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fpoling10/11/20242 repliesview on HN

A lot of other ad blockers use static lists for years. The fact that they work tells that ad industry does not see the blockers as a problem that needs to be dealt with. It can also be that so far the increased cost of development of ads that are immune to simple static lists is not worth it.


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vlovich12310/11/2024

I’ve noticed a huge number of websites have interstitials pop up asking you to remove your ad blocker. While some let you bypass it anyway some don’t. Clearly the websites themselves seem to care.

tyingq10/11/2024

Right. Advertisers didn't bother with all these tactics because normal chrome users could download a plugin without any major hurdles to thwart it. Why drive people that wouldn't otherwise use an ad blocker to do so?

That's going away now. Now mostly everyone is vulnerable with the only recourse being pretty technical stuff, not just downloading a very popular plugin.

So advertisers will now be free to get more aggressive without much downside.

Edit: I do get that this sounds like conspiracy theory. But it really matches the Google boiling frogs approach. Removing the blocking onBeforeRequest, as one of the very first things in the manifest v3 spec was not a coincidence.

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