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Chrome 71 will block any and all ads on sites with "abusive experiences"
Google is promising to punish sites that offer what the company calls "abusive experiences." Chrome 71, due for release in December, will blacklist sites that are repeat offenders and suppress all advertising on those sites.
The behaviors deemed abusive cover a range of user-hostile things, such as ads that masquerade as system error messages, ads with fake close boxes that actually activate an ad when clicked, phishing, and malware. In general, if an ad is particularly misleading, destructive, or intrusive, it runs the risk of being deemed abusive.
Chrome already takes some actions against certain undesirable website behaviors; it tries to block popups, it limits autoplay of video, and it blocks certain kinds of redirection. These measures have been insufficient to prevent misleading or dangerous ads, hence Google taking further steps to banish them from the Web.
Also at The Verge, 9to5Google, Engadget, and Search Engine Journal.
Previously: Google Preparing to Filter "Unacceptable Ads" in 2018
Google Chrome to Begin Blocking "Non-Compliant Ads" on Feb. 15
(Score: 4, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:29PM (8 children)
All of the above actually doesn't sound half bad for the consumer-level browsing public. It would be a wonderful gift if Google themselves weren't in the business of selling ad space. But since they do, this is monopolistic behavior which should be stopped even if the service is both beneficial in intent and good in practice. It's a conflict of interest regardless of its utility.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:56PM (2 children)
Look, it just so happens the only non-abusive ad network is adsense. It's just a coincidence.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:14PM (1 child)
<sarcasm>And the only ad exchange with non-abusive policies is DoubleClick.</sarcasm>
But even if that is true, publishers can work around this by not selling a site's ad space through a network or exchange. Instead, publish a rate card on your site and sell ad space directly to advertisers, as Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net] and Read the Docs [readthedocs.io] do.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:23PM
No, but seriously, even if they do this well, and with nothing but the best interests of their end users, they're still wide open for an anti-trust beatdown.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Tuesday November 06 2018, @09:03PM (4 children)
I hope that they include the following abusive behaviors, which should not invoke any conflicts of interest:
- short delay then GIANT MODAL WINDOW HEY PLEASE PLEASE SIGN UP FOR OUR MAILING LIST WE WILL SHOW THIS EVERY TIME WHETHER YOU DO OR NOT teeny x to close
- if you move the mouse toward, say, the scroll bar, the site's scripts conclude that you are about to leave and GIANT MODAL WINDOW HEY WE ARE BEGGING YOU SIGN UP FOR OUR MAILING LIST WE WILL SHOW THIS EVERY TIME WHETHER YOU DO OR NOT teeny x to close
- if you read the page's content and happen to scroll to the bottom, this is detected and answered with a GIANT MODAL WINDOW HEY WE ARE REALLY INSECURE AND SO WE FEEL THAT WE HAVE TO DEMAND THAT YOU PRETTY PLEASE SIGN UP FOR OUR MAILING LIST WE WILL SHOW THIS EVERY TIME WHETHER YOU DO OR NOT teeny x to close
- any other abusive behavior that also deliberately hides the site content with something flash, annoying, and irrelevant.
- bonus points if the browser or blocker looks up the domain contact e-mail addresses and signs them up for whatever the mailing list is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:35AM (3 children)
These are called "exit intent pop-ups". The Better Ads Standards page for pop-ups [betterads.org] links to an interpretative advisory [betterads.org] stating that the following experiences haven't yet been tested properly:
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:13PM (2 children)
Calling them rocketships does not give them enough thrust to reach orbit. See the following:
This is a lie. While they might come up when "engagement" is not as "active" as they like, they also come up in a wide variety of irrelevant situations or conditions as I described in my previous post.
You, dear scummy delayed popup purveyor whoever you may be, have no idea when I am going to leave the page, because you are not watching my fingers closely enough to see whether they are getting near Ctrl+F4. Moving my mouse just means I am moving my mouse. My usual workstation desktop is 5760x1080 and spans three 40" monitors. My casual research shows that you have *no clue* what I am doing with it. Don't be so full of yourself.
First of all, "inactive" can mean reading, attempting to refer to your page content in one window while writing an article in another, or opening your page in one of my three or four dozen usual tabs because I want to read it shortly. Your abusive ads short circuit any of these. I just close your site and move on, there are too many sites for me to put up with your site's abusive behavior.
You don't have the technology to know what I have "reached" in terms of semantic content, and if you did, that does not indicate that it would be acceptable for you to HEY! LETS COVER UP ANYTHING USEFUL WITH THIS USELESS AD!.
If I open your tab for my purposes (I have ADD, and can't take the medicine that works for it anymore due to a heart condition), and you bait-and-switch to something else, then (a) you are a jerk, and (b) I move on to a different site. Life is too short for me to spend it working to circumvent your semi-creative but workflow-disrupting and annoying nonsense. If your content didn't raise my interest, I assure you that annoying me won't do what you want either.
They don't need too much testing; they fail quickly and consistently to deliver a positive user exper---WAIT! DON'T GO! SIGN UP FOR SOME POINTLESS SPAM LIST! YOU KNOW NOW THAT WE ARE SCUM, WHY NOT FILL YOUR LIFE WITH OUR NEWSLETTER OF STILL MORE SCUMMY CONTENT!!!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday November 07 2018, @05:24PM (1 child)
I agree with you that exit intent pop-ups are a scummy practice. I was explaining why Google hasn't yet blocked them in Chrome and deranked them in Search.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:05PM
I do appreciate your explanation--I modded you "informative"--and was arguing against the world in general, not with your helpful and correct information.