6 ms·

Mozilla and independent researchers publish guidelines for an ad archive API

151 points by BorisYeltsin 8y ago

kyrra 8y ago
To view this request through a different lens, in what ways could this information be used maliciously? The immediate thought that comes to mind for me is a political party during opposition research on their competitors.
- megous 8y ago
  If all the parties have equal access, transparency should help all the parties and only hurt those who do something deviant. It would become an equalizing factor I suppose.
- gambler 8y ago
  >in what ways could this information be used maliciously? Depends on who can get access to it and how. If there are organizations that get privileged access to such API it will give them knowledge that is easily translatable into political power. For example, if you know whom your political opponent targets with ads, but they don't know the same about you, it wold give you a tremendous edge in a campaign. Also, it depends on how good this info is protected against data-mining for undermining someone's privacy. From the article: "The number of impressions that an ad received within specific geographic and demographic criteria (e.g. within a political district, in a certain age range), broken down by paid vs. organic reach." I can see this being used to undermine someone's campaign by showing their ads are reaching "bad" audience. Eventually someone will figure out a way to make bots to "watch" ads and skew these numbers.
- rndgermandude 8y ago
  If you think the opposition will have a field day finding some old ads, then maybe you shouldn't have published those old ads in the first place?
blfr 8y ago
There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.
- garfij 8y ago
  Ah yes, such a simple solution, just get everyone, everywhere to install adblocking software in their browser of choice. Problem Solved!
  - stirfrykitty 8y ago
    Actually, as a sysadmin/coder (devops, but I hate the term), I have a moral imperative to protect people on my network. I use the firewall at work to block ads via a subscription list. My next project is to run Pi-hole on a VM with proper specs to get almost everything. Does wonders for bandwidth and a clean corporate network.
  - blfr 8y ago
    Considering this blog comes from the makers of Firefox, they could bundle adblocking software by default.
    - dao- 8y ago
      Firefox is going to enable tracking protection by default, which is already risky and would currently make many websites with anti-adblocking measures block Firefox by default. Blocking _all_ ads would surely make content providers revolt against Firefox to the point where its viability as a mainstream Web browser would be at risk.
      - stirfrykitty 8y ago
        Which is where something like the Pi-hole comes in handy. Defense in depth is the only way to go with this stuff. Like most IT people, I use multiple browsers. I want everything blocked with every browser, not just Firefox (my default). Let's say the advertisers and websites do start giving grief to end users who are proactively protective. I have an idea that I believe can be done, but I'm at a loss with my current skill level to achieve it. Quick anecdote: when Flash was a thing, I used to symlink .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null to let the Flash cookies "think" they were being written to the HDD, while allowing me to view Flash content without worrying about the LSOs tracking me. I wonder if there is a way, if ads/websites figure out how to block adblockers, that would allow the "loading" of ads, but shunt them into /dev/null (or similar bit bucket) making the website think they have been loaded, but not. A man in the middle, as it were. If I could figure out how to begin this, I would undertake it as a project. Hosting this online and allowing others to pass their traffic through it would be ideal. MitM/proxy. Methinks it will eventually come to this if enough people continue to add blocking tools to their tool set. Any ideas?
stirfrykitty 8y ago
Or, best method is to block all ads, beacons, 3rd party cookies, and trackers. Keep it simple, just block anything that is not actual content. Everyone knows online ads are now the major vector for malware online along with bad apps. Pi-hole, uBlock Origin, Privacy badger, Decentraleyes, Tracking Token Stripper, Neat URL, and No Coin. Set browser to block all HTTP/S referers, disable geo, css links history, fingerprinting, and you are well on your way to never having or seeing an issue. uBlock Origin also kills dead the adblock blockers. Editing to say that it was my children's absolute frustration with waiting for ads in videos that led me to adopt the Pi-hole. Nothing so far has escaped the event horizon of the Pi-hole. It's great for TVs, too. Everything on the network benefits from the Pi-hole. Setting up a VPN will allow you to pass your mobile device through it while away from home. One of my upcoming projects is to get a DO Droplet, set up the same and have less "infrastructure" in my house. Benefits remain. Google Cloud also allow this in the free tier. Why not? There is nothing to lose except annoyance.
- megous 8y ago
  > just block anything that is not actual content At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. Most websites can be modeled quite easily as category->article(->comment) with some additional data. Writing UI for that is quite trivial. It can be done in browser via extensions/userscripts (without a database), or you can fetch the data into a database and view it via an electron app, or cli tools, or whatever.
