Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. It is time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode. This episode is called how ad Blockers Work,
Speaker 1: and it originally published on Marche. And I've got some
Speaker 1: things to say about ad blockers. I'll save it for
Speaker 1: the end, and it's likely going to be repeated in
Speaker 1: the actual episode, which you know, full disclosure, I have
Speaker 1: not gone back and listened to, so it may very
Speaker 1: well be that everything I say is repetitive. But that way,
Speaker 1: I'll just throw it at the end, and if you
Speaker 1: hear stuff I've already said, you know you just stop it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's go back and listen to this classic episode. Before
Speaker 1: we get started on this, We'll go ahead and say
Speaker 1: that you know, there there are the advertisers who make
Speaker 1: ads are not necessarily trying to make them to annoy you.
Speaker 1: That would actually be counter productive to what the ad
Speaker 1: is supposed to do. Well. I would argue that some
Speaker 1: ad theory um states that if you annoy an audience
Speaker 1: enough to get their attention, then that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: But that's but but we're getting into sticky territory there,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll cover all of that as we go along.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to hear a really simple story
Speaker 1: about how ad block came to be bad news everyone.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, ad block has got an incredibly
Speaker 1: complex story because it is one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a hydra. You know, eventually one
Speaker 1: head would get cut off and two other heads would
Speaker 1: spring up, and those two heads would each be doing
Speaker 1: kind of what the first head did, but they're doing
Speaker 1: it in a different way, and they're not really communicating
Speaker 1: with each other, and when they do communicate with each other,
Speaker 1: they're fighting a little bit. Yeah, it's a it's one
Speaker 1: of those that it's it's not so simple as to say, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know this one piece of software. Now it's version two,
Speaker 1: now it's version three. You actually have lots of forking
Speaker 1: going on. It's more like Windows. How Windows would occasionally
Speaker 1: fork into different groups and you're like, well, I used
Speaker 1: to be able to explain the history of Windows, but
Speaker 1: now not so much. But you can actually trace it
Speaker 1: back to a single point, a historical moment when the
Speaker 1: very first version of ad block came out, and it
Speaker 1: originally came out for the Firefox web browser. This was
Speaker 1: a browser extension. UM Firefox being open source, it allows
Speaker 1: people to developers well, I mean developers are people. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean to. UM. It allows you to create extensions
Speaker 1: or add ons for the browser in order to change
Speaker 1: or improve or to increase its functionality. Right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's some things that a browser can do, and then
Speaker 1: occasionally the web develops in such a way where there's
Speaker 1: some really awesome stuff you could you if the browser
Speaker 1: just supported it, and the extensions kind of allow you
Speaker 1: to create that ability, right, and so according to one
Speaker 1: Vladimir Poland, a Danish programmer by the name of Henry
Speaker 1: Ostav Sarson, I think I got that right. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's definitely better than I could have. UM who developed
Speaker 1: this extension. I I don't remember now if we said
Speaker 1: already in two thousand two. No, we did not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, the reason why we said we don't
Speaker 1: know already is because you guys do not get treated
Speaker 1: to the fact that our buildings started to vibrate because
Speaker 1: of something going on somewhere inside this building, and we
Speaker 1: figured you'd rather be you know saved that experience. But yeah,
Speaker 1: three minute break in which we went what is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: But in two thousand two, in fact, he did begin
Speaker 1: development on this. This was formally the ad Block Extension,
Speaker 1: and at that point it was spelled A D little
Speaker 1: B L O C K. No. The reason I say
Speaker 1: little B is because the other versions will talk about
Speaker 1: differentiate themselves with capitalization as well as adding other words.
Speaker 1: But this is the first one. Now, this one could
Speaker 1: block images, which at the time was pretty much the
Speaker 1: main form of web advertising. It wasn't the only one
Speaker 1: that was the main one. So things like banner ads
Speaker 1: that were at the top, or the ones that are
Speaker 1: along the side of the column, or even just inserted
Speaker 1: directly as like a picture inside an article. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that would block. Sure. And so if
Speaker 1: you found an image that you didn't like a probably
Speaker 1: because it was an add, you could add that that
Speaker 1: that images u r L to a list of blocked images, right,
Speaker 1: and it would actually go all the way back to
Speaker 1: where the source of that image came from and then
Speaker 1: start blocking other images from that source. Because, of course,
Speaker 1: if there's one advertiser that happens to run a lot
Speaker 1: of different campaigns, and back in those early days of
Speaker 1: the web, there were a few that had lots and
Speaker 1: lots of clients. You could essentially blanket block a whole
Speaker 1: list stuff advert right. It was pretty effective at the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for images. Anyway, they did have some downs sides.
Speaker 1: One of the downsides was that it did not actually
Speaker 1: prevent the web page from loading the image. In fact,
Speaker 1: that the earliest version, which they called point three. Uh
Speaker 1: I assume that versions point one and point two or
Speaker 1: earlier dat yeah, yeah, and never were released. But this
Speaker 1: point three one, it did not prevent the images from
Speaker 1: loading at all. It would, in fact, first load the
Speaker 1: entire web page images and all, and then block those ads.
