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Princeton's Ad-Blocking Superweapon May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
An ad blocker that uses computer vision appears to be the most powerful ever devised and can evade all known anti ad blockers.
A team of Princeton and Stanford University researchers has fundamentally reinvented how ad-blocking works, in an attempt to put an end to the advertising versus ad-blocking arms race. The ad blocker they've created is lightweight, evaded anti ad-blocking scripts on 50 out of the 50 websites it was tested on, and can block Facebook ads that were previously unblockable.
This fulfills the dream, that I'm sure I'm not alone in having, of "what if something could see the entire page, and show me a copy of the page with the ads visually blocked, but with the advertiser's scripts interacting with the original copy filled with thousands and thousands of blinking, dancing, flashing, seizure inducing ads."
Ads ruin everything they touch. Radio. TV. Magazines. Newspapers. Billboards. I could go on, but on the web ads, like they always do, started out unobtrusive. Then there were deceptive ads designed to lure you to "punch the monkey". Then more deceptively to look like an OS dialog warning of something with horrible consequences demanding immediate response luring you to install malware. Ads. Ad blockers. Ad blocker blockers. Then better ad blockers. Now this. Maybe something that will finally kill ads dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
I visit a lot of sites lately that use pop under advertising, but I'm too lazy to install any kind of ad-blocking. Fortunately for me, right-clicking seems to do the trick. As long as I never left-click, the ads never appear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @10:14PM
You don't need to, you can edit the default DOM events that can open windows w/o whitelisting in Firefox-based browsers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:33PM (3 children)
Admit it. None of us wants to see niggers on the Internet. Now thanks to Princeton and Stanford University researchers we can use machine vision to censor whatever we don't want to see. No longer will our precious eyes be assaulted by pictures of niggers. We can live the dream of a pure Aryan Internet the way God intended.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:38PM (2 children)
Of both the pale-skinned and hoodied varieties :)
And now black and white alike can live in their perfect internet worlds, never interacting with the other, except when they accidentally visit places neutral to race :)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:42PM
And the best part is nobody will ever need to tolerate anyone ever again.
Which reminds me: fuck you for existing.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by edIII on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:10PM
That would be porn. Nothing more unifying than good ol' interracial fucking.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:39PM
So now we have the weapon of choice to whack TV ads? ;-)
And radio etc. On the other hand the content in mainstream is quite worthless to begin with.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:45PM (2 children)
I don't want it to interact with anything. And if this "superweapon" operates on 3rd party servers instead that means that someone gets control over what I see.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @11:52PM (1 child)
I don't want it to interact with anything
Yeah.
...and ISTM that this requires that the crap first be downloaded, then inspected, then it is hidden.
That's NOT what I want.
That's NOT BLOCKING.
I don't want their web bugs. [wikipedia.org]
I don't want to waste my bandwidth on their crap.
I don't want to use up any more RAM and CPU cycles than it takes to just say NO.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 16 2017, @07:00AM
Also, unlike traditional ad blockers, this does nothing to protect you from malware served through ad networks.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:46PM (1 child)
Users beware: I installed this Princeton Ad-Blocker and it formatted my Windows 10 partition.
I guess I'll have to use Linux now.
(Score: 4, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:50PM
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by YeaWhatevs on Saturday April 15 2017, @03:53PM (43 children)
Good content has to be supported somehow. The problem is, publishers are liars and put in ads even if you pay, so why pay? If everybody could block all ads then only commercially viable content would survive. Uh oh, now most of the YouTubers would have to go get a real job and the content will dry up. So maybe we agree to live with ads on sites we wish to survive. This all starts to sound a bit like tipping websites systems, which haven't worked out well in the past, but maybe this time will be different. Well, even if this somehow works out to be really great at blocking ads I have a hard time all this will come to pass though, I think the publishers will undergo an evolution and those that survive will find a way to get their advertising through.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:01PM (14 children)
How did great sculptures, great paintings, great music, and great theater get made before advertising? If the internet would follow that model it would be a better place.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:13PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:28PM
But but but artists and writers are LIBRULS! It will make puppies sad!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @11:58PM
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Depression.Era.murals [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:21PM
Rich people that deceived their money from others by increasing prices on traded goods or plain rulers that simply used the threat of force. Just pay closer attention to who gave Leonardo Da Vinci money.
