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AdFlush

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Re: AdFlush

#51

Post by ndriscoll »

Centigonal wrote: post #39
avmich wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't control the browser, user does.

Google controls the APIs that extension writers can use. They are currently using that control to impose limits on what adblocker extensions can do. [1][2] You could download the Chromium source and patch it to change the extensions APIs (or better, just use Firefox), but the majority of users won't do this, and extension writers aren't going to make a version for a patched Chromium browser unless it has significant…

You could always provide an extension that loads itself as a .dll/.so. I don't see much difference in friction between adding an extension through google's website vs. download setup.exe from somewhere. Of course like you say, using less user-hostile software is preferable.

Re: AdFlush

#52

Post by bityard »

Gud wrote: post #27
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The filter based adblockers are at risk though, with Google's new extension thingy that - at least a few years ago, I haven't heard from it since - limited the amount of rules. If there's a non-rule based system that is 98% effective then that would circumvent the arbitrary rule limits that Google set.

They day Google starts blocking ad blocking users is the day the exodus starts from Google services.

I don't know what you mean. They are already blocking adblock users on YouTube and there is certainly no exodus happening there. A few people complain about it and get a handful of upvotes on social media from their friends, but it hasn't even come close to rising to "backlash" status.

Re: AdFlush

#53

Post by bityard »

rvnx wrote: post #15
RamRodification wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only one person has to report an ad for it to go into a crowdsourced list that blocks it for millions of others Is it that easy? Sounds very abusable

Yes, and some list maintainers accept money to add or remove you from the list (officially, or officiously through a secondary maintainer, depending on the list), but otherwise it's no different than getting a domain marked as malware or phishing (with a few paid editors on Phishtank or VirusTotal). It's easier to get a domain added than removed. and for the "corruption"/"rackeetering" part, it's a "win-win" for the…

Which lists do this? Do any of them ship with uBlock Origin?

Re: AdFlush

#54

Post by ko27 »

1oooqooq wrote: post #20
ko27 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Practical solutions" also leave you vulnerable to cat and mouse games against sites that block or bypass adblockers (even with ublock origin). The end game is to have heuristic/AI adblocking which would directly hook into browser rendering so that it becomes undetectable. Obviously leading browsers do not support this for extensions, but forking Chromium wouldn't be so hard.

"doing thing X work and everyone uses it, so bad actors invest time against things X. While thing Y isn't used by anyone so bad actors aren't spending time to work around it, q.e.d. we prove thing Y is better". i don't really buy your argument

The argument is that Y is more robust.

Re: AdFlush

#56

Post by __jonas »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #25
kmlx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, one of my clients was hit by this and i was tasked with solving the situation. i had to create a ticket in a repo explaining why blocking a whole domain instead of a single subdomain was actually pretty bad. they approved it and reverted the change. finding where exactly i had to open the ticket and what to write was a “down the rabbit hole” experience.

Domains are cheap, don't serve content on an ad domain maybe? Sounds like perhaps your task was to ensure a company's ads got through an adblocker?

You could be right but you are definitely jumping to a conclusion here.

The default lists used by uBlock for example include things like error tracking telemetry, Sentry for example.

I can see why people want to block that stuff (privacy) but it’s not exactly an “ad”

Re: AdFlush

#57

Post by kmlx »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #25
kmlx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, one of my clients was hit by this and i was tasked with solving the situation. i had to create a ticket in a repo explaining why blocking a whole domain instead of a single subdomain was actually pretty bad. they approved it and reverted the change. finding where exactly i had to open the ticket and what to write was a “down the rabbit hole” experience.

Domains are cheap, don't serve content on an ad domain maybe? Sounds like perhaps your task was to ensure a company's ads got through an adblocker?

my task was to rectify an issue in one of these crowd sourced lists of ad servers.

they were blocking a whole domain instead of blocking the ad-serving subdomain.

the issue was rectified, the main domain was replaced by the ad-serving subdomain.

Re: AdFlush

#58

Post by GioM »

AlexandrB wrote: post #19
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The filter based adblockers are at risk though, with Google's new extension thingy that - at least a few years ago, I haven't heard from it since - limited the amount of rules. If there's a non-rule based system that is 98% effective then that would circumvent the arbitrary rule limits that Google set.

My understanding is that under manifest v3[1] only a list of rules is allowed. An algorithmic ad blocker wouldn't be able to work at all . [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-l...

This is true. Extensions currently (manifest v2) are able to evaluate net requests dynamically, and are able to modify requests according to a dynamic ruleset that the extension can retrieve from some filter list published on the internet.

Under manifest v3, extensions are not able to dynamically inspect requests, instead, they may only apply rules to net requests. Even worse, there is a limitation of only 5000 rules per extension!! [1]

Even WORSE worse, under Chrome's manifest v3 rules, the extension cannot load any external code! Meaning that blocklists must be packaged with the extension. [2] Now, one might consider the reading of that link to no affect block lists, it's not a "library" and it's not "code" so long as it's just a list of textual rules.... however, google considers the following to be a violation: "Building an interpreter to run complex commands fetched from a remote source, even if those commands are fetched as data". [3]

Sneaky sneaky. An extension update (and hence new app store submission) is required to update filter lists.

In other words, dynamic net requests are banned, and remotely-updated blocklists are banned as well.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

[2] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...

[3] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/program-policies/...

Re: AdFlush

#59

Post by seized »

> We tested AdFlush on a dataset of 10,000 real-world websites, achieving an F1 score of 0.98, thereby outperforming AdGraph (F1 score: 0.93), WebGraph (F1 score: 0.90), and WTAgraph (F1 score: 0.84).

... Has anyone even heard of these ad blockers before?

Re: AdFlush

#60

Post by ysavir »

ndriscoll wrote: post #51
Centigonal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google controls the APIs that extension writers can use. They are currently using that control to impose limits on what adblocker extensions can do. [1][2] You could download the Chromium source and patch it to change the extensions APIs (or better, just use Firefox), but the majority of users won't do this, and extension writers aren't going to make a version for a patched Chromium browser unless it has significant…

You could always provide an extension that loads itself as a .dll/.so. I don't see much difference in friction between adding an extension through google's website vs. download setup.exe from somewhere. Of course like you say, using less user-hostile software is preferable.

That might work for highly tech savvy people, but that's a very small minority of users. Google will still make ad blocking near-impossible for 99.99% of its users.
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