Ad Un Block Communities

Imagine a community using a tool like AdBlockPlus - but instead of just subscribing to the exclusion filter lists that tell your browser which ads to disallow; also subscribing to an additional whitelist of adservers, that will be allowed through.

Once that is set up - you might have a list of adservers that would be willing to jump through a few hoops for the right to have access to those strongly matched eyeballs; to get allowed onto our screens, and into our browsers.

And the mechanism for keeping all other ads out could be the already well working crowd sourced adblocking extensions, like adblockplus (which btw, is very usable in both firefox and chrome)

This other set of communities could collectively maintain additional filter white-lists; that users of the adblock/plus extension or similar would just need to subscribe to, in order to join.

For instance, one such community could demand from participating adservers, the following: • No annoying ads. No flash animation, or large downloads. • Only advertisers that behave well; with commitments to sustainability, global justice, workers rights. • That they pay money, which goes to a list of organisations, like, say, the EFF, Free Software projects, Free Media organisations, etc. things that the community agrees are worthwhile. • forks/branches of the community could ask for just the type of ads that interest that sub-community (wouldn't advertisers love that), and with possibly no spite from us

This way, you know that whatever ads you see, are for products that are in line with your community's values, and that you can purchase with greater confidence..

.. Is there some fundamental dynamic shifting here? Apart from it being another possible mode of consumer activism?

from a recent blogpost of mine.. some notes on a possible community --JaysenNaidoo