Speaker 1: Right now, this was an important deal, Like people really
Speaker 1: wanted to have it blocked, not just you know, from view,
Speaker 1: but blocked period so it wouldn't download. Not just because
Speaker 1: people thoughts or at least some people thought that advertising
Speaker 1: was really intrusive and and it decreased their enjoyment of
Speaker 1: the surfing experience visually annoying, but also was using up
Speaker 1: precious memory and usage bandwidth. Yeah, so you would take
Speaker 1: you extra time to download a web page because I
Speaker 1: had to download all of those assets, including the ads,
Speaker 1: and if you could turn those ads off, then the
Speaker 1: web pages would load faster. You know, this is the
Speaker 1: era of dial up. You know, I remember that era well, uh,
Speaker 1: not happily, but I do remember it well. I couldn't
Speaker 1: have find memories of it, not at all. Uh. You
Speaker 1: know when when someone would would say, hey, you need
Speaker 1: to go and look there's this funny picture, and you
Speaker 1: click on it and then six minutes later you go
Speaker 1: and make yourself a cup of coffee. Right, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just gonna go wander offer a bit.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so this ad block version was limited in
Speaker 1: its use, but it had potential. And so the next
Speaker 1: version of ad block came along from someone else. Because
Speaker 1: Sorenson was interested in creating this tool, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: interested in continually updating it and uh and and and
Speaker 1: giving it more features. It was kind of a one
Speaker 1: off for Sarrenson. So we then have a mysterious figure.
Speaker 1: So someone by the handle of Rue, whose name I'm
Speaker 1: still not sure of. Yeah, Ru are you e? As
Speaker 1: in uh, you know that that spelling not r O O.
Speaker 1: But the Ru created ad block zero point four and
Speaker 1: went in a completely different way used XML binding language
Speaker 1: also known as x b L. Now that's a web
Speaker 1: markup language, so HTML is hypertext markup language. This is
Speaker 1: similar except instead of it telling specifically like a browser,
Speaker 1: how to display things, it's more about defining specific behaviors
Speaker 1: of elements that would be displayed in a web page.
Speaker 1: So it's all about letting a program know what any
Speaker 1: particular element is supposed to be able to do, so
Speaker 1: that the computer does that thing when you make the command.
Speaker 1: So an easy example is a scroll bar. If you
Speaker 1: were to put a scroll bar within the context of
Speaker 1: a web page itself, you know this isn't this isn't
Speaker 1: the browsers scroll bar, but something that's inside the web page.
Speaker 1: Then you might use XBL to define those behaviors, so
Speaker 1: you say, when the user drags the scroll bar, this
Speaker 1: is the thing that's supposed to happen. Now, in this case,
Speaker 1: they were using XBL to sort of, uh, just prevent
Speaker 1: again these these display these ads from displaying. But it
Speaker 1: could prevent more than just images because it was working
Speaker 1: within the code of the browser. It could also prevent
Speaker 1: flash and Java objects right, and this was another big
Speaker 1: advance as far as ad blocking was concerned because anyone
Speaker 1: who has been using the web for a while knows
Speaker 1: ads that are just pictures that appear on the top
Speaker 1: or the side, or within the context of an article
Speaker 1: or something. That's just a small slice of the types
Speaker 1: of web advertising we've seen out there. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of things that have float over ads, float under ads,
Speaker 1: AutoPlay ads, which boy, are those my favorite. I definitely
Speaker 1: feel some sympathy here for folks who really get tired
Speaker 1: of ads that have, you know, a negative impact on
Speaker 1: your user expect if they're intrusive. Absolutely. I mean, if
Speaker 1: I go to a website where there's some sort of
Speaker 1: audio component that I want to listen to, and because
Speaker 1: I moved my cursor and it goes over a AD
Speaker 1: panel and then some advertising audio starts playing at the
Speaker 1: same time, that's clearly not an enjoyable experience. You can't
Speaker 1: really get around that. But anyway, Yeah, this meant that
Speaker 1: it was more useful than the point three version of
Speaker 1: ad block, But it should be said that because it
Speaker 1: was using a different approach, while it was called ad
Speaker 1: Block zero point four, it wasn't necessarily a direct descendant
Speaker 1: of ad block ad Block zero point three. And this
Speaker 1: is where we already have some confusion, right, right, further
Speaker 1: confusion would happen because Um Latimer point who who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, was basically unaware of of this update going
Speaker 1: out and created his own point for right. So you
Speaker 1: have Ladimir saying, okay, I know that this this thing
Speaker 1: that Sarnsen did was useful, but it was very limited.
Speaker 1: I want to make my own approach and try and
Speaker 1: create a more versatile, useful platform to block this sort
Speaker 1: of intrusive advertising. Uh and started working on and then
Speaker 1: was prepared to release it, and then discovered through some
Speaker 1: I have no idea what the tone was from the
Speaker 1: basis of the history that that that Pollent wrote, I
Speaker 1: would like to imagine that Rue was a little miffed.
