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Adblock Plus Letting Ads By

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mouser:
Except for when it comes to me, it seems......
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Sorry Tinman, I jumped the gun.. I think my bias is always to criticize the longtime dc members when i see the insults flying -- mostly because i expect that the more time you spend on DC, the more you can be expected to know the protocol.

CobbleHillGuy:
Well, Tinman57, you did say that I posted a rant, which I didn't, and you did suggest that I posted it either because I had an undisclosed interest or because I was simply a troll. The former suggestion was simply not true, and as for the latter, it was certainly not true at the time that I posted my first comment, though I'll leave it to the judgment of others whether or not it is becoming true. On the other hand, I confess that I said that an entire class of people must be either intellectually lazy or hopelessly churlish, a class of which I rudely implied you were a member. I apologize. So, what to think? Shall we call it quits now?

mouser, is it possible for me to change my display name to "Hopeless Churl" (or "HopelessChurl" if one can't have spaces)? It's kind of grown on me. I can't see a way to accomplish that from my end.

wraith808:
Can we just leave that part behind, and continue onward.  It was an unfortunate choice of words- more than one person took it as a negative, and the definition is *definitely* negative.   It was an unfortunate response.  Let's just forget about it, leave offense by the wayside, and go from there.  No need to continue it in any fashion.

app103:
We could take a lesson from the ad companies and pay to have the ads blocked. Choose a software with an actual business model that doesn't include accepting bribes from ad companies...perhaps Ad Muncher, which will work with any browser (without a plugin), any desktop RSS reader, any non-browser software that pulls in ad banners from an external source.
-app103 (July 09, 2013, 06:13 PM)
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It's more than a little unfair, to characterize your remarks very leniently, to insinuate that the developer of Adblock Plus is taking bribes from ad companies. A bribe is something of value given to a person with the intention of inducing him to act contrary to his moral obligations or to refrain from acting in a way that he is morally obliged to act. Please explain to us how it can be justly suggested that the developer of Adblock Plus is accepting bribes.
-CobbleHillGuy (July 09, 2013, 06:40 PM)
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I am not sure what else to call it when the developer of a free ad blocker accepts money from advertisers, to not block their ads.

If the developer of a free antivirus application made its money the same way, and accepted cash to treat certain malware in the same way that Adblock Plus has treated certain ads, would it be much different?

40hz:
It would be nice if AdBlock was a little more upfront and candid about how their white listing and "pay for exception" policy works. They didn't go out of their way to call attention to it.

When a product calls itself "AdBlock," naive little fools like me tend to assume (at least at first) that that is exactly what it does. And that it does it globally. When it doesn't - or the publisher switches horses in the middle of the stream - I think it's incumbent on them be more upfront and public about their policy change, "lest disappointment ensue" as a badly translated set of instructions once said.

Perhaps it's because I have a big problem with the whole "monetization" concept itself that I get so irritable about things like what AdBlock is doing. I think it far more honest and dignified that somebody who wants to make money from their works simply put them up for sale to the people who are using them - as opposed to putting in some sneaky semi-hidden revenue stream while hoping that most people won't notice or care about it.

But that's probably just me. 8)

---------------------------------------------

Note: another popular blocking product called Ghostery now also has a hidden revenue stream. Ghostery was bought by Evidon in 2010. MIT's Technology Review covered that debate in an article that can be read here.

From the MIT article:

That makes Evidon, which bought Ghostery in 2010, something of an anomaly in the complex world of online advertising. Whether in Congress or at the Web standards body W3C, debates over online privacy typically end up with the ad industry and privacy advocates facing off along clearly demarcated lines (see “High Stakes in Internet Tracking”).

Evidon straddles both sides of that debate. “This is not a scheme,” says Scott Meyer, Evidon’s cofounder and CEO and formerly a senior figure in the New York Times Company’s online operations, when asked about that dual role. He says there is no conflict in offering a tool that helps users hide from the ad industry while also helping that same industry.

“Anything that gives people more transparency and control is good for the industry,” says Meyer, who says it’s fine with him that most Ghostery users opt not to share data with Evidon. Meyer points out that those who want to block online advertising are unlikely to respond to it, making Ghostery use good for both sides. Meyer also says that Ghostery users are presented with clear disclosures about how the company uses their data if they opt in. However, MIT Technology Review found that it was possible for a user to opt in without seeing the disclosures.
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Which is another problem with monetization. It can be implemented at any time with scant notice, whether by the original developer (often), or by some company acquiring the product (always).

As time goes on, the truth in the saying "if you're not the customer - you're the product" becomes more and more inescapable when it comes to closed-source software.
 :-\

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