5 ms·

RIP web accessibility when everyone starts doing this to make ad blocking more difficult

recursive 5y ago
This is exactly the reason I don't use an ad blocker. In the long run, it will make everything worse, and I still probably won't be able to block ads. I'm clearly on the losing side of this though.
- kgwxd 5y ago
  "Ad blockers" need a new name. I don't consider uBlock Origin an "ad blocker". It's a proper user agent (like a browser is supposed to be) that gives the user control over what is allowed to happen on their machine. That just happens to have the side effect of not allowing most ads to render because the way they're typical delivered. It won't matter if everyone starts using canvas unless they also stop using my machine to fetch random third-party content, which they won't, because the "ad" industry is now really the "tracking" industry. The very few times I've seen ads over the last decade or so, they were standard images hosted directly by the site. That's all ads should be. The contract between the site and advertiser should be their problem, my machine isn't obligated to be their mediator.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I like this take a lot. The problem is that most people that are using ad blockers actually seem to want ad blockers.
  - google234123 5y ago
    They also aren't obligated to serve you free content.
    - kgwxd 5y ago
      No one said they are.
weird-eye-issue 5y ago
It is an interesting possibility. Obviously people wouldn't want it to hurt their SEO (for public facing websites). However Google is okay with displaying a different page to their Googlebot (for example if you have a SPA it is okay to prerender it and display that as long as the content it the same). So if your HTML based content is the same as your canvas based content maybe Google would be fine with it and you could get both good SEO and an ad-blocker-free experience...
- jerf 5y ago
  That's a good point. It's not clear how to square the circle of making your content sufficiently accessible that it can be indexed by Google properly, but ad blockers can't get a grip on it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not clear. Any website that wants to go to 100% pure WASM canvas code is going to have serious problems with getting indexed properly. Anything they do to scramble ad blockers will scramble the indexing as well. It makes sense for google docs because the contents of the documents shouldn't be indexed (mostly). And of course there's the special case here of Google having both the document and the web engine so they'll always be able to index the public documents, even if nobody else can. (I'll pencil in the antitrust hearings for this for 2027 or so.)
o_m 5y ago
They won't be able to sell the service in Europe if they ignore web accessibility. The US also have similar laws, or at least people can sue a company if they don't meet the accessibility requirements.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  In almost 30 years of experience, I only had one project where that was actually a requirement, as it was a government agency. Sadly most don't really care, and unless it is something like government it isn't enforced. Also here in Europe we aren't as happy to go to court like in US.
Spivak 5y ago
Eh, I'll believe the slippery slope when I see it. Right now I think this move makes total sense since the dom is currently just being used as a rendering target and has to implement all its document-y behavior itself. Nothing about Google Docs uses the dom semantically and it already has to implement all its own accessibility support itself because without a lot of help screen readers would be useless.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  To be fair, the web has been way down that slippery slope for over a decade now.
soheil 5y ago
Seems far-fetched that normal webpages would use canvas as the primary method to render text something like Google docs makes sense because it's a complex application and consistency is important. For these type of sites if they choose to put ads on I would not try to block them because clearly the effort the developers put to build them justifies displaying ads. Additionally, I can see future ad blockers also getting more sophisticated by finding a way to block already rendered elements on a canvas without having access to the representational elements (reverse engineering).
EvanAnderson 5y ago
Absolutely. All it's going to take is somebody porting a browser to WASM. They just need to "tunnel" accessibility concerns to the "outer browser" until all of that can be completely implemented within the "inner browser".
kyrra 5y ago
(googler, opinions are my own, I know nothing about this project). I will bet that this will ship with accessibility support. If it doesn't, maybe they will launch with it being opt-in, as they flesh out a11y. But if I were to put money on it, it will ship with a11y functionality. The good thing here is that Google already has experience with accessibility on canvas UIs . Flutter, which uses canvas on web[0] and opengl on phones, has accessibility[1]. Hopefully there was some good knowledge sharing there. [0] looks like this is a WiP: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/projects/68 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/projects/68 [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/development/accessibility-and-localization/accessibility https://flutter.dev/docs/development/accessibility-and-local...
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Great, but will it ship with ad block support? Or will I be forced to look at ads, where high value individuals (most of HN) are selling their attention for pennies (being able to view a Youtube video or whatever)?
  - sp332 5y ago
    Does Google put ads on Google Docs? Anyway, adblockers that work at the network level should still work. This will make things more difficult for cosmetic removals though.
    - axiosgunnar 5y ago
      How will it work, if they are sending binary WASM blobs? This is akin to saying "pi hole can block ads in .exe files"
      - sp332 5y ago
        The question is, who is sending binary WASM blobs? That ad data needs to come from an ad server, and if network requests to the ad servers are blocked, the ads will not load.
joelthelion 5y ago
When this becomes the norm, I'm sure someone will come up with a deep learning-based adblocker. It will be slow and make mistakes, but well...
nhumrich 5y ago
Sure this impacts google docs free users, but the blog post is on google workspaces, which already has 0 ads. Google never has and never will advertise on a google workspace account.

