Browser adblocking should be installed by default

[tr14]

AdBlock Plus (or its more anti-ad replacement TrueBlock Plus) should be installed by default.

The extension should ship subscribed to EasyPrivacy+EasyList, Fanboy's List, Fanboy's [International] Tracking/Stats Blocking, Adversity, and Adversity Privacy List. If AdBlock Plus is used, the allow non-intrusive advertising setting should be disabled by default.

Ghostery should also ship by default, set for script blocking and tracking cookie blocking.

Internet advertising has become a plague. Advertisers deluge users with a tsunami of annoying garbage, slowing down our machines, wasting system resources, and increasing energy consumption in the process.

To deliver this advertising, marketroids deploy highly intrusive user tracking and profiling technology, collecting deeply personal information about users, to be used against them, and later resold to additional marketroids.

Advertising is not for the benefit of the user. It trespasses onto our systems. More people don't push back against it because of the hassle, apathy, or lack of technical know-how.

When these ad blocking technologies are not installed, many people must go through the additional steps of installing and configuring them, which is about a ten minute process.

If they were to ship by default, a small number of people would uninstall them, a process which takes about thirty seconds.

I firmly believe that a greater number people will choose to install them if they are not shipped by default than would choose to uninstall them if shipped by default. That, along with the time disparity, favors a default installation.

As a user-centered distribution, purging advertising by default makes sense, saves time, and enhances the user experience.

It is easy enough to include these in the Firefox package.

If people want to be assaulted by advertising, then that is their choice, but like junk email, it should be an OPT-IN choice. Having to opt-out of advertising and tracking is an anti-user position.

Advertising is also a vector for malware. Advertising is used by criminals to distribute browser exploits, often by malicious Flash files, or conditional redirects to exploit-containing PDF documents. Blocking it by default enhances the security of systems.

More aggressive advertising control methods like NoScript, RequestPolicy, or a hosts file would create confusion and problems. Non-technical users can't easily diagnose and work around these like they can with adding a site-specific whitelisting in ABP. An ad blocker along with Ghostery presents no such problems.

[gn2]

I guess you don't like adverts...?
It is highly likely that Adblocking in Mint will never be default.

Linux Mint is free of charge (thanks to your donations and adverts on the website) and we hope you'll enjoy it.

Source: http://www.linuxmint.com/index.php

[tr14]

Almost nobody likes them.

Most people have come to accept them because they do not know any differently.

I have installed ad blocking for hundreds of non technical users, and not a one of them asked for their advertising to be put back once it had been eradicated. On the other hand, I have received so much thanks and praise for helping these people do something they did not even know was possible.

As for the project, if it needs money, donations are in order. It would be a shame for a conflict of interests over a few measly ad dollars on this site prevented the project from enhancing the experience of every Mint user all across the web.

[mank_in]

@gn2
i will post quote from http://www.linuxmint.com too but you are already doing that

If browser adblocking is installed by default in Linux Mint, it will not attracted a sponsor.
Of course you can decide to block all advertising , is your freedom.

[tr14]

One goal of community FOSS is to put users before the interests of corporate dollars.

In doing so, the project should protect people from advertising who do not know any better or who do not fully understand the depths of the intrusiveness posed by tracking.

If people want to opt-in to these with informed consent, then that is their choice.

What should not happen is for a default Firefox install to assist in tracking and profiling users who have yet to make that choice to opt-in. That would be like IE allowing ActiveX installations by default.

The default should be safe, secure, and fully user oriented. That means our computers are free of things which are not acting in our interests, whether that be advertising, DRM, or the epidemic of trialware on Windows PCs.

[Midnighter]

It's about choice. Forcing it on people (no matter how much you think it''s what they "need") is not the way to go. By choice, I use Ghostery and Privoxy for much of my browsing, but then I chose to do so. Just because you think your ideas are better as the "default" does not make it so. There ae plenty of resources available if one wants to block/filter adverts/etc. Forcing it on them (no matter how "noble" your intentions) is no better. It's more doing them a disservicve if anything. If all they see is the filtered net from day one, then much of the advert revenue some sites rely on would dry up, and people would be surprised when actually do see ads (as I often do when visiting friends, and am surprised to see some of the same sites in their browser with adverts, etc). Plus, not everyone is as bothered by a bit of advertising as some others. They takle it as par for the course.

Also, not everyone will stick with Firefox as a browser, so that would nullify that right away.

Eveyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but not their own facts.

[tr14]

Installing it by default isn't "forcing" it on anybody.

Disabling two extensions takes about 30 seconds and almost no know-how.

Installing two extensions and configuring them takes about 15 minutes and does require both know-how as well as awareness of the problem.

Since we can't please both crowds at once, the more sensible policy is the one which maximizes satisfaction and minimizes configuration time.

As I said, I don't know of anybody who asks for the advertising to be put back once it has been filtered out.

Not everyone does stick with Firefox, however shipping Firefox by default isn't "forcing" Firefox on anyone, as there does have to be a choice made of what browser to include.

The default can be Firefox or it can be a safer and more secure version of Firefox.

