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I'm not going to downvote you. But it's in no way shape or form fraud. It's just like sending back business reply mail if you're not interested in the product.

by new299 10y ago

I'm not going to downvote you. But it's in no way shape or form fraud. It's just like sending back business reply mail if you're not interested in the product. It's not fraud. I can see a case for it being a bit like a DDOS attack. But I can't see a case for it being fraud.

harshreality 10y ago
I'm not so sure. 1. The authors of the extension clearly intend to harm the ad industry. There's no expectation that anyone will look at any one fake ad click and say, "oh, that person's sick of ads... maybe we should change our strategy." There's no business-side interaction with fake clicks like there is with empty returned prepaid envelopes. The only impact anyone intends or expects from this extension is financial. The intent is to get advertisers to pay more for fewer sales. 2. This is automated, and by distributing an extension, automated on a (potentially) mass scale. I hate ads and I'm the kind of person who would use that extension if I weren't already happy with ublock origin, regardless of whether it might be considered fraud. However, I think there's at least a passable argument that it could be. If the main reason for this removal is that Google views the extension as fraud, then banning the extension from the Chrome web store is fairly decent of Google compared to suing the developers.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  > The authors of the extension clearly intend to harm the ad industry Not at all, it is just trying to prevent tracking and profiling by obfuscating genuine clicks with noise. It is explicitly a reaction to ad firms ignoring do-not-track.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > The only impact anyone intends or expects from this extension is financial. Financial disruption is the tool used by most forms of direct action[1]. The power imbalance between large businesses and the people affected by those businesses usually leads to problems being ignored for the sake of profit. When money is the metric that influences decisions, the only way to effect change is to disrupt the source of revenue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action
  - timthelion 10y ago
    Logged in just so that I could upvote this.
viraptor 10y ago
> It's just like sending back business reply mail if you're not interested in the product. Without going into fraud-or-not, this is the opposite of how it works. It responds to every single business "I'm interested in all your products". This potentially generates some costs for the business which sees a new interest on latest products and makes misguided related investments.
- malka 10y ago
  yeah, and I'm allowed to do it. It's not against the law to be an asshole. I'm even doing it on the phone, for the companies that keep calling me despite me telling them not to: I make them lose as much time and money as I can, by scheduling fake appointment with their salespeople
  - viraptor 10y ago
    In some cases it is against the law. Spam only wastes our time and tiny fraction of money - it's literally just companies being assholes. And it's been declared illegal. Same for phone spam.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > It responds to every single business "I'm interested in all your products". This is unwarranted wishful thinking. Clicking an ad doesn't necessarily imply interest. > generates some costs Yes. Hitting businesses in their profits is one of the only communication methods some businesses listen to.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    > Clicking an ad doesn't necessarily imply interest. I believe this is actually the only thing that a real honest click on the ad indicates. What else would it do? > Hitting businesses in their profits It's also illegal in other ways. Racketeering idea would potentially apply here - you're making the company pay to get rid of problem (meaningless clicks) which wouldn't exist if you didn't run the extension.
onion2k 10y ago
But it's in no way shape or form fraud. If I "accidentally" visit my own website while I have this extension active it'll cause any adverts to be clicked and I'll earn money from them. Unless the plugin has a way to block the action on adverts that the browser user receives money from it's indistinguishable from deliberate click fraud - all Google knows is that the browser used a programmatic event instead of a user initiated click. To that end I can see why Google might want to disabled it. I hope they'll also reach out to the developers to come up with a workable solution rather than just blocking it permanently though. Google have an opportunity to show they do actually care about privacy on the web here.
- claudius 10y ago
  Just don’t have ads on your website. Easy as pie.
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    So, in some cases, you're advocating just closing up shop?
    - claudius 10y ago
      If your website costs so much that you need income to support it and provides so little value that people are unwilling to pay for those costs, then, yes, you should probably shut it down.
      - dkonofalski 10y ago
        You do realize that both YouTube and Google make their money entirely off of ads, right? If you had your way, we wouldn't have the largest search engine on the internet nor any of their spawned products.

