Hi PVX,

There's a major effort underway to find other ways than advertising to keep websites in business. But since most people don't pay for subscriptions and Patreon and Flattr aren't yet in wide use, ads are it until something better comes along.

To your first point, some other ad blockers adopt a "take no prisoners" approach to ad blocking. They block more ads, but their methods often break websites. From a user experience perspective, it could be argued that that's a faulty product. :) In contrast, we try to find a balance between sustaining the web we all love and providing a good user experience. The vast majority of our users agree with this approach.

To your second point, we do include the Acceptable Ads program as a filter list in AdBlock. We give users the opportunity to disable it with one click when they install AdBlock, and it can also easily be disabled in AdBlock's options. Why do we make it opt-out? Well, it goes back to that balancing act again.

All that said, we understand that there are folks who just don't want to see ads, no ifs, ands, or buts. We're okay with that. Other ad blockers will probably meet their needs better, and we're okay with that, too. :)

Thanks for giving AdBlock a try!

Rhana Cassidy
AdBlock Community Manager

Glad to hear all is well again!

Rhana, AdBlock Community Manager

Hi Drake,

You're thinking of Adblock Plus (ABP), an unrelated product developed by a different company.

ABP started the Acceptable Ads program a few years ago. It includes a whitelist that large companies can pay to join as long as their ads meet the criteria for non-intrusive advertising. (Their fees subsidize smaller companies, which can join the whitelist for free, again as long as their ads meet the criteria). AdBlock agreed to participate in the program when ABP agreed to move control of the whitelist to an independent board, which they did earlier this year.

Unlike other ad blockers, AdBlock and ABP don't take a "scorched earth" approach to blocking ads. The web simply isn't sustainable under that model. It's a balancing act, and we find that most folks don't mind seeing a few unobtrusive ads that help to pay for content they like.

Rhana Cassidy
AdBlock Community Manager

Hi star_weaver,

Please try disabling "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" in AdBlock's options. If that doesn't help, here are some additional things to check: https://help.getadblock.com/solution/articles/6000055490-no-ads-are-blocked

If the troubleshooting steps in that article don't help, please use our "Report an ad" feature on the page where you're seeing ads. Thanks!
- Rhana, AdBlock Community Manager