(he's still a great painter and inventor)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
There has been advertising since there was commerce. During the Renaissance, art, literature, and music were paid for by rich patrons. You don't think a Shakespeare play wasn't advertised?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:36PM (3 children)
Did Homer have advertisers pressing the flesh to come and listen to him sing?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:05PM (2 children)
Yes. The Simpsons have always had ads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:48PM (1 child)
But who advertised Ancient Greek poet Homerus?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:50PM
That's why Horatio was at the gate. "Come see my bro, Homely, making a nonsensical hash out of common words, until no one understand WTF he's saying!"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:19PM (4 children)
How did great sculptures, great paintings, great music, and great theater get made before advertising?
Through a model called "patronage". Rich people paid the artists to make stuff for them. It worked out well if you were one of the very best artists, but it didn't exactly support a lot of arts, because there were only a small number of people that rich. Most people were dirt poor.
They've tried this model on the internet, with things like "Patreon". It doesn't work (or maybe I should say, it doesn't scale). A tiny number of people might make a living off their artwork that way, a much larger number will make some extra spending money (but nowhere near enough to live on), and that's it. Some non-profit stuff gets funded that way: an example is the Star Trek fan-made series such as Star Trek Continues. But no one's making any kind of money to live on there (it's explicitly disallowed by Paramount); all the money goes solely to fund the production work (sets, post-processing, etc.), so all the actors and talent and even construction workers are just unpaid volunteers. There just aren't that many people willing to donate to artists (or journalists) they like. So we have things like paywalls on news sites now to try to force people to pay, through subscriptions (rather than commissions or one-time donations). Time will tell if those are successful, but I suspect not.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:23PM
There are groups of journalists that live good of donations alone. But the bar to accomplish that is to deliver something that is really worthwhile to read.
Kickstarter perhaps is another path were a working pay can be made.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:53PM
Works made by people that know the material and love their craft and want to share will survive. A hobby might not pay the bills but that's not really the point of hobbies. If you can't make a living doing something, then maybe that something doesn't quality as a paying job - that would be about 90% of the blogs, youtube videos, and general crap on the 'net.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:12PM
That sounds like a Republican's wet dream healthcare plan.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @10:59PM
Through a model called "patronage". Rich people paid the artists to make stuff for them. It worked out well if you were one of the very best artists, but it didn't exactly support a lot of arts, because there were only a small number of people that rich. Most people were dirt poor.
So it wouldn't have supported the mass-production of autotune pop? Cry me a river.
Looking back, "didn't exactly support a lot of arts" really was a problem, because it means that a lot of the culture was only available to the 1% -- but when you can infinitely, losslessly replicate almost every kind of art, you don't need "a lot of arts". Haven't you heard idiots complaining about "peak TV", the idea being that there's too much new art produced now to even keep up with all the worthwhile stuff, let alone have time to delve into anything from before they were born? And IMO that is an idiotic thing to whine about, but it still goes to show we can certainly live with a lot less quantity.
They've tried this model on the internet, with things like "Patreon". It doesn't work (or maybe I should say, it doesn't scale).
So it works without rich people (given the right infrastructure to allow consolidating large numbers of tiny payments from poor people), and it only supports interesting things, rather than the commoditized churn (I mentioned music, but think hollywood blockbusters, too) that is so much of our pop culture today? Sounds great!
Also, even if you're right that it fails to scale (and I think it may be a little early to state that conclusively -- Patreon has been around for 4 whole years, and Kickstarter for 8), it's important to note that it's failing when competing with deeply entrenched players in each content industry that "everyone knows" are the way things get done -- it doesn't prove it wouldn't scale in the absence of those players.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:06PM (1 child)
Mmmm... Good content... I remember those times.
