11–20 of 48 posts
There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.
Ah yes, such a simple solution, just get everyone, everywhere to install adblocking software in their browser of choice. Problem Solved!
The most concerning political advertising thrives in the shadows: it whispers messages to audiences that are false (easier to counter in the light of day) or prejudiced (and thus should have consequences to whatever groups post them). Radical transparency during campaigns may not stop these types of things, but at the very least it enables a response.
That said, it's worth thinking deeply about the arms race that might ensue - when every PAC can see every advertisement every other PAC is investing in, does that make the race into even more of a "whoever has the most money wins" situation even more than the post-Citizens United dystopia we find ourselves in now?
There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.
The point of the ad archive is to protect society as a whole from bogus election ads.
Sure, block ads and tell all your friends to do the same. But unless you get all members of society to block ads, the above problem still exists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, such a simple solution, just get everyone, everywhere to install adblocking software in their browser of choice. Problem Solved!
Considering this blog comes from the makers of Firefox, they could bundle adblocking software by default.
Blocking _all_ ads would surely make content providers revolt against Firefox to the point where its viability as a mainstream Web browser would be at risk.
There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.
> Just block ads. The point of the ad archive is to protect society as a whole from bogus election ads. Sure, block ads and tell all your friends to do the same. But unless you get all members of society to block ads, the above problem still exists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering this blog comes from the makers of Firefox, they could bundle adblocking software by default.
Firefox is going to enable tracking protection by default, which is already risky and would currently make many websites with anti-adblocking measures block Firefox by default. Blocking _all_ ads would surely make content providers revolt against Firefox to the point where its viability as a mainstream Web browser would be at risk.
Let's say the advertisers and websites do start giving grief to end users who are proactively protective. I have an idea that I believe can be done, but I'm at a loss with my current skill level to achieve it.
Quick anecdote: when Flash was a thing, I used to symlink .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null to let the Flash cookies "think" they were being written to the HDD, while allowing me to view Flash content without worrying about the LSOs tracking me. I wonder if there is a way, if ads/websites figure out how to block adblockers, that would allow the "loading" of ads, but shunt them into /dev/null (or similar bit bucket) making the website think they have been loaded, but not. A man in the middle, as it were. If I could figure out how to begin this, I would undertake it as a project. Hosting this online and allowing others to pass their traffic through it would be ideal. MitM/proxy. Methinks it will eventually come to this if enough people continue to add blocking tools to their tool set.
Any ideas?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> just block anything that is not actual content At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. Most websites can be modeled quite easily as category->article(->comment) with some additional data. Writing UI for that is quite trivial. It can be done in browser via extensions/userscripts (without a database), or you can fetch th…
> At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. This basically exists already. It's called Reader View in Firefox.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just block ads. The point of the ad archive is to protect society as a whole from bogus election ads. Sure, block ads and tell all your friends to do the same. But unless you get all members of society to block ads, the above problem still exists.
But mozilla/firefox is actually in a position to block all ads. They just need to make a browser better than Chrome.
Mozilla can't block ads for non-Firefox users, nor does it aim for establishing a Web browser monopoly, so the original problem still exists.
There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.
> Just block ads. The point of the ad archive is to protect society as a whole from bogus election ads. Sure, block ads and tell all your friends to do the same. But unless you get all members of society to block ads, the above problem still exists.