Adblock Plus Plays on Both Sides of the Street

11 years ago

Anyone else see potential conflict of interest or UNFAIR COMPETITION issues in this scenario? Also, if adbocker is the top dog in its niche, wouldn't such deals be tantamount to abuse of market dominance?

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sbucciarel

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by writeaway

Anyone else see potential conflict of interest or UNFAIR COMPETITION issues in this scenario? Also, if adbocker is the top dog in its niche, wouldn't such deals be tantamount to abuse of market dominance?

Definitely a conflict of customers ...the customers that are paying to have ads blocked and don't have a clue about the secret setting for whitelisted ads.

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Mohsin Rasool

11 years ago

Yes I was reading this news another day. And it did not feel right

At one side they championed to hate ads, block ads Champions...
and now they are getting money to stop them from their damned mission...

It is saying like... we are going to rob the earning of all ads publishers but if you pay
us then we will not rob from you! Hurrah!!!

-Mohsin

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Alexa Smith

Banned 11 years ago

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sbucciarel

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

There's a concealed social motivation behind these things: in the long run, they're doing it all to keep lawyers employed.

Yeah, surely there must be a gray area that they have crossed. Selling ad blocking services and selling ad unblocking services at the same time from the same product smells like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

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Saul

11 years ago

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

Yeah, surely there must be a gray area that they have crossed. Selling ad blocking services and selling ad unblocking services at the same time from the same product smells like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

how? Will users take a firm to court because they don't know how to use the software?

"I'm gonna sue you because I'm lazy and I don't care to check all the options in this program! You should have not put options in your program! shame on you! I can't deal with choices, gimme my money back!"

meh, doesn't sound like a winning lawsuit to me :/

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sbucciarel

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by Saul

how? Will users take a firm to court because they don't know how to use the software?

"I'm gonna sue you because I'm lazy and I don't care to check all the options in this program! You should have not put options in your program! shame on you! I can't deal with choices, gimme my money back!"

meh, doesn't sound like a winning lawsuit to me :/

It's called deceptive advertising. Nowhere where it's easy to find do they divulge that advertisers can pay to have their ads whitelisted.

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Saul 11 years ago

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

Playing devil's advocate here: I don't see anywhere on that image that it blocks EVERY and ALL ads. It only blocks the "annoying" ones.

Are you to choose what's *their* business definition of annoying? Or are they to choose what does annoying mean in their line of business? Not the generic dictionary definition of "annoying", but the one for the very specific context of online advertising.

If targeted means "not annoying because useful and relevant to someone's life" then there's no deceptive advertising there in my opinion ;-)

ciao!
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- sbucciarel Banned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Saul
  
  Playing devil's advocate here: I don't see anywhere on that image that it blocks EVERY and ALL ads. It only blocks the "annoying" ones.
  
  That's funny because in their own graphic ... the one to the left with the two pages ... one with a bunch of ads and the other one with zero ads ... that sort of implies NO ads. A picture is worth a thousand words.
  
  Nice business plan though. Get a bunch (as in millions) of people believing that you are providing a service to block ads and once they all have been using the service for awhile, start selling whitelisting services to those who want to serve ads to all those people.
  
  Just the fact that serving ads to those pay for play customers is a default setting shows where they're at with this. If they were indeed serving the people who want to BLOCK ads, it would be just the opposite. They would have to tinker with the settings to allow whitelisted ads.
  
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  Saul 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by sbucciarel
  
  that sort of implies NO ads. A picture is worth a thousand words.
  
  it might sort of "imply" it, in people's minds, but it out right spells, written black - well, red on white: "surf the web without annoying ads". It's not "without any ads" :-P
  
  Between what is clearly written down and what someone might imply in their own mind, I think a judge would favor the side that has written things down, and not the side making up things in their own mind.
  
  Again, I'm only playing devil's advocate: although I make videos on youtube and people using adblock hurt my business and enjoy my hard work without even the kind thought and gentle gesture of watching 15 seconds of advertising for a whole 15 minutes of entertainment (on average, and good luck finding that ratio on tv!), I obviously see your point: I won't deny they're being pretty sneaky about this whole thing.
  
  ...but, if the ads that weren't blocked were the ones from my videos, the ones that help me pay my bills... in all honesty I can't say that I would mind that so much - in fact, quite the contrary. I would truly appreciate that feature very very much, and I bet google and youtube do to ;-)
  
  Sbucciarel, your username sounds italian. Any links to my beautiful country?
  
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  sbucciarel Banned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Saul
  
  Sbucciarel, your username sounds italian. Any links to my beautiful country?
  
  Yes, the whole name is Bucciarelli from a long defunct marriage rather than my birth name, but if I were going to travel for fun, Italy would be high on my list.
  
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  Saul 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by sbucciarel
  
  Yes, the whole name is Bucciarelli
  
  ah yes, that's definitely an italian name... ah well.
  I hope I didn't tick you off playing devil's advocate ;-)
  
  ciao!
  
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  sbucciarel Banned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Saul
  
  ah yes, that's definitely an italian name... ah well.
  I hope I didn't tick you off playing devil's advocate ;-)
  
  ciao!
  