Speaker 1: Great was the message thereof and that um and that
Speaker 1: Vladimir found out that he couldn't release it as a
Speaker 1: point for because there was already a point for. So
Speaker 1: now comes the discussion of whether or not Vladimir's work
Speaker 1: should be incorporated into a point five version. So keep
Speaker 1: in mind that while this is all going on, Firefox
Speaker 1: itself is continuing to slowly release updates, which necessitates that
Speaker 1: browser extensions be updated as well. Because exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this was not, you know, just an academic discussion of
Speaker 1: should this go forward or not. It needed to keep
Speaker 1: developing for it to be useful. So his approach was
Speaker 1: to look at content policies to both predict and block ads,
Speaker 1: which ended up being an advance over the previous versions
Speaker 1: because it was finally allowing the user to have these
Speaker 1: ads blocked before the page even loaded. So now we
Speaker 1: get into that that era where things can be sped
Speaker 1: up because you don't need to load all the assets.
Speaker 1: He also had this discussion with Rue about what needs
Speaker 1: to be done. They decided to kind of collaborate, but
Speaker 1: according to Plans history, he got very frustrated that Ru
Speaker 1: would kind of piecemeal pick the bits that Vladimir had
Speaker 1: created and then ignore everything else. And Laddim felt that
Speaker 1: a lot of the things he had contributed were being
Speaker 1: ignored and that uh, and that some of the things
Speaker 1: he had made we're being used in ways he had
Speaker 1: not intended. There was one in particular way said users
Speaker 1: were complaining about this particular interface, and the problem was
Speaker 1: I had never intended users to be activating this interface.
Speaker 1: It wasn't meant for us. But now it's part of
Speaker 1: what because I'm not the one who I don't own
Speaker 1: ad block and not implementing these changes myself, and so
Speaker 1: that became kind of a source subject. So you move
Speaker 1: forward to two thousand and five, and no one had
Speaker 1: really worked on ad block. Yeah that there was still
Speaker 1: some of that xbl stuff involved, and and some of
Speaker 1: Ladimir's approaches were in there. He was kind of a mishmash.
Speaker 1: It was like a Frankenstein's Monster version of the of
Speaker 1: what what each person like rou and Ladimir had both
Speaker 1: had in mind. But out of this grew um what
Speaker 1: was going to be called ad Block Plus. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is when a fellow named Michael McDonald who used the
Speaker 1: handle mc m came along and he created a new
Speaker 1: version going back to point three as sort of the
Speaker 1: point of inspiration with enhanced features. He did call it
Speaker 1: ad Block Plus. And at this point one of the
Speaker 1: things that was added was this ability for users to
Speaker 1: white list certain file sources so that they would still
Speaker 1: get those shown to them, right, white white listing being
Speaker 1: the opposite of blacklistings, certifying that a certain thing or
Speaker 1: person or entity is acceptable exactly. So instead of just
Speaker 1: having a giant X over any advertising, this would allow
Speaker 1: you to be more selective, so you could say, no,
Speaker 1: I want to see these particular types of ads, these
Speaker 1: ads are okay. So Vladimir and Rue continued there discussion
Speaker 1: about what should be ad block, and Ladimir even went
Speaker 1: so far as to offer to rewrite, uh the zero
Speaker 1: point five version of ad block and then adding the
Speaker 1: new features as well as try and tweak some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that he felt was clunky or not user friendly.
Speaker 1: But there was more disagreement between Rue and Ladimir, and
Speaker 1: then eventually Ladimir contacted McDonald mc m about ad Block Plus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and m c m said, you know you can, you
Speaker 1: can come on over, you can come on over here,
Speaker 1: because I don't really want to to forever be developing
Speaker 1: this this extension, just like you know Sartinson did years ago.
Speaker 1: He you know Sartenson said, no, I made this thing,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to have to keep making it.
Speaker 1: And especially at the time Firefox was going through this
Speaker 1: kind of like update every other day sort of process,
Speaker 1: it was really rapid. Yes, So McDonald said, you know,
Speaker 1: I really don't have the time and effort that to
Speaker 1: to be the steward of this extension. So so Latimer,
Speaker 1: if you want to take it, take it, and Latimer
Speaker 1: say a yeah, okay, fine. So in January two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, they launched ad Block Plus zero point six.
Speaker 1: So again, the versions are starting to get a little
Speaker 1: confusing because this ad block Plus was not directly connected
Speaker 1: to ad Block. It existed as his own thing at
Speaker 1: the same time. So we have two different versions going on,
Speaker 1: two different approaches um and two different communities of users.
