Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Newest update to Adblock Plus is a massive strike against ‘anti-adblock’ tools · 2018-08-28 14:15 by Tom Woolford
Adblock Plus 3.3 strikes against anti-ad block companies.
Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Your Data and You · 2018-03-22 14:50 by Tom Woolford
Adblock Plus discusses the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and what you should do to keep your data safe.
Yes, that's how you do it · 2008-06-20 18:28 by Wladimir Palant
Just read this article on The Daily WTF. Yes, that’s how you do it if you care about your readers and their impression of your site. I am not usually blocking Google Ads but I had to add a filter specifically for The Daily WTF to block Google’s image ads. I guess I can take that filter out again. Now if they would only get rid of animated ads altogether, I would disable Adblock Plus on that site.
How I "stole" the code that made Adblock a success · 2007-09-16 18:39 by Wladimir Palant
Just wow… I got a mail from a fellow extension developer with some corrections to the History of Adblock. He notified me that his content blocker was first to use content policies and suggested that I correct the history. I declined because the history never claims that I was first when I came up with this concept in June 2003, I was (and still am) simply unaware of already existing implementations.
Ads don't generate money · 2007-09-10 04:46 by Wladimir Palant
The Adblock discussion started by Danny Carlton’s half-hearted attempts to exert pressure on Mozilla Corporation continues. Now the “big players” entered the game, in the last few days I was contacted by reporters from NY Times, BBC World, National Public Radio, and several others. Their criticism of Adblock Plus is different — and more convincing. After all, nobody can deny that Adblock Plus is taking revenue away from content providers thus undermining the foundation of the Internet, right?
Profitability is not a right, it has to be earned · 2007-09-06 22:18 by Wladimir Palant
The first project I wanted to make money from became a failure. Yes, I got some customers, even one large company, but in the end what I earned wasn’t comparable to the effort I put into it. Who’s fault was it? Mine of course. I knew too little about how to get users interested and to sell my product, and, frankly, I didn’t even want to learn more — creating a good product was more important to me. Did I blame my customers for my failure, did I say that they should have been more interested, should have paid more? Of course not. The customers didn’t have any obligation towards me, they were free to choose, as always.
Filterset.G - I call "bullshit" · 2007-02-13 15:01 by Wladimir Palant
I stumbled upon the Filterset.G article in Wikipedia and noticed that G recently edited it adding some “facts”. The most ridiculous one is: “There are approximately 1.5 million users of Filterset.G”. And these statistics are supposed to back it up. From the look of it G simply took the absolutely meaningless number of sites per month.
The Sorry State of Online Advertising · 2007-01-31 00:18 by Wladimir Palant
Advertising online is at an all-time low. Users are constantly bombarded by advertisements that seem to be getting larger and more visually obtrusive by the minute. Online advertisements seem to have little or nothing to do with the site’s content and lack any sense of respect for the user. Even though it is a well-known fact that internet users detest ads, the same horrendous model is shoved down their throats. It is as if site creators have just accepted that the advertising status quo is the only way to generate ad revenue and they expect that the users will have to “deal with it”.
Read The Sorry State of Online Advertising by P.J. Onori.
Anatomy of ads · 2007-01-25 18:57 by Wladimir Palant
I would like to take a look at the different costs connected to ads. Most of the time, the only cost people consider is our attention — ads are designed to be distractive, they don’t let us concentrate on what we are doing. Jeff Atwood analyzed the space occupied by ads in comparison to content on a particular page and came to alarming results. I want to pick another page to look at the other aspects.
A World of Endless Advertisements · 2007-01-22 03:29 by Wladimir Palant
Jeff Atwood wrote an interesting article on the craziness of internet advertising. I’m not commenting on it yet so just read it yourself: A World of Endless Advertisements. Don’t forget to read the comments. Some of my own thoughts on this topic: Ethics of blocking ads – part 3