Unlike other vendors, there is no pay-to-play option.
We aim to take a principled rules based approach to blocking and raising the standard of trust online.
(Disclaimer: DDG employee)
What's this based on?
I'm more included to use Privacy Badger (from the EFF), why should I use the DDG extension instead?
Members include Google, Facebook, and Reuters among many others.
I thought that's what this was based on, but looking at the google blog post [2] I don't see any references to the betterads stuff directly. They do reference the same "Ad Experience Report" as the google blog post announcing the start of this idea to block "bad" ads mid last year [3], so they are at least involved.
[1] https://www.betterads.org/
[2] https://blog.chromium.org/2018/11/further-protections-from-h...
[3] https://blog.chromium.org/2017/06/improving-advertising-on-w...
>The Coalition’s research identifies the ad experiences that rank lowest across a range of user experience factors, and that are most highly correlated with an increased propensity for consumers to adopt ad blockers.
Nobody has to make any mistake about the motivations, they are literally saying this is so that the "good" advertisers can take back the ecosystem and prevent the "race to the bottom" of more obnoxious ads paying the best, and so they can prevent more people from installing ad blockers by making their ads less obnoxious.
As an outsider, I have no inside knowledge of what Google is doing. But, I think it's important to keep in mind that sometimes the goal of a business, even an ad business, can align with broader societal goals. I fully support online advertising as it supports a bunch of the sites that I visit daily. The web becoming increasingly overburdened with scam / malware "ads" is a threat to those sites as it causes people to install more ad blockers. It's also a threat to Google's business - as as those "ads" proliferate, its puts them in the uncomfortable position of either having to play in the mud, or, to cede ground to "advertisers" that are profiting off of ripping people off. Preventing such a race to the bottom is a smart business move on Google's part - and it may be driven purely by profit considerations. But, if that is what Google's long game is - it's not just good for Google, it's good for society too.
Sometimes a business acting in its own self interest can be a good thing for everyone. I don't know enough about Google to state definitively that is what is happening here - but at the very least, it seems plausible. So, lets wait to freak out about it until we have actual evidence that there is some sort of bad behavior at play - something I haven't seen any evudence of yet.