The Two Generals Problem

Re:The Two Generals Problem by ohyoutravel on Monday May 09, 2022 @09:26PM (#31322266)

Notably this is the first website I’ve seen ads on in a very long time thanks to a combination of Duck Duck Go and PiHole and various other things. I found the ads so objectionable and attention-grabbing that I updated my PiHole block lists and checked that it was still working. Turns out the ads are served from the same domain as the article, which is kinda neat.

I didn’t finish the article because I went down an Ad-bashing rabbit hole though.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by travisjungroth on Monday May 09, 2022 @11:12PM (#31323006)

Interesting that ad companies find the value of sending from a different domain greater than the loss from ad blocking. Makes sense that the calculation would tip on a "weblog covering Linux Systems and DevSecOps"!

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by dredmorbius on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @06:19AM (#31325384)

My understanding is that independent verification is more readily accomplished through third-party service. It's also more scalable --- ads to many sites are served through a single ad network rather than through site-by-site negotiations.

Self-hosting may lead to sites gaming impressions data. Not that that's not also a problem with third-party hosting.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by EdwardDiego on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @03:58AM (#31324628)

A large part of it is that the publisher is having to make code changes to do so, and as part of doing so, may as well set, and then forward cookies to your adtech company right? Assuming you're not in a GPDR country.

Helps your advertiser still gain some info if the user is blocking the 3rd party cookies they'll try to render anyway.

The drive to map 1st party cookies to 3rd party cookies to compensate for stricter default cookie blocking in non-Chrome browsers, and the generalised failure of doing so, is what drove Google's FLoC.

Even though user targeted ads are generally pretty ineffective, advertisers are addicted to them.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by Moru on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @05:03AM (#31324978)

Using uBlock Origin here and see no ads on that page without going down any Ad-bashing rabbit hole. Sure, I always have trouble ordering stuff online but not seeing ads is all worth it.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by Helmut10001 on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @05:33AM (#31325133)

I have uBlock origin, too - and still see the Ads on this page. Strange. [Edit] Correction: After Refresh (loading the page a second time), the Ad is gone.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by amelius on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @06:17AM (#31325374)

> Turns out the ads are served from the same domain as the article, which is kinda neat.

We really need some cooperative filtering and/or deep learning approach for ads.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by EdwardDiego on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @03:53AM (#31324606)

Yeah, proxying adtech company resources through your own server is the latest in adtech's attempts to bypass ad blockers and 3rd party cookie blocking.

I'm so glad to be out of that market.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by 10x_contrarian on Monday May 09, 2022 @11:43PM (#31323191)

uBlock Origin has no problem blocking them. I thought domain-proxied ads were pretty common.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by ashitlerferad on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @06:10AM (#31325339)

It's probably because the ads are in-house from the root domain and not 3rd party ads with a bunch of tracking nonsense.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by rolandog on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @04:13AM (#31324723)

I usually avoid most ads by defaulting NoScript to not allow anything to be 'run', not even noscript elements.

Granted, most sites become unusable.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by pcarolan on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @07:02AM (#31325627)

This comment chain at the top of a good article is more annoying than the ads were in the article.

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Re:The Two Generals Problem by pcarolan on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @07:37AM (#31325860)

I appreciate the commenter’s honesty in stating they didn’t read it at least. Sorry for the author who has nice comments below that most people won’t get to read. Great article.

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