Ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware" | Hacker News Reader

Ad-tech company was a delivery system for "mercenary spyware"

pluralistic.net

56 pointssamizdis11 comments

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50101813

“AdFection: Targeted ads turned into a pipeline for zero-click mercenary spyware” (citizenlab.ca)

512 points | 2 days ago | 721 comments

Guys - ublock origin and similar pure and true anti-ad solutions (though ublock origin declares itself as a generic content blocker rather than merely an ad-blocker) need to become basic human rights. It is time to destroy and totally abolish the adMafia. Spyware etc... are just extensions that tap into the same problem.

I suggest we eliminate ads completely. All companies that still force them onto the users, be it Google, Amazon and whichever, need to be either abolished, or be forced to stop cramming down ads onto people. The legislation also needs to change away from this pro-corporate worship that the orange mafia (but also prior governments) forced onto us (correspondingly in other countries as well).

It will only work if we start buying subscription for newspaper and magazines again. People have to eat so it's either government paid, ad-paid, subscription paid or propaganda paid.

phrases like "the world's worst governments" in a piece like this is just maddeningly muckrakey imo

Why? Any government that supports ads needs to be eliminated, in my opinion.

It gets incredibly tiresome to see every act of cyber warfare ever blamed on the same "world's worst governments" like come on

Maybe it's time to face facts.

How many times can you recall from your entire life when you or someone you know ever purchased something SOLELY because of an ad?

The entire ads industry is mostly a racket, at best a case of the emperor with no clothes.

At worst it's a blatantly thin veil for mass surveillance.

Hey bro/babe lemme peek in your window and see everything you do so I can SeRvE you MoRe rElEvAnT ads

I agree with most of your statements, e. g. mass surveillance and what not.

But I think you make one basic mistake with the "ever purchased something solely because of an ad". Because I believe you may not fully understand human psychology.

Not all ads work as a "buy this now". Some use annoying noises or visual effects to hook a message into the brain. Others just do an ad to promote the brand; that's why they use simple and stupid slogans "that stick".

There are many more reasons here, too many to explain in detail. The bottom line is that ads are not solely confineable towards a "it must get people to buy the product". Yes, that is the base line, but the evil ad company works with various tricks, including targeting children, e. g. the "nagging factor". There are excellent books of how this mafia works. Hopefully we'll eventually manage to abolish ads completely. Naturally with Google's adChromium, this will be a fight mankind has to win in the long run.

You make good points, but have any of these companies ever bothered with peer-reviewed psychology to support this before spending Lichtenstein's GDP on ads, or is it just typical executives shooting from the hip?

Ads work, so does PR, so do bot farms, underhanded influence campaigns and other dirty tricks. There are limits: Elon can't save more than one or two congressional Republicans for the $300 million he's spending on it. But in general, our government can in fact be bought, especially in cases where the vote might be close. It's not an exaggeration that we have an oligarchy problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com