Not asking for tech support here, just wondering if in theory it would be possible to create a plug-in or even a complete browser that blocks ads in a way that’s impossible to detect. One model that comes to mind is a quarantined / containerized non-blocking virtual browser which queries the web server directly, then the UX filters the content from that container and presents it to the user ad-free. As far as the web server can tell, the containerized browser is just vanilla Chromium.
uBlock Origin already does
i think greasemonkey could do this with scripts like load ads into a 0 pixel window or something maybe
I assume if the client is undetectable that ads will escalate to phoning home for viewing confirmation, and then to something even more dumb once we beat that.
It’s an arms race, it’s probably silly to think we can just outright win for once and all.
It doesn’t matter how good your browser is when you can only access content through an app.
That’s the way things are headed, I’m afraid. In a few years you won’t be able to load Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, or Twitter(formally X) from a browser.
Bleak but probably true. Cabin in the woods with a good book is my future.
What do you mean all the woods are “gone”?
An ad-blocking DNS server on your local network should work for apps too, right? (As long as the ads are hosted on known ad servers.)
They do still have to cater to desktop users, so I imagine accessible websites for those platforms will exist for many years to come.
The way you’ve described it is basically how it would have to work.
Various ad-blocking detection technologies basically boil down to loading some element on the page and then querying for it during/after rendering to see if it’s still there. This could be combined with an AJAX call to load the actual content, which is how all those annoying sites work that pop a nag up in your face if you’re running uBlock or whatever. And even then you don’t get the content even if you subsequently block the nag notice.
A truly undetectable adblocker would still have to pull down and load all the ad content and render it somewhere (invisibly in the background, presumably) and then serve a second cut down version of that page with the ad elements not rendered.
Edit to add: This would be somewhat detrimental to the user, because it would by necessity not stop the types of tracking that are typically built into served ads. Current adblockers (like uBlock Origin) also by default also block various advertisers’ nonsense like cross-site tracking cookies and tracking pixels, etc.
