rndeonMar 16
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.

Show threadmaco
@rndeon @pluralistic pushing ad auction calculations on-device was supposed to be Google’s solution to privacy concerns. It was part of the plan to kill 3rd party cookies in Chrome. I used to work in ad-tech when this was being designed. The UK regulators were concerned it would be a monopolistic practice for Google and required evidence that this wasn’t hurting other ad-tech companies. I don’t know what the results showed, but Google backed out of killing 3rd party cookies.
Mar 24 at 1:28pmWeb