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

Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

stackdiary.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 486 posts

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#351

Post by probably_wrong »

danielovichdk wrote: post #52

I know ads is a huge business. I never click them. Who clicks on ads? Really? What segment of Internet users does?

I've willingly clicked on a couple ads sometime this year when I was desperately trying to find something that neither DuckDuckGo, Amazon, nor Google could find (namely, a very last minute plane ticket for an even remotely reasonable price). My thought being "since the regular results are SEOd to death, maybe the people willing to pay for me to look at their offer are of higher quality". Plot twist: they weren't. But at least that made me realize that my adblocker was disabled so I could at least fix that.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#352

Post by tjpnz »

nikanj wrote: post #176
liendolucas wrote: post #116

Do you know what puzzles me most? How can software engineers work on something like this? Don't those paid engineers or involved ones have the balls or dignity to walk away? I'm just wondering how they would feel about this (if they feel anything at all). I mean, if I'd be in such a position and asked to push something like this I'd have walked away on the spot, no matter what you offer me. No one at Google is standi…

Tell me you don't have a mortgage and kids without telling me

I've got a mortgage and two kids, I don't have a FAANG job and live very comfortably thanks. Stop spreading BS, you don't need to work for one of them to have a high paying tech job.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#353

Post by [deleted] »

liendolucas wrote: post #116

Do you know what puzzles me most? How can software engineers work on something like this? Don't those paid engineers or involved ones have the balls or dignity to walk away? I'm just wondering how they would feel about this (if they feel anything at all). I mean, if I'd be in such a position and asked to push something like this I'd have walked away on the spot, no matter what you offer me. No one at Google is standi…

[deleted]

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#354

Post by jvolkman »

merricksb wrote: post #284

Earlier discussions: Web Environment Integrity API Proposal – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817305 (618 points/4 days ago/442 comments) Google Chrome Proposal – Web Environment Integrity – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778999 – (117 points/7 days ago/94 comments) Web Environment Integrity Explainer – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36785516 (87 points/6 days ago/44 comments)

And related:

Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36862494 - (530 points/1 day ago/398 comments)

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#355

Post by nologic01 »

As year after year passes and nothing happens on the anti-trust front it is clear that the do-no-evil embrace of the boa constrictor will end in a fatal bone crushing event that no alternative vision of technology could survive.

The open minded tech comminity can move mountains but this is now bigger than a mountain.

At this point about the only slingshot manouevre that could help us escape this fate is a reasonably resourced sovereign entity fully underwriting an open source stack (desktop, mobile, browser, cloud, fediverse) and nudging / seeding a mass user base by making it mandatory for engaging with public functions, paying taxes, transacting is sovereign money etc.

Effectively by declaring a tech "liberation" war.

I don't give this scenario high odds of happening but hopefully not every sovereign is captured. History is not made by the dazed and confused indulging in debilitating apathy.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#356

Post by vamc19 »

zb3 wrote: post #50

The latest, tone-deaf response from a Google engineer: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

I find it interesting that the author thinks "invasive user fingerprinting" would stop with WEI. If you really believe ad networks are _only_ fingerprinting users to fight fraud and will stop doing it after WEI, I have a bridge to sell you.

How else are they going to learn more about me and shove ads that they think I care about?

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#357

Post by macNchz »

jasonjayr wrote: post #324
jeroenhd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What attestation the website accepts entirely depends on the configuration. There's nothing in the spec that will prevent attestations for Linux computers. Linux already works perfectly fine with secure boot and such, I don't see why a signed bootloader starting a signed attestation engine wouldn't be trusted by third party websites. It'll kill open platforms like the rare open source RISC-V implementations, but for…

Linux computers with an approved boot chain and software environment. Gentoo users are out, as is anyone making a custom kernel.

I imagine also anyone who, despite being on an approved distro, has had to enroll their own key to build and sign drivers as well.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#358

Post by ryukoposting »

px43 wrote: post #317
ryukoposting wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> assume positive intent This rule applies to discourse , not perspectives . I also wouldn't call many of these concerns "fantasies," because anyone with a basic understanding of public-key cryptography can tell you exactly how this technology, even its most basic form, could be used to: - Create an absolute monopoly on browsers. - Give the holder of the browser monopoly the power to control who can/can't crawl the w…

> Create an absolute monopoly on browsers. Your premise is broken. How is this even possible in an open source ecosystem? Chrome was built to be forked, and there are several healthy forks that are thriving. There is zero chance of there being a browser monopoly any time soon. Basically every proprietary browser is now dead.

Whether or not the browser is open-source has no impact on this issue. The monopoly would not exist because Google/Apple/whoever are the only people allowed to make browsers. Google would simply have the power to make all of its services (search, docs, etc) totally unusable on any browser that isn't a version of Chrome compiled and distributed by them, thus making all other browsers useless to the vast majority of the population. Because analytics data is money, other companies would have financial incentive to follow suit.

By the way, Chrome contains proprietary code. Chrome and Chromium are not identical.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#359

Post by NoGravitas »

hospitalJail wrote: post #247
suyash wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using Apple products, your first preference should be Safari. I use that all the time, it's faster, leaner and syncs tabs/history/bookmarks greatly between different Apple devices.

Why not Firefox?

I'm not an Apple user, but from what I've heard, battery usage is the main reason to prefer Safari to Firefox on MacOS.
Post reply on HN