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Chrome, 10 Years Later

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Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#131

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

SalimoS wrote: post #79
xg15 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never requested the ad.

no you request a resource (webpage) the ad was sent to you by the owner of the resource (it's his right to put whatever he want the the webpage) as your right to not request it/block it PS:in another comment i tried to explain how i see it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33919824

It's like going into a hotel, restaurant, college lecture theatre, or library and immediately being mobbed by sales people.

The owner/landlord may have given permission. But it's still not a welcome intrusion, and wearing a "No salespeople here" anti-mobbing suit is a completely legitimate personal freedom.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#132

Post by dijit »

josefx wrote: post #123
roenxi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are trying to anthropomorphise companies and that isn't a sensible way to understand them. The list of people who have your interests at heart: * You (some caveats). * Maybe your family (lots of caveats). As Stallman has been pointing out since the early 1990s, if you give up your freedom you won't be free any more, and other people can do stuff you don't like to you. People still refuse to use that logic desp…

Let me get this straight, you cite Stallman on freedom and then claim that Google hasn't done anything wrong? Google the company that manages the webs most widely used DRM module? You are aware that Stallman and GNU explicitly oppose digital restrictions management in the context of freedom?

I think he's not as internally inconsistent as you claim.

"Doing things i don't like" would be locking me out of purchases I made or bricking my devices if I don't subscribe to some new service.

Google isn't doing this, you can use their products mostly for free and you're unlikely to rub up against the 900lbs gorilla that famously doesn't have support.

Until you do rub up against that gorilla; then you will start to cry about freedom, and retrospectively realise you kept trading it away.

(see also: if they change the rules, usability, cost of entry, etc;etc;etc)

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#133

Post by nonameiguess »

jefftk wrote: post #119
Joeri wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it is perfectly fine to use an ad blocker by default, and perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled. At least then there’s a negotiation going on.

> perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled And yet ublock origin tries to work around this. About a third of their issues are "this site refuses service to people with adblockers": https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...

Because they don't refuse access. They kindly ask you to disable, but don't require it, and the users of an ad blocker know damn well they're not going to voluntarily disable it if it's possible to browse the site at all with it on, so rather than rote click "continue" 90 times every two hours, let the blocker block the nagging popup as well.

If these sites really don't want you there with an ad blocker, they can actually block you. I imagine they realize there is value in getting more eyeballs even without ads, whether that be that users might still recommend and create links to your content that other people without a blocker then follow, or you actually sell something and some of those people might buy it. Whatever it is, by revealed preference, those site owners seem to be indicating it's worth it to allow people to browse with an ad blocker.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#134

Post by jefftk »

nonameiguess wrote: post #133
jefftk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled And yet ublock origin tries to work around this. About a third of their issues are "this site refuses service to people with adblockers": https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...

Because they don't refuse access. They kindly ask you to disable, but don't require it, and the users of an ad blocker know damn well they're not going to voluntarily disable it if it's possible to browse the site at all with it on, so rather than rote click "continue" 90 times every two hours, let the blocker block the nagging popup as well. If these sites really don't want you there with an ad blocker, they can act…

> Because they don't refuse access

Nope; uBlock Origin will work around that as well. Skimming recent issues, in https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/15338 atozmath.com detects that people are running an ad blocker [1], explains what they're doing, and refuses access. The discussion is how to make the site think ads aren't blocked, though they haven't succeeded yet. In https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/13801 there's a simpler one with https://www.magicgameworld.com where it refuses access but doesn't provide reasoning, and that one was fixed.

[1] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/90739617/196804351...

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#135

Post by nonameiguess »

SalimoS wrote: post #60
tgvaughan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, although it's never "cheating" to block ads on our own devices, unless we accept that it's okay to force people from looking away Clockwork Orange-style. (Even the term "blocking" seems wrong: it's not like the ads are coming down a pipe and my "ad blocker" is bouncing them away.)

The way i see it (an example) you as a user want to read a story that i wrote in my website but when you request it i'm embedding an ad with the story, it's my right to embed the ad and not showing what i wrote without it and it's your right to not open the website it's not perfect, im using an ad blocker and i can't understand how people can surf the internet without one but hopefully we can find a solution the chan…

> The way i see it (an example) you as a user want to read a story that i wrote in my website

This is very rarely the case, though, and also the fundamental error the original article is making. The vast majority of page loads are blind link clicks. The user doesn't know what is behind it before clicking. They're trying to take a quick sample and maybe stay on the page and read something if it proves sufficiently interesting and not obnoxious compared to the thousands of otherwise identical pages with near identical content.

