13 ms·

adnauseam.io i don't know how many people actually install this extension, but it is specifically designed to clicks ads so you don't have to :)

user5994461 6y ago
Warning to not install this extension if you use google ads in any capacity (work/blog/other), it will get your account banned from google very quick for clickfraud.
- notatoad 6y ago
  In addition to google, it's likely to get you at least shadowbanned on any site that has ads and does any sort of basic fraud prevention.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    What's Shadowbanning? Never heard of this.
    - notatoad 6y ago
      It's where you're effectively banned without being told about it. You can still use the service, but any action you take is isolated from the rest of the site. The term I think comes from reddit but the concept is by no means unique to them: your upvotes or downvotes wouldn't affect rankings and nobody would ever see your submissions or comments other than you. The idea is to let spammers or fraudsters waste their energies on accounts that have already been flagged, instead of notifying them that they've been banned so they switch to a clean account.
      - GekkePrutser 6y ago
        Thanks, I had no idea! Never heard of this. Really good explanation.
- _jal 6y ago
  Well, yeah. Similarly, if you work in a bank, I recommend not spontaneously shouting about the evils of capital while lighting the til on fire. The entire point of the extension is to attack the incentive mechanism that makes ad networks work. This tends to mix poorly with trying to turn a profit from those same networks.
crumbshot 6y ago
That looks great. I already use an adblocker, but playing a small part in interfering with their pay-per-click mechanisms sounds much more compelling. Are there any downsides to using this?
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  As others have said, any service doing fraud prevention might ban you. It doesn't seem to be happening yet, but that could change any time it got popular and they would be pretty justified doing it.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Since when is clicking on something but not looking at it fraud?
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I know you're being obtuse, but the fraud is that someone is paying for you to look at those ads. You're under no obligation to actually do it, of course, and the site is under no obligation to let you use it, hence the ban.
      - GekkePrutser 6y ago
        I just reacted to the term 'fraud' which is a legal term that has a clearly defined meaning. If it was really fraud it would be implied to be illegal. It's not a nice thing to do but it's not illegal.
- nomel 6y ago
  If you're goal is to get the pages, that you value enough to view, to move to some other way to get money from your use of their service (which I assume you think should be free), then there's no downside.
  - 6y ago
sincerely 6y ago
Always wondered how stuff like this/Decentraleyes etc work (or not, as the case may be) if you already have Ublock origin running.
- ghgr 6y ago
  Well at least Decentraleyes states in their page that "Complements regular content blockers" [1] [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Decentraleyes caches important JavaScript includes without which most sites don't work. UBlock origin won't block those because it'll break too much.
ffpip 6y ago
That is a stupid idea and will get your accounts and IP banned from Google and Cloudflare. Use it yourself if you want, do not encourage others to use it. It is based off uBlock Origin. Just use uBlock Origin.
- ValueNull 6y ago
  I’ve used AdNauseum for close to a year with no issues, it seems to be pretty good about simulating realistic clicks.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    Okay, use it yourself. But do not encourage others to use it. It is adfraud and most people set it to full click through rate.
    - Balgair 6y ago
      What is adfraud?
      - monadic2 6y ago
        Ad fraud is when you scheme to get clicks on your own site to defraud the ad network that would pay you for the space you sold them. It is not relevant here unless you're using the extension on your own site.
      - ffpip 6y ago
        Because Google calculates clicks as results, people are encouraged to click the ads, meaning news sites earn more money if clicks increase, and the advertiser has to pay more money to Google if clicks increase.
- h0p3 6y ago
  I'll challenge your claim that it's a stupid idea, if you really want to speak carefully about it together. Your prescription to not prescribe using it requires some justification. The best way to use the tool is to have it click between rarely and sometimes. Anti-tracking tools may allow you to dial it up as well.
surround 6y ago
This extension hides ads, but doesn’t block them in order to click them. Which means you don’t get any of the privacy benefit uBO offers.
rsync 6y ago
217 comments into this thread and not one mention of nextdns.io ... Just look it up - it's basically a cloud-based pi-hole and it's wonderful.
dheera 6y ago
This is awesome. I thought about exactly doing that at one point, since I block most ads, although I do it via /etc/hosts instead of AdBlock, so that makes it a little harder. I also have custom CSS/JS rules to block those infuriating chat box popups on various websites and thought it might be fun to not only block them but also run a chat bot on them in the background for every chat box that pops up unsolicited. Waste their time and maybe they will learn very quickly that unsolicited chat popups are the most annoying UX ever. (To be clear, I love chat UIs for customer support -- but not unsolicited "Can I help you?" sales chat boxes that pop up and cover part of the screen before you have even had a chance to understand the product.)
- jamiequint 6y ago
  How is breaking the mechanism that makes the internet free be producing tons of fraudulent clicks "awesome" in any way?
  - dheera 6y ago
    You see, the main reason I block ads isn't because I disagree with advertising. Advertising itself is fine. I block ads because: - They are often bloated with CPU-intensive JavaScript that makes my web experience less than smooth. I demand that scrolling and other UI actions be imperceptibly fast, and 90% of the time I find it's ads that are the culprit in making them perceptibly slow. - They are often loaded with tracking and fingerprinting spyware. I blocked Facebook ads as soon as they started showing me stuff that I had searched for on eBay and Amazon. Like, WTF. Big nope. I was fine with the ads, but not that level of tracking and sharing user data across companies. As such, I block ads in protest of the above. But if I establish a mechanism that clicks the ads in the background, they don't have to know whether it is me or a robot that clicked them -- as far as they are concerned my residence is a black box, and there are some intelligent beings inside this black box that click the ads, some of those intelligent beings are made of silicon and some are made of carbon, and they don't need to know the chemistry of what being caused the click. At some point in the far future of civilization and humanity, I expect biological chemistry to be abstracted out, and laws in place to not discriminate on the chemistry of a being, and economies will have to be rebuilt around that assumption. I'm just living that future now, and as far as the big companies are concerned, they can start thinking about new monetization models now that better align the collective incentives of my blacxbox with theirs. Traditional ads don't influence my purchasing behavior much either. I'm not their typical consumer. So it wouldn't have made a difference. My purchasing decisions are based more on a combination of first principles and friend/coworker recommendations. Now there's the issue of how ads might drive revenue, and that's how the internet is kept free. Sure. But I think there are other ways to drive that than the current iteration of ads. Social-media-ify it, gamify it, make it fun, and I'll actually want to interact with the ads. Make me have to play a game to get a $1 Starbucks discount, and I might play -- and go to Starbucks! You see, carbon-based lifeforms love coffee, and love games, so the possibility of a discount on that might actually make me want to play the game. But none of this tracking-spyware-CPU-bloat-while-I'm-trying-to-do-something-else please. Plain <a href="foo"><img src="blah"></a>, no megabyte-sized images, and no cross-site sharing of user data? If they can agree to that, I'll stop blocking.