This is exactly the reason I don't use an ad blocker. In the long run, it will make everything worse, and I still probably won't be able to block ads. I'm clearly on the losing side of this though.

kgwxd 5y ago
"Ad blockers" need a new name. I don't consider uBlock Origin an "ad blocker". It's a proper user agent (like a browser is supposed to be) that gives the user control over what is allowed to happen on their machine. That just happens to have the side effect of not allowing most ads to render because the way they're typical delivered. It won't matter if everyone starts using canvas unless they also stop using my machine to fetch random third-party content, which they won't, because the "ad" industry is now really the "tracking" industry. The very few times I've seen ads over the last decade or so, they were standard images hosted directly by the site. That's all ads should be. The contract between the site and advertiser should be their problem, my machine isn't obligated to be their mediator.
- recursive 5y ago
  I like this take a lot. The problem is that most people that are using ad blockers actually seem to want ad blockers.
- google234123 5y ago
  They also aren't obligated to serve you free content.
  - kgwxd 5y ago
    No one said they are.

weird-eye-issue 5y ago

It is an interesting possibility. Obviously people wouldn't want it to hurt their SEO (for public facing websites). However Google is okay with displaying a different page to their Googlebot (for example if you have a SPA it is okay to prerender it and display that as long as the content it the same). So if your HTML based content is the same as your canvas based content maybe Google would be fine with it and you could get both good SEO and an ad-blocker-free experience...

jerf 5y ago
That's a good point. It's not clear how to square the circle of making your content sufficiently accessible that it can be indexed by Google properly, but ad blockers can't get a grip on it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not clear. Any website that wants to go to 100% pure WASM canvas code is going to have serious problems with getting indexed properly. Anything they do to scramble ad blockers will scramble the indexing as well. It makes sense for google docs because the contents of the documents shouldn't be indexed (mostly). And of course there's the special case here of Google having both the document and the web engine so they'll always be able to index the public documents, even if nobody else can. (I'll pencil in the antitrust hearings for this for 2027 or so.)

o_m 5y ago

They won't be able to sell the service in Europe if they ignore web accessibility. The US also have similar laws, or at least people can sue a company if they don't meet the accessibility requirements.

pjmlp 5y ago
In almost 30 years of experience, I only had one project where that was actually a requirement, as it was a government agency. Sadly most don't really care, and unless it is something like government it isn't enforced. Also here in Europe we aren't as happy to go to court like in US.

Spivak 5y ago

Eh, I'll believe the slippery slope when I see it. Right now I think this move makes total sense since the dom is currently just being used as a rendering target and has to implement all its document-y behavior itself. Nothing about Google Docs uses the dom semantically and it already has to implement all its own accessibility support itself because without a lot of help screen readers would be useless.

NoGravitas 5y ago
To be fair, the web has been way down that slippery slope for over a decade now.

soheil 5y ago

Seems far-fetched that normal webpages would use canvas as the primary method to render text something like Google docs makes sense because it's a complex application and consistency is important. For these type of sites if they choose to put ads on I would not try to block them because clearly the effort the developers put to build them justifies displaying ads. Additionally, I can see future ad blockers also getting more sophisticated by finding a way to block already rendered elements on a canvas without having access to the representational elements (reverse engineering).

EvanAnderson 5y ago

Absolutely. All it's going to take is somebody porting a browser to WASM. They just need to "tunnel" accessibility concerns to the "outer browser" until all of that can be completely implemented within the "inner browser".

kyrra 5y ago

(googler, opinions are my own, I know nothing about this project). I will bet that this will ship with accessibility support. If it doesn't, maybe they will launch with it being opt-in, as they flesh out a11y. But if I were to put money on it, it will ship with a11y functionality. The good thing here is that Google already has experience with accessibility on canvas UIs . Flutter, which uses canvas on web[0] and opengl on phones, has accessibility[1]. Hopefully there was some good knowledge sharing there. [0] looks like this is a WiP: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/projects/68 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/projects/68 [1] https://flutter.dev/docs/development/accessibility-and-localization/accessibility https://flutter.dev/docs/development/accessibility-and-local...

axiosgunnar 5y ago
Great, but will it ship with ad block support? Or will I be forced to look at ads, where high value individuals (most of HN) are selling their attention for pennies (being able to view a Youtube video or whatever)?
- sp332 5y ago
  Does Google put ads on Google Docs? Anyway, adblockers that work at the network level should still work. This will make things more difficult for cosmetic removals though.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    How will it work, if they are sending binary WASM blobs? This is akin to saying "pi hole can block ads in .exe files"
    - sp332 5y ago
      The question is, who is sending binary WASM blobs? That ad data needs to come from an ad server, and if network requests to the ad servers are blocked, the ads will not load.

joelthelion 5y ago

When this becomes the norm, I'm sure someone will come up with a deep learning-based adblocker. It will be slow and make mistakes, but well...

nhumrich 5y ago

Sure this impacts google docs free users, but the blog post is on google workspaces, which already has 0 ads. Google never has and never will advertise on a google workspace account.