Chrome 71 will block any and all ads on sites with “abusive experiences” | Hacker News Reader

Chrome 71 will block any and all ads on sites with “abusive experiences”

arstechnica.com

37 pointsokket47 comments

We all know the types of ads that Google is saying they are going to block here - and good riddance. I really wish I knew of some study - but, my personal theory is that roughly 100% of those ads are trying to sell some scam or download some virus. It's really hard to imagine a legitimate company that sends users ads with fake close buttons, pop ups, redirects, fake mouse pointers, etc and after the user trudges through all of that they end up at a page advertising 10% of garden shears at the local hardware store.

Yes - Google sells ads. Yes - Google, apparently, now blocks ads. Yes - that sounds troubling. And it sure will be troubling is if it turns out that they are blocking legitimate Ad Words competitors. But, these aren't really ads by any reasonable definition: these are overwhelmingly anti-user malware scam garbage. In my opinion, it's pretty troubling if a super profitable company like Google has the ability to make such a user-positive change and _doesn't_ do so.

Maybe its step 1 down a slippery slope to actual bad behavior. But, let's get worked up about that when there is some actual evidence of bad behavior - it's not like there won't be plenty of people interested in trying to keep tabs on what Google is doing here.

When you search for certain pieces of free software to download on Google search, their own ads on those pages often direct you to malware-laden or otherwise unofficial sources for those downloads. One wonders whether these scams will be blocked by Google's new approach to ad-blocking.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. If it turns out that Chrome doesn't block these ads, and there is some sort of reasonable evidence that it's due to some sort of intentional functionality to exclude them, I'd agree that would be a big, big problem. But, if some number of them manage to get through the ad blocking, another reasonable explanation would be that Chrome's feature just isn't as good as it could be and isn't by itself evidence of some conspiracy.

Regardless, it's all speculation about something that hasn't happened yet. It's reasonable to talk about these issues - and hopefully some group goes further than speculating and actively monitors the situation. But, until there is some evidence that Google is misbehaving, what has been announced is that Google is going to try to provide a feature that will actively help users - and I hope they are successful at doing that.

Well, I for one am quite confident they will show small pubs the same leniency they will no doubt grant to goggle.com. right?

There is a pretty big difference between a legitimate ad and what Google is saying they are targeting here. We can't be sure if Google will end up targeting other ad companies in inappropriate ways - but we can remain vigilant. However, whats actually been announced here is that they are going after garbage ads that in my anecdotal experience, are basically 100% malware / scams and its a complete fallacy to say that Google should not do something good (shut down that garbage) because they _might_ later do something bad (which they could do regardless of if they shut down that garbage).

I'd challenge anyone to provide even anecdotal experience of encountering an ad that meets their stated guidelines for being an abusive ad (linked by Yver at: https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7347327) that isn't a scam / malware.

You clearly don't understand what google is proposing at all.

They are going to block all ads on a PUBLISHER which shows any of their list of bad ads. This has nothing to do with ad companies.

My point is that google has -- including relatively recently! -- quite proudly run the ads they label as bad ads, which now trigger blocking of all ads on the site, on google.com. And there will be future instances of malware ads on google.com. See: malware and unwanted software, particularly for downloads such as vlc or flash.

So when a publisher has a stray bad ad on their site -- an no one is disputing these ads are bad -- google is going to screw them. When google doesn't blacklist scam software install ads, or whatever slips through their filters, well, what can you do? No chance chrome blocks all ads on google.

Most of that is conjecture. What they choose to block is not a browser responsibility but one of the search engine results page. When they block new tech threatening their business model it'll be months if not years before anyone "gets it".

I fully admitted I don't have proof of my theory that the vast majority of ads that meet Google's definition are scams / malware. Do you have any examples or even anecdotal experience with ads with fake mice, misleading click targets, fake close buttons, auto-redirects, etc that turned out to be legit? I very much do not.

Why isn't it a reasonable thing for a browser to do? I do a search and get some results. I click on site A. site A has a link to site B. I click on this link. Site B is full of ads that meet Google definition of an abusive ad. I'd appreciate my browser blocking those ads on site B even though I didn't get there via a search page.

Google has a conflict of interest here given that they sell advertising themselves, so a single company policing ads is definitely suspect. I’d prefer to see decisions like these made by a group of interested parties/companies rather than Google alone.

Among other features DuckDuckGo's extension blocks third-party trackers on a website (duckduckgo.com/app) and gives each site a privacy grade.

Unlike other vendors, there is no pay-to-play option.

We aim to take a principled rules based approach to blocking and raising the standard of trust online.

(Disclaimer: DDG employee)

> and gives each site a privacy grade.

What's this based on?

I'm more included to use Privacy Badger (from the EFF), why should I use the DDG extension instead?

I'm using DDG Browser to weeks after recently giving up on Brave. The DDG browser is nice and all but not as well designed as FOSS Browser (available on F-Droid). Thanks for offering a popular alternative though.

Why did you give up on Brave? I find Brave a good option on Android with all the privacy options built in. What am I missing?

They are part of the "Coalition for Better Ads" [1] which, aside from sounding like an evil group from a comic book, is trying to be that kind of group of interested parties.

Members include Google, Facebook, and Reuters among many others.

I thought that's what this was based on, but looking at the google blog post [2] I don't see any references to the betterads stuff directly. They do reference the same "Ad Experience Report" as the google blog post announcing the start of this idea to block "bad" ads mid last year [3], so they are at least involved.

[1] https://www.betterads.org/

[2] https://blog.chromium.org/2018/11/further-protections-from-h...

