone approached you with a deal to mention a product X times in a book? (I imagine it would be a colourful and robust response!)

I ask because Fay Wheldon did this for Bvlgari.

http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books

In September 2001 the novelist Fay Weldon wrote what was, certainly at the time, the world's first sponsored novel. Entitled The Bulgari Connection, it was, you guessed it, sponsored by the jewel house, Bulgari. According to this article in the Guardian, Weldon was required to mention the name of Bulgari at least 12 times. It was originally intended as a private venture, but was then released for commercial publication. Nevertheless, fairly scary stuff though it is, the fact that this was a year and a half ago and doesn't seem to have spawned hundreds of similarly-sponsored books gives at least some hope that this won't be a trend throughout the publishing industry...

Salon has a nice piece about it. (http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/)

War time penguins had ads, at the end of the book.

http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-suc...

Here's an article about tobacco advertising that shows glossy inserts in Kurt Vonnegut books.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.htm...

mratzloff3• 13 years ago

No one seems to agree with you. Everyone wants online and mobile content for free, and very few care how it happens. So either someone else pays for it (advertisers) or those people become the product (selling their data to marketers). I don't see that attitude ever changing, but I do anticipate traditional approaches to paying for content getting more intrusive or slowly disappearing in favor of other models.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

I don't recall a vote.

degenerate• 13 years ago

I've been happily using Adblock Edge (a fork of ABP without the acceptable ads feature): https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

I allow ads on sites I support and respect, and everyone else gets blocked. I'd rather do that myself than have ABP decide that for me.

Unfortunately ABE is not available for Chrome (see https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/issue/23/adblock...), so I still use ABP on Chrome. Is there an alternative out there yet?

nathan_long4• 13 years ago

Yes. AdBlock (https://getadblock.com) is actually the most popular extension on Chrome, more than Adblock Plus. It blocks solely based on your filter subscriptions and custom rules and is funded solely by usrs.

https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

drcongo• 13 years ago

On OS X there's GlimmerBlocker, which is hugely superior to AdBlock Pro or Edge.

[1] http://glimmerblocker.org

_Lemon_• 13 years ago

As an alternative, I switched to Adblock Edge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

jacquesm• 13 years ago

Adblockers should just block ads, not be used to extort money once they reach a certain level of adoption.

iambateman2• 13 years ago

Here's the problem...anything that can be done, will be done. And ads can be blocked online. It's just reality. Like digital music will be copied and secret government problems will be leaked and embarrassing pictures of politicians will surface online.

It doesn't matter what you want to happen. It's just going to.

So we, as people who profit from the web, need to think about structuring our businesses in such a way that the inevitable doesn't kill our work.

(FWIW, Adblock's business model is apparently extortion, which makes me sick.)

peterwwillis• 13 years ago

"The Internet's business model"

The internet is a single business with one business model? Holy shit. It must work well, as I hear the internet's all the rage with the young folks. Should've invested sooner.

psn• 13 years ago

Hah. I recall antispam companies doing the same thing - once they got big enough, they demanded money from major mail exchanges. I'm sure companies paid out rather than risk long legal cases and poor PR.

gabemart3• 13 years ago

But sites are rarely paid “per click”.

Doesn't google AdSense alone count for a non-trivial portion of internet advertising? Unless the rules are different for bigger partners, all AdSense revenue is per click.

nathan_long4• 13 years ago

Please note: This article is about Adblock Plus. AdBlock is a completely separate extension with different developers, and is 100% user-supported.

Details: https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

bsullivan013• 13 years ago

Ads are fine, up to a point. If the page is almost all ads and not marked clearly as so, then F that company.

But these AdBlock PLUS guys are extortionists. Google paid and their ads are "acceptable." all of the sudden. (Disclaimer: not a fan of Google at all) Google being the world's largest advertiser is leading the way in putting the entire business model at risk, ruining ads for everyone. They started with no ads, then a few ads on the side, then on top, then 2-5 on top and 12 on the sides, now ads everywhere and just a few results hidden by ads. Now the product search is 100% ads and I doubt that most people know (not everyone reads HN and Ars) I posted them before but this is a disgrace and it's not receiving the needed attention from the media:

http://i.imgur.com/mhJhc5W.png

http://ho9od35yvs05ejqn.zippykid.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/u...

SudoNick• 13 years ago

Given that the business model in question has come to revolve around highly targeted advertising achieved via extensive tracking and profiling of users, it certainly deserves to be threatened.

Unfortunately, the AdblockPlus "acceptable ads" criteria don't address the privacy issues. So the ABP folks are actually promoting advertising standards and ads that are intrusive. To make matters worse, this "ad blocker" that supposedly "protects your online privacy" is purposely equipped with a material defect in the form of an enabled by default whitelist that allows many ads through including those that are harmful to your privacy. Those unsuspecting users who fail to learn of this and/or those who forget to opt-out can get burned.

MichaelMoser123• 13 years ago

I have written a short article on adds and 'peak advertising'. Might be of interest.

http://mosermichael.github.io/cstuff/all/blogg/2013/10/14/po...

Sagat• 13 years ago

Ads make for some interesting doublethink.

One one hand, I hate the consumer oriented society that wastes resources on a ton of useless products; I despise the scummy advertisers who manipulate people into pursuing the wrong goals. On the other, I like having stuff and will happily buy things to put inside my home and on my person. I am totally dependent on the consumer ecosystem and I enjoy creature comforts.

That said, when I truly need something I will make a targeted search for it. It's really rare to see ads that actually interest me. So I am generally extremely hostile to the ad business. I hate everything about them, because they symbolize the uncomfortable truths and compromises our society rests upon. They are everywhere and mostly do nothing but sap your mental energy.

nathan_long4• 13 years ago

The advertising problem is very strange. There is content we do want which we could have by paying a small amount. But we're (by and large) unwilling. So we get ads.

A tiny fraction of the ads are clicked, and a tiny fraction of the money spent on that product goes back to the content producer. And that's enough to fund them.

We could avoid seeing 100 ads which end up giving 10 cents to the site if we'd just pay 10 cents each.[1] It would be nicer for us and simpler for the content producers. But we're not willing, apparently.

It seems perverse to claim that we value good articles and shows if we force the creators to sell us boots in order to make a living.

Oh, micropayments, when will we find a workable system for you?

[1] Made-up numbers

jonathansizz2• 13 years ago

Can anyone shed some light on the Hacker News story ranking algorithm?

After 1 hour, this submission was in third place on the front page, then I checked again about 15 minutes later and it had dropped to 93rd place, on page 4! There are many other stories that are both older and have fewer points that are higher up the rankings. Judging by the number of comments, this link is obviously a story of interest to HN.

Just curious what's going on..

bsullivan013• 13 years ago

Employes of a certain company that starts with G do this on stories harmful to their employer. I'd bet that's the reason.

jonathansizz2• 13 years ago

So the ranking isn't simply based on a combination of age and upvotes? I see.

maaarghk• 13 years ago

Thanks, due to this post I have switched from ABP on chrome to Adblock. Had no idea the ABP people were acting in this way, will try to spread the word.

Adblock Plus: the tiny plugin threatening the internet's business model

Related Stories