SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 5, Informative) by K_benzoate on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:03PM
All the more reason to run with scripting disabled. The advertising industry is actively sabotaging the web, and violating your privacy. It's also a huge security risk these days. Injecting malicious scripts through self-serve ad platforms is a fast growing malware vector. Running around the web with full scripting turned on is like habitually raw dogging hookers. You're going to catch something eventually.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:16PM
The slowdown is on the server side. Not the client side.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:29PM
The slowdown is on both sides.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by francois.barbier on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:30PM
If you don't load the script from that server, how is that server slowing you down?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:59AM
I much prefer adblock and blocking at the host file level to Noscript. Noscript operates off a whitelist which the user has to gradually build by constantly enabling JS on nearly every page visit made. Most websites have at least a little JS.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday July 30 2015, @02:38AM
And some websites have so much crap that you're doing the recursive NoScript boogie 3 times to get that full functionality. And then you get redirected to a third-party site to pay and have to NoScript once or twice more.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 30 2015, @06:24AM
Noscript operates off a whitelist which the user has to gradually build by constantly enabling JS on nearly every page visit made. Most websites have at least a little JS.
And?
I much prefer adblock and blocking at the host file level to Noscript.
APK, is that you?
All joking aside, isn't a universal blacklist that you have to add exemptions to objectively safer? Security has always been safety vs. convenience.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by blackhawk on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:18PM
I run AdBlock and Ghostery to reduce the worst of the ads which is great on my PC, but doesn't do a thing for my Android TV, tablet, mum's iPad, etc. I was using a downloadable DNS block list (at the risk of summoning APK) and just editing it into my HOSTS file on my PC, but again, that does nothing for all my other devices.
A few weeks back I spent a few hours tossing a clean install of Ubuntu onto Raspberry Pi I had laying around and then installed the DNS Masquerade daemon to provide DNS and DHCP services. I switched off DHCP on my modem and let the Raspberry Pi handle it all for the internal network. After setting up the daemon to hand out IPs and set the default router and nameservers I was almost done.
Now, my sweet little Raspberry Pi hands out IP addresses, reserves some for specific devices, has entries in the hosts file to resolve internal device names and points at the Google nameservers 8.8.8.8 to bypass any shit the Australian government is trying to pull. The daemon loads up an extra file or two for me which it can resolve prior to asking the Google servers, so all the known ad servers and malware servers (on the list at least) resolve to localhost.
Now, every device on my network is at least partially protected from ads, with the only ones able to get through so far being served by Facebook. My browser wastes absolutely no time loading up Javascript, images or anything else from slow ad servers, and pages all load a lot quicker. My tablet no longer shows me bullshit ads, and Spotify is also happily ad free (as is Skype, whose flashing ads were a constant eyesore while I was trying to work).
If you're tech savvy, I'd suggest adding a DNS / DHCP server to your network too since it gives you the chance to stop ads / malware at the root. YMMV.