Sylvain Miermont1d ago
rndeon
Reading https://thatshubham.com/blog/news-audit ( HT @pluralistic ) and I'm astounded.
I had heard of web ad auctions.
I had heard of edge computing.
I did not realize they were pushing their ad auction calculations onto your device!
Knowing this, I think ad blockers are too polite a response. Are there any browser plugins that send them something like a decompression bomb? Or maybe that interferes in the ranking so the cheapest bid is returned as the winner? My device is the one deciding, after all!
The 49MB Web Page

A look at modern news websites. How programmatic ad-tech, huge payloads and hostile architecture destroyed the reading experience.

Mar 16 at 4:24pmWeb
Show threadChris Hodges1d ago
@rndeon @pluralistic Now I wonder if anyone has ever assessed the emissions savings from script- and ad-blocking
Show threadCurio1d ago
@HodgesC
Brave shows you how much time it save loading (and I think also executing) ads, that’d be a solid base for estimation, I guess.
@rndeon @pluralistic
Show threadjean-mi1d ago
@rndeon @pluralistic dns blocking is good when not done by state.
Show thread7heo1d ago

@jeanmimi @rndeon @pluralistic

Also when done by the state. It shows you where to look. 🤫

Show threadMariya Delano1d ago

@rndeon I think we also need to remove incentives on the advertiser’s side too / encourage other ways of promoting and advertising online.

To be honest this is yet another drop in the bucket of why the popularity of this kind of advertising drives me crazy. I’ve tried to get companies I’ve worked with to reduce their dependence on pay-per-click ads / ads auctions, but it’s like pulling teeth.

Everyone knows how to use these bidding platforms, new marketers are trained in them, their use is on everyone’s resume, people get proud about brandishing their certifications from ad vendors…

And so far no pitch I’ve made resonated. I’ve argued for advertising directly with creators / publishers or through small and specialized ad platforms (things like podcast ads) and nope. Everyone wants their comfortable interface with easily adjustable bits, micro-tracking, dollar-amount attribution, and fancy tech company logo.

I want to find a way to break this addiction in my field but I don’t know what it is.

Show threadCurio1d ago
@rndeon
AdNauseum allows you to load the ads without displaying them to make companies waste money on unviewed-but-paid ads. Not the same, but its a start, I think?
@pluralistic
Show threadWindy city1d ago

@rndeon @pluralistic Author here, thanks so much for reading! I was just as blown away when I first dug into this and had the same reaction.

What is wild is that the logical fix for this, something called Server-to-Server (S2S) auctions like prebid server already exists. It offloads the compute and saves massive amounts of bandwidth. But because of certain data-matching limitations between servers, ad-tech prefers to hijack our browsers to keep revenue high.

To your point about messing with the bids, it is a brilliant thought! But currently, the client just collects the bids...the final clearing price is validated server-side by the primary ad server AFAIK. Spoofing the bid might just break the iframe or serve you a cheap fallback ad if they've built contingency measures(which I'm sure they have).

Dropping the requests entirely with an ad blocker is an incredibly effective and sane response! But I'm always open to hearing from smart people. Thank you for sharing 🙏✨

Show threadAxomamma, Antifa from birth1d ago

@pheonix I have to assume you're kidding when you say "I don't know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from."

I assume, because I sure as fuck won't click the link to a mystery adventure.

I appreciate the work you put in to writing the article. Thank you!

Show threadOwen 🇬🇧1d ago
@pheonix Thank you for making aware of text-only or "lite" news sites. I did not know they existed. :)
Show threadJamey Sharp23h ago

@pheonix I'm confused by this response, and I think this is an interesting exercise, so I hope you don't mind this reply.

Either the ad server has enough information to validate the bids, in which case why ask the client to collect them at all? Or it doesn't, and the client could lie, like @rndeon suggested. What am I missing?

In particular, if the client queries several advertisers and forwards all the responses to the ad server, I'd expect a graceful fallback for some of the requests failing. If the ad load fails when any request fails, then every additional bidder multiplies the failure rate. So the client should be able to look at the responses and decide to drop some of them. While signing might help validate bids, encryption might keep the client from making decisions on bid contents, and a signed timestamp might help prevent replaying old bids, even cryptography can't keep the client from pretending it never received a response. And the client could drop responses at random or based on metadata, instead of on actual bid contents, and still screw with the results.

That said, and like you point out, this is much more complicated than just blocking the entire ad loading process, which is safer and more efficient for the client, so I'm not sure it's worth trying to manipulate the auction outcomes. Sending decompression bombs or other invalid data to ad servers to waste their CPU cycles is still tempting though…

Show threaddisorderlyf1d ago
@rndeon @pluralistic Imagine expecting people to give you almost as much bandwidth as the cap Discord is willing to give you if you pay them $5/month for a single message for the privilege of reading the text they want to display to you.
Show threadv1rulenc31d ago
@rndeon @pluralistic I am of the mind that I should have control over all things calculated by my computer, so why not decide the ad auction as I wish, if the work is to be passed to me anyways? What an odd thing.
Show threadjbhughes1d ago
@rndeon @pluralistic In my 1980s computer company we used to fantasize about a machine instruction with the code HCF to send to the computers of miscreants who screwed up the network. It means Halt and Catch Fire.
Show threadPaul Barnfather1d ago
Surely this means there's an opportunity here to mess with their revenue streams?
I'm thinking: drive down income for the host, drive up costs for the advertiser. That kind of thing. 😈