Today, users of the well-known "AdBlock" extension for many browsers received a popup notification telling them that the company has been sold, and the new AdBlocking Overlords have decided to allow some ads that are controlled by the "Acceptable Ads" program.
The program is opt-out, not opt-in, and will be (or has already been) enabled the next time your extension checks in. An article on how to opt-out of the Acceptable Ads program and continue to block all ads can be found here.
What advertisement blocking extension(s) do you use, and on what browser?
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AdBlock, Not Adblock or Adblock Plus (Separate Companies), has been Sold
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(Score: 5, Informative) by opinionated_science on Friday October 02 2015, @02:08PM
uBlock Origin.
Don't see the point in *any* "acceptable" ads unless they can be guaranteed malware free....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:25PM
Yup, same here. Screw that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @03:02PM
Thanks, I checked out uBlock and may switch to it from Adblock Plus / AdBlock Plus / ABP /whatever it is I have now. Sounds like uBlock may be less resource intensive. Not only that, it has a distinguished name so I can actually use a product that I can tell apart from the other thirty extensions named some form of "adblock."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock#uBlock_Origin [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock [wikipedia.org]
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @03:08PM
Update: I'm trying it out. I took all the default filters plus Fanboy's Annoyance List. I wondered if I'd need to add Fanboy's Social Blocking List, but apparently social buttons are already blocked by one of the default filters.
Looks great! And so far I imagine my browser seems zippier (not sure if that's true or not). My only nit so far is it's not immediately apparent how to send in a report if I see an ad that I think should be blocked. I liked that feature of Adblock Plus.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by len_harms on Friday October 02 2015, @03:28PM
I am using ublock on a couple of boxes. The rest are still ABP.
I have to say the speed and memory usage is nice. In some ways the GUI is better. In some ways worse. For example disable is sorta permanent. So if you disable to get some site to work correctly it stays that way. Not the behavior I really want. Now that I have played with it for a month or two I would say I like the idea of 'global disable' better instead of per site. Also disabling individual filters is not as nice as it is in ABP. ABP has a nice little checkbox with ublock you have to write a counter whitelist item. Also the logging is really nicer looking and I would say better than ABP. However, it does not keep track of what is blocked. So you can see a site has 100+ blocked items and you want to look. Then you open the logging and it is empty until you refresh. But at that point the website may act differently. Those are my nitpicks with ABP.
I do like the 'total blocked items' counter. I am sitting around 11-12% blocked items. That may however be because of my usage of no-script as well.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Friday October 02 2015, @06:54PM
I just started to use it yesterday, got a block on sorceforge site, was able to temp unblock without a problem. "So if you disable to get some site to work correctly it stays that way." I think is an incorrect statement.
(Score: 2) by len_harms on Friday October 02 2015, @07:58PM
I think I know what you are talking about. Yeah that does work temporarily. What I was talking about it the dropdown menu item. The big blue button to disable/enable a site. That seems like it auto adds to the white-list. What I want is 'only for this session' sort of disable. Sort of like what no-script does.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 02 2015, @07:43PM
but apparently social buttons are already blocked by one of the default filters.
Not in my experience. I had to explicitly turn that on.
Social (2)
Anti-ThirdpartySocial (see warning inside list): CHECKED
Fanboy’s Annoyance List (forums.lanik.us):
Fanboy's Social Blocking List (forums.lanik.us): CHECKED
Without these checked I was still getting social buttons. Gone now.
I'm off to find pages with those annoying html5 popups to see if those are blocked.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @07:49PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 02 2015, @09:35PM
I don't have that one checked, but social buttons are blocked.
I suppose they may be blocked in both of those lists.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Techwolf on Friday October 02 2015, @06:52PM
Make sure you are using uBlock Origin and not uBlock. Different projects with different goals.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday October 02 2015, @07:26PM
And not Ublock for Origin
as well as a bunch of other wanna-bes that are tagging along on the ublock name.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @08:05PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 02 2015, @09:01PM
Yep, this saved me from making the same mistake.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by tnt118 on Friday October 02 2015, @03:15PM
I'm hearing a lot of folks give this a good recommendation, and I'm about to try it out myself.