user5994461 6y ago

Warning to not install this extension if you use google ads in any capacity (work/blog/other), it will get your account banned from google very quick for clickfraud.

notatoad 6y ago
In addition to google, it's likely to get you at least shadowbanned on any site that has ads and does any sort of basic fraud prevention.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  What's Shadowbanning? Never heard of this.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    It's where you're effectively banned without being told about it. You can still use the service, but any action you take is isolated from the rest of the site. The term I think comes from reddit but the concept is by no means unique to them: your upvotes or downvotes wouldn't affect rankings and nobody would ever see your submissions or comments other than you. The idea is to let spammers or fraudsters waste their energies on accounts that have already been flagged, instead of notifying them that they've been banned so they switch to a clean account.
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      Thanks, I had no idea! Never heard of this. Really good explanation.
_jal 6y ago
Well, yeah. Similarly, if you work in a bank, I recommend not spontaneously shouting about the evils of capital while lighting the til on fire. The entire point of the extension is to attack the incentive mechanism that makes ad networks work. This tends to mix poorly with trying to turn a profit from those same networks.

crumbshot 6y ago

That looks great. I already use an adblocker, but playing a small part in interfering with their pay-per-click mechanisms sounds much more compelling. Are there any downsides to using this?

thatguy0900 6y ago
As others have said, any service doing fraud prevention might ban you. It doesn't seem to be happening yet, but that could change any time it got popular and they would be pretty justified doing it.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Since when is clicking on something but not looking at it fraud?
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    I know you're being obtuse, but the fraud is that someone is paying for you to look at those ads. You're under no obligation to actually do it, of course, and the site is under no obligation to let you use it, hence the ban.
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      I just reacted to the term 'fraud' which is a legal term that has a clearly defined meaning. If it was really fraud it would be implied to be illegal. It's not a nice thing to do but it's not illegal.
nomel 6y ago
If you're goal is to get the pages, that you value enough to view, to move to some other way to get money from your use of their service (which I assume you think should be free), then there's no downside.
- 6y ago

sincerely 6y ago

Always wondered how stuff like this/Decentraleyes etc work (or not, as the case may be) if you already have Ublock origin running.

ghgr 6y ago
Well at least Decentraleyes states in their page that "Complements regular content blockers" [1] [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Decentraleyes caches important JavaScript includes without which most sites don't work. UBlock origin won't block those because it'll break too much.

ffpip 6y ago

That is a stupid idea and will get your accounts and IP banned from Google and Cloudflare. Use it yourself if you want, do not encourage others to use it. It is based off uBlock Origin. Just use uBlock Origin.

