
Ad blocker that clicks on the ads - eamonncarey
http://dhowe.github.io/AdNauseam/
======
forca
I realize this won't be popular, but I really have no feelings for ad
networks.

\- They allow shoddy security on their servers

\- They track users against their will

\- Info on me is sold w/o my knowledge or consent

\- Ads are a poor business model since they can be blocked

\- There is no moral imperative for me to view ads since I've paid to access
the Interwebs

I block all ads, tracking cookies, beacons, all of it... I whitelist my bank
and my email provider. Everyone else gets nothing from me. I lie about my
browser agent, I disallow scripts, CSS history, I disallow HTTP/S referrer,
DOM storage, I use a European proxy where I need to. This all works great for
me, as I have the right to move around the Internet as a customer, not a
product.

I think if anything, this extension makes ad companies sit up and take notice.
I won't be installing it, as I don't need it, but kudos to the authors for
throwing the cat in among the pigeons. Ad revenue from most of these sites is
based on tracking people and this is something I am against 100%.

~~~
acdha
> There is no moral imperative for me to view ads since I've paid to access
> the Interwebs

I dislike the ad model but this is dangerously wrong: you pay your ISP for
transit – unless you're subscribing to a specific site, nobody else gets a
dime from you to pay for their costs. Unless subscriptions or micropayments
catch on, that means that sites are either going to rely on ads or will be
limited to organizations with significant other revenue streams – neither of
which is a particularly healthy prospect.

~~~
wpietri
I agree that the point you're replying to is ridiculous, but I still think
there's no moral imperative. An equivalent moral case is broadcast TV ads. You
aren't obligated to stay in the room and pay attention; going to the kitchen,
using Tivo, and flipping channels are all morally ok.

Part of the reason that subscriptions and micropayments haven't caught on is
that people put up with ads. If ads stop working as a business model, I doubt
we'll be looking at a bleak future of watching Love Boat reruns and rereading
old Family Circle articles. We will find some other way of funding good
content.

Indeed, when I look at the way the quality of television has improved over the
last couple of decades, I think it's a reasonable argument that blocking ads
would be the moral imperative. As anybody who has worked in ad-supported
industries knows, consumers aren't the customers, they're the product. Rather
than being served, viewers and readers are being served up to advertisers. The
system has a conflict of interest at the heart of it. It's reasonable to
refuse to support corrupt systems.

~~~
dserodio
OTOH, the alternative to ad-supported content is paying directly for the
content you want to read, which is even worse from a privacy POV because
publishers will know exactly who you are instead of only knowing which
"demographic" you belong to.

~~~
pdkl95
Paying directly changes the relationship significantly - a business is
generally going to pay attention to their _customers_ that produce their
revenue than the "free" accounts that are the merely the _product_ being sold
to advertisers.

The Onion was right[1]. In the rush to sell out their "users" to to whomever
is willing to pay, a lot of people seem to have come to believe that
advertising is the only way to the internet can work.

The internet enabled many new ways of publishing due it removing most of the
per-transaction costs. I suspect we haven't even seen most of these methods.
While "Kickstarter" style funding and Wikipedia's "public television style"
requests for donations, while interesting experiments, are only the first
generation of what is enabled by the internet.

Unfortunately, untested and unproven (by somebody else) ideas do imply some
amount of risk, which scares a lot of people back into the traditional method
where the advertisers get to paint over everything.

edit: forgot URL

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o)

------
teddyh
“ _Most of you have browsers, and most of those browsers show you
advertisements, and I’m very puzzled about why. The advertisements are
annoying most of the time, they slow you down, they injure the concentration
that you bring to whatever task it is that you’re doing, and there’s no reason
why they show you advertisements; my browser doesn’t show_ me _any
advertisements. I don’t see any ads when I read The New York Times, or go to
wherever it is that you are happy going to, because my browser has Adblock in
it, and that pretty much ends the story. Even in this town, many of you,
indeed, I would guess, most of you are probably using the Firefox browser.
That means you’re two clicks away from not having any advertising on the net
anymore. All you need to do is google “Adblock Plus”, and say “I’m feeling
lucky”, [Laughter] thank you very much. Now you know why my friends – and they
are my friends – at the Mozilla Foundation are paid tens of millions of
dollars every year by Google – basically, not to bundle Adblock Plus into the
default distribution of Firefox.