  - dao- 8y ago
    > At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. This basically exists already. It's called Reader View in Firefox.
    - gcb0 8y ago
      which doesn't even work with github readme.md
borntyping 8y ago
"Just block ads" isn't a useful answer here - this is about being able to see who is advertising to the people who aren't using ad-blockers (which is most users on the internet), and being able to do research into who is paying for advert and who they are targeting. As long as the advertising industry still has a presence on the internet, this information will be important.
- nickelcitymario 8y ago
  Preach. It's not about blocking ads. It's about exposing people who would abuse ads. It's like saying: "The solution to human trafficking is for everyone to stop having sex. If no one has sex, no one will pay for trafficking." As an aside: I would not want to live in an advertising-free world, if only because advertising pays for so much of the shit I would otherwise have to pay for myself. Online ads have entered into crazy town, so it's good that we're now exploring ways of reeling that back in. But I genuinely don't know how enjoyable an ad-free world would be once the revenue generated by those ads also disappears.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Even in traditional print magazines you find abusive and emotionally manipulative advertisements from internationally known corporations, with their recognizable brands proudly announced on the ad. For instance ads that gaslight the reader, or suggest the reader is unattractive and can only rectify that by purchasing the product. Ads that try to induce then exploit low self esteem to sell products are more common but just as morally reprehensible as ads that try to install keyloggers on your computer. You cannot solve the problem of bad ads by exposing the people behind it, when those people have no shame. Even when it's totally transparent who's behind ads, ads are still awful.
    - nickelcitymario 8y ago
      It might not stop those people from doing whatever it is they want to do. But it helps us to be more informed. And when we're more informed, we can write better laws. For example, it used to be perfectly legal to lie in advertising. But we became more informed, and we enacted new laws, and now you can't blatantly lie in an ad without risking being sued for it. You used to be able to say things like "Coca-Cola will make you slim." But since there's no actual benefit to drinking Coke other than quenching your thirst, that's the only benefit they'll ever promote anymore aside from taste. Likewise, greater exposure might lead to laws that, say, require that Facebook only accept ads from companies who have a license to advertise. (I'm not advocating this, I'm just using it as an example.) Or to prove they're American if they want to advertise in America. Or something. Lots of possible ways to approach it. But it starts with being able to see the problem clearly. And we can't do that when the data is hidden, obfuscated, protected, or simply doesn't exist.
btown 8y ago
I've taken a liking to the term "the New York Times rule" - write and act as if your message, statement, or a detailed account of your actions could be published at any time on the front page of the New York Times: https://businessethicsblog.com/2010/12/08/business-ethics-and-the-new-york-times-rule/ https://businessethicsblog.com/2010/12/08/business-ethics-an... . The most concerning political advertising thrives in the shadows: it whispers messages to audiences that are false (easier to counter in the light of day) or prejudiced (and thus should have consequences to whatever groups post them). Radical transparency during campaigns may not stop these types of things, but at the very least it enables a response. That said, it's worth thinking deeply about the arms race that might ensue - when every PAC can see every advertisement every other PAC is investing in, does that make the race into even more of a "whoever has the most money wins" situation even more than the post-Citizens United dystopia we find ourselves in now?
- terryschiavo22 8y ago
  It sounds like you're saying, "Act as if Big Brother is always watching".
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    Or more explicitly: always act in a way in which people who could hurt you would like, even when you don't think anybody is watching.
- aussieguy1234 8y ago
  Not always a good idea. Back in the 70s as the LGBT rights movement was beginning and being gay was still illegal, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names and addresses of those who marched in the first LGBT Mardi Gras, which became a riot after police became violent. Some lost their jobs and were evicted. Many had problems for years after.
kerng 8y ago
Love Mozillas engagement and spearheading these efforts! To be effective having guidelines be established via outside counsel is the right way to drive independent improvements at scale.
nickelcitymario 8y ago
Any other copywriters here think this would make for an amazing swipe file?
aussieguy1234 8y ago
This should be put into law, with real penalties for non compliance
amelius 8y ago
Such an archive could come in handy when training a DL network to recognize ads and block them.

