
AdNauseam Browser Extension: Clicking Ads So You Don't Have To - tshtf
http://adnauseam.io/
======
jacquesm
The source is here:

[https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam](https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam)

This actively poisons the advertiser/publisher relationship, which in my
opinion is a much harder stance than simply blocking ads.

edit: I've tried it using the abp/adnauseam combo but it only worked on one
out of 5 heavily ad laden pages. It's funny, I have so many layers of this
stuff running that it took me quite a while before I managed to see any ads at
all and then to re-enable just ABP. So, on FF at least, not really recommended
by me, maybe someone else has a different experience. (tried it on two
different machines)

~~~
layble
By poisoning the advertiser/publisher relationship they are also poisoning the
publisher/user relationship. Like it or not publishers have to pay the bills
and these types of efforts are either going to result in paywalls (which users
of this plugin will no doubt try to circumvent) or by the content going away
all together.

I think a much better option for those opposed to advertising is to just not
visit those publishers. Anything other than that strikes me as theft of
service.

~~~
highace
I'd be totally cool with a paywall instead of slow and distracting ads.

Here's an idea - why don't a bunch of publishers (or a third party) get
together and build a subscription service for a reasonable monthly fee that
automatically gets me through their paywall when I visit their sites. In
theory it would be open for any publisher to join, and they get to split my
monthly fee based on pageviews.

~~~
ant6n
You'd think that would exist already: A service that costs, say, 8$ a month.
It should remove ads and paywalls, and pay the publishers some amount relative
to how much I've browsed their site.

~~~
arjie
$8 a month is a pittance. You can't even get the NYT alone for that. You can't
get the WSJ either. You can, just barely, get the Linux Weekly Newsletter for
that much.

This is like the GMail-without-ads idea. The provider and the user are far out
of sync with each other. You _can_ get a Gmail without ads today, if you want.
It'll cost you $50 / year.

To make it worse, that decreases the value of your advertising space. When you
have a free-only service, the value of your advertising is the benefit of
showing the people who can afford things ads. If you have a free and a paid
ad-free service, the value of your advertising is significantly lower, because
the people with money (and willing to spend it) are no longer going to be
shown the ads.

Great, now I'm going to advertise to a bunch of poor people and skinflints.
There's no chance I'm going to pay the publisher an equal amount for those ads
as I'm going to pay them for the rest. So that publisher will have to charge
paying users enough to make up the shortfall.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _$8 a month is a pittance. You can 't even get the NYT alone for that. You
> can't get the WSJ either. You can, just barely, get the Linux Weekly
> Newsletter for that much._

It would work poorly for the regular NYT readers, but I'd argue that's not
most of the Internet. People don't browse websites, they read articles they
found using a search engine or were linked to somewhere. I'm not paying NYT,
the Economist, WSJ, The Atlantic, and a hundred other websites $10 each, when
I read on average one article every two month on each of those sites. So I
think the idea mostly works, but we need to make sure that those who read more
articles from a single site pay correspondingly more to it.

> _Great, now I 'm going to advertise to a bunch of poor people and
> skinflints. There's no chance I'm going to pay the publisher an equal amount
> for those ads as I'm going to pay them for the rest. So that publisher will
> have to charge paying users enough to make up the shortfall._

So the system stabilizes at some price point and there are no ads? I'd say
"mission accomplished" :).

------
a3n
Maybe I misunderstand. Although it's nice not to load and see ads, and it's
really nice not to be tracked and correlated, it's really really nice for an
advertiser not to be aware of me personally, at all, correlated or not.

So this thing poisons the stream, but it also says "there's a person here, put
him in the database." It's like responding to spam; there's no future in it.

I don't mind _advertising_ at all, and when I used to read physical magazines
and papers, none of the ads bothered me, I'd either look at them, ignore them,
or throw away a whole section if that's all it was.

It's _tracking_ ads, and the ad networks more generally, that I object to.

If a site just sold and showed static ads, with no information about me
personally sold to or detected by the ad buyer, I'd be among the first to
whitelist such a site. Until then ... fuck off.

EDIT: Actually I guess there'd be no need for whitelisting, the ad would just
show up with the editorial content. So, Wired, when you whine at me for using
a blocker, why not instead just show me a picture of Suntory?
[http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory](http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory)

~~~
caractacus
Quite. What does it matter to an advertiser selling cars if I also indicate
that I like holidays to El Salvador, Dove washing liquid, and videos about
giraffes? They will still think that I want to buy a car.

~~~
a3n
Apparently it matters a lot, because they pay for that information.

