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It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent o

It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. What if the advertiser is not a rich company but a small business. How acceptable it's to destroy the potential value of her budget? Of course, Google might already be detecting it, but the intent of AdNeuseam seems nothing but despicable.

convery 9y ago
Or for the contentcreators, think Youtube, their CPM going from 2$ to 0.5$ just because people dislike Google seems a little cruel.
- ko27 9y ago
  If you are talking about the obfuscation, and not the ad-block part, then they never had those 2$ to begin with.
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  The cynic in me: Oh, no, my daughter will have less 2h videos of people unwrapping Kinder surprise eggs to watch; a cultural loss.
  - radicalbyte 9y ago
    Killer feature! Does Adnauseum work on iPad? :)
- cyphar 9y ago
  YouTube already ruined the CPM of creators several months ago, through a bunch of hair-brained schemes to try to appeal to advertisers that were scared by flat-out lies by WSJ. AdNauseum was created long after the "adpocalypse". I would not be surprised if some people are using it in protest of YouTube's attempts to ruin the ability for independent media to fund themselves.
- wyager 9y ago
  I would feel bad about this if YouTube wasn't already ramping up targeted demonetization via "YouTube Heroes".
amelius 9y ago
The problem with ads is much bigger than most people realize. To put it simply: ads work against the free market; instead of the "best" product, the one with the largest advertisement budget wins.
- srean 9y ago
  Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in place of ads ?
  - legopelle 9y ago
    I imagine a single state-owned database where merchants enter detailed product information. The consumers may then query the database at their leisure.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Which government would you trust to do that?
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        I'd trust the UK civil service to do that. The hardest but would probably be verification -- does that lasagne really only have beef in, was the cocoa for that chocolate actually grown in a Fairtrade farm, in Ivory Coast, etc..
        KGIII 9y ago
        I'm American. I don't even trust my government to do math properly.
      - gaius 9y ago
new299 9y ago
I don't use AdNauseam. However, it doesn't seem that hard for me to understand. If you see advertising as a social ill, that seeks to manipulate people into making purchases that they neither need nor will make their lives better. If that's what you believe it doesn't seem inconsistent to want to do everything you can to make advertising nonviable.
closeparen 9y ago
> the intent of AdNeuseam seems nothing but despicable. To some, the intent to operate a business, particularly one that depends on advertising, is despicable. They consider the act of making money (i.e. revenues > costs) to be evil exploitation of workers, and the act of getting people to buy something they can survive without (i.e. advertising influences whether and how much consumers buy) to be evil consumerist waste, part of a culture of buying shit you don't need, which they see as a cancer on human civilization. Running a DoS attack against advertising has a decently advantageous risk:effectiveness ratio as a technique to fight capitalism, if that's your intention, and for some people it is.
clarry 9y ago
> Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. Why not? Many of us are so hell bent on not wanting to see ads that we actually run adblockers. Then ad companies want to dmca or prosecute adblockers and advertisers call us thieves for using one (however, none of them would reimburse the ram, electricity, internet bandwidth, and time wasted with all that unsolicited spam). I don't care if they go bankrupt. > What if the advertiser is not a rich company but a small business. How acceptable it's to destroy the potential value of her budget? When they pay for clicks, they're gambling. No sympathy. It might be a good idea to cap that gambling budget and consider less risky ways to reach people if the yield isn't high enough.
oh_sigh 9y ago
I think the intent is to screw Google over. The advertisers are an unfortunate casualty
pasta 9y ago
I think there are two major point why people hate ads: no privacy and a potential source of malware and what not. Yesterday I was looking for a nice Android game and stumbled upon Mekorama. Not only is it a great game but the developer is asking very politely for some money without the use of ads. In the reviews you can see this is an absolute bonus. And because of this the game doesn't need ads for exposure. See, I just promoted the game on HN. People just hate ads.
amelius 9y ago
Arguments against ads: - They provide unsollicited information, which distracts and irritates users. - They use screen real estate. - They use bandwidth. - They use energy. - They make websites slower. - They introduce security problems. - They track users, collect their data. - They incentivize companies to disrespect our privacy. - They put users in an information bubble. - Market failure: not the "best" product wins, but the one with the biggest advertisement budget behind it. - They make people feel inconfident (see photoshopped fashion ads) - They play with our minds. - They are often targeted at children.
- srean 9y ago
