Which is better, Adblock or Adblock Plus?

He surely just forgot to mention that Google allegedly payed 25 million € to Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, in order to participate in the "acceptable ads" program, a "feature" which is turned on by default and allows users to "surf more comfortably". And that he is (or at least was) one of the directors.

I'm most certain that there are people out there who would call this business model "blackmailing", but I could also be wrong.

Source (in german): http://www.welt.de/wall-street-journal/article124441049/Goog...

Adblock Edge, since it doesn't contain the 'paid for exemptions' (aka ads).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

"Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature. Adblock Edge was primarily branched off from Adblock Plus 2.1.2 source code package "http://adblockplus.org/downloads/adblockplus-2.1.2-source.tg... created by Wladimir Palant."

I've posted this on previous ad blocking threads, and I'll post it again because I think it's very relevant—

> "Adblock without the plus" isn't the original Adblock (from which Adblock Plus was forked), it's an extension created for Google Chrome once Google Chrome enabled support for extensions. Very disingenuous name. It piggy-backed on the work already done for Adblock Plus (for Firefox).

> Adblock Plus for Google Chrome came much later.

Nowadays, I use and recommend HTTP switchboard[0]. It's fully open[1], and offers very powerful customization on what exactly to block on a site.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/http-switchboard/m...

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard

I pretty much all agree with all of Wladimir Palant's post.

But I also have one problem regarding Adblock Plus' "acceptable ads" openness.

When I read about their "acceptable ads" approach, I am led to believe the "acceptable ads" list contains all the sites which are whitelisted for purpose of "acceptable ads". I am invited to consult the list to see for myself which sites qualify.[1]

Problem is, many web sites are not whitelisted through that publicly available list, but through the x-adblock-key HTTP header (which is not something disclosed up front to users).

So in fact there is really a public list and a private list it appears (through the x-adblock-key header), while the public list is presented as all there is to "acceptable ads".

[1] https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#list

I see Wladimir Palant has again commented on µBlock in his comment section [1]:

> clear tendency to trade performance for memory use

This has been a pattern with Wladimir Palant with regard to my work. Outright misrepresentation [2], or criticism through vague statements while never specific enough to understand what part of the code he is referring to.

Nowhere in the code did I trade memory for CPU, both have always been of highest concern. Given that my benchmarks show µBlock does significantly better than ABP on both memory and CPU count, vaguely stating that "clear tendency to trade performance for memory use" is just plain nonsense. [3]

I did ask him to be specific about his statement regarding how I implemented element hiding without injecting gigantic CSS stylesheet in every page and frame, but never received a response, and it is understandable why: he was misrepresenting. [4]

[1] https://palant.de/2014/07/29/which-is-better-adblock-or-adbl...

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/wiki/Adblock-Plus... (bottom of the page)

[3] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-...

[4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c39

Edit: added reference to CPU/mem benchmarks

I'm loving ublock https://github.com/gorhill/ublock

Adblock is the #1 culprit for bugs on NewsBlur. I get at least one report a day where some functionality is broken (sharing stories, saving stories, loading a user's feed list, etc). First thing I do now is ask them to disable Adblock.

Doesn't even matter if they've told me if they have Adblock installed. I just assume if some random functionality is broken on my single-page site, it's Adblock's fault.

I suppose I should look for a way to identify if a user is using Adblock, though I bet they've made that as difficult as possible. And if I identify a user using Adblock, I should let them know it's the cause of any bugginess.

Ooh, whitelisting of ads via partnerships. That's shady as fuck for an ad blocking company.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

"whitelisting websites if they serve only acceptable ads turned out unrealistic – nobody would do that right now. There needs to be more incentive to use acceptable advertising first."

https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-by-the-numbers

What I've wanted for some time, and it seems hard for me to find, is a good ad blocker that only works on blacklists. I don't mind ads on some sites as long as they're non-intrusive. Once they start getting in the way of the content though, I want to blacklist the site. Everything I've seen so far (although I haven't put a LOT of time into searching) only works on all sites by default and you have to whitelist the ones you want to have ads enabled on.

Adblock Plus is malware. Period.

Besides blackmailing advertisers into whitelisting their ads for money, last year it added a "typo correction" feature that would intercept "mistyped" url's and redirect you to the correct one.

Except it blatantly redirected existing domains to that of competitors, and added referrer affiliate ID's to the URL so Palant could cash in.

Despite claims to the contrary, that "feature" was initially on by default. That is pure malware, it has nothing to do with blocking ads.

Palant is someone who's words should not be trusted. He's basically a successful malware blackmailer.

If people prefer more extreme solutions:

I eventually moved to Conkeror (think Firefox, but with Emacs bindings and Emacs-like extension via javascript; I know cue the egg throwing). I was looking at other browsers to replace Firefox, as I got sick of it, and I picked Conkeror.

Conkeror has a neat little feature called content-policy. I can block kinds of crap per session or site (Flash, JS, Fonts, Object tags, Images, you name it). I use this and by default all our blocked completely. I can reload a buffer when I need it (even on HN I leave all this crap off). I used NoScript before and I like this as more basic and defensive tool built into the browser core. Check it out.

