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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

#291

Post by devonkim »

bdhess wrote: post #223
just2n wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr, I wouldn't trust them in this capacity. How many of us would hold steady in our own ethics and morals if someone routinely offered something like a $2,500,000 payday and we had no risk at all of being fired or jailed?

> Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr Can you provide a source for this? Don't know much about the topic but I've always assumed that, in general, Congressmembers who are wealthy were already wealthy before they were elected to Congress.

If you look at the rate of returns on their investments, they would outpace a lot of Wall Street and definitely most index funds.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/mutfund/congr...

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

#292

Post by juiyout »

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 might be possible that for an ad-blocking system that,

for all visitors to a specific page, vision analysis only has to be applied once on that specific page and share that post-analytic knowledge publicly. Then all future visitors would benefit from that previous analysis knowledge and block the ad without yet another vision analysis on the same specific page.

to scope with pages changing widly, the system can assign 5% of the visitors to each specific page to perform new vision analysis and update the findings.

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

#293

Post by mark_l_watson »

Great article, as much for the tension between people wanting free content and ad free content, and the practical issue of publishers 'keeping the lights on.'

I subscribe to Blendle (currently I have another tab open to a Wall Street Journal article by Garry Kasparov about issues with artificial intelligence - I paid Blendle $0.49 from the funds in my account wallet to read this, so Gary and the WSJ get paid). Many Blendle articles I read are only $0.09 or $0.15 - this was an especially expensive one.

I think the 'war' over ad blocking might have a beneficial effect in moving content providers to easy to use micro payment systems.

Most people I know think that I am crazy for spending small amounts of money to read stuff, but there are costs in life like supporting things we enjoy and charities (I really like Google's One a Day charity clearing house - easy to take 30 seconds and give a dollar or two to some worthwhile cause). The amount many people spend on coffee each day is more than paying for content and donating to One a Day.

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

#294

Post by johncolanduoni »

oh_sigh wrote: post #247
brianwawok wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a musician clearly put that on the package of a CD, why not? I dont have a constitutional right to buy an artist's CD.

If a musician clearly puts on the package of a CD that black people cannot listen to it, is that okay?

No, just like a restaurant can refuse service for not wearing a suit jacket but not because of race. It's not even a slippery slope.

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

#295

Post by Hoasi »

shouldbworking wrote: post #203
downandout wrote: post #36

The article puts a significant emphasis on the idea that bulletproof ad-blocking technology, assuming that's what this turns out to be in practice, will work long-term becuase of legal restrictions imposed by the FTC. If Google, Facebook, or other multi-billion dollar entities detect an existential threat arising from this or any other technology, rest assured that the laws will change as quickly as is necessary to k…

I unfortunately agree with you 100%. Theres too much money tied up in advertising for it to ever go away. Google is the greatest conglomeration of Nobel worthy scientists and engineers in the last century. And their entire organization is built on advertising. After creating the best search engine and email system, they created the best web browser and most popular operating system in the world. All of this for the s…

There is always a way to avoid ads if you want to. There always will be ways to counteract ad tech, in spite of Google's intelligence. If this makes advertising better in the process, that's very good. As much as people hate ads, they usually welcome the less than 0.01% good ads.

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

#296

Post by mark_l_watson »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #269
shouldbworking wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unfortunately agree with you 100%. Theres too much money tied up in advertising for it to ever go away. Google is the greatest conglomeration of Nobel worthy scientists and engineers in the last century. And their entire organization is built on advertising. After creating the best search engine and email system, they created the best web browser and most popular operating system in the world. All of this for the s…

"Nobel worthy scientists and engineers"? You'd never hire one to make you a native ad! Native ads, integrated or disguised as creative content, are impossible to block. Creative professionals, like film directors, visual artists, writers and even ad executives are the main innovators of native advertising. I would argue native advertising is where most of the relevant innovation in ads occurs. Not at Google. Creative…

While I largely agree with you, I disagree on things like Google Play Music and Movies (includes TV). Their sales platform for other people's content works well. My wife and I used to use Spotify, a good service, but find a $15 / month family plan for YouTube Red (including Play Music) to be a good service and a good deal.

Off topic, but even though I have spent much of the last 30 years working on AI and machine learning, I did work for Disney and Nintendo for a while in the 1990s, and I have a keen amateur's interest in the business side of content production. I never would have predicted the amount of money Amazon, Hulu, Netflicks, and HBO would invest in producing their own content. Interesting that Google does not do the same thing. When I worked at Google as a contractor I enjoyed the visitor talks, and Spike Jone's talk about directing movies and the way he does it was very well received by a large crowd.

I am very glad that there are several large companies competing and not just one or two.

EDIT: I am all for decentralization and small groups/companies, but sadly we live in a world of larger corporations.

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

#297

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

wnevets wrote: post #136
drumttocs8 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see it now... "Advertisements are a form of free speech. Corporations are people too."

This was the argument telemarketers used, it was their right to call you and try to sell you crap you don't need!

That sounds annoyingly plausible; how did that claim get overturned?

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

shinypotatoe wrote: post #287
ColanR wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you use something like w3m or lynx? (if not, I would love to hear about it) The problem is that text-based browsers of that ilk are not user-friendly to the general population. If you have the knowledge to implement that kind of not-requesting of ads, I bet one of the fringe/experimental browsers (I'm thinking of Vivaldi) would be a great place to implement what you're talking about.

I use umatrix for not loading ads and for tracking protection. It is a tool to define from which domains a certain website may fetch resources. It is a bit less convenient than a adblocker, because for every new site you have to configure it, but I think it is great. It's really eye opening how many things some websites load that they do not actually need to show the content I am interested in.

[deleted]

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

#300

Post by kalleboo »

iamben wrote: post #45

At risk of being very unpopular, am I the only person that doesn't mind ads? I mean some are pretty intrusive, but largely I'm happy to make the trade off. I'll look at (and maybe click on) your ad, if it means you have the cash to bring me what I want to look at. It's fantastic to think we live in a world where the web can support itself without ads, but it's not really practical, is it? Some stuff I'd support - but…

I don't mind ads typically. I still haven't bothered to figure out how to block ads on YouTube. I started out tailoring Ghostery to just block trackers but not ads. But the clickbait ads from taboola and friends were just so terrible (grossly misleading clickbait, half-naked women, tryptophobia) that now I don't feel bad about just blocking everything.
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