Adblock shenanigans

[Aractus]

Okay I was planning to make a topic last week, but I didn't.

Firstly, use uBlock Origin, not ABP, Adblock, Adguard, or any other 'blocker' where possible. A recent benchmark showed it still outperforms its competitors, despite it being completely non-profit (no donations are solicited) and open-source.

This is the old version of Adblock's FAQ (bottom of their homepage - click for full size).



And here is the new version (again click for full size):



What happened was Adblock sold-out to a mystery buyer around the end of September, and people were notified about it on October 1. People using Adblock then got this notice:



"Announcing the acceptable ads program"? The main point of difference between Adblock and ABP was that Adblock didn't have an "acceptable ads program" and always said that white-listing sites should be up to the individual user and not the adblocking extension. I'm not going to go into a rant about how downright intrusive some of these so-called 'non-intrusive' ads are (such as on startpage.com); but it does beg the question how long will ABP and AB (and AG) be able to keep up this farce?

See both programs are open-source. So that really begs the question - how did Michael Gundlach manage to sell something that's open-source? All he really sold was the website, and handed development to whomever now owns it. Anyone can fork their own version from the source (which isn't kept strictly up-to-date but is available), just like they could with uBlock, or ABP.

So why does the website's new FAQ lie about the 'development team'? The FAQ is just shamelessly plagiarised from Gundlach's original one and doesn't tell us anything.

And furthermore why was the Knowledge Base changed too?

Before:



After:



Notice that much more information was removed than was needed to simply patch over the introduction of "acceptable ads".

I will post a reply shortly to deal more specifically with the current opinion trend of adblockers (some of which might surprise you), but before I do I want to share one final thing in the OP - one advertising company called "PageFair". It automatically detects ads that are blocked on a website by ABP (or another adblocker) and then serves users alternate ads that conform to the 'acceptable ads program'. Of course these alternate ads get blocked anyway by any users not participating in the 'acceptable ads program', however most users leave ABP on its default settings once installed, automatically opting them in to seeing so-called 'non intrusive ads'.

But what happened a few days ago was that Pagefair ads got hacked to install malware on vulnerable systems. This just goes to prove that ALL 3rd-party ads represent a security risk to users. This is why I've ALWAYS used the MVPS HOSTS file (I honestly can't even remember when I first installed it it was that long ago now). Don't get me wrong, I do applaud Pagefair for wanting to make internet ads less intrusive in webpages - however, it doesn't solve the security risk or the privacy risk. It just solves the 'annoyance factor'. That'd be why the MVPS HOSTS file blocks pagefair.

Think about this. If you hack one single website to install malware, then you can only target that website's viewers. But if you hack the 3rd-party advertiser you can have your malicious code running on hundreds of the most popular websites on the web. This is why big 3rd-party advertisers like Pagefair are a target for hackers - because they only have to hack one company to have their malware served on hundreds of websites, without needing to hack hundreds of websites individually. By the way this should serve as a timely reminder to have flash disabled by default (i.e. set it on "ask to activate" and then activate it only when you need to on websites).

[Minimalist]

There are no "non-annoying ads."

[Jackalope]

There are ads on the internet?

[SteelCurtain]

Ghostery, son.

[Jackalope]

I'm not going to go into a rant about how downright intrusive some of these so-called 'non-intrusive' ads are (such as on startpage.com)

OK, I'll bite. What's "downright intrusive" about the ads on startpage.com? I'd never used startpage.com before about 60 seconds ago, I just happen to have ABP installed in this browser (it's an oversight), and the ads there look pretty much like standard Google Adsense text ads - and quite frankly, if you're going to have ads, I'd rather they be those rather than the exploit-laden bullshit that everyone else serves up. The only thing about them that's even remotely obnoxious is that there's little little to distinguish them from ordinary search results.

As far as the rest of it goes, yeah, I agree, uBlock Origin is the way to go.

[Jackalope]

Ghostery, son.

Wasn't Ghostery purchased by one of the ad networks?

[SteelCurtain]

Maybe. I still see zero ads.

[Jackalope]

Maybe. I still see zero ads.

The dope on the nerdvine back maybe a year ago said to drop Ghostery like a bad habit, so I did.

15 seconds of google-fu later, I found what I was looking for.

[Aractus]

Okay onto the some of the "current" opinions...

Youtubers hate adblock and don't mind saying so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_SVd927h0I

Well Hank, nice of you to tell us that you and John don't use pre-roll ads on your channel 'vlogbrothers' because you "don't like pre-roll ads". But that's really a half-truth isn't it? Since you do use them on your other channel, CrashCourse.

