SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the turn-off-your-adblocker-to-see-this-content dept.
"According to people familiar with the company's plans:"
The ad-blocking feature, which could be switched on by default within Chrome, would filter out certain online ad types deemed to provide bad experiences for users as they move around the web.
[...] In one possible application Google is considering, it may choose to block all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves. In other words, site owners may be required to ensure all of their ads meet the standards, or could see all advertising across their sites blocked in Chrome.
Google declined to comment.
The ad-blocking step may seem counter-intuitive given Google's reliance on online advertising revenue, but the move is a defensive one, people familiar with the plans said.
Uptake of online ad blocking tools has grown rapidly in recent years, with 26% of U.S. users now employing the software on their desktop devices, according to some estimates.
Source: Google Plans Ad-Blocking Feature in Popular Chrome Browser
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday April 21 2017, @06:29PM
Ad-blocking and the tug-of-war between it and advertisers only scratches the surface. Yes, you can turn off Javascript and run AdBlocker/UBlock/UMatrix/GreaseMonkey/NoScript etc, you can tune your firewall, but that's an approach that assumes advertisements are modular and separable from the content, which is assumed to have value. But the content is the advertisement. Serving ads on top of the "content" is only the advertisers greedily trying to get a two-fer, or three-fer, or n-fer. Many of us on Soylent know it instinctively, calling stuff out as shill pieces or clickbait. But I don't know if there is a general, formal awareness yet that there is very little out there that is straight-up information. Either something is a PR press release to pimp a new product or service, or a propaganda piece put out there to move public opinion and influence policy.
Sometimes it's obvious which is which, and other times not. It's why Soylent and forums like it are so valuable, because sometimes all it takes to puncture the veil is somebody with a little more information than what you yourself have.
Washington DC delenda est.