  I think those descriptions are a little too subtle and too nuanced. Broader generalizations that make more sweeping claims would work better to make the point.
  - tyfon 9y ago
    I think each of those are broad and sweeping and show just how bad the advertisement has become.
  - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
    Absolutely. Broad, biased statements are indisputably the best way to gain deep insight into an issue. Details and worries about correctness often muddy the waters.
    - srean 9y ago
      Indeed sir, glad that you concur. My downvoters dont seem to agree. Poe it is.
      - philipodonnell 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure one of you is being sarcastic, but I can't tell which one. :-)
pdkl95 9y ago
This isn't shadenfreude; it's a type of direct action against advertising and indirectly the type of hyper-capitalism that allowed advertising to become malignant. When profit is the only metric that counts, the only way to send a message is to disrupt the flow of revenue. > seems nothing but despicable I'd suggest viewing it from the other side, but I suspect Upton Sinclair's caution may apply: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
- _ak 9y ago
  You overestimate the amount of impact adnauseam makes. Users that click on many ads on one page within a short time window, but never convert? Obviously fraud that's being filtered, the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side, and you very quickly make no impact at all, and will most certainly not disrupt the flow of revenue for anybody involved here. That's not some outlandish futuristic technology, that's standard practice for any half-decent player in online advertising.
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    > You overestimate the amount of impact I never discussed the level of impact for this type of direct action. edit: Also, if the impact is negligible, I assume you're fine with more people installing adnauseam. > Obviously fraud Good luck making that decision. Are you willing to defraud the people hosting your ads with an overly-sensitive detector? Unlike the user that installs adnauseam that doesn't have any contractual relationship with the advertiser or ad-hosting website, the advertiser would be committing fraud if their false positive is too high.
  - taneq 9y ago
    > the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side Isn't that a win, for a user who already runs an adblocker?
    - jdavis703 9y ago
      No it just means that you start seeing really crappy ads, i.e. Russian bride ads and malware ads with big "download' buttons.
raverbashing 9y ago
> It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam MacKeeper ads
omginternets 9y ago
>But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. Literally nothing else seems to be working, so poisoning the advertising well strikes me like a fair tactic.
- zo1 9y ago
  Have you tried regulating? Seems to work pretty well for places like China.
belorn 9y ago
Several reasons why adnetworks is hated to the point where people want to take action: Adnetworks don't take responsibility for what they publish. Malware, scams, illegal ads (such as targeting children), and resource depleting software are all ire-causing problems where it's the victim that have to shoulder it. Then we have the ethical question about tracking and creating registers over people who search for medical conditions. To target the sick and vulnerable is very ire-inducing. Doctor-patient confidentiality exist for good reasons and many ad networks have no problems in ignoring that. If adnetworks played by the common rules (ie laws) that we all have to abide to, then I would generally agree that citizen action like this is bad. But thats not the current situation, so its either activism like this or put our hope that global treaties is going to be signed that limit what companies can do and what legal responsibility they have.
throwaway7312 9y ago
If enough users adopt this, the effect will be advertisers flee whatever websites those users frequent. The end result being those websites (due to declines in revenue) cut their staffs, reducing the quantity and quality of their content. And then AdNauseum users complain on certain subreddits about the declining quality of the target sites. AdNauseum seems to be a case of "you destroy what you love."
- kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
  Something that can only support itself with ads has no right to exist at all in my view.
  - neotek 9y ago
    What a ridiculous way to think.
    - squarefoot 9y ago
      Badly exposed, maybe, but surely not ridiculous. We are so used to wasting hours alone in front of a screen while being bombarded by advertising that we are totally forgetting what it looks like to get out and speak with other people. Word of mouth, baby. When a product is good it makes a good subject for conversation with friends and relatives, and they surely don't cover my mouth with duct tape as a form of ad-blocking.
      - hanetzer 9y ago
        Off topic, but are you still interested in those ActiveX h264 dvrs? I've got sdks for a few variants of a chip family commonly used in them and am working on reverse engineering their binary kernel modules, and was hoping to start gathering helpers.
        squarefoot 9y ago
        Hi, thanks. I have only one of the old 4 inputs models left, but should get one of the new AHD ones and be able to do some tests in a while. I'm not expert in reverse engineering but if I can help I'll be glad to. I'm almost new here, if there is a way to send PMs to other people I didn't find it.
