
Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Through Ad Blockers - cpeterso
http://bgr.com/2015/06/18/sourcepoint-ad-block-stopping-software/
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rendx
The next logical step is an ad 'blocker' that simulates ordinary user behavior
by still downloading the ads, in the background without displaying them, and
added random walks by simulated 'clicks' on advertisement. This allows all the
creepy tracking that comes with loading the spyware, but if done right has the
potential of disrupting the already disgusting mind-manipulation while
silently giving back to the content publishers.

Happy arms race.

~~~
nostrademons
The step after that is to create artificial humans that surf the web just like
real ones, build up marketing profiles just like real ones, "view" ads just
like real ones - but aren't actually people. And then computers can market
things to other computers. We might even get a shadow economy where it's
computers all the way down, sorta like how 75% of Twitter traffic is (used to
be?) bots.

Skynet, here we come.

~~~
rokhayakebe
_And then computers can market things to other computers._

+2

~~~
MaysonL
Charlie Stross already wrote that: _Accelerando_.

~~~
greenyoda
I looked up the summary on Wikipedia[1]. It sounds like an interesting read.
It was released under a Creative Commons license, so it can be read online for
free.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_%28novel%29)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Read it recently, excellent book. Take the time if you have it.

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droopyEyelids
I wonder if this is the dying gasp of javascriptless web browsing

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AceJohnny2
javascriptless web browsing died in 2004, and its killer is called Ajax.

~~~
wwweston
Nah. For a long time after AJAX was birthed as a concept, people actually
believed in progressive enhancement.

It's only somewhere in the last 5 years the SPA trend seems to have reached
critical mass and instead of starting from the idea of meeting user needs by
serving reasonable media types from resource endpoints (and then building up
interactivity on top of that), people want to treat browsers as just another
cross-platform runtime (an _inferior_ one, naturally) that happened to win out
instead of Java or Flash or Silverlight.

~~~
kstrauser
That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors
lack JavaScript. AJAX and things like jQuery are ubiquitous and powerful, and
it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works well
for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their browsers.

Pros for expecting JavaScript to be enabled:

\- Cheaper development because you can assume a common, featureful baseline.
That leads to less code complexity on both the client and the server because
you don't have to implement parallel code paths.

\- Freedom to add features that would be difficult or impossible to emulate
with traditional static pages

Cons for expecting JavaScript to be enabled:

\- The site won't look and act right for the 1% of visitors who are used to
every other site also not looking and acting right

There are lots of reasons to use JavaScript in the browser and almost no
reasons not to, so everyone collectively decided to stop hamstringing
themselves to cater to a teensy portion of users.

~~~
wwweston
> it can be ludicrously expensive to build a site that looks nice and works
> well for that extra 1% of visitors who've deliberately crippled their
> browsers.

Huh.

If you think that one of the advantages of JS-required SPA-style applications
is that they will help you _avoid things getting expensive_ somehow... I'm not
sure where to start, actually. Maybe the situation here is kindof like the old
saw about mediation: you should do it for 20 minutes a day, unless you don't
have time, then you should do it for an hour a day.

My experience is that sites that start with the focus on their shiny new
JavaScript framework and their app-like UI tend to devolve into architectures
with overspecific and mixed concerns pretty quickly. If you want to keep
things from getting complex and expensive, start by keeping discipline
involved in conceiving of the app in terms of plain HTTP and different media
representations of the same relevant resources/data. For back ends already
producing well-modeled JSON documents, producing equivalent HTML
representations should be easy. If it's not, something is likely wrong (and if
you're already producing well-modeled HTML documents, it's exceptionally rare
that producing good JSON docs with the essential content is anything other
than trivial).

Now it's true that some apps just aren't about resources and media types, and
you need the browser-as-runtime instead of the browser as document/media
viewer. It's nice that the browser keeps growing in capabilities here. But
let's be honestly: most of the JS-required apps we're seeing out there these
days aren't even close to meeting this bar. And the "extra costs" you're
invoking of supporting clients without JS are, in those cases, self-inflicted.

> That's because industry analytics showed that approximately 1% of visitors
> lack JavaScript.

And I bet those same analytics probably showed even fewer visitors without JS
after they used those stats to require it -- problem solved!

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jessaustin
This seems like DRM, a "solution" that doesn't have to work IRL because it
works in the boardroom.

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enterprize4
The whole fight about adblocking won't be solved in the court, but with a
technical arms race. In the end startups like this one will probably win, just
because there is a real, monetary gain for them. And then visitors of the
sites using technology like this will have to choose: Either don't see ads,
but also no (or not as much) content or content, but with ads or a payment. In
my opinion this will lead to a better "contract" between users and the site,
where everyones cards are on the table.

~~~
zem
it might also lead to people skipping those sites altogether, which is what
triggered the whole ad-supported-web madness in the first place.

~~~
bashinator
I do this on principle, especially with mobile where ad-blocking is less
available. If a page is especially egregious (full page ads, poor loading,
etc), I will just close the entire tab ASAP. There's very little I need to
read that badly, and hopefully it will show up in some tracking metrics.

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rokhayakebe
People block ads not because they do not like them, but because ads are just
lazy.

I am being currently "re-advertised to" by Converse. They and a few ecommerce
keep showing the products I browsed, and I find that to be not annoying at
all. In fact there is a small chance I would drop them a quarter to keep
reminding me for some time.

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teaneedz
Sounds like snake oil - anyone have examples of their tech in action?

BI gave an example of The Guardian in it's article, but that is visible for
me.

Instead of addressing the root cause, ad tech will further hurt publishers by
chasing more traffic away. How difficult is it for the ad world to get the UX
issues that are at stake?

Publishers need to invest in UX - not tracking, malvert, bandwidth consuming
tech that has forced users to go out of their way to install ad blockers in
the first place. No, it's not theft. It's common sense and basic security.

Sorry for the rant ... Just looking for customer examples for what Sourcepoint
is doing.

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logn
"The publisher can also choose to circumvent the ad-blocking program and still
present the ad."

"'if users opt-in to having advertising subsidizing the experience, we can
serve that ad, [and if an ad blocker continues to block the ads] then that
would be illegal'"

Wouldn't unauthorized use of my browser to download content over my ISP,
against my wishes and for the benefit of someone else, be a federal crime?