I think I like it here.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday October 02 2015, @06:40PM
Try out uMatrix as well for script blocking. It's much like RequestPolicy (for FireFox) but has a better interface and works on Chrome as well. Absolutely fantastic.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 02 2015, @09:02PM
It's a bit confusing at first, but once you figure it out, it is simply first rate. No more need to blanket whitelisting sites across all domains.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday October 02 2015, @11:58PM
But the ability is there if you wish as well. The editable config with wildcard support is awesome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @05:08PM
An elaboration may be useful. Looks like there is "uBlock" and "uBlock Origin". You would likely want "uBlock Origin". For more details, look up at wikipedia.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Friday October 02 2015, @06:50PM
Ha, you beat me to it. I did some research on finding another ad disabler, found uBlock and found nearly the same situation of AdBlock/Ablock Plus, uBlock and uBlock Origin are separate projects. uBlock Origin is a fork of uBlock by the orinagle developer. The current dev of uBlock is borderline scammer now.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 02 2015, @09:00PM
I started using uMatrix when NoScript or ScriptNo or whatever it was called quit working. It had been abandonware for a while, so it was only a matter of time.
uMatrix is much more powerful, allowing per-domain whitelists. I set up uBlock when I got that "haha fuck you" message from AdBlock.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:10PM
AdBlock PIus, avoid sinful ads.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday October 02 2015, @02:28PM
and the new AdBlocking Overlords have decided to allow some ads that are controlled by the "Acceptable Ads" program.
Well they just jettisoned any users who had switched over from AdBlock Plus.
Not that it isn't extremely easy to just turn off that setting ABP.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:28PM
...use? only one: disabled javascript. works perfectly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @03:46PM
Works perfectly for most sites. But sometimes the functionality I'm after (like watching videos) needs JavaScript enabled. In that case, I still do not want to see ads.
Policeman allows you to block everything coming from another site (even non-script stuff). The best way to avoid third-party tracking is if the third-party web server doesn't even get any hits from you.
But even then, it's IMHO a good idea to have an adblocker as last line of defense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @04:28PM
NoScript, 'nuff said.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday October 02 2015, @07:10PM
Noscript only prevents scripts. It doesn't prevent e.g. tracking images.
NoScript is necessary, but not sufficient.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by termigator on Saturday October 03 2015, @04:01PM
Combine NoScript with RequestPolicy. Blocks most crap and tracking bugs. RP is good to see how horrible many sites are in serving data from outside the originating page.
I have yet to use any adblocking extensions since the above tends to be sufficient.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 03 2015, @04:14PM
Yes, RequestPolicy is a good complement to NoScript (although lately I've switched to Policeman since it allows more fine-grained whitelisting).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday October 03 2015, @01:58AM
NoScript for me too.
I was not trying to specifically block ads. I see them all the time on Google.
Specifically, what I was trying to block is things that take over my machine. Executables doing only God-Knows-What.
Webmasters have their "hold harmless" clauses against responsibility for what crap they may serve up, while I have NoScript to knock the crap off the plate before I try to eat it.
If an advertiser wants his message seen, then do not try to force your way into my machine using executables.... I see this much like a door-to-door salesman running around with a set of lockpicks, crowbars, and axes, then running back to Congress, with his hand out for a shake, imploring them to pass law to make putting steel grates around one's house illegal because it "violates his business model".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday October 03 2015, @05:42PM
Don't forget hosts! Probably the best adblock I've ever used.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:31PM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:49PM
uBlock Origin has been working properly in PM for a while too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2015, @08:55PM
i wanted to mention that I too use adblock latitude.
I will have to check out ublock origin.
