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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

#41

Post by wwalexander »

xnx wrote: post #34
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…

Meta and Apple are pushing their AR (advertising required) goggles because they are a locked-down systems where it is even more difficult to block ads.

Safari on visionOS supports Content Blockers and extensions just like on every other platform. In what sense is visionOS any different from iOS or macOS in this regard?

EDIT: I suppose the developer of the content blocker needs to already have an iPad version and check the “visionOS” box, but Apple has made this extremely easy and it’s in both Apple and the content blockers’ interest to release a visionOS version.

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

#42

Post by thomastjeffery »

xyst wrote: post #14
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.

Until quantum computing becomes mainstream and then consumers can break drm on the fly!

You don't need quantum computing. You just need a debugger. The user already has the encryption key, else they would not be able to see the content.

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

#43

Post by imglorp »

helpmefindpurp wrote: post #22
flohofwoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was just fine before it was turned into an ad delivery platform.

If you do not like the ads, just stop visiting sites that show ads...

But it's not just ads: that's disingenuous by understating the impact. It's the entire tracking, data broker, ad marketplace, surveillance capitalism ecosystem. This ecosystem causes immense harm in global climate, ruins lives, delivers malware, violates privacy, and supports authoritarian overreach.

Ads might be fine, a pinch of annoyance.

And yes I pay for my content thank you.

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

#44

Post by TylerE »

deadbabe wrote: post #39

SMS is the next big frontier for ads, every few messages with someone you can see a little ad about something related to your conversations. Or if a conversation has gone stale and someone hasn’t replied in several days, inject an ad to wake it back up.

SMS is dead. The US is basically an abberation in still using it. Rest of the world has moved on to whatsapp/imessage/whatever.

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

#45

Post by NelsonMinar »

guitarlimeo wrote: post #5
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…

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.

That'd be a good reason to finally break Widevine.

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

#46

Post by golergka »

lakomen wrote: post #12

Just once and for all understand, people who do not want to see ads and you force ads on them, will not come to your site. All you're doing is making the user experience worse and decreasing your site's worth. And people will remember who was so rude to them. I've been there. Don't do it.

If your website is monetized through ads, why would you want these people to visit it in the first place?

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

#47

Post by Repulsion9513 »

eli wrote: post #15
bawolff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without early hints, i assume you could do the same thing with the link http header. Or if you really dont care about performance, just loading the start (e.g. ) of the document and wait a little bit to see which subresources are loaded.

Yeah but the critical piece here is loading Early Hints happens before the HTML is sent to the browser. So the server can change the HTML of the page based on what the browser does. (I wonder about the performance impact of this though.) Trying to detect adblock via a (or an or a etc) means you have to do the check in javascript, which can be manipulated by the browser.

You can send some content () and then wait for something else to happen (prefetch) before you continue sending the rest of the content (the page).

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

#48

Post by marssaxman »

helpmefindpurp wrote: post #22
flohofwoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was just fine before it was turned into an ad delivery platform.

If you do not like the ads, just stop visiting sites that show ads...

It's not really practical to know in advance whether any random site will invite me to view an ad; it's easier to just decline such invitations when they come.

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

#49

Post by wafflemaker »

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.

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

#50

Post by ndriscoll »

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…

I don't understand how this feature even came to be. Presumably these resources are cached (it's going to be used for static resources; for dynamic ones, you'd need to have already performed the request on the server to figure out what to send, so you'd just send the response). So what, you're saving 5 ms off the first page load? Assuming it's not already a static response, in which case again you'd just send it.
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