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Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

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Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#121

Post by bradleyjg »

dmm wrote: post #118
bradleyjg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that you have the caveat and all, but seriously? The tech industry has widespread cooperation with a regime in China that is brutalizing Hong Kong and committing ethnic cleansing of the Uigurs--and you want to know if he can sleep at night because he codes software to show ads for socks to people that don't want to see ads (but somehow can't bring themselves to live without content that's ad supported)?

> (but somehow can't bring themselves to live without content that's ad supported)? Every day that becomes less and less of an option and presenting it as an option is disingenuous. Are you seriously suggesting that people live without search engines? I think it's valid to question the role of cars in our society even if the critic took a car to the meeting, for example.

There’s a difference between questioning the role of cars in our society and morally condemning car engineers while riding around in a car.

As for living without a search engine, people have gone through much worse for their moral beliefs. I personally don’t see the moral issue at all, but if you feel so strongly about it—-then yes I expect you to sacrifice your own interests for those beliefs and not just go around making cheap condemnatory statements.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#122

Post by nothrabannosir »

SquareWheel wrote: post #100
dessant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're contributing to tech that erodes people's privacy, even when they actively fight against it. Don't delude yourself with net positives. The harm your employer causes still affects people, regadless of the useful things you may work on at Google, or the donations you give.

Not everyone shares your moral sentiments. I find your view elitist and unfair towards jefftk, who has been extremely open and amiable.

On the one hand, you’re right jefftk has been cordial. On the other.. where does that argument stop holding water? Just because someone is polite about their views doesn’t really justify them any more or less.

I appreciate your engagement in this, Jeff, but I’ve read the post and I agree that it’s rather light in its evaluation of the negative value of ads.

Anyway I guess it’s getting too far off track at this point. Thanks for at least engaging in the conversation, unlike basically everyone. I would love to chat further in private if you have the time. my contact is in my profile.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#123

Post by judge2020 »

joombaga wrote: post #71
freeone3000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change it on web browsers, for now, but not on IoT devices.

I'm not aware of any IoT devices with non-configurable DoH.

It's coming in the future, likely soon we'll see it in Google hardware since they all auto-update.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#124

Post by MayeulC »

bradleyjg wrote: post #115
QUFB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, and I'm not making any value judgements: Do you have any moral issues working an adtech?

I get that you have the caveat and all, but seriously? The tech industry has widespread cooperation with a regime in China that is brutalizing Hong Kong and committing ethnic cleansing of the Uigurs--and you want to know if he can sleep at night because he codes software to show ads for socks to people that don't want to see ads (but somehow can't bring themselves to live without content that's ad supported)?

I'm not sure... I think I'd be more comfortable working for a weapons shop than for (tracking) adtech. Ethics is a spectrum, so there can be many opinions on the topic.

Going back to adtech, I more or less equate it to the tech you alluded to, as well as global tracking, NSA-sized surveillance, and a complete disregard for "privacy", regulations and civility. Would any self-respecting person follow their neighbors around, write their every moves on a notebook, and sell that to the highest bidder? It's literally what is being done by those tracking giants, on a much bigger scale (and Google does track your every move, or does its best to do so).

I feel like I'm distancing myself more and more from conventional Internet platforms as a result.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#126

Post by judge2020 »

pitay wrote: post #114
brian-armstrong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, ad companies and the people who sell their websites to ad companies have some base level of distrust of one another, which has kept them from integrating like this. Ad companies want to serve the code to be sure that no click fraud is occurring, and people who run websites don't want to completely hand over their domain. But it's easy to see them forging this alliance if ad delivery depended on it…

This may be tremendously ignorant but... What is to stop ad tech companies creating a cryptographically secured reverse proxy device[1] that clients can install in their network between the web server and requests from the internet? The ad tech company only has to trust that their device is secure and the company that sells their website doesn't have to give up control of their domain or anything else. They would hav…

This would have to be a reverse proxy on the AdTech's infrastructure itself to make sure no rewriting is being done after-the-fact, as you can't trust your AdTech customer (the person that owns example.com) to not run a reverse proxy in front of that.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#127

Post by judge2020 »

e2le wrote: post #111
homero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also means most of their audience blocks ads. What are they to do?

I think simple ads most people are OK with however you start to lose people when those ads track your movements like a creepy stalker, sell that data without your knowledge or consent, and tax your system with resource hungry js that adds precious seconds to your wait only to be served with a zero day or other malware. Sites and ad networks have being engaged in a abusive relationship with users for a long time now a…

Slightly unrelated but I don't see how people justify ad blocking on mobile YouTube, the ads these are all native (video ads) and take up at most 30 seconds. If you don't want to wait for the ads, don't watch YT and burn Google's bandwidth.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#128

Post by BlueTemplar »

jrockway wrote: post #79
na85 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start providing content that users are willing to pay for?

The problem is that subscription models are flawed, at least for things like Ars Technica. In most cases, people don't want to commit a portion of their monthly budget to a specific website for the rest of their life. I don't know how often I read Ars Technica, but it's probably a couple of articles a month. That is worth maybe $0.10 to me, so they can never collect that profitably. They use ads because then I "pay"…

Flattr has been around for years now.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#129

Post by earthboundkid »

jefftk wrote: post #42

The easiest way for site-owners to delegate control has been to include third-party javascript. With new browser restrictions, we're starting to see companies switching to loading JS via CNAMEd subdomains, because that's nearly as easy. The next step is probably reverse proxies, though, where the third-party JS comes from the same server that gives you the rest of the site's JS. (Disclosure: I work in ads; speaking o…

Or we could make all of that illegal and have an ad ecosystem that works for publishers and consumers as it does in every field except for the web (print, broadcast, podcasts, billboards—all work without JS and are great for consumers). Web is the one weirdo market with tracking. Make that illegal and it will be good like all the other markets.

Re: Cname cloaking, a disguise of third-party trackers

#130

Post by earthboundkid »

ignoramous wrote: post #53
bsysop wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think ad companies will really trust reverse-proxied ad traffic? Seems like a tremendous opportunity for fraud. Right now with user agents hitting ad servers directly, there's much less opportunity for content publishers to fake impressions and clicks.

Instead of websites deploying reverse-proxies to tunnel ads through, Google has entire websites tunnel through their edge via AMP. Wouldn't surprise me if BigTech gets together and introduces standards that open up more avenues for CDNs to take away even more control and monetize the traffic they serve, on their terms. Google has pretty much checkmate d content-blockers in that they control the servers, the OS, and t…

TBF, Google is probably going to be broken up in the next five years and AMP will be exhibit A at the trial.
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