FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

AdBlock Plus Will No Longer Decide Which Ads to Let Through

The company is handing the privilege off to a committee.

Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, is handing over the reins of its controversial Acceptable Ads program to an independent board.

The independent board, which will be in place in 2016, will have full control and final approval over what criteria are used to determine what is and isn't an acceptable ad. The board is expected to be comprised of representatives from the publishing and advertising industries as well as Adblock Plus users.

Advertisement

Currently, acceptable ads are ads that don't include sound or animation; don't obscure website content; and should be clearly labeled as an ad. This criteria may change as the board sees fit, Eyeo's Ben Williams told Motherboard in a phone interview.

This is about asking ourselves, "What can we do with our product to improve online ads?" Williams asked, adding that Eyeo wanted "more voices" to be part of the acceptable ad review process. Williams did not say how the board would be elected.

The acceptable ads program, which began in 2011, is designed to allow advertisers to show "non-intrusive" ads to users of Adblock Plus, an ad blocking extension that debuted for Mozilla Firefox in 2006. The idea is to give Adblock Plus users the ability to "support websites that rely on advertising" so long as these websites use "non-intrusive ads.

The announcement of the creation comes just a few weeks after Apple released iOS 9, which includes the ability to block online advertising in Safari with the use of content blockers. (One such content blocker was the top app in the App Store at launch.) The debate surrounding the use of content blockers has spurred numerous articles on how their use will either destroy the commercial web as we know it, or how users may benefit from the reduction in the use of things like autoplaying videos and commercial tracking software.

Who knows, you might even have to pay for content in the future!