But you also know why all the talk about advertising supported models on the
web is just talk, and why it is that in the end, all of those models are fated
not to work. Because in digital media, when you give people knowledge, you
can’t force them to take advertising, because digital media are filterable –
that’s the beauty of them._”

— Eben Moglen, _Free and Open Software: Paradigm for a New Intellectual
Commons_ , 2009-03-13

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Parad...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Paradigm_for_a_New_Intellectual_Commons)

~~~
orbifold
Hm, so how viable would it be to launch a rebranded Firefox/Chromium that
includes Adblock or HttpSwitchboard by default?

~~~
thesteamboat
Call it BadFox! (Ban ADs fireFOX) The logo can be a fox with sunglasses and a
leather jacket.

------
androidb
Bad idea, ads are also a way to support the site/service you are using.
Automatic ad clicks can get that site banned (i.e. Adsense will surely do
that) so that's a sure way to kill the site. Google for instance wouldn't have
existed without ads. Lots of people on HN saved millennia with help from
Stackoverflow (ad supported) and so on.

I'm now "ad-aware" so I know how to differentiate content from ads, but I will
click on an ad if it's something that's of interest to me. I support the
publisher this way and also get some value out of it. I don't like sites
filled with ads but my way of "punishing" those is to avoid visiting that
site.

~~~
forrestthewoods
I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads. First of all,
you're right that it would totally kill sites. Let's say it happens. What's
next? I would be ecstatic if sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker died. That'd be
great[1]. But it also kills good sites like Stackoverflow. That sucks.

Right now people don't have to pay for content. Almost everything is ad based.
Because of this people almost never pay for the really great premium content.
Well what if there was no free, good content? Would that lead to more great
content? Probably not... but maybe! What if suddenly people expected to pay a
small subscription fee to a small number of sites in exchange for great
content. That'd be, well, great!

How do you guys think it would play out?

[1] I think they literally make the world a worse place but that's a separate
discussion.

~~~
userbinator
_I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads._

It's simple, think of all the completely-non-ad-supported sites you've used,
and imagine an internet where those are the only ones around. Basically that
would largely be sites hosted by the government, companies (whose profit comes
from something else), educational institutions, nonprofits, and individuals.

From my experience, I've seen a lot of great content on non-ad-supported
(mostly personal) sites.

Stackoverflow in its current incarnation would likely not exist, but I'd guess
something similar would appear in its place. P2P systems might become more
popular too. It's hard to say but I doubt such an internet would really be
worse than the one we have today - it would just be _different_.

~~~
thesteamboat
Wikipedia doesn't have ads -- it follows fundraising/donations model of NPR
which is far easier to bake in to relevant content. In a world without ads,
this might be a model for Stackoverflow and other largish sites with largish
communities.

------
ganeumann
The Internet is already awash with bots that do exactly this: visit sites and
'click' on all the ads. Fraudulent ad networks employ these bots to generate
revenue. The adtech industry has already implemented software to ignore these
clicks (it's pretty glaring, after all, when all the ads are clicked
simultaneously when generally only one in every 500 ads is ever clicked.)

This also does not corrupt the algorithms most adtech companies use by even a
little bit. Weeding out the bogus clicks of people who would never, ever click
on an ad anyway (because only those people would install this extension) does
not in any way change the ability to project from the people who do click on
ads.

And, as others pointed out, by 'clicking' on the ad instead of just blocking
it, you provide information to the ad network anyway. If you really don't want
to be tracked online, block third-party cookies (or clear your cookies at the
end of the day), and turn off flash. (If you don't want to be tracked offline,
call your congressperson, and good luck.)

------
eli
As someone who runs an ad-supported site, I would really prefer if you just
blocked my ads and did not register fake clicks on them.