Speaker 1: So then Pilot decides he'll he'll keep on working on
Speaker 1: ad block Plus and he wanted to try. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not that he hated the old ad block. He
Speaker 1: actually tried several times to address issues because as the
Speaker 1: the extension got older and less relevant, it also became
Speaker 1: clear that there were some security vulnerabilities, and so he said, listen, guys,
Speaker 1: I found these vulnerabilities. You really should patch them. You
Speaker 1: need to. You need to update ad block so that
Speaker 1: doesn't remain a vulnerability for users. And then it got
Speaker 1: to a point where it's like, really, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can I can help do this if you need to.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of one of those things where
Speaker 1: ad Block just sort sort of began to die out
Speaker 1: at that point. In ad Block Plus was the it's
Speaker 1: wrong to say the winner because it wasn't like it
Speaker 1: was a real battle, but it's the survivor of the two.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I was about to say it sounds like
Speaker 1: like internet Darwinism. Yeah yeah, it kind of is. So
Speaker 1: h then you get into I got really snarky with
Speaker 1: this note, y'all, But I'm going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: include it because schadenfreude. No. In two thousand seven, PC World,
Speaker 1: the magazine named ad Block Plus one of the one
Speaker 1: best products of two thousand seven. The reason why I
Speaker 1: felt the need to include this is because today PC
Speaker 1: World is online only. It ended its print format in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, and now it depends very heavily on
Speaker 1: the online format, you know, the one that is sported. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: I did. I didn't want to mention though, that that
Speaker 1: it's certainly not the only award that ad Block Plus
Speaker 1: is one. Um. For example, it also nabbed best Firefox
Speaker 1: Extension from Lennox Magazine, in which, by the way, you
Speaker 1: can still get in print, So bully for them, how
Speaker 1: about that. So then we move up to December eight,
Speaker 1: two thou nine, and boy, we just we just got
Speaker 1: to the point where we narrowed it down ad block
Speaker 1: Plus was the only player in the game. It was
Speaker 1: going to be so much easier to talk about this
Speaker 1: for the rest of this podcast. And then Google made
Speaker 1: an announcement, which led to a whole bunch of more
Speaker 1: mass happening. Well, we have more to say about ad blockers,
Speaker 1: but first, um, hey, what do you know? We have
Speaker 1: some ads. We'll be right back. Okay, so December eight,
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and this is the first time where
Speaker 1: we can actually put a specific date on one of
Speaker 1: these things. You know, again, developers don't necessarily write down
Speaker 1: stuff for historical records, which, guys, you've got to start
Speaker 1: doing that. Yeah, seriously, everyone get on that. I know. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean everyone is on that at this point because
Speaker 1: of the popularity of blogging and micro blogging. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, right, this is when Michael Gunlock developed his
Speaker 1: own ad blocker called ad block with a capital B
Speaker 1: this time. Right, that makes it totally different obviously spelled
Speaker 1: the same way as the original ad block, except that
Speaker 1: the B is capitalized. Like you said, Look, it's the Internet.
Speaker 1: Things can be case sensitive. I just think that's funny
Speaker 1: that you already have a product called ad block Plus,
Speaker 1: so clearly what you want to come out with is
Speaker 1: one called ad block. But you know, again, these are
Speaker 1: open source approaches. It's not like these these different developers
Speaker 1: are all getting into it in order to make book
Speaker 1: who's amount of money. It's stopped something that they felt
Speaker 1: was necessary to extend functionality, and it's a passion thing. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So this is totally separate from the original ad block
Speaker 1: and also ad block Plus. And originally this was an
Speaker 1: extension for Google Chrome. And in fact, the reason why
Speaker 1: I said December eight, two thousand nine, is that's also
Speaker 1: the very first day that Google allowed extensions in Chrome,
Speaker 1: only in the beta version of Chrome. Actually at the time,
Speaker 1: it would roll out extensions for for Chrome as a
Speaker 1: as a whole a couple of months later, but you know,
Speaker 1: they made this amount announcement, and gun Launch checked to
Speaker 1: see whether there was already an ad block for Chrome,
Speaker 1: and specifically ad block plus for Chrome because he really
Speaker 1: liked that block plus it was his favorite Firefox extension.
Speaker 1: And he saw that there wasn't and started coding one
Speaker 1: like on the spot. Yep, and so uh and now
Speaker 1: these days you can actually get it from multiple uh browsers,
Speaker 1: not just Google Chrome. Also there's version for Safari and
Speaker 1: one for Opera. Ad Block Plus, by the way, also
Speaker 1: available on multiple browsers, including Chrome, Safari uh as well
Speaker 1: as Internet Explorer and of course Firefox where it got started.
