An update on Better Ads (Chrome native ad-blocking) | Hacker News Reader

An update on Better Ads (Chrome native ad-blocking)

developers.google.com

35 pointsmgiannopoulos59 comments

There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see. My computer, my rules. Lately now blocking coin mining in addition to all ads, trackers, beacons, pixels, etc. I have the right to surf on my terms. Traffic to websites is a cost of doing business; don't try to recoup in ways that I never agreed to (mining), selling my data w/o my permissions, etc.

You have to love the tripe in the article: "Better ads experience..." No one enjoys the experience. No one except those in a position to make money from same. Everyday IT people and others find ads intrusive, annoying, and dangerous. Ads are a major vector for malware. Again, my rules, my computer. I've not seen an ad in many years, but I do keep up with the tech and means to keep blocking all newcoming means to circumvent my own security.

> My computer, my rules

Or maybe their website, their rules? Otherwise this is like walking into a store and telling them to take off their ads, because your eyes, your rules.

It's like requesting a chocolate bar, paying for the delivery, and the store sends you a truck full of garbage with that chocolate bar at the bottom.

Sorry I'm all out of car-themed analogies.

What part of sending a GET request to view a web page corresponds to ordering chocolate bar?

A GET request is not a request to view a web page, it is a request to receive the page. It is up the recipient to determine if and how the page should be rendered.

You seem to be constantly replying in a way that looks like you disagree with me when in fact we're in agreement!

Sorry, but nobody ever promised to render your website in any specific way; my browser does whatever I programmed it to do. I might be using w3m. I might be using a browser you never heard of. I might be using a text-to-speech engine. Website owners do not get to set the rules on my machine, no matter how badly they want to.

You can put on rose-colored glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into a store, too. I don't really see a contradiction.

Exactly: you can put on AR goggles and have them draw opaque rectangles over all the ads in the store, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Not a great analogy.

We all know that HTML is an opt-in language, in that user-agents are designed to render the tags that they support and ignore the ones they don't.

My user-agents do not support ads at all.

Your glasses (or AR goggles) when you walk into the store would correspond to the HTML renderer here.

I can't wait for the day that lightweight sun-glass frames can block real-world ads in real-time. Perhaps replacing them with classical art or even white rectangles.

That sounds great.

I don't think the analogy stands. For example: If I walk into a shoe store I won't see ads for pain meds. I might see ads for special sales or maybe for a sibling store which doesn't sell shoes, but is under the same company. These kind of ads can bypass or are not even blocked by today's adblockers because they usually don't have to be served by an ad-network. And that's perfectly fine. The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face. I would definitely complain if ads are shoved into my face in real life (please don't misunderstand, I am aware there are ads everywhere, assume the scenario where you walk into a shoe store or an apple store). It would also be easy to argue that showing irrelevant ads in your store is distracting and even bad for business.

> The problem comes when ads are not relevant to your context and are shoved into your face.

That's not the problem the parent had:

>> There are no "better" ads. The only good ads are the ones I cannot see.

My apologies, you quoted just the part with

> My computer, my rules

So my reply was mostly about the store analogy.

I see. Well, there's not enough information in the mere phrase "my computer, my rules" to come up with an analogy (or even a reply). If this was about my friend using my computer without permission, the statement would well be an apt one. It's definitely worth looking into the context & main ideas of whatever people are replying to, not the mere tiny parts they quote!

Terrible analogy. It's like me putting my hand in front of my eyes to block out the view.

They don't have to serve me content. But since they do, I can view it however I wish.

I had so much respect for Google about a decade ago.

Now they are on the same level as Microsoft. The Orweillian attempts at redefining language is... not surprising. This is beyond regular corporate-speak.

Their search results are full of spam.

They take hostage Gmail accounts.

It seems that everything "cool" they do... has a sinister, ulterior motive.

I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.

> They take hostage Gmail accounts.

> I don't know if all the good they have done outweighs the bad.

Well, I wouldn't call Google outright sinister. That's just what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Too bad that even the EU, even the mothership of regulations Germany, didn't have the guts to put some red lines (and consumer rights!) towards Google.

The old Google Toolbar had a warning with big red font saying “THIS IS NOT YOUR USUAL YADA TADA”. It explained the page rank feature sends what domains you visit to Google for checking their pagerank, and how Google processed that specific information.

It gave you the choice to enable or disable, in equally sized buttons.

Today, you instal Chrome and are immediately asked to sign in without being aware this “syncs” your browsing history to Google.

I'm sad to see you downvoted into the grey.

>My computer, my rules.

This is really the only thing that matters. Ads are not a working model for monetization on the web for this reason, and this is non-negotiable. Ads are a non-starter. It's as simple as that. If anyone can't find a different way to support their content, then the web is better off without them. "Better ads" is putting lipstick on a pig - I'd sooner not invite the pig into my living room, thank you.

