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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: 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.