keldaris 9y ago
> It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Have you seen modern ads? They're a direct security threat, a threat against privacy and, many would argue, a considerable social ill. AdNauseam represents one of the few available means of direct action against the ad industry. Personally, I think it's a great idea. In fact, I would argue that until the ad networks take responsibility over the security implications of their actions, using AdNauseam is the ethical thing to do.
tomjen3 9y ago
It is not Schadenfreude, it is war and arguably a defensive one. And if you believe ads are wrong then it really doesn't matter whether it is a big or a small company that does it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
micheljones 9y ago
It's not schadenfreude, and this latest uptick in AdNauseam installation&use is not caused by anti-ad attitudes, but as backlash against what is perceived as thought policing by google, mostly in form of demonetizing and silencing popular YouTube users who lean right in their political expression.
- shimon_e 9y ago
  Yeah its a politic war. I believe it all started when some people on the left got some companies to pull their ads from some right wing Fox anchor. Unless someone knows of events older than this?
  - zo1 9y ago
    The earliest notable one I can think of is the whole Kellogs and Breitbart incident. However, specifically relating to Google, I'd say it's the James Damore political silencing by Google. And even more recently, Youtube has started censoring controversial videos and putting them inside a "gimped" version of Youtube. I.e. no likes/shares/related videos. It really is turning into a 1984 scenario.
    - micheljones 9y ago
      Yes, no likes/shares/related, but on top of that, the videos are demonetized + no longer embeddable.
    - UncleMeat 9y ago
      1984, where the government literally rewrites books, changes the language to be incapable of expressing dissent, and murders its citizens. Comparable to firing a guy who upset a huge portion of the company and false positives on hate detection algorithms. Sure.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    This has been going on for decades - I can remember it being used as a tactic against apartheit in South Africa.
whipoodle 9y ago
Somehow, I think Google just might pull through this dire situation.
wyager 9y ago
I can imagine several reasonable belief systems that would justify attacking advertisers; for example, if you view advertising as a form of psychological pollution. However, given that one generally chooses to go on websites that serve ads, I think it's harder to justify messing with web ads as opposed to, say, billboards.
feelin_googley 9y ago
This is one way to look at it. The type of business Doubleclick engages in is neither efficient nor effective on most web users but it causes a pervasive wide scale annoyance to all who enounter Doublclick's tentacles. One could argue that Doubleclick (now Google) must retain a certain level of schadenfreude to pollute the web with their garbage for so long knowing that, in the main, they are only creating a nuisance for web users, not generating revenue for their customers. If a salesman has to knock on thousands of doors to find only a single buyer, there is always the chance communities close their gates to keep the salesman out. Clearly, most people living in the community are not interested in what he is selling. Is it reasonable to annoy thousands of people to find one person who will buy? Who knows? But certainly, one can expect that there will be thousands of annoyed people. Another way to look at this, especially after Google acquired Doubleclick, is that it could be the customers purchasing ads who are being deceived. It is hard to imagine that web users are deceiving Doubleclick and Google by clicking on ads and not purchasing products. Doubleclick knows most users do not click and do not purchase products/services in response to these ads. But those purchasing ads may not know this. The information asymmetry is in Google's favor. These "adnauseum" users appear to be acting out of frustration in response to the promulgation of advertising that Google knows most users are not interested in. They are not achieving any financial gain, and certainly not by deceiving others. It is easier to imagine a situation where those parties buying ads are being deceived by Doubleclick to believe that certain web advertising is more efficient, effective and reliable than it truly is. Hence the refunds. Users are entitled to click on whatever they so choose. If they become frustrated and start clicking on everything, it is hard to argue this is "fraudulent" or deceptive. They are expressing themselves honestly: they are frustrated. The possibility that users can click on anything and everything in a page presented to them has always been there; buyers of web advertising should be aware of this when engaging a web ad sales company. Leading them to believe otherwise might be deceptive or even "fraudulent".
gasof 9y ago
Demonizing the anti-advertisement camp doesn't help your case. There are legitimate reasons people dislike the deep penetration of advertisements in every area of life. I personally consider ads unethical, and I don't care if I decrease the effectiveness of what I consider to an unethical practice, in fact it's a joyous thing to me. Your tone convinced me to go to the distance of moving to AdNauseam, and I'll be changing my recommendations to friends on unmetered connections as well.