Speaker 1: So now we're covering pretty much all the basis and
Speaker 1: some of these you know, you're you're limited on choice,
Speaker 1: Like if you're using Opera, Uh hello, Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that the Opera fans out there are big
Speaker 1: passionate fans. They love that browser. I just I think
Speaker 1: there might be three of you. But hey, if you're
Speaker 1: one of those three, write us and tell us why
Speaker 1: Opera is the best, because I would I would love
Speaker 1: to hear it. I've I've used it a couple of
Speaker 1: times and that's all I know about it. So at
Speaker 1: any rate, uh, you had ad block going under version
Speaker 1: numbers like two point oh being the first one that's
Speaker 1: being released for actual use, so we're no longer at
Speaker 1: the zero point whatever. For ad block, it's it's on
Speaker 1: a totally different path. Again, it's not really connected to
Speaker 1: those other ones other than the fact that the end
Speaker 1: result is it blocks ads. Right, It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: based on the same concept, so it was written from
Speaker 1: an entirely separate bit of code exactly. So one of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories about the the ad block extension is
Speaker 1: what happened on April Fool's Day two thousand twelve. So
Speaker 1: this day, the developer decided to do something playful by
Speaker 1: tweaking the code a little bit, so instead of just
Speaker 1: blocking ads so that you don't see them, it replaced
Speaker 1: ads with the Internet's favorite thing, little cats. So it
Speaker 1: became cat block Day. And in fact, it got so
Speaker 1: popular that and people loved it so much that they
Speaker 1: went ahead and added cat block as an as an
Speaker 1: optional add on it. Yeah, you could subscribe and get
Speaker 1: cat block if you wanted everything to permanently well everything
Speaker 1: all the ads to permanently be switched over to cats,
Speaker 1: not not the entire and not just a cat browser,
Speaker 1: although someone's got to have done that, I'm sure, right,
Speaker 1: I'm positive anyway, Yeah, so uh interesting, yeah yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Features of good launches ad block are that it can
Speaker 1: it can block resources in Google Chrome so that the
Speaker 1: elements won't even load in the browser, right, um, and
Speaker 1: that includes uh, not just pictures but also flash elements.
Speaker 1: It can block ads and videos like if if YouTube
Speaker 1: plays an ad before a video, it can just wipe
Speaker 1: that from creation, right yea, at least as far as
Speaker 1: your concerned. Yea. Um. The current version I believe is
Speaker 1: available in more than thirty languages. Yep, yep, it's got
Speaker 1: international capabilities built right into it. Also a note of
Speaker 1: interest in good Luck launched a successful Crown funded campaign
Speaker 1: to and and follow me closely here, kids create ads
Speaker 1: for ad block so that ad block can block more ads.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're talking about bob blah blaws blaw blog.
Speaker 1: That's that's what it sounded like to me. It was.
Speaker 1: The campaign was to advertise his his service ad Block,
Speaker 1: because not that many people use it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that as as of the campaign, he was saying
Speaker 1: that only three and ten Internet users had any kind
Speaker 1: of ad blocking software at all. Um. And so he
Speaker 1: thought that, you know, more people need to know about
Speaker 1: this thing awareness problem, right right, Yeah, and and that
Speaker 1: you know, if people knew so, right, So he launched
Speaker 1: this campaign and yeah, they made enough money to like
Speaker 1: put up a billboard in Times Square. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: took an analog and ad blocking company paid for an
Speaker 1: advertisement and what is one of the world's most well
Speaker 1: known advertising Mecca's meat Space, where no one can block it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm my brain is hurting right beautiful, Well, anyway, if
Speaker 1: you're one dring, Hey, what happened ad block? Plus? He
Speaker 1: kept on keeping on. Yeah. In two tho it would
Speaker 1: receive an anonymous donation that was generous enough to allow
Speaker 1: Ladimir to quit his day job and work full time
Speaker 1: on the project for two entire years. Yeah. He during
Speaker 1: that time expanded it for use with all of the
Speaker 1: browsers that we were talking about a moment ago. Oh
Speaker 1: and also Firefox Mobile and Android. I didn't even mention
Speaker 1: the mobile operating system, right, um and then inn would
Speaker 1: incorporate what became a very controversial feature, UMU developer led
Speaker 1: white listing. Yeah. So you know, the earlier white listing
Speaker 1: we were talking about was about users defining Okay, I
Speaker 1: want to see this particular content, right, every personal user
Speaker 1: using this ad blocking software. This is on the developer side,
Speaker 1: This is before it ever gets to the user. And
Speaker 1: the idea was that the philosophy was kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to me. The the premise is that people want ad
Speaker 1: block because they don't want annoying, intrusive ads. However, a
Speaker 1: lot of people still want to be able to support
Speaker 1: the sites that they go to, and they realize that
Speaker 1: those sites depend on AD revenue exactly, so in order
Speaker 1: to make sure they are not denying these these different
Speaker 1: sites that add revenue, that they are allowing their participating
Speaker 1: in this kind of marketplace where we can have people
Speaker 1: paid for the work that they're doing and other people
Speaker 1: can enjoy that work. Ad blog plus took it kind
Speaker 1: of upon itself to define what a good ad is
Speaker 1: versus not a good ad. Yeah, the whole thing grew
Speaker 1: out of a partnership between Ladimir and uh person by
Speaker 1: the name of till fed A who's who's an online
Speaker 1: marketer who agreed that lots of online ads are really terrible.
