Whitelist Notification Feedback

[Aggrophobic]

When you whitelist after blocking these type of ads should no longer be shown. Still finishing up the implementation of this, but it hopefully will be live soon.



I think we might have done that? Fairly static ads do show up if you have adblock set to allow non-intrusive ads IIRC.

But then you also get that annoying notification. I actually got an extra adblock just to make that go away.
Is that fixed now?

I used to let MMO-C show the non intrusive ads but just turned it off when you started to spam notifications every time I refreshed the page.

[darkwarrior42]

I have enjoyed being on this site for eight years now but I can't whitelist it. It's too risky and there has been little communication beforehand about how damn annoying these ads are for us. People were burnt once by the malware--why would anyone try to risk that again? It's not worth it, I am sorry. Without proper reassurance and proof.

Honestly, since I quit WoW, the number of forums here that are truly useful for me has dropped to a point where I'm not sure it's even worth putting up with the notifications.

I get that they need the money from the ads, but between the noticeable loss of speed, the unusually high (compared to other websites I visit) number of issues that have come from the ads, and the occasional auto-play crap (sometimes from ads, which they don't allow, but also occasionally from MLG or other streams).... I was already questioning my use of this site.

I think this recent change pushes me into the "will not be coming back" category. *shrug* I hope for the rest of the users here that this goes well, but I don't really expect it to. Good luck.

[dacoolist]

Everyone has to make money - the site is paid for by ads - and I don't run adblock while on mmo-c.com

With that said, when die hard fans that have continued to come here, post expiring (if you're coming here, and you don't play WoW) - state they aren't coming back due to particular ad troubles (had a friend get some mean rootkits tracked 100% to wowhead) - it should make someone care about the scripting side of things here on the site.

Again, I typically run the site via my IOS devices, which aren't affected at all by spyware/malware.

[chaud]

Wow, so much nonsens in just one post.
"You can't get infected by the ads just trough existing!" -> Welcome to the Internet, u ever heard of something exotic like....i dont know...java?

I don't think Java ads are a thing.

That isn't how that works. There are hundreds of thousands of new viruses and malware created every single day. It takes time for any system to update its database to protect from them. You can be infected just by the ads being there and opened. They transmit data straight to your computer. In order to view Anything on the internet, the data is downloaded to your computer and then opened and viewed.

That is why ads are so dangerous. Especially when the website hosting them doesn't try to filter them at all. You end up with computers getting infected because an ad was on your website that was carrying an infection. That is why most people won't whitelist a site. I, like many others, Wont whitelist any sites. This one included. Its too much of a risk. Even with up to date programs to fight them off.

For the most part, the only real malware vector would be some kind of Flash exploit. I don't know that we actually run Flash ads anymore.

[Drynix]

So I decided to give you guys another shot. I figured you wouldn't be asking for a whitelist if you didn't up your game on your adds.

And I can say I am happily suprised on most parts. For me personally adds were all small banners at the top and bottom of the page, a total of 3 per page. Main page might have an extra in between. So nothing to bad. Most of them were static adds, had 2 with animations over the 20 or so different adds I have seen. Which is always a good thing. Downpart is that the page got a way longer load time and some adds (Either one related to unicef or one related to TNO, a big science company here in the Netherlands) is causing the page to load in new things every 10'ish seconds. Unicef add was also in French for some reason but oh well.

I deliberatly clicked a ton of adds just to see if I can pop my internet protection, non of em did. So far everything shown is clean. I will let mmo champ be whitelisted for a week. Since I don't think I can fairly judge based on 5 minutes. If the increased loading time the only thing it causes I am cool. If other issues start popping up I will report them and block untill fixed.

But you guys are making proper steps in the right direction of acceptable add showing.

[Deleted]

I think we might have done that? Fairly static ads do show up if you have adblock set to allow non-intrusive ads IIRC.