convery 9y ago

Or for the contentcreators, think Youtube, their CPM going from 2$ to 0.5$ just because people dislike Google seems a little cruel.

ko27 9y ago
If you are talking about the obfuscation, and not the ad-block part, then they never had those 2$ to begin with.
_pmf_ 9y ago
The cynic in me: Oh, no, my daughter will have less 2h videos of people unwrapping Kinder surprise eggs to watch; a cultural loss.
- radicalbyte 9y ago
  Killer feature! Does Adnauseum work on iPad? :)
cyphar 9y ago
YouTube already ruined the CPM of creators several months ago, through a bunch of hair-brained schemes to try to appeal to advertisers that were scared by flat-out lies by WSJ. AdNauseum was created long after the "adpocalypse". I would not be surprised if some people are using it in protest of YouTube's attempts to ruin the ability for independent media to fund themselves.
wyager 9y ago
I would feel bad about this if YouTube wasn't already ramping up targeted demonetization via "YouTube Heroes".

amelius 9y ago

The problem with ads is much bigger than most people realize. To put it simply: ads work against the free market; instead of the "best" product, the one with the largest advertisement budget wins.

srean 9y ago
Free market cannot work without propagation of information. Curious what kind of mechanism you envision to solve that problem: public service anouncements in place of ads ?
- legopelle 9y ago
  I imagine a single state-owned database where merchants enter detailed product information. The consumers may then query the database at their leisure.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Which government would you trust to do that?
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      I'd trust the UK civil service to do that. The hardest but would probably be verification -- does that lasagne really only have beef in, was the cocoa for that chocolate actually grown in a Fairtrade farm, in Ivory Coast, etc..
      - KGIII 9y ago
        I'm American. I don't even trust my government to do math properly.
    - gaius 9y ago

new299 9y ago

I don't use AdNauseam. However, it doesn't seem that hard for me to understand. If you see advertising as a social ill, that seeks to manipulate people into making purchases that they neither need nor will make their lives better. If that's what you believe it doesn't seem inconsistent to want to do everything you can to make advertising nonviable.

closeparen 9y ago

> the intent of AdNeuseam seems nothing but despicable. To some, the intent to operate a business, particularly one that depends on advertising, is despicable. They consider the act of making money (i.e. revenues > costs) to be evil exploitation of workers, and the act of getting people to buy something they can survive without (i.e. advertising influences whether and how much consumers buy) to be evil consumerist waste, part of a culture of buying shit you don't need, which they see as a cancer on human civilization. Running a DoS attack against advertising has a decently advantageous risk:effectiveness ratio as a technique to fight capitalism, if that's your intention, and for some people it is.

clarry 9y ago

> Ads can be hated. That's all right. But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. Why not? Many of us are so hell bent on not wanting to see ads that we actually run adblockers. Then ad companies want to dmca or prosecute adblockers and advertisers call us thieves for using one (however, none of them would reimburse the ram, electricity, internet bandwidth, and time wasted with all that unsolicited spam). I don't care if they go bankrupt. > What if the advertiser is not a rich company but a small business. How acceptable it's to destroy the potential value of her budget? When they pay for clicks, they're gambling. No sympathy. It might be a good idea to cap that gambling budget and consider less risky ways to reach people if the yield isn't high enough.

oh_sigh 9y ago

I think the intent is to screw Google over. The advertisers are an unfortunate casualty

pasta 9y ago

I think there are two major point why people hate ads: no privacy and a potential source of malware and what not. Yesterday I was looking for a nice Android game and stumbled upon Mekorama. Not only is it a great game but the developer is asking very politely for some money without the use of ads. In the reviews you can see this is an absolute bonus. And because of this the game doesn't need ads for exposure. See, I just promoted the game on HN. People just hate ads.

amelius 9y ago

Arguments against ads: - They provide unsollicited information, which distracts and irritates users. - They use screen real estate. - They use bandwidth. - They use energy. - They make websites slower. - They introduce security problems. - They track users, collect their data. - They incentivize companies to disrespect our privacy. - They put users in an information bubble. - Market failure: not the "best" product wins, but the one with the biggest advertisement budget behind it. - They make people feel inconfident (see photoshopped fashion ads) - They play with our minds. - They are often targeted at children.

