ABP (AdblockPlus) sucks and I will prove it...

[Aractus]

OK, so I wanted to know exactly why ABP (AdblockPlus) has a whitelist enabled by default. Sure it's only installed in one browser (IE) and I'd use Adblock instead if I could, but I want to know what the fuck they're thinking. Here's an example let me show you (all these images are 75% size)...

DuckDuckGo:



StartPage:



Ixquick:



Okay so let's review the ABP policy located here... I want you to pay special attention to "which ads are 'acceptable'?" In that section it reads "Static advertisements only", "Preferably text only", "Advertising should be clearly marked", "it should be distinguishable from page content", "paid search results cannot be mixed with organic results" etc.

Now if you thought any of those were bad, here's Google - with ABP running on the default settings:


(click for full-size)

No I'm not joking, here's ABP's policy:

When ads are placed above the content of a main page, they should not require the user to scroll down. The available vertical space is likely to be at least 700 pixels. Advertising should not occupy more than one-third of that height. Paid search results on search pages are allowed to occupy more space, but they should never outnumber organic results.

Now here's the thing - this is my opinion - the google ads on startpage and ixquick are specifically designed to look like the search results, and particularly on ixquick if you don't pay attention it's difficult to tell where the first ad begins. Furthermore, google ads use javascript to hide the advertising URL. DuckDuckGo's ad does have a clearly different look to the search results. Google's ads are completely excessive. The outnumber the search results (google provided 9 search results, and the first one isn't even visible without scrolling on a 1920x1080 display!)

Now, what ads does AdBlockPlus block by default out of those 4 websites? DuckDuckGo's ad and that's all. And how many of those websites have their own option to disable their ads? That would be only DuckDuckGo!

How the fuck ABP sees that google page full of ads as "non-intrusive" is beyond me. Personally I would call DDG's ad the least intrusive of the lot, but according to ABP it's the only intrusive one in the examples I provided.