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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

#91

Post by alanbernstein »

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.

So you start a company to produce two networks with GAN techniques, then sell them as separate products, to the opposing sides...

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

#92

Post by aub3bhat »

2bitencryption wrote: post #86
aub3bhat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.")

Hahah Actually its worse, "Ask your doctor about XYZ, and if your doctor did not tell you about it, We will find out! Since we know her name and how much XYZ she prescribed vs generic ABC!"

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

#93

Post by Chaebixi »

jpambrun wrote: post #60
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…

Not sure Anti-ad-blocking laws are practically enforceable. Even with the ad labeling requirements relaxed, unless it is truly deceptive, a CNN could identify it just as well (or better) than we can.

> Not sure Anti-ad-blocking laws are practically enforceable

An anti-ad-blocker ad would probably be easy to enforce: arrest the people making and distributing ad blockers.

However, I think the main threat is a repeal of requirements to label ads (which this technology relies on), not to ban ad-blockers outright. I bet that would cause less resistance. Quoth the OP:

> Perceptual ad-blocking, on the other hand, ignores those codes and those lists. Instead, it uses optical character recognition, design techniques, and container searches (the boxes that ads are commonly put in on a page) to detect words like "sponsored" or "close ad" that are required to appear on every ad, which is what allows it to detect and block Facebook ads.

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

#94

Post by justboxing »

rhizome wrote: post #43
justboxing wrote: post #5

> [DELETED]

Don't mean to jump on you, but yesterday you posted with the interesting fact that you'd never heard of SWOT before. Maybe hang back a bit more next time? Maybe do some Googling so you don't come off like "I'm 12 years old and what is this?"

I really hadn't heard of SWOT.

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

#95

Post by pavel_lishin »

Does this cover the issue of tracking, etc? It seems that in order to detect/block the ad, it must allow it to load - and at that point, the malicious payload is already on my machine, and I've already spent part of my precious allotted bandwidth on someone's idea of profit-making.

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

#96

Post by treehau5_ »

2bitencryption wrote: post #86
aub3bhat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.")

It was Pfizer that pioneered that, and it's cataloged wonderfully in the book "Overdosed America"

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

#98

Post by quotemstr »

tn135 wrote: post #70
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…

> 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 keep them happy. Lobbyists will be paid, and donations will be made Money will be paid and wolves will be invited in the house to essentially bring a legislation that is not enforceable. As a profit hungry business ow…

Oh, the legislation is enforceable all right: just require cryptographic remote attestation for access to online services.

Corey Doctorow was right about the coming war on general-purpose computing.

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

#99

Post by pjc50 »

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."

Watch out for the corresponding ruling that adblockers are not free speech ...

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

#100

Post by hackuser »

jpambrun wrote: post #60
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…

Not sure Anti-ad-blocking laws are practically enforceable. Even with the ad labeling requirements relaxed, unless it is truly deceptive, a CNN could identify it just as well (or better) than we can.

> Not sure Anti-ad-blocking laws are practically enforceable

Many doubted that DRM was practical to enforce.

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