The irony: Adblock Plus has been running its own pop-up ads

[steven36]

Here's the pop-up some Adblock Plus Chrome browser extension users reported seeing on Friday.

Adblock Plus today sent out a pop-up notification to users of its Chrome browser extension, advertising its Adblock Plus browser for smartphones and tablets.
There's an obvious irony here: An ad blocker doing advertising.
And not just any ad, a pop-up ad. The Adblock Plus website even promotes that it blocks "tracking, malware, domains, banners, pop-ups and video ads."
A handful of people tweeted about being served the notification:


Time to uninstall @AdblockPlus. Don’t abuse notifications for spam and advertising (even if it is self-promotion). pic.twitter.com/rdOBotKYoq
— Taylor Simpson (@iLama) September 25, 2015



Something about Ad Block pushing a notification just doesn't seem right #irony pic.twitter.com/w2WuFf4IoB
— Stephanie (@SBteph) September 25, 2015



Adblock Plus just spammed me with its own popup ad for the smartphone version of Adblock Plus. What's a better desktop ad blocker?
— Jeff Noxon (@jnoxon) September 25, 2015



adblock is giving me a popup which is advertising adblock gg adblocker
— Topi Y (@tuhkakuppi111) September 24, 2015

AdBlock+ just used Chrome's HTML5 notification mechanism to advertise AdBlock+ to me.

— mfollett (@mfollett) September 25, 2015

An Adblock Plus spokesman sent Business Insider this statement:

"We have not run any ads on any of our users. We felt a notification to people who use our product telling them about another product (Adblock Browser) was just Adblock Plus communicating with our users, and we use that format from time to time with important announcements. An in-app notification is not an ad, and I'm hoping that you understand that.

If some users don't want to know about Adblock Browser and were annoyed by our notification, they can always opt out of ever getting another ABP notification again."

Adblock Plus hasn't done anything wrong here. Lots of Chrome extensions send notifications about updates or products about updates or other products they might find useful. And it's not like swathes of users are publicly complaining about it either.

But it goes to show that it's easy to bash online advertising ... until you have something you need to promote.

Source

[NightWalker]

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

[Cereberus]

well... how often will that notice pop up ? if it's a 1 time deal if you hadn't received it yet, and is not too often, then is probably okay (for me). if i did use their adblocker, that might be something i might actually want to be informed about. I also spot a notification setting, maybe that can be disabled then ?

some app software usually have some form of temporary pop up to indicate something, like for example, my nod32 will show a temp pop up to alert me something happened before it goes away after a few seconds.

An in-app notification is not an ad, and I'm hoping that you understand that.

Personally i don't use adblocker, but this is a reasonable statement to some extent, using the example i mentioned.

[Holmes]

Adblock plus isnt obsolete and bloated it works fine Im using it and love it no pop-up here ublock isnt as good adguard I cant speak for. It could be a alternative I havent used it I think dcseighteen uses it he says its good. Im sure there is a setting to prevent that from happening. It does say configure notification settings its just notifying you of something new.

[SPECTRUM]

NightWalker, on 26 Sept 2015 - 09:02, said:

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

in mobile devices AdBlock Plus works as a local proxy firewall, so for me is better, because it can block ADs in any app, while uBlock Origin only works in specific browsers, and AdGuard is not free.

[Knightmare]

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

Yes, I've been using uBlock Origin with no problem. It is the perfect adblock, IMO.

[WALLONN7]

After its "unobtrusive ads" approach... Am I surprised?! No, I don't... Money talks... sadly...

[emerglines]

I stop using it a year and a half, cause of memory leaking that cause the browser to crash or freeze until your restart it.

[Holmes]

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

Yes, I've been using uBlock Origin with no problem. It is the perfect adblock, IMO.

Someone mentioned in a different thread ublock has a problem with blocking ads sometimes Ill have to find the article:

http://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/252092-adblock-plus-accused-of-paying-off-other-ad-blockers-to-let-some-ads-through/

Look at taker's post in that article.

[steven36]

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

Yes, I've been using uBlock Origin with no problem. It is the perfect adblock, IMO.

Someone mentioned in a different thread ublock has a problem with blocking ads sometimes Ill have to find the article:

http://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/252092-adblock-plus-accused-of-paying-off-other-ad-blockers-to-let-some-ads-through/

Look at taker's post in that article.

No one cares , we been listing to anti Ublock propaganda on this board since they invited Ublock for Firefox to the point I dont bother to start a update topic with it .

You can't use what you like in peace without advertisements for ABP pooping up in every topic Its worse than ads . :lol:

[Holmes]

If no one cares and your posting about it you care lawls. I use adblock plus no problems here. There is a difference between a ad and a notification.

