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Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

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Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#171

Post by xsc »

neurostimulant wrote: post #170
hedora wrote: post #4

Sounds like it might make sense to drop this early hints feature (whatever it is). I wonder how much longer it will be before the next major escalation happens with ad blockers. I can imagine mainstream browsers that fetch unmodified pages and click ads in the background (do subvert pay per click ad business models and make it harder to compute targeting metrics), but then display an ad/tracking-free version in a sep…

Given the web industry's obsession over reducing TTFB as much as possible, I bet no one would use this tricks to avoid tanking their web vitals score.

TTFB role in the overall time to a usable web page has dramatically decreased. Instead of being the primary driver in display of mostly static sites, the role is smaller now due to the increased compilation/execution time of client code.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#172

Post by soco »

nottorp wrote: post #128
nullfield wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to subscribe at a really good annual rate vs. list through some online aggregator, where they pre-warn me of renewal and rate changes to let me cancel if I want. I don’t remember what it was without searching my email, so not shilling for them in any way, but there are methods. That said, yeah-no one can reasonably afford the constant “I just want to read this one linked article twice a year on your local c…

> Maybe with news the best way would be some kind of micro transaction, but all attempts so far have failed… It's hard. I wouldn't pay a subscription to a micro transaction middle man, for example. Unless it would work like a music service, i.e. have everything available for one price, and not like a video service with their islands and attempts to differentiate. But if they had everything, you'd end up with a gateke…

There is this thing called Zette: https://www.zette.ai/ - 30 cents per article on about hundred (so far) big newspapers. However it's not working for EU/Switzerland because data protection rules (what are they doing with your personal data???) and their FAQ site is broken, so I wouldn't even bother.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#173

Post by andyvotty »

ericholscher wrote: post #106
skrtskrt wrote: post #89

Anyone know what happened to ethicalads.io? Website has been offline for over a month, but founders/engineers seem to be active on LinkedIn & GitHub still

Website is very much online. Can you share a curl or screenshot of what you see?

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#174

Post by hoseja »

wafflemaker wrote: post #49
hedora wrote: post #4

Sounds like it might make sense to drop this early hints feature (whatever it is). I wonder how much longer it will be before the next major escalation happens with ad blockers. I can imagine mainstream browsers that fetch unmodified pages and click ads in the background (do subvert pay per click ad business models and make it harder to compute targeting metrics), but then display an ad/tracking-free version in a sep…

AdNauseam does just that. It clicks the adds before blocking them (possible to whitelist non-tracking adds). It's a fork of uBlock and what I replaced the uBlock with on my phone and PC. Sadly, it doesn't do clicking in the private browsing mode, which I usually use not to crowd the browsing history with hn and other forums' articles.

I'd be worried I'd get blacklisted by cloudflare etc with maximum prejudice.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#175

Post by nottorp »

soco wrote: post #172
nottorp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe with news the best way would be some kind of micro transaction, but all attempts so far have failed… It's hard. I wouldn't pay a subscription to a micro transaction middle man, for example. Unless it would work like a music service, i.e. have everything available for one price, and not like a video service with their islands and attempts to differentiate. But if they had everything, you'd end up with a gateke…

There is this thing called Zette: https://www.zette.ai/ - 30 cents per article on about hundred (so far) big newspapers. However it's not working for EU/Switzerland because data protection rules (what are they doing with your personal data???) and their FAQ site is broken, so I wouldn't even bother.

Lol 30 cents. When they will quit with trying to lead you into a subscription, they'll get people paying reasonable microtransactions.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#176

Post by ukoki »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #28
guitarlimeo wrote: post #2

This makes sense, but I guess adblockers could just start loading the data and not show it to the user?

Part of the goal of content blocking is to reduce network traffic, so that's not an ideal outcome.

As an adblock user, reduction of network traffic is of very minor benefit to me.

I block ads because I find them annoying.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#177

Post by throw10920 »

avidiax wrote: post #160
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spammers would actually prefer it I think. I think for each captcha solved, spammer are ready to pay more than real users(be it electricity or real money). They were already paying real humans before AI became good enough for solving captcha.

Spammers are probably not using their own computer or electricity, so this would be very attractive for them.

No, it would not. Spammers are still paying for the devices - most botnets are built and used (to spam) by different actors. Systems that require more computational power to spam take up more of their resources, making spamming significantly less profitable.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#178

Post by throw10920 »

bawolff wrote: post #11
guitarlimeo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, current ad blockers can't block ads from Widevine (DRM protected) streams, so I guess it's only a matter of time until Chromium team comes up with Widevine for webpages and then it's game over for normal consumers.

While i know its evil, i always wished widevine was an option for creating captchas. Most captcha solutions are defeated by services like 2captcha.net and generally aren't the most privacy respecting.

Widevine (or any other DRM-based "proof of human" solution) would be far less compute-freedom and privacy respecting than a captcha.

Hashcash[1] was invented two and a half decades ago and is still the best solution. It doesn't require manual work or user privacy invasion and deters mass spammers.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#179

Post by hereme888 »

dpig_ wrote: post #158
hereme888 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time that happens my hope is that we might have the new GPT-5 with personal agents curating information for us.

I already have a personal (NSA) agent that does this for me.

I'm not sure if I missed a joke about the NSA, or if there's a computer agent you use, in which case i'd love to hear about it.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#180

Post by YetAnotherNick »

throw10920 wrote: post #177
avidiax wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spammers are probably not using their own computer or electricity, so this would be very attractive for them.

No, it would not. Spammers are still paying for the devices - most botnets are built and used (to spam) by different actors. Systems that require more computational power to spam take up more of their resources, making spamming significantly less profitable.

Depends on how much do you want real users to spend per captcha in electricity cost? If say it is $1/captcha it would be untenable for real users. If it is 0.01 cent, it wouldn't hurt spammer's margins.
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