Here's a well researched article about the well known "AdBlock Plus" browser extension.
http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-in-ein-mafioeses-werbenetzwerk/

tl;dr: The extension with 15 million users belongs to a small company in Germany that is heavily affiliated with the advertising industry. At the same time AdBlock Plus has introduced what they call "Acceptable Ads" and it has become obvious that advertisers can buy into this whitelist or be extorted to buy into it, as the case may be.

Nice investigation work! I didn't expect what they are doing to generate enough money to allow them to run a company.

I've been using AdBlock in Chrome for years now, it is open-source and has no "acceptable ads" functionality, it works great. In Android, AdAway is the best.

Chrome Web Store - Adblock Plus - see recent reviews.

Heh, how ironic.

Need the money I suppose 

Dram drama, but only because they allow certain ads to come trough, I wouldn't say they could be called a "mafia-like network". They need some money to keep up their work, and I am pretty sure someone will code a patch to disable acceptable ads if they ever get obligatory.