How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?
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They're blocking ads that damage user experiences. How is that an apocalypse?
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And it's about time. Looking at the article, the only problem I see with it is that it doesn't go far enough: I would drop a banhammer on any ad that contains any Javascript for any reason.
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It is the universe's largest conflict of interest.
Beyond that I really don't have an opinion on it, other than I'm sure it'll start a huge brouhaha that will probably have to be settled in the courts. Inertia will keep me using Chrome unless it drastically changes how things work and/or rebelling sites start blocking it.
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@blakeyrat As long as they don't interfere with third-party ad blockers. The more blocking, the better.
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@hardwaregeek Agreed. That would be a major conflict of interest. What @blakeyrat calls "the universe's largest conflict of interest" here, on the other hand... I call that "simply being a good corporate citizen."
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@hardwaregeek said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@blakeyrat As long as they don't interfere with third-party ad blockers. The more blocking, the better.
If they do break third-party ad blockers, it should be pretty simple to get them working again. I doubt Google would intentionally break them, because that would mean a lot of people stop using Chrome, and that's bad for Google's business.
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@masonwheeler Actually it's less bad than I thought, they're using the recommendations of a relatively neutral organization for determining what to block. In any case, both Google (aka DoubleClick) and Facebook (aka legacy Atlas) are on-board, and that's something like 85%+ of the ad exchange market.
The problem is their list doesn't include ads that push the page content down, then yank it back up when the ad disappears, causing you to completely lose your place (twice!) when reading text articles. IMO those are way more annoying than "sticky" ads at the bottom of the window.
It's unclear to me how, technically, they're doing to detect these things, though... a lot of those ads listed in the guidelines have functionality identical to legit site features. (For example, a "sticky" ad is identical CSS-wise to a site with perfectly normal sticky navigation widgets on the bottom of the window.) Unless they're going to add a heuristic that the content has to be served from a different domain, in which all sites using 1st party ads will be completely unpoliced, which hardly seems fair.
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@blakeyrat said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
(For example, a "sticky" ad is identical CSS-wise to a site with perfectly normal sticky navigation widgets on the bottom of the window.)
Generally, the former will be included from a different domain and the latter won't be.
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@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Generally, the former will be included from a different domain and the latter won't be.
I just added a sentence about that.
If they only block third-party ad servers, then they're doing a really shitty job.
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@blakeyrat said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Generally, the former will be included from a different domain and the latter won't be.
I just added a sentence about that.
If they only block third-party ad servers, then they're doing a really shitty job.
It's possible that some rules will block only third-party stuff, but other rules (like the ones about full-page ads that block content from being read) will apply to everything.
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@blakeyrat said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
The problem is their list doesn't include ads that push the page content down, then yank it back up when the ad disappears, causing you to completely lose your place (twice!) when reading text articles. IMO those are way more annoying than "sticky" ads at the bottom of the window.
This does, however, fall under my criterion of "ads that contain any JavaScript for any reason whatsoever."
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@ben_lubar Maybe; I'm sure Google fucked it up in one way or another.
Of course this is all pie_whatever's "redefining the word advertising" since a site that's all ad, for example this one: https://crypterium.io/ isn't going to be blocked when, let's be honest, it's a hell of a lot more harmful than any number of banner ads.
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@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
They're blocking ads that damage user experiences. How is that an apocalypse?
So far, all ad blocking has been third part, unofficial, and whined about. It's broken things like YouTube where the 'ad' isn't so clearly defined. Many websites scream at you if you block their ads. And now all of this will be enabled by default, officially, on the browser everyone uses, created by the largest ad company in the world. Imagine the average idiot user, who has never cared about ads, but now finds all their pages tell them to stop or they can't access the content, and them not understanding what to do.
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
They're blocking ads that damage user experiences. How is that an apocalypse?
So far, all ad blocking has been third part, unofficial, and whined about. It's broken things like YouTube where the 'ad' isn't so clearly defined. Many websites scream at you if you block their ads. And now all of this will be enabled by default, officially, on the browser everyone uses, created by the largest ad company in the world.
So, one of three outcomes:
- Ad companies stop making terrible ads
- Ad companies attempt to get around the system and are blacklisted by Google and go out of business
- Ad companies break websites in an attempt to get around the system and the websites suffer
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@ben_lubar All three outcomes, plus IAB lawsuits, plus bad legislation.
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@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
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@twelvebaud said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
plus IAB lawsuits
I think if they stick to blocking the most technically noxious ads, and scrupulously avoid blocking on the basis of what product or service is being advertised or (within reason) who is doing it, the scope for successful lawsuits will be extremely limited.