------
bloat
"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video
recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the
bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television
for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks
believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly
onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to
believe."

Douglas Adams

------
rattray
This looks interesting. I personally think the anti-tracking brouhaha is
overblown and don't mind if "corporations" send me fewer irrelevant ads thanks
to tracking. But for those militantly opposed, this seems like a clever way to
fight back.

~~~
alkonaut
What happens is first you get "relevant ads". Then you get a different price
of the book on Amazon than I do, because you discussed buying it in a
"private" chat on FB with a friend.

Next you visit an airline website and you get a higher fare becuase of the
knowledge that you have already booked a hotel in that city so they know what
day you have to travel. What part of that do you believe is already here, and
what part is dystopian future?

I'm against the whole idea of information as a commodity, and the ad business
today is just that: it's customer information as a bulk commodity. I don't
mind being shown _ads_ I just don't want my information collected and used.
You could argue that website owners actually give me something (the content)
and want something in return (a payment or an ad impression), but I disagree
with how the transaction takes place without my knowledge. Just use static
image ads served from your domain, then my browser can't know it's an ad. It
will be a "dumb" ad, but those have worked in magazines and bus stops since
forever.

~~~
commentzorro
I hear you. You click on an ad because you might be interested in a trip and
now you're penalized all over the web because you actually showed some
interest in an ad?!

~~~
alkonaut
Worse, you'll be penalized because your mom clicked an ad, and they know you
are related, for example.

------
thinkloop
When you install an ad blocking browser extension, you are trading limited,
specific, mostly non-personal data sharing with publishers, for complete,
unrestricted, uncensored data sharing with extension providers.

Extensions can see the entirety of every page a user visits. This includes
their bank account, what they searched on google, what they searched on duck-
duck-go when they didn't want their search to be recorded, what sites they are
a member of, how frequently they visit those sites, at what times they visit
those sites, what emails they have sent and received, what they typed in their
encrypted proton-mail account, what 20 word passphrase they chose for their
bitcoin wallet, what they posted anonymously on 4chan...

From a pure privacy perspective, it's a huge net loss.

Even if you only enable extensions on non-sensitive sites, the difference in
the amount of data being given to the extension provider vs the data being
restricted from the ad provider, is very large during that time.

~~~
Spivak
> Extensions can see the entirety of every page a user visits. This includes
> their bank account, what they searched on ...

At this point why do you even trust your browser, or the OS it's running on
both of which have access to all of that and more? I browsed through the code
of uBlock and uMatrix and found nothing suspicious, it's not exactly a large
code base. Sure, it's not a formal audit or anything but it's enough where I
trust it.

I have to trust a single piece of software whose source is totally transparent
to me, compared to trusting every single ad network on every site I visit, and
every agency that data is sold to, and every state that data travels to. From
a privacy standpoint it's a huge net benefit as all that data the extension
has access to is never recorded and doesn't leave my machine.

~~~
thinkloop
>At this point why do you even trust your browser

I don't trust my browser :) and do expect some major data breach of my
browsing history at some point in the next 20 years - but it's worth it to be
able to browse.

Here people are trying to attain privacy by opening themselves up to possibly
much less privacy - just want to make sure they know what they are paying.

------
_ak
Are you people really that naive? Any decent adtech company will detect this
as click fraud and filter it. This does nothing but waste computing and
network resources for everyone.

~~~
SolarNet
Oh, so it only DDoS the ad networks who aren't adhering to No Tracking
standards. Alright.

------
Mz
As someone who runs a number of blogs, I have been following the "adblocker
wars" with interest. Here is my opinion on a not malicious alternative for
publishers looking to monetize:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving-
an...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving-and-thriving-
amidst-adblocker.html) [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-
to-make-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-
paypal-tip-jar.html)

I will suggest you promote that idea if you really want to see fewer ads and
not have to debate (internally) the morality of whatever of poisoning the
stream, etc. I think it is a payment model that can work. Your readers need to
value what you offer, but, ideally, they should be there for that reason
anyway.

------
soared
This will only help advertisers. If a large group of users click ads and
bounce immediately it will be obvious they are using this service. Send them a
fake ad, see it they click. If they do, don't count/charge for their clicks
anymore. Now Google has effectively found everyone who don't convert with ads,
and doesn't target them. This makes normal ads more targeted, increases
conversions rates, increases ctrs, and lets Google charge advertiser more.