Pretty sure I am checking correctly, but I may be wrong.
if you go to https://easylist-downloads.adblockpl...ptionrules.txt
This seem to be a list of sites that are signed up to the none intrusive adds settings. "MMO-C" is not showing up in a simple search.

not sure how you would change this though.

[Deleted]

You're having a laugh right?

This is what your site looks like without adblock. The video autoplays with sound.

[Twoddle]

But then you also get that annoying notification. I actually got an extra adblock just to make that go away.
Is that fixed now?

I used to let MMO-C show the non intrusive ads but just turned it off when you started to spam notifications every time I refreshed the page.

I've only seen the whitelist notification once, are you logged in with 'Remember me' ticked? Presumably your login cookie should ensure you don't see it on every single visit.

Also you don't need an extra Ad blocker, a suitable custom filter should take care of it or change the active filter lists to block more stuff.

[Deleted]

I typically run the site via my IOS devices, which aren't affected at all by spyware/malware.

not as as common sure, but not at all? lol.

[Mifuyne]

It's funny that NOW all this stuff comes up after you've been bought by curse.

[Deleted]

It's funny that NOW all this stuff comes up after you've been bought by curse.

Curse acquisition was *years* ago, the new one is curse bought by Twitch/Amazon.

[Mifuyne]

Curse bought MMOC like 7-8 years ago, the fuck are you on about?

As you can see, I've been here for a while. Seen it happen!
Maybe my memory is failing me, seems like it wasn't so long ago
I wonder what they really need the money for, it's only a forum.

[Twoddle]

not as as common sure, but not at all? lol.

Practically every time it's the user being duped that leads to the malware becoming activated. Last time I heard of malware being installed without any user interaction other than browsing webpages was back in the 90's because now everything gets patched so fast.

Actually there was a close call last week when Microsoft made an emergency fix when it was discovered that Windows Defender itself could infect the machine if it scanned a specially crafted file within your email. Was anyone in the real world actually infected by this exploit? I doubt it.

[Aggrophobic]

I've only seen the whitelist notification once, are you logged in with 'Remember me' ticked? Presumably your login cookie should ensure you don't see it on every single visit.

Also you don't need an extra Ad blocker, a suitable custom filter should take care of it or change the active filter lists to block more stuff.

I'm always logged, yes.
Adblock plus was not able to remove it at first so I got uBlock that find and removes way more for whatever reason.

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

We're aware ads can sometimes be a frustrating experience, but - realistically - they are our main revenue source and necessary for us to remain online.

My main source of revenue is shaking down little children for their lunch money. I realize that's it can be frustrating to go hungry but - realistically - it's the only way I can pay the mortgage. If they would just give over the money without resistance they wouldn't get roughed-up so badly, so please consider complying rather than trying to run away.

No matter how you may feel, your feedback on this notification is greatly appreciated. We'll be reading it all and passing it along to everyone on our team.

Doubling down on bad decisions isn't always the best way to get yourself out of a bind. If there's not enough revenue to keep the site online from advertising that people are willing to view then maybe it's time to scale back what you do.

Why don't you manually moderate all your ads?
Honestly, we would love to be able to do that - but the fact is it's just not possible to manually check the tens of thousands of ads you might see. If you ever experience a bad ad on our site, please let us know right away. We will have it removed immediately - seriously.

Just because you've chosen a crappy monetization strategy doesn't mean it's my problem. Why would I whitelist anything when I'm almost certain to have a much worse experience. A 10mb+ page load on a typical American mobile data-plan mans that a user only gets 3 page views per day unless they enable ad blocking. The value proposition of this website works if there's no advertising but not if there is; your content isn't good enough to sacrifice my security, privacy, and sanity for.

Do you allow autoplay audio ads?
No - we dislike them as much as you. However, sometimes one may occasionally slip through the cracks. As soon as an autoplay audio ad is reported, it's removed as quickly as possible. This is the same for ads that redirect on mobile.

