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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

#261

Post by ouid »

orblivion wrote: post #166
ouid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in what way, except for the grammatical structure of the phrase, is the war on ads similar to the war on drugs?

As I alluded to, in both cases, there's a demand to be met, and there's a strong social resistance to having that demand to be met. Advertisers annoy 99.9% of us, but there's the 0.1% that demand something that they don't yet know about. There's money to be made, and satisfaction to be had, if only the connection of knowledge could be made. So I'm saying, perhaps instead of thinking in terms of blocking the knowledge…

you're not making your case very well, these are still superficial parallels.

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

#262

Post by Filligree »

CalRobert wrote: post #185
JoshTriplett wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Website terms of service are not law, no matter how people have abused the CFAA. You can't control how a browser displays content, whether it does so with a browser, screen reader, or musical interpretive dance. I look forward to seeing that battle play out.

Not to mention this basically makes cURL illegal..

cURL.

That's that hacking tool, right? I think I saw it in the Matrix. It's used by nmap.

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

#264

Post by ColanR »

gwu78 wrote: post #248

I do not have "block ads". I simply do not request them. Users do not intentionally make requests for ads or pixels from tracking servers. Browsers do. Automatically. People writing web pages that aim to cash in on advertising budgets depend on this "feature". However it is optional. I read hundreds of web pages and never see any ads. Because for eading the news I do not use a so-called "modern" browser. It seems the…

I'm guessing you use something like w3m or lynx? (if not, I would love to hear about it) The problem is that text-based browsers of that ilk are not user-friendly to the general population.

If you have the knowledge to implement that kind of not-requesting of ads, I bet one of the fringe/experimental browsers (I'm thinking of Vivaldi) would be a great place to implement what you're talking about.

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

#265

Post by petre »

jorvi wrote: post #214
virmundi wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say. Since you're a finger in the Hand, I guess the palm would tell you to fold.

..when in comes the EU, who have successfully penalized and stared down Facebook, Intel, Apple and Microsoft. And which is either the biggest (until the Brits have officially left) or the third biggest economy in the world. You can't simply ignore them, even as a company of Google or Apple's size.

This is mainly a covert trade war with the US due to taxes. The US has also succesfully penalized VW.

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

gwu78 wrote: post #248

I do not have "block ads". I simply do not request them. Users do not intentionally make requests for ads or pixels from tracking servers. Browsers do. Automatically. People writing web pages that aim to cash in on advertising budgets depend on this "feature". However it is optional. I read hundreds of web pages and never see any ads. Because for eading the news I do not use a so-called "modern" browser. It seems the…

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by takeda »

takeda wrote: post #158

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.

Also, as an example, I noticed a spam today with a subject: "Magic pill lets Trump perform better" which is an obvious way to fool bayesian filters.

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

#268

Post by hueving »

shouldbworking wrote: post #203
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 unfortunately agree with you 100%. Theres too much money tied up in advertising for it to ever go away. Google is the greatest conglomeration of Nobel worthy scientists and engineers in the last century. And their entire organization is built on advertising. After creating the best search engine and email system, they created the best web browser and most popular operating system in the world. All of this for the s…

>Google is the greatest conglomeration of Nobel worthy scientists and engineers in the last century.

IIRC both Microsoft and IBM produce way more research than Google. Let's keep things in perspective.

>And their entire organization is built on advertising.

Similarly the entire government is built on taxation, that doesn't mean everyone in the government wants to work on taxation or is good at it.

>After creating the best search engine and email system

Sure engine, sure. Email system, only if you restrict to web-based without privacy.

>they created the best web browser and most popular operating system in the world

Google didn't create Android, they bought it.

>Google's open source contributions are unmatched

Metrics for this are pretty lame, but even they show this is wrong: https://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/09/15/in-your-face-goo...

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

#269

Post by doctorpangloss »

shouldbworking wrote: post #203
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 unfortunately agree with you 100%. Theres too much money tied up in advertising for it to ever go away. Google is the greatest conglomeration of Nobel worthy scientists and engineers in the last century. And their entire organization is built on advertising. After creating the best search engine and email system, they created the best web browser and most popular operating system in the world. All of this for the s…

"Nobel worthy scientists and engineers"? You'd never hire one to make you a native ad!

Native ads, integrated or disguised as creative content, are impossible to block. Creative professionals, like film directors, visual artists, writers and even ad executives are the main innovators of native advertising.

I would argue native advertising is where most of the relevant innovation in ads occurs. Not at Google.

Creative content? Not at all Google's expertise. The best engineers are the least equipped to understand appealing creatives.

- Google acquired YouTube, whose basic premise was pirating, not creating, creative content. Despite having the largest video audience in the world, Google could never make something like Netflix's House of Cards.

- They're years away from delivering a compelling experience for Daydream. Never mind a game. Every NYTimes subscriber who received their Cardboard probably threw it away.

- The folks who worked on Make with Code privately describe their Google partners as insufferable.

- The folks who work on Google's creative ad campaigns—video & design—have variously described their Google partners as aloof and stifling.

- Despite its huge penetration, Google Music has no role in music culture. No musician I know thinks about how many plays they get on Google: they worry about Spotify, Hype Machine and other things their manager actually uses. A music manager wouldn't be caught dead with something as uncool as a Google Music subscription.

Indeed, I would argue that Google's culture is toxic to artistic creativity. If they wanted to hire some writers and directors, what would they do: administer a white boarding test? Laughable! That's assuming the people at e.g. ATAP even follow up with their own recruits (which they don't).

Serious creatives are anti-conformist. Google as an institution is something serious creatives criticize and lampoon, not celebrate. Have you seen Silicon Valley? Read Circle?

Listen, I might hate David Eggers's writing. But nobody writes a book about how Netflix is a cult.

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

#270

Post by deno »

x0x0 wrote: post #182
deno wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ads are protected free speech how are tobacco ads illegal?

Speech is regulated all the time. Free speech in practice means we bias towards permitting speech, but many categories of speech are regulated. To wit: you cannot lie in advertisements, you cannot incite imminent violence, you can be successfully sued for slander and/or libel, etc. Read the first two paragraphs of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite... ; it also discusses commercial speech.

United States still has obscenity laws, a backdoor around first amendment, which can be interpreted to mean whatever the court wants it to mean in any given situation. It exists, unchallenged, because otherwise child pornography would have to be legal.

My question was, wouldn’t this ruling be a basis to challenge the outright Tobacco ad ban?

Before the ban there was still regulation, the ads had to be offset with other content, pro-health etc. Just like with political ads on public airwaves now.

In Canada, for example, the Tobacco ban was successfully challenged in court as violating Freedom of Speech as recently as 1991. Ultimately the ban remained in place because of another backdoor called “peace, order, and good government.”

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