It is not people trying to grab your magazine to take home without paying. It's people at the magazine stand browsing through all of them trying to decide if any are worth buying. While thumbing through the covers, we don't want autoplay videos taking over our speakers and waking up our sleeping spouse, malicious JavaScript querying the OS to figure out what our hardware capabilties and settings are to fingerprint us, thumbnails of a bunch of women with E cups in tight shirts with no relation to a story trying to get us to browse through to something else. We just want to see if whatever the hell we clicked on is actually worth reading. You're automatically assuming we made that decision before loading the page.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#136

Post by nonameiguess »

LunaSea wrote: post #94
xg15 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly possible to view the article without the ad if I use an adblocker.

No, because the article wouldn't have been written without the ads.

I guarantee you no important information is going to go totally unreported anywhere, even if ads ceased to exist globally tomorrow.

On the other hand, a whole lot of recycled content mills where all the $0.05/paragraph contract writers are about to be replaced by GPT-4 probably would.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#137

Post by LunaSea »

concordDance wrote: post #106
LunaSea wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is incorrect. Most people don't pay for content. You can see how well donation links work on content sites and open source projects for proof.

Most people do pay. E.g. Netflix or whatever. I personally pay $50/month on Patreon to various makers.

> Most people do pay. E.g. Netflix or whatever.

That's for long form video content (series, movies, documentaries, etc.).

Text content is rarely something people pay for.

How many newspapers are you subscribed to?

> I personally pay $50/month on Patreon to various makers.

Sure, but look what the ratio of Patreon subscriber to viewers is for Twitch streams or Youtube content creators is.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#138

Post by gorhill »

nonameiguess wrote: post #133
jefftk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly fine for a website to refuse access with ad blockers enabled And yet ublock origin tries to work around this. About a third of their issues are "this site refuses service to people with adblockers": https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...

Because they don't refuse access. They kindly ask you to disable, but don't require it, and the users of an ad blocker know damn well they're not going to voluntarily disable it if it's possible to browse the site at all with it on, so rather than rote click "continue" 90 times every two hours, let the blocker block the nagging popup as well. If these sites really don't want you there with an ad blocker, they can act…

By default we try to work around sites which require that the user disable their content blocker, as this is not acceptable since content blockers are used for more than to just block advertisement. In uBO, trackers and malware sites are also blocked, and thus it's not acceptable that sites require to wholly disable uBO.

By default, we do not try to work around sites which make a polite demand that the users disable their blockers without preventing access, this way the final decision is up to the users.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#139

Post by drivebycomment »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #11

I actually really like Chrome, well Chromium, despite the negative perception about Manifest v3. I truly hope that they work out the kinks quickly enough to resolve some of the concerns. I do get that the new API in some ways is safer for the average user, but there are power users that should be able to do what they want. Unfortunately, ad-blockers go against a business model that is central to Google. Despite the c…

I think MV3 critics are mostly based on a loss aversion bias, rather than a rational opposition.

If those people truly think it's absolutely essential for the extension system to have the pre-MV3 webrequest API, they should either stop using Safari, or ask Apple to support the same as loudly. But they don't. None of the critics I know does.

I think Google sees this as matching Apple for privacy and security - as there has been so many malicious extensions that caused significant harm. Everyone thinks they won't be affected by malware or bad extension, and they think it's personal responsibility but as is often the case, the best way to improve the security is to eliminate the attack vector whenever possible, instead of trying to control / safeguard it. Given the practical downside is virtually non-existent - I have been using uBlock Light since it came out, and there's been no noticable change in adblocking - I think MV3 made the right trade off, and I would be disappointed if Chrome team cave to the emotional and irrational critics.

Re: Chrome, 10 Years Later

#140

Post by abecedarius »

tgvaughan wrote: post #38
xg15 wrote: post #34

> People seem to think it's the browser's job to block ads, but my perspective is that if a business owner wants to make their business repulsive, the only sensible response is to stop using the business. Somehow once technology is involved to abstract what's happening, people start talking about how it's their right to unilaterally renegotiate the transaction. Or for another analogy that will likely make you upset:…

I agree, although it's never "cheating" to block ads on our own devices, unless we accept that it's okay to force people from looking away Clockwork Orange-style. (Even the term "blocking" seems wrong: it's not like the ads are coming down a pipe and my "ad blocker" is bouncing them away.)

You know how e.g. Netflix requires a DRM plugin in your browser, and some standard for that kind of thing got into the WWW standards? Now that AI with camera access is basically competent to tell if you're watching, it'd be natural to require something analogous to confirm you see the ads. "This website requires Telescreen(TM). Please enable it to continue."
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