If enough people start doing this, AdBlock will somehow react to get people to see their ads again.
Just because you got rid of the problem doesn't mean the conflict of interest isn't there. And if there's a conflict of interest, it's just a matter of time before something happens. Having an extension in your browser that you can forget about is much easier on your nerves than an extension that doesn't do anything bad at the moment, but could.
> If enough people start doing this, AdBlock will somehow react to get people to see their ads again.
That's a hypothetical future problem, not requiring action today.
If ABP is blocking all ads for me, why would I care about a conflict of interest?
In fact, I agree with it; I like that advertisers are victimized, paying extra to be on whitelists yet still not reach people because of a simple checkbox in the settings. Are they victimized, though?
Users who install ABP yet say yes to acceptable ads are a special demographic. Why would the gatekeeper to that demographic give away free access to that demographic? If someone pays for that access, it probably means that they perceive value in it for them. Ads are more valuable if better targeted and all that.
> If ABP is blocking all ads for me, why would I care about a conflict of interest?
You might not care, but if you are recommending others an extension to use for blocking ads, you cannot do it solely on your own preferences.
Imagine being recommended as alternatives an adblocker that you can install and forget or an adblocker that you need to configure and keep on watch in case it starts showing ads anyway. Having no experience with adblockers before, which one would you choose?
This hasn't happened with ABP, and could conceivably happen with any ad blocker, even one whose developers are saints (due to a bug).
Basically "might happen" is just FUD.
Reminds me of 1990's anti-Linux FUD. Don't use that, it might not support some sound card or video card you might want to buy later, even though it works now! You might run into a problem that needs support and then you're screwed. Etc.
So this discussion has devolved to the point of cutting out words from sentences to change their meaning and using the new sentence as a straw man. Here we go again HN.
The fundamental problem with defaults is that people do not change them, no matter what they say.
There might be a fantastically tiny fraction of people actually following through.
Eyeo even uses this behavioral insight to make a case that users like the acceptable ads program (since users don't change defaults)
The speaker was asked by the audience whether there is a control group in which the acceptable ad option is switched off and the speaker only grinned about it.
It's a dark pattern and Eyeo is fully aware of it.
There is no dark pattern except for the cover up of what "acceptable" really is. The setting is prominent and clear, smack in the middle of the General panel. Moreover, I seem to recall, there is no default; you're prompted for this at install time. (Not going to bother reinstalling just to check whether this is true.) In any case, I do not remember at all that there is a situation that ads keep being shown after ABP is installed and having to hunt through settings. I was prompted to check my setting by this HN submission, and it feels like I've never seen that panel before, yet it shows that acceptable ads are off.
I think that people who are vehemently against ads are steered toward the setting which is right for them: and Eyeo probably wants it that way, because their selling point for the whitelisting is that they provide access to a segment of the population who are not vehemently against ads.
It's still a little surprising here. Not having an adblocker at all is the default setting, users had to go out of their way to install it in the first place. Given that, you'd think that people would manage to turn off the 'allow acceptable ads' option too. (Perhaps it is well hidden?)
I'm not bothered by ads. I see them on TV, I see them on billboards, in magazines in the waiting room at my doctor's office and I'm fine with all that. What I don't want is the tracking.
So for me, acceptable ads are the ones that don't involve surveillance of my online activity in anyway.
