Adblock is to begin reselling the ads it blocks, replacing websites' original ads with ones under its control—and which it takes a fat cut of the revenue from.
The program is meant to be friendly to publishers — it is, after all, letting them display some ads instead of none whatsoever. But there’s still obvious reason for publishers to be unhappy. Acceptable ads [AdBlock's in-house advertising] are likely to be less valuable than the ads a publisher could otherwise display, limiting what a website can earn. And in setting up its own marketplace, Adblock Plus continues to position itself as a gatekeeper charging a toll to get through a gate of its own making.
This was always the gameplan. AdBlock marketed itself as about blocking ads, but it's really about providing a temporary improvement in user experience to convince readers to insert it as a middleman between them, publishers and advertisers. Once secure, AdBlock can let advertising (and the user experience) creep back to the profitable way it was before, but with it charging rent to everyone.
If you block ads, at least block them with something that isn't taking a shit on both of us: get rid of AdBlock and try uBlock. If you don't like ads but would like to support Boing Boing, buy a t-shirt or an inexpensive gadget from our store.