srean 9y ago
I think those descriptions are a little too subtle and too nuanced. Broader generalizations that make more sweeping claims would work better to make the point.
- tyfon 9y ago
  I think each of those are broad and sweeping and show just how bad the advertisement has become.
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  Absolutely. Broad, biased statements are indisputably the best way to gain deep insight into an issue. Details and worries about correctness often muddy the waters.
  - srean 9y ago
    Indeed sir, glad that you concur. My downvoters dont seem to agree. Poe it is.
    - philipodonnell 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure one of you is being sarcastic, but I can't tell which one. :-)

pdkl95 9y ago

This isn't shadenfreude; it's a type of direct action against advertising and indirectly the type of hyper-capitalism that allowed advertising to become malignant. When profit is the only metric that counts, the only way to send a message is to disrupt the flow of revenue. > seems nothing but despicable I'd suggest viewing it from the other side, but I suspect Upton Sinclair's caution may apply: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

_ak 9y ago
You overestimate the amount of impact adnauseam makes. Users that click on many ads on one page within a short time window, but never convert? Obviously fraud that's being filtered, the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side, and you very quickly make no impact at all, and will most certainly not disrupt the flow of revenue for anybody involved here. That's not some outlandish futuristic technology, that's standard practice for any half-decent player in online advertising.
- pdkl95 9y ago
  > You overestimate the amount of impact I never discussed the level of impact for this type of direct action. edit: Also, if the impact is negligible, I assume you're fine with more people installing adnauseam. > Obviously fraud Good luck making that decision. Are you willing to defraud the people hosting your ads with an overly-sensitive detector? Unlike the user that installs adnauseam that doesn't have any contractual relationship with the advertiser or ad-hosting website, the advertiser would be committing fraud if their false positive is too high.
- taneq 9y ago
  > the user will be blacklisted on both the supply and the demand side Isn't that a win, for a user who already runs an adblocker?
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    No it just means that you start seeing really crappy ads, i.e. Russian bride ads and malware ads with big "download' buttons.

raverbashing 9y ago

> It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam MacKeeper ads

omginternets 9y ago

>But, why would anyone be so hell bent on depleting advertisers budget. Literally nothing else seems to be working, so poisoning the advertising well strikes me like a fair tactic.

zo1 9y ago
Have you tried regulating? Seems to work pretty well for places like China.

belorn 9y ago

Several reasons why adnetworks is hated to the point where people want to take action: Adnetworks don't take responsibility for what they publish. Malware, scams, illegal ads (such as targeting children), and resource depleting software are all ire-causing problems where it's the victim that have to shoulder it. Then we have the ethical question about tracking and creating registers over people who search for medical conditions. To target the sick and vulnerable is very ire-inducing. Doctor-patient confidentiality exist for good reasons and many ad networks have no problems in ignoring that. If adnetworks played by the common rules (ie laws) that we all have to abide to, then I would generally agree that citizen action like this is bad. But thats not the current situation, so its either activism like this or put our hope that global treaties is going to be signed that limit what companies can do and what legal responsibility they have.

throwaway7312 9y ago

If enough users adopt this, the effect will be advertisers flee whatever websites those users frequent. The end result being those websites (due to declines in revenue) cut their staffs, reducing the quantity and quality of their content. And then AdNauseum users complain on certain subreddits about the declining quality of the target sites. AdNauseum seems to be a case of "you destroy what you love."

kaffeemitsahne 9y ago
Something that can only support itself with ads has no right to exist at all in my view.
- neotek 9y ago
  What a ridiculous way to think.
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    Badly exposed, maybe, but surely not ridiculous. We are so used to wasting hours alone in front of a screen while being bombarded by advertising that we are totally forgetting what it looks like to get out and speak with other people. Word of mouth, baby. When a product is good it makes a good subject for conversation with friends and relatives, and they surely don't cover my mouth with duct tape as a form of ad-blocking.
    - hanetzer 9y ago
      Off topic, but are you still interested in those ActiveX h264 dvrs? I've got sdks for a few variants of a chip family commonly used in them and am working on reverse engineering their binary kernel modules, and was hoping to start gathering helpers.
      - squarefoot 9y ago
        Hi, thanks. I have only one of the old 4 inputs models left, but should get one of the new AHD ones and be able to do some tests in a while. I'm not expert in reverse engineering but if I can help I'll be glad to. I'm almost new here, if there is a way to send PMs to other people I didn't find it.

