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What would happen (theoretically) if ublock would be changed to not only hide the ads, but click on each and every one of them. Would that disincentivize ad net
by 63stack 8mo ago
What would happen (theoretically) if ublock would be changed to not only hide the ads, but click on each and every one of them. Would that disincentivize ad networks to run ads because the data would be poisoned?
- rahimnathwani 8mo agoAdnauseam (https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/) does this
- rvnx 8mo agoIt's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US, viewed as a scheme to defraud advertisers by generating invalid clicks that cause financial harm, by depleting their budgets and push them to spend for fake traffic), but in practice it's way easier to just blacklist that IP / user. The big networks filter such traffic, the small networks benefit from it. https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1pq6kgp/is_it_legal_to_trick_ads_into_thinking_they_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1pq6kgp/is_it_legal_... You may also get accidentally get your own website blacklisted or moved to a lower RPM tier, or provoke shadow-ban websites that you like to visit, or... generate more ad revenue for them.
- Terretta 8mo agoDon't tell me I'm not allowed to click buttons you put in my face. Any jurisdiction where this is supposedly illegal, it hasn't been court tested seriously.* Per your link: "What you're describing is essentially the extension AdNauseam. So far they have not had any legal troubles, but they technically could." That stance or an assertion it's not illegal is consistent throughout the thread, provided you aren't clicking your own ads. "The industry" thinks you shouldn't be allowed to fast forward your own VCR through an ad either. They can take a flying .. lesson. * Disclaimer: I don't know if that's true, but it sounds true.
- y-curious 8mo agoTelling me this is illegal has made me want to download it more. “IT IS ILLEGAL TO ATTACK THIS NONCONSENSUAL SPAM SIR”
- Tor3 8mo agoSome years ago I was by chance listening to a radio program about advertising. They interviewed a marketing guy and he insisted that it was illegal for you to visit the bathroom or the kitchen while the ad was running (on TV or on the radio). Completely nuts.
- dylan604 8mo agoThat reminds me of the time I was flipping through TV channels and stopped in on TBN to see what color Jan's hair was going to be. Instead, I found Paul preaching about how anyone watching his programming and NOT sending him donations was stealing from him.
- direwolf20 8mo agoYou're not clicking the button, you're sending a known fraudulent request saying the ad was clicked, when the ad was not clicked
- sharperguy 8mo agoI still wonder about that. I don't have a contract with the advertiser to provide genuine data back about what ads I've clicked and what I haven't. The website operator does have such a contract and so cannot hire a bot farm to spam click the ads. If it's something that's been held up in court already then of course I have to accept it, but I can't say the reason seems immediately intuitive.
- direwolf20 8mo agoThere's a very general law that says something about using a computer to cause money to move
- pbronez 8mo agoSeriously? What laws catch it out?
- rvnx 8mo agoYou deliberate harm and financial damage using a computer bot. Almost all countries have provisions where you can be sued for any type of damage you cause and be asked to repair it (a minima at the civil level). Big ones detect it, so they don't care to sue. Small ones benefit, so they don't sue. This is your main protection, there is nothing to squeeze from a single guy. Even if you get him to pay you back the fraud, then what ? It costs more in legal fees. Still, it's such an odd concept to self-inflict yourself such; it's way better to just block the ads than to be tagged as a bot and get Recaptcha-ed or Turnstiled more frequently.
- malfist 8mo agoHow did I cause financial damage? I didn't charge anybody anything. I didn't pay anybody anything. I agreed to no terms and conditions
- rvnx 8mo agoWith your logic this is legal: > One public Firebase file. One day. $98,000. How it happened and how it could happen to you. https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/1kg9icb/one_public_firebase_file_one_day_98000_how_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/1kg9icb/one_pu... "It's just a script that makes a loop, I didn't charge anybody anything, I didn't pay anybody anything. I agreed to no terms and conditions". It's a very harmful practice to intentionally try to hurt companies, when you can just block what you don't like.
- zenethian 8mo agoOkay but hurting consumers by tracking everything they do is totally okay? Companies aren’t people. Fuck companies.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- infecto 8mo agoWrong. There is no law saying you cannot click every link on a website within your browser. It would not only be impossible to prove but also entirely wrong interpretation of existing laws. Now if you had an AdWords account and ran a botnet that visited your property and clicked ads, that’s fraud.
- pixl97 8mo ago>It would not only be impossible to prove I mean if you had an extension that did it I don't see why it would be impossible. And with an extension for that purpose it shows intent.
- infecto 8mo agoBack up a bit. AdNauseam and similar tools are not illegal. The only real avenues would be violation of ToS, fraud, computer abuse or similar. For an individual running this on their home PC for their own use it would be a real challenge for anyone of any size to prove harm. Now like I already said, if you are running a botnet clicking on your ads that is entirely a different story. So tell us what does having the extension installed prove?