[3] https://blog.chromium.org/2017/06/improving-advertising-on-w...

That coalition seems a but one sided, or? Where is EFF or DDG? Google appears to be smart about collaboration and playing by the rules creating a .org campaign. But make no mistake about the true motivation behind this is to set, control and influence the rules to lock out others.

It's not like they are trying to hide it, the coalition is very open about what they are, a group of advertisers and ad networks that are trying to get rid of bad ads so that people don't install adblockers that block all ads. This is copied from their site:

>The Coalition’s research identifies the ad experiences that rank lowest across a range of user experience factors, and that are most highly correlated with an increased propensity for consumers to adopt ad blockers.

Nobody has to make any mistake about the motivations, they are literally saying this is so that the "good" advertisers can take back the ecosystem and prevent the "race to the bottom" of more obnoxious ads paying the best, and so they can prevent more people from installing ad blockers by making their ads less obnoxious.

I fully agree with the sister comment by Klathmon - they are being pretty transparent that it's a group that is trying to further the goals of online advertisers.

As an outsider, I have no inside knowledge of what Google is doing. But, I think it's important to keep in mind that sometimes the goal of a business, even an ad business, can align with broader societal goals. I fully support online advertising as it supports a bunch of the sites that I visit daily. The web becoming increasingly overburdened with scam / malware "ads" is a threat to those sites as it causes people to install more ad blockers. It's also a threat to Google's business - as as those "ads" proliferate, its puts them in the uncomfortable position of either having to play in the mud, or, to cede ground to "advertisers" that are profiting off of ripping people off. Preventing such a race to the bottom is a smart business move on Google's part - and it may be driven purely by profit considerations. But, if that is what Google's long game is - it's not just good for Google, it's good for society too.

Sometimes a business acting in its own self interest can be a good thing for everyone. I don't know enough about Google to state definitively that is what is happening here - but at the very least, it seems plausible. So, lets wait to freak out about it until we have actual evidence that there is some sort of bad behavior at play - something I haven't seen any evudence of yet.

While it's certainly ideal if everything is consensus driven, I have difficulty seeing that working here. Presumably the people serving these intrusive ads would disagree with any decision to get rid of them.

Chrome 88 will require you to do three "I am not a robot" verifications every time you visit a site.

Only if you don’t have sufficient Google Points(TM)

...unless you are signed into a Google account and have history sync enabled

Chrome 90 now saves incognito history to google servers, the config option to disable this has been removed.

This tradeoff was definitely worth preventing bots from using Google Search, something that affects us all deeply on so many levels.

Google's Web Tools Help's definition of what constitutes an "Abusive experience": https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7347327

Google's hostile takeover of the web continues unabated.

Eh, I'm all for this one. I don't use Chrome (I prefer Safari on my Mac), but I think it's a reasonable response to increasingly terrible, malware-spewing ads.

Advocating for the user and serving self interests aren't always at odds. Can you propose an alternative?

I'd love to hear how blocking the ads that meet Google's definition of abusive (linked by Yver: https://support.google.com/webtools/answer/7347327) is a takeover of the web. In my experience, these are basically 100% scams / malware. Please specifically address that point and not bring up unrelated theories.

Good. The layman isn't capable of seeing the difference between fake error messages and real ones.

That's being generous: if I'm tired I may not notice an error message is fake.

The typical tell I look for: is this window right for my OS? (Windows dialog on Android) Is the version right? (XP styled dialog) Can I tell which window it can from? (Move browser to sanity check where I am)

I run a tiling WM full-time, so it's rather hilarious when I see any dialog error/warning box since literally nothing I run generates them. A virus on my C: drive, you say? Nope.

What I'd really like is an option to auto-decline all requests to allow desktop notifications.

Can't you just set them to blocked under "chrome://settings/content/notifications"?

Sorry for not responding forever... I thought doing that would block all, while I'd still like to allow some from apps I use like Gmail and Google Calendar. Just tested with Calendar, and it turns out the allow list still allows even if set to blocked! Thanks for letting me know about the setting, I've set it to blocked.

Here is Google's announcement: https://blog.chromium.org/2018/11/further-protections-from-h...

I see this as a thinly-veiled "any ads that aren't run through Google Ads Network will be blocked"

You can see it that way if you choose. But:

1) No one on this thread has tried to defend the classes of ads Google is targeting here.

2) No one has presenting evidence of Google unfairly blocking competitors ads.

Can you provide concrete examples of either of those things?

It's unreasonable to attack Google for something they are doing, because of something else they _could_ do, but provide absolutely no evidence that they will.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/02/22/is-goog...

Apologies for being slightly pessimistic about the potential agenda of the largest marketing organization in the world.

That linked article seems to be a pretty clear editorial which seemed to me to have its conclusion written first and then the rest of the article was written to fill in the blanks. And all of the harms it's talking about is still speculative and, IMO, involve a few leaps of logic.

Surely fairly thickly veiled?

Any grounds to believe that?

> Any grounds to believe that?

That be how monopolies do

>Any grounds to believe that?

Knowledge of history? The ability to think critically?

Well. I'm obviously of the opinion that it's me doing the critical thinking here. But your absolute certainty is most definitely intoxicating.

There was a Chrome ad blocker that got a lot of press back in February and then apparently disappeared. What happened to that? Is this the same code?

The suspicious thing is the full block. The right thing to do would be to alert the user and let them decide.

Many users aren't going to be equipped to make a good decision when presented with that alert. Just explaining what the alert is saying is probably going to involve more text that most people are going to read. Doing a full block isn't suspicious - it's a perfectly reasonable default.

Anybody else using Vivaldi?

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