Here's a really irate loud-mouth American Youtuber mouthing-off about Adblock users for a full 20-something minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHPSTAXtGA


Oh no, adblock users are "stealing" your content? Your content that you publish at no cost to you on Youtube? Give me a fucking break, you don't even pay hosting fees or anything, your videos are displayed at no cost to you - do Youtubers really not understand that concept? Do they not understand just how hypocritical they sound when they complain about users viewing "their" videos using a browser extension? Not to mention their Youtube channels fucking suck anyway, and I don't understand why people subscribe to their generic shit.

I already went on about this in a previous thread, but to re-cap. Youtube is driving adblock use at the moment because of how saturated the service is with ads. If Google put in place better sanctions on how many ads can appear to viewers (for example let's say one or two pre or post roll ads per hour of Youtube viewing), then people would be much less annoyed. But then again, if Google did that then well more than 40% of the revenue from advertising would be lost, so they don't want to do that because it would mean an even greater loss of present revenue when compared with what they get at the moment. But let's face it, Youtube still isn't profitable to Google even with the advertisement saturation. If Google - the world's largest and most profitable internet advertising company can't make Youtube turn a profit for them - it just proves we have a platform that's currently unsustainable - see if users were actually charged hosting fees for their videos, they might then start to realise that it actually costs money to host shit on the internet.

"Non Intrusive? Really?

Yes Min I don't agree that 'all advertising is intrusive', in fact consumers do have certain kinds of advertising they prefer. If a shop puts a Store Catalogue out the front of their shop - lo and behold people actually choose to pick it up and read it. In fact, catalogues delivered in the mail - while I hate them and never read them - many people just love for some reason - and they will keep them in their homes on their coffee tables for weeks without throwing them out as well.

But here's the problem with PageFair. They swap-out intrusive advertising for non-intrusive advertising - so this begs the question, why don't websites just cut-out the middle-man and change all of their advertising to "non-intrusive"? Well because they don't want to - PageFair actually allows them to keep the intrusive ads, and yet still show ads to a number of people using ABP/AB/AG. So they actually aren't supporting the shift away from the more intrusive ads, they're simply helping websites keep them without being penalised by the "acceptable ads program". Get your head around that.

"Adblock is stealing"?

This claim has been made a lot of times. By many different companies. But advertising companies themselves are actually quite careful not to make the claim.

There's actually been a declining trend in the use of popping up messages to users to "disable your adblock please to support this site". For example, DuckDuckGo abandoned the use of the 'anti-adblock-message' a few months back, even though it was relatively non-intrusive as far as 'please disable your adblock' messages go:

---

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If you haven’t read about ad blocking in the recent past, I envy you. For those of you who did escape the bonanza, please share the location of the rock you were living under.
...
It’s undeniable that ad blocking creates a better Internet experience. Nice clean pages, no flashing ads, or, God forbid, pop-ups.
...
Secret Media, on the other hand, is a full-on assault on the ad blockers by trying to outwit them. Whilst pleasing a few hundred publishers, they deny what a billion Internet users want: no ads.

Philip Inghelbrecht, Oct 2015

Pretty bold to be published on a company that relies on internet advertising for revenue.
But what's perhaps even more startling is opinions from the sector itself. AdNews, which was founded in 1928, recently published this, and I suggest reading it in full, but here are some snippets:

Candide McDonald | 8 October 2015
There is not a person on the planet who loves ads more than I do. I just happen to love AdBlock too. I love it because I don’t want to know the “secret” reason why a 57-year-old grandmother looks 27. If you can’t grab my interest before the ‘Skip’ button kicks in, you don’t deserve to be on YouTube. And whatever is in my phone is not for anyone else to see, unless I send it to them. I am not alone in Team AdBlock - see what these industry creative think below.

Andy Flemming, creative director M&C Saatchi Sydney
... From now on, I’ll just tell (research companies) that people hate what we do so fucking much that they’re willing to use a bespoke program that completely eradicates it from their lives.
Because when all’s said and done, the vast majority of what the industry puts out is shit. It’s shit because of many factors.
Researchers. Nervousness. Lack of talent. Researchers. People have had enough.
And who can blame them? We show the same ad literally thousands of times on YouTube. ...

