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A lot of things costing a company money are perfectly reasonable and we rightly complain if a company sabotages them. Things like leaving negative reviews/ratin

A lot of things costing a company money are perfectly reasonable and we rightly complain if a company sabotages them. Things like leaving negative reviews/ratings, receiving refunds for defective products or shopping around to compare prices ultimately hurt someone's bottom line, so I think we can expect better from an analogy here.

notahacker 10y ago
I think "indiscriminately bombard ad networks with the intent of sabotaging the ad network's business" is a lot closer to my DDoS example (or smashing up a store) than "if a product proves to be disappointing, exercise my statutory right to a refund and/or tell people about it". I'd also feel Google could and probably should remove browser extensions whose distinctive feature was that they automated the process of submitting fake reviews or purchases/cancellations if they stumbled across a class of product the plugin designer disapproved of enough to want to harm the vendors' ability to continue selling it.
- ben0x539 10y ago
  I don't think you can reasonably frame clicking on too many ads as an act of sabotage. It's interfering with the metrics that some people who you don't necessarily have a business relationship use to make business decisions (like paying out money), but it's not obvious to me how you're obligated to be particularly cooperative in their gathering of the metrics. The system continues to work as intended, you're just not supplying it with the data its creators would ideally hope to receive. That also seems to contrast it with a DoS attack. I agree that Google should probably remove browser extensions that are convincingly designed to facilitate actual fraud. I'd also be on board with Google removing a browser extension that was designed by a site operator to produce artificial clicks on ads on that particular site, since now there's someone involved who probably signed a thing saying they won't produce artificial clicks. But my point with my examples was that you can harm someone's bottom line without it being fraud or otherwise illegal, so it doesn't just follow that if you harm someone's business, you're doing the equivalent of a DoS or smashing up their merchandise.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    > I don't think you can reasonably frame clicking on too many ads as an act of sabotage. It's interfering with the metrics that some people who you don't necessarily have a business relationship use to make business decisions (like paying out money), but it's not obvious to me how you're obligated to be particularly cooperative in their gathering of the metrics. The system continues to work as intended, you're just not supplying it with the data its creators would ideally hope to receive. That also seems to contrast it with a DoS attack. Blocking an ad/tracker is being "not particularly cooperative", and fulfils the goal of not seeing ads or being tracked pretty well. The entire point of modifying an existing ad blocker to click everything, as stated by the creators is to disrupt the metrics to the point where the system doesn't continue to work as intended, and cost the indiscriminately clicked ad-purchasers an average of $1.58 per wasted PPC click, as they've taken the effort to estimate (see their FAQ). I can't see how anyone can honestly argue that a tool whose creators openly state that its purpose is to indiscriminately "obstruct" and "resist" an industry to force it to change its business model by rendering its analytics worthless and wasting PPCers budgets isn't sabotage, irrespective of whether they agree with the desirability of the end goal.
    - ben0x539 10y ago
      Fundamentally I feel like sabotage involves something like me going to someone's place and destroying their equipment like in your original analogy, also I'm probably being really sneaky about it. Naturally there's a legal and moral right to me not coming over and fucking up their shit, and probably to not be sneaky in some ways. But here, they are wasting their money because they decided that they'd pay some amount per click. That doesn't somehow confer a legal or moral obligation on me, some random third party, to behave in such a way that this is actually a good deal for them. That whatever they measure when my browser follows an ad corresponds to some amount of human attention is a gamble they're making, and in no way comparable to the expectation that in civilized society, someone doesn't walk into your store and smashes your merchandise without being punished for it. Next we're going to go around and fine people for leaving their TVs running without paying attention to the commercials...

notahacker 10y ago

I think "indiscriminately bombard ad networks with the intent of sabotaging the ad network's business" is a lot closer to my DDoS example (or smashing up a store) than "if a product proves to be disappointing, exercise my statutory right to a refund and/or tell people about it". I'd also feel Google could and probably should remove browser extensions whose distinctive feature was that they automated the process of submitting fake reviews or purchases/cancellations if they stumbled across a class of product the plugin designer disapproved of enough to want to harm the vendors' ability to continue selling it.

ben0x539 10y ago
I don't think you can reasonably frame clicking on too many ads as an act of sabotage. It's interfering with the metrics that some people who you don't necessarily have a business relationship use to make business decisions (like paying out money), but it's not obvious to me how you're obligated to be particularly cooperative in their gathering of the metrics. The system continues to work as intended, you're just not supplying it with the data its creators would ideally hope to receive. That also seems to contrast it with a DoS attack. I agree that Google should probably remove browser extensions that are convincingly designed to facilitate actual fraud. I'd also be on board with Google removing a browser extension that was designed by a site operator to produce artificial clicks on ads on that particular site, since now there's someone involved who probably signed a thing saying they won't produce artificial clicks. But my point with my examples was that you can harm someone's bottom line without it being fraud or otherwise illegal, so it doesn't just follow that if you harm someone's business, you're doing the equivalent of a DoS or smashing up their merchandise.
- notahacker 10y ago
  > I don't think you can reasonably frame clicking on too many ads as an act of sabotage. It's interfering with the metrics that some people who you don't necessarily have a business relationship use to make business decisions (like paying out money), but it's not obvious to me how you're obligated to be particularly cooperative in their gathering of the metrics. The system continues to work as intended, you're just not supplying it with the data its creators would ideally hope to receive. That also seems to contrast it with a DoS attack. Blocking an ad/tracker is being "not particularly cooperative", and fulfils the goal of not seeing ads or being tracked pretty well. The entire point of modifying an existing ad blocker to click everything, as stated by the creators is to disrupt the metrics to the point where the system doesn't continue to work as intended, and cost the indiscriminately clicked ad-purchasers an average of $1.58 per wasted PPC click, as they've taken the effort to estimate (see their FAQ). I can't see how anyone can honestly argue that a tool whose creators openly state that its purpose is to indiscriminately "obstruct" and "resist" an industry to force it to change its business model by rendering its analytics worthless and wasting PPCers budgets isn't sabotage, irrespective of whether they agree with the desirability of the end goal.
  - ben0x539 10y ago
    Fundamentally I feel like sabotage involves something like me going to someone's place and destroying their equipment like in your original analogy, also I'm probably being really sneaky about it. Naturally there's a legal and moral right to me not coming over and fucking up their shit, and probably to not be sneaky in some ways. But here, they are wasting their money because they decided that they'd pay some amount per click. That doesn't somehow confer a legal or moral obligation on me, some random third party, to behave in such a way that this is actually a good deal for them. That whatever they measure when my browser follows an ad corresponds to some amount of human attention is a gamble they're making, and in no way comparable to the expectation that in civilized society, someone doesn't walk into your store and smashes your merchandise without being punished for it. Next we're going to go around and fine people for leaving their TVs running without paying attention to the commercials...