Should anti-adblocking filters be added to subscriptions?

rick752 · Post by **rick752** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 6:02 pm

I have fixes for the anti-adblocking sites discussed here but have NOT published them or added them to the EasyList, EasyElement, or ABP Tracking Filter subscriptions.

I have been keeping a log of fixes (can be only seen on EasyList PVT forum .. it is not visible to the general public).

The question is:

"Should I add these to the filters, simply publicly publish the fixes as they come up, or not do anything about them and just let those sites suffer?"

... for now, I have chosen the latter

pirlouy · Post by **pirlouy** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 6:54 pm

For now, the later too.

Maybe you could create an extra list for those sites...

jamieplucinski · Post by **jamieplucinski** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 9:55 pm

Well that depends... these ad block blockers aren't achieving anything but pissing people off. I think it'd be best to add anti-adblock fixes for the benefit of new users that might not know what to do in the event of a stupid webmaster.

Post by **Hubird** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 1:39 am

I agree with jamie, up until recently ABP has been silently blocking ads in the background, but now we find sites displaying messages and denying ABP users from entering, this could become very confusing for new users. What are they going to do next, insist that we turn the built in pop up blocker off so they can have bigger more annoying ads ??

Peng · Post by **Peng** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 2:21 pm

Back when popup blockers started to catch on, did anything like this happen?

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 2:55 pm

Yes, in particular aol.com was very persistent about their pop-up ads (which more or less forced us to redesign Firefox' pop-up blocker). On quite a few sites you would see "please disable your pop-up blocker, pop-ups are required for this site to work". But this all went away soon, you cannot build a site on the hope that users will reconfigure their browser for you.

cuzz · Post by **cuzz** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:30 pm

Option A as a fourth easylist subscription would be entertaining

I think the best suffering to inflict is continuing the arms race against ads! It'll result in better ad-blocking!!

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 4:29 pm

cuzz wrote:Option A as a fourth easylist subscription would be entertaining

That would be pointless IMO. In the end this harms them much more than it harms us - so let it be.

ecjs · Post by **ecjs** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 7:50 pm

In my opinion, you should not make anti-(anti-adblock) filters as long as the websites which use those anti-adblock scripts are not that famous. If someone cares about them, he would just come and look for a topic in here.

mrbene · Post by **mrbene** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 2:28 am

Either way, a strict differentiation between false positives should exist. It is my understanding that false positives have historically been reported and corrected. Should those detection methods depend on false positives, like http://showip.net/adblock.php, be treated any differently than accidental false positives?

How about DOM crawling? Does it make sense to attempt to block or work around scripts that crawl the DOM to verify the existence of certain elements? I know that this work-around is already in place for Google ads - http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js is not blocked, but the iframe that the script generates is.

Finally, what about the messages that sites put up? Do those get blocked "only if they are invasive," and if so, what is "invasive"? A JavaScript alert() box? A "please click to indicate you have understood" page? A DIV?

Rick, kudos for bringing this topic up. I think that with proper transparency, content publishers who depend on advertisement revenue will feel less threatened by Adblock Plus, allowing them to spend more time improving their user experience, and their relationship with their customers. If there is a documented way of not having your "Whitelist This Site" get blocked, there'll be happiness on the side of the publisher.

Hmm...

/mrbene.

mrbene · Post by **mrbene** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 2:43 am

Like so:

http://mrbene.net/

/bene.

edit: Note that all you get is text saying "Please whitelist my site" and when you click on the link I prompt and add the whitelist entries. This is a quick mock-up, to show that adding site-specific whitelist entries can be very easy.

Post by **Hubird** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 8:54 am

I've been thinking a little more about this topic and I'm willing to boycott sites that try to force me to put up with ads.

cuzz · Post by **cuzz** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 7:00 am

mrbene wrote: "Please whitelist my site"

How is that other than "polite" adblocking-blocking?

mrbene · Post by **mrbene** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 10:11 am

cuzz wrote:
mrbene wrote: "Please whitelist my site"
How is that other than "polite" adblocking-blocking?

There's nothing but that tech demo at http://mrbene.net/ right now - no actual content if you were to whitelist the site. It's simply showing that static filters can be created that can create whitelist entries.

If a site with actual content were to implement this type of technology, it would be best with a subtle notification, and while meeting the recommendations here, and whatever discussion may have occurred based on this.

The problem is that even meeting the recommendations, if a web site puts their ads in an "/ads/" subdirectory on their own server, Easylist and other filter sets will block it. Therefore, providing an easy method of whitelisting is helpful to both the web site owner who is politely engaging his or her visitors, as well as the site visitor who has an easy way of supporting the site - if they so choose.

edited for BBCode.