4 ms·
I dislike ads as much as the next person (and indeed run uBlock on nearly every site), but I'd feel wrong using this because of the cost to the advertisers. It
by ljoshua 10y ago
I dislike ads as much as the next person (and indeed run uBlock on nearly every site), but I'd feel wrong using this because of the cost to the advertisers. It would be further lining the pockets of ad networks while increasing expenses for, at least in some cases, legitimate businesses. Sure, it's a bit of fighting fire with fire, but I'd rather not be an unnecessary expense for someone in my fight against intrusive ads.
- eli 10y agoAdvertisers will just lower their bids, so it mostly hurts the publishers of the websites you visit.
- amelius 10y ago> Advertisers will just lower their bids, so it mostly hurts the publishers of the websites you visit. ... who will then have to revert to a more sane monetization scheme, which doesn't mess with their visitors' data.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoI doubt it. More likely, who will progress to even more insane monetization schemes...
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThe law is the ceiling, per the wise saw that any sufficiently advanced business model is indistinguishable from a scam. I hope we'll reach peak insanity soon, and then some trace amount of humanity will return to the industry.
- eli 10y agoI understand where you're coming from, but this seems an awfully aggressive way to send that message to websites that you presumably like and find useful. Merely blocking ads isn't enough?
- davidgerard 10y agoWhatever works. If advertisers and their apologists express pain at a given action, it's probably an action worth trying. (source: the comments on this page.)
- CaptSpify 10y agoThere have already been multiple attempts at allowing acceptable, quality ads. Nobody played along. Subtle didn't cut it, so now we're escalating to aggressive. Advertisers had their chance and they blew it. No sympathy from me
- DougN7 10y agoNot if advertising is what brings in sales. I've seen my ad prices go up every year. I can't lower bids or my ads don't show and I won't get sales.
- beedogs 10y agoI'm using it now precisely because of the cost to advertisers. They can all get fucked.
- developer2 10y ago>> because of the cost to the advertisers Odds are that this addon doesn't actually trick the major advertisers whatsoever. 1. Any user/session that is seen clicking many ads across many different domains will quickly have their entire history ignored. You can bet that if your browser is seen clicking 1,000 ads across 10 domains in one day, that your assault will be completely ignored and have exactly zero effect against the network or its advertisers. 2. If the addon manually triggers click events on hidden elements, then the ad network likely has javascript detecting these clicks as invalid and ignoring those impressions. a) Any element that is not visible on screen has events ignored - it will check for display:none, visibility:hidden, as well as common off-viewport positioning, transparency tricks, etc. b) When you manually trigger a browser event on an element, no event object is passed to the event handler, meaning those events are easy to detect and dismiss. Networks aren't guaranteed to implement #2, and any implementation may not be very sophisticated, but I'd bet a good penny that there is at least a basic client-side line of defense. If you manage to outsmart the client-side implementation, you're still very unlikely to outsmart the server-side analytics, where people who live and breathe this industry have spent over a decade writing software to analyze every ad click, specifically to not be fooled by such a naive attempt to hurt their business.