~~~
eamonncarey
Totally agree. There's something quite mean spirited about this.

~~~
forca
There is something also mean-spirited about tracking users. Yeah, yeah, I've
heard it's all anonymous, but I've been in the IT industry for a very long
time, and I know for a fact they can identify the users with enough time.
Because all of this is bought and sold behind the scenes.

I would be OK with ads that went straight to the site selling an item with no
tracking other than click-thru stats but not using the IP address, not
fingerprinting the browsers, etc.

It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop
users. I've seen this by testing it myself. It's a sham. It's the seedy side
of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price. Another reason to block
ads, since allowing them means you're buying into the way they do business.

Nothing mean-spirited about blocking a very strong vector for malware, which
we all know ad networks have become. I have a moral imperative to protect
machines under my control, so we block all ads, disallow all tracking, use
Disconnect, Ad Block Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere, along with other in-place
tools to allow users a clean Internet experience. Let's not even mention how
much bandwidth is saved by adblocking... That alone makes it worth it.

~~~
column
> It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop
> users.

Out of curiosity, which is cheaper?

~~~
forca
Desktop generally. Also iPhone users frequently are quoted higher prices than
Android users. I've seen this with my own eyes.

~~~
eli
And car dealers sell the same car to two different people for two different
prices. And Proctor & Gamble puts the same shampoo in an expensive bottle and
a cheap bottle and sells them side by side.

I understand why you think this is unfair, but it just doesn't seem like that
big a deal to me.

~~~
forca
It's a big deal because it's disingenuous.

~~~
kamikazi
<Offtopic for others, but imp for forca - pls don't downvote> Hi forca: With
respect to your comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304139))
where you stated you needed some surgery and sought help with figuring out
your options? I replied to it
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8334691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8334691))
which you missed. I can help since I'm launching this very service.

As you don't have any contact on your profile so there was no way for me to
reach you. I even contacted YC admin and they confirmed you haven't left an
email in your profile :( Since then I've been tracking your comments page to
maybe catch you live.

So let's talk? I can answer any/all of your queries and the ones I don't know
the answer to I can figure out. Think of me as no-obligation, friendly
discussion to clarify all your doubts. I hope you see this message.

------
verroq
This is a great way to get your favourite websites blacklisted for click-
fraud.

~~~
balazsdavid987
Exactly. This is way more harmful for websites than a simple adblocker.

~~~
greyman
But that is the point - they want to actively fight against ads who do
tracing, and by extension, against sites using those ads.

------
rebel
It's a shame this is even receiving front page publicity. This is ultimately
terrible for everyone except maybe a few anarchists that think they deserve
every websites information for free while sabotaging the publishers who work
to develop the sites. And if it actually were to take off, it would then be
bad for the anarchists who no longer get that free access to the information
they wanted. Who wins?

Edit: Seriously, how is this a good idea? You disproportionately harm the
sites you actually visit, and ultimately the result is A) Big ad networks shut
them off .. or B) Independent ads think their ads aren't converting and pull
them.

This is how you kill the sites you actually visit. They don't magically find a
new business model before hosting/payroll/whatever catch up to the fact that
their ad revenue has been shut off. I can't fathom what you stand to gain from
getting their ads shut off instead of just hiding them for yourself with a
standard ad block that is much more acceptable.

~~~
GhostCursor
We don't agree with ads as a means for 'paying for your hosting and content'.

Charge people for your content and hosting, but this ad business doesn't work
because of one reason: the user has control now.

Can't be as shady anymore.

~~~
rebel
Then don't visit those websites. If you haven't paid money to access the
content, immediately turn away from websites that are free and ad supported.
If you don't agree with it, why do you have the right to not only "steal" the
content on the website, but also needlessly shut down their revenue source
just because you not only want the data for free, but you actively want to
harm this person supplying the data for free.

