can’t see some images here? Adblock Plus is FAIL for legit content

by Violet Blue on January 22, 2009

Image by bodyscape.

A number of people have let me know this week that some images (not all — and it’s seemingly random, including images linked from Flickr) on my blog are not showing up. This is thanks to Adblock Plus, which, as it turns out and many people are informing me, is blocking oodles of non-ad, non-porn, legitimate content — Internet-wide. Not just on sites like mine.

Read: Are Adblock-Plus Visitors Seeing Your Content?

It’s an older article, but clearly something’s recently changed with Adblock Plus. If you’re having trouble seeing my images, see if you can set my site (or feed) as “safe” in AP. I have no ads on this website. Here’s the transparency: Every business linked to in my right hand sidebar is NOT an advertiser; they are affiliates and almost every single one of them is run by a personal friend (I usually create the thumbnail art myself). It took a while for me to even be okay with being an affiliate, even with friends. Other than that, I am sponsored by a couple of companies (but I receive no payment from them): Nokia, Virgin Helio, Laughing Squid, Libsyn, Blip.tv, Qik. I run a few widgets, and have an Amazon affiliate account, with sidebar widget. That’s it. Additionally, I do not do link trades (I delete those emails on sight), nor do I take payment for endorsement for linking. I’d probably make money if I did accept ads on this site, but I think it would undermine my credibility and mission here. So there’s no reason for an ad blocker to censor images on Tiny Nibbles.

Violet Blue

The London Times named Violet Blue "One of the 40 bloggers who really count" and Self Magazine named TinyNibbles one of the “Best Sex Resources for Women.” Blue is an autodidact and pundit on sex and technology, hacking and security, porn for women, privacy and bleeding-edge tech culture. She is a journalist for ZDNet, CBS News, CNET; she's an educator, speaker, crisis counselor, volunteer NGO trainer, and the author and editor of over 40 award-winning books.

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{ 6 comments }

1 violet January 26, 2009 at 12:29 pm: @Michael — I’ve let the team at Kink know about the problem. thank you! I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I was doing, checked all my image names, locations… didn’t consider that Kink would have some of their galleries on a domain starting with ‘ads’…
2 MichaelK January 23, 2009 at 8:40 pm: In http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2009/01/pretty-girl-friday-international-fetish-day-edition.html

http://ads.meninpain.com/imagedb/5658/i/h/830/19.jpg
http://ads.meninpain.com/imagedb/5658/i/h/830/3.jpg
http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/asw.js

Show up in my list of items/blocked items, tripping the “http://ads.” and “.assoc-amazon.” filters.

I didn’t know there was an assoc.amazon filter in there before (never noticed it) but I don’t know why meninpain.com (and publicdisgrace and whippedass) is serving regular pictures off a domain beginning with “ads.”
3 violet January 23, 2009 at 3:43 pm: @Michael, can you point me to anything here that begins with that string?
4 MichaelK January 22, 2009 at 7:44 pm: Well, it’s blocking stuff that starts “http://ads.” which is pretty much what I expect it to do…
5 Arthur January 22, 2009 at 6:49 pm: I just went to the ABP control center embedding in my browser and selected “disable on http://www.tinynibbles.com‘.

Everything seems to be working fine now.

Thanks!
6 anon January 22, 2009 at 5:19 pm: it appears to be the EasyList (easylist.adblockplus.org) subscription blocking pretty much anything with the string affiliate in it. augh. might need to find another blocker. sigh.