ValueNull 6y ago
I’ve used AdNauseum for close to a year with no issues, it seems to be pretty good about simulating realistic clicks.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Okay, use it yourself. But do not encourage others to use it. It is adfraud and most people set it to full click through rate.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    What is adfraud?
    - monadic2 6y ago
      Ad fraud is when you scheme to get clicks on your own site to defraud the ad network that would pay you for the space you sold them. It is not relevant here unless you're using the extension on your own site.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      Because Google calculates clicks as results, people are encouraged to click the ads, meaning news sites earn more money if clicks increase, and the advertiser has to pay more money to Google if clicks increase.
h0p3 6y ago
I'll challenge your claim that it's a stupid idea, if you really want to speak carefully about it together. Your prescription to not prescribe using it requires some justification. The best way to use the tool is to have it click between rarely and sometimes. Anti-tracking tools may allow you to dial it up as well.

surround 6y ago

This extension hides ads, but doesn’t block them in order to click them. Which means you don’t get any of the privacy benefit uBO offers.

rsync 6y ago

217 comments into this thread and not one mention of nextdns.io ... Just look it up - it's basically a cloud-based pi-hole and it's wonderful.

dheera 6y ago

This is awesome. I thought about exactly doing that at one point, since I block most ads, although I do it via /etc/hosts instead of AdBlock, so that makes it a little harder. I also have custom CSS/JS rules to block those infuriating chat box popups on various websites and thought it might be fun to not only block them but also run a chat bot on them in the background for every chat box that pops up unsolicited. Waste their time and maybe they will learn very quickly that unsolicited chat popups are the most annoying UX ever. (To be clear, I love chat UIs for customer support -- but not unsolicited "Can I help you?" sales chat boxes that pop up and cover part of the screen before you have even had a chance to understand the product.)

jamiequint 6y ago
How is breaking the mechanism that makes the internet free be producing tons of fraudulent clicks "awesome" in any way?
- dheera 6y ago
  You see, the main reason I block ads isn't because I disagree with advertising. Advertising itself is fine. I block ads because: - They are often bloated with CPU-intensive JavaScript that makes my web experience less than smooth. I demand that scrolling and other UI actions be imperceptibly fast, and 90% of the time I find it's ads that are the culprit in making them perceptibly slow. - They are often loaded with tracking and fingerprinting spyware. I blocked Facebook ads as soon as they started showing me stuff that I had searched for on eBay and Amazon. Like, WTF. Big nope. I was fine with the ads, but not that level of tracking and sharing user data across companies. As such, I block ads in protest of the above. But if I establish a mechanism that clicks the ads in the background, they don't have to know whether it is me or a robot that clicked them -- as far as they are concerned my residence is a black box, and there are some intelligent beings inside this black box that click the ads, some of those intelligent beings are made of silicon and some are made of carbon, and they don't need to know the chemistry of what being caused the click. At some point in the far future of civilization and humanity, I expect biological chemistry to be abstracted out, and laws in place to not discriminate on the chemistry of a being, and economies will have to be rebuilt around that assumption. I'm just living that future now, and as far as the big companies are concerned, they can start thinking about new monetization models now that better align the collective incentives of my blacxbox with theirs. Traditional ads don't influence my purchasing behavior much either. I'm not their typical consumer. So it wouldn't have made a difference. My purchasing decisions are based more on a combination of first principles and friend/coworker recommendations. Now there's the issue of how ads might drive revenue, and that's how the internet is kept free. Sure. But I think there are other ways to drive that than the current iteration of ads. Social-media-ify it, gamify it, make it fun, and I'll actually want to interact with the ads. Make me have to play a game to get a $1 Starbucks discount, and I might play -- and go to Starbucks! You see, carbon-based lifeforms love coffee, and love games, so the possibility of a discount on that might actually make me want to play the game. But none of this tracking-spyware-CPU-bloat-while-I'm-trying-to-do-something-else please. Plain <a href="foo"><img src="blah"></a>, no megabyte-sized images, and no cross-site sharing of user data? If they can agree to that, I'll stop blocking.