Support Ads Shown For Gold User Logged In with Adblock

[Breakthrough]

Details

• Read the Docs project URL: http://pyscenedetect.readthedocs.io
• Build URL (if applicable): https://github.com/Breakthrough/PySceneDetect
• Read the Docs username (if applicable): Breakthrough

Expected Result

I am a gold member using RTD to host docs for my users, and I happen to use an ad blocker. I should see no ads.

Furthermore, neither should my users, as I am paying to hide ads on my site for them.

Actual Result

See screenshot below. I am logged in. Is this expected behaviour?

I'm told to go ad-free by subscribing, but I already have...

It would also be nice for people browsing my documentation using adblockers to not see this message as well, as I thought the whole point of me paying for gold was to hide these messages.

(Aside, I also accidentally double-billed two $5 subscriptions but only see the one - can I turn it into a $10 one to cover another project, without having to pay again?)

Thank you!

[davidfischer]

There's a few things going on here but in short, this is a bug and I'll have a fix for it shortly.

The ad blockers are extremely zealous and actually block the API call back to RTD to even determine that you are a Gold member (they block readthedocs.org*/sustainability*). As a result, it isn't currently possible to determine that you the user -- separately from your project -- shouldn't see ads. The workaround for you is to enable Read the Docs ads (allow the API call) and then you won't get any ads.

For projects that are sponsored, we worked around this issue (#4329) by including whether a project is ad-free when docs are built. This isn't used to determine whether to show an ad or not -- if you weren't blocking API calls, you wouldn't see an ad -- but rather disables the nag when a project is ad-free. Your project is correctly marked ad-free but this logic isn't quite correct and will be fixed soon.

So neither you nor any other user regardless of whether they run an ad blocker are supposed to see ads or the ad block nag when you browse a sponsored project. When you browse a non-sponsored project and use an ad blocker, you will see the nag and I haven't figured out a great solution there short of filing a bug on the easylist. Counter-intuitively, if you allow ads, you won't get any.

(Aside, I also accidentally double-billed two $5 subscriptions but only see the one - can I turn it into a $10 one to cover another project, without having to pay again?)

I definitely see that there's an issue here. Looking in stripe I see two active subscriptions for you and two $5 charges. I have canceled one subscription and refunded one charge (Stripe says it should hit your bank in 5-10 days).

I'm not particularly familiar with the code that handles subscriptions but I suppose I'm going to need to get acquainted. Can you describe what happened to get into this state?

[davidfischer]

This is possibly related to #4503.

[Breakthrough]

Hi @davidfischer;

Thank you for the detailed (and fast) response.

In regards to subscriptions, all I actually did was click "Update Subscription" on the https://readthedocs.org/accounts/gold/subscription/ page. I just did it again, and was billed another $5 even though I didn't actually modify my subscription.

Perhaps the button should be disabled unless you modify something? I can submit this as a separate issue if it helps.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

---

Edit: I decided to actually update my subscription after testing this to $10, to cover a second site - could you refund the additional $5 charges? Sorry about that!

[davidfischer]

I refunded 2 more $5 charges and left only the $10 charge and the $10/mo subscription.

I also figured out the problem and have a PR in for it.

[Breakthrough]

Awesome, thanks for all your help looking into and solving the problem @davidfischer!!