> and people have said that their business model is based on extorting ad companies to pay them to not block their ads
i mean, it is. ABP is basically modern day protection racket
i mean, it is. ABP is basically modern day protection racket
Inflamatory statements aside, and whether or not online advertising is acceptable in its current form, there is a need they are fulfilling. If people don't find ads to be hospitable to their user experience then people don't find ads to be hospitable to their user experience, period. You can argue why all you want, in the meantime, ABP is there to get rid of them for you.
They'll also mistakenly introduce bugs to destroy your on-site metrics if you don't pay up.
I'm going to need a citation for that. I don't use ABP for obvious reasons, but I don't really see them as a problem; they're effectively extorting money from advertising companies, which are absolute scum and deserve to lose any and all profits that they have made (not only for scummy business practices and an entire business model built around the worst kind of psychological manipulation and data mining, but actually convincing people that they are good for supporting a "free web" as if they are some charitable benefactors giving free money out of the good of their hearts). The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I haven't been able to suss out any way that they do any real harm to the end users, but if they do actually do harm to other ad blockers, that would be some actual harm, but I am having trouble finding any evidence of this anywhere.
There is a middle ground of people okay with advertising, but pissed off about the nightmare that is the present state of internet ads. I use uBlock. But I’d be okay with e.g. text ads that don’t track me.
By having ABP widely used a lawyer could make the argument, or a judge could infer that advertising is an acceptable behavior, but the use of ABP is just the users signaling to advertisers that ABP content is rather preferred method.
If everyone used uBlock Origin on the other hand, a compelling argument against the legitimacy of intrusive advertising becomes much more likely to be accepted in court, which is where it matters.
It's sad it's come to this, but with advertising and marketing as huge active lobbying groups, the courts are one of the more even battlefields we stand to even be able to win on.
> I'm going to need a citation for that.
I was mostly referring to the fact that they bought uBlock and made it use their “acceptable ads” program, which seems mainly like a move intended to weaken uBlock Origin, or at least leech off its reputation.
Honestly I don’t really know much about them, I just know that I’d much rather support uBlock Origin than this company.
Companies pay to get their ads categorized as acceptable if they meet the criteria for that. You can't just pay to get your ads to show up.
And within the browser extension, the user still has the option to block them anyway.
In this case they're a middle man between the abusers and the abused, so I think it's more like prostitution.