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You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

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Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#61

Post by GabeIsko »

millzlane wrote: post #59
northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

Instead of the botnet just make the extension block the site with an explanation. Doesn't uBlock Origin do this?

I think the default filter lists don't seek to block video content like this, but you can definitely accomplish this with custom filters. I have filters set up to block these videos on cnn.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#62

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

Something about the post itself: while I'm firmly in the "it's annoying" camp, as is the author, the poll is a textbook example of how to make a heavily biased poll.

Maybe there is a person or two who actually like it, but the dripping sarcasm of the poll's response is saying "whoever you are, you're cretins", and is not quite inviting for a discussion.

I'd love to hear from someone who actually liked this pattern (and many others) as a consumer. It's so alien. Maybe I'd learn something.

Then again, I'm probably going to write that crawling bot that would frequent the sites I read, snip the actual content and deliver it to me via email or my Kindle. Call RMS what you will, but that bit of his digital life is quite clever.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#65

Post by leeoniya »

northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

you're describing https://adnauseam.io/

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#66

Post by throwawayboise »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #9

Have you ever driven across a bridge, or along a highway and run over one of those "hit counter" cables that the Department of Transportation lays out to know how many people are driving on that bridge, or that highway? Now imagine that the cable can reach up into your car at the exact moment that you cross over it and pull down your person and your entire life's history.

That's E-ZPass, FasTrak, etc. Also those toll bridges where they take a photo of your license plate and send you a bill that includes a $6 "convenience fee"

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#68

Post by discordance »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #54
nmstoker wrote: post #30

I feel browsing the web is long overdue having a robot butler to do it for us and come back with the things we wanted, leaving the "People in Norwich are using this genius trick"-style nonsense on the cutting room floor. It ought to be trivially possible, going on from things like grease monkey and ad blocking scripts to add a bit of user intent guessing / content filtering / simplified view logic.

If it was trivially possible, Firefox would already be doing it. But there's always an arms race with stuff like this. Our robot butler would be able to figure out how to parse the web today, but the advertisers would completely change the structure of pages tomorrow. Facebook used to have their ads wrapped in ` `. Now, they're buried a thousand divs deeps, and the ads and content both have nonsensical, non-semantic…

It's technologically possible, but not legally possible and not convenient.

People in the know have the right extensions to block stuff and get past paywalls using the right snapshot services etc. Firefox can't officially offer this, but they can let people do whatever they want if they run their own extensions.

If this was common place or convenient for the masses then it would be actively discouraged or outlawed, similar to what happened with Napster and MP3s.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#69

Post by 3np »

northwest65 wrote: post #16

How about an opt in botnet extension for your browser that focuses it's energy on sites with this sort of dark pattern behaviour. i.e. You install the extension, when you come across a site like this you vote it for getting punishment, once the site gets enough vote the botnet occasionally focusses it's energy on the site in question when the participants browser is otherwise sitting idle. The punishment could potent…

Even if you assume the server operator is benevolent, that would be trivial to fork (and no one should run a closed-source version of that in the first place) bu someone just forking the extension and using it to trivially DDoS sites for other purposes. Or just break out that part of the code and use it in other malicious client code.

Consider also the sybil vector; I could just use a proxy network to vote millions of times for a site I'd like to see targeted. Or how do you ensure that 1 human = 1 vote? Throw in some PoW? No.

I'm not for building easily available tools for remotely and unilaterally coordinating DDoS attacks.

Re: You click a link to a news site, to read an article that seems interesting

#70

Post by nkrisc »

wffurr wrote: post #32
stavros wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because why? Just don't visit these sites if they annoy you. I don't burn down jazz bars just because I don't like jazz.

What if you are trying to go to jazz bars but they inexplicably play an extremely loud high pitched tone over the jazz music?

This analogy is getting stretched a bit thin, but: you leave.
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