Ads are how we get free sites. I am ok with ads, even targeted ads – until they get abusive and interruptive.
I want an ad blocker that will be default allow ads, unless either I block them for that site; or the ads cross some thresholds. Anyone seen any like that? The few I tried block everything by default, allowing them only if the use whitelists the site.
You could simply install an ad blocker, block nothing at the outset, then select annoying ads to hide on an ad hoc basis. To me that would be incredibly time-consuming, an annoying Whack-A-Mole adventure I’d be playing all day long on all the sites I visit (which all use differing ad networks).
You might be interested in taking a look at the Chromium-based, open source Brave browser. (I use it - along with Chrome and Safari - and find it so good I deleted Firefox from my iMac.) The browser blocks ads and website trackers by default. In a future version of the browser, the company intends to adopt a pay-to-surf business model, developing a feature allowing users to opt in to receiving ads sold by the company in place of ads blocked by the browser wherein Brave will pay content publishers 55% of the replaced ad revenue, and users themselves would get 15%.
I block everything and see no ads at all, but while the browser was built to strip online ads from websites its maker’s business model relies not merely on ad blocking, but on replacing the scratched-out ads with advertisements from its own network. (Which, as I noted, you can block if you want, instead of getting paid for seeing ads.) It does not strip out adwords in search results.
It’s designed using Chrome’s open source Chromium engine, but without Google’s built-in tracking. It’s fast and stable and can use any of the huge variety of Chrome plugins. According to a Computerworld article
"On the desktop, Brave loads pages twice as fast as Chrome and Firefox, the No. 1 and No. 3 browsers in the world as ranked by analytics vendor Net Applications. On a smartphone, Brave loads pages up to eight times faster than Chrome (Android) or Safari (iOS).
The speed increases are not surprising. By eliminating ads and ad trackers, Brave downloads much less content from a website than any browser sans an ad blocking extension. There’s nothing technological about Brave’s performance; it’s simply retrieving less data than other browsers. (If that weren’t the case, Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers would be just as fast.)"
Thanks.
Brave looks interesting. Although I’m reasonably happy with Firefox and Ghostery, Brave seems worth a try.
By the way, for your needs you might want to check out the AdBlock Plus plugin (or Microsoft’s Edge browser on iOS which integrates it) which has a setting to allow in ‘Acceptable ads’ along with allowing personalized whitelists.
Personally, on Chrome I use the twin plugins Nano Defender and Nano Adblocker, which are offshoots of uBlock Origin. On top of that I use the AdNauseam plugin to randomly click on all ads, even blocked ones (without affecting my browsing). Why? In order to make it near-impossible for ad networks to build an accurate profile of me "AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks’ databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile."
IMO, Brave is not ready for prime time. No sync to iOS and, unless I missed something, the only thing that syncs between desktops are bookmarks. I don’t really want to set up all the extensions and browser preferences on each device.
I’ll keep it in my apps and check back with it from time to time.