It doesn't work on Facebook's autoplay video ads, so that didn't last very long...
Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
141–150 of 356 posts
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#142The 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."
x
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#143This 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…
Yeah, "end of the arms race", are you kidding me Vice?
I see 13 year olds watching their favorite youtube stars showing off the new products they're being sponsored with this week. How exactly would you block this?
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Already you have restrictive software/firmware running on your computer. Look into Intel ME (Management Engine) a likely backdoor into your computer you have no control over, don't know what it does, and can not disable it. It already helps many DRM applications to restrict what content you can play and how. Legislation to disable adblocking could be reinforced already be implemented into the next generation of Intel…
> It already helps many DRM applications to restrict what content you can play and how. [citation needed] - I'm aware of the hypervisor capabilties of ME but not aware of it being used for DRM yet?
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
My issue with advertisements is that they are designed to be manipulative, esp. emotionally. "Smart, young, beautiful people" buy this product - don't you want to be like them? The ads that are strictly informational ("This product exists, here is why!") typically don't make good advertisements or are so poorly done that they become a form of comedy. Ads subtle enough to get past an "AI Guardian" mean they are meant…
You could train an AI to rewrite manipulative psychology out of all content.
Has the added bonus of fixing a lot of news in the process.
(Okay, so it's slightly more complicated in practice -- you would have to reduce the manipulative content there, and then add back a certain chosen bias so the reduced manipulation is overpowered by the chosen one.)
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#146Just change the alpha values in the `coverContainer` function in `utils.js` and it actually blocks ads. Patched `utils.js`: https://pastebin.com/YLyN2uJ8
Hey—I wrote this article ... if anyone forks this and makes it real please let me know. @jason_koebler on twitter or jason.koebler@vice.com
[deleted]
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#147The 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…
This is too cynical. You can be sure there will be lobbyists involved making the case for companies affected, but this does not guarantee results . Any business plan where there's government involved is risky. Heck, even with a Republican-controlled Congress, the Republicans can't always get their agenda passed because they don't even agree among themselves what it is. Nobody can rest easy that Congress will do what…
It would be cynical in the case of lower profile companies just looking to get their way. In the case of at least two $400 billion+ companies - combined market cap of nearly $1 trillion and the bedrock our country's image of technology supremacy - the rules change. Members of Congress, senators, and many of their constituents directly or indirectly hold shares in one or both of these companies.
It is unfathomable to me that once brought to their attention (through lobbying and donations) that these kinds of threats to companies like Google and Facebook would not be legislatively blocked.
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#148The war on ads is like the war on drugs. This is just going to create more ruthless ad cartels. There is a demand to be met, it will find its way to the consumer, even if it has to plow over 50 others in the process. The question is, what is the online ad equivalent of legalizing drugs?
in what way, except for the grammatical structure of the phrase, is the war on ads similar to the war on drugs?
Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#149Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race
#150Just change the alpha values in the `coverContainer` function in `utils.js` and it actually blocks ads. Patched `utils.js`: https://pastebin.com/YLyN2uJ8
Covering is not as good as not loading. Loading brings all the malware, the tracking, and the bandwidth/load times.
I agree, it's a limitation of the perceptual blocker, as it needs to `see` the ads to detect them. However, combined with a regular ad blocker to catch the ads that the regular ad blocker missed, it seems like a reasonable solution.