Barrie Barton, strategy and insight director Right Angle Studio
... There’s no point in lamenting blocking software – people quite naturally just want what they like the most, with as little distraction as possible. Viewed optimistically, adblocking isn’t even a problem, it’s a provocation to think of better ways to engage our audiences and make money. ...

Matt Gilmour, executive creative director Archibald/Williams
... I love adblocking and I love how it blocks ads. So when I was asked to write about ad blocking being a problem, I was slightly concerned. Have I been doing the wrong thing by the ad industry all this time? How much larger could my penis have become? How many Russian brides might I have married? I’ll never know. ...
Obviously, adblocking will increase in popularity, but that’s a good thing because it’ll make us work better. ...

Lee Stephens, CEO Switch Digital
While adblocking is a factor in the market, it remains a secondary issue behind advertising accountability and quality. ...
In June 2014, Adobe conducted a study of 150 million US browsers and found that young men (aged under 29) and tech savvy consumers are the highest users of ad blockers. ...
Young men are a notoriously difficult target audience to engage, and a reliance on desktop banner advertising alone is a rookie mistake. ...
On the whole, adblocking has been met with a similar hysteria to that experienced with cookie blockers 10 years ago. ...

Kristy Russell, executive producer, Tribal Melbourne
... If people are going to the trouble of blocking ads, then it’s pretty clear they don’t want to receive irrelevant ads, and brands could benefit from not pissing people off. ...
Adblocking is a simple reminder that the advertising world is constantly evolving and we live in a world of empowered audiences. ...

Ben Keenan, interactive creative director Clemenger BBDO Melbourne
My grandfather used to design some of the original 728 x 90 banners back in the early 1990s. They’d lay each pixel by hand back then. ...
They were so evocative in the way they blinked, asked us to “click here” – where was I clicking to? ...

See even the industry realises there's a problem, and it's not the consumer. Loud-mouth Youtubers might be blaming the consumer, but they aren't the problem. Print advertising and other forms of advertising are not privacy-invading and a security-risk in the way that 3rd-party internet ads are.

OK, I'll bite.  What's "downright intrusive" about the ads on startpage.com?  I'd never used startpage.com before about 60 seconds ago, I just happen to have ABP installed in this browser (it's an oversight), and the ads there look pretty much like standard Google Adsense text ads - and quite frankly, if you're going to have ads, I'd rather they be those rather than the exploit-laden bullshit that everyone else serves up.  The only thing about them that's even remotely obnoxious is that there's little little to distinguish them from ordinary search results.

As far as the rest of it goes, yeah, I agree, uBlock Origin is the way to go.

Well let's have a look at a comparison between SP and DDG then:

Startpage:



Duckduckgo:



There's a number of differences I could point out. First note that these screenshots are exactly the same size (594x548 taken from the top-left at 75% zoom). They both show the first three search results, although DDG also shows Wikipedia above the search results. Startpage has 3x ads that are nearly indistinguishable from the first search result, whereas DDG's have  distinct style that doesn't try to make them blend into the search results. Now this isn't to actually indemnify DDG, as sometimes they do serve ads that are are the same width as the search results, in the same style, and merely marked with the yellow "AD" marker.

And Adsense seems to randomly decide upon whether it will serve three ads or just two on Startpage, which makes it even more difficult for users to find the first search result.

[Tiberius]

Ghost Rank is disabled by default though, and I don't think they hide the fact that it sends data to advertisers, after all they need to make money somehow.

Big difference between that and "purchased by one of the ad networks" IMO.

Update: I just checked, and Ghost Rank on my install of Ghostery is disabled (should be default setting) and also has the following text next to the option:

When you enable Ghostrank™, Ghostery collects anonymous data about the trackers you've encountered and the sites on which they were placed. This data is about tracking elements and the webpages on which they are found, not you or your browsing habits.

Online marketing companies need better visibility into real-world applications of their technologies and those owned by their competitors. Ghostrank data is sold as reports to businesses to help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties, and comply with privacy standards.

Ghostrank data shared with businesses never includes data about Ghostery users. To learn more about the data that Ghostrank collects, click here.

We also publish our own research and provide data to privacy researchers[1][2], analysts and journalists. Additionally, organizations like the Better Business Bureau use Ghostrank data in the enforcement of privacy standards like the DAA AdChoices program.

We hope you'll opt-in to Ghostrank, but if you do not enable data sharing, we won't collect anything. To read more about how the Ghostery service supports the business, read our post The Most Frequently Asked Question.

So yeah, I don't think there's any reason to worry about Ghostery at the current time.