In any event, no script and adblock latitude work well for me.
i also use host files and a local DNS server to block several domains out there (doubleclick, google analytics, pageads2 or whatever as well). I intended to set up a pixel server to redirect the DNS lookups for those specific domains, but eh lazy.
besides, the red x or whatever is useful to indicate what a website is trying to sell me out with. if I had no information at all I would end up being ignorant of to whom my soul is being sold to and by whom.
(Score: 1) by isj on Friday October 02 2015, @02:40PM
Flashblock on the browser stops the most CPU-heavy ads.
I also go through a squid proxy where I have configured a few ACLs to block the worst ad or ad-like networks. Eg. insert-links-on-every-word services such as intellitxt are easily blocked that way.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday October 02 2015, @02:42PM
uBlock Origin (with a heck of a lot of filters added)
Ghostery
NoScript
Flash is not installed, and also disabled in Chrome
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @02:48PM
uBlock Origin
NoScript
HTTPS Everywhere
Self-Destructing Cookies
Flashblock
BetterPrivacy
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @03:04PM
RequestPolicy is another good one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @06:49PM
uBlock Origin has the same functionality if you check "I am an advanced user." in the settings. Another benefit is that, unlike RequestPolicy, it is actively maintained and e10s compatible. Yes, I know about RequestPolicyContinued, but that is technically a different add-on from RP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2015, @01:49PM
Good list. Time to switch to Palemoon though. As of Firefox 42 it will be a dead end for plugins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @02:55PM
What advertisement blocking extension(s) do you use, and on what browser?
I use AdBlock Plus (or Adblock plus? - who knows what the capitalization is, and if there's another product using the same name with different caps), on Firefox and Chrome. I believe it's the same product on both, but who knows? The newer entries need to stop picking the exact same name as the originals.
I've been using Adblock since the Filterset.G days and I switched from Adblock to Adblock Plus some time after Filterset.G died, whenever Adblock just totally stopped being updated, or stopped working.
My filters are EasyList, Fanboy's Social Blocking List, Malware Domains, EasyPrivacy, and Fanboy's Annoyance List. I had Adblock Warning Removal List in there, too, at some point, but I believe it was redundant with the Fanboy's Annoyance List and they conflicted with each other or caused bad performance or something.
Apparently on Chrome I have Adblock Warning Removal List, EasyList, EasyPrivacy, and Fanboy's Annoyance List. Maybe I need to update that to match what I have on Firefox and get rid of one of the two conflicting lists, but it doesn't seem to be a problem so far. I use Chrome less than Firefox.
I posted yesterday about why I block ads and that seems germane here so I'll briefly repeat it: I'm tired of being advertised to. I don't think advertising is evil or morally wrong or anything. There's probably even some threshold below which advertising doesn't bother me but it is much, much lower than it is for most people. I don't allow any "acceptable ads" with my adblocker. When I see a page detects my adblocker and nags me, lectures me, or tries to persuade me to change my mind or buy something, I report it so it can be added to the filter that's supposed to catch those things. If sites can't make it because I block ads, I don't care and I feel no remorse - I can live without them. I give willingly to some key sites that I want to keep around, like SoylentNews and I have occasionally run user-supported sites myself. I don't waste mental bandwidth for disrespectful jerks who want to guilt me into not blocking ads. If they don't want me viewing their site without ads, then it's up to them to implement technical or financial measures to stop me.
