Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible

stackdiary.com /web-environment-integrity/

32 comments

Why are we saying “engineers” when we know full well there isn’t a single qualified engineer in there that thinks this bullshit is a good idea?
This is management being management.
- It's a bad idea to assume everyone in the field is of a similar mindset and philosophy. There are a LOT of people who genuinely want to make the world worse and see things like adblocking as piracy.
  In fact, I've met people who hate the concept of Open Source and want things to be closer to creative fields. They're shortsighted of course, greedy. But the basis doesn't change the outcome. Yes, it's blatantly their desires to "own" a piece of code the same way musicians often own a movie's score and get licensing fees on them that led that path. But they still walked it and they still exist and they're still out there, hoping for the day they get to go against you.
- I dunno, I’ve met a few engineers that fancied themselves as being smarter than everyone else. Their ideas were the only ones that held merit due to their belief that they were ‘enlightened’, so to speak.
  The vast majority I’ve met are normal, well-adjusted human beings that think the ‘smart’ ones are full of it. Specifically, they they can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.
  
  Ah, Elon's.
- But they will still implement it. Does it really matter if they didn't come up with the idea if they are the people that will build it up?
  
  The world collectively decided that just following orders wasn’t excuse for doing something wrong. While this might be quite as cut and dry a situation, it is definitely partially the fault of those who implement this. Engineers aren’t the type of laborers that risk homelessness and suffering when quitting a job typically. They have the privilege of withholding their labor that most Americans don’t. They choose not to exercise it, which leaves two options, indifference, or support, of these implementations.
  
  It does matter, because the article uses the word “want”.

So these assh… are going to pay the wasted data from metered connections? they’ll pay me money? they can also guarantee that malware is not spread anymore via ad networks? sure sure.
- When a machine gets infected with malware because of drop-in ad content, the ad broker should be liable to the machine owner for $$$.
  
  Should be. As far as I know they are. But nobody seems to care...

Louis posted a video on a much bigger problem that Google has with ads. These campaigns seem to completely neglect.
https://youtu.be/hWJrsz_cmas
In short: it's fake views. That's were advertisers pay for viewed ads, but the view happened to a bot. Ad block at least doesn't discourage advertisers since they don't pay for unviewed ads.

Technical explainer:
https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md#how-it-works
It apparently requires some kind of proprietary operating environment to function, thus making it compatible with free (as in freedom) computing. You would need either a proprietary library/OS or an open OS but a proprietary piece of vendor hardware to act as the attester.
- Assuming you meant incompatible.

It's been evident big tech wants their own corporate intranet of sorts. Perhaps we're seeing the beginnings of a great net split. That's if there's enough movement to forge on with a free (as in libre) standards regardless of what big tech is doing on their own.

I'll just use AI to filter out ads in future. Too bad advertisement needs to be recognizable, so AI can.

32 comments