keldaris 9y ago

> It's hard to understand the level of _schadenfreude_ that warrants use of AdNauseam. Have you seen modern ads? They're a direct security threat, a threat against privacy and, many would argue, a considerable social ill. AdNauseam represents one of the few available means of direct action against the ad industry. Personally, I think it's a great idea. In fact, I would argue that until the ad networks take responsibility over the security implications of their actions, using AdNauseam is the ethical thing to do.

tomjen3 9y ago

It is not Schadenfreude, it is war and arguably a defensive one. And if you believe ads are wrong then it really doesn't matter whether it is a big or a small company that does it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

micheljones 9y ago

It's not schadenfreude, and this latest uptick in AdNauseam installation&use is not caused by anti-ad attitudes, but as backlash against what is perceived as thought policing by google, mostly in form of demonetizing and silencing popular YouTube users who lean right in their political expression.

shimon_e 9y ago
Yeah its a politic war. I believe it all started when some people on the left got some companies to pull their ads from some right wing Fox anchor. Unless someone knows of events older than this?
- zo1 9y ago
  The earliest notable one I can think of is the whole Kellogs and Breitbart incident. However, specifically relating to Google, I'd say it's the James Damore political silencing by Google. And even more recently, Youtube has started censoring controversial videos and putting them inside a "gimped" version of Youtube. I.e. no likes/shares/related videos. It really is turning into a 1984 scenario.
  - micheljones 9y ago
    Yes, no likes/shares/related, but on top of that, the videos are demonetized + no longer embeddable.
  - UncleMeat 9y ago
    1984, where the government literally rewrites books, changes the language to be incapable of expressing dissent, and murders its citizens. Comparable to firing a guy who upset a huge portion of the company and false positives on hate detection algorithms. Sure.
- pjc50 9y ago
  This has been going on for decades - I can remember it being used as a tactic against apartheit in South Africa.

whipoodle 9y ago

Somehow, I think Google just might pull through this dire situation.

wyager 9y ago

I can imagine several reasonable belief systems that would justify attacking advertisers; for example, if you view advertising as a form of psychological pollution. However, given that one generally chooses to go on websites that serve ads, I think it's harder to justify messing with web ads as opposed to, say, billboards.

feelin_googley 9y ago

This is one way to look at it. The type of business Doubleclick engages in is neither efficient nor effective on most web users but it causes a pervasive wide scale annoyance to all who enounter Doublclick's tentacles. One could argue that Doubleclick (now Google) must retain a certain level of schadenfreude to pollute the web with their garbage for so long knowing that, in the main, they are only creating a nuisance for web users, not generating revenue for their customers. If a salesman has to knock on thousands of doors to find only a single buyer, there is always the chance communities close their gates to keep the salesman out. Clearly, most people living in the community are not interested in what he is selling. Is it reasonable to annoy thousands of people to find one person who will buy? Who knows? But certainly, one can expect that there will be thousands of annoyed people. Another way to look at this, especially after Google acquired Doubleclick, is that it could be the customers purchasing ads who are being deceived. It is hard to imagine that web users are deceiving Doubleclick and Google by clicking on ads and not purchasing products. Doubleclick knows most users do not click and do not purchase products/services in response to these ads. But those purchasing ads may not know this. The information asymmetry is in Google's favor. These "adnauseum" users appear to be acting out of frustration in response to the promulgation of advertising that Google knows most users are not interested in. They are not achieving any financial gain, and certainly not by deceiving others. It is easier to imagine a situation where those parties buying ads are being deceived by Doubleclick to believe that certain web advertising is more efficient, effective and reliable than it truly is. Hence the refunds. Users are entitled to click on whatever they so choose. If they become frustrated and start clicking on everything, it is hard to argue this is "fraudulent" or deceptive. They are expressing themselves honestly: they are frustrated. The possibility that users can click on anything and everything in a page presented to them has always been there; buyers of web advertising should be aware of this when engaging a web ad sales company. Leading them to believe otherwise might be deceptive or even "fraudulent".

gasof 9y ago

Demonizing the anti-advertisement camp doesn't help your case. There are legitimate reasons people dislike the deep penetration of advertisements in every area of life. I personally consider ads unethical, and I don't care if I decrease the effectiveness of what I consider to an unethical practice, in fact it's a joyous thing to me. Your tone convinced me to go to the distance of moving to AdNauseam, and I'll be changing my recommendations to friends on unmetered connections as well.