I read some sort of manifesto circa 2001 about how advertising was everywhere and how it was affecting quality of life. I remember it talked about how the author didn't need to be advertised to about shirts and he could just go down to costco and buy a pack of T-shirts. I can't find it any more, but I tend to think similarly to the way he did - I'm just tired of it and don't want to see it. Not on my phone (cell or landline), not in my email (thank God spam blocking has become so great), not in my browser, and not on my television. And I don't see it in any of these places, for the most part, and I'm much happier for it. I'm not angry at the advertisers - I just have no time for them.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @04:36PM
You may think you are happier but you have never tasted Coca Cola as good as it is to one inundated with the ads. You are choosing asceticism, which is fine for you, but don't expect others to conform to your (nonexistant) expectations.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @04:50PM
don't expect others to conform to your (nonexistant) expectations
I don't! :)
Good post, btw.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2, Insightful) by xorsyst on Friday October 02 2015, @03:32PM
Just Ghostery. I don't have a problem with seeing ads, just in the tracking. As it is, I basically never see ads.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SomeGuy on Friday October 02 2015, @03:35PM
Here is the ad blocker I use: Don't visit sites with abusive advertisements.
Go ahead and cry me a river about losing revenue, there is no law forcing me to view your pukey page.
Well, at least until the big web sites decide to join the ranks of the MPAA and RIAA and crate the Web Hypertext Association of America (WHAA!) and purchase a law to make everyone pay a web entertainment tax regardless if they even have internet access or not. :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @03:44PM
Are abusive ads anything like abusive husbands?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday October 02 2015, @04:13PM
Well, they hurt you and convince you that you need them. Quite possibly to not get kicked out of your home(page). They also mingle with shady characters and give you a virus afterwards, which is totally not their fault. So I'd say yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @03:56PM
How do you know which site has abusive advertisements before you visited it?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Osamabobama on Friday October 02 2015, @04:36PM
Well, your adblocker should tell you. I use VapoRware Plus+, and it warns me before I type an offending url.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 03 2015, @08:59PM
I had the same question.
Being told that I am a silly stupid person that simply should adhere to a strict diet of graham crackers to prevent sinful behavior he shouldn't be worried about that I am doing only tells me that we shouldn't take advice from control freaks because he will always know better than us. The list of approved sites probably won't include much of where I want to go.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday October 02 2015, @05:10PM
Here is the ad blocker I use: Don't visit sites with abusive advertisements.
So, you only visit here and a few random self-hosted blogs that don't get enough traffic to attract advertisers then?
All kidding aside, what useful sites are out there that don't treat their users like livestock to be tracked, monitored and sold to the highest bidder?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @03:41PM
I'm using Opera 12.16, which has a built in Content Blocker. I don't know if the Chropera versions still have it, but they probably don't. A set of wildcard rules can catch the majority of ads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @06:33PM
Man, I was so sad to let go of Opera 12... used it since the first version in the late 90's.
I've even paid for earlier versions (multiple times... it was that good).
It took me fully 2 years to find the acceptable extensions for FF and others to make them usable to me as a long time Opera power user.
(after opera ditched the 12 development path.)
so you know, I think there was one further point update to 12.17, tho I'm not sure it's relevant at this point
I miss it almost every day
Cheers fellow Opera lover!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 02 2015, @04:18PM
I use AdBlock by BetaFish to get rid of advertisements. And, no, I don't want to see any ads, period; abuse / malware / "annoying" / whatever, I don't care. I just fucking hate advertisements, and I don't give a goddamn if your business model depends on me sucking at that teat. Either hope you've got enough suckers to pay your bills that way, figure out some other way of paying the bills, or eat flaming death.
I use ClickToFlash by Marc Hovois to ensure that the only flashy things that actually load are the ones I really, truly, honestly want to load.
I use JS Blocker by Travis Roman so assholes who don't get the point that should have been made by the previous two can't sneak in under the radar. Works great; on a site-by-site basis, you pick and choose which scripts you do and don't want to load. Most sites don't need any JavaScript at all to get to a Reader view, and most of the rest don't need more than one or two self-hosted scripts.
And I use Safari Cookies by Sweet P Productions to ensure that cookies and caches and what-not don't build up. Ever since I have, YouTube has stopped being incredibly annoying with in-your-face "Recommended for you" videos that I really don't give a damn about, and all the sidebar videos are ones closely related to the video I'm watching. And, of course, no minute-long YouTube ads just to watch a 30-second cute kittens video somebody insists I must watch.
