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

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

#401

Post by bloopernova »

heisenbit wrote: post #75
KnobbleMcKnees wrote: post #11

A good and measured article marred only by a silly, clickbait title. Unless there is a plan to allow attesters that are independent bodies then this is absolutely a threat to the open internet, or what's left of it. The biggest dead canary for me is the lack of calling this out explicitly by Google or Apple. We're left to assume that Google is hand-wavingly saying "don't worry we can take care of that" when the priva…

What is wrong when walking into a web shop with disclosing how much money you earn and may be able to part with?

Obviously this is awful, but I wanted to share some organizations could use that as a bad pattern:

"Oh, this area of $hot_social_media_site is for people earning ($user_salary * 1.4). But you can get access for just $10/month paid monthly or $9/month paid a year in advance! You don't want to be left out and lose the chance to network with higher earners, do you?!?"

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

#402

Post by Rudism »

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…

For a while I worked at a company that did arguably worse things than Google does. Regardless of dignity and courage it's hard to just "walk away" from a paycheck when you have mouths to feed, a mortgage to pay, a family who gets sick and needs medical care, pets, hobbies, whatever. There's also the fact that for most of us work is a huge percentage of our time and our social lives can be deeply intertwined with our work lives--it can be a tough decision to walk away from all your colleagues and friends who you enjoy working with even if you don't particularly enjoy the work itself (sometimes shared hardships and commiseration can make those bonds even tougher to break).

Expecting engineers to die on this hill for us seems incredibly unfair. To balk at someone not upturning their life and (under the US healthcare system at least) endangering the health and well-being of themselves and their families in the name of dignity or morality when the net result of doing so would be exactly zero because Google can replace them in a heartbeat is, in my opinion, a gross and unnecessary misdirection of blame.

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

#403

Post by nequo »

cmilton wrote: post #303
nequo wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a monopolist that acts like a monopolist. Its main revenue source is advertising. So it will use its monopoly power to secure advertising. You cannot expect Google to act against its own self-interest only because you ask nicely. You have to stop giving them the market power to do it.

Have they won the game of capitalism by becoming a monopoly? I don’t expect Google to act against its own will, but they should.

I don’t know if they won the game of capitalism but their market power and profit incentive are facts.

If you don’t want to stop using Chrome, then your alternative is to buy a controlling share of Alphabet and appoint a Board that forgoes advertising revenue in exchange for being nice to adblock users.

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

#404

Post by papruapap »

adrianN wrote: post #230
papruapap wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should fairly simple for MS to block this API (if they wish to).

Why would they? They make money with ads too

But Googles makes way more, will make compete with Google even harder in the future (deeper pockets).

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

#405

Post by Brian_K_White »

jvolkman wrote: post #354
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)

As has been pointed out, Apple's captcha-skipper is rather different.

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

#406

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

jackdaniel wrote: post #35
KnobbleMcKnees wrote: post #11

A good and measured article marred only by a silly, clickbait title. Unless there is a plan to allow attesters that are independent bodies then this is absolutely a threat to the open internet, or what's left of it. The biggest dead canary for me is the lack of calling this out explicitly by Google or Apple. We're left to assume that Google is hand-wavingly saying "don't worry we can take care of that" when the priva…

even assuming unbiased and objective attesters, the issue lies with the "baseline criteria" of attestation and who defines them. There are two risks here (examples follow): 1. hostile requirements - "the agent won't feature adblockers", or "scraping without explicit website permission must be forbidden" 2. prohibitive requirements - "the agent implements protocols X, Y and Z and adheres to standards A, B and C" - all…

Absolutely. Independent bodies don't solve the other myriad issues with attestation, but they don't add the ones that corporate interests do either.

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

#407

Post by raxxorraxor »

jeroenhd wrote: post #281

People get mad at Google for implementing something Apple already implemented up to a point, that the economic driving force behind the free internet is asking for. It's a shit idea but honestly Google isn't even the bad guy here. Everyone is mad at the theoretical anti-adblock usage of theoretical websites. Be mad at those websites instead! Almost every free service out there runs on ads. If you pay your subscriptio…

Safari doesn't have the market share that they could affect a change, especially since it is only seriously available on Apple devices. but Chrome is still in such a position.

Next comes the state that demands clients are verified in a way that they can ensure the age and identity of the user. This doesn't lead to anything good.

Google was essential in securing the web. Their acceleration of HTTPS adoption was constructive. This is for their ad business, against privacy and against the open web for very questionable benefits.

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

#408

Post by gabereiser »

liendolucas wrote: post #210
gabereiser wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't work for the dignity, they work for the paycheck. As long as people are willing to pay others more for doing this than saving the internet, it will continue the trend. Lashings will continue until morale improves.

> People don't work for the dignity, they work for the paycheck. I'm sorry but I don't believe that. I do understand that line of thought if you are in a very complicated personal/financial situation but you're stating that the only driver is money, which is clearly wrong...

it may not be your experience, but 95% of us work because we need the money.

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

#409

Post by jwr »

hcks wrote: post #287
jwr wrote: post #56

Unfortunately, we will all happily accept this. Because using Chrome is "convenient". People will accept anything for convenience — WhatsApp is a good example, where millions of people worldwide happily share and sync their entire phone book with Facebook/Meta. If you care, stop using Chrome. If you criticize this evil move, but continue using Chrome, you are part of the problem.

Please explain the terrible consequences of sharing my phonebook with Meta

Well, for one, you tell Meta about me, without my consent.

Let's say I have a kid at a school. I don't use WhatsApp, but several parents have me in their phonebooks. They use WhatsApp and also use Facebook on their phones. Facebook gathers their location information, and given what Facebook knows about them, it isn't difficult to infer that I also must have a kid attending a school at a particular address at particular times during the day.

Data mining quickly gets scary.

You can also look at it another way: if this information wasn't valuable, do you think Facebook/Meta would have paid a billion for WhatsApp back in the day? Do you think they maintain the "end-to-end encrypted" communications app out of the goodness of their hearts? This is extremely valuable information: millions of people share their identifying information (their phone number) and their social network (their phonebook). It's worth a lot!

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

#410

Post by raxxorraxor »

aerhardt wrote: post #18

The article mentions that this is a trade-off in trust vs privacy… An ad-backed site’s trust on not being visited by bots, vs my privacy… Doesn’t even sound like a trade-off from a user’s perspective.

You can add this in the dictionary under false dichotomy.
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