
Ask HN: A browser that clicks on every ad as a protest against Google? - burtonator
Like the subject line... only instead of ad block you click every add and load it in a hidden tab.<p>The ad is still hidden too... just that we click on more ads than a usual user.<p>Sure..  you waste a bit of bandwidth but it&#x27;s asymmetric and you waste a lot more money on their end.
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askvictor
In the short term, this helps Google; they profit from each click, with the
advertiser paying Google. In the long term, sure, _if_ enough people use it
(they won't) then advertisers will start demanding Google do something (I
strongly doubt advertisers would pull out of Google altogether). Google will
then proceed to add a score to each click "probability that this click was by
a bot" which would be pretty easy to determine given they're prowess in this
area already.

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idunno246
It’s generally assumed that a large percentage of clicks are fraud, on the
order of a quarter. That’s after filtering out the detected fraud. So this is
basically another form of fraud, you’d have to be a pretty large percentage of
clicks to matter. And even then, advertisers are ok with the fraud, you just
pay less per click assuming some percentage is fake, so in the end total
dollars wouldn’t change, clicks go up and cpc goes down

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ChrisGranger
This sort of exists already in the form of the AdNauseum add-on.
[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

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55555
Is your goal primarily to waste the budget of advertisers, many of whom are
small businesses? Because you would be increasing the revenue and profit of ad
networks.

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sanxiyn
Yes, because then advertisers will reduce their ad spend.

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55555
Yes but not to the degree that the ad network will make less money in total.
If you understand how advertisers optimize their campaigns and think it
through you'll come to this conclusion. Performance-based marketers will
reduce bids until they asymptote at the real value of the traffic. But other
marketers with bad stats will just keep spending, and performance-based
marketers launching new campaigns will need to run run-of-network until
they've blacklisted the crappy placements. In the end, the ad network will
make more money and advertisers will lose money.

This is just one of a billion issues with a simple implementation of this
idea. Another issue is that merely clicking ads without adequately spoofing
your fingerprint will just get you ignored by the smarter networks... I could
go on and on but don't have time atm

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sanxiyn
This all sounds good to me. Punishing ad industry would be the best, but
punishing dumb advertisers and punishing dumb ad networks also sound great.

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drivingmenuts
Punishing the people who buy ads is a far more effective strategy that gets to
the heart of the issue.

Also, just as effective.

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pkaye
How about FireFox getting rid of Google search from their browser?

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unreal37
> How about Firefox getting rid of their main source of revenue.

FTFY

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pkaye
So it is okay to promote Google just because it makes them money? That is what
allows Google to stay at the top. Why not ask FireFox users to donate a little
money to fund development?

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cannonedhamster
As much as I pay for services I use, many people don't have the ability or
won't see it as important enough to fund. While you and I might see the
purpose, I suspect those like us area in the minority.

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return1
If you really want to help webmasters get rid of advertising, then start using
cryptocurrencies and persuade them to switch to micropayments. It's that
simple.

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cloud_thrasher
That's assuming the metrics they measure actually means anything. It's been
proven many times that all the "science" behind these metrics and the
resulting numbers are meaningless.

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tehsauce
I have personally suspected this, but was unaware it has been "proven many
times". Do you have some references?

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TrueDuality
That's liking playing aggressive russian roulette with your machine. Do you
like malware? Because that's how you get malware.

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gremlinsinc
why not sell raspberry pi's that are just clickbots that anyone can buy and
plug into their lan as a google protest that just clicks google ads all day
long...that way your computer won't get infected just the pi.

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klyrs
Follow related searches randomly, use random fingerprints to simulate
sessions. Click more ads. Search for terms on the advertiser's page. Click
more ads. Search for random terms mixed with common terms in the session.
Click more ads.

Spam the damn spammers and teach the AI with uncorrelated garbage mixed into
the correlations it's already learned.

