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A comment on Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Through Ad Blockers.

Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by rendx on Thursday June 18, 2015 @06:23PM (#9741974)
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.

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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by nostrademons on Thursday June 18, 2015 @07:17PM (#9742173)
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.

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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by rokhayakebe on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:31PM (#9742409)
And then computers can market things to other computers.

+2

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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by MaysonL on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:47PM (#9742468)
Charlie Stross already wrote that: Accelerando.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by greenyoda on Friday June 19, 2015 @08:24PM (#9748436)
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

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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by toomuchtodo on Sunday June 21, 2015 @03:23AM (#9752539)
Read it recently, excellent book. Take the time if you have it.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by partiallypro on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:59PM (#9742511)
Who says that's not already happening, in the fraudulent sense? I would be a huge swath of traffic that gets reported is fake, same for ad clicks.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by Canada on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:49PM (#9742477)
I see the next logical step is simply extracting the content and distributing it through ad free means.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by est on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:50PM (#9742480)
Disable all thirdparty javascript unless whitelisted ones would solve 99% of the CPU hog and ads problems.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by marssaxman on Friday June 19, 2015 @04:51PM (#9747610)
That's how I browse, using NoScript. I enable JS for specific sites when they do something I care about, but it's easy to leave all the background analytics crap disabled.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by beznogim on Thursday June 18, 2015 @07:30PM (#9742209)
Definitely a way to go. Some browsers already have the "reading mode" feature which accurately distills useful content for display while the page is rendered in background. But it would be really nice if advertisers considered making ads more tolerable.
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Re:Sourcepoint: Former Googler Will Sell Tech to Punch Throu... by ccvannorman on Thursday June 18, 2015 @08:02PM (#9742336)
Obligatory SMBC reference to the future of advertising. Not quite what you're hoping for. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2490
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