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A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

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Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#51

Post by f4rker »

chillydawg wrote: post #41
vsund wrote: post #16

Here's @vsund, author of this commit message. I understand that the title may was a bit clickbaity and now the title got renamed to a more rational one (which is totally ok). Unfortunately the new title "A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'" doesn't reflect the situation very well in my opinion. The library didn't fail (mainly because there is no library yet), what instead h…

As one of an extremely large group of people who will never use that library but DO get protected from some ads and tracking by blacklisting beacon.js, I disagree that it's an issue with ad blockers. The internet is a toxic place, to put it mildly, and if you're getting into any kind of public facing service on it, you need to know exactly what you're doing.

They are called "ad blockers" but block all kinds of "non ad" content that breaks sites in unexpected ways.

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#52

Post by f4rker »

kevingadd wrote: post #2

An interesting related anecdote on this is that at least in Chrome, adblockers can also interfere with extensions' attempts to load scripts, load stylesheets, or open windows. I maintain an extension with a smallish active userbase (~20k people) and a couple different times I've encountered mysterious failures that were the result of clumsy keyword blocklists in ublock/adblock/etc - for example an extension asset (pa…

Users can setup your domain on a white list

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#53

Post by sorokod »

kronos29296 wrote: post #50
prebrov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. I've recently encountered a video ad startup that runs a proxy wrapping VAST responses into a VMAP. So, a website would request an ad not from DFP, but from an inconspicuous CloudFront URL. These CF distributions are deployed for each publisher and you'd have to block them one by one, not being able to block the whole ad platform. They said that some adblockers can discover ad servers by parsing responses. I…

Like all arms races, one day it will all blow up in our faces. Since it is not a literal arms races, it will metaphorically blow up in our computers. Hope somebody resolves it before it really does. (Not gonna happen though)

Arms races are ubiquitous , from US Vs China to bats Vs the moths.

How exactly do they blow up?

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#54

Post by tgragnato »

sorokod wrote: post #53
kronos29296 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all arms races, one day it will all blow up in our faces. Since it is not a literal arms races, it will metaphorically blow up in our computers. Hope somebody resolves it before it really does. (Not gonna happen though)

Arms races are ubiquitous , from US Vs China to bats Vs the moths. How exactly do they blow up?

Usually for money reasons?

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#55

Post by cpeterso »

I heard that Google's AdWords management portal ran into a similar problem because their web pages had HTML and CSS using names containing the word "ad" because that is related to the domain of ad management. AdWords customers running ad blockers couldn't manage their own AdWords campaigns. :)

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#56

Post by [deleted] »

vsund wrote: post #16

Here's @vsund, author of this commit message. I understand that the title may was a bit clickbaity and now the title got renamed to a more rational one (which is totally ok). Unfortunately the new title "A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'" doesn't reflect the situation very well in my opinion. The library didn't fail (mainly because there is no library yet), what instead h…

[deleted]

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#57

Post by nashashmi »

This extreme vetting made me disable all of those adblocking lists. Now I manually go through web scripts and block the stuff I don't like. It turns out that majority of ads on the web are served by just a handful of advertisers. So my list of blocks include only 27 websites. And these site turn out to be the notorious displays of junk on the internet. I don't see ads on the web anymore. I also don't get called foul on by sites that block adblockers.

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#58

Post by nitrogen »

jakub_g wrote: post #7

Another protip: don't name your images "banner.jpg"; "ads.js" and "analytics.js" etc are also not exactly great names. Another protip: Always make sure that critical flows in the app won't fail if analytics event fails. You probably want to wrap calls to analytics provider with your own function, and in that function check for existence of global analytics object like "window.ga" which may fail to load due to adblock…

Always make sure that critical flows in the app won't fail if analytics event fails.

Monoprice's site won't allow checkout with uBlock unless you define a function they're trying to call: _satellite = { track: function(){} }

With inventions like Google Tag Manager that allow marketing departments to inject JS into the production site, things like this may not even be the developers' fault.

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#59

Post by Scaevolus »

Klathmon wrote: post #30
jakub_g wrote: post #7

Another protip: don't name your images "banner.jpg"; "ads.js" and "analytics.js" etc are also not exactly great names. Another protip: Always make sure that critical flows in the app won't fail if analytics event fails. You probably want to wrap calls to analytics provider with your own function, and in that function check for existence of global analytics object like "window.ga" which may fail to load due to adblock…

This shit drives me up a goddamn wall. I had a web app a few years ago that I was using webpack to build the JS with, and the output filename was just a SHA hash of the contents. After an update, I started getting reports that it wasn't working for some people. Turns out they had adblockers that were blocking *ad.js and it just so happened that the SHA hash of the file ended in ad.js

Medium had the same problem where hash-named paragraph divs would disappear if they contained "ad".

Re: A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'

#60

Post by Ajedi32 »

chillydawg wrote: post #41
vsund wrote: post #16

Here's @vsund, author of this commit message. I understand that the title may was a bit clickbaity and now the title got renamed to a more rational one (which is totally ok). Unfortunately the new title "A JavaScript browser library fails due to an adblocker blacklisting 'beacon.js'" doesn't reflect the situation very well in my opinion. The library didn't fail (mainly because there is no library yet), what instead h…

As one of an extremely large group of people who will never use that library but DO get protected from some ads and tracking by blacklisting beacon.js, I disagree that it's an issue with ad blockers. The internet is a toxic place, to put it mildly, and if you're getting into any kind of public facing service on it, you need to know exactly what you're doing.

Wait, you're saying that a false positive in an ad blocker is _not_ an issue with the ad blocker? Of course it is! Blocking files based solely on their names is a brittle and error-prone way of doing things, and this false positive is a clear example of that.
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