321–330 of 416 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not an expert, but I'm running Firefox Nightly for exactly that reason. https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/04/09/protectio...
What's your user agent like? I would imagine there are not many Nightly users out there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you allowing arbitrary JavaScript to run on your device?
Sites like StackOverflow require JavaScript to work (or at least, to work in a manner approaching interactivity). So, even someone who disables JavaScript normally, would presumably enable it in order to use this popular and useful site. Furthermore – and importantly – they place trust in StackOverflow not to abuse the privilege of executing arbitrary JavaScript. That is an entirely reasonable thing for a technically…
I agree that StackOverflow is at fault here, but enabling JS is not a binary choice — "allow all JS on this site" vs "block all JS on this site" are not your only options.
Tools like uMatrix allow me to control JS coming from different domains on different domains independently. For example, on SO I have enabled JS from Stack Exchange and related domains, but not from Google or other snoopers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At that point I think most people wouldn't care. Nobody is offended because James Bond wears an Omega watch. When it is doing not so subtly then it becomes weird (e.g.: transformers)
I am. I despise that. It's the worst kind of advertising.
In fact, I almost spat out my Coca Cola, I was so surprised that you would think that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could “solve” the issue by not having third party ads. Of all the sites on the internet, StackOverflow has the demographics that any advertiser would crave. How large of an inside ads sales force would you need to target higher than average income earners? How large reputable sites trust third party ad servers is a mystery to me. Besides, native ads that could be served from StackOverFlows own servers would be h…
That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run. Advertisers, agencies, media buyers and the rest of the supply chain don't negotiate with individual sites like that, not at any scale that can sustain a site like SO.
At that point I'd expect sites like Stack Overflow to point out that they have a specific of way of running their sites as well - and that shouldn't include having ads execute arbitary javascript.
While those requirements would certainly exclude a significant number of ad agencies, I can't imagine that there aren't enough advertisers left that would happily play by Stack Overflow's rules to reach a rather large and specific target audience with (likely) disposable income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1. scrollbars and positioning can cause problems with iframes that an inline div doesn't have, especially if there are multiple small iframes on the page. I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I'm curious. Have any examples?
Ideally you would like the iframe to not be visible -- you don't want it to show scrollbars if the content overflows. But at the same time, you want to see all the content in the iframe. If you knew ahead of time exactly the layout of the text in the iframe you could do this, but it's harder when you have dynamically generated content inserted into the iframe, and now add to that wanting the page to be on different d…
And this is why, even with the best intentions of site operators, my browser will continue to use the best ad-block tools I can get, and my networks will be protected by tools like PiHole.
Besides disabling JavaScript you can put hosts file blocklists.
Simple corporation block list (e.g. Facebook, Google) https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/tree/master/corporatio...
"Someone Who Cares" list http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Ultimate Hosts Blacklist: 1 million blocked domains (once in a while you might need to unblock something) and also a bonus known hacking IP blocklist. https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/Ultimate.Hosts.Blacklist
"It's not very straightforward to find where it's coming from, but we are working on it." This encapsulates the entire problem with the current state of digital advertising in 1 simple sentence.
It's amazing to me that an advert can run arbitrary javascript at all. It wasn't long ago that this would have been seen as a massive security risk by site owners and ad platforms alike. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that perhaps it's a structured service provided by the ad network, and the ad buyer just checks a box. But as a site owner even that would be too much for me. I've been playing aroun…
I run NoScript with all JS blocked by default and only whitelist the domains I want. On most sites you can get by with no JS or just scripts from the same domain whitelisted. Maybe a CDN from time to time
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could “solve” the issue by not having third party ads. Of all the sites on the internet, StackOverflow has the demographics that any advertiser would crave. How large of an inside ads sales force would you need to target higher than average income earners? How large reputable sites trust third party ad servers is a mystery to me. Besides, native ads that could be served from StackOverFlows own servers would be h…
The tech industry has a bit of habit over emphasizing their importance. In reality they have much less clout than they like to think. Techies expect the world to bend over backwards because they make money. A decent chunk of that is basically funded by ads.
That being said, techies—unlike admen—are still builders and the people who build the shit will always ultimately have the clout. It’s just a question of using the clout effectively.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it outright puzzling that CDN edge servers have not morphed into ad splicers yet, that business seems so obvious to me. The closest to a "guessplanation" I can come up with for is not happening is that there might be trust issues (overreporting/underreporting impressions) in the triangle of publisher, ad-network and CDN/ad-splicer. But I'm not convinced at all that this would outweigh the anti add-blocker adva…
Until now, while most people don't use ad-blockers and browsers have accepted third-party cookies, there's an advantage to loading a resource from another domain, since an ID created and stored by doubleclick.net on site A could be read by doubleclick.net on site B, allowing for cross-domain tracking. As third-party cookies increasingly get blocked, I think we'll see that more and more.