- Larrikin 8mo agoYou're all over this thread spreading misinformation. AdNauseam has been around since 2014. It is specifically banned in the Chrome store so Google knows of it's existence. If you check the wikipedia page you'll see that they have landed in the press and taken multiple actions against the extension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdNauseam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdNauseam Usually when it's brought up people say it doesn't work or try to spread fear that it is illegal. Google banning them but taking no action otherwise indicates to me and the thousands who use it that it is in fact effective and Google has no other recourse other than their control over the most popular browser.
- bmandale 8mo agoclick fraud consists of the person who runs a website themselves clicking, running bots to click, paying someone else to click, etc ads on their own website. it becomes fraud first because they have contractually agreed not to do that, and second because they are materially benefiting from it. an unaligned third party clicking (etc) on ads has neither of those conditions being true, and hence isn't fraud or otherwise illegal.
- rvnx 8mo agoDoubtful. If you intentionally loop-download large files or fake requests on websites that you don't like, in order to create big CDN charges for them, then what ? Without reaching the threshold of Denial of Service, just sneakily growing it. Nobody benefits, except for the weird idea of the pleasure of harming people, still illegal.
- infecto 8mo agoYou are just wrong on many levels and keep repeating the same mistruths.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 8mo agoDoubtful Not doubtful at all. He literally laid out the definition of click fraud for you. As someone who ran ads on web sites as far back as 1995, that has been the term the industry has used forever. Replying with a dismissive "doubtful" demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about.
- rvnx 8mo agoYes, doubtful it is not fraud, just because you didn’t sign a contract does not prevent it from being fraud. And it is fine to use the terms click fraud when you conduct artificial clicks with the intent: Examples: https://integralads.com/insider/what-is-click-fraud/#:~:text=Simply%20put%2C%20click%20fraud%20involves%20the%20deceptive,inflate%20advertising%20costs%20or%20mislead%20performance%20metrics. https://integralads.com/insider/what-is-click-fraud/#:~:text... One of the top leading company of traffic filtering is literally using these words to describe that. Other users even 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13328628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13328628 + sources from court: > The opinion states: “click fraud” can occur when “either a (natural) person, automated script, or computer program, sometimes referred to as a `bot,’ simulates the click activity of a legitimate user by clicking on the Program Data displayed, but without having an actual interest in its subject matter or content.” Etc
- _DeadFred_ 8mo agoA plugin that does pre-fetch is illegal?
- reaperducer 8mo agoIt's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US Never in the history of HN has a [citation] been so [needed]. And from an actual lawyer, not just some rando cosplaying M&A in his mom's basement.
- rvnx 8mo agoCould be interesting to get your perspective
- reaperducer 8mo agoI disagree. I'm neither a lawyer nor a legal expert, and I don't pretend to be either on the internet.
- snarfy 8mo agoA "scheme to defraud advertisers", how infuriating. Advertisers are stealing my time and attention. Why is this not illegal also then?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- figmert 8mo agoI've never understood the use-case of Adnauseam. This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad. Unless every single person uses it, it's not going to stop business from advertising, it just makes the likes of Google get more revenue.
- dooglius 8mo agoI view it in the same vein as the thing where people waste scammers' time by pretending to be falling for it and being slow/unhelpful
- digiown 8mo agoAssuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about), it increases the cost on the business putting up the ad (presumably targeting you). It acts as a small punishment to the business buying the ads I guess.
- gruez 8mo ago>Assuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about), Which it probably doesn't, given that it uses XHRs to "click" on ads, which is super detectable, and given the proliferation of ad fraud I'd assume all networks already filter out.
- Lalabadie 8mo agoThe other assumption here is that ad networks want to filter out all clicks but the most legitimate. I don't think that's a very lucid assessment of how advertisers operate on the Internet. We all agree that they could take these steps. If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers), I don't think they want to cut it out from their revenue and viewer analytics.
- gruez 8mo ago>If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers) You think ad networks don't have logs more sophisticated than default nginx/apache logs? XHRs are trivially detectable by headers alone.
- culi 8mo agoData poisoning is probably a more effective way to preserve privacy than simply blocking all ads.
- SSLy 8mo agoclicking each ad would have no entropy. Clicking some on the other hand…
- billyp-rva 8mo agoYou would probably just start seeing worse and worse ads [0]. Legitimate ad accounts would stop bidding on your profile so you'd be left with only scam ads. [0] https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-chum/ https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
- tuco86 8mo agoWasting scammers money seems like it's targeting itself in the right direction. i used adnauseam a while ago. it clicked on about 1.5 million ads in half a year of usage. Not sure i can give good reasoning for this, but it felt like doing the right thing. :)
- lux-lux-lux 8mo agoAssuming those numbers are accurate that’s over 8,200 ads per day, every day. Absolutely staggering.
- WarmWash 8mo agoThis is also why when people turn off their adblock they only get ads for crypto scams and malware downloads, reinforcing the notion that even "clean" websites are infested with scams and viruses.
- Tom1380 8mo agoScams and malware are unacceptable. It doesn't matter if it's all the ads or only some of them. No justification there.
- direwolf20 8mo agoThat exists, it's called Ad Nauseum
- worldsavior 8mo agoProbably not recommended. Many small businesses rely on ads and it just causes a financial harm to them. No need to be cruel, just block the ad.