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0 pointsddalex6y ago0 comments

> publishers actually vetted the products

I work in ad technology for a publisher. We put in a lot of effort to make the tech fast, lightweight and secure for our visitors - we hate bad ads too. We screen our partners, use whitelists and monitor what JS is running on the site.

This being said - things sometimes slip through the cracks. Somebody with a browser-based 0-day will pay huge CPMs to insert their ad and own thousands of machines. We can't prevent this - if you have any ideas on how, I'd love to hear it.

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smt886y ago

I don't think reviewing code for malware scales, especially in a competitive industry like online ads. You have to automate it, and automation isn't foolproof.

You can either: 1) disable JS in ads entirely, or 2) give all users an option to pay for an ad-free site.

Since few publishers do either, I'll continue to use my adblocker and simultaneously pay the publishers I think we can't do without (e.g. ProPublica).

ddalexOP6y ago

I agree that getting directly payed by users is a much better outcome. But the reality is that people don't want to pay us directly (in the US markets; we charge directly in other markets and it's working beautifully)

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