7 ms·

Ad blocker that clicks on the ads

165 points by eamonncarey 12y ago

mpeg 12y ago
I don't understand this, they say it prevents tracking but, actually, this helps ad companies track you since they will now know you will click their ads whenever you are visiting a certain site. With ad blockers that prevent the HTTP request, those third party sites aren't able to track you. The publisher can always track you but that won't be shared with their advertisers or networks. Disclaimer: I work in the adtech industry.
- hobs 12y ago
  You have my upvotes, while you may think "well now they know nothing because they think I like everything!" instead it will be "I just told every ad network that I visit this website, another notch in the information about me belt." You cant get around that fact, and the information is not some firehose they cant take or something ( also this kind of behavior is eminently detectable by the ad network, nobody clicks ALL of the ads).
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Thank you, I was about to post more or less the exact same thing. I used to work in the adtech industry.
- adjwilli 12y ago
  I'm not endorsing AdNauseam, but the idea is that the information the ad companies track will be useless since the target person will appear to have clicked on every ad regardless of true interest in the product. For instance it will make it appear that a single, heterosexual male is interested beauty products or diapers.
  - cbr 12y ago
    "this user clicks on absolutely everything we put in front of them" seems really easy to filter out...
    - zmmmmm 12y ago
      It would almost certainly be filtered out as an outlier in any sensible algorithm. With all the bots that routinely scan web pages for all kinds of reasons I am sure that filtering out the "clicked on every ad" behavior is probably particularly well handled at this point.
      - adjwilli 12y ago
        Yeah, you're probably right. AdNauseam would do better to click on only a percent randomly.
  - mpeg 12y ago
    Yes and that will screw up the advertiser's stats, but in terms of tracking you actually give more third parties access to your data. All they need to track you is either access to your device (by serving you code, or saving data in it, like cookies), or ip address + http headers and timestamp (which they would definitely get if the HTTP request goes through by clicking on the ad).
- pb2au 12y ago
  In addition, the overzealous, erratic clicking originating from an obscure extension could make it pretty easy to detect these users. The only result would be filtering out their traffic from counting towards any PPC ads and more accurate tracking of the individual users. There isn't an upside to running this extension.
- tomp 12y ago
  Doesn't the ad network get that information already when you load the ad?
  - psykovsky 12y ago
    They don't get any information if you use the hosts file to send all the requests for their (sub)domains straight to localhost or even /dev/null
  - mpeg 12y ago
    In addition to psykovsky's comment, the ad network is not the only player in this space (or the one you should be more concerned about) When you see and click on an ad, you might be also getting tracked by DSP / retargeter / affiliate / analytics companies.
- josho 12y ago
  Their hypothesis is that bad data (I click everything) is worse for the ad networks than no data (ad blocker). I suspect the hypothesis is wrong for two reasons. Those clicks make the network money, and a small percent of bad