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What I don't get here is - who is doing this? I'm not sure who has the motivation to falsify clicks on Reddit ads. For Google ads, somebody might want to falsif

by ufmace 6y ago

What I don't get here is - who is doing this? I'm not sure who has the motivation to falsify clicks on Reddit ads. For Google ads, somebody might want to falsify clicks on the ads displayed on their site because they get paid by the click, but who other than Reddit would want to do that here?

seanalltogether 6y ago
I see ads in my reddit stream, but when I click them they are blocked by ublock
et1337 6y ago
Not sure about ads, but I do know with Facebook likes, people who sell likes have to like a lot of organic-looking random pages to avoid being banned. Something similar could be happening here. Either that, or it’s Ad Nauseam. Edit: someone else mentioned money laundering too.
advisedwang 6y ago
Perhaps competitors trying to drain the budget of the advertiser?
atian 6y ago
Let’s not first assume intent. There are tons of scrapers running on Reddit. Reddit ads are presented inline rather than iframed/complex load behavior like Google Ads. Also browser extensions, browser behaviors (which smartly preload pages, prefetching) all cannot differentiate a Reddit ad url vs a regular link. Reddit makes it much easier for any web traffic to follow through to ads. The issue is that Reddit doesn’t have a mature ad network infrastructure team to care about filtering traffic to better standards. Given that only 50% are jokingly fraudulent, I’d say they’ve already done an OK job and aren’t booking an order of magnitude more of the web’s typical random traffic.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  As long as it’s constant between ads, the scraper effect should all be a wash in the end, no? Ad buyers will pay half as much for double the traffic when half of the traffic is bots.
- ufmace 6y ago
  If it's all scrapers, why would somebody build a scraper that bothers to click ads? And if you wanted to scrape Reddit, why not use their public API instead?
- ffpip 6y ago
  > all cannot differentiate a Reddit ad url vs a regular link. Every ad links to alb.reddit.com . Every post links to *.reddit.com .
BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago
The real money is in astroturfing stories to the front page and creating the illusion of consensus in the comments section.
- staplers 6y ago
  The nasty part about this is it creates a positive feedback loop where easily-manipulated people see that "consensus" normalized and begin reproducing it elsewhere.
RKearney 6y ago
I use AdNauseam[0] which blindly clicks ads in the background on any page you visit. It may be morally wrong, but so is the amount of tracking ads do and the amount of malware that ad networks like Google let through. [0] https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
Groxx 6y ago
One reason I've seen detected elsewhere (wish I could remember the blog post tho): adding noise and farming "human signals" to get through later tests better. E.g. if you have a bot to click on ads to make you money, you'll be less likely to be detected if they also click other ads / have other background advertising data. Similar to how spam review accounts will also leave reviews on entirely unrelated products, both to appear more real at a glance (not just one "5 star buy now" review), and to throw off detection of "this account is obviously paid by this account".
the8bit 6y ago
The most common causes of false ad clicks on the web isnt fraud but unintended maliciousness. Eg. there are extensions around that 'click' and load pages or click through posts to cache contents, etc. Plenty of people write web scripts that end up looking to webservers like humans interacting with ad content.

by ufmace 6y ago

seanalltogether 6y ago

I see ads in my reddit stream, but when I click them they are blocked by ublock

et1337 6y ago

Not sure about ads, but I do know with Facebook likes, people who sell likes have to like a lot of organic-looking random pages to avoid being banned. Something similar could be happening here. Either that, or it’s Ad Nauseam. Edit: someone else mentioned money laundering too.

advisedwang 6y ago

Perhaps competitors trying to drain the budget of the advertiser?

atian 6y ago

Let’s not first assume intent. There are tons of scrapers running on Reddit. Reddit ads are presented inline rather than iframed/complex load behavior like Google Ads. Also browser extensions, browser behaviors (which smartly preload pages, prefetching) all cannot differentiate a Reddit ad url vs a regular link. Reddit makes it much easier for any web traffic to follow through to ads. The issue is that Reddit doesn’t have a mature ad network infrastructure team to care about filtering traffic to better standards. Given that only 50% are jokingly fraudulent, I’d say they’ve already done an OK job and aren’t booking an order of magnitude more of the web’s typical random traffic.

Scoundreller 6y ago
As long as it’s constant between ads, the scraper effect should all be a wash in the end, no? Ad buyers will pay half as much for double the traffic when half of the traffic is bots.
ufmace 6y ago
If it's all scrapers, why would somebody build a scraper that bothers to click ads? And if you wanted to scrape Reddit, why not use their public API instead?
ffpip 6y ago
> all cannot differentiate a Reddit ad url vs a regular link. Every ad links to alb.reddit.com . Every post links to *.reddit.com .

BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago

The real money is in astroturfing stories to the front page and creating the illusion of consensus in the comments section.

staplers 6y ago
The nasty part about this is it creates a positive feedback loop where easily-manipulated people see that "consensus" normalized and begin reproducing it elsewhere.

RKearney 6y ago

I use AdNauseam[0] which blindly clicks ads in the background on any page you visit. It may be morally wrong, but so is the amount of tracking ads do and the amount of malware that ad networks like Google let through. [0] https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/

Groxx 6y ago

One reason I've seen detected elsewhere (wish I could remember the blog post tho): adding noise and farming "human signals" to get through later tests better. E.g. if you have a bot to click on ads to make you money, you'll be less likely to be detected if they also click other ads / have other background advertising data. Similar to how spam review accounts will also leave reviews on entirely unrelated products, both to appear more real at a glance (not just one "5 star buy now" review), and to throw off detection of "this account is obviously paid by this account".

the8bit 6y ago

The most common causes of false ad clicks on the web isnt fraud but unintended maliciousness. Eg. there are extensions around that 'click' and load pages or click through posts to cache contents, etc. Plenty of people write web scripts that end up looking to webservers like humans interacting with ad content.