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@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
Which makes this a distinct improvement on the status quo!
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@dkf said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
I think if they stick to blocking the most technically noxious ads, and scrupulously avoid blocking on the basis of what product or service is being advertised or (within reason) who is doing it, the scope for successful lawsuits will be extremely limited.
It's fine! We're using machine learning!
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@blakeyrat said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
If they only block third-party ad servers, then they're doing a really shitty job.
Except 99% of ads are on third-party servers, meaning this will work in 99% of cases with 0 false positives - I wouldn't call it a shitty job. I'd actually call it a very damn good job.
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@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
Meanwhile in Poland...
And that's year ago.
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@gąska said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@blakeyrat said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
If they only block third-party ad servers, then they're doing a really shitty job.
Except 99% of ads are on third-party servers, meaning this will work in 99% of cases with 0 false positives - I wouldn't call it a shitty job. I'd actually call it a very damn good job.
I would probably say that 99% of harmful ads are on third-party servers. TheDailyWTF.com uses its own domain for ads, but they're just regular images wrapped in links with no scripting attached to them. TroyHunt.com just uses a tiny line of text to say who sponsors him, and since it's just a link with text in it, it's not able to be on a different domain.
I'd guess a lot of websites host their own ads, especially in tech blogging, where it's common to have a smaller number of specific sponsors instead of just generic advertisers. But at the same time, sites that host their own ads are generally pretty good at making the ads reasonable.
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@gąska said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
Meanwhile in Poland...
And that's year ago.
If Poland was the highest at 56%, the internet as a whole is probably well below 50%. As far as I know, there aren't any Poland-specific web browsers.
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@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@gąska said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
Meanwhile in Poland...
And that's year ago.
If Poland was the highest at 56%, the internet as a whole is probably well below 50%. As far as I know, there aren't any Poland-specific web browsers.
You haven't heard of Kurwanium?
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@hungrier said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@gąska said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar None of which has actually happened yet, despite the prevalence of ad blockers.
None of the ad blockers have a majority share of browser users as far as I know.
Meanwhile in Poland...
And that's year ago.
If Poland was the highest at 56%, the internet as a whole is probably well below 50%. As far as I know, there aren't any Poland-specific web browsers.
You haven't heard of Kurwanium?
Someone needs to make a Chrome extension that does that now.
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@ben_lubar Google is smart and helpful:
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@hungrier said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@ben_lubar Google is smart and helpful:
This is the downside to Google learning how the word kurwa is used in Polish.
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Why do you have a second standard? Seriously. Acceptable Ads still exists, and addresses a lot more of the reason I use a blocker than Better Ads does.
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Why do you have a second standard? Seriously. Acceptable Ads still exists, and addresses a lot more of the reason I use a blocker than Better Ads does.
Hahahaha, if you're the product, do you think they have any reason to keep your interest in mind?
Their standard is "how do we stop ads from scaring away 90% of our eyeballs", not "let's get rid the world of ads or at least get rich asking protection money" (not that they don't get rich but they're part of the ad-serving side).
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Why do you have a second standard? Seriously. Acceptable Ads still exists, and addresses a lot more of the reason I use a blocker than Better Ads does.
Xkcd_whatever_that_one_is
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@jbert said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Their standard is "how do we stop ads from scaring away 90% of our eyeballs"
"People don't like our product" -> "Remove the parts of our product that the people don't like, but keep selling the product."
Makes perfect sense.
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Why do you have a second standard? Seriously. Acceptable Ads still exists, and addresses a lot more of the reason I use a blocker than Better Ads does.
hi we are AdBlock, we do Acceptable Ads. Want to be acceptable? Fucking pay us.
umm-- hi everyone, we're Google. We're bigger, and can fuck you up big time because we own everything. We started our OWN standard, with blackjack and hookers. So how about you pay US instead? Or in addition. We don't fucking care. But you're paying us.And that's why we have a second standard.
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@pie_flavor said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
Why do you have a second standard? Seriously. Acceptable Ads still exists, and addresses a lot more of the reason I use a blocker than Better Ads does.
It's a road of progression. First you need to get better ads, and once people get used to them, the companies might be willing to move to acceptable ads.
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@dkf said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
@twelvebaud said in How will you deal with the coming Chrome apocalypse?:
plus IAB lawsuits
I think if they stick to blocking the most technically noxious ads, and scrupulously avoid blocking on the basis of what product or service is being advertised or (within reason) who is doing it, the scope for successful lawsuits will be extremely limited.
Why? Wouldn't any site be able to say that by visiting their site or using their service they are agreeing to the advertising that pays for it?