Edit: I can't reply further down. However, I included in my original statement
that using adblock is an acceptable measure. Why do you actually have to shut
down the publishers revenue stream and ultimately their website to show off
your dislike for ads? If you want to go with your street musician example, the
way I see it is that you are free to not pay him money, however to punch him
in the face after listening to his music (and presumably enjoying it) is
completely pointless.

~~~
orbifold
An imperfect analogy would be street musicians, they play in the hope that
some people give them money for it. You are hosting content and each person
accessing it is perfectly free to display only parts of it, you have no right
to enforce that the content has to be viewed in a specific way. If I click on
a link to a website, I have no way of knowing whether it would display ads or
not. Since I have blocked ads for years, now I am not even aware of how awful
some of the sites look with ads (piratebay / facebook come to mind).

------
karmacondon
This exposes a fundamental flaw in the internet advertising model. On some
level I've known that a script like this could be easily written for a long
time, but seeing this working product really made it clear. It's unlikely that
millions of people would use something like this, but if they did it would be
chaos in the advertising industry. They love online ads because it allows them
to gather empirical metrics that can't be gathered from television or radio.
It's impossible to know objectively what kind of an impression a tv made, but
you can see exactly how many people clicked on a banner.

But this could also be a fatal flaw. If a lot of people wanted to, they could
destroy payperclick advertising. It would be almost impossible to know which
clicks were real and which were fake. Companies would lose a lot of faith in
the industry because an update to the script could play havoc with the online
ad budget of this company or that on a whim. I don't know why anyone would
chose the attack the online advertising industry and it wouldn't be a good
idea, but it's interesting to that it's possible. Online ads is a huge market
space but also one could also be severely disrupted by a greasemonkey script.
They'd better be careful not cross the line with tracking and privacy invasion
because this is one of the rare cases where people can take direct action to
fight back.

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting, blocking and click fraud all in one package :-) As many sites
live and die by their "traffic quality score" this seems like it would
negatively impact that in a serious way. It seems to me that could get a site
in trouble with its ad network, and if it were Google there have been examples
where it just gets all of its ad revenue revoked/tossed without resource.

So it seems like this might kill smaller indie sites if it became popular. Is
that the goal?

------
mpeg
I don't understand this, they say it prevents tracking but, actually, this
helps ad companies track you since they will now know you will click their ads
whenever you are visiting a certain site.

With ad blockers that prevent the HTTP request, those third party sites aren't
able to track you. The publisher can always track you but that won't be shared
with their advertisers or networks.

Disclaimer: I work in the adtech industry.

~~~
adjwilli
I'm not endorsing AdNauseam, but the idea is that the information the ad
companies track will be useless since the target person will appear to have
clicked on every ad regardless of true interest in the product. For instance
it will make it appear that a single, heterosexual male is interested beauty
products or diapers.

~~~
cbr
"this user clicks on absolutely everything we put in front of them" seems
really easy to filter out...

