Princeton's Ad-Blocking Superweapon May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

An ad blocker that uses computer vision appears to be the most powerful ever devised and can evade all known anti ad blockers. A team of Princeton and Stanford University researchers has fundamentally reinvented how ad-blocking works, in an attempt to put an end to the advertising versus ad-blocking arms race. The ad blocker they've created is lightweight, evaded anti ad-blocking scripts on 50 out of the 50 websites it was tested on, and can block Facebook ads that were previously unblockable.

This fulfills the dream, that I'm sure I'm not alone in having, of "what if something could see the entire page, and show me a copy of the page with the ads visually blocked, but with the advertiser's scripts interacting with the original copy filled with thousands and thousands of blinking, dancing, flashing, seizure inducing ads."

Ads ruin everything they touch. Radio. TV. Magazines. Newspapers. Billboards. I could go on, but on the web ads, like they always do, started out unobtrusive. Then there were deceptive ads designed to lure you to "punch the monkey". Then more deceptively to look like an OS dialog warning of something with horrible consequences demanding immediate response luring you to install malware. Ads. Ad blockers. Ad blocker blockers. Then better ad blockers. Now this. Maybe something that will finally kill ads dead.