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AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jay_kyburz 3y agoIts a feature!. Also, I would not install this if you have Adsense connected to your Google account :)
- 3np 3y agoPast discussions: AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886300 - Feb 2023 (69 comments) AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043165 - Nov 2020 (11 comments) AdNauseam: Browser extension to fight back against tracking by ad networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20048216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20048216 - May 2019 (63 comments) AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936 - March 2019 (164 comments) Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15112524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15112524 - Aug 2017 (246 comments) AdNauseam – Clicking Ads So You Don't Have To - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109251 - Aug 2017 (174 comments) AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327228 - Jan 2017 (329 comments) AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13222733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13222733 - Dec 2016 (276 comments) AdNauseam Browser Extension: Clicking Ads So You Don't Have To - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611594 - Nov 2015 (72 comments) Ad blocker that clicks on the ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8515398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8515398 - Oct 2014 (238 comments)
- mgiampapa 3y agoThis may not be the best title, it's the desired function of the add-on to generate noise and making tracking and targeting less useful. There is nothing hidden about what it is doing for the user.
- 3np 3y agoI did a slight edit now, hope that makes it more clear.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cottsak 3y agos/fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users/fork defending users by silently clicking ads I came here with the revised title assuming malicious intent from the fork. I now know thats not how it works. So my title rename is just a suggestion to further clarify the intent. hth
- brianmorris10 3y agoI don't understand all this fork talk
- error9348 3y agothe word "clicking" to me suggests a change in behavior/new bug. ".. to silently click .." would remove that suggestion.
- throw9away6 3y agoDo you end up with some really terrible ads?
- endisneigh 3y agoFight against ads by giving the ad networks money and further incentivizing captcha and other tech to stop bots.
- arealaccount 3y agoIt will drive down key advertising metrics like conversion rate, and return on ad spend. Which will lower bids for ads. But it would be easy for Google, FB, etc to filter out this traffic. Which I guess is the goal of the plugin.
- nvy 3y agoIsn't the purpose to cause ad networks to lower fee payments due to rampant click fraud and thus to destroy the business model?
- paulpauper 3y agoThe problem is it does not destroy the model of annoying ads, it jsut makes it less profitable for publishers. It works like an auction, which is that advertisers place bids. assuming there are lots of fraudulent clicks, advertisers would notice a lower conversion rate, which would hurt ROI and advertisers would adjust by lowering bids, so the problem sorta corrects itself by adjusting to a new equilibrium of profitability. the only one hurt are the publishers and ad networks like meta/alphabet who earn less. but the evidence only shows higher ad rates despite this, not less.
- nvy 3y agoI don't personally run this extension (because I've read that the fraudulent clicks are easy to detect) but supposing that the clicks from this extension were both pervasive and indistinguishable from real clicks, it would seem to me that that would cause ROI to asymptotically approach zero which would result in the collapse of ad networks as a viable business model.
- aeyes 3y ago
- xwdv 3y agoOf all the ad blockers, AdNauseam is the one that is feared the most. If everybody used it, it would kill the industry.
- paulpauper 3y agothere are so many things that should have killed the industry by now, but it finds a way to keep thriving ...
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWhat economic model would you like to supplant the one which is currently serving a whole load of websites to us all for free?
- MrStonedOne 3y ago[dead]
- function_seven 3y agoDisplay ads. No tracking, no JavaScript, no analytics. Ad-supported media existed before the Internet. They would target based on content rather than reader. That would be fine.
- coldtea 3y agoOne that has us pay for websites would be far better. Including services like Gmail and such. We would be paying customers, not eyeballs for sale, and only websites deemed worthy of that level of loyalty would survive. Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.
- SoftTalker 3y agoYou know how you pay for cable, and Hulu, and Netflix, and still have to sit through ads? It would be like that. If I'm going to have to watch ads anyway, I'll decline paying for the service, thanks. And go on blocking the ads.
- charles_f 3y agoLove the concept, embracing doom and tracking to make it senseless. Awesome!
