metabet.io

[mphil14]

Greetings,

I run metabet.io, we're a tech company that helps sports-focused sites add legal gambling info to their sites. Our JavaScript library was added to easylist_thirdparty.txt in https://github.com/easylist/easylist/co ... 4fbfc19eed.

I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how we ended up on this list, and finally realized we forgot to remove the user GUID logic we were trialing last year. *facepalm* It was never used, but it was still being created on the client-side.

The user GUID is now no longer being created. You can check this by visiting a page like

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https://www.mmamania.com/2022/3/5/22962890/ufc-272-cold-open-video-former-friends-put-bitter-rivalry-to-the-test-ppv-espn-mma-las-vegas
https://www.metabet.io/odds
https://www.postingandtoasting.com/

and looking for the POST to

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https://metabet.static.areyouwatchingthis.com/tracking/metabet/

Please let me know if there's any other info that would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mark

[fanboy]

Wasn't blocked because of tracking, since its considered an ad advert. The betting ad widget was added to EL.

[mphil14]

Got it! Thanks much for clarifying.

I fully appreciate that this right-rail spot feels like an advertisement, especially in the gambling industry, but it's actually self-promotion.

SB Nation and DraftKings have been co-producing content since gambling was legalized in the States

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https://www.voxmedia.com/about-vox-media/2019/9/5/20849938/sb-nation-and-draftkings-launch-draftkings-nation

and we were brought in to replace their static ads. Instead of 300x300 "Win $1,000,000 dollarsz!!!" generic ads, our role is inserting factual, informational tiles that complement articles about a specific game or team.

Here's one of their co-branded sites, where we're adding an information tile about the game being discussed:

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https://dknation.draftkings.com/2022/3/9/22964979/lakers-vs-rockets-picks-prediction-wednesday-spread-odds-over-under-lebron-james-injury-status

SB Nation and DraftKings are very much an outlier, though. On all of our other customers' sites, the branding is much more straightforward. They're all using our tools to complement their articles with factual data, just like adding in live weather or a stock price, and using their own logos and branding to do it.

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https://scores.frontpagebets.com/
https://www.thelines.com/odds/finals/
https://www.si.com/gambling/parlay-calculator
https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/parlay-calculator
https://www.ftnbets.com/nba/odds

[mphil14]

Greetings!

We've tackled a large project on our side to explicitly label our widgets whenever we're not displaying informational data or if it's branded by an external company.

If you look at the original URL that was flagged for us, we're now inserting a metabet-sponsored class on our HTML elements:

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https://www.mmamania.com/2022/3/5/22962890/ufc-272-cold-open-video-former-friends-put-bitter-rivalry-to-the-test-ppv-espn-mma-las-vegas

Customers that are using our widgets without branding from an external company won't have the metabet-sponsored class:

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https://www.ftnbets.com/mlb/odds

I'd like to request that instead of a global block, that ".metabet-sponsored" is used in the filter.
https://github.com/easylist/easylist/co ... 4fbfc19eed

Please let me know if I can send over any other useful info.

[mphil14]

Hey folks, I'm reaching out to see if we can get our Javascript library unblocked.

We have dozens of JS-backed products related to sports (tables, fixtures, scores, etc.) that have zero company branding, so we'd really appreciate a class-based filter.

We've added

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metabet-sponsored

as a class to every widget branded by an external company that can be used as the filter, but if you felt it was more appropriate to block all

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metabet-adtile

widgets, we'd be okay with that too.

[mphil14]

Greetings,

I'm writing in hopes someone could take another look at our blocking. We have a small sect of sponsored ads marked with a

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.metabet-sponsored

CSS class that should be blocked, but currently, the block on us is global.

We're a sports data company, and we provide dozens of widgets like Fixtures, Standings, and Odds for our customers. These widgets provide sports information and you can see some in action here:

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https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/schedule
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/standings
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/latestodds

The original tile on

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https://www.mmamania.com/2022/3/5/22962890/ufc-272-cold-open-video-former-friends-put-bitter-rivalry-to-the-test-ppv-espn-mma-las-vegas

that was flagged in https://github.com/easylist/easylist/co ... 4fbfc19eed absolutely qualifies as an ad, and we wholeheartedly agree that it should be blocked. It has the .metabet-sponsored CSS class because it's branded.

My request is that https://github.com/easylist/easylist/co ... 4fbfc19eed is rolled back, and instead of blocking our global JS library, that the specific

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.metabet-sponsored

class is added to EasyList to block any of our tiles that are sponsored.

[mphil14]

Greetings folks,

I've been using ad blockers for a really long time, and I've never seen a sports scores page like ours get disabled:

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https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/scores

Scores, Schedules, Tables, and more are all being blocked, and they don't have any ads or tracking. We have dozens of products, and the few that are sponsored by a third-party brand are each flagged with

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.metabet-sponsored

I'm struggling to understand why a sledgehammer is being taken to our entire domain. If there's something I'm missing, a reply would be appreciated--I'll gleefully make it right.

As always, thank you for all that you do.

[intense]

That global js is not blocked anymore.
What exactly is broken and how to reproduce it ?

[mphil14]

Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Can you please also add a block for '.metabet-sponsored' and remove '.metabet-adtile'?

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https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/a3f02c881d5f14b3042587ec1fdf304fbfc19eed

Some of our customers aren't purely self-promotion and take on branding from outside companies. This will make sure the originally blocked widget of ours on

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https://www.mmamania.com/2022/3/5/22962890/ufc-272-cold-open-video-former-friends-put-bitter-rivalry-to-the-test-ppv-espn-mma-las-vegas

remains blocked.