For when I do use Javascript (this is on Linux of course), I uses hostsblock[0] to redirect all blacklisted sites in /etc/hosts to a local DNS proxy on 127.0.01 on my laptop (dnsmasq, which we all probably know, and you could set it up upstream on a router or server for a group of people). Then I use kwakd as recommended to serve white space for all these redirected domains.

The end result, now I open up JS when I need, and like 100,000 domains are blocked. I check when certain shady domains are mentioned to look for stones unturned, and I rarely see exceptions that are not listed (by default even no cookie YouTube domains are blocked, so JS-less pages give you a blank YouTube box on sites a lot).

So why all this effort? Because this is the second or third time I read "ad-blocking company not as dedicated as you think to your principles" articles. And people who argue "my website needs your ad revenue" you ask? Honestly, fuck 'em. I can't be bothered. Be adults, as you do not believe in legislation on Minority Report-like ads following me around in realtime while I walk in public or forcing my eyes open to read newspaper and billboards just for ads, I think I have the right to voluntarily ignore them as I will not buy your shit or shill for you anyway and it is waste of both of our time. I do not mandate everyone look away, but give me the privilege too thank you very much. And I know a company cannot be trusted long term to defend this right as it is not in their interest, especially if it is their core model ad companies (all mentioned here Adblock, Ghostery, disconnect.me will change their tune if they have not already say).

In short, do not use corporate-backed tools for this. Said companies always change their mind.

[0] More info here: http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2013/12/28/hostsblock/

UPDATE: Fixed cue typo. Thanks for pointing it out, Thomas, whoever you are.

I have a long /etc/host file with many of the worst tracking/ad services that i have found. Blocks of a very large portion of the stuff that i do not like.

Isn't Disconnect.me broadly, another "tracking-blocker"? How would Adblock be able to 'monetize' through installing it?

"Privacy Badger" is the only option nowadays.

No whitelisting, and no corrupt companies behind, doing the whitelisting.

Since a lot of people are running out to download Adblock Plus, you guys might want to contact Google to try and get the spam app "Adblock Plus" from exgam.com removed from the store. Apps typically show up above extensions, so I've already seen several people download the wrong one :/ .

I keep seeing people complaining about some ads being not filtered by ABP...why not just right click those ads and block them. No more ads. Haven't had any with it on for some time (except on some sites where I want to see the ads to help those specific communities)

Although the naming of the two projects appears to be problematic at first, I'm guessing that many users will pick the Adblock PLUS over the Adblock, simply because 'Plus' feels like a superlative.

Adblock Edge is the better version, since it genuinely blocks ads, whereas Adblock Plus still lets some through by default.

AdBlock Plus also increases the amount of memory used by Firefox, to the order of 60–70 MiB + about 4 MiB per iframe.

https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus...

I wouldn't mind ads if they didn't completely destroy the viewing experience on many sites. From the long load times (oftentimes the browser rendering will hang because some stupid JS from an ad server has trouble loading), to the distracting ads, it's a huge mess. That is why I use Ad Blocking.

Since Chrome added "click to play" in plug-in settings I haven't used an ad blocker. With Flash ads no longer playing, my need for the blocker went away.

The changeover to canvas ads is happening quickly and that may bring back my need.

When I don't want to be tracked I rely on incognito mode.

Privoxy.

i havent used Adblock Plus in some time. A combination of Noscript blocking third party js (with some domains/cdns whitelisted) and Ghostery takes care of 90% of annoying stuff without bloating mem usage and improving page load speed drastically.

Gabriel from AdBlock here.

Here is AdBlock's response to Wladimir's post: http://blog.getadblock.com/2014/07/adblock-and-privacy.html

Use HTTP Switchboard. Faster, more powerful, and honest.

Maybe it sounds stupid, but I have both on my Chrome so whichever whitelists the other will remove. Problem solved!

I have never ever seen ads since then

Are there any other reason to use Ad Block software other then privacy and speed of surfing the internet?

I don't have this problem because I just choose not to use sites that have disrupting advertising.

Changing your hosts file will work great.

* http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts

Oh, I heard something like this on Reddit and I still got them confused because I started using "Adblock" instead of "Adblock Plus". Reading this today I realize that I should have been using "Plus".

I think I'm going to abandon both of them and try out some of the alternatives listed here (ublock, http switchboard).

A great solution is to run DNSMASQ on your local network, and configure it to block unwanted domains. That way it works on any connected device automatically, with no plugins or browser overhead.

There are plenty of guides - google it!

Without a doubt, Adblock.

I use both of them so i wont care reading this post. All that matters to em to me is the I should not be wasting 15 seconds of my life in watching ads on youtube videos and the combo of ad block and ad block plus does it well for me.

<rant>

Blocking ads is such a dick move. This should be made illegal. You are not entitled to change a website to your contempt and cut their main revenue source. If you want to use a website/app and it was made available with the Ad, then just suck it in or use a different one.

To my eyes this is not very different than piracy. Where you use a software without paying for it's price.

Advertising is the price you pay to use a service. Targeting is a technology to make that Ad as much relevant to you as possible. And yet there's a lot of negativity in here towards both. It's supposed to be a win-win-win solution for advertisers, publishers and users and yet are met with negativity and FUD.

If you are here in HN you should think the same, because advertisement is what funds the industry you are in.

</rant>