Speaker 1: Um but but right, But he didn't want to see
Speaker 1: the revenue from online ads dry up entirely. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of an idea that ads that follow a
Speaker 1: certain set of rules are okay, right if if they're
Speaker 1: not um, if they're not preventing you from accessing the
Speaker 1: content that you went to that page to read, or
Speaker 1: or auto playing sound which is terrible all the time,
Speaker 1: or video or or otherwise just coming up the works
Speaker 1: in such an annoying way that that you want to
Speaker 1: block that thing. Yeah. In fact, ideally according to this
Speaker 1: that has very strict size restrictions that you know, ads
Speaker 1: have to be a certain size and write all that down.
Speaker 1: But there ideally our text only, which advertisers do not
Speaker 1: care for. Uh. You know it's you know, it's not
Speaker 1: as eye catching as something like picture of so. But
Speaker 1: according to the white listing approach, it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: text only. None of that AutoPlay stuff, whether it's sound
Speaker 1: or video. It's supposed to be um, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be unobtrusive. So it's not supposed to
Speaker 1: cover up things you can't have like a scrolling swoop
Speaker 1: in or scroll in or or shadow box or yeah
Speaker 1: or reform all the words to spell out this product
Speaker 1: is awesome. You know, it's not supposed to do any
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff. Uh. And that if you
Speaker 1: played by those rules and if you filled out some
Speaker 1: forms and stuff, you could work with ad blocks because
Speaker 1: to get onto this white listed program. So like a
Speaker 1: company that would provide advertising, because you know, the companies
Speaker 1: that you see advertising online, they're usually not the ones
Speaker 1: that are handling the actual ads. It's usually an ad agency.
Speaker 1: There are some companies that have their own ad departments,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them will go to a third party.
Speaker 1: So if these third parties partner with ad block plus
Speaker 1: and create ads in this way, those ads would in
Speaker 1: theory not be automatically blocked by the ad blocker. However,
Speaker 1: if if as a user you wanted to still say
Speaker 1: I don't want to see any ads. I don't care
Speaker 1: about the revenue thing, I don't care. All I want
Speaker 1: is all the free existence, you could actually turn that
Speaker 1: option off so that you it was automatically on by default,
Speaker 1: but you could turn it off in the settings and
Speaker 1: uh and block all ads whether they are on a
Speaker 1: quote unquote good ad list or not. Also, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a um honor system approach. It still is
Speaker 1: kind of an honor system approach because ad block plus
Speaker 1: doesn't have an automated way to make sure that the
Speaker 1: ads that are submitted in fact follow those criteria. Right.
Speaker 1: Once a company gets gets white listed, all of their
Speaker 1: ads are white listed, and it's up to the developers
Speaker 1: and also to the users of the program to pick
Speaker 1: out ads that they still find offensive and submit a
Speaker 1: report about them. Right. So, if as a user, you
Speaker 1: see something on a web page and you think, wait,
Speaker 1: that doesn't fit the criteria, and I've totally got ad
Speaker 1: blocker plus on and it should be blocking all this stuff.
Speaker 1: You can report the ad and then add block plus
Speaker 1: could take action and say, hey, guys, this isn't following
Speaker 1: the rules that we said. Of course, there was still
Speaker 1: pushback from from users about this, who said that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, they didn't agree with a
Speaker 1: group of developers making this choice for them of what
Speaker 1: was and wasn't acceptable um. And second of all, that
Speaker 1: there was a potential that ad block plus was getting
Speaker 1: paid to serve ads to them. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: blogger named um Sasha Palenberg who first said that ad
Speaker 1: block plus was an advertising mafia, that this put them
Speaker 1: in charge, like they were the ones who could say
Speaker 1: what ads are showing on the web in which ones
Speaker 1: aren't effectively at least to the audience that uses ad
Speaker 1: block Plus. And then someone who has not been named
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, an anonymous person alleged
Speaker 1: that the developers of ad block plus had demanded a
Speaker 1: share of ad revenue in order to white list ads
Speaker 1: from his or her site. We don't know who this
Speaker 1: person is, We don't know their gender or anything, but
Speaker 1: According to this, one person who presumably works for an
Speaker 1: advertising company ad block plus was saying, okay, well, if
Speaker 1: you share a third of your money that you make
Speaker 1: from these ads, then you can totally be on the list. Um.
Speaker 1: Not a lot. Not that everyone who applies to get
Speaker 1: on the list makes it right. Most people don't, and
Speaker 1: ad block has has. Ad Block plus rather has said
Speaker 1: a lot about this issue online and in blogs and interviews. UM.
Speaker 1: They they published a uh clarifying piece in October stating
Speaker 1: that it rejects over half of its applicants based on
Speaker 1: unacceptable ad practices right out the door um, and that
Speaker 1: overall it only has accepted about nine point five percent
Speaker 1: of its applicants to the program. Meanwhile, over at ad
Speaker 1: block you have the founder saying, hey, uh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: if I had an option, they're saying, show me ads
Speaker 1: that don't suck. Those are his words that my users
Speaker 1: would opt in. But it doesn't actually have that functionality.