Thank you for your comments. You are right. What with the now ultra-cheap Amazon and Google in-home devices, it's increasingly difficult to have a "safe" space. Like you, I will not invite this nonsense into my home. I don't use Siri, won't use any Google product, and I don't have any iot devices other than my iPhone, and I don't use non-Apple apps.

I use OpenBSD and Fedora Linux for the majority of my work and I heavily filter my personal and work connections. Being I run the firewall at work, I took the liberty of blocking all advertising connections to our buildings to save on bandwidth. My boss was thrilled to learn this could be done.

People are horrified to learn that I, an IT veteran of now 20 years have the attitude I do towards technology. It seems everyday there is a new startup offering the same old dreck that all of them seem to offer--ways to divest you of your privacy, freedoms, etc. I never bite. I stick with the minimalism I always have.

Would it make any difference to you if a site notified you that they monetize with ads before they display content?

An attempt by Google to take over the Adblocking market and thus maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads. I have already moved over to firefox

> maintain their own whitelist which will obviously not block Adsense ads

You make this sound like some kind of trick. The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do.

I can't say if it's going to be fair or not, but the way it treads adsense specifically isn't going to be the deciding factor.

>The stated goal is to block especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do.

Either way you think the relation goes probably depends on your opinion of Google, but I would take this as thinking backwards.

Google has lots of interest in preventing Adsense from being blocked as part of some broad-stroke policy, so everything they do as part of their adblocking policy has that in mind - wherever users prefer the Chrome native policy, Google wins. Whatever criteria gets picked for the adblocker is going to fit Adsense pretty well, or else Google loses.

If Adsense, and the ad revenue model, weren't deciding factors in introducing these partial blockers in the first place, Google wouldn't be taking the steps to implement one.

Put another way, this is an example of standard Google strategy: defend and control the approaches to the advertising river of gold.

Chrome was itself just such an investment. By controlling a major browser (eventually, the dominant browser), they can prevent Mozilla or Microsoft from cutting them out.

Now they want to prevent the increasing pool of ad blockers from freezing out adsense. Happily for Google, this means that advertisers will prioritise advertising through them, as they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense.

Their next step will be to bundle Contributor with Chrome. Again, by happy coincidence, this blocks out anyone else from getting a good run at microsubscription. Last I checked, the design is intended to be revenue-neutral for Google.

Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor.

> Disclosure: I have been working on a business, Robojar, intended to remove advertising and bypass paywalls in exchange for microsubscriptions. Google have a very similar model in Contributor.

Good luck! I love the idea of micropayments from a fixed budget to support sites, but Contributor's bidding-based system was not a good path at all.

> they will only be guaranteed to show up in Chrome if they use adsense

That's the worst-case scenario, as far as power abuse here. But they might be fair! We'll have to see.

I want to give Google the credit for a conceptually elegant approach that will slot neatly into the existing bidding system.

But it seems to think of humans and adtech bidding ecosystems as identical economic agents. If we're all perfect consumers, sure, the system converges to an equilibrium.

That seems like a mighty generous "if". It's already annoying to manage the mental cost of schemes like Patreon's. How much more annoying is to have to forecast, several weeks in advance, a bidding system that settles in milliseconds, millions of times per minute?

It's worth noting that I may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nuances and design of the Contributor scheme. I'm a potential competitor, my remarks ought to be look on skeptically.

But likewise I ask people to follow the money. Cui bono? In this case: Google.

My main objection to the bidding system is not even the unpredictability, but that it rewards the wrong things. I don't want to pay more to a site that happens to have car insurance ads. I don't want to pay less to a site that installed fewer banners.

...hang on, when did google contributor relaunch as a service that pays per-page-load, is opt-in per domain, and is basically useless?

Google, you manage to do youtube red just fine. Try harder.

Oh wow, you're right. The model has gotten even more cognitively expensive.

This somewhat widens my ray of hope.

Adsense ads may or may not be obnoxious, that's a matter of aesthetic preference. But they are definitely effective. Part of why I block ads is I don't want those commercial interests changing the way I think.

> You make this sound like some kind of trick

That is what it is

> especially obnoxious ads, of the kind adsense doesn't do.

That's your opinion, not everyone's. Luckily I'll easily be able to use what meets my definition of obnoxious with this feature (i.e. custom lists for this native blocker) instead of yours or this consortium's, right?

I'm interested to hear your definition of "especially obnoxious" ads that fits adsense. And no, "all ads" doesn't count.

Unless adsense has gotten worse since I last looked? I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the advertising space.

> And no, "all ads" doesn't count

Says who? You? Google? A consortium of advertising companies?

Because it's meaningless to define "especially obnoxious X" to be the same thing as "all X". If you do that, you're not even trying to engage in a discussion, you're just trying to 'win'.