~~~
zmmmmm
It would almost certainly be filtered out as an outlier in any sensible
algorithm. With all the bots that routinely scan web pages for all kinds of
reasons I am sure that filtering out the "clicked on every ad" behavior is
probably particularly well handled at this point.

~~~
adjwilli
Yeah, you're probably right. AdNauseam would do better to click on only a
percent randomly.

------
lostcolony
The real solution is for ad companies to agree to allow their ads to be
vetted, and hosted on the delivery network's systems.

I had no problem with ads up until the point I went to the official online
source for a number of print comics, and had my browser forcibly minimized,
with a new window spawned in the bottom right corner of my screen designed to
look like a Windows alert, trying to trick me into installing malware.

At that point I installed an Adblocker, and have never looked back.

I don't mind disabling it when reminded (Hulu and the like), for certain
sites, but until I can be certain that websites with positive reputations
won't deliver such scurrilous ads, it stays on by default.

------
vdaniuk
HN is so oblivious about ad industry, it isn't even funny. The ad industry is
moving towards action-based model of payment, where advertisers pay for the
purchase, lead or download. This ad blocker will just provide more data about
users to advertisers.

Also if this succeeds, many small publishers will die and large publishers
will accelerate the introduction of native ads.

Also if this succeeds and most sites switch to paywalls, most poor
people(billions of them) won't have access to quality content.

The short-sightedness is so strong, I doubt the general ability of the HN
community to reach an educated consensus on the topic of ad supported business
models.

------
cyanbane
If you really wanted to cause chaos in the macro scale then having it randomly
select Ads to click would be better one would think. If an Ad network has
multiple Ads on a page that were clicked I would suspect it would be easy to
form some type of filter heuristic for that particular set of users. It may
cause a slight bit of obfuscation for that particular "user" on their side,
but as for the over all success of an Ad campaign it would not be hard to
remove those entities that selected ALL the Ads assuming more than one is
served on a page from a given network.

------
chatmasta
Nice. I had a very similar idea to this a few days ago: chrome extension for
DDOS'ing ad networks. Instead of just blocking the ads, send 10x requests to
the networks.

Not a nice move, but good social/thought experiment.

------
xefer
I honestly feel that blocking ads is a win for both the audience and those
serving the ads.

I don't mean this to sound insulting but if you're not (let's say) "wise"
enough to block ads, then you're exactly the target audience for 99% of the
stuff out there.

This is similar to the way Nigerian scammers purposely use bad grammar to
target the less sophisticated.

It's a win for the ad network because they're not wasting bandwidth pushing an
ad to someone who would never consider whatever they're selling.

~~~
Artemis2
Installing AdBlock Plus = smart? Doesn't looks like a lot of thought went into
this comment...

~~~
xefer
The point is, by installing an ad blocker, the ads that do get through are
ultimately seen by those to whom they are move effective.

Ad servers get a somewhat smaller but receptive audience.

------
secalex
The well-meaning but naive people behind this and other ad-disrupting
extensions are doing more than anybody to end the era of general purpose
computing. These products (several of which are created by for-profit
companies that then extort the ad networks) are slowly killing the desktop web
as a viable distribution channel for professionally created content. This is
pushing publishers to put more and more of their focus on the mobile space,
where their content is trapped in a mobile app that can gather way more data
and show unblockable ads.

We'll look back at the 2000's and 2010's as the golden age of the web, when it
was economical to publish content for free without relying upon the DRMish
guarantees of the major mobile OSes. In five years the desktop web available
to general-purpose browsers will be dominated by pay services (Netflix),
micro-payment supported sites, NPR-like fund drives (Wikipedia, Internet
Archive), academics who don't need to raise revenue, and sites with super-low
cost structures due to their reliance on user-generated content (Reddit).

------
smcg
one of the main reasons why I use adblock is to avoid malware (either from
sites that are malicious that I don't know about, or legitimate sites that
have been compromised to display malware ads, or legit sites that use an ad
provider that has been compromised to display malware ads)... so no, I do not
want to click on those ads, thank you very much.

~~~
psykovsky
NoScript and domain blocking using the hosts file is the best I've found to
stop tracking. AdBlock is such a resource hog...

~~~
smcg
my main gripe with NoScript has been performing transactions and buying things
online... if you don't allow all JS or enable JS on exactly the right domains
then your purchases can fall through or fall in to limbo. and I don't have any
resource problems with AdBlock.

------
Deregibus
Wouldn't this just enforce the existing ad preferences? Say the ad networks
determined that you're looking for a car. They then start showing you car ads,
this software clicks on them, and now they think that you must really, really
want a car. That hasn't messed up the fundamental information, it's just
adjusted the scale.

------
justinpaulson
"AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent with advertising
networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas."

Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that
information to target advertisements to you later?

I never understand the outrage against targeted ads. You are going to get ads
no matter what. That is how "free" content works. Would you rather the ads be
catered to your interest and show things you that you might actually like an
not know about, or would you rather have the ads be random things that you may
have no interest in at all. Either way, you are getting ads. The ad companies
are using this information to rob your house when you are away on vacation, or
to reveal your embarassing secrets on social media, they are using this
information to target ads to you and show you things that might actually
interest you.

Why the anger over this?

