<story><title>Opera browser built-in ad blocking, now in beta</title><url>http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/03/opera-built-ad-blocking-now-beta/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SCdF</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m really beginning to wonder where the ad-blocking wars are going to leave us.&lt;p&gt;If I ran some kind of online content, and it was clear the majority of my money was made in advertising, and that the majority of my money was being eroded by ad blockers, I feel like the natural next step is to fill your content with ads that are simply not blockable.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve started seeing this with YouTube videos, where people quickly (or not so quickly) plug audible at the start of their videos. I have no doubt that &amp;quot;native&amp;quot; advertising is becoming both more frequent and more insidious (because obvious native advertising doesn&amp;#x27;t work as well as non-obvious).&lt;p&gt;I have to be honest: I&amp;#x27;m not really a fan of this future. I think the right future is either a) paid content (which very few people will go for) or b) ad-supported content, but those ads aren&amp;#x27;t evil animated audible malware vector infected boxes of non-relevance. This leaves a chance that the content will actually &lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt; content, and not some headphone review that you&amp;#x27;re entirely unsure who has paid for the existence of.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps instead of having massive blocklists with the occasional white-listed website, there should be some kind of automated sin-binning, where websites (and ad agencies) that have proven to behave themselves (non-animated, relevant, safe advertisements) are allowed through while dodgy scum gets blocked for N months or until they have a proven amount of time where they have shown themselves to be safe.&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t solve the whole &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t want people tracking me&amp;quot; thing. I&amp;#x27;m not really sure how to solve that. I don&amp;#x27;t see how you can. I see the future for that being more and more walled gardens so you can be tracked server side, which is also entirely undesirable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Opera browser built-in ad blocking, now in beta</title><url>http://www.opera.com/blogs/desktop/2016/03/opera-built-ad-blocking-now-beta/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mrweasel</author><text>Microsoft is also adding adblocking to Edge, which makes you wonder if the sites that rely on ads for finance their operation is designing a &amp;quot;Plan B&amp;quot;. Granted it&amp;#x27;s not the two biggest browsers, and Google isn&amp;#x27;t likely to add ad blocking to Chrome, but still the it must make some sites rethink their business plan.</text></comment>