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Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

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Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#31
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AR?

The grandparent likely means Augmented Reality; they may be imagining a strange world where you wear glasses that filter ads out of your vision, and yet those ads are on a computer screen you view rather than right there in the headset being projected onto your eyes.

Shut up and take my money

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#32
It isn't just "make ad-blocking (near) impossible" as the current title of the submission suggests. It is:

Make browsing the internet possible only on Chrome, Safari or Edge (with no modifications or extensions). No competition allowed in browsers.

Make browsing the internet possible only on macOS, Windows, Android or iOS (no custom Android distributions, definitely no LineageOS or GrapheneOS or whatever). No competition allowed in Operating Systems, especially no open source operating systems.

Make crawling the internet possible only to Google. No private crawling and no competing search engines.

Let me know if I've missed anything...

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#33
Why would anybody expect them to do anything different. They are an ad company. Their revenue comes from selling your attention and profile.

People seem to have some severe cognitive dissonance when it comes to commercial web sites. They are crucified for selling ads and tracking then when they have the temerity to try and charge for their work people will start posting archive.is links to route around their paywalls.

If you don't like advertising then don't visit advertising funded sites or use their "free" tools. If you don't like paywalls then hit the back button and spend your attention elsewhere.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#35

A good and measured article marred only by a silly, clickbait title. Unless there is a plan to allow attesters that are independent bodies then this is absolutely a threat to the open internet, or what's left of it. The biggest dead canary for me is the lack of calling this out explicitly by Google or Apple. We're left to assume that Google is hand-wavingly saying "don't worry we can take care of that" when the priva…

even assuming unbiased and objective attesters, the issue lies with the "baseline criteria" of attestation and who defines them.

There are two risks here (examples follow):

1. hostile requirements - "the agent won't feature adblockers", or "scraping without explicit website permission must be forbidden"

2. prohibitive requirements - "the agent implements protocols X, Y and Z and adheres to standards A, B and C" - all of these may be reasonable things, but en masse they may be too much work to carry by anyone but a reasonably big vendor

Additionally these criteria must be verifiable, so user can't basically modify the agent, because then the attestation is practically void.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#36
post #16

It may not have the desired effect they seek. I already feel my reluctance growing towards opening my browser when it is not absolutely necessary. Are they sure that even more user hostility is what the modern internet misses?....

Let’s go full circle and go back to a new gopher based on content APIs.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#37
post #4
post #2

Waving that don't be evil flag proudly eh team.

I hate ads as much as anyone but providing a free service that runs ads and shares part of that income with content creators is hardly particularly evil.

You make it sound like an old fashioned newspaper.

But in reality it's more like the newspaper publisher would then follow you around all day wherever you go and interrupt you every time you try to have a moment's thought or talk to your children, so they could perhaps interest you in this product they're advertising. Not only would they passively follow you around but instead direct you to places where you find the most outragous people you can think of. When you're all worked up they could put you in touch with the higest bidding political operative that promises to ease all your pains.

I mean sure, maybe the publisher is not evil but I don't know what to call them.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#39
post #8

It will be hard to beat any AR level ad filtering. Ultimately AI will make ad avoidance easier rather than harder.

Their AI agents will be stronger than yours. They'll watch you 24/7 and make sure you're not doing that – verify there are no non-approved gadgets in front of your eyes; verify that there are no visible analog-gap-defeating tools anywhere in your physical proximity. Nothing will escape the machine's notice: no detail too small or subtle for a bored yottaflop God with nothing in the world to do but watch you.

You'll be free to opt out, though most of the internet will be unusable without Environment Integrity.

Re: Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

#40
post #4
post #2

Waving that don't be evil flag proudly eh team.

I hate ads as much as anyone but providing a free service that runs ads and shares part of that income with content creators is hardly particularly evil.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page's original search engine paper fell short of calling it evil. But they did use phrases like "incentive to provide poor quality search results", "particularly insidious" and "inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers".
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