Adblock Plus

extremetech.com has been abusing the site with randomly generating scripts to avoid being detected and targeting adblock plus users by countering all filters. Which has had to deploy a blanket block on the site.

This is counter to any Acceptable ad policy.

Also, the site "deadline.com" has been attempting to counter adblock users, and also should be removed on the same basis.

No comments yet?

I forwarded it to our BizDev team last week and that usually takes a bit of back-and-forth between them and the partner. Seems like they're a bit shy when it comes to using the forum to communicate that.

Anyway, I could imagine that it may depend on whom we have the partnership with (e.g. the publisher or the ad provider) and also to what degree they are involved in that.

Though as a general policy, if sites subvert Adblock Plus/Eastlist filters they cant then request or be in the Acceptable Ads list. (Can't have your cake and eat it too)

How would a policy change like this need to happen?

fanboy wrote:How would a policy change like this need to happen?

We need to internally discuss our options how we could enforce this taking all existing partnerships into consideration. I agree that we don't want a site with Acceptable Ads on it to employ anti-adblock techniques.

fanboy wrote:Though as a general policy, if sites subvert Adblock Plus/Eastlist filters they cant then request or be in the Acceptable Ads list. (Can't have your cake and eat it too)

Note that in some cases, like this one, we don't have a partnership with the website directly but with the ad provider.

deadline.com has cleaned there site, no more revolving anti-adblock scripts (I've removed filters targeting them). extremetech.com is still an issue. Also tweaktown.com has a similar anti-adblock scheme. Seems to a common anti-adblock cms?