  Not at all. That's what discussion forums are for and I understand that some rely on ads for their income. I use Ghostery and I still see some ads. I'm mostly opposed to tracking cookies more than ads, except in the case of sites that have so many ads they're really obtrusive.
  
  I live in the country and have slow Internet connection, so some sites are nearly crippled by all the advertising code they put on their site for me. Plus I just think there's something sneaky about the way Adblock is going about it.
  
  Thanks
  
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kindsvater

11 years ago

I saw those articles after noticing Adsense ads appearing despite using ABP. The plugin has lost its legitimacy and Google remains one of the most dishonest companies I have ever seen.

If you use AdBlock Plus:

Click on Filter Preferences

Then unselect the option "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"

Also, visit a Google search page. Then within ABP there is an option to report an issue with the page. This is where you can send a complaint to ABP. I did, and you should too.

But the fact this conflict of interest is being discussed everywhere except the ABP forum speaks volumes.

On ABP's "acceptable ads" page it says:

Are you stupid? Nobody wants this!

The results of our user survey say something different. Only 25% of the Adblock Plus users seem to be strictly against any advertising.

Which just goes to show how statistics or any survey can be manipulated to show whatever you want. Really - only 25% of users installing an ad blocker want to block ads?

.

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sbucciarel

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by kindsvater

On ABP's "acceptable ads" page it says:

Which just goes to show how statistics or any survey can be manipulated to show whatever you want. Really - only 25% of users installing an ad blocker want to block ads?

.

That's for sure. I read that millions of people use this product. Hard to believe that they're using it because they don't mind ads if the advertiser has the moola to pay off Adblock Plus. :rolleyes:

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Donimo

11 years ago

Just imagine for a second if *everyone* used Adblocker. Imagine the amount of websites that would have to close, and would cease to exist. Potentially, Adblockers could be the death of the internet in a very large way.

I think it's essential that Adblockers like that have some sort of way to allow advertisers to have their site unblocked, as if for some reason browsers or something came with this pre-installed, the internet world would completely change, and would KILL (in my opinion) over 90% of popular websites.

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ashloren

11 years ago

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was reading several blog posts that claimed ad blockers were killing the internet. I didn't know that Adblock Plus was screwing with their customers like this, which makes them pretty lame in my opinion.

It reminds me a lot of those mugshot websites that exploit public records and then accept huge amounts of money from the people showcased on the sites in order to remove them (usually from just one site that rumors claim sends them to other sites that they often own too).

It's wrong.

So is the above claim that ad blockers could mean the death of the internet. Wikipedia is proof that not everyone requires payment in order for valuable content. The editors at wikipedia are everyday folks who have jobs that pay them, and they write for Wikipedia for no compensation and it's pretty top notch stuff.

THAT is the internet.

Not all bloggers and websites are doing it for the cash. I blog, but I make no money from doing so. I provide services and sell products to make money online, but the blog is my way of giving back to the web the same kind of free information that made me first fall in love with the internet.

Just saying...

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Saul

11 years ago

Originally Posted by ashloren

they write for Wikipedia for no compensation and it's pretty top notch stuff.

meh, I guess it depends on the topics... I've seen some pretty unreliable info posted on wikipedia ;-)

THAT is the internet.
Not all bloggers and websites are doing it for the cash.

I do agree very much on this though, adblockers certainly will *not* kill the internet because the majority of the internet does not rely on advertising to thrive. It mostly relies on pictures of cats and naked ladies, i.e. por...ahem...eheheh, lol just kidding ;-)

"Free" is still a huge thing on the interwebs so whether adblockers block everything or only a part of ads i really don't think it will affect the future of the internet, but hey - being a doomsday fanatic was fashionable in the middle ages and probably even before that, it will probably carry on being fashionable for a long time :-P

Going back on topic - adblock: will it pave the way to a new business model (pay me to *not* censor you?) or will consumer rage make others think twice about going down that path? Will it be the money (of advertisers who don't want to be censored) or the consumers (who want the software to do as...advertised, ironically ;-) who will prevail?

ciao!

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kindsvater

11 years ago

I have a new and better solution than manually unselecting the "unobtrusive" advertising option.

1. Delete Ad Block Plus from your web browser.

2. Install Ad Block Edge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fir.../adblock-edge/

Same add-on but without the backdoor for Google and others to buy ads.

Bottom line: Ad Block Plus is crap for selling out to Google. It's better to delete the plugin and to install the free alternative.

The more people who do this the better to send a message that this type of deception is unacceptable.

.

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sbucciarel

Banned 11 years ago

Originally Posted by kindsvater

I have a new and better solution than manually unselecting the "unobtrusive" advertising option.

1. Delete Ad Block Plus from your web browser.

2. Install Ad Block Edge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fir.../adblock-edge/

Same add-on but without the backdoor for Google and others to buy ads.

Bottom line: Ad Block Plus is crap for selling out to Google. It's better to delete the plugin and to install the free alternative.

The more people who do this the better to send a message that this type of deception is unacceptable.

I agree completely and that's what I would do if I used AdBlock. I imagine that their definition of an "unobtrusive" ad is any advertiser's ads that pays them to whitelist.

At least with Ghostery, which is free, you can decide what is obtrusive and what isn't. You can choose to let some companies display ads and block others, or you can just block them all ... your choice.

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