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
Related Stories
Google plans to block "unacceptable" ads in Google Chrome starting in 2018, and is preparing publishers for this reality:
News that Google intends to install an ad-blocker in its Chrome browser shocked the tech and publishing world in April. Now, details of how the program will work are starting to become clear.
The Google ad-blocker will block all advertising on sites that have a certain number of "unacceptable ads," according to The Wall Street Journal. That includes ads that have pop-ups, auto-playing video, and "prestitial" count-down ads that delay the display of content.
[...] The company hasn't made its plans public, but Google has discussed its plans with publishers, who will get at least six months to prepare for the change coming sometime in 2018. Publishers will get a tool called "Ad Experience Reports," which "will alert them to offending ads on their sites and explain how to fix the issues," the Journal reports.
Google is also offering a tool called "Funding Choices," which would present users who have non-Chrome ad blockers with a message asking them to disable their ad-blockers or pay to remove advertising.
When you open a YouTube video, it typically auto-plays an advertisement.
Will this become Google's antitrust moment?
Google Chrome will soon begin blocking all ads (including those served by Google) on websites that repeatedly include certain "non-compliant" (annoying) ads:
In June, Google revealed that Chrome will stop showing all ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that display non-compliant ads "starting in early 2018." Now the company has committed to a date: Chrome's built-in ad-blocker will start working on February 15, 2018.
[...] Google this year joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group that offers specific standards for how the industry should improve ads for consumers — full-page ad interstitials, ads that unexpectedly play sound, and flashing ads are all banned. Yesterday, the coalition announced the Better Ads Experience Program, which provides guidelines for companies using the Better Ads Standards to improve users' experience with online ads.
[...] The hope is that Chrome's built-in ad blocker will stymie the usage of other third-party ad blockers that block all ads outright. Google has noted in the past that ad blockers that do not discriminate hurt publishers that create free content (like VentureBeat) and threaten "the sustainability of the web ecosystem." Despite the fact that Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from ads, the company sees its selective ad blocker as the natural evolution of pop-up blockers.
Also at Engadget, Variety, and 9to5Google.
Previously: Google Preparing to Filter "Unacceptable Ads" in 2018
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:00PM (8 children)
uBlock Origin, uMatrix, and half a dozen other script blockers work perfectly well. They will even block Google's own prying into your life! Add in the MVPS hosts file, http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm [mvps.org] and you're already miles ahead of what Google is offering with this updated browser. If your router is configurable, you can block all sorts of sites, including those Microsoft forced updates.
I use some Google services. Do I trust Google? Not only "NO", but "HELL NO!"
Chromium is built to spy on you, the user. Perhaps the spying is less obnoxious than some of what it promises to block, but they are still spying on you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
Using /etc/hosts as a means of content filtering is effective for some sources but not others. In particular, if the source randomizes the subdomain (such as 192bd0.badsite.example vs. a9f78a.badsite.example), the most widely supported syntax for /etc/hosts cannot cover all possibilities because it lacks wildcard support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:15AM (1 child)
This is true of any blacklist.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:22PM
The point that one notorious Anonymous Coward on the green site appears not to get is that this is less true of a wildcard blacklist than a single-hostname blacklist.
(Score: 4, Informative) by WizardFusion on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:59PM
Use https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net], a much better solution.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:35PM (3 children)
Do you mean Chrome, or Chromium? There isn't much choice these days I'm afraid. Firefox still runs like shit, and there is no IE on Ubuntu :)
I've tried other browsers but they are not as good.
So what information is Chromium leaking? I thought that was the open source version that I could compile if I wanted (which I may try here), and that people are generally looking at it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @06:18AM (2 children)
This covers some of the problems https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium [github.com]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)
There's also Vivaldi, if you don't mind that they aren't FOSS.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Friday November 09 2018, @03:26AM
There's also completely open source wrappers around the Blink engine such as Falkon (formerly Qupzilla).
Though honestly Firefox has improved quite a bit in comparison to Chrome, though I prefer Palemoon.
(Score: 5, Funny) by SomeGuy on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:16PM (2 children)
* To read the content of this post, you must switch to a browser that does not block our malware, you must disable your ad blocker, turn off your firewall, uninstall your virus scanner, and take off your pants so we can rape you whenever we want.
[YES] [YES]
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:37PM (1 child)
Many of the ad blocking detection mechanisms rely on...scripts.
Its funny, there are many times i've enabled scripts on a site for some reason only to have it immediately hide what I just read and tell me to disable my ad blocker :-p
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @11:41AM
Use another site. Most sites are the same and have the same cr*p.
And if there is anything hiding content just go with adNauseam in a separate browser (I use a sandboxed portable Firefox to it). Used in a larger scale may teach not only not to spread malware, but also not to cooperate in spreading it.
(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.
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:35PM
Do as we say, not as we do!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:44PM (4 children)
that, even is you pause them, follow you down the page as you scroll.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:03PM (2 children)
I doubt that it's practical to accurately block floating paused advertisements without site-specific blocking lists. I suspect that detecting whether a floating element is an essential user interface element or an advertisement is AI-complete.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:16PM
As I hate floating ads, and can't imagine a use them them in a decent GUI, I'm ok with flat out blocking the damned things.
My ducks are not in a row. I don't know where some of them are, and I'm pretty sure one of them is a turkey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @08:16PM
Those floating UI's are even more cancerous than the ads because they steal vertical screen space. Site UI's belong in a side bar.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:49PM
I've seen that many many times, but appropriately. Some science articles, and other doc pages. The video is not an ad, but a presentation. That allows you to continue to scroll down and read, while the presenter is talking.
I don't think that behavior is intrinsically bad or related to marketing (which is intrinsically bad).
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:52PM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:54PM (5 children)
It's not the actual video but the sound. It interrupts the dulcet harmonies of David Bowie's "I'm Afraid Of Americans".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:07PM
"No one needs anyone; they don't even just pretend."
On sites that don't have high media engagement, Chrome already blocks autoplaying audio and autoplaying video that lacks the muted attribute. One way for website operators to work around this is a so-called "pivot to video": provide more articles in the form of video rather than text in order to artificially inflate the media engagement metric that Chrome uses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:20PM (3 children)
Try AutoplayStopper, works for me.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday November 07 2018, @03:28AM (2 children)
How many methods in this test suite [pineight.com] does AutoplayStopper block, and how many get past it?
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday November 07 2018, @12:28PM (1 child)
It didn't block GIF and other image based 'video', which is strange because it does block those annoying animated GIF's on Twitter. That was originally the reason why I installed it in the first place. For a quiet, static, readable experience instead of dozens of stupid annoying animated GIF memes in my face. Not that I use Twitter by choice, but sometimes it's the only place where relevant information gets posted, often followed by blaring GIF's that I'm not interested in. This blocker freezes those GIF's.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:17PM
The Twitter platform transcodes GIF to AVC, an MPEG-4 codec, to save bandwidth.
The hard part about blocking video is that if most people block MPEG-4, advertisers will likely revert to GIF. And if you pay per bit for your Internet connection, as many users of cellular or satellite Internet do, reverting to GIF costs you money.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
If it cuts down on the amount of fake Office 365 login pages that users can access, I am all for it. We need to be cutting those things off at every layer we possibly can.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @07:44PM
Agreed. We need to be cutting off Office 365 logins as much as we can!