I thought it was clear that I was separating ads into multiple categories. If you tell me you honestly don't understand then I will reword it in other terms for you. Let me know what you need.

I might be the only one here but I have been waiting for a long time for something similar to what Google is attempting to do here.

I don't want to block ALL ads. Only the annoying ones (mostly popup and popunder).

I am ok with being displayed ads by defaults for the sites I consult (especially the ones I like) since it is an acceptable form of micropayment (I should mention that I don't see ads no youtube since I pay for play music).

Sadly, such a selective ad blocking takes time to setup and maintain and with the extensions I always end up realizing that I have been blocking ads on one of my favorite sites for months.

I'm confused. You used an example of not realizing you were blocking ads from a site to support a less transparent blocking approach? Why can't you just take the list from this better-ads program and use it in your extension? (And if you can't, think about why you can't)

I can't figure out whether your problem is with the current crop of extensions or the filter lists. Regardless of which it is, I'm not sure your concerns will be alleviated by unnecessarily-built-in, likely non-extensible, likely non-customizable blocker using an opaque set of filters.

Depends on how these filters are configured. Again, I just want something that blocks mischievous ads and lets everything else in.

I don't know whether Google will achieve this but I am willing to give it a try.

To be honest, I am disillusioned with the extensions I have tried that seem all lacking because they are only here to support a racket like business model where you pay to get whitelisted.

> Depends on how these filters are configured.

What I'm saying is you probably can't configure them to your liking. Otherwise, they'd just give us a filter list for our existing extensions. Do you support hidden lists over visible ones?

> To be honest, I am disillusioned with the extensions I have tried that seem all lacking because they are only here to support a racket like business model where you pay to get whitelisted.

The most popular among tech circles, uBlock Origin, does not suffer from this. I am disappointed that you only tried ones that are corruptible and then had those experiences lead you to look forward to a more opaque solution by an ad company. Yet I fear this is why Google will succeed.

No matter how benign an ad looks, it is probably still loading a ton of javascript from dubious places. Ads are a perfect distribution system for malware, and the best strategy is to just disable the whole thing as comprehensively as possible.

I'd rather my favourite website goes offline than my bank account gets hacked.

I could see us getting to a place where ad networks that allow third party javascript are blocked. That's probably enough to deal with most malware worries, even if it's not perfect.

How is this not a monopolistic, anticompetitive measure?

The largest ad company starts a shell coalition so their largest market-share browser can use it as justification to block "non-approved" (competitor's) ads.

At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot.

If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it.

What happened to ad block blocker blockers?

Also it was bound to happen, ad blocker/privacy co.'s selling out to block ad blockers/sell personal info, drawing from a very typical criminal enterprise behavioral pattern.

>If this effort by Google can somehow raise the quality of online ads from horrendous to just terrible, I'll reluctantly support it

I think the rationale for this move is to stem the growth of adblockers rather than anything else. Google Chrome on Mobile does not allow any extension so thats safe for their monetization. Its only on desktop which is dwindling and they are using this opportunity to make sure this is contained

Only on Android does this save Google. iOS has had the ability to install content blockers for a few years. They not only work in the browser but also the newer embedded Web Views (WebViewController?)

>At this point, I'm dealing with so many pop-ups asking me to turn off my ad-blocker that the original purpose of the ad-blocker (don't bother me) is becoming moot.

Use this specific list in your adblocker to subvert those messages: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/blob/master/anti...

I asked before, but never really got a good answer. Is this client side only? If not, how are they querying a server? And where can I download the full list of unacceptable ads/sites? And if I can't, why not? And finally, why does this have to be native instead of an extension?

Edit: I guess another question, why aren't the answers to obvious questions like these readily available? Or am I just ignorant?

I believe this is a hybrid. Chrome sends telemetry data to their server and they already know what kind of sites and ads are blocked.

I think they need correlation of ads shown followed by an adblocker extension install so that they want to block such ads to prevent the growth in adblockers

I really hope a service will be created where I can pay for adfree content internetwide.

you already have that here: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta

So removal of ads is based on a blacklist, rather than client-side identification?

Members of the "Coalition for Better Ads" are listed at the link below. Which major internet advertising providers are not listed? (I am not familiar with the market.)

https://www.betterads.org/members/

I'm not a lawyer, but it just seems like the biggest online ad peddler of the world blocking ads of exclusively it's competitors in his preinstalled browser on the most widely used mobile platform in the world is a recipe for a blockbuster anti-trust sanction.

I'm sure Google's employees who can say I am a lawyer reviewed this.

They've been paying Ad Block Plus to do this for years. Bringing it in house can't change the legality much.

So, basically all ad networks like zeropark, popads, popcash, propeller ads, will soon disappear?

That or we'll start seeing "this browser not supported"

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