151 points by BorisYeltsin 8y ago

To view this request through a different lens, in what ways could this information be used maliciously? The immediate thought that comes to mind for me is a political party during opposition research on their competitors.

megous 8y ago
If all the parties have equal access, transparency should help all the parties and only hurt those who do something deviant. It would become an equalizing factor I suppose.
gambler 8y ago
>in what ways could this information be used maliciously? Depends on who can get access to it and how. If there are organizations that get privileged access to such API it will give them knowledge that is easily translatable into political power. For example, if you know whom your political opponent targets with ads, but they don't know the same about you, it wold give you a tremendous edge in a campaign. Also, it depends on how good this info is protected against data-mining for undermining someone's privacy. From the article: "The number of impressions that an ad received within specific geographic and demographic criteria (e.g. within a political district, in a certain age range), broken down by paid vs. organic reach." I can see this being used to undermine someone's campaign by showing their ads are reaching "bad" audience. Eventually someone will figure out a way to make bots to "watch" ads and skew these numbers.
rndgermandude 8y ago
If you think the opposition will have a field day finding some old ads, then maybe you shouldn't have published those old ads in the first place?

blfr 8y ago

There is a famous, in Poland, quote from Stefan Kisielewski about communism: "Socialism bravely fights problems unknown to any other system." And this reads exactly like that. Just block ads.

garfij 8y ago
Ah yes, such a simple solution, just get everyone, everywhere to install adblocking software in their browser of choice. Problem Solved!
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  Actually, as a sysadmin/coder (devops, but I hate the term), I have a moral imperative to protect people on my network. I use the firewall at work to block ads via a subscription list. My next project is to run Pi-hole on a VM with proper specs to get almost everything. Does wonders for bandwidth and a clean corporate network.
- blfr 8y ago
  Considering this blog comes from the makers of Firefox, they could bundle adblocking software by default.
  - dao- 8y ago
    Firefox is going to enable tracking protection by default, which is already risky and would currently make many websites with anti-adblocking measures block Firefox by default. Blocking _all_ ads would surely make content providers revolt against Firefox to the point where its viability as a mainstream Web browser would be at risk.
    - stirfrykitty 8y ago
      Which is where something like the Pi-hole comes in handy. Defense in depth is the only way to go with this stuff. Like most IT people, I use multiple browsers. I want everything blocked with every browser, not just Firefox (my default). Let's say the advertisers and websites do start giving grief to end users who are proactively protective. I have an idea that I believe can be done, but I'm at a loss with my current skill level to achieve it. Quick anecdote: when Flash was a thing, I used to symlink .adobe and .macromedia to /dev/null to let the Flash cookies "think" they were being written to the HDD, while allowing me to view Flash content without worrying about the LSOs tracking me. I wonder if there is a way, if ads/websites figure out how to block adblockers, that would allow the "loading" of ads, but shunt them into /dev/null (or similar bit bucket) making the website think they have been loaded, but not. A man in the middle, as it were. If I could figure out how to begin this, I would undertake it as a project. Hosting this online and allowing others to pass their traffic through it would be ideal. MitM/proxy. Methinks it will eventually come to this if enough people continue to add blocking tools to their tool set. Any ideas?

stirfrykitty 8y ago

Or, best method is to block all ads, beacons, 3rd party cookies, and trackers. Keep it simple, just block anything that is not actual content. Everyone knows online ads are now the major vector for malware online along with bad apps. Pi-hole, uBlock Origin, Privacy badger, Decentraleyes, Tracking Token Stripper, Neat URL, and No Coin. Set browser to block all HTTP/S referers, disable geo, css links history, fingerprinting, and you are well on your way to never having or seeing an issue. uBlock Origin also kills dead the adblock blockers. Editing to say that it was my children's absolute frustration with waiting for ads in videos that led me to adopt the Pi-hole. Nothing so far has escaped the event horizon of the Pi-hole. It's great for TVs, too. Everything on the network benefits from the Pi-hole. Setting up a VPN will allow you to pass your mobile device through it while away from home. One of my upcoming projects is to get a DO Droplet, set up the same and have less "infrastructure" in my house. Benefits remain. Google Cloud also allow this in the free tier. Why not? There is nothing to lose except annoyance.