Pity it's extinct since long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 16 2017, @07:10AM
No, most of that good content still exists. Sure, some has been lost, but most is still there.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:09PM (8 children)
YouTubers would have to go get a real job
YouTubers will be shocked, shocked I say, to discover the economy can't support them anymore, because there simply aren't enough real jobs left in the economy.
tipping websites systems, which haven't worked out well in the past
Nope. Microtransaction cyberbegging is even more intrusive than advertising.
but maybe this time will be different
We have this ancient practice called taxation. You should try it some time. We have another ancient practice called basic income. You should try it again. Maybe this time basic income will work better than ever because we really do have a massive abundance of resources and scarcely enough work to keep the people occupied.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:22PM (5 children)
We could do that instead of bombing everyone but who'd want that?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:41PM (4 children)
Somehow the Roman Empire managed to pay a dole while conquering most of Europe. By historical standards, America is an utter failure as a superpower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:09PM (1 child)
By historical standards, America is an utter failure as a superpower.
Well, why don't you tell that to Nazi Germany, Imperialist Japan and the Soviet Republic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @12:12AM
Draft-dodging Donnie Tiny Hands is one of those who is stuck in the past.
Now let's move on to something that happened since the 1940s.
In the 1950s, USA poured a bunch of men and materiel into an Asian peninsula.
Both sides signed a ceasefire in 1953 but that scrap never officially ended.
IOW, USA fought to a draw with a "demilitarized" zone established at the 38th parallel.
In the 1970s, some guys in black pajamas crossed the 17th parallel [google.com] and kicked the ass of the never-should-have-been-there USA, chasing it out.
...then, this century, there's the ragheads that have kept USA tied up without a victory for 14 years (even longer than the pajama-wearing guys--it just keeps getting worse).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:14PM (1 child)
I'm not sure that's comparable. The roman empire had to pass laws preventing the freeing of slaves to keep their system going:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Aelia_Sentia [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:45PM
Consider the productivity of a slave kitchen vs. an industrial kitchen in the modern world ; how many loaves on bread per man-hour in each? Consider as well for modern farming techniques, transport, etc. From a sheer logistics point of view, there is no reason we cannot provide a [very basic] minimum standard of living while steamrolling over the rest of the world at this point. There's just no real political will to do either.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:25AM (1 child)
Unfortunately, payment even of a fraction of a cent involves sharing my account access information with someone else.
I am far more apt to give someone a lunch on me, or give 'em a buck, than I am to pay even one cent for something if that involves sharing that info.
Its like those TV infomercials for diet pills and the like... Call Now! We will send you a trial bottle for Free! Just pay shipping!
Once I share my charge card info with them, no telling what they do with it. Given the trickery today, I would not even want to share my mailing address with them. Even if they sent me a bottle of pills unsolicited, I would be afraid to eat something that just showed up.
In short, this generation of shrewd businessmen that pride themselves on clever trickery and one-sided contract has spawned off a generation of customers that no longer trust them. Now nearly all businessmen have a very formidable barrier to even contact a potential customer, even more to win them over.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @01:18PM
There is already a way to avoid that: Virtual debit cards.
You create a new card, set how much you want it to hold and when should it expire, and get a new card number with its own expiry date and CVV/CVV2. Then you use it for your transactions until the cash is depleted or the expiration date arrives, whatever happens first. After that the card is no longer valid and no charges can be made on it. It's not very useful if you need to show a physical card, but for online transactions works like a charm. You can also have several virtual cards working at once, each with different amounts and expiration dates.
I know of many european banks which offer that service for free when you have an account and debit card with them. Don't know why it's not more popular on the other side of the pond.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:31PM (3 children)
Uh oh, now most of the YouTubers would have to go get a real job
What is a "real job"? Is something only a "real job" if it makes you miserable? Is this at all related to the True Scotsman?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:30PM
I think we can reasonably conclude that True Scotsmen all work Real Jobs.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:28PM
A real job is something that makes people confuse exhausted with making a difference.
Even Einstein had a real job as a patent clerk. And then he stop doing a real job....
