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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: 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.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.