Speaker 1: This would become so controversial that ad block plus actually
Speaker 1: ended up, and not not just among advertisers. Clearly it's
Speaker 1: controversial to them, but also to users, users who said, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't want this to be on by default. I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to go into my settings and
Speaker 1: change it. They ended up for king ad block plus
Speaker 1: because it couldn't get more confusing, right uh, and created
Speaker 1: ad block Edge, which doesn't have any of the white
Speaker 1: listing features. It's essentially this is this is just going
Speaker 1: to block everything unless you manually go in and tell
Speaker 1: it not to write um and and a brief point
Speaker 1: going back to that monetary issue UM In that company
Speaker 1: blog from ad block Plus, basically they said that less
Speaker 1: than ten percent of the applications that they've advanced to
Speaker 1: the final stages UM were submitted with some kind of
Speaker 1: monetary benefit to ad block plus. So some were submitted
Speaker 1: with monetary benefit. Yes, that just raises more questions. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would call that so clarifying anymore.
Speaker 1: I think there needs to be a clarification of the
Speaker 1: clarifying statement. After this next set of ADS, I promise
Speaker 1: will block more until we need to run more ads.
Speaker 1: Take it away ads. This is, UH is beyond just
Speaker 1: the issue of I don't want to see ADS or
Speaker 1: I find this intrusive. There there are other thing considerations
Speaker 1: that are legitimate that people have because today the way
Speaker 1: the web works, there's a lot of different ways to
Speaker 1: kind of gather information about users, even in ways that
Speaker 1: don't necessarily name who you are, but if there's enough
Speaker 1: of your behavior there, they can totally tell who you are.
Speaker 1: They can and they can certainly track you anonymous user number,
Speaker 1: you know x online as much as they want to,
Speaker 1: and people do continually, and a lot of that tracking
Speaker 1: software is packaged along with ad serving software, so so
Speaker 1: you know, and these are are modern times of big data.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an issue. Um As of March, ad
Speaker 1: block plus claim to have the capacity to block eight
Speaker 1: thousand six different trackers, you know, different cookies and scripts
Speaker 1: and all that other stuff that runs in the background
Speaker 1: of sites that you visit, collecting continual information about you
Speaker 1: and your activities and your habits to either use or
Speaker 1: to sell to other companies, you know, companies that are
Speaker 1: sifting through it for whatever potentially nefarious purposes they choose
Speaker 1: to or just other advertisers. It may not be so
Speaker 1: much nefarious, but it could just mean that you're going
Speaker 1: to get yet more ads right right, and and those
Speaker 1: weird creepy ads that show that they know what you've
Speaker 1: been looking at on Amazon dot Com right right, Like
Speaker 1: when you go to Facebook and you notice that all
Speaker 1: the ads on Facebook somehow match things that you had
Speaker 1: just been browsing on a totally different site. What really
Speaker 1: confuses me is when they serve me ads of something
Speaker 1: that I just purchased because I'm like, I I did
Speaker 1: like that thing. Yeah, I already thought it. I bought
Speaker 1: the thing that you told me to. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to buy it again. I'm not going to click there.
Speaker 1: What confuses me is when I get the ones for
Speaker 1: enormous muscles, because y'all, I don't know if you see
Speaker 1: me recently, but I mean you're basically already already human perfections. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you know, I don't so much have
Speaker 1: a six pack as I have a raging kicker. That's
Speaker 1: what I've got going on. But anyway, so to get
Speaker 1: down to the the side that we're on. So we're
Speaker 1: Lauren and I Obviously we both work for a company
Speaker 1: that's a web based company. We get, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there there are ads that run on how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Absolutely, and so we run ads in our podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a different kind of thing certainly, but
Speaker 1: still it's it's that's how that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: main ways we generate revenue. Yeah, that that is what
Speaker 1: allows us to have jobs. Right, So if everyone were
Speaker 1: to block it and it got to a point where
Speaker 1: advertisers said, well this, this isn't working because now we
Speaker 1: can no longer make any money. Like essentially, if you
Speaker 1: pull the rug out from underneath that entire industry, you, uh,
Speaker 1: it forces everyone to have to rethink how do I
Speaker 1: make money? Because if I can't make money, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do this. I'm gonna go do something else
Speaker 1: where I can make money. Sure, so you know, are
Speaker 1: you going to put your content behind pay walls of
Speaker 1: various tiers or are you going to rely on donations
Speaker 1: or merchandise? Uh? And and none of those are as
Speaker 1: easy I guess as just selling ad spaces, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it all depends. Like there's some larger organizations that
Speaker 1: have a historical following that could do things like shift
Speaker 1: to a paywall method and still stay afloat. There are
Speaker 1: others that cannot, just as there are examples of uh
Speaker 1: companies that or or individuals who exist on on patronage.
Speaker 1: There's there's the site Patreon now where you can pledge
Speaker 1: a certain amount per month for people who are doing
Speaker 1: things and a crowdfunding you know that the controversial Penny
Speaker 1: Arcade crowdfunder that that basically let them run their site
Speaker 1: for a year for you. So, I mean there there
Speaker 1: are other ways, but it's not necessarily something that's within
Speaker 1: the grasp of everyone. So sure, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that the general recommendation is too if you like a site,
Speaker 1: uh white list it and and let let it serve
Speaker 1: you ads, right and uh so yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: needs to be an ongoing conversation between users and advertisers
Speaker 1: and the companies that want to advertise, right, because, like
Speaker 1: I said, most most companies are saying, we want people
Speaker 1: to be encouraged to buy our goods and services or
Speaker 1: to at least have a more increased awareness of them.
