4 ms·

How is this not actionable? I'd get in touch with my state AG's office as well as the FBI.

fareesh 6y ago
If it's a conspiracy, the number of people involved would be quite high, so it would probably be difficult to keep it a secret.
parliament32 6y ago
Assuming this isn't Reddit, but just a bunch of users with AdNauseum installed, what do you expect them to do? Present a captcha before letting a user click through an ad?
- 24gttghh 6y ago
  That's one way to kill the ad industry, and I'm all for it!
  - kikki 6y ago
    And what should replace the ad industry - to keep websites running?
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      Maybe nothing. If it's a valuable service, a small subscription or micro transaction. If Noone is willing to pay for it, even the site owner themselves, maybe it doesn't actually need to be around. I think alot of labor of love sites would remain.
    - spideymans 6y ago
      Spitballing here, so excuse me if this is a horrendous idea: The reason we have aggressive web advertising is because the web has no revenue model to pay website owners for their content costs. So I’ve wondered if the web would be better off with a Spotify-like model, where ISPs pay web hosts per page view (or how long time is spent on a page). If websites want to be eligible to receive these payments, they’d have to commit to having no ads, or at least very unobtrusive ads without any tracking. And line Spotify, consumers would continue to pay a flat rate, regardless of how many pages they visit (within their data cap) I think the major web players are far too mature and entrenched to make such a major shift in the web’s revenue model. But if this had been implemented decades earlier, it might’ve had a shot at success.
- gruez 6y ago
  >what do you expect them to do? Present a captcha before letting a user click through an ad? Maybe not the kind where you need to solve puzzles explicitly, but a few months back I noticed they were running recaptcha enterprise on every page, presumably for anti-bot/fraud purposes. This would be consistent with the hn story a few months back which found that reddit was fingerprinting users through a company called "whiteops", also for anti-bot/fraud purposes.

If it's a conspiracy, the number of people involved would be quite high, so it would probably be difficult to keep it a secret.

parliament32 6y ago

Assuming this isn't Reddit, but just a bunch of users with AdNauseum installed, what do you expect them to do? Present a captcha before letting a user click through an ad?

24gttghh 6y ago
That's one way to kill the ad industry, and I'm all for it!
- kikki 6y ago
  And what should replace the ad industry - to keep websites running?
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    Maybe nothing. If it's a valuable service, a small subscription or micro transaction. If Noone is willing to pay for it, even the site owner themselves, maybe it doesn't actually need to be around. I think alot of labor of love sites would remain.
  - spideymans 6y ago
    Spitballing here, so excuse me if this is a horrendous idea: The reason we have aggressive web advertising is because the web has no revenue model to pay website owners for their content costs. So I’ve wondered if the web would be better off with a Spotify-like model, where ISPs pay web hosts per page view (or how long time is spent on a page). If websites want to be eligible to receive these payments, they’d have to commit to having no ads, or at least very unobtrusive ads without any tracking. And line Spotify, consumers would continue to pay a flat rate, regardless of how many pages they visit (within their data cap) I think the major web players are far too mature and entrenched to make such a major shift in the web’s revenue model. But if this had been implemented decades earlier, it might’ve had a shot at success.
gruez 6y ago
>what do you expect them to do? Present a captcha before letting a user click through an ad? Maybe not the kind where you need to solve puzzles explicitly, but a few months back I noticed they were running recaptcha enterprise on every page, presumably for anti-bot/fraud purposes. This would be consistent with the hn story a few months back which found that reddit was fingerprinting users through a company called "whiteops", also for anti-bot/fraud purposes.