He even avoided real slaughter.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 16 2017, @07:23AM
A real job is a job people are willing to pay you for doing it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:25PM (4 children)
How about I don't give a fuck? The problem with your logic is:
1) Advertising was never correct from the beginning, and was always a unilateral assault upon the consumer. It was always a captured audience, and that fundamentally means the lack of consent. There were never any agreements made, just social contracts assumed as valid, correct, and inevitable. All based off the lack of choice.
2) Online advertising is really remote-execution-of-code. It's a truly fundamental security violation. Nobody in the advertising industry gives a fucking shit about the consumer, and the billions consumers spend to clean their systems of malware. This anti-advertising superweapon actually fails at preventing this. Utterly.
3) It's simply the assumption that without advertising content would dry up. How would we know? We've never tried..... The distributors and execufucks that have been making billions for decades want you to believe there is no other way. That's true for these people. There is no other way they can make billions from activities wholly bereft of any positive cultural or social benefits.
4) Advertising is intellectually offensive. It treats you like you're a moron with the mind and impulse control of a child, while being wholly disruptive to the entertainment experience or attempts to educate yourself.
I subscribe to this site. I do pay for other content. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever relent and accept any forms of advertising in my life whatsoever. Period. If all the content dies, then so be it. At least I will not have advertising in my life. That also means I will deal with far less malware issues than the average sheep.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)
3) It's simply the assumption that without advertising content would dry up. How would we know? We've never tried.....
Actually it has been tried on the internet before advertising there was a thing. The consequence is that amount of content decreases largely but there surely is a bottom level which is substantial. Also professionally managed servers will not be around.
Otoh, on the internet everybody is free to use sites that isn't ad financed. The choice can be made at any clock cycle.
There are a lot of slime that takes advantage of any situation and push it as long as they can. But it won't take away the bottom logic. Machines need to be manufactured = $, needs connection and power = $, needs attention span of people = $.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 16 2017, @07:26AM
Of course. Everyone here does so for at least one site. Determining what site that is is left as an exercise to the reader. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:16PM (1 child)
I'm not certain that you're being completely fair and accurate. There was a time, when all "advertising" was by word of mouth. No interent, no television, no radio, no print (or at least not resources to waste on valuable paper and ink). A traveling tinker might find a scrap of paper, and pay someone literate to print a flyer, which he would put on a community bulletin board. That was "advertising" - word of mouth, and maybe a flyer. Pretty direct, and pretty honest.
To some extent, advertising is necessary. But, it sure as HELL isn't as necessary as the advertising agencies would have us believe. Today, we have the tail wagging the dog. If advertising were as reasonable as it was way back in the fifties, and maybe the sixties, I might possibly tolerate it. Five or six minutes of adverts, in an hour program. Then it became ten. Then fifteen. Then ten minutes in a half-hour program.
The advertising turned me off of television at least as much as the poor excuse for content that was offered.
A little bit goes a long way, but the American obsession has always been "more is better!"
Every known ad-server is blocked on my network. That doesn't stop me seeing blogs, twitter posts, articles here, tech articles, market articles, and more. The advertising gets through, sometimes in newspaper headlines. I know about Raspberry Pi, without ever looking at an advertising agency's targeted bullshit. I'm perfectly aware that Intel has a generation 7 CPU on the market. I see evaluations of various goods that I might be interested in. And, if/when the time comes that I don't have enough information on some product, I can always hit Google to find more info and evaluations.
Advertising is good - if it brings you data on stuff you need and want. Most advertising is designed to make a mindless booby want crap that he doesn't need, and never thought about wanting. Hoola Hoops? Barbie dolls? Oh - in recent times, "sexy" chain saws. I skimmed an article in a magazine, in which a bunch of idiots who never had any real use for a chain saw ran out and bought "sexy" chain saws, and competed against each other doing stupid crap. New age machismo amounts to wasting money on junk to annoy your neighbors with pointless noise, thanks to advertising.
If the dog could learn to wag the tail again, things would be alright, I think. Because, advertising does serve a purpose.