What I am proposing is erring on the side of caution. There is no barrier for those who wish to opt-in to advertising contamination by disabling the blockers. That is why I did not suggest something more aggressive, like a hosts file.

Likewise, users can choose to install non-free applications like Skype, but they do so at their own peril. Advertising should be handled in the same way. Users who wish to have their resources drained and their privacy invaded should have to opt-in to that treatment.

Civil society operates on principles of consent. We must grant affirmative consent for everything from doctors who treat us to cameramen who film us. We grant affirmative consent for people to come into our home or verify our employment if we are applying for a loan.

Affirmative opt-in consent is expected on the Internet, too. The acceptable use policy of every responsible whitehat ISP requires bulk mailers to obtain affirmative consent from each recipient on a bulk email list. Failure to obtain that consent is considered spam, a hanging offense.

The recent controversy over Carrier IQ highlighted the public's desire for informed consent of what happens on their phones. Users were pissed, as they had a right to be, because carriers were invading their privacy without being clear about what was happening.

Even the nefarious Facebook presents users with an "abandon all privacy, ye who enter here" policy before users opt-in to its intrusions.

When was the last time you saw a clickwrap opt-in to in-page advertising on a website? They don't exist, because advertisers care not one bit for the privacy or dignity of users. Advertisers will do whatever they can get away with, which right now, is everything, because default browser configurations do not keep their crap out until it is asked for. What I am proposing levels the playing field by protecting users from advertising and tracking as the default policy. If those users subsequently choose to win the Nigerian lottery and see all those great offers to enhance their manhood then they do so at their own peril.

Think of what people who didn't like ads had to do back when they were setting up a brand new Windows PC. To get Firefox, they had to launch IE, which by default took them to an ad-laced default homepage of MSN. Unless they passed http://www.mozilla.org/ to IE as a command line argument they were receiving advertising they didn't ask for before they even hand a chance to block it.

[carbonic]

Thought I would give some thoughts about your idea

1. Much of the sustainability of the Internet comes from the millions of users who click or are exposed to advertising. If it was removed as default, much of the content on the internet would be gone. This is the reason that some sites block users with adblockers.

2. Also, saying users can easily pause adblock etc. if it messes with a website is dead wrong. People will never think that it's the default software that messes the site up. Advertising on the other hand doesn't have the possibility break sites thus the OS will not be blamed. Mint will be blamed for all the sites that don't work which is quite bad PR.

3. It should really not be up to Linux maintainers to adjust the inner workings of their shipped browsers. This suggestion would be better redirected to the Firefox developers etc.

4. If blocking should be shipped as a default, I don't believe it should be on as standard. However, adding it as an installation choice or asking about it first time you start the browser would be way better and more transparent for the user as this is a new paradigm of what a browser should do which will confuse novices.

[tr14]

The majority of Internet use comes from those using Windows, OSX, and mobile devices. If every desktop GNU/Linux distro shipped every ad blocking tool by default it wouldn't make much of a dent in the global advertising industry, even though desktop GNU/Linux users would be protected against the advertising threat.

That being said, even if public consciousness rises up against advertising, the first group to lose will be the low-quality content farmers. Everybody's search results are polluted because advertising has created such a powerful incentive to put quantity before quality in content creation. Even offline, is it much of a loss if a lack of advertising demand causes the cancellation of the latest Paris Hilton reality show or stops the massive waste of resources caused by physical junk mail? Digital advertising wastes resources, too. Every second the CPU/GPU spends interpreting massive cross-site JS and rendering ads is more energy down the drain. Computing uses massive amounts of electricity. I wonder how much fossil fuel could be saved if our computers weren't busy processing junk. That goes for the resource hungry banners as well as the dedicated appliances and servers we must deploy to combat the flood of spam.

Everything we buy is more expensive due to the advertising arms race, even if we don't see advertising ourselves.

We could ship an ad blocking package with sane and low false positive defaults. That is easily uninstalled by the user, or it could be uninstalled quickly on first run by a dialog asking for consent to opt-in to advertising.

Defaults should keep people safe. That is why we create user accounts during OS installation, so we don't encourage logging in as root. If there is a need for root privileges, then we sudo.

Geeks were here first. The advertisers came along to pollute things later. A lack of advertising was no barrier to the growth of the Internet, and I can't help but feel the entire Internet would be a better place if the only things which existed were things created by the creator's passion, or on the commercial side, things of enough value to warrant a micropayment.

I can remember a time in which we gave out our email addresses freely because expecting a lack of abuse was reasonable. Likewise, I can remember a time in which people were free to research, surf, and express themselves without wondering whether some advertising slimeball was looking over their shoulders. That was a much better time on the Internet.

Redhat led the way in giving the information away for free and adding value with human services.

[gn2]

Default Adblocking in Mint?
It won't happen.
End of.

[Midnighter]

You still don't see that your opinion is just that? Figures.

[tr14]

Your opinion, which is just that, is to force a default insecure configuration on everybody and hope that every single user understands the threat enough to make an informed decision.

Most people don't know just how bad and intrusive the tracking has become.

