this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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Can someone explain how the server is going to know whether or not the client browser is showing the ad? A stealthy browser would say, "hey yeah send that ad so I can render it to the user" and the server says, "yeah ok" and then . How is the server going to know whether the ad is displayed or not? Don't current gen adblockers not even retrieve the asset? If the asset was retrieved but not displayed, how (if even) can this be monitored?
The point of the proposal is to allow servers to be sure the software (ie browser) running on the device is what it says it is, and take away the ability to spoof what browser you’re running (which is currently fairly trivial).
So if someone makes a browser that doesn’t allow adblockers and always shows ads, the server can do things like only serve content to that browser.
Imho, without hardware support they won't be able to keep up against the hackers. In the end it's software and it's running on hardware outside of the control of the server. There are millions of possible attacks to break/bypass this.
Problem is the effort to find a vulnerability and exploit it is often higher than the effort required to patch it. Because by its nature a browser and the server it talks to are internet connected, Google will be able to revoke keys for older exploited versions at will. As long as it’s well-engineered I think there’s a good chance they’ll be able to keep that secure.
Though I’m sure there will be some successful approaches to ad blocking etc but if something like this gains traction it could completely change the internet. If enough people are running browsers like this then sites could effectively be able to kill off competing browsers that aren’t restricted.
I think the key is to not let it happen in the first place, and boycott browsers that implement stuff like this.
So if we already took down Twitter, and Reddit, how do we kill Chrome?
So what it boils down is companies are going to try to cut off their user base if they don't view ads? People will complain they can't view their page and cancel their subscription? Nobody's going to willingly install a browser that won't let you install an adblocker, right?
It's not subscription business models that will be affected by this, it's ad-supported ones.
The problem is you're running Chrome now*. Google are in the process of severely restricting the mechanism by which adblockers work in Chrome and its derived browsers - so it's happening now. The only viable alternative left is Firefox, if Google manage to get this proposal past then there's nothing stopping ad-supported sites from forcing you to use Chrome or another browser they know they can serve you ads with. Those types of sites are already comfortable with aggressive anti-adblock tech so no doubt they'll be comfortable with this too.
Switch to Firefox!
* statistically speaking!
But what about Apple?!?! Can't they strong arm this?