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Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

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Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#21

Post by pmiller2 »

news_to_me wrote: post #14
bagacrap wrote: post #11

Doesn't this blocker still require you to load and render the ads so they can apply their vision techniques to them? You won't get any performance win and you'd still see empty popovers or blank space. I don't see how detecting that something is an ad is enough on its own to create an effective ad blocking solution. The part about defeating known anti-ad blockers seems rather unfair. If this technique did gain popula…

It sounds like part of their premise is that won't happen because of legal reasons - to some extent, ads have to be identifiable.

It already happens. Misleading ads are one of the big reasons I use an adblocker.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#22

Post by nickbail3y »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #19
nickbail3y wrote: post #15

According to the article, current adblockers like Ublock Origin aren't searching for keywords in the page elements for ads, they're just using human maintained lookup lists? That's very surprising. I would have thought that would be the first avenue of attack for adblockers. Also, who wants to help me retrofit this thing to actually block ads?

> they're just using human maintained lookup lists? That's correct. The lists are maintained here: https://forums.lanik.us

Very interesting, thank you.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#23

Post by theandrewbailey »

news_to_me wrote: post #13
throwaway13337 wrote: post #2

What would a post-ad-supported web looks like? Only selling user data without a way to use it to target ads? Consumer software that isn't free? Sock puppet marketing run rampant? It would sure be a different world.

I'm hoping it would be something based on micropayments, maybe through a service like flattr. That would keep content accessible (for a small, affordable fee) and completely block out the bad actors (i.e. advertisers).

I've been hearing lots of good things about Patreon, especially from Youtube personalities. I haven't heard of Flattr being used much recently.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#24

Post by abiox »

devy wrote: post #4

> Another technique used to hide the ad blockers' activities is even more impressive. They are able to "create two copies of the page, one which the user sees (and to which ad-blocking will be applied) and one which the publisher code interacts with, and to ensure that information propagates between these copies in one direction but not the other." So this ultimate ad-blocker would potentially consume twice as much r…

i'd wager that it would take a substantial refactor of layout and rendering code to avoid significantly increased resource usage while also preventing sketchy ad code from being able to detect that it's being blocked.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#25

Post by randomwalker »

ktta wrote: post #20
randomwalker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coauthor of the paper here. No --- this is not one of the three techniques that we implemented. It was a hypothetical suggestion for future work. Unfortunate that the article didn't make that clear. Here is the paper http://randomwalker.info/publications/ad-blocking-framework-... Here is our blog post about it: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/04/14/the-future-of-ad-bl...

Looks like you've accidentally repasted the paper URL for the blog post

Oops! Thanks, fixed.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#26

Post by nkrisc »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #2

What would a post-ad-supported web looks like? Only selling user data without a way to use it to target ads? Consumer software that isn't free? Sock puppet marketing run rampant? It would sure be a different world.

I imagine part of it might look like some sites already look today. Ads that are not served through third-party ad networks, but are created and displayed by the owners of the site based on direct relationships with advertisers and sponsors.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#27

Post by RUG3Y »

devy wrote: post #4

> Another technique used to hide the ad blockers' activities is even more impressive. They are able to "create two copies of the page, one which the user sees (and to which ad-blocking will be applied) and one which the publisher code interacts with, and to ensure that information propagates between these copies in one direction but not the other." So this ultimate ad-blocker would potentially consume twice as much r…

Maybe. We already have front-end libraries that are maintaining a "virtual dom".

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#28

Post by dpflan »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #2

What would a post-ad-supported web looks like? Only selling user data without a way to use it to target ads? Consumer software that isn't free? Sock puppet marketing run rampant? It would sure be a different world.

HTTP 402's and cryptocurrencies (fractional payments for access)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857236

I remember talking to a friend who was trying out 21co's "bitcoin" computer and that 402+cryptocurrency payment seemed like something to evolve from that project. It seems to have changed focus a bit since that discussion.

https://21.co/

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#29

Post by IIIIIIIIIIII »

This is not the end of the arms race.

At some point we will have AI designing and AI delivering ads, and while we may have AI designed to prevent us from having to watch ads we don't want we will also have AI that watches everything, gathering and filtering information that is too much for us to handle but tuned to our needs since it's "our AI". Then the race will be that one AI wants to trick the consumer AI into giving their information more weight and attention.

So instead of the race humans against humans we'll have a race humans => AI ("sellers" of anything, from goods to news) => AI (consumers) => human (us).

It's going to be a lot more complex: Right now all that people on both sides have to know is human psychology. In that future they'll have to understand the potentially far more varied world of possible AIs - and if that isn't enough the complex interactions between them and also between the AIs and the humans.

Are we creating the diversity and complexity that we remove from the biosphere (the ongoing mass extinction and/or reduction of many species) anew but in a completely different space? In addition to technical systems we are also getting much better (and better faster!) in controlling biological systems, creating our own ideas. At least some programmers of the future will write their code in DNA - or possibly even something more complex, something that can encode completely new proteins that the current code can't represent. And then there's combining biology and technology... an explosion of complexity and diversity?

I studied CS more than two decades ago. I kept up to date and continue to do the odd course in my field, but what I consider an amazing experience (for an IT guy) was when I spent the last few years taking hundreds of hours of courses in biology and medicine. Looking for new ideas? Take an introduction to biology and genetics course instead of learning an only very mildly different programming language, for example (free): https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-...

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