Adblock Fuss

I'm a big fan of Adblock Plus - it's a great add on if you don't want to be hit over the head with any number of spinning, flashing adverts torn straight from the pages of Dante.

However, an interesting change has been made to the program with the release of 2.0 and some users are up in arms about it:

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"Adblock Plus has also been configured to allow non-intrusive advertising. You can change this selection at any time in the filter preferences."

Blasphemy? Madness? Sparta? Who knows, but we now have a situation where users aren't happy about the opt in by default setting, or indeed approving adverts in general no matter how limited the scope. There's a page on the Adblock Plus site that outlines some of the reasons for this change:

"You can allow some of the advertising that is considered not annoying. By doing this you support websites that rely on advertising but choose to do it in a non-intrusive way...In the long term the web will become a better place for everybody, not only Adblock Plus users. Without this feature we run the danger that increasing Adblock Plus usage will make small websites unsustainable."

As for why this is set live by default:

"If we ask users to enable this feature then most of them won't do it — simply because they never change any settings unless absolutely necessary. However, advertisers will only be interested in switching to better ways of advertising if the majority of Adblock Plus users has this feature enabled."

I'm not entirely convinced that advertisers so fond of flashy, spinning adverts from the back of beyond will tone their adverts down just because of this move - and hey, let's not forget that adverts meeting the requirements to be potentially given the green light ("static ads, text only, no attention grabbing images") can be just as dangerous if not more so than the flashy horrors still on the blocklist.

One good thing that may come out of this move is a possible reduction in infections. No really, hear me out. I know a lot of people who have told me they never installed Adblock Plus or similar programs because their income was primarily driven by dedicated communities, and they wanted to put something back into those communities by not blocking their (static) advertisements. For example, a professional comic artist or writer is supported by their community; as a thank you, they won't block the adverts on the sites belonging to their fans or webcomic rings.

As a result, quite a few of them were hit by drive by installs and exploits while browsing the web with no ad blockers in place.

If the Adblock Plus team do a good job of this, it might actually encourage more people to now try the program and let a few (hopefully harmless) adverts through while using their new found installs to block malicious adverts elsewhere with a clean conscience.

That can only be a good thing. However, much will depend on their examination of the approved advert networks, their advertising methods, the kind of links those advertisers allow (and how they react to the bad apples that slip through the net) and whether or not the userbase approves of the opt in by default setup.

We'll have to wait and see how this one plays out...

Christopher Boyd