How much would it suck, if you couldn't find data on the various automobiles availabe? You would be at the mercy of whichever salesman saw the sucker coming first. Remember, every bit of data that you can pull off of the internet regarding your interest in cars, is some form of advertising. Low-key, subdued advertising, yes, but it's advertising.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday April 17 2017, @08:22PM
I think we define advertising a little differently. The definition of course, at least to me, being defined by advertisers in the same way people game Wikipedia.
Your points are all valid and I don't disagree with your assessment of the beneficial effects. What I disagree with is the definition. I define advertising as being an activity wholly predicated upon captured audiences or the lack of consent.
Posting a notice on the public wall, or a scrap of paper stapled to a telephone pole are advertisements to you. To me, I had to actually direct my attention to it. They were not taking my attention away like a 100ft lit HD billboard sign standing out like a sore thumb for thousands of feet in every direction. That's merely information I came across in passing, while I was the one choosing what to experience. If I go to Craigslist for example I'm actively seeking out those "advertisements". Speaking with people is also something I chose to do, and when they use "word of mouth" to tell me about a product or service they enjoyed, that was something I knowingly chose to participate in. I could also tell that person I'm not really interested in X, but I want to talk about Y.
Advertisers choose what you experience, and then make sure you must experience specifically that. It's now 100% an actual science of manipulation being used well beyond advertising (politics).When your ass is stuck in a chair you paid $12 for, made sure you got your seats, and then are surrounded by other people, you are just a little bit captured. What you chose to experience was the movie, what advertisers chose for you were the commercial advertisements before. That's the nature of them stealing my attention and time in ways that we both agree have become progressively more obnoxious.
Advertising is an active and very obnoxiously intrusive activity. That's where we differ in definition.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by BK on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:34PM (4 children)
So Princeton made a better defense. You betcha a better offense is on the way if it is released. It's an arms race and that's how those work.
Just stop there.
That's the thing to fix. Some things have to be advert supported -- over the air TV for example. Other things can be subscription supported... On-demand subscription based video for example. Why would we allow anyone to do both?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday April 15 2017, @08:10PM
There will be an arms race, but the ads will have to become so sneaky that they will become indistinguishable from normal astroturfing, which is around no matter what, which means ads will be dead. This, unless this superweapon is vapor/spyware.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday April 15 2017, @10:35PM (2 children)
...Some things have to be advert supported -- over the air TV for example...
Ummmm ... no, here's an example [abc.net.au].
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)
...and here's another. Free Speech TV [wikipedia.org]
...and just for luck Pacifica Radio [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:57AM
So basically like NPR / PBS. Yep. Foundations. Viewers/listeners. But always need a deep pocket.
So I guess there are now two possible working models:
1) Ad supported, or 2) supported by political 'foundations'.
I suppose both methods have some advantages. I'm not sure that (2) is better.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:57PM
The issue is that the ads aren't targeted to the page and they're extremely obtrusive. That's when they aren't delaying the page loads or serving up malware.
The fact that these adblockers are even a thing is a direct result of the ad companies being so sleazy. Serving up text ads or simple GIFs that are targeted to the page wouldn't have inspired so many people to get ad blockers. I know that I personally click on far fewer ads these days because they're not relevant and they're often times malware.
Most people are just too lazy to install an add on to block ads, they do it because that's what sensible people do in response to the malware and other anti-social behaviors that advertisers engage in in order to get our attention. Just serve up a simple ad that tells us what your product is and why we should want it and we might click. Doing anything more is counterproductive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:44PM
I'm OK with legitimate ads that support sites.
I don't want clickbait photos and links which are simply noise.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 17 2017, @02:21PM
I wouldn't have a problem with ads in principle. What you describe sounds reasonable. The problem is once the camel's nose is under the tent, the medium that has the ads is done for. It may not happen overnight. But ads will destroy it. I would think that by now there are enough historical examples of this that people would realize this. But the money from ads is just too seductive. So the platform gets ads. And so it begins.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:03PM (15 children)
Ad blockers are important because they block JavaScript used for mass surveillance and Internet tracking, even if not all trackers are blocked, we still stop them from collecting more information. In contrary, merely preventing ads from displaying on the screen doesn't solve this problem anyway, you'll still be fingerprinted and tracked...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:57PM (13 children)
If this thing is using "computer vision" to determine whether or not to display an ad, presumably it has to allow the content to be retrieved in order to evaluate it. That defeats one of the many benefits of ad-blocking. Along with all the other damage they do, ads soak up valuable bandwidth. As long as ISPs charge by the byte, something unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, one of the reasons I'll continue to run ad-blockers is to not waste my precious limited monthly allocation on that scum.
