I use a combination of UBO, PiHole and AdGuard on my mobile devices. Can't say I've seen an ad in the last year. Is this trying to solve an existing problem or speculating on where things could go in future?
AdFlush
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: AdFlush
#12AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
practical solutions don't get you published
Re: AdFlush
#13Oh boy, that didn't take long. Just last year I made Butter https://butter.sonnet.io as an excuse to talk about this:
> This project is a half-serious, half-assed attempt to demonstrate that in the next few years the process of blocking this type of content could be almost entirely automated. Yes, it would be wasteful from a computational and human potential perspective, and otherwise completely unnecessary, but hey, more money would change hands!
Re: AdFlush
#14AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
> only one person has to report an ad for it to go into a crowdsourced list that blocks it for millions of others
Is it that easy? Sounds very abusable
Re: AdFlush
#15AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
> only one person has to report an ad for it to go into a crowdsourced list that blocks it for millions of others Is it that easy? Sounds very abusable
Yes, and some list maintainers accept money to add or remove you from the list (officially, or officiously through a secondary maintainer, depending on the list), but otherwise it's no different than getting a domain marked as malware or phishing (with a few paid editors on Phishtank or VirusTotal).
It's easier to get a domain added than removed. and for the "corruption"/"rackeetering" part, it's a "win-win" for the adblockers and the list maintainers.
Adblockers also often pay browsers to be integrated by default (AdGuard, Adblock Plus, etc), and then they negociate with publishers to whitelist some domains (not necessarily the most obvious, can just be analytics).
"We offer your domain to be unblocked on xx millions of devices by default, this will create you a uplift of revenue of +yy%"
Re: AdFlush
#16AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
The filter based adblockers are at risk though, with Google's new extension thingy that - at least a few years ago, I haven't heard from it since - limited the amount of rules. If there's a non-rule based system that is 98% effective then that would circumvent the arbitrary rule limits that Google set.
Re: AdFlush
#17AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
practical solutions don't get you published
"Practical solutions" also leave you vulnerable to cat and mouse games against sites that block or bypass adblockers (even with ublock origin). The end game is to have heuristic/AI adblocking which would directly hook into browser rendering so that it becomes undetectable. Obviously leading browsers do not support this for extensions, but forking Chromium wouldn't be so hard.
Re: AdFlush
#18I use a combination of UBO, PiHole and AdGuard on my mobile devices. Can't say I've seen an ad in the last year. Is this trying to solve an existing problem or speculating on where things could go in future?
I’m curious why you’re using 3 separate methods. Do you miss things with just one? AFAIK all 3 use similar block lists and are configurable.
I’m building a pi-hole type solution for myself and essentially want all the filtering and blocking to happen at my firewall and not on my client (phone, laptop, tablet).
Re: AdFlush
#19AdFlush (F1 Score: 0.98) seems to do better than some other adblockers: AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84), but it begs the question: why not compare to the most popular adblockers: uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus etc. I think the authors want to compare apples with apples, so they only compare their algorithm to other adblockers that use algorithms, as opposed to those whi…
The filter based adblockers are at risk though, with Google's new extension thingy that - at least a few years ago, I haven't heard from it since - limited the amount of rules. If there's a non-rule based system that is 98% effective then that would circumvent the arbitrary rule limits that Google set.
My understanding is that under manifest v3[1] only a list of rules is allowed. An algorithmic ad blocker wouldn't be able to work at all.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-l...
Re: AdFlush
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
practical solutions don't get you published
"Practical solutions" also leave you vulnerable to cat and mouse games against sites that block or bypass adblockers (even with ublock origin). The end game is to have heuristic/AI adblocking which would directly hook into browser rendering so that it becomes undetectable. Obviously leading browsers do not support this for extensions, but forking Chromium wouldn't be so hard.
"doing thing X work and everyone uses it, so bad actors invest time against things X. While thing Y isn't used by anyone so bad actors aren't spending time to work around it, q.e.d. we prove thing Y is better".
i don't really buy your argument