With all of this...browsing is actually pretty much exactly what it should be. Content, just the content, nothing but content. No bullshit. Stuff just works. And it's much, much, much faster, the browser basically never crashes, CPU usage is too low to see in the monitor, memory stays at about half a gigabyte, and so on.
It's high past time people started taking control of their browsing, rather than laying back an thinking of the Queen. Life is so much nicer without all the bullshit.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Friday October 02 2015, @04:53PM
(Score: 2) by No Respect on Friday October 02 2015, @04:58PM
From the announcement: "Acceptable Ads are not annoying."
Sorry, Charlie, or Michael or whatever your name is. Wrong. All online ads are annoying. I'll stick with ABP for now but will also be on the lookout for alternatives. This is the beginning of the end for ABP as they have started down the slippery slope of monetization. Next thing you know there will be some ads that you cannot opt out of. Slimy advertisers will be scrambling to pay ABP for the ability to get through the ad blocks.
(Score: 4, Touché) by joshuajon on Friday October 02 2015, @05:49PM
Is there any way the title or summary could have made it more abundantly clear that this is ***NOT*** related to Adblock Plus?
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday October 02 2015, @08:19PM
Is there any way the title or summary could have made it more abundantly clear that this is ***NOT*** related to Adblock Plus?
Yes, but only if one of the adblock products named Adblock would change its name.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Friday October 02 2015, @05:24PM
I use on both Cyberfox / Firefox and Google Chrome:
Disconnect
uBlock Origin
On the iPad Air, I've been using Mercury Browser Pro. With iOS 9, I haven't settled on a new adblocker yet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by snufu on Friday October 02 2015, @05:37PM
The fork of Adblock Plus without "acceptable" ads.
(Score: 1) by WittyUserName on Friday October 02 2015, @05:46PM
Firefox or Palemoon running:
HTTPS anywhere
Adbock Edge
Privacy Badger
NoScript
ImageBlock (toggles)
Random Agent Spoofer
Toggle Javascript
(FlashBlock on Palemoon)
Run with custom settings to clear everything on exit and no 3rd party trackers
Fsck the advertisers - I don't remember signing anything that requires me to obey their rules. They've have stolen the Web.
(Score: 1) by Groonch on Friday October 02 2015, @06:44PM
The subject of adblocking does bring up a lot of boohoo stories about how content producers need advertising to survive. But, really, internet advertising is the reason that alternative schemes like micropayments have not taken off. If adblock saturation gets to the point where people paying for media they consume (rather than the Soviet Russia scenario we have now), then I'm not too worried.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acp_sn on Friday October 02 2015, @08:00PM
the people who make ads don't have the victim's best interests in mind, they have their own best agenda regardless of the effect on the victim
direct advertising should be actionable as a civil tort under as a trespass
meatspace display advertising should be illegal as a public nuisance
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @08:21PM
RequestPolicy addon blocks requests to adservers
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 02 2015, @09:31PM
I might or might not know a guy that loves ads so much that he's written a custom uBlock settings check-box titled "I Love Ads \ Retaliation" that following each successful ad block, opens 1-8 download connections capped at 1kbps to the ad, followed by a client side connection drop within a few seconds.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Friday October 02 2015, @11:33PM
Besides ABP and Ghosterly, I also have my host file configured to block everything. I also block facebook which is probably even worse than the ads. And I would never get near any modern version of Windows.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by randmcnatt on Saturday October 03 2015, @12:46PM
I use AdBlock Plus as a general-purpose content-blocker (although due to recent events and after reading the comments here I may switch to uBlock),. For instance, one site I visit daily usually has many comments on every page, and has user avatars stored on an unusually slow server (and what site allows 150k avatars, anyway?). Since blocking the avatars the page loads at least 400% faster.
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.