Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

ctrl.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 326 posts

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#291

Post by kuschku »

joosters wrote: post #289
kuschku wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to be condescending, and there's a much simpler solution to avoid being influenced by ads. It's called making data-driven decisions. Step 1: Find a set of products that solve your problem based on independent reviews, e.g. what Stiftung Warentest writes. Step 2: Use several price comparison engines, e.g. idealo, Preispiraten, Hardwareschotte to find the cheapest option for the products. Step 3: Order…

But does anyone actually follow that algorithm 100% faithfully? We are not machines, fortunately.

If you don't have enough money, and can only barely afford to buy something, then yes, very much you will follow it religiously. You will try to buy the most reliable for the cheapest price, because you can't afford the product failing, nor can you afford paying too much, and you don't want to go back to getting food from the food bank so you can spend your grocery money to replace the broken washing machine.

Of course if you're a SV programmer earning 5-10 times the average wage, you don't care about this and buy overpriced shit every day, but many people follow this to the letter.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#292

Post by Corrado »

jordigh wrote: post #251
TravelTechGuy wrote: post #246

Google telling us what "better ads" are is like a drug dealer lecturing you about crack quality control. They could have solved it years ago, but made tons of $ by letting the ad space become the wild west of nagware, malware, and tracking bonanza. If they were to provide a real adblocker, allowing people to opt-in to ads on sites they like, while blocking everything else, I'd have considered it, on the basis that an…

To me, "better ads" sounds like "humane torture" or "acceptable manipulation". The principle of ads is repugnant to me. There's no way to make it better. I don't need to be psychologically manipulated to buy things I don't need. There's no way to make that manipulation ok. What Google considers acceptable, I consider subtle and even more manipulative, trying to sneak it in where most people won't object to the intrus…

I've mentioned this in another comment, but I think there is a place for well positioned adverts. In the past I've missed out on cultural events (movie premiers, etc.) that I really wanted to know about simply because I don't watch much broadcast TV and use a pretty aggressive Ad blocker. This is generally a great idea and keeps all the crap from streaming into my head but it also stops the rare gem from enriching my life.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#293

Post by Feniks »

joosters wrote: post #283
JoshMnem wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm never thinking about buying anything that I see in an ad. I don't own much more in life other than some books, my computers, and a few clothes. I prefer to take my own initiative on what I buy, and the less I buy, the better.

Ah, you unique snowflake :) It’s astounding when people think that advertising doesn’t affect them. And yet companies continue to pay billions for adverts...

I think people who use ad blockers, like myself, KNOW all about how advertising works. Oh yes most certainly WE KNOW. That is why some of us choose to block them.

I limit my exposure to marketing as much as I can.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#294

Post by Feniks »

Corrado wrote: post #290

I use an Ad blocker and I kinda regret it sometimes. Most of the time the blocker keeps me from seeing annoying, repetitive ads for things I have zero interest in learning about (trucks, loans, cash back, etc.) However, I have realized that by blocking all Ads I am missing out on some cultural things, events that I want to know about. Movie information (Avengers, Hellboy, etc.) is one thing that I don't get informed…

I know what you're talking about and feel the same.

If you block marketing you are blocking a part of society. It reminds me of a Christian friend who never watches television.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#295

Post by CM30 »

jordigh wrote: post #251
TravelTechGuy wrote: post #246

Google telling us what "better ads" are is like a drug dealer lecturing you about crack quality control. They could have solved it years ago, but made tons of $ by letting the ad space become the wild west of nagware, malware, and tracking bonanza. If they were to provide a real adblocker, allowing people to opt-in to ads on sites they like, while blocking everything else, I'd have considered it, on the basis that an…

To me, "better ads" sounds like "humane torture" or "acceptable manipulation". The principle of ads is repugnant to me. There's no way to make it better. I don't need to be psychologically manipulated to buy things I don't need. There's no way to make that manipulation ok. What Google considers acceptable, I consider subtle and even more manipulative, trying to sneak it in where most people won't object to the intrus…

Ads aren't necessarily a bad thing, they can be incredibly informative or entertaining in their own right. I mean, have you watched a movie, TV show or game trailer at all? That's an advertisement, yet no one would say all of those are manipulative.

Something like this is almost entirely informative for someone looking for information about the product:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcdRBHM7kM

And the same goes for quite a few trailers and ads. Oh sure, they obviously want you to buy the product, and will pick the best footage to make it look good, but they also act as a nice quick summary of the story and what you'll actually be getting from it.

