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"Company which makes its money from advertising bans automated click fraud extension from being used in its browser."

by nimbix 10y ago

acobster 10y ago
Not that I'm really surprised by Google's action, but "fraud" is a pretty strong word for what's happening, and pretty disingenuous IMO. No one's pretending to be anyone they're not.
- nimbix 10y ago
  Click fraud is a standard industry term for robot initiated clicks, which this is a case of. What this extension generates are certainly not legitimate clicks form interested users, or even unintentional clicks that happen due to various reasons (some HN readers like to blame them on dark patterns, but they're really just of a consequence of the fact that ad tech is just not that great in general).
  - kylebenzle 10y ago
    No, it is not. It is an industry term for robot initiated clicks for the purpose of profiting, that is the "FRAUD" part, just clicking random ads is not defrauding any party to the benefit of another, it just wastes resources.
    - floweringlotus 10y ago
      Do you think it is fraud to order a pizza to be delivered to someone else's house, because you are a vegetarian and wish to destroy the business model of meat-based pizza? How about doing this to every pizza store you encounter that serves meat? You're not profiting..just wasting a business's resources by misrepresenting your identity and intentions.
      - spaceribs 10y ago
        Either that or tracking clicks is a terrible way of keeping track of ad effectiveness, and therefore cannot rise to the definition of fraud. What if I had a billboard with a camera that used face recognition to determine how many people looked at that billboard. Is it fraud to put on a mask to prevent my face from being detected? Is it fraud to put a bunch of faces on a poster-board and parade it in front of the billboard to confuse it? Websites only provide information that I then can choose to render/manipulate however I want, and what I do on my application on my end with that information is my business.
      - ben0x539 10y ago
        Someone clicking an ad is not a) making an order or b) pretending to be someone else, which seem kinda instrumental for the fraud in your analogy. The ad didn't get served with a ToS document explaining that by clicking it, you enter into a contract or whatever. It's your decision to pay money based on ad clicks, and it doesn't somehow oblige people who have nothing to do with you to only click ads in the manner you intended.
        floweringlotus 10y ago
        Alright, how about an example with no orders? Let's say you think the police state is evil, and you wish to destroy it by wasting its resources. Is making automated empty 911 calls justified? Just because you intend to use the 911 hotline as an emergency resource surely shouldn't impede my right as a phone owner from calling it in the manner you intended. It's my god-given right as a phonebook owner to call whatever numbers I see fit in whatever quantities I want to. It doesn't even have to be 911. You can DDOS the phone lines of any business to make them less effective. Is this ethically defensible?
        wvenable 10y ago
        This analogy is still a stretch. Both are examples of DDOS which prevents legitimate requests from going through. This is more the equivalent of replying to every piece of physical junk mail that you get using their provided self-stamped return envelopes. I think you'd be hard to pressed to argue that, while being a jerk move, you're still aren't entitled to do it.
  - lalalander 10y ago
    "Click Fraud" is an industry term precisely because that's what the ad networks want you to think. It's fraud when you unintentionally (automatically through a script or otherwise) click on their ads, but when they spy on you, it's not called "spying", it's called "personalised" advertisements. "Standard industry term" is just another way for the big players to justify what they are doing, in essence, a euphemism.
- notahacker 10y ago
  On their FAQ page AdNauseum reproduce the following definition of click fraud to argue they're not engaging in it: The practice of ... clicking on an advertisement hosted on a website with the intention of ... draining revenue from the advertiser Elsewhere on the same page they've even gone to the extent of explaining how they calculate the average revenue they think each simulated click drains from the entities they wish to "resist"
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    The difference is that in the classical definition, the revenue is drained from the advertiser to the click fraudster. That's an obvious and prohibited motive for traditional fraud. In AdNauseum's implementation, the revenue is drained from the advertisers to all of the sites where those ads are hosted and where AdNauseum's users browse. Neither AdNauseum nor the users browsing the sites benefit from that revenue. Instead, the advertiser's marketing budget is slightly less effective. This changes the behavior from an intent to profit to an intent to harm. I'm certain that they could prove in court that they do not intend to profit from this activity. But I don't know whether or not the court would classify the outcome of the activity as "resistance" or "harm".
    - notahacker 10y ago
      The classical definition AdNauseum reproduced regarded it as fraud if it was to generate revenue or to drain revenue. Wikipedia uses the even more straightforward definition: "Fraud occurs when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link" Regardless of what a court may decide if it ever gets involved, the term "click fraud" as its most widely used and defined certainly includes clicks aimed at causing a party to lose money as well as than clicks aimed at directly obtaining money.

