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Ad blockers could still "scroll" through a website, run an AI model on it to discover the ad sections, and cut them out. Even a simple model that filters out vi

by est31 5y ago

Ad blockers could still "scroll" through a website, run an AI model on it to discover the ad sections, and cut them out. Even a simple model that filters out visual animations and replaces them with a static would be useful as a large annoying component of online ads is the movement and blinking etc. that make it hard to focus on the content. Dark mode etc can, too, be implemented to work in terms of framebuffers only. But yes, unless there is a serious need, canvas rendering is a severe regression.

anon_tor_12345 5y ago
>run an AI model what exactly would this AI model be trained on?
- iandanforth 5y ago
  Ads? The suggested approach is "from pixels" so any rendered ad is a source of training pixels.
tjpnz 5y ago
I've seen some rather atrocious techniques employed to bake ads into source but that can still be done without any performance impact. Making that work in WASM would require dynamic recompilation, doable perhaps for smaller apps but for behemoths like Gmail and Docs I couldn't see even Google getting that to scale. I think we'll still have browsers performing additional HTTP requests for that stuff, at least in the short to medium term. So traditional adblocking techniques will still be viable.
asciimov 5y ago
It will be like cutting out the ads in a newspaper. Lots of holes, everywhere.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  The difference from a physical newspaper is that on a computer we don't have to leave holes, we can replace them with beautiful artwork or our favorite cat pictures. That's still a hell of a lot better than ads.
- est31 5y ago
  I'm ok with ads in a newspaper. I can ignore them safely and blend them out. Many online ads nowaday blink or do other dark patterns to make ignoring them harder though. I hate that.
4684499 5y ago
Is there any ad blocker that blocks ads rendered within videos? It's possible doesn't mean it's viable.
- Nullabillity 5y ago
  SponsorBlock does a surprisingly good job: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
xxpor 5y ago
That still defeats the purpose. I want the ads to be blocked from loading for performance reasons more than anything else.

by est31 5y ago

anon_tor_12345 5y ago

>run an AI model what exactly would this AI model be trained on?

iandanforth 5y ago
Ads? The suggested approach is "from pixels" so any rendered ad is a source of training pixels.

tjpnz 5y ago

I've seen some rather atrocious techniques employed to bake ads into source but that can still be done without any performance impact. Making that work in WASM would require dynamic recompilation, doable perhaps for smaller apps but for behemoths like Gmail and Docs I couldn't see even Google getting that to scale. I think we'll still have browsers performing additional HTTP requests for that stuff, at least in the short to medium term. So traditional adblocking techniques will still be viable.

asciimov 5y ago

It will be like cutting out the ads in a newspaper. Lots of holes, everywhere.

exhilaration 5y ago
The difference from a physical newspaper is that on a computer we don't have to leave holes, we can replace them with beautiful artwork or our favorite cat pictures. That's still a hell of a lot better than ads.
est31 5y ago
I'm ok with ads in a newspaper. I can ignore them safely and blend them out. Many online ads nowaday blink or do other dark patterns to make ignoring them harder though. I hate that.

4684499 5y ago

Is there any ad blocker that blocks ads rendered within videos? It's possible doesn't mean it's viable.

Nullabillity 5y ago
SponsorBlock does a surprisingly good job: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/

xxpor 5y ago

That still defeats the purpose. I want the ads to be blocked from loading for performance reasons more than anything else.