September 8, 2019
On Facebook user data leaks
Some thoughts after recent Facebook user data leak.
I know no evidence of the following, so not stating it's true at all. Though in a light of user data usage restrictions and depersonalisation the real user data would definitely help those who buy ads on Facebook. To put it straight: leaks lead to rise of ad sales!
What I believe is true is that until companies like Facebook is punished really hard for user data leaks, the data leaks incidents will continue to happen.
I know no evidence of the following, so not stating it's true at all. Though in a light of user data usage restrictions and depersonalisation the real user data would definitely help those who buy ads on Facebook. To put it straight: leaks lead to rise of ad sales!
What I believe is true is that until companies like Facebook is punished really hard for user data leaks, the data leaks incidents will continue to happen.
Labels: ads, data leaks, facebook, security, user data
April 14, 2017
Patch to stop video autoplay in Chrome
I don't like an annoying videos crying out loud on me from respectful web sites (mostly ads). Also I don't want to setup another one Chrome extension (230000 users using that). I already have too much of them. And yes, uBlock Origin cannot stop them all.
So I've patched Chrome (chromium actually) source code and compiled it for myself from source. Voila, it works! Patch is below just to know how simple the change (that is being discussed for 2 years with no effect, while the problem itself exists for much more than 5 years) is.
And yes, I don't mind pressing manually for video to start every time. Also I don't mind stop wasting my data plan and draining laptop battery. Thanks Google for being unfriendly and not having any user settings for this ;-)
Disclaimer: published under MIT License. That is, simply: "as-is", no guarantees, by downloading this patch you know what are you doing.
So I've patched Chrome (chromium actually) source code and compiled it for myself from source. Voila, it works! Patch is below just to know how simple the change (that is being discussed for 2 years with no effect, while the problem itself exists for much more than 5 years) is.
And yes, I don't mind pressing manually for video to start every time. Also I don't mind stop wasting my data plan and draining laptop battery. Thanks Google for being unfriendly and not having any user settings for this ;-)
Disclaimer: published under MIT License. That is, simply: "as-is", no guarantees, by downloading this patch you know what are you doing.
PS. How for Google is that possible to build such an unrelevant ads platform on a base of such modern data analysis techniques and so many context-related ads? I just don't see any relevant video or text ads for the last few years.
Labels: ads, autoplay, chrome, chromium, linux, opensource, patch, video, webkit