I can justify my policy position - it protects people from harm, conserves system resources, and saves time. If users want to expose themselves to the harm, it takes all of 30 seconds for them to opt-in to the advertising.

Choosing a reasonable set of defaults in a distro is part of the game. Decisions have to be made, otherwise we all start from a Gentoo stage and build it exactly how we want over the course of two days. Projects choose desktop environments, window managers, browsers, messengers, text editors, music players, games, torrent clients, and miscellaneous utilities. Choosing a reasonable set of defaults is designed to save most people the frustration of needing to hand pick every package in a process which takes many hours and can produce many errors. None of that is being "forced" on people either. If somebody doesn't like gedit then they're free to replace it, even though it does the job well enough for most of the users. What shouldn't happen is completely foregoing the decision so everybody has to make every single choice on their own. That wastes time.

Why does X start automatically? Because most people want that. Booting to a lower runlevel so that nobody is "forced" to see a GUI is just plain silly.

We build those packages with a reasonably safe set of flags, aiming for wide compatibility, even if we don't get to --rice-all-loops.

Not installing ABP and Ghostery costs each user who does so maybe 10 minutes of installation and configuration, while leaving those who don't know any better in a vulnerable state.

Installing them costs each user who wishes to opt-in to the advertising maybe 30 seconds to disable them. Not many people will do that, because not many people want the junk.

As far as the balance of post-install configuration time goes, defaulting the installation makes sense.

[tr14]

The state of privacy on the web is atrocious.

For the sake of discussion, suppose that a 15 year old downloads Linux Mint because he's into computers, curious about FOSS, and wants to get started.

Suppose also that he's not sophisticated enough to understand tracking and block it, and lacks the maturity to understand the long term ramifications of intrusive advertising.

He then goes to Google and types in "how do I tell my parents that I'm gay"

It's bad enough that Google will be tracking that and putting it in his permanent record.

Of the top ten results I see for that query, eight of them contain third party advertising and trackers. Those networks will also be placing it in his permanent record. If he uses Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, G+, or any other identity platform, now those pageviews can be cross-correlated to those accounts and follow him around forever.

There are a million different scenarios where tracking can hurt people who don't know any better or don't fully understand the issue. That is why a community-oriented OS should put users first and protect them by default, particularly those users who don't know any better, aren't capable of forming informed consent, and don't know how to take affirmative steps to safeguard their privacy.

The state of privacy today is a lot worse than in the old days when a few intrusive banners might be included by a first-party method from /ads/

Why should the user not be paramount? If people want an OS for consumers, they can choose Windows or OSX.

[craig10x]

very nice...you want to block advertising, which on linux mint's site provides revenue which helps to support this wonderful free and open source project...
way to go....not

ever stop to think how many wonderful things are provided to you free of charge on the internet BECAUSE of advertising? Nah...guess you probably never thought about it...

without advertising AND donations...there would be no Linux Mint (for example) more so from the advertising rather then the donations end ...no doubt...

[tr14]

ABP has a site-specific whitelisting feature.

Users who wish to support a site by receiving advertising have the choice to do so.

The extension can even be preloaded with settings and filtered lists but toggled to a disabled state.

There are so many ways to automate this and give users maximum control.

I support Linux Mint by making donations, not allowing a bunch of advertising douchebags to invade my privacy pitching me on crap I don't need. Reading is so much nicer with a high signal to noise ratio. Advertising interrupting serious web reading is just as inappropriate as travelling salesmen harassing patrons in the reading room of a library.

[Lomapur]

I don't think AdBlock should be installed by default, responses for a question "why ?" were provided above.

I personally use AdBlock and like what it is doing, but the very first thing I always do after installing it is disabling it on linuxmint.com and few other domains that I want to support and I know ads are not offensive. I think it's the way I can help, a little but always, this project to grow.

[craig10x]

tr14...hate to have to tell you this but although the donations obviously are an important contribution to the support of mint, i recall Clem mentioning that it is the "advertising douchebags" as you call them are responsible for the bulk of the money that enables Clem to devote his full time to the mint project along with his recent adding of a 2nd full time employee (aside from himself) and an additional one, temporarily (3 in all at the moment)...

So, while i don't support your concepts at all..at the very least, for maximum mint support not only should you enable all ads on the mint site but also occassionally click on some of them as well (that helps also)...

And if Adblock was installed by default, that CERTAINLY would discourage advertising support to mint...no doubt about it...

[w2ibc]

as a adblock user should it be installed by default? no.

it takes me a 1 min to install it and set my filters on a fresh install.

[bimsebasse]

Another tin hat user with faltering grasp of reality. Web adverts is one of mints largest sources of income so of course they shouldn't ship firefox with Adblock+ by default. Think! It takes all of one minute to install adblock in both Firefox and Chrome, and people can make their own choice whether they want adblock or not in their browser. Non-issue.

[MALsPa]

I'd love it if ad-blocking was installed by default!

But in Linux Mint's case, I don't think it should be, and I don't think it ever will be. Which makes me wonder, anyone ever heard of any distro that has web browser ad-blocking installed by default?