Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Trampling on users’ free will is not sustainable -- even if you're Facebook · 2016-08-12 18:32 by Ben Williams

They call this thing a cat-and-mouse game for a reason. Since we wrote yesterday there have been several workarounds, followed by “re-circumventions” that only brought more workarounds. But the tech tug-of-war is not the point. What’s important is that going against the will of the people is wholly unsustainable.

FB reblock: ad-blocking community finds workaround to Facebook · 2016-08-11 16:54 by Ben Williams

A few days ago Facebook decided to force users to view their ads, even if those users employed an ad blocker. Well, it’s taken about 48 hours but the open source community that supports all ad blockers has already found a solution. You’ll just need to update your filters (see how here) to return the largest social network to an ad-free place.

Oh well, looks like Facebook just got all anti-user · 2016-08-09 17:52 by Ben Williams

Facebook announced today that it would start attempting to show ads to ad-blocking users who visit its desktop site. This is unfortunate, but it’s nothing new: they join a long list of “circumventionists” in an arms race against the open source community fueling ABP and other ad blockers.

Element Hiding Helper 1.3.9 for Adblock Plus released · 2016-08-02 14:18 by Wladimir Palant

Install Element Hiding Helper 1.3.9 for Adblock Plus

This is a minor update, fixing the position of the icon in the Inspector panel for Firefox 48 and above (issue 4255), as well as improving its quality on high-resolution screens (issue 4256).

Finally! Adblock Plus for Microsoft Edge now available for 350 million Windows 10 users · 2016-08-02 14:00 by Oleksandr Paraska

Today, Microsoft is releasing the big Anniversary Update to Windows 10. Among other changes to the operating system, this brings support for extensions to Microsoft Edge. Which means that people running Windows 10 can install Adblock Plus for Microsoft Edge, and start blocking annoying advertisements in Microsoft’s new standard browser.

The lonely bully: China issues edict to ban ad blockers · 2016-07-20 14:00 by Ben Williams

Just last week China issued its Internet Advertising Interim Rules, essentially a list of prescriptions for online ads that included Article 16, which stipulates that ad blockers will be banned from September 1. This is troubling news for Chinese users, many of whom block ads on their mobile phones, but it’s even more concerning for the door of online oppression it leaves open.

Resolving the ad blocking 'dilemma' – new research from HubSpot shows how · 2016-07-13 14:01 by Ben Williams

HubSpot Research conducted a global survey on ad blocking. Now, before you dismiss it and go back to hunting down corpses in rivers on Pokémon Go, bear in mind that we got to add some questions this time that produced results which delve into places other studies don’t go. While it doesn’t reveal any waterlogged bodies we did stumble on some solutions for advertisers’ “ad blocker issue.”

The full study is available here, a slideshare’s here.

BIG Flattr Plus update · 2016-07-07 17:05 by Ben Williams

“BIG” as in long … we take a deep dive into the status our Flattr Plus project: what we’ve accomplished since we announced it in May, what we need to improve on and where the project is heading. If you’re interested in getting the beta this fall before anyone else, sign up here.

Adblock Browser 1.4.0 for iOS released · 2016-06-29 11:05 by Mario König

Install Adblock Browser 1.4.0 for iOS

Changes

Added “in page” search functionality via URL bar (Issue 3929)
Added the ability to open websites in Adblock Browser from Safari using Safari App Extensions (Issue 3901)
Added the possibility to show the settings bar by tapping the bottom of the screen as well as the possibility to scroll to the top of the page by tapping the status bar (Issue 3859, Issue 3932)
Deferred the location permission dialog to when websites actually request the user’s location (Issue 3898)
Implemented multiple minor user experience improvements (Issue 3812, Issue 4003, Issue 4016)
Fixed multiple bugs which caused ABB to crash under specific circumstances (Issue 3534, Issue 3925, Issue 4002, Issue 4074, Issue 4166)
Fixed multiple additional minor bugs (Issue 3897, Issue 4035, Issue 4064)

Adblock Plus 1.12.1 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2016-06-28 12:56 by Dave Vandyke

Install Adblock Plus 1.12.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.12.1 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.12.1 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

This is a minor release, including some bug fixes and performance improvements.

Changes

Further improved element hiding performance, reducing overall page load times (issue 4075).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Fixed a bug that stopped Adblock Plus filter subscription links from working for old versions of Chrome and Opera (issue 4065).

Safari-only changes

Fixed a regression, introduced with the previous release, that stopped adverts from being blocked on YouTube when using older versions of Safari that still relied on the Flash player (issue 4141).
Fixed a minor bug when converting $document exception rules to Safari Content Blocking rules (issue 4076, issue 4072).