I don't allow audio advertising either and the way I enforce that is by running an ad-blocker. If you can't figure out how to build a fine-grained filtering system then I'm happy to let my coarse grained and effective approach do the job. You might not like the results, but that's what you get when you delegate your job to the people you're trying to sell to marketeers.

Do you have malicious ads?
It's very unlikely that an ad displaying on a page will give you a virus. If you ever click an ad, get redirected, and think you've received a virus, please let us know.

Asking me to let you know after I've been compromised is about as silly as asking me to report a brain injury after asking me to drive around town without wearing my seatbelt and I crash. You're asking me to take a lot of risk so you can benefit without offering anything in return. As it is today this website isn't worth visiting with the advertising you run. If your proposal is "take a bunch of risk to get something worse than you have now" I'm going to pass.

Can I just have some kind of membership with no ads?
This is something we are definitely talking about. If you feel this way, please leave that as a point of feedback. Your comments are heard, and your opinions could help direct the future of the site.

Maybe I'd consider it, but that's not really something I'm going to worry about right now because it doesn't exist.

My adblocker shows that it is blocking eleventy million ads!?
This is the number of requests blocked, not actual ads. There are usually around 3-5 ads on a page.

Those requests are tracking my attention, location, they're burning bandwidth and battery. I don't really care if it's a single 100 megabyte advertisement with a 1% chance of being a bit of malware or 100 1 megabyte advertisements with a 0.01% chance: the end result is the same. In fact many small requests are even worse because you're paying the TLS-hand-off/connect for each one and you're giving multiple third parties a chance to screw you rather than just 1 that—at least in principle—you could come to trust. If this sort of thing is so marginal, why have you allowed it to happen in the first place? Laziness? Incompetence? Malice?

[Rennard]

Fuck the ads on this website. They are ridiculous and you should feel bad. No, seriously.

[Nathanyel]

My main source of revenue is shaking down little children for their lunch money. I realize that's it can be frustrating to go hungry but - realistically - it's the only way I can pay the mortgage. If they would just give over the money without resistance they wouldn't get roughed-up so badly, so please consider complying rather than trying to run away.

Do these children also come to you for free services? Do they also tell you that you should just not shake them down in return for those services?

[Tyrianth]

I don't know how much revenue you make, say yearly, but you make it sound like you're struggling. Like, your website is so hard up for cash, that you can't develop more features unless you convince more people to turn off their adblockers? I personally find that hard to believe, I'm sorry.

If it was still Boubille's personal website I would believe it.

But now that it's own by Curse (and therefore Amazon) I have no pity for them.

[micwini]

I agree with just about everything, but this. Every other industry has to be able to vet their sources of revenue. Whether it is back ground checks, credit checks, word of mouth, validity of payment, whatever every source has to be checked out. If you don't you're setting yourself up for liability and/or losing a shit ton of money. Website ads are a pretty classic case of having your cake and eating it too. I don't see that changing until civil/criminal liability moves more into the internet land.

It's impossible to screen millions of unique ads.
You would basically have to look to every individual ad and determine:
- Does the advertisement contain malware?
- Is it too flashy?
- Does it play sound at will?
Impossible task and you bet your ass of this can't be automated.

I then asked Chaud why they don't just screen the ad-providers instead, to which he replied:

Ad networks have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of potential ads that can be displayed to users. We use multiple ad networks, so there are probably millions of different ads you could see. It just isn't realistic for us to screen those. It would be great if the ad networks would properly screen ads and restrict what they could do, unfortunately they don't do a perfect job there either.

Also, does "every other industry" imply what I think it does? Because you can't compare big companies to a website run by a couple of non-professionals.

[Wilian]

The redirect ads definitely aren't something we want to display. If you could report details we can get them removed. Without reports we really have no idea these bad ads are there, unless we run across them ourselves.

The thing about that is that only times I use my phone to browse the internet is during breaks at work and those are short enough as it is, spending them to write down with that god awful keyboard and trying to provide links to these shiet of redirects is not worth the effort, since the time required to do that would be far more than the break itself.