In recent news, Google has put forth a proposal known as the "Web Environment Integrity Explainer", authored by four of its engineers. On the surface, it
It's a bad idea to assume everyone in the field is of a similar mindset and philosophy. There are a LOT of people who genuinely want to make the world worse and see things like adblocking as piracy.
In fact, I've met people who hate the concept of Open Source and want things to be closer to creative fields. They're shortsighted of course, greedy. But the basis doesn't change the outcome. Yes, it's blatantly their desires to "own" a piece of code the same way musicians often own a movie's score and get licensing fees on them that led that path. But they still walked it and they still exist and they're still out there, hoping for the day they get to go against you.
I dunno, I’ve met a few engineers that fancied themselves as being smarter than everyone else. Their ideas were the only ones that held merit due to their belief that they were ‘enlightened’, so to speak.
The vast majority I’ve met are normal, well-adjusted human beings that think the ‘smart’ ones are full of it. Specifically, they they can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.
The world collectively decided that just following orders wasn’t excuse for doing something wrong. While this might be quite as cut and dry a situation, it is definitely partially the fault of those who implement this. Engineers aren’t the type of laborers that risk homelessness and suffering when quitting a job typically. They have the privilege of withholding their labor that most Americans don’t. They choose not to exercise it, which leaves two options, indifference, or support, of these implementations.
So these assh… are going to pay the wasted data from metered connections?
they’ll pay me money?
they can also guarantee that malware is not spread anymore via ad networks?
sure sure.
In short: it's fake views. That's were advertisers pay for viewed ads, but the view happened to a bot.
Ad block at least doesn't discourage advertisers since they don't pay for unviewed ads.
Ultimately, my browser must render each web page element, no? I don't see how an ad blocker could be impossible, unless ads are part of the content itself like what happens with video streaming.
So let the browser live unmodified. Intercept JavaScript on memory and block it. Of course there's a way, no matter how complex, to stop a remote server from displaying something on your screen - Google isn't controlling your graphics driver.
It's been evident big tech wants their own corporate intranet of sorts. Perhaps we're seeing the beginnings of a great net split. That's if there's enough movement to forge on with a free (as in libre) standards regardless of what big tech is doing on their own.
It apparently requires some kind of proprietary operating environment to function, thus making it compatible with free (as in freedom) computing. You would need either a proprietary library/OS or an open OS but a proprietary piece of vendor hardware to act as the attester.