(Score: 2) by shipofgold on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)
I think the argument of "wasting valuable bandwitdh" is becoming obsolete. Video Ads that start automatically are evil and the Video ads may burn a few bytes...but the average WWW page load, even if it is loaded with javascript, sidebars and popunders and other crap are not going to blow your Internet cap or slow the content by that much.
What I want is an adblocker that allows static image ads that link to something if I click on them, but NOT allow them to track me, get in my face or use my CPU for anything other than attempting to entice me with their product or service.
Google and the other Ad servers could solve this problem quite quickly by banning JavaScript and other tracking methods.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:40PM
Actually the resource hogging on the machine costs in equipment investment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:51PM
TFA loaded a video AD on me without prompting. This moved page elements around forcing me to scroll.
When the AD finished p[laying it removed itself, and I had to scroll back.
Was real tempted to come back with lynx.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:37PM (8 children)
In what country is a fixed line ISP that charge by the bit still a thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @10:51PM (1 child)
Umm, most of Canada?
Bell Canada Look at the fine print. [www.bell.ca] Internet data usage 50 GB/mo.; 4.00/additional GB (max. $100/mo.)
Rogers Lower priced packages [rogers.com] 500GB / 250GB / 25GB
Now, I have a smaller independent supplier for DSL, unlimited service, but less than 6MB down and about 500kB up.
Welcome to the land of great internet, NOT!
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday April 16 2017, @06:48AM
Stupid Rogers detected that they don't offer DSL where I live :P
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday April 16 2017, @03:26AM
In the United States, Xfinity Internet by Comcast includes 1000 GB per month.
In the United States, there exist residences served by no fixed line ISP.
(Score: 1) by Didz on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:02AM (3 children)
Australia.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)
Is it that Australian government initiative to put fiber to the people that got shutdown due vested corporate interests that is casting a shadow still? (Ted Turner empire stroke back?)
(Score: 1) by Didz on Monday April 17 2017, @04:05AM (1 child)
From the very start the whole business model in Australia was to charge more for speed, bandwidth or both. Truly unlimited service isn't very common and ones that are cost a lot.
With websites and a lot of advertising networks being outside of the country latency is increased so ad blocking not only helps with lowering bandwidth consumption but makes things finish loading quicker too.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @05:30AM
Any chance to start an ISP by oneself?
I'll guess the obstacle is access to international sea cables. Otoh, even the price for those perhaps can be had low these days?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:55PM
http://www.centurylink.com/home/help/products/internet-and-data-usage-limits.html [centurylink.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 15 2017, @07:20PM
Yep - you've got something there. I installed it on Chrome. It's supposed to highlight all the ads - but nothing is marked. Oh - well - I block the adservers on the router, so this addon isn't finding any advertisements.
It is apparently all but worthless. At best, it will make the unaware aware. But, they won't be aware that they are being tracked anyway.
(Score: 1) by corey on Saturday April 15 2017, @11:33PM
This is what I was thinking. I wonder if it can see the 1-pixel trackers like what Facebook uses.
I guess its aim is intrusive advertising, not tracking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:22PM
The sad thing is, they don't have to, and they didn't used to. Advertising started ruining everything back in the nineties. Now there are twice as many on TV and radio because the internet brought the price of ads down so much.
