Obviously, I’m watching the watchers.
by schwim on May.12, 2009, under Software
If you use Firefox as your browser, then chances are great that you use a product maintained by Wladamir Palant. He develops the Adblock Plus addon, which allows you to browse the internet without offers to punch a Monkey, match the lips with the star or having to view whole movie trailers through a flash applet while trying to read an article on a news site.
Well, it seems they got to Wladamir. You see, the developer of the addon that blocks ads for me would like to integrate a new feature into ABP that would allow site owners to hit you with a pop-up asking you to change your mind about their ads.
My response concerning how cool I thought it to be is buried in that page, but I can summarize quite neatly. I need an ad blocker. Not an advertisement mediator.
Fork coming in 3…… 2…… 1…….
May 14th, 2009 on 10:19 am
…and you’re doing an excellent job of watching the watchers.
This seems to be nothing more than an effort to compromise the AB+ brand.
It doesn’t install by default. Users have to go get it and configure the filters so you gotta figure at that point that they’re smart enough to allow ads from a particular site via the AB+ menu if they want to.
Marketeers want “opt-in” adblocking on a case-by-case basis which becomes a PITA for the surfer so he uninstalls AB+ to save having to deal with a damn pop-up which was why he installed AB+ to start with.
Wladamir should understand that once he starts down this road there’s no turning back.
May 14th, 2009 on 8:36 pm
When I first read it, I had to laugh. It’s kind of like my firewall software company writing me to tell me that they’re in discussions with the makers of port sniffers because there’s some legitimate reasons to scanning ports.
You just kind of lose your faith in them after that.