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from the the-perfect-advert-for-AdBlock dept.
An interesting conspiracy theory on Business Insider:
A Business Insider reader claiming to be a former ad tech executive at a really huge, well-known news publisher then sent me a fascinating email, in which he claimed that ad tech companies deliberately serve ads slowly because everyone makes more money that way.
Basically, his theory is, when a reader clicks to read a story, the page calls for bids from advertisers on the ad space available. This bidding is supposed to take place in a few milliseconds. But, my correspondent says, ad tech companies hold open the bids much, much longer, so more bids come in, driving up the price. Publishers hate this because it makes pages load really slowly, giving readers a terrible experience. But it's hard to stop because everyone — publisher included — is taking a cut of the winning bid. So publishers and ad tech companies actually have an incentive to make pages load slowly.
[...] Generally, other sources in the ad tech business tell us that this is rubbish. But a couple also admitted that there are some shady practices out there, and it is possible for this happen. "In theory he is basically correct. Publishers and the ad networks they work with have pretty effectively gamed each other. Lots of crazy s--- happens," one source told us. "It's a wild world out there and publishers are not generally very technically competent so ad networks get away with a lot."
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:24PM
Even with Adblock Plus, when I opened the BI link there was a splash page (with only the text) wanting me to look at it for ten seconds before it fed me article. That's why I like old fashioned newspapers. The ads don't get the way of the article.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FreeUser on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:38PM
Even with Adblock Plus, when I opened the BI link there was a splash page (with only the text) wanting me to look at it for ten seconds before it fed me article. That's why I like old fashioned newspapers. The ads don't get the way of the article.
Old fashioned websites without that shit are pretty nice, too. We should simply stop driving traffic to those sorts of sites. Maybe then they'd get the hint.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy, a Novel
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:14PM
if I go to a page and it takes more than 15 seconds to unblock enough to read what they have, I block everything there (more so) and move on, never coming back.
life is too short to mess with money-focused assholes like marketing guys, sales guys,WEB 'MASTERS' and so on. they are pond scum, pretty much. if they make the barrier too high, I just don't go there. simple. and I don't miss out on much, either.
sometimes I'll waste time at a place like fark; but almost always, the article has so many ads and JS bullshit that I can't see it. I can see the discussion forum which is really what the value of a site like that is, and I can get an idea of what the article is about. that's enough, actually.
the war continues; escalate away, we have the tools to ignore YOU, mr. advertiser. and I won't even go to any websites on my phone since the unwashed internet is a horrible place and most phones don't have the same level of blocking that regular linux has.
my blacklist of sites is huge. that's the only thing really slowing me down. there's not much I can do about it, either; until there are some good tools to help monitor which blocks are still useful and which are just slowing things down. for now, I never remove old block rules since I have no easy way to know how current they are.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:09PM
I wonder when they are going to make it illegal to block ads. Something like the DMCA or maybe even THE DMCA*.
Wet dream of these asshats destroying the Internet is DRM on every web page that forces you to view the entire thing, ads included, or be charged with terrorism for circumvention and violation of the DMCA and get sent to Guantanamo for re-education.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @10:34AM
Sadly we're half way there. https://www.defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5 [defectivebydesign.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @12:38AM
>and most phones don't have the same level of blocking that regular linux has.
ublock on firefox/pale moon android is really good.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:56AM
When I go to a webpage and it is slow, I can't help but wonder if they are downloading another "Cryptolocker" to my machine.
I got nailed once with that once. No, I did not pay the ransom. I just lost everything, but thank goodness I was only using the box ( cheap WalMart laptop ) to browse the web, as my serious stuff was on an old DOS machine.
I got the laptop because businesses wanted me to have a "modern" machine in order to communicate to them. Being a business, they are too important to be bothered to drop back to deprecated protocols the simpler machines used.
It taught me to keep backups with CloneZilla.
So, I keep a little "gadget" on my desktop which tracks memory and CPU usage. If I see it rail on a website, it only behooves me to shut the connection down as soon as possible to find out why.
Nailing another Cryptolocker before it does its thing would save hours of restoring disk images and incremental changes.
I believe NoScript has played a major factor, as I have not seen any reinfections of Cryptolocker after installing it.
But I cannot help but be afraid every time some webmaster tells me I need to bypass NoScript that he may have another infection of Cryptolocker for me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by Qlaras on Friday July 31 2015, @04:30PM
Could do your web surfing in a virtual machine; with a clone or snapshot (or just have it throw away changes on shutdown if just surfing and not saving anything).
Faster than a backup of the bare iron for restoring to 'working, known-clean'.
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Friday July 31 2015, @07:18PM
Qubes OS [qubes-os.org] is built around this premise but takes it a step further. Every application is running inside it's own VM and only has access to certain resources based on preconfigured "zones". Kind of a neat idea, not sure how practical it is though.
(Score: 1) by Qlaras on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:16PM
I've seen that - uses Xen presently, KVM is in the works. (I've never managed either)
They've done the automation to make it all work, that's the hard part, I think.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday August 01 2015, @01:12AM
I have got to learn how to do this.
It sure seems to me that browser and OS coders have dropped the ball as far as security goes. It seems all the browser coders have to kowtow to business types who want to collect data on everyone, regardless of the security holes said snooping opens up.
If a conscientious coder shows up, he is replaced with another coder that follows orders.
I have already seen that happen. Way too many times.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @09:40PM
> when I opened the BI link there was a splash page (with only the text) wanting me to look at it for ten seconds
Not for me. NoScript user here. BI doesn't seem to depend on javascript for anything important. At least not for reading individual articles which is all I ever do there.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:01AM
Another NoScript user here. The BI link loaded properly for me.
NoScript indicated it was blocking about a dozen other parties.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:23PM
Even with Adblock Plus, when I opened the BI link there was a splash page (with only the text) wanting me to look at it for ten seconds before it fed me article....
Got straight to the article when I tried it (Seamonkey, NoScript)
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:58PM
NoScript and uBlock Origin here - no splash page. The page just loaded, and I was able to read the whole thing.