~~~
spain
>Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that
information to target advertisements to you later?

I found it hard to reply to this and I think its because you framed the
question in a strange way. Targeted advertisement is not only based on what
ads you click, but also the sites you visit and the stuff you view on them. If
targeted advertising only worked based on what you'd click I wouldn't have a
problem with it since I never click ads and it would be that easy to opt-out
of it.

Targeted advertising itself is a whole other thing. In order for it to work,
they need to gather data about you and this doesn't always happen in obvious
ways (e.g. clicking on an ad) and that means you can't always opt-out of it,
which makes it a breach of privacy in my book.

~~~
justinpaulson
So what? If they are using that information to cater ads to you, what is the
problem? What are they using this information for other than targeting ads?

~~~
spain
It doesn't matter, it's a breach of my privacy regardless of what they use it
for.

~~~
justinpaulson
Well I think giving out information to a company over the internet isn't
really privacy. They aren't collecting any information that you aren't freely
giving up. So I think the debate is really skewing what the term "privacy"
means. No one is breaking into your computer and finding out what is in your
private files, they are just collecting data you are openly giving out. Your
public record.

~~~
Nursie
>>They aren't collecting any information that you aren't freely giving up

They don't present a choice. Most non-tech people don't have a clue they're
being recorded. Especially not that they're being recorded in great detail
across multiple sites so that advertisers and marketers (many of whom have
exceedingly questionable ethics anyway) can target them better.

It may be semi-public, but its also done secretively and without permission.
If someone followed you out of your house and took a note of every shop window
you looked at, every book you picked up, everything you did, would you be
happy?

There is some expectation of privacy even in public spaces. The balance has
not yet been struck properly with the net yet. For now the technology is just
making it easier to violate.

------
Rudism
I worked in the online advertising industry for a number of years at my last
job, and I can pretty confidently say that the worst thing that software like
this might do is potentially earn a bit more money for some publishers using
the ad networks that are being blocked (if they're lucky enough to be running
any pay-per-click campaigns).

Nobody in the industry will even take notice that this exists. If they do
accidentally come across it, far from being scared or "taking notice," it
would at best circulate around a few internal email lists to give everyone a
good laugh.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this was actually developed by an ad
network as a joke--they know that ad-block users aren't going to be making
them any money anyway, so why not put them to use as what would essentially
amount to a free bot network of very natural-looking traffic to send to their
advertisers? Sure, it might lower conversion rates by a fraction of a fraction
of a percent, but any amount of natural-looking traffic coming through to
advertisers that isn't obvious bot traffic only increases the perceived
quality of the ad network. It's much easier to shuffle the blame for poor
conversion rates off to the advertiser themselves than it is to explain away
low traffic volume or bot clicks.

Bot traffic is usually pretty easy to identify--very low quality traffic all
coming from the same block of IPs, geographical region, or publisher. The
quality is basically a measure of conversion rate for that subset of traffic
compared against the average conversion rate across the entire network. In the
(unlikely) event that something like this product catches on and sees a high
enough adoption rate to actually affect the numbers across entire ad networks,
it would lower traffic quality equally across the board, thus making it
essentially undetectable. It's when that starts to happen that advertisers and
publishers start to get desperate and we start seeing them play new and
shadier games. You might be happy and safe behind your ad-clicking blocker,
but grandma and gramps who don't have the technical know-how to protect
themselves will start to see new fake download button ads, pop-unders, auto-
playing video ads, and other gross tactics being used to try to compensate.

My time in the industry has pretty heavily biased me against online
advertising quite a bit (I run ad blockers, no-referrer, strict whitelist-only
cookie policies, etc), but I can definitely say that running this extension is
pretty antithetical to its stated intention.

