German blogger calls Adblock Plus 'a mafia-like advertising network'

Yes. EasyPrivacy is under the same group of people as EasyList. AntiSocial and other lists by Fanboy are created by the same author "Fanboy" who is also part of the EasyList contributor group. He's lists are merged with EasyList and he works directly on them.

If you have a reason to question a whitelist entry you can do 2 things:

1. Check the reported False Positives forum.
2. Browse the Mercurial commit notes.

If you think a whitelist entry is no longer needed, have tested it and have come to said conclusion, you are free to report it for removal as others do.

 

http://www.ianww.com/ad-detector/

http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/08/20/ad-detector-native-ads/