Still, there are a few things left not ruined by advertising. The Illinois Times is a very good newspaper that subsists on ads alone, giving paper copies away for free. Even in its online version [illinoistimes.com] the ads are unobtrusive.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Funny) by kaszz on Saturday April 15 2017, @04:34PM
I know what you're thinking. "Did his webbrowser remove six ads or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this blinking hell I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a computer vision, the most powerful information tool in the world, and would blow your ads clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: "Do I feel spammy?" Well, do ya, punk?!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:14PM (1 child)
According to TFA, the tool relies on the fact that:
It might come as a surprise to the Princeton and Stanford CS faculty, but most of the world is not subject to Federal Trade Commission regulations (yet). If this tool starts getting used, US advertisers will simply outsource advertising abroad. For other advertisers it will be business as usual.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday April 15 2017, @06:21PM
They can't outsource advertising to skirt the FTC rules. If ads show up on a US website like NYT and don't follow the regulations, it doesn't matter where the ads are served from, so they'll still get busted. Now if you're reading some news site in eastern Europe or something, then sure, the regulations don't apply there.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday April 15 2017, @05:40PM (1 child)
Great. Now "content providers" will have no choice but to make the actual content you wanted to read look like an ad.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday April 16 2017, @05:57AM
Yup... that will be a lot more pages on the internet which render like a beginning webmaster's first attempt at a web page on a lot of people's machine.
Under the URL of a business, no less....
What a way to make the first impression!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15 2017, @10:05PM
its about not seeing the ads now? it used to be about privacy - which meant no 3rd party connections, no data-leakage, no bandwidth wasted. and this new newness wants to give the monkeys a private room on my dime? sounds rather like bankruptcy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @01:32PM (1 child)
What they did:
"create two copies of the page, one which the user sees (and to which ad-blocking will be applied) and one which the publisher code interacts with, and to ensure that information propagates between these copies in one direction but not the other."
That give me back the eyeballs, but what about my ears and computer's memory, cycles and bandwidth?
Perhaps over time, if nobody sees adds they will become less prevelent.
It hasn't happen so far.
Guess we get another level of arms race for a war fought on my screen.
Sigh.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 17 2017, @02:24PM
I would be happy to pay with extra bandwidth consumed to simply be blissfully unaware of the ads. Not to ever see or hear them again. Yet the advertiser and platform serving ads is blissfully unaware that I have the ads blocked. Seems like everyone would be happy.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday April 16 2017, @02:04PM (4 children)
Advertisers ruin every form of communication. A couple years ago I disconnected my land line because it was 99.8% telemarketers.
The web was better before it got saturated with
contentclickbait. Pretty much every ad-supported site we'd be better off without.Staying below the marketer's radar is becoming more and more impossible. You block a thousand spies and then one gets your info and you're sunk.
Who has tried the opposite tactic: jam their databases with noise? Maybe we need a spider that "clicks" every ad, fills out every form with random zip code etc. until they can't find the signal under all the static. Of course that doesn't solve the bandwidth problem. And the spider would probably have to run in a VM that auto-resets every hour to flush out the malware, cookies, etc. Probably needs to randomize user-agent and other trackable elements. Oh the glory day when they decide they have to make us fill out a CAPTCHA before showing an ad!
I think parts of this exist... has anyone come up with something that puts it all together?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @05:38AM (3 children)
What OS and browser are you running? most of these troubles have a technical solution.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday April 17 2017, @05:05PM (2 children)
Linux, Firefox, NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere, RefControl, RequestPolicy, 15K hosts blocked in /etc/hosts...
but even so I only have to make one mistake and my info leaks, and once it does, The Net Never Forgets. So I'm thinking of the opposite approach: bury them with noise.
Also, ideally, it wouldn't involve finding, configuring, and maintaining the right combination of plug-ins or tools, but rather one thing that integrates it all.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 17 2017, @08:12PM (1 child)
I can see at least one problem here and that is the strategy of the "enumeration of bad". Ie decide what is allowed, forbid everything else. Somewhere there you can add mechanism to stuff their spying with junk.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday April 17 2017, @08:40PM
Which is exactly why I am asking for better ideas that anyone else may have tried.
However, NoScript has a whitelist mode where you allow scripts on trusted sites (for me, that = 0) but default deny all others. So my strategy is not exclusively "enumeration of bad" unless you consider scripts an instance of enumerated bad. I couldn't argue with you there.