------
oliwarner
Just remember that while targeting the ad networks, you're hurting the small
publishers (who can't solicit independent advertising) more than the likes of
Google.

At least in the mid-term, Google can keep charging the same rate for the
clicks and still take their cut. If anything, this is making the networks more
money.

In the long term, this devalues a click. The very moment things turn, the
publisher will bear the full shortfall.

I get that some people don't like bad advertising. Point that out directly to
a publisher. Shame them publicly if they do nothing about it... But
undermining the incoming stream for _every_ little publisher out there is
irresponsible.

~~~
cbr

        In the long term, this devalues a click. The
        very moment things turn...
    

Why would you expect a sharp turn? Some fraction of clicks on the internet are
already fraudulent, and if people start using this product that fraction goes
up. But it doesn't really matter because it's all auctioned.

Let's say I run a billing service and I've placed ads on searches for "billing
service". I find that it costs me $X of advertising per incoming visitor, Y%
of these convert into customers, and a new customer is worth $Z to me. I'm
willing to bid up to $X x Y% on ads. Now lets say a lots of people switch from
blocking ads to giving them fake clicks and now half the clicks on my ads are
from this extension. Y% drops by half, because half the visitors from this
source are now just browser-extension bots, so I'm only willing to bid half as
much. But so is everyone else, which means my new 1/2 x $X x Y% bid is still
competitive, and there's twice as much traffic to bid for, so it all comes out
the same.

Ad networks take click-fraud very seriously because it's important to their
reputation, but the market is actually pretty robust to it.

(Plus this browser extension sounds like it would be really easy for the ad
networks to filter out.)

------
gglitch
I sympathize with anyone who doesn't have the technical knowledge to know
whether a given ad is benign or malignant, or even what the real differences
are between the two. For that crowd, the unregulated ad-based market (the web)
can feel quite predatory, and an adblocker can feel like a very sensible
default protective measure. If there were other trustworthy protective
measures in place, that gave a user confidence that a given ad or a given page
wouldn't do anything alarming or insecure, maybe adblockers wouldn't be
necessary.

------
randunel
The only reason I have installed ABP is google's youtube ads. All the other
websites are suffering because of google's politics with youtube, since I
encouraged all of my friends to do the same thing, just to watch youtube
quietly.

I would really like to use this project, though, on websites with paywalled
articles, not on others, but I would never bother creating or maintaining a
black/white list. So I might just go ahead and install it.. :P

~~~
randunel
Done, installed. While my ABP motivation is youtube, my AdNauseam motivation
is paywalled revenge.

I know all the other websites are suffering because of this, but as a user, I
don't really care, unless I get more problems than benefits.

~~~
showsover
>my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge. So instead of paying for access
(which is a decent way to earn something) you are mad that you don't get
everything for free?

------
alkonaut
The people behind the adblockers should throw their weight around a bit and
issue some guidelines for what kind of advertising is acceptable and just
whitelist the good guys.

I prefer being shown useles add that don't interest me, than being shown ads
for the thing I just bought or googled as it is today. Most as networks and
advertisers probably find that completely bonkers "but you get consumer
information that is relevant to you!"

Get off my lawn

~~~
sbierwagen
AdBlock Plus does this: if you pay the author of ABP money, then he whitelists
your ads.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting)

------
Imerso
While I agree that this can be a problem for the webpages you visit, see that
the point of the extension is:

" [...] to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and
tracking by advertising networks."

So while it may be a negative side effect the point of the extension is not
disrupting online advertisement, but disrupting online tracking. Even though
you will be effectively doing both.

~~~
chrisBob
Can someone explain now clicking an ad link prevents tracking?

~~~
loumf
It's explained on the site. If every ad is clicked by everyone, tracking data
is useless.

~~~
jackmaney
No, it isn't. Ad networks would have a clearer picture of sites that people
visit (albeit a muddier picture of ad preferences).