- neilv 3y agoAs someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be conflated, seems to be a very different matter. Imagine this being used to justify hamfisted legal restrictions on how everyone's browsers may behave. Or used as a reason or pretext to effectively force even more invasive user identity requirements or device attestation. (Which, history suggests, will then be abused for more nefarious and societally dangerous purposes.)
- imglorp 3y ago> force even more invasive user identity requirements or device attestation I think those are both coming. All the major forces are aligned against users: governments, content holders, advertisers, police, and authoritarians everywhere. It's inevitable unless we take the power back.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoWhat does taking back the power look like?
- djbusby 3y agoFire and guillotines?
- 8bitsrule 3y agoSomething more BBS-like. (Something like this: http://www.textfiles.com/100/ http://www.textfiles.com/100/) You send a detailed list of what's being offered, and expected. I return a request for exactly what I'd like to get ... and nothing else ... along with my list of what I'm willing to send in return. If you don't like my list, deny my request. If you deliberately send me something I didn't checkmark, or change your stated expectations, I'll refuse any more of your traffic.
- 0x53 3y agoI used this for a while. It generates a gallery of all the ads that you “click” on which is quite entertaining. It’s interesting to see what ads come up based on what it clicks.
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago> I used this for a while. Why did you stop using it?
- Pushy 3y agoHow does it work with youtube? Does it block but fakes that you have watched the ads?
- klntsky 3y agoAdnauseam does not achieve the goal, but I know how to fix it. First of all, clicking every ad is easily detectable. People should click occasionally, but from many devices/IPs. It is not achievable with low number of users -> bootstrapping problem. Bootstrapping can be solved by incentivising users. Consider this scheme: - A marketplace for fraud clicks advertised as a way to ditch competitors - Anyone can pay a fee and point to a certain ad that must be fraud-clicked - Users with an extension will be directed to this ad in background, lust like Adnauseum does - They will receive a fraction of the fee This scheme could bring in missing economic incentives for the users.
- jedberg 3y agoIt took me a long time to come around to using ad blockers. For a long time, my feeling was, "if you don't like ads don't use the web. You owe it to those websites to look at their ads". But then the ads just go so resource intense that I came around and finally installed an ad blocker. This however still feels one step too far. The ad blocker protects me from the resource utilization of ads. But if you're already blocking the ads, then the tracking shouldn't work anyway. How do you justify using their resources unnecessarily? Doesn't something like this make you no better than the advertiser?
- creata 3y ago> But if you're already blocking the ads, then the tracking shouldn't work anyway. But doesn't that fail if the blocking is anything short of perfect?
- raincole 3y agoPeople do this more for ideaology reason. For some people (not me) ads are inherently bad, so it's okay to abuse advertiser. Just like for some people, copyright are inherently bad, so piracy is not just a way to save several bucks, but a moral duty.
- jedberg 3y agoPeople also commit terrorist acts and justify it as "ideological".
- forlorn 3y agoThe sites could track your mouse position and compare it to the position of the element activated now (clicked).
- concinds 3y agoSomething I don't understand: wouldn't clicking all the ads still help build tracking profiles of you? (except, inaccurate ones, which still carry the chance of harming you?) They seem to compare themselves to TrackMeNot, which Googles random things in the background to try to mess up Google's profile of you — but I always thought that sounded crazy, because what if it looks up stuff that gets you put on a list, or stuff that's outright illegal? I tried looking at the TrackMeNot paper but it 404's. Another question I have about AdNauseam: people seem to think that if we succeed in abolishing tracking, the web will still be free, just with non-tracking ads. I don't buy that, because ads aren't very profitable as it is. We might end up with wide swaths of the web just paywalled (or worse? If we get to that point, there'll be lots of "innovations" I'm sure). Why don't people demonstrate what a better model would look like, and whether it would work at scale, if they really dislike the current state of the web?
- AlbinoDrought 3y agoTrackMeNot does allow opting in to a list of keywords[1] that have been monitored by the DHS[2] [1] https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot/blob/master/dhs_keywords.json https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot/blob/master/dhs_keyw... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/departme...