[steven36]

If no one cares and your posting about it you care lawls. I use adblock plus no problems here.

I have more morals than to use it even before they made Ublock for Firefox I used ABE ..I'm not supporting a programs that gets rich from whitelisting ads themselves

[Holmes]

According to online its not the software's fault its the filter you use's fault and you can use a different blocklist and whitelist and remove entries out of your list when you want to. If you decide you want to use adblock edge over adblock plus thats fine user preference same for ublock I just heard what takker said and didnt like that I have not experienced any problems with adblock plus I havent gotten the adblockk browser notification if you use internet explorer to use google google shows a notification that says you should use chrome its not a ad same in this case. Allow some non-intrusive advertising is fine with me and as for ad's getting whitelisted I dont want I have been using adblock plus and havent seen any ad's I dont like if any ad's at all.

[steven36]

According to online its not the software's fault its the filter you use's fault and you can use a different blocklist and whitelist and remove entries out of your list when you want to. If you decide you want to use adblock edge over adblock plus thats fine user preference same for ublock I just heard what takker said and didnt like that I have not experienced any problems with adblock plus I havent gotten the adblockk browser notification if you use internet explorer to use google google shows a notification that says you should use chrome its not a ad same in this case. Allow some non-intrusive advertising is fine with me and as for ad's getting whitelisted I dont want I have been using adblock plus and havent seen any ad's I dont like if any ad's at all.

If the devopler had done something to improve it with that $25 million it gets from Google it would had been different . I'm not against developers making money but whitelisting ads is no improvement. back when APB was open source I used it But ABE witch is still opensource could do the exact something and its based on and old version. I dont even really like using adblockers . I use them because I dont trust ads to not have malware .

[Holmes]

Same here I have gotten hit with ad's which have dropped drive-by downloads and got infected one time with a rogue anti-malware program used malwarebytes chameleon to remove it. I am trying to whitelist the ad's on the front page of this website I cant see the ad's I thinkk its my host file.

[steven36]

Same here I have gotten hit with ad's which have dropped drive-by downloads and got infected one time with a rogue anti-malware program used malwarebytes chameleon to remove it. I am trying to whitelist the ad's on the front page of this website I cant see the ad's I thinkk its my host file.

What its going to do in the end is a lot of small websites will close and large ones will become paid models . Google is getting tried of paying them there losing billions more than there saving . With all the linkshrink sites running malware ads I look for many sites that offer us free services to close down any day now. Because they cant even get paid.

[NightWalker]

2015 and people are still using the obsolete and bloated Adblock Plus? uBlock Origin and Adguard are much better alternatives (and transparent too)

Yes, I've been using uBlock Origin with no problem. It is the perfect adblock, IMO.

Someone mentioned in a different thread ublock has a problem with blocking ads sometimes Ill have to find the article:

http://www.nsaneforums.com/topic/252092-adblock-plus-accused-of-paying-off-other-ad-blockers-to-let-some-ads-through/

Look at taker's post in that article.

Sir you are confusing some things, Ad Block Plus was the one allowing ads.

With Ublock we wont have this kind of problem, its totally open source and doesnt allow this kind of things for money (Raymond is a great developer, he could have done a lot money with Ublock, but doesnt want to)

Anyway I use and recommend the Dynamic module of Ublock, it will simple block everything that you want.

See:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-default-deny

[Holmes]

I never said ublock allowed ad's and that adblock plus doesnt I was refering to this post from that article:

Use uBlock.. ;)

uBlock Origin or for that matter uBlock is not that great in its Firefox avatar.

One of the many flaws include that it can't block properly.

Try this, in your firefox, just block a particular image and add it to your user filter or as uBlock calls it My Filter section.

Clear cache, history and all, restart browser.

Now when you try again to access that image that is blocked either by typing its address fully and pressing enter or right clicking its designated space (on the web page to where it belongs) and clicking view backround image, you will see it shows it, even though it's in the block rules.

Again don't forget to read the underline part. ;)

It only talks about firefox which means if you use opera or internet explorer it should be fine.

[steven36]

It only talks about firefox which means if you use opera or internet explorer it should be fine.

What do people plain to do when Firefox moves to chrome add-ons? Element hiding helper is a 3rd party add-on for Firefox only .. Stay with and old version of the browser because there favorite add-ons no longer work?

Developers will have until mid-2017 to switch to the new programming model.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/mozilla-sets-plan-to-dump-firefox-add-ons-move-to-chrome-like-extensions/

As it stands for now if you was just worried about blocking images you could use Yet Another Remove It Permanently you dont really need a adblocker to do this :P

[Holmes]

Not a good move I hope they decide against it. I love firefox addons.