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> unblockable ads delivered through first party and using obfuscated techniques like canvas or webassembly When I said basically the same thing 4 years ago[1],
by pdkl95 7y ago
> unblockable ads delivered through first party and using obfuscated techniques like canvas or webassembly
When I said basically the same thing 4 years ago[1], most people seemed to think it wasn't a serious concern or could be easily bypassed. However, after observing how certain types of businesses use the World Wide Web over the past 3 decades, it's obvious what they want: to send an opaque binary blob to the user that nobody can investigate or modify, that gives them full control over what the user sees and is allowed to do. Just like TV.
The only safe response to this is to stop allowing documents (or docs with 3270-styole forms) to embed software in a Turing complete language. Add functionality that is used declaritively, or the answer to "should this be blocked" is undecidable. Give them the ability to run a Turing complete language that renders to a canvas, and adblocking becomes a hard image recognition problem (or requires solving the Halting Problem).
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10211050
- pingyong 7y agoI'm not saying no one will try to do this, but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual video content for the duration of the ad for several years now. They chose not to do it. Potentially the lost revenue from people not using YouTube as much anymore / migrating to a different platform would be bigger here than the increase in ad traffic. People who don't want to see ads (i.e. a large part of adblock users) are also more likely to engage in toxic (to advertisers and YouTube) behavior, such as intentionally clicking on ads but never buying anything (or even writing scripts to do that), or intentionally avoiding the advertised product, etc.
- JoeSamoa 7y agoHonestly I wish people cared this much. Most people just roll over and deal with the ad or pay for premium so they don't have to see ads.
- nirvdrum 7y agoIs paying to remove the ads a big deal? Presumably the content creator wants to earn something for putting the effort into creating something. Ads are one way to support content creation. Directly paying is another. Many advocates to remove ads say they want a direct pay model.
- galangalalgol 7y agoI agree, as long as no ads means really no ads I think premium is something they are doing correctly. If the take downs, demonitizing, and political deplatforming weren't an issue they would be all set. Also, the horrible compression. I takes the same data to binge wath a series on Netflix as to watch a few short computer security or safe firearm maintenance videos, er well it did until those videos all disappeared.
- kgwxd 7y agoIt's fine, until they put ads back in, which has happened everywhere I can think of. I'm counting self-promoting ads like Netflix and HBO do.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThen the solution is to stop consuming things with unacceptable levels of advertisements. Unfortunately, given what the situation is on television channels, movies, and social media these days, that level is extremely high for most people.
- pmoriarty 7y agoThe thing is, that solution will only work if enough people do it, and apparently as it stands not very many people are willing to give up their favorite content to avoid ads.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI can only control what I do, and if I must give up consuming media that will give me a temporary high (but it won't since I'll be annoyed by the ads), then so be it.
- ahartmetz 7y agoPossibly it's also self-preservation by the people involved. I imagine that even the YouTube developers and project managers hate watching ads. A solution only for them would probably look bad to the outside.
- e_proxus 7y agoI assume they would just all have free Premium accounts if they're working at Google.
- snug 7y agonope source: ex-googler
- troydavis 7y ago> I imagine that even the YouTube developers and project managers hate watching ads. In most countries, any YouTube user can pay a subscription fee to disable ads. It's called YouTube Premium: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en This has existed since 2015, so presumably Google employees have it on their personal accounts.
- Kaiyou 7y agoIsn't that basically Youtube Red?
- adreamingsoul 7y agohttps://aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/ https://aws.amazon.com/mediatailor/
- plopz 7y agoTwitch does do this with its SureStream ads and its much worse for a livestream than a video since with a video you can resume where you left off after the ad finished whereas for a livestream you just lose what was happening during the ad. Twitch also removed the ad-free benefit from twitch prime.
- pas 7y agowow. that's absurd. I mean so full circle and more compared to last century TV.
- OscarTheGrinch 7y agoSuch poor behavior creates gaps in the canopy, providing sunlight for other services to grow. If you don't like how a service is treating you, switch to a better one and make the case to your peers why they should do likewise. A healthy internet is ultimately up to us to build and maintain.
- plopz 7y agoThis is actually interesting right now because Microsoft, Google and Facebook all seem to be trying to get into streaming. I would definitely like to see more competition in this space so that Twitch doesn't get complacent.
- fiddlerwoaroof 7y agoThe issue is that an alternate service can only grow in the gaps if it has a viable business model: so far, monetizing internet services for the general public without advertising and tracking is a mostly-unsolved problem, despite interesting efforts like Brave.
- jlarocco 7y ago> monetizing internet services for the general public without advertising and tracking is a mostly-unsolved problem I feel like that's not a real problem. Or, maybe only a problem for services that care more about having a ton of users than being profitable and sustainable. There are quite a few services (SmugMug, Vimeo, NetFlix, etc.) that charge money, don't have advertisements, and are doing just fine. It's weird that so many web companies decide to go the sleazy advertisement/tracking/malware route rather than just charge money for the services they provide.
- Justsignedup 7y agoThis. This is the solution. AdNausium will destroy the ad market. Adblocking users will engage in toxic behaviors if you force them to. The problem is that sites trying some insane techniques is a bad arms race. Sites like the wallsteet journal made a adblock-wall, see ads or don't use the site. That's fine. They can do that. And they lost lots of traffic. But they can decide if they like that. Websites want a have-your-cake-and-eat-it option -- forcibly show ads, no opt out.