- ck2 3y agoThe point of ublock is not just eliminating tracking but also to radically reduce resource use on a page from abusive marketing. Cutting out 200+ objects, some with significant overhead, on a lower powered device or low bandwidth or long ping time like overseas can completely change a browsing experience from intolerable to completely acceptable. Clicking ads would defeat the whole point and require all resources to be loaded. However some day if politicians take enough money from the powers that be and make laws requiring all ads to load, this would be a good alternative to have. (However then they'd ban automated clicking)
- remote_phone 3y agoThe whole online ad industry is based on users honestly clicking on ads so that advertisers get some sort of feedback as to its effectiveness. If extensions are silently clicking on ads, it renders ad metrics and tracking completely irrelevant. I love it.
- gruez 3y ago>https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause... >AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel. Isn't this easily detectable? XHRs are easily detectable through various headers, so it's trivial to filter out the fake traffic from this with a few lines of code. I'd expect any ad network worth their salt to implement this. Failing that, thanks to ad fraud there's a whole industry of bot/ad fraud detection firms using browser fingerprinting and behavioral analysis to detect fake ad clicks. I have no doubt that an extension that's "clicking" on every ad using XHR is going to get detected and filtered. I'm very skeptical using this extension will ever achieve its policy goals of fighting against adtech or whatever. You might as well attach a "DNT: 1" header to all your requests.
- stephenr 3y ago> XHRs are easily detectable through various headers Are they though? The most common one (X-Requested-With) isn't inherent to XHR, it's added by js libraries by convention.
- gruez 3y agohttps://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Sec-Fetch-Mode https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Sec-Fetch-User https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se...
- stephenr 3y ago
- quanto 3y agoOnline advertising industry is at the point of negative externality. If everyone is blasting ads to users, the effectiveness of each ad goes down, and thus an advertiser need to blast even more ads. All this is at decreased quality of user experience and increased resource serving ads (screen real estate, servers, developer hours) while the economic efficiency (matching willing sellers and buyers) is no longer increased. In other words, between online advertisers, it is a zero sum game -- there are only so many willing buyers' eyeball-hours. It's difficult to imagine how to end this negative (externality) spiral. A legal ban on online ads could reduce drastically, but that is throwing the poor baby out with the bathwater. I wonder if something like phantom clicking ads could tip the economic scale for advertisers such that it is no longer cost effective for them to blast ads at people. There is a serious game theoretic optimization going on in this trillion-dollar field (and I worked in this field before) and a novel tech or paradigm can change the game completely.
- beachy 3y ago> if everyone is blasting ads to users, the effectiveness of each ad goes down, and thus an advertiser need to blast even more ads. Things have really gone full circle now. If I visit a site (happens rarely) that has a clean design and puts all the ads into a plain column down one side of the page, I'm pretty sure I'm more likely to look at those ads than I am on the typical crappy site where I need to swat away ads like blowflies off a horse turd just to begin to see the underlying content.
- lioeters 3y ago> swat away ads like blowflies off a horse turd Brilliant.
- dooglius 3y agoAdvertising is not zero sum because a company can choose to keep money rather than pay for a marginal ad, which may be more profitable. Microeconomics indicates that increased per-unit costs to suppliers (advertisers) decreases quantity sold. I'm not sure I understand your argument for why this would not apply. Although, I will note that giving advertisers disinformation resulting from adnauseam loads is probably a much more significant effect than the cost of serving additional bytes.
- stephenr 3y agoArgument 657 why Safari's declarative content blockers are a better approach.
- MasterYoda 3y agoI have never really understood AdNauseam. I understand it clicks all ads so there would be no useful tracking profile that way. But if you have an adblocker and tracking protection like in uBlock Origin and Firefox, it feels it then does not make any sense. You would just send alot of data to trackers, even if its just garbage, and it would just waste your broad band. It clicks on things that would be blocked with an adblocker. My question is, make AdNauseam any sense when you block ads and trackers (use uBO and Firefox (Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection)? Or is it just useful if you want to have ads, but not want to be profiled by trackers?
- demaga 3y agoWhy would you want ads but not personalized ones? It doesn't make any sense to me too
- ryandrake 3y agoI don’t want ads at all and will not click on them, but if I had to choose, I would rather have a non-personalized ad, because it is less likely to have been produced by violating my privacy.