by new299 10y ago

harshreality 10y ago

I'm not so sure. 1. The authors of the extension clearly intend to harm the ad industry. There's no expectation that anyone will look at any one fake ad click and say, "oh, that person's sick of ads... maybe we should change our strategy." There's no business-side interaction with fake clicks like there is with empty returned prepaid envelopes. The only impact anyone intends or expects from this extension is financial. The intent is to get advertisers to pay more for fewer sales. 2. This is automated, and by distributing an extension, automated on a (potentially) mass scale. I hate ads and I'm the kind of person who would use that extension if I weren't already happy with ublock origin, regardless of whether it might be considered fraud. However, I think there's at least a passable argument that it could be. If the main reason for this removal is that Google views the extension as fraud, then banning the extension from the Chrome web store is fairly decent of Google compared to suing the developers.

gpderetta 10y ago
> The authors of the extension clearly intend to harm the ad industry Not at all, it is just trying to prevent tracking and profiling by obfuscating genuine clicks with noise. It is explicitly a reaction to ad firms ignoring do-not-track.
pdkl95 10y ago
> The only impact anyone intends or expects from this extension is financial. Financial disruption is the tool used by most forms of direct action[1]. The power imbalance between large businesses and the people affected by those businesses usually leads to problems being ignored for the sake of profit. When money is the metric that influences decisions, the only way to effect change is to disrupt the source of revenue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action
- timthelion 10y ago
  Logged in just so that I could upvote this.

viraptor 10y ago

> It's just like sending back business reply mail if you're not interested in the product. Without going into fraud-or-not, this is the opposite of how it works. It responds to every single business "I'm interested in all your products". This potentially generates some costs for the business which sees a new interest on latest products and makes misguided related investments.

malka 10y ago
yeah, and I'm allowed to do it. It's not against the law to be an asshole. I'm even doing it on the phone, for the companies that keep calling me despite me telling them not to: I make them lose as much time and money as I can, by scheduling fake appointment with their salespeople
- viraptor 10y ago
  In some cases it is against the law. Spam only wastes our time and tiny fraction of money - it's literally just companies being assholes. And it's been declared illegal. Same for phone spam.
pdkl95 10y ago
> It responds to every single business "I'm interested in all your products". This is unwarranted wishful thinking. Clicking an ad doesn't necessarily imply interest. > generates some costs Yes. Hitting businesses in their profits is one of the only communication methods some businesses listen to.
- viraptor 10y ago
  > Clicking an ad doesn't necessarily imply interest. I believe this is actually the only thing that a real honest click on the ad indicates. What else would it do? > Hitting businesses in their profits It's also illegal in other ways. Racketeering idea would potentially apply here - you're making the company pay to get rid of problem (meaningless clicks) which wouldn't exist if you didn't run the extension.

onion2k 10y ago

But it's in no way shape or form fraud. If I "accidentally" visit my own website while I have this extension active it'll cause any adverts to be clicked and I'll earn money from them. Unless the plugin has a way to block the action on adverts that the browser user receives money from it's indistinguishable from deliberate click fraud - all Google knows is that the browser used a programmatic event instead of a user initiated click. To that end I can see why Google might want to disabled it. I hope they'll also reach out to the developers to come up with a workable solution rather than just blocking it permanently though. Google have an opportunity to show they do actually care about privacy on the web here.

claudius 10y ago
Just don’t have ads on your website. Easy as pie.
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  So, in some cases, you're advocating just closing up shop?
  - claudius 10y ago
    If your website costs so much that you need income to support it and provides so little value that people are unwilling to pay for those costs, then, yes, you should probably shut it down.
    - dkonofalski 10y ago
      You do realize that both YouTube and Google make their money entirely off of ads, right? If you had your way, we wouldn't have the largest search engine on the internet nor any of their spawned products.