(Edit: The headline used to be "Adblock Plus is changing Amazon refs", but it has been fixed. I commented on the new one below [6].)
I'm a developer at Eyeo, working on Adblock Plus. Adblock Plus is not changing Amazon links. TFA is ripe with FUD, but it doesn't even go this far.
Maybe this was a major misunderstanding of the typo correction feature [1], which is opt-in, only implemented in Firefox and merely corrects typos in URLs, always telling what it corrected. I was never really sure how it fits into ABP, but I fail to see how this could be considered shady.
Other than that, the only thing Adblock Plus does is block content. Which content that is depends on the filter lists you use. There are defaults, but you're free to use any you like, or create your own. It's usually ads, but ABP is also pretty good at blocking any kind of tracking [2].
Back to TFA. The main allegations are:
1. The CEO and the angel investor at Eyeo have ties to the ad industry
2. Adblock Plus is letting ads through if sites pay for it
3. Adblock Plus is burning money
One at a time:
1. This is true. Eyeo was founded to find a middle ground between users blocking ads and sites monetising from ads. The idea is that there are decent ads that most people wouldn't want to block, in the sea of horrible ads - "acceptable ads" [3]. "The ad industry" is not a single evil entity that wants to blind us all, some people in it actually want to make ads better. Hence Wladimir joined forces with them.
2. Every site can have their ads whitelisted, and ads that violate the criteria [4] will not be whitelisted. Some sites are supporting us financially, others don't. I think the main controversy is that this feature is opt-out rather than opt-in.
3. I disagree. More than half of the employees on the payroll are working remotely, deliberately. We wouldn't even all fit into the office, which is nice, but cheap (it's a building that's going to be demolished in 1-2 years). We're barely profitable, nobody's getting rich. We manage the infrastructure that delivers the filter lists - which are used by literally every other ad blocker out there, for free, and that's fine. Everything we create is open source [5], everything can be forked, and that's fine.
Wow, the headline has been fixed. Gotta love HN. It used to be: "Adblock Plus is changing Amazon refs", now it's "Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links". (I'll have to point out though that this is not a major point in TFA, I didn't even see that mentioned in there.)
Yup, that's right. This is the URL fixing functionality only implemented in ABP for Firefox. If you type amazorn.com, Adblock Plus will correct it for you (if you activated this feature, it's opt-in), sending you to amazon.com.
ABP does indeed add an affiliate ID to those links, it was a monetisation idea. We've been open about this [1] (See "Monetization"), nobody's being tracked and nobody's seeing any extra ads.
I had and have some doubts about this making sense as a part of ABP, but I wouldn't consider it shady.
There are some things you could improve about typo correction to make it consistent with how you handle ad-blocking rules:
* Update the rules over HTTPS, not HTTP
* Filter preferences should show the typo-correction-rule URL, just as it does for ad-blocking rules, and it should be possible to inspect them by clicking
* typo correction should probably only be used if the target website doesn't actually exist. See elsewhere in the comments, that is what how one would normally expect it to work.
As it is now the fact that typo correction even uses an insecure, remote list of rules is not at all obvious from the UI, instead its hidden away in the code.
Of course its also a bit confusing on why typo correction is even part of AdBlock Plus to begin with, as there is another extension just for that purpose - urlfixer.
If someone wants typo correction you could suggest them to also install urlfixer, but it doesn't really make sense to have two unrelated features in one extension.
Don't try to become an extension that does everything...
Frankly, I have no idea why it's not being served over HTTP (there must be a technical reason, Wladimir is a HTTPS zealot), and I'm not sure why the corrections URL is not configurable. I bet we discussed that in the blog or the forum, but unfortunately the site's down right now :(
As for correcting URLs that do exist, I think the idea was to avoid phishing sites and parking sites. But IIRC we did have a considerable number of false positives, so it's a questionable approach.
I'll argue for removing it from ABP now. URL Fixer is from us as well (it's the same code we have in ABP), so anyone who liked it can just install that. I'd rather have ABP do one thing, and do it well, feature creep is a thing...
Thank you for stepping in with some info before the pitchforks come out. Combining your statements with the fact that the js itself shows Amazon URL rewrites are only happening for people who have opted-in to the typo correction feature makes this seem much ado about nothing. The company could have been more transparent to begin with, but you guys have done a lot to improve the online advertising experience.
Thank you for the thanks :) What we do attracts bad press and subsequent flamewars, and I usually shy away from getting into those. But I couldn't bear this unreflected FUD on HN, which is important to me.
I suppose we could have communicated better. Maybe we should have talked more about our employees and their backgrounds, about who is whitelisted and why. We've made mistakes, and we're trying to learn from them.
I'm a developer at Eyeo, working on Adblock Plus. Adblock Plus is not changing Amazon links. TFA is ripe with FUD, but it doesn't even go this far.
Maybe this was a major misunderstanding of the typo correction feature [1], which is opt-in, only implemented in Firefox and merely corrects typos in URLs, always telling what it corrected. I was never really sure how it fits into ABP, but I fail to see how this could be considered shady.
Other than that, the only thing Adblock Plus does is block content. Which content that is depends on the filter lists you use. There are defaults, but you're free to use any you like, or create your own. It's usually ads, but ABP is also pretty good at blocking any kind of tracking [2].
Back to TFA. The main allegations are:
1. The CEO and the angel investor at Eyeo have ties to the ad industry
2. Adblock Plus is letting ads through if sites pay for it
3. Adblock Plus is burning money
One at a time:
1. This is true. Eyeo was founded to find a middle ground between users blocking ads and sites monetising from ads. The idea is that there are decent ads that most people wouldn't want to block, in the sea of horrible ads - "acceptable ads" [3]. "The ad industry" is not a single evil entity that wants to blind us all, some people in it actually want to make ads better. Hence Wladimir joined forces with them.
2. Every site can have their ads whitelisted, and ads that violate the criteria [4] will not be whitelisted. Some sites are supporting us financially, others don't. I think the main controversy is that this feature is opt-out rather than opt-in.
3. I disagree. More than half of the employees on the payroll are working remotely, deliberately. We wouldn't even all fit into the office, which is nice, but cheap (it's a building that's going to be demolished in 1-2 years). We're barely profitable, nobody's getting rich. We manage the infrastructure that delivers the filter lists - which are used by literally every other ad blocker out there, for free, and that's fine. Everything we create is open source [5], everything can be forked, and that's fine.
[1] http://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adblo...
[2] http://adblockplus.org/en/features#tracking
[3] http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
[4] http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria
[5] https://hg.adblockplus.org/
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5947553