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Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

webkit.org

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#41
post #18
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be a good change if publishers were forced to sell/deliver their own ads. The problem has always been third-party ad networks that track you across the web and sometimes delivers malware. Publishers have never had to take ownership for the ads they serve and the user experience has suffered. The way forward is native ads (no, native ads aren't advertorials) like podcast ads, radio ads, or sponsored po…

even big publishers like Yahoo can't do that because there's an average of 20 companies between then and the brands advertising. publisher would love to be alone in the field and pocket the .20 per click. but ad agencies go a long way to doubt the publisher reports etc and try to pay less. every month a new layer show up, with the sole promise of allowing the ad vendor to pay less for the publisher. the fad du jour i…

But the other way could work. A service like Cloudflare could become an ad network and inject ads in transit.

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#42
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take you more seriously if you referred to them as "ad supported websites" rather than "free" websites.

I think "free" is the most accurate succinct terminology to be used here, when used with it's most common definition. An ad-supported site/service can still cost money to use (e.g. Hulu Plus), so just referring to a site as ad-supported to distinguish the business model is no clearer than calling it free. The way to resolve this is to be more explicit, such as saying it's "monetarily free". But we all knew what was m…

> But we all knew what was meant, so why bother?

Some dudes here have autism. That or they like to be a pain in the ass...

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#43
post #4

Apple: "We will allow ad blockers for Safari in iOS9. By the way, here's our new News app, which serves unblockable iAds"

This just brings iOS to parity with OS X though, I keep seeing people talking about this as if it's exclusive to iOS to make some strained point about Apple. Both OS X and iOS now use this same implementation, where the blocking extension is little more than a JSON blob of rules describing what should be blocked from loading or hidden on the page.

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#44
post #36
post #9

Firefox is also dabbling with built-in tracking protection ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594158 ). I'll be curious to see how Google faces this trend with Chrome going forward. Apple may be able to get away with enabling users to block web ads while serving them native ads (in the guise of privacy), but if Google tried to do the same (i.e. with Google-served ads being somehow "blessed" by virtue of not shar…

They can do the same justification AdblockPlus does: Don't disable unintrusive ads, only intrusive ones, and thus allow google text ads. And yes, the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice.

>the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice.

(No offense, but you're an anonymous writer on the internet.) Do you know of a URL or something I can use to verify that statement?

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do the same justification AdblockPlus does: Don't disable unintrusive ads, only intrusive ones, and thus allow google text ads. And yes, the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice.

>the adblock devs were given money by google shortly before making that choice. (No offense, but you're an anonymous writer on the internet.) Do you know of a URL or something I can use to verify that statement?

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7963577/google-ads-get-thro... http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/5/4496852/adblock-plus-eye-go...

I was using Adblock Plus, but this made me think a lot about this. Now, I'm using Privoxy + NoScript with custom filters.

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are free websites going to last much longer if we keep attacking ads?

Ads aren't being attacked, they're being ignored. This is a reflection of that.

Ads seem to be paid attention to enough for webmasters to bother using them. Vendors blocking them by default could be problematic

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#47
post #42
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "free" is the most accurate succinct terminology to be used here, when used with it's most common definition. An ad-supported site/service can still cost money to use (e.g. Hulu Plus), so just referring to a site as ad-supported to distinguish the business model is no clearer than calling it free. The way to resolve this is to be more explicit, such as saying it's "monetarily free". But we all knew what was m…

> But we all knew what was meant, so why bother? Some dudes here have autism. That or they like to be a pain in the ass...

I am desperate for the time when my karma is high enough to down vote people who use "autism" as a means to condescend or insult.

In the meantime, I'll just politely ask: Please stop doing that.

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#48
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we all knew what was meant, so why bother? Some dudes here have autism. That or they like to be a pain in the ass...

I am desperate for the time when my karma is high enough to down vote people who use "autism" as a means to condescend or insult. In the meantime, I'll just politely ask: Please stop doing that.

You can flag a comment like that by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. If enough users do so, the comment will be flag-killed. That's happened here.

Please don't post comments like this, though, which only dilute the thread further.

Re: Introduction to WebKit Content Blockers

#49
post #9

Firefox is also dabbling with built-in tracking protection ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594158 ). I'll be curious to see how Google faces this trend with Chrome going forward. Apple may be able to get away with enabling users to block web ads while serving them native ads (in the guise of privacy), but if Google tried to do the same (i.e. with Google-served ads being somehow "blessed" by virtue of not shar…

Is it a guise of privacy when iAds is actually more private? Google has already done this with blocking Flash ads which blocks their own ad network as well.

Google/DoubleClick has been using Swiffy to convert their customers' Flash ads to non-Flash HTML/SVG for mobile websites. It would be easy to use Swiffy ads on desktop, too. If other ad networks can't convert Flash ads, then ad agencies that want to continue use their Flash toolchain will move to Google/Doubleclick's ad network (to get Swiffy) thanks to a change in Google's own browser (which also happens to be the world's most popular browser).
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