------
sparkzilla
Why is Hacker News encouraging a project that aims to defraud advertisers and
websites? It's hard enough to run an ad-based business without having to deal
with getting blocked by Google from fraudulent clicks. If you don't like ads,
the solution is simple -- don't go to sites that have them.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not Hacker News (site) encouraging a project, it's users of Hacker News.

Also, I don't see how this is defrauding (in legal sense), it's just shoving
shitty behaviour back at the source.

Also, even if you don't like it, it's _still_ more ethical than what Uber is
doing, so I think it should be encouraged at least as much in the tech world.
;).

~~~
sparkzilla
Because Uber, a company in a completely unrelated field, is engaging in what
you see as unethical behavior does not give you the right to defraud other
companies of any kind.

It's fraud because it aims to register false clicks to deceive and confuse the
companies that provide ads. It causes trouble for website owners, who can
easily lose their entire income stream because they will be banned if the
amount of false clicks on their site is deemed to be too high. If you don't
like ads, don't go to sites that have them.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Uber is related here because you asked about HN (site or community) supporting
something, and Uber is one of the most popular startups in the tech crowd. I
further conclude that if said crowd doesn't seem to mind Uber's behaviour then
it definitely shouldn't mind this extension, because it _also_ provides value
to users and, as opposed to Uber, _is not actually illegal_.

But let's drop that, it was just me being snarky in the morning.

It's not a fraud, no matter how advertisers want to call it. It wouldn't fly
in court. You serve me some buttons, I click them. I haven't signed any
document, implicitly or explicitly, between me and ad network that would
oblige me to view or click their buttons in a way they want it to. So let's
not use strong words where they don't belong.

Yes, it aims to register false clicks to deceive and confuse the companies
that provide ads - because those companies give negative utility to users an
it's in everyone's personal interest to get rid of them. It's tracking, it's
spreading malware, but it's also simply shoving ugly shit in users' face. We
have a right to strike back.

> _It causes trouble for website owners, who can easily lose their entire
> income stream because they will be banned if the amount of false clicks on
> their site is deemed to be too high._

I say, good riddance. Site quality and trustworthiness is anti-correlated with
ad count anyway.

> _If you don 't like ads, don't go to sites that have them._

No. If you don't like people not viewing your ads, paywall. Oh, but your
paywall has to be leaky or else Google goes away? Well, welcome to the
Internet. It was supposed to be a medium of information exchange, not a
shopping mall.

~~~
sparkzilla
Some men just want the world to burn.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And some just want to burn out the weeds that have taken over the garden.

You should consider it lucky that we're only talking about this extension. Per
the other article that's currently on the front page[0], we could instead
build an army of robots that would roam the world and punch advertisers to
keep them down.

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611053)

------
joosters
What a waste. If you can detect the ads and trackers, just block them instead.

Besides which, their claim that 'targeting and surveillance becomes futile' is
untrue. You're still letting all the ad networks and trackers watch every web
site you visit.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not a waste, and not everyone cares primarily about _trackers_. Some find
_ads_ a problem, and this is one possible approach to reduce that problem at
the source.

~~~
joosters
Sure, not everyone cares about trackers. But the people who might care are
being misled by the lies on the web page.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough.

Their point, presumably, is that with enough noise tracking becomes pointless,
but I see how this extension doesn't really generate tracking noise, only
buying-preference noise.

------
pinkunicorn
Well this is amazing!

I honestly think if a majority of people start using this, Click Fraud will
eventual become indistinguishable from clicks made my AdNauseam and ad
companies for once will worry about milking the ad-cow.

But then... I know this will die in someway or the other.

~~~
eva1984
This won't have the push as ad-blockers, it doesn't have explicit benefits on
the user side while sabotage the publishers. So it will be very hard to sell.

~~~
jacquesm
Another weak point is that it does end up loading the ads which would slow
down the connection and it confirms the pages you've seen to the networks
increasing the amount of tracking done.

------
jsonne
I would be very careful with this. It may constitute fraud.

~~~
jacquesm
How so?

~~~
jsonne
If a publisher was to use this to click their own ads, it would be fraudulent
clicks. If they're charging on a cpc basis it would be defrauding the
advertiser.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, you mean the instance where a publisher would install this plug-in. I see,
well that would be _supremely dumb_ of such a publisher, but I don't think
this plug-in is aimed at publishers to commit click-fraud. I thought you meant
fraud on behalf of an ordinary user, your comment made no mention of
publishers.

~~~
jsonne
Well I mean in addition, if you work for a competitors company, if you
yourself are an advertiser in any capacity etc. There's many scenarios where
you could find yourself in trouble.

------
jonknee
Fraud As A Service.

