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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

#151

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

derefr wrote: post #134
imglorp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covering is not as good as not loading. Loading brings all the malware, the tracking, and the bandwidth/load times.

"Not loading" doesn't make sense in the case where the ad is inline in the response body (i.e. "part of the site", like Facebook's ads are.) Which is the case where this ad-blocker uniquely shines. Besides which, the algorithm involved is a computer-vision one, so the ad needs to be rendered before the algorithm can recognize it as an ad. The best solution here, if you want maximum privacy, would be to use a traditio…

You could feed back the visually blocked ads to a system that profiles their HTML/etc and then generates new rules for the first line blocking (which is usually itself a combination of not loading and not rendering).

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

#152

Post by Eric_WVGG »

betenoire wrote: post #132
pavel_lishin wrote: post #95

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.

This is my thought as well. I avoid ads because of the additional resources they require, network requests, javascript, etc. Not because my eyes can't handle them

Same. I’ve wasted several minutes whitelisting various ad networks for the maniacs at Forbes and Wired, but when they say “we rely on ads, stop being a dick” and I try to comply; it turns out they’re not talking about ads at all.

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

#154

Post by coddingtonbear »

apsec112 wrote: post #142
drumttocs8 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

x

Although I agree (in essence) that legal personhood is something most people misunderstand, I'm not sure the NYT is a very good example given that "the press" is specifically listed in the text of the first amendment (and has been understood to mean a newspaper production organization since even before the amendment was ratified).

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

#155

Post by jagthebeetle »

Not seeing a whole lot of discussion about the implementation. Looking through the extension's code (which should be somewhere under your Chrome app files, if not online), briefly, it seems like an unsung hero here is Tesseract.js: http://tesseract.projectnaptha.com/.

The extension itself seems to do OCR (using Tesseract) on images and look for the string "adchoices", or else the adchoices icon, which yes, is cool: but just want to clarify that the folks at Tesseract seem to be doing the meaty "computer vision" part.

EDIT: oh, this isn't markdown.

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

#157

Post by palunon »

downloadthisad wrote: post #114

I thought this was hacker news. If you dont want something to be downloaded to your computer restrict your computer from downloading it. If you dont know how to do this then learn so. This cannot be stopped. At the point it can be stopped the computer you have is no longer your computer. Like when the car you have is being driven by a computer and Tesla does not allow you to do self maintenance it is no longer your c…

>So dont buy computers that restrict you from full access to the software (I dont think this has been done yet).

It is done, right now, on any (recent) Intel computer.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161005075537/http://www.alexra...

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/intel-me-and-why-we-shou...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Tech...

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

#158

Post by takeda »

Allow me to be a bit skeptic about it.

This reminds me a lot of Bayesian spam filters. Those things worked great very few false positives and negatives, once Google started using it on a large scale (GMail) spammers started playing the system and often they are successful.

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

#159

Post by Retric »

downandout wrote: post #147
skybrian wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

'Breaking' the internet for 50+ million people is a no go, they would just add a 10$ / month fee at the ISP level just like music CD's, because company's just want money and politicians want to get elected.

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

#160

Post by skybrian »

downandout wrote: post #147
skybrian wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You do realize they're closer to the Democrat's side on most issues? The Democrats aren't doing so well lately.
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