Speaker 1: We would rather that increased awareness doesn't come along with Oh,
Speaker 1: those are those irritating so and so's that always block
Speaker 1: it whenever I want to watch such and such a right, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that in all of this Google,
Speaker 1: which is an ad company, don't don't ever think it's
Speaker 1: a search company because that's not what they're there for. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they allowed, they chose to allow ad blocking
Speaker 1: extensions for for Chrome for its browser. UM. Speaking about
Speaker 1: the Jonathan Rosenberg, the senior vice president of Product Management
Speaker 1: as of two thousand nine, wrote in an in company
Speaker 1: letter UM that aiding users with options can can really
Speaker 1: only grow and enrich the Internet community at large. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting take. I mean, particularly from someone who,
Speaker 1: like like you said, is working for essentially an ad company.
Speaker 1: You know, they absolutely didn't have to do that, and
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty pretty beautiful that they do. I
Speaker 1: have a quote actually from another Google employee, one um
Speaker 1: Linus Upson, who is of at least was Google's engineering director,
Speaker 1: about this entire issue. He said, it's unlikely ad blockers
Speaker 1: are going to get to the level where they imperil
Speaker 1: the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that
Speaker 1: a large segment of the population wants to block it,
Speaker 1: then advertising should get less annoying. Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the best way of going
Speaker 1: about this is to design ads that are that definitely
Speaker 1: advertise your product or service, but don't do so at
Speaker 1: the expense of the user experience. It's really I mean,
Speaker 1: that's easy to say, it's really hard to do because
Speaker 1: but but you know, I kind of appreciate that it's
Speaker 1: pushing the design impetus back to the people responsible for it.
Speaker 1: It's saying like, don't create bad stuff. If you want
Speaker 1: people to not block it, don't don't go with the
Speaker 1: easy approach of using something that blocks their view of
Speaker 1: what they're trying to get at, or something that's so
Speaker 1: eye catching that you literally can't pay attention to anything
Speaker 1: else on the page. Right if it if it looks
Speaker 1: like a MySpace page, let's the old school MySpace. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's like Geo c s that would have
Speaker 1: been a better way of putting it. Yeah, if it
Speaker 1: looks like a Geo cities page, you may want to
Speaker 1: revisit that unless you're doing it specifically for the irony
Speaker 1: and it's going on a site that that would that
Speaker 1: would fit in well. And that wraps up that classic
Speaker 1: episode of tech stuff the things I wanted to say
Speaker 1: about ad blockers. So I used to be a big
Speaker 1: user of ad blockers because a lot of ads were
Speaker 1: so intrusive, particularly the ones that would just launch with
Speaker 1: audio and video out of nowhere, and it was really disruptive,
Speaker 1: especially if you're someone who's doing a lot of research
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of tabs open, maybe you don't
Speaker 1: even know which tab is the one that's making the noise.
Speaker 1: I know that at least in Google Chrome you can
Speaker 1: see the little megaphone icon that shows which one is
Speaker 1: playing noise. But when you've got like twenty tabs open,
Speaker 1: it's hard to even see that. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where because the ad experience was
Speaker 1: so bad, I didn't want to have to deal with it. However,
Speaker 1: that being said, I also these days feel like it's
Speaker 1: really giving the short end of the stick to the
Speaker 1: companies that are running the uh, the site or service
Speaker 1: that I'm on. You know, that's how they generate revenue.
Speaker 1: And if I'm denying that, then if you do enough
Speaker 1: people do that, then the stuff goes away, right, There's
Speaker 1: not enough money to support it. And as someone whose
Speaker 1: job depends upon ad revenue, I I get it. Um.
Speaker 1: I wish that ads could be less intrusive, and I've
Speaker 1: actually found some ads to be really helpful. I followed
Speaker 1: some ads, and I've bought stuff. Heck, I've bought stuff
Speaker 1: from other podcast ads and including some of my own.
Speaker 1: I've used my own. I've used my own discount code
Speaker 1: to buy stuff, so they do work, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't like that. I still only the disruptive ones that
Speaker 1: ends up being something that sticks in my you know,
Speaker 1: six center my skin, and I don't care for it.
Speaker 1: But I definitely understand the need for ads, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't use ad blockers anymore. Sometimes that ends up
Speaker 1: being a challenging situation. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that was the choice I made. Not that I'm telling
Speaker 1: any of you guys how to choose to do things,
Speaker 1: just that it was something that I ultimately decided. I would,
Speaker 1: you know, live in an ad filled world because I
Speaker 1: want the stuff I to keep going. All right, that's it.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is over on Twitter and the handle we use as
Speaker 1: text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.