- edoceo 7y agoWhere is the source for the traffic loss claim? Their profile on Alexa looks healthy and their rank has improved over time
- rndgermandude 7y agoWant to take a guess on where Alexa gets its data from that it then uses to estimate traffic and ranks?
- hombre_fatal 7y agoFrom a sampling of users: https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-us/articles/200449744-How-are-Alexa-s-traffic-rankings-determined- https://support.alexa.com/hc/en-us/articles/200449744-How-ar... Why ask a vague winky-face question when you can make your assertion instead? Now I have to wait for you to respond just for you to clarify what you were trying to say.
- hk__2 7y agoThis link is very vague: they only talk about a “global data panel” without saying how it’s constructed. You can’t build a representative sample if you don’t have an idea of what the global traffic might be like. See also https://blog.alexa.com/alexa-panel-increase/ https://blog.alexa.com/alexa-panel-increase/: > our traffic estimates are based on data from our global panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of many different browser extensions. However, we don’t just rely on browser extensions. We also gather much of our traffic data from direct sources, including sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script and certify their metrics. It is this unique combination of data from our global panel, plus data from directly measured sources, filtered through our advanced statistical models that allow us to provide you with robust and comprehensive metrics.
- wazoox 7y agoI remember the first software I tried that automatically removed ads while recording a video stream. It was back in the previous century and then required an SGI workstation, but I suppose the same sort of ad-detection tech could be included into youtube-dl in about 5 minutes....
- BlueTemplar 7y agoI think that TiVo does that too?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoWith something like YouTube of course the "content" is often ads too, deterring people could kill that part of the ad ecosystem.
- swiley 7y agoYou could make an argument that that’s no longer the web, it just happens to run in a browser.
- parliament32 7y agoI've been thinking about this too: it's odd that YouTube doesn't try harder to stop ad blocking. Maybe the low amount of users with adblockers just make it not worth it?
- ew6082 7y agoIt's far more likely that the data obtained about what videos you watch is far more valuable than the cash value of the ads you're not being served. Youtube videos are a very good early interest indicator for advertising.
- h5erahrgera 7y agoI think this is an unstable equilibrium. YouTube is incentivized to continually recalculate this equation or find new approaches that maximize the number of ad-blocking users forced to give up the ad-blocker without leaving the website. Potentially the new terms of service allow them to use your other Google accounts as leverage to prevent users from using a malicious "Ad-Nauseam" style retaliation.
- nickysielicki 7y ago> but YouTube had the technical option of splicing ads directly into the video stream and simply not sending the actual video content for the duration of the ad for several years now I don't think that's true, video encoding is expensive. This is not trivial to do without investment in hardware. Google doesn't just sell ads, they sell targeted ads. Yes, YouTube currently does some processing on every video uploaded. But they only do that once.
- efreak 7y agoIt's trivial to send a different stream, though, and stop sending content for the primary stream for the duration. I believe a comment elsewhere says Twitch is doing this with HLS
- irrational 7y agoI'm far from an expert, but isn't this what WebAssembly gives them? My understanding is that webassembly is a binary file that is an opaque binary. Why not have webassembly build out the entire page dynamically?
- folkrav 7y agoWASM doesn't have DOM access (yet).
- irrational 7y agoThat is interesting. I didn't realize WASM was designed to be so constrained.
- EvanAnderson 7y agoWASM doesn't need DOM access. You can just implement a browser in WASM and target canvas. I'm really surprised somebody hasn't done this already and marketed it as an unblockable ad delivery platform.
- Faark 7y agoHow many accessibility laws does this violate? Does it work with a screen reader?
- EvanAnderson 7y agoYou can be certain that, when this does happen, these considerations will be dealt with. I feel very strongly that this is going to happen. The chance to execute arbitrary code on clients will be too alluring for adtech companies to ignore.
- folkrav 7y ago"Dealing with it" basically means re-building a browser rendering engine inside the browser renderer.
- fooker 7y agoWhy is Turing complete important here? You can easily generate a static document with ads, doing the heavy lifting on the server.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoScaling costs ?
- matheusmoreira 7y ago> Just like TV. TVs allow the user to mute the audio, switch channels and fast forward past ads in recorded video. What publishers are doing to the web is like sending a control message that reconfigured the TV and disabled some of its functions. "You can't mute the audio, you're obligated to listen to this. Also, we're turning the volume all the way up in order to reach you even if you leave. You can't turn it off either." Publishers simply don't want users to have any control over the experience. It's their way or the highway.
- stOneskull 7y ago> It's their way or the highway. or the pirate bay
- fireattack 7y agoI'm not sure what you're trying to say. You can also mute your computer/phone.
- matheusmoreira 7y agoPeople sometimes leave the room during commercial breaks. Advertisers realized this and started increasing transmitting much louder audio to make sure the audience can't get away. So I use the mute button and the problem is solved. What if broadcasting companies sent signals during commercials that told the TV to disable these features? "They've enjoyed the movie, now it's time to make them pay. Don't let them change the channel, mute the audio or lower the volume". How long would it take before TVs that didn't follow these intructions entered the market? Browsers have features publishers don't want people to have. We can download copies of "their" content. We can delete their ads. We can filter out their user tracking malware. This is possible because the browser serves us, not them.
- zo1 7y agoOne other thing that's tangentially related to this: Region restrictions on DVD players, and gaming consoles. Those were built right into the hardware/firmware of some of these devices.