this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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A good ad blocker would be one that will still load the page as intended but not display the ads. There would be no way for the site to know you can't see them. Blocking their activation just signals the site that you are using an adblocker.
Edit: I was thinking more of a VM sandbox like another comment said
Sandbox the ads. Trick them into thinking the playback is finished. If there is a timer that prevents skipping, modify timing calls to shorten the duration. Or execute faster than real-time.
If there is some kind of timer callback to server, it would even be preferable to have ad "running" invisibly with a progress bar and no ad.
Honestly, I'd tolerate an adless grey timer, you don't even have to trick it that time has passed.
Just open in another tab, wait for skip option, skip (but probably not in a perfectly timed robotic way), then pause. Grey and silent midroll would be annoying but still tolerable.
People who know programming and how far it can go seem to sometimes trap themselves in very difficult problems that would be great to solve, but undervalue a version without that complicated luxury.
I'm all for trying to solve it, but a tool that doesn't is still good. I just don't want to be aware of what the companies want to make me aware of.
Pretty soon there will be captchas that are ads. Or they'll get around to implementing tech to force you to watch it.
Lol "please type in the following captcha: 'Toyotathon December to Remember event is right around the corner!'"
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/484756f/2147483647/strip/false/crop/1770x1180+0+0/resize/1486x991!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fad%2Fea%2Fdcaa267146179ea365bfc5b5f2f2%2Fca.0914.clockwork.orange.333.jpg
At that point your site is unusable
That's all an ad captcha would be lol
That is really what I was thinking of
That would be rendering potentially malicious code in the ad.
Sandbox them
One could make a strong argument that the creators of the page intended the page to show ads.
If you want to block them, that's fine with me, but arguing that not displaying ads is the intended experience of the page is just incorrect.
Hi! I work with google ads every day, it's my job, and I have a business running ads for other small businesses.
Guess what, I use an ad blocker!
If all ads were innocent businesses trying to sell things I'm interested in, and they all had their targeting set up correctly, it'd be great. Unfortunately, all my ads are "you are male and under 60" and that's as sophisticated as the targeting has been set to, so they're totally irrelevant, terrible ads.
Also, my other issue is that some advertising platforms have really low standards for what you're allowed to show. Google at least has some standards and is sometimes overzealous with its automated disapprovals, which hopefully makes its platform a little better. But I don't get to choose which platform ads I see when I visit someone's site (and Google pays very little when compared to other platforms)
I had to laugh and show my wife the current wave of ads I'm getting that remind me of the ads I saw during the home refinancing boom years ago. I get ads for things like financial advisors and it is a photo of a woman with big breasts. It is like the ads were made by Dennis from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
😂 it's always interesting to click the "why are you showing me this" button to see just how wide a net they're casting. (Before ruthlessly clicking it to waste the budget on their stupid untargeted ads, then blocking it)
I think he means that a good adblocker should load the page as intended with the ads and then simply discard them before rendering the page.