~~~
rvschuilenburg
Clearer picture? I think just loading the ad is enough info for finding out
what sites are visited. This just makes clicks less valuable.

------
Alupis
This is not a good idea... it will get sites you frequent possibly put into
review by their ad networks. By clicking ads every time you visit their page,
they will grow suspicious quickly... at least Google Adsense will...
potentially freezing or seizing all funds in the adsense account (the opposite
reaction to the spirit of this product)

------
joopxiv
Good effort in disrupting the online advertisement market, which for many
websites is their primary source of revenue.

~~~
ivanca
This is not disrupting; to disrupt you need to replace it with something. This
is just destroying.

------
lampstack2
I don't like ads either, but monetizing the internet is going to be a lot
tougher in the age of ad blocking.

------
acomjean
More in your face, html5 ads are coming (sigh). If ad blocking gets real
popular like an arms race where those that don't block ads suffer the most.

Maybe the days of site/advertiser direct partnership will come back (see
strobist/ midwest photo exchange or xlr8yourmac.com and otherworld computing.)

------
halcy
If the end goal is to reduce third-party tracking by ad networks, then
actually loading the ads, nevermind fake-clicking, certainly seems terribly
misguided, and that's putting aside that anything short of a proper click is
probably going to trigger ad networks bot detection measures.

------
nezumi
This would be perfectly fair if there were a reliable way for ad-supported
sites to restrict access to only clients which aren't running an ad blocker.

------
ClifReeder
It's worth noting that a decent amount of web advertising's "value" is based
on viewability, not click through rates.

------
crossre
That's bog data for you. Works well after a little why. No immune data mining
algorithm I know of.

------
cornewut
Those worried about supporting content creators - there are other ways to do
this( e.g. Flattr).

~~~
rebel
Can you show me a single example of a website making enough to sustain itself
on Flattr?

------
ivanca
> AdNauseam joins a broader class of software systems that serve ethical,
> political, and expressive ends

I have installed ad-blocker; but the level is self-righteousness is the only
nauseam thing here.

I'm pondering about creating a script that blocks users that use this one; if
you weren't expecting a fight back you are delusional.

------
chrisBob
Screw that.

If you don't like sites with annoying adds why send them revenue from click
throughs? There are also a lot of hard working companies out there that would
rather not pay $0.25 every time some ass hole with a browser extension visits
a page.

edit:toned down.

~~~
easytiger
Not sure if you've used google to advertise with before but they will work out
that this user is clicking maliciously and discard them. The whole point is
they won't get revenue from this unless you visit very few sites.

~~~
chrisBob
So does that make it better or worse than just blocking adds?

~~~
jackmaney
Worse, as ad networks can--and do--block publishers for click fraud.

~~~
easytiger
well they will be able to identify that the user is responsible, not the host.
hopefully

~~~
jackmaney
How?

~~~
easytiger
Same way they do now. They don't publicize the algorithms i believe

[http://www.google.com/ads/adtrafficquality/invalid-click-
pro...](http://www.google.com/ads/adtrafficquality/invalid-click-
protection.html)

------
rip747
this is absolutely moronic and childish

if you don't want to see ads, use adblock and be done with it. why do you now
have to be a child and "one-up" the ad agencies by sending fake clicks to the
them?

you do know that legitimate businesses and people advertise on these networks
and the only thing you're going to be doing is draining their accounts. if you
_think_ you're hurting the ad networks themselves by use this extension, you
are living in a fantasy world. i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way
to the bank with an extension like this.

~~~
faizanbhat
>i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way to the bank with an extension
like this.

Definitely not. If this were to catch on, the whole ad ecosystem would feel
the impact. Ad networks have advertiser relationships to look after. If the
numbers looks fishy, they are held to answer by clients and usually instructed
to stop running ads on sites where the suspicious activity originated.

------
jdalgetty
Running this amounts to fraud and will hurt the website owners, ad networks,
agencies and the actual advertisers.