It's why even the BBC are fine with advertising their own shows in the same way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njNnTDiLOd4

And let's not forget how oftentimes these things being posted can be seen as a big event in itself. Something like E3 or a Nintendo Direct is literally just advertising for the company or companies involved. Yet millions of people treat the advertising event in the same way as a hotly anticipated TV show or sporting event, because it provides them a way to see what's been worked on and find out more about something they're interested in. Same sort of thing with the Superbowl ads being a draw in themselves. Or how Disney releasing a trailer for the next new Star Wars film would cause a huge reaction online.

So ads in of themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing. They certainly can be if they're exploitative (like, payday loan advertising or sugary foods being advertised in kids shows), lie through the teeth about the product (like No Man's Sky and Aliens Colonial Marines) or harm the consumer or their property (like malware ads and tracking online), but they can also be an art in themselves and a perfectly valid way of learning more about a new product.

If online ads were relevant to the content, didn't track the user or try and run scripts on their machine and worked about the same way they do in a real life newspaper or magazine (or the trailers before movies) then that would be acceptable and rightly classed as 'better'.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#296

Post by jasonkostempski »

neolefty wrote: post #266
jordigh wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, "better ads" sounds like "humane torture" or "acceptable manipulation". The principle of ads is repugnant to me. There's no way to make it better. I don't need to be psychologically manipulated to buy things I don't need. There's no way to make that manipulation ok. What Google considers acceptable, I consider subtle and even more manipulative, trying to sneak it in where most people won't object to the intrus…

Any thoughts on how web search should be funded, in an ideal world, if ads are inherently repugnant?

Web search shouldn't be centralized or closed source, it should be made of the same stuff Linux is. Whatever Linux does to keep existing, there should be a community driven web search project that mimics it.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#297

Post by Sylos »

mabbo wrote: post #89

I think there's good intentions by Google here. That said, let's talk about the worst-case scenario, the thing that Google could actually do that is entirely anti-competitive. Step 1: Google finds a large number of competitors who are doing pretty well playing by their rules. Google finds some trait they all have in common. Google then modifies their own ads to not have that trait. Step 2: Google declares the given t…

Why should Google have "good intentions"? It's a company, a publicly traded one at that. Their intentions are profit maximization. Abiding the law and maintaining somewhat of a reputation tend to be non-optional for that, but it's not their primary goal.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#298

Post by Sylos »

gorhill wrote: post #102

> Google appears to be shipping the entirety of EasyList and EasyPrivacy; which includes blocking rules for Google’s own AdSense and DoubleClick advertisement platforms as well as Google Analytics, and other Google services. This is confusing. EasyList is not bound to the "Better Ads Standards", its purpose is to block all ads, regardless of their perceived intrusiveness. Also, I failed to understand why would EasyPr…

I found that confusing, too. I thought, they were actually running EasyList and EasyPrivacy in full and fulltime, which would have been completely orthogonal to Google's entire business model.

So, what it actually means is that if you follow the visual guidelines, which Google has been following for reputation reasons for a long time, then you get to track users all you want, which is where Google is market leader. If you don't follow the visual guidelines, then your ads and tracking gets blocked, fostering the monopoly of Google.

Sounds like a primary example of anti-competitive behaviour then.

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#299

Post by nibnalin »

I’m all for ad-blocking and the existence of ad blockers.

But I really don’t like the idea of corporations making decisions about what ads we get to see. It’s a slippery slope to go down. The existence of an entity which may even be “blamed” by content creators for taking their money(not exactly, but to some extent) for not meeting a standard they virtually have very little control over is almost un-democratic. And I won’t be surprised if there are some “oops, these guys meet all criterias but are still getting blocked” unintentionally(or even intentionally) by Google.

I don’t use Chrome very often, but I’d recommend everyone to disable this feature when it ships(and use ublock/other open source blockers if one has to).

Re: How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works

#300

Post by Sylos »

mnm1 wrote: post #167

I hope Mozilla will do the same, only with a proper ad blocker. It's the only thing that makes sense given the two organizations' goals and purposes. Either that or they're loving their sponsorship money too much and there's no difference in goal or purpose between the two organizations. Can't wait to see if they stand up for users or lie down for money.

If webpage owners don't make money off of a browser, they'll stop testing/building their webpage against that browser or even block access from it, leading to broken webpages in that broken, which is not at all in the interest of users.
Post reply on HN