I could be wrong though, it could be worse. I mean look at the last 7 entries:
A story about blood-sucking parasites
An “advertisement” showing a number of men and women heavily blindfolded and earplugged
A picture of a cyclops drawing a picture
Two “advertisements” about learning to “code”
A story about thieves stealing “seeds”
another “advertisement” about coding.
And so on.
Is this really about capitalism and selling out, or is it a cry for help? Should we read the subtext and make the connections? Are Cory & Xeni & Mark really free agents, or do they need our help?
And here is the blog view with a javascript blocker thrown into the mix. The empty grey boxes are a tad distracting, but only for the brief moment you’re viewing the top post.
I have a similar memory, about a different publication. The Whole Earth Review used to be an important quarterly publication. Over time, it succumbed to a long series of compromises, becoming a lifestyle magazine before finally closing its doors. If you got the original editors in a room and got them to talking, I think some patterns would emerge that would look familiar to any boingboing old timer.
I mean the real solution is to just permanently have boingboing on ad block. It’s clear they cannot keep bad ads from us, and one bad ad is all it takes. They’ve broken the public trust.
Well what do you want me to say? Their site is actively installing malware on people’s machines and their response is to ask the people doing it nicely to stop.
EDIT:
Now that I’m home and at a computer: All I want is for BoingBoing to maintain the basic security standards for their site that they routinely criticize others for not following. I adore Doctorow’s work and I legit have real problems balancing what he says he stands for versus what BoingBoing is doing. This isn’t the first time their site has had this kind of thing happen and I just feel conflicted about it.
Shit happens. The difference is in how you deal with it.
BB is actively infecting people’s computers with malware via one of BB’s 3d party ad networks. What should BB do?:
Shut down the ad malware spewing ad network until the problem is resolved
Post a warning on the BB site alerting visitors of the attack
Alert users not to download Flash, .apks or other malware vectors, nor to bypass the Android “unknown sources” security lockout.
Suggest that users all run malware scans on their devices
All of the above
Or
Say “we are working on it” in a user forum comment and leave main site visitors in the dark about the ongoing malware infections.
Keeping the public in the dark about security breaches is one of the things BB has traditionally, IIRC, criticized others for. Best practices, IMO, include immediately shutting down the malware vector (even if that means shutting down some legitimate ads in the mean time) and a public alert.
Keep in mind that malware can ruin people’s lives by stealing account info, financial records, social security numbers, private photos, etc., enabling the draining financial accounts, creating debt via identity theft, enabling the public posting of private information and photos, and even creating criminal records in the victim’s name. Malware attack targets and methods vary, but malware is not a trivial issue. We aren’t talking just the inconvenience of annoying ads.
And that screenshot I posted above was taken with uBlock Origin running – I’d already de-whitelisted in my desktop browser earlier after seeing the Google Play thing on my tablet. Which makes this whole episode even more alarming/problematic.
(Edit- clarity)
Yeah that is what got my attention this morning.
And this is why I have ad block running as it is an arms race between the ad networks and the assholes creating malware ads. I don’t mind ads but I do mind stuff that makes the page unsafe and/or take 2 minutes to load.
I’ve got uMatrix running for granular control of 3d party calls. No malware popups (crossing fingers) on mobile or desktop for me but I have my preferences set in a way that kills a lot of sites entirely, which can be a pain.
Every once and a while I check the junk/sp@m folders of my various secondary email accounts, because for most of them they get zero to at most a few per month, so it’s not worth taking the time more often than that. One email account was set up mainly for BBS stuff. I virtually never use it for anything else, and I virtually never go to the actual BB blog. It is the only one of my accounts to always have a large number of sp@m posts in it. And that’s with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Avast, and all the current automatic protections from Firefox.
Seems like there are a couple of different-but-related issues, not just unwanted ads.
Just for posterity’s sake. BB was definitely for sure hacked and a common response in the comments was “Oh, I thought they’d just let the ads get even worse”
I’m absolutely glad they did, but it’s incredibly depressing that the standard for ads on BB is so skeevy these days that people thought by a literal malware outbreak was intentional.
I mean they’ve had skeevy ads in the past. Same vendor they use now. They’ve got skeevy shop items that have horrible reviews and are oftentimes just dropshipped crap from Ali Baba. So, it wasn’t insane to think this was more of the same. This thread wasn’t even started based on the hack, it was other behavior.
