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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

#301

Post by rayiner »

devonkim wrote: post #291
bdhess wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr Can you provide a source for this? Don't know much about the topic but I've always assumed that, in general, Congressmembers who are wealthy were already wealthy before they were elected to Congress.

If you look at the rate of returns on their investments, they would outpace a lot of Wall Street and definitely most index funds. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/mutfund/congr...

From a different article, that study has some odd data points:

> The study found some significant difference based on party membership and seniority, with the Democratic sample beating the market by nearly 9% annually, versus only about 2% annually for the Republican sample.

> And representatives with the least seniority considerably outperformed those with more seniority.

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

#302

Post by rayiner »

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."

Hey how do you feel about corporate speech now that you've got someone like Trump who could've used the opposite ruling in Citizens United to clamp down on media criticism?

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

#303

Post by btown »

gavinpc wrote: post #246
btown wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN strips trailing periods from URLs; add a period at the end, or click the Search link at the page the above links to, to see the case. The raw opinion is here: https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/0... It's a very interesting finding. The appeals court actually did reverse parts of the decision, including the hard-drive-to-RAM argument, ending up in favor of MDY for many of the claims! But the…

> I am not a lawyer You might have missed your calling.

I enjoy building products too much :)

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

#304

Post by kalleboo »

jpmattia wrote: post #16
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.

> What would a post-ad-supported web looks like? Probably a lot like the pre-ad-supported web.

Minuscule?

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

#305

Post by amelius »

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…

On the flipside, if humans can detect what is an ad, then ultimately a computer (e.g. through deep learning) will also be able to detect it.

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

#306

Post by amelius »

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.

And they are probably all wondering when the first Nobel prize will be issued for "the advancement of ad technology".

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

#307

Post by panarky »

bdhess wrote: post #223
just2n wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr, I wouldn't trust them in this capacity. How many of us would hold steady in our own ethics and morals if someone routinely offered something like a $2,500,000 payday and we had no risk at all of being fired or jailed?

> Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr Can you provide a source for this? Don't know much about the topic but I've always assumed that, in general, Congressmembers who are wealthy were already wealthy before they were elected to Congress.

"Congress Tells Court That Congress Can’t Be Investigated for Insider Trading"

https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant-inv...

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

#308

Post by dragonwriter »

amelius wrote: post #305
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…

On the flipside, if humans can detect what is an ad, then ultimately a computer (e.g. through deep learning) will also be able to detect it.

There a fairly common forms of advertising that are used because humans are very bad at detecting them (where the commercial message is incorporated into content with another surface purpose rather than delivered alongside it in a discrete form), so that just means those forms will become more common as a share of all ads.

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

#309

Post by daxelrod »

btown wrote: post #232
daxelrod wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be interested in MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.[1] (the WoW Glider case). World of Warcraft's Terms of Use prohibited bots. The court found that users who used the Glider bot with WoW were violating the Terms of Use and therefore were not licensed to use WoW in that way. Because users running WoW must copy its content from their hard drives to RAM to run it, the court found that using Gli…

HN strips trailing periods from URLs; add a period at the end, or click the Search link at the page the above links to, to see the case. The raw opinion is here: https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/0... It's a very interesting finding. The appeals court actually did reverse parts of the decision, including the hard-drive-to-RAM argument, ending up in favor of MDY for many of the claims! But the…

Thank you for elaborating on the appeals court's findings. I'm really happy that the HD-to-RAM argument was thrown out.

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

#310

Post by IIIIIIIIIIII »

jbmorgado wrote: post #183
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…

No you won't because that's ilegal. An advertisement must be clearly understood as such (at least in EU) and in fact (for instance) now the channels in here are actually having to tell you that you are about to see advertisements. So, no, we won't have AI tuning the advertisements so that they can't be catch by software like this one because that means it also wouldn't be catch by humans and that a very big no. I can…

I'm not sure what to make of your comment, it's a little.. "weltfremd" (unworldly says the dictionary, not sure if that conveys the same meaning as in German though). There are MANY ways around it. It is like lobbying: Bribes are clearly not allowed, and yet politicians can easily be bought without actually breaking any laws.

The problem with that attitude is that when you are looking for bad things you are looking for intent, which is really not necessary for bad things to happen. This is like looking at individual neurons and not finding psychopathy (or whatever else actually is a system outcome of the network's actions, not of individuals).

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