"Company which makes its money from advertising bans automated click fraud extension from being used in its browser."

by nimbix 10y ago

"Company which makes its money from advertising bans automated click fraud extension from being used in its browser."

Not that I'm really surprised by Google's action, but "fraud" is a pretty strong word for what's happening, and pretty disingenuous IMO. No one's pretending to be anyone they're not.

nimbix 10y ago
Click fraud is a standard industry term for robot initiated clicks, which this is a case of. What this extension generates are certainly not legitimate clicks form interested users, or even unintentional clicks that happen due to various reasons (some HN readers like to blame them on dark patterns, but they're really just of a consequence of the fact that ad tech is just not that great in general).
- kylebenzle 10y ago
  No, it is not. It is an industry term for robot initiated clicks for the purpose of profiting, that is the "FRAUD" part, just clicking random ads is not defrauding any party to the benefit of another, it just wastes resources.
  - floweringlotus 10y ago
    Do you think it is fraud to order a pizza to be delivered to someone else's house, because you are a vegetarian and wish to destroy the business model of meat-based pizza? How about doing this to every pizza store you encounter that serves meat? You're not profiting..just wasting a business's resources by misrepresenting your identity and intentions.
    - spaceribs 10y ago
      Either that or tracking clicks is a terrible way of keeping track of ad effectiveness, and therefore cannot rise to the definition of fraud. What if I had a billboard with a camera that used face recognition to determine how many people looked at that billboard. Is it fraud to put on a mask to prevent my face from being detected? Is it fraud to put a bunch of faces on a poster-board and parade it in front of the billboard to confuse it? Websites only provide information that I then can choose to render/manipulate however I want, and what I do on my application on my end with that information is my business.
    - ben0x539 10y ago
      Someone clicking an ad is not a) making an order or b) pretending to be someone else, which seem kinda instrumental for the fraud in your analogy. The ad didn't get served with a ToS document explaining that by clicking it, you enter into a contract or whatever. It's your decision to pay money based on ad clicks, and it doesn't somehow oblige people who have nothing to do with you to only click ads in the manner you intended.
      - floweringlotus 10y ago
        Alright, how about an example with no orders? Let's say you think the police state is evil, and you wish to destroy it by wasting its resources. Is making automated empty 911 calls justified? Just because you intend to use the 911 hotline as an emergency resource surely shouldn't impede my right as a phone owner from calling it in the manner you intended. It's my god-given right as a phonebook owner to call whatever numbers I see fit in whatever quantities I want to. It doesn't even have to be 911. You can DDOS the phone lines of any business to make them less effective. Is this ethically defensible?
        wvenable 10y ago
        This analogy is still a stretch. Both are examples of DDOS which prevents legitimate requests from going through. This is more the equivalent of replying to every piece of physical junk mail that you get using their provided self-stamped return envelopes. I think you'd be hard to pressed to argue that, while being a jerk move, you're still aren't entitled to do it.
- lalalander 10y ago
  "Click Fraud" is an industry term precisely because that's what the ad networks want you to think. It's fraud when you unintentionally (automatically through a script or otherwise) click on their ads, but when they spy on you, it's not called "spying", it's called "personalised" advertisements. "Standard industry term" is just another way for the big players to justify what they are doing, in essence, a euphemism.
notahacker 10y ago
On their FAQ page AdNauseum reproduce the following definition of click fraud to argue they're not engaging in it: The practice of ... clicking on an advertisement hosted on a website with the intention of ... draining revenue from the advertiser Elsewhere on the same page they've even gone to the extent of explaining how they calculate the average revenue they think each simulated click drains from the entities they wish to "resist"
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  The difference is that in the classical definition, the revenue is drained from the advertiser to the click fraudster. That's an obvious and prohibited motive for traditional fraud. In AdNauseum's implementation, the revenue is drained from the advertisers to all of the sites where those ads are hosted and where AdNauseum's users browse. Neither AdNauseum nor the users browsing the sites benefit from that revenue. Instead, the advertiser's marketing budget is slightly less effective. This changes the behavior from an intent to profit to an intent to harm. I'm certain that they could prove in court that they do not intend to profit from this activity. But I don't know whether or not the court would classify the outcome of the activity as "resistance" or "harm".
  - notahacker 10y ago
    The classical definition AdNauseum reproduced regarded it as fraud if it was to generate revenue or to drain revenue. Wikipedia uses the even more straightforward definition: "Fraud occurs when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link" Regardless of what a court may decide if it ever gets involved, the term "click fraud" as its most widely used and defined certainly includes clicks aimed at causing a party to lose money as well as than clicks aimed at directly obtaining money.