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Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

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Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#81

Post by aub3bhat »

drumttocs8 wrote: post #74
downandout wrote: post #36

The article puts a significant emphasis on the idea that bulletproof ad-blocking technology, assuming that's what this turns out to be in practice, will work long-term becuase of legal restrictions imposed by the FTC. If Google, Facebook, or other multi-billion dollar entities detect an existential threat arising from this or any other technology, rest assured that the laws will change as quickly as is necessary to k…

I can see it now... "Advertisements are a form of free speech. Corporations are people too."

Advertisements are a form of free speech.

6 vs 3 Supreme Court

"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrell_v._IMS_Health_Inc. "

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#82

Post by news_to_me »

jerf wrote: post #65
LeoPanthera wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon works around the concept of subscriptions, rather than one-off payments. One-off payments seems like the better idea, and a cryptocurrency seems like a natural fit. Perhaps not bitcoin, since the fees are so high, but maybe ethereum or litecoin.

The problem with one-off payments is that payments are just that... one-off. If you make $500 this month, the correlation on making $500 next month isn't strong enough for most people to feel very comfortable trying to make a living or reliable hobby out of whatever you're trying to pay them for. The long tail is generally going to have "hits" where they spike up on certain posts or videos or whathave you, but those…

> The problem with one-off payments is that payments are just that... one-off.

That makes it pretty similar to ad-supported sites now. The difference is, the revenue comes from the user, who is more likely to incentivize good content.

> In fact I'd point out that when it comes down to it, the incentives created by pervasive, automatic micropayments looks almost identical to what we have now.

That's a really good point, and as you mention that's pretty much what we have now. I would think that in a micro-payment based world, where you have to pay a bit to read an article, publishers would gain reputation to protect against this.

If it cost a teeny bit of my own money to look at a buzzfeed quiz, I'd probably stop doing that pretty quickly.

But I do agree that it isn't the best model for all sites, and it would be nice to offer micro-payments along with Patreon-style subscription, for those who know they'll want content from this site a lot. Kind of like how newspapers used to work.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#84

Post by kalid »

RangerScience wrote: post #38
IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #29

This is not the end of the arms race. At some point we will have AI designing and AI delivering ads, and while we may have AI designed to prevent us from having to watch ads we don't want we will also have AI that watches everything, gathering and filtering information that is too much for us to handle but tuned to our needs since it's "our AI". Then the race will be that one AI wants to trick the consumer AI into gi…

Check out "General Adversarial Networks". It's basically training a two-part AI via an arms race; one part is trying to fake out the other, the other is trying to detect the fake.

Small fix, I believe it's "Generative" Adversarial Networks.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#85

Post by mattb314 »

Slightly related question from a non-expert in ad-blocking: is it possible to block interstitial ads? While the freedom to render a page as you wish seems to come with controlling the browser on your computer, I can't imagine any way to circumvent the ads the obstruct the entire page and force you to wait for a few seconds before seeing content. Obviously you can just choose not to render them, but if the server can just delay serving article content until X seconds after the interstitial loads, it seems like the fundamental advantage here lies with the publisher and not the user. While submarine ads and lobbying are obvious responses to the Ad-blocker proposed above, wouldn't interstitials (which personally bother me much more than sponsored facebook posts) also gain popularity?

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#86

Post by 2bitencryption »

aub3bhat wrote: post #81
drumttocs8 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see it now... "Advertisements are a form of free speech. Corporations are people too."

Advertisements are a form of free speech. 6 vs 3 Supreme Court " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrell_v._IMS_Health_Inc . "

This is the reason why in the USA you will see commercials for medications ("Ask your doctor about XYZ; you know, instead of letting your doctor decide what's best.")

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#88

Post by AndyNemmity »

ams6110 wrote: post #42

I use a hosts file, and uBlock Origin. I can't remember the last time I've seen an ad on a website. I'm thinking there's not a lot of room for improvement.

As have I for almost 2 decades now, some variation of a hosts file and an ad blocker.

My most downvoted comment ever on reddit was concerning not seeing ads. I had forgotten they existed (I didn't use mobile at the time).

It's been a solved problem forever, and yet so few people seem to know about it.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#89

Post by mschuster91 »

flubert wrote: post #17
throwaway13337 wrote: post #2

What would a post-ad-supported web looks like? Only selling user data without a way to use it to target ads? Consumer software that isn't free? Sock puppet marketing run rampant? It would sure be a different world.

How does HN pay the server bills, etc.? Is it essentially paid for as a marketing / recruiting aid out of ycombinator funds? Or is it a charity paid for by PG?

> How does HN pay the server bills, etc.?

I believe it's two relatively simple servers running the Arc code of HN, and Cloudflare as CDN.

HN does not need much processing power or bandwidth - 5 assets (cacheable+versioned CSS/JS, three tiny gifs) and thanks to gzip usually two-digit KB sizes of content. The only real expense is the manpower needed for moderation.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#90

Post by philipkglass »

IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #59
pmontra wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an asymmetrical game because most ads are meant to be recognized as such (product placement and sponsored content are subtler than that). So the anti ad AI has an advantage over the ad publishing one. If an ad gets through because the adblocker doesn't recognizes it AI probably the reader won't notice it too.

You assume ads will be recognizable as such, but even today we have ads that few people recognize. From waves of reddit /r/funny posts about certain sitcoms or sugary beverages to product placements in articles, shows, films to magazine and news articles, not always recognizable as ads because often they are not actually ads but actual articles that only happen to mention some products. Very nice for publishers who g…

I am fine with ads that are subtle enough to pass by an AI guardian. What I want to kill is stuff that dominates the page space, can't be ignored, follows you down the page as you scroll, autoplays video, runs so many scripts that my cooling fan spins up to full speed...

I don't object to the existence of advertising. I object to advertising that is intrusive and/or resource-intensive enough to impair site usability. (And malware served over ad networks, of course, but that's a bit different as a problem.)

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