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Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

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Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#431

Post by connicpu »

firecall wrote: post #149
quitit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible how fast websites load with this combination. I recall reading that despite the internet being faster, actual website performance has never really improved meaningfully. Whatever speed gains we've achieved have simply been eaten by larger and more complex tracking scripts. Google themselves are a significant contributor to this problem, for many websites, Google's scripts are the core source of slowne…

Since ADSL1 the web has felt much the same. Of course there was flash to deal with rhen too. Now back when we had 56K Modems was when it really was unusable! I don't how sites think i want to read an article and warxh a totally unrelated video at the same time. I'm really starting to miss old style magazines lately. Click bait and fake headlines about the next iphone have ruinwd the web.

The jump up to 5mbps down was the last time I felt like upgrading my internet made the web a noticeably better experience, it was incredible to be able to watch videos at an okay quality without pausing for buffering. Everything else has been only incremental improvements that have been eaten up by increasing inefficiency, and my only gains have been higher resolution video streams and faster video game downloads (also offset by massively larger video games...)

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#432

Post by josephcsible »

hedora wrote: post #408
josephcsible wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you going to do once Google makes TEE-based bootloader unlock checking a mandatory part of SafetyNet? Right now, I'm in the same camp as you, and I don't have a good answer to that myself.

I'll likely just not use banking software that requires safetynet. If that means I need to switch banks, that's OK.

It's a lot more than just banking apps. It's also McDonald's, Netflix, Snapchat, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, etc. Will you just stop using all of them too?

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#433

Post by mullen »

neonsunset wrote: post #293
Larrikin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads. The modern web is so much worse than the pop up ads of the old web.

Just get Adguard it's really good.

The best part about Adguard is that there is nothing to really get. You just start using the DNS servers and it just works. Some stuff slips through here and there but not for long as the DNS servers catch up on blocking new Ad Serving servers.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#434

Post by aembleton »

jsmith99 wrote: post #22
buro9 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise for NextDNS as Androids Private DNS. This combination of Firefox+uBlock and NextDNS+Private DNS makes Android a pleasurable experience.

DNS level filtering is the only choice for system level filtering but is less flexible and harder to manually override false positives than application level filtering like ublock. If your browser supports adblock (eg on Android use Firefox or Kiwi) then disable DNS filtering for the browser (ie override the system level filtering) by using browser privacy settings to choose an unfiltered DoH provider like Cloudflare…

> If your browser supports adblock then disable DNS filtering for the browser

Why would I want to disable DNS filtering? What advantage does that give?

UBo is great but does use a small amount of CPU whereas DNS filtering won't use any on my phone - its all on the DNS server. I'd rather filter out as much as possible with DNS filtering and then clean it up with UBo cosmetic filtering and more precise blocking.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#435

Post by bastardoperator »

xhrpost wrote: post #381
mdavis6890 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will do everything that's in my power" Will you pay money for the content you consume?

Sadly, even paying for content will often keep ads around. NYTimes and WSJ come to mind.

Youtube premium is ad free.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#436

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

exitheone wrote: post #341
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm torn between wanting to pay for a useful service and not wanting to reward YouTube for intentionally degrading their free service.

I don't understand this stance. They intentionally degrade the service to make it profitable. Video serving is incredibly expensive and YouTube is no charity. They have a premium tier at a very competitive price so what's the issue?

That's an interesting question. I had been under the impression that they were profitable even before they started doing that, but it would change my calculus if that were true.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#437

Post by enlightens »

jrm4 wrote: post #243
Terretta wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The experience is so awful when I browse on my iPad, instead of my Android phone with Firefox+UBlock. I really don't understand how most people can stand to browse with all the ads. Most people don’t. Most people who use anything for iOS tend to use things like: - 1Blocker - super full featured, including custom script and css rules. business model is paid software, not ‘acceptable ads’ paying them for placement or…

Whoa. Customized adblocking DNS servers? This is definitely striking me as one of those "why didn't I think of that" and "why don't we already have a lot of this?" Any ideas? Seems like you could go wild with this and do something like "Tor"ify, or "torrentify" or dare I say "blockchain" it? Someone can probably school me on why this is harder than it sounds.

I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS really made this possible. I recently started using NextDNS and it simply gives you a custom URL to drop in your DNS configs. If we were just doing IP address DNS server lookup you'd have some severe limitations on matching up customers to servers.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#438

Post by hk__2 »

IX-103 wrote: post #415
midasuni wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t spread the ad company’s lies. There is no need for pop ups under the gdpr. If you are handling personal information, giving cookies etc which aren’t required (E.g to sign in), then ask at the point of signing in/up. Otherwise you don’t need to set cookies, you might want to, to track and monetise your visitors, but that’s different.

How are you supposed to provide a consistent appearance for A/B testing changes without being able to store which group a user is assigned to? How are you supposed to count unique users that visit your site? How are you supposed to figure out why most users bounce? These are legitimate questions a publisher may want to know to improve their site, but are not allowed under GDPR without a specific notice and opt-out. T…

> How are you supposed to provide a consistent appearance for A/B testing changes without being able to store which group a user is assigned to?

Those are legitimate cookies for which you don’t need to ask an authorization.

> How are you supposed to count unique users that visit your site?

https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-cookies#how-can-p...

> These are legitimate questions a publisher may want to know to improve their site, but are not allowed under GDPR without a specific notice and opt-out.

Why would the publisher’s questions be legitimate and the user’s right not to be tracked no? You can still answer those questions but you need to ask for permission. A physical store owner has also a lot of questions but they’re not allowed to follow you everywhere in the store and in the street.

> Heck, when GDPR was first proposed most publishers assumed advertising would be allowed under "essential" business uses since they can't provide content if they don't get paid.

That’s a really weird reasoning. Should drug dealers be exempted from police controls because their activity is essential for their income and so for their life? Earning money is necessary, but there are multiple ways to do so.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#439

Post by mxkopy »

cortesoft wrote: post #418
mxkopy wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day in the middle of reading an article a green border popped up around the entire page, blocking the beginning and ending of most sentences. At the bottom of the page was an advertisement for a Sonic burger. I felt assaulted. There is no reasonable justification or purpose for this that takes into account basic human empathy. Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product…

I don’t think pointing out useless and intrusive advertising is the same as saying there should be no advertising at all. We can even agree that ALL current advertising is awful and should be abolished, but agree some form of promoting your product should be available.

Seems like you can't read.

> Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose.

I have no problem with promoting a product, as long as it takes into account basic human empathy. But I guess if your bank account is directly correlated with product sales, you kind of forget about that.

Re: Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers

#440

Post by water-your-self »

onion2k wrote: post #347
alexb_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of users have no idea what any of this is.

Developer wages would crash through the floor and all the way down to the centre of the Earth if ad blockers really took off without users also accepting micropayments or subscriptions for web services at the same time. Maybe we should be a little bit glad that the main thing keeping massive amounts of money in tech is accepted by users. The key thing that most people in tech don't appear to grok very easily is that…

Maybe we shouldnt optimize for developer salaries blindly. Surely that human effort could be better directed.
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