[cptskippy]

In the later scenarios, what assurance does the Ablocker have that their requests are respected? I could easily see a scenario where an Adblocker says "Hey Chrome block all requests to ads.google.com" and Chrome saying "Sure thing buddy" then completely ignoring that request.

[Angostura]

The same assurance you have that the browser wouldn’t simply inject its own ads into all pages.

[TylerE]

There's really nothing at all preventing Chrome from doing that today if they wished... they can manipulate the page before and after the Adblocker sees it.

[zie]

SHHH!!! That's for Chrome 100 ;P

I agree it's totally possible they would do that, but one could figure it out pretty easily with a touch of detective work.

[cptskippy]

And then what? Google will say that it's protecting critical functions from breaking and to piss off. Suddenly Google is a monopoly in the ad space because they have the predominant browser and let through only their ads.

[zie]

they arguably are effectively a monopoly now. Them doing things like this isn't remotely new. They just got caught tracking everyone's smart TV usage. Nothing will happen to them until:

1) the Government decides to intervene.

2) Users give up and start using different services.

I'm pushing for #2, but then I switched off like a decade ago, when I saw the writing on the wall.

[ummonk]

Were they tracking smart tv usage or were smart tv manufacturers using google apis to store their tracking data?

[zie]

Both it seems:

"The most prevalent tracker, Google's doubleclick.net, showed up in 975 of the top 1,000 Roku channels, with Google analytics trackers showing up in 360, the researchers found." - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/studies-google-n...

[ryandrake]

Adblocker apps/extensions don't require that assurance. The user requires this assurance, and if the browser ignores the user's wishes, the browser is the application that should be held accountable by users.

[cptskippy]

How is the user to know if it's the AdBlocker or the Browser though? It's a he-said-she-said kind of situation with the AdBlocker and the Browser potentially pointing the finger at each other.

This setup gives the Browser/Maker plausible deniability when they act badly.

[saagarjha]

Browsers and extensions aren't black boxes; it's easy to inspect them for this kind of behavior.