megous 8y ago
> just block anything that is not actual content At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. Most websites can be modeled quite easily as category->article(->comment) with some additional data. Writing UI for that is quite trivial. It can be done in browser via extensions/userscripts (without a database), or you can fetch the data into a database and view it via an electron app, or cli tools, or whatever.
- dao- 8y ago
  > At this point the reverse approach (whitelist) becomes easier. Just pluck out the content, ignore the rest, and write your own simple UI. This basically exists already. It's called Reader View in Firefox.
  - gcb0 8y ago
    which doesn't even work with github readme.md

borntyping 8y ago

"Just block ads" isn't a useful answer here - this is about being able to see who is advertising to the people who aren't using ad-blockers (which is most users on the internet), and being able to do research into who is paying for advert and who they are targeting. As long as the advertising industry still has a presence on the internet, this information will be important.

nickelcitymario 8y ago
Preach. It's not about blocking ads. It's about exposing people who would abuse ads. It's like saying: "The solution to human trafficking is for everyone to stop having sex. If no one has sex, no one will pay for trafficking." As an aside: I would not want to live in an advertising-free world, if only because advertising pays for so much of the shit I would otherwise have to pay for myself. Online ads have entered into crazy town, so it's good that we're now exploring ways of reeling that back in. But I genuinely don't know how enjoyable an ad-free world would be once the revenue generated by those ads also disappears.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Even in traditional print magazines you find abusive and emotionally manipulative advertisements from internationally known corporations, with their recognizable brands proudly announced on the ad. For instance ads that gaslight the reader, or suggest the reader is unattractive and can only rectify that by purchasing the product. Ads that try to induce then exploit low self esteem to sell products are more common but just as morally reprehensible as ads that try to install keyloggers on your computer. You cannot solve the problem of bad ads by exposing the people behind it, when those people have no shame. Even when it's totally transparent who's behind ads, ads are still awful.
  - nickelcitymario 8y ago
    It might not stop those people from doing whatever it is they want to do. But it helps us to be more informed. And when we're more informed, we can write better laws. For example, it used to be perfectly legal to lie in advertising. But we became more informed, and we enacted new laws, and now you can't blatantly lie in an ad without risking being sued for it. You used to be able to say things like "Coca-Cola will make you slim." But since there's no actual benefit to drinking Coke other than quenching your thirst, that's the only benefit they'll ever promote anymore aside from taste. Likewise, greater exposure might lead to laws that, say, require that Facebook only accept ads from companies who have a license to advertise. (I'm not advocating this, I'm just using it as an example.) Or to prove they're American if they want to advertise in America. Or something. Lots of possible ways to approach it. But it starts with being able to see the problem clearly. And we can't do that when the data is hidden, obfuscated, protected, or simply doesn't exist.

btown 8y ago

I've taken a liking to the term "the New York Times rule" - write and act as if your message, statement, or a detailed account of your actions could be published at any time on the front page of the New York Times: https://businessethicsblog.com/2010/12/08/business-ethics-and-the-new-york-times-rule/ https://businessethicsblog.com/2010/12/08/business-ethics-an... . The most concerning political advertising thrives in the shadows: it whispers messages to audiences that are false (easier to counter in the light of day) or prejudiced (and thus should have consequences to whatever groups post them). Radical transparency during campaigns may not stop these types of things, but at the very least it enables a response. That said, it's worth thinking deeply about the arms race that might ensue - when every PAC can see every advertisement every other PAC is investing in, does that make the race into even more of a "whoever has the most money wins" situation even more than the post-Citizens United dystopia we find ourselves in now?

terryschiavo22 8y ago
It sounds like you're saying, "Act as if Big Brother is always watching".
- pessimizer 8y ago
  Or more explicitly: always act in a way in which people who could hurt you would like, even when you don't think anybody is watching.
aussieguy1234 8y ago
Not always a good idea. Back in the 70s as the LGBT rights movement was beginning and being gay was still illegal, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names and addresses of those who marched in the first LGBT Mardi Gras, which became a riot after police became violent. Some lost their jobs and were evicted. Many had problems for years after.

kerng 8y ago

Love Mozillas engagement and spearheading these efforts! To be effective having guidelines be established via outside counsel is the right way to drive independent improvements at scale.

nickelcitymario 8y ago

Any other copywriters here think this would make for an amazing swipe file?

aussieguy1234 8y ago

This should be put into law, with real penalties for non compliance

amelius 8y ago

Such an archive could come in handy when training a DL network to recognize ads and block them.