~~~
DannyBee
If you opted in to having advertising subsidize the experience, you are
consenting, so no.

This is also not an entirely sensible question, as it works the other way
around, too: "Wouldn't unauthorized downloading of content, using your ISP,
and then deliberately extracting certain parts of it, against the publishers
wishes, and for your own benefit, be a federal crime?"

(Note: The question of whether this is _copyright infringement_ , which is the
common claim, is separate from the question of whether it may fall under some
_crime_ )

~~~
kuschku
No.

It’s been solved in court in the past (and some horrible misdecisions were
made, like saying that if no one links to something, it isn’t public), but in
general: if you make something available for me, I can ALWAYS for private-only
use remix it as much as I want. I can copy my CD collection a thousand times,
I can burn a hundred clones of a videogame – for private use.

Which is the case here.

The publisher has no right to expect that users actually see ads. Even with
TV, all recording devices since the time of VCR skip recording ads completely.
And with live TV, people switch the channel.

~~~
DannyBee
"It’s been solved in court in the past"

No, it actually hasn't, at least not to the degree you think.

For example, the main ruling in favor of your argument, the Hopper ruling,
turned on this: "commercial-skipping does not implicate Fox’s copyright
interest because Fox owns the copyrights to the television programs, not to
the ads aired in the commercial breaks."

Not on some more general right to commercial skipping.

The only thing won on appeal so far is the preliminary injunction. Dish may in
fact, still lose :)

Even if they don't, unlike TV shows, publishers will likely be able to claim
compilation and collective copyrights on the work _as displayed to the user_.
Plus, it's not time-shifting. Plus you have website terms of use that may bind
you.

You may not want this to change the result. It probably changes the result.

"The publisher has no right to expect that users actually see ads. Even with
TV, all recording devices since the time of VCR skip recording ads completely.
And with live TV, people switch the channel."

This is 100% not the same as what is being described here. Those are time
shifting devices. This is not. It is not "fast forwarding" the ads on the
computer. People are also not switching to different tabs to avoid the ads.
You also have another serious problem in websites: Terms of use. Unlike TV,
which doesn't bind you to anything, on the web you can be bound to terms of
use (plenty of website terms of use have been held valid and binding, it's
usually a mixed question of fact and law). Expecting precedent to come out the
same given all this seems .. a dubious line of argumentation. It may, it may
not. Acting as if this is a solved question is incredibly premature.

Additionally, the only court in your favor has not ruled that Ad skipping is
generally okay, it ruled that _Fox can 't complain about it because they don't
own the copyright rights to the ads".

You do realize this means _the ad owners* may be able to complain, right?

Anyway, if you believe otherwise, i'd love to see some case law. (Because the
case law i've found doesn't support your argument at all :P)

(Note, since i got a private email about it: I actually don't have strong
feelings one way or the other as to whether it _should_ be legal/etc, i'm just
trying to express an view as to whether it _is_ )

~~~
kuschku
Hmm, the US situation actually seems interesting.

Anyway, under German law, you can always make a copy or compilation of any
product you can use or have a license to use for personal use.

As an adblocker is only personal remixing, it is totally legal - just like
ripping a CD, or mixing two songs I downloaded from iTunes.

Additionally, there are personal rights which can not be signed away by a ToS
or even a contract, including the right of remixing.

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SchizoDuckie
And I will be blocking you in my hosts file in 0.02 seconds. And then never do
business with the company that uses your tech ever again.

Bring it.

~~~
grrowl
Hosts files are a relatively obsolete way of blocking ads — it seems to be
only because ad companies insist on serving ads and JS from their own domains.
If a content site was sufficiently motivated enough, they'd serve ads exactly
as content and include javascript within the content page itself to ensure
they load.

Thankfully, I haven't seen anyone go "thermonuclear" on ad blockers yet except
for executive-level decisions and lamentations — but as a technological-level
problem it's theoretically straightforward to subvert given the rudimentary
nature of ad blockers.

~~~
steckerbrett
I've seen one person go thermonuclear trying to prevent ad blocking, and it
seriously sucks. Randomly generated content classes and IDs, shifting DOM
elements around to avoid them being targeted that way, and later on just
completely removing all the divs from the area and manually painting large
advertisements with primitives. Made scraping substantially more difficult,
but of course not impossible.

One site that still has me beat dynamically loads all of the content and code
through a websocket, and various bits are so heavily obfuscated that they look
like brainfuck. Finding tools to tamper with SSL websockets is a challenge
enough in its own right (Chrome has nicer tools now though).

~~~
zem
are you doing it for the sheer fun of beating the ad-blocker-blocker, or do
you need the information off the site?

~~~
steckerbrett
One is screen scraping, one is attempting to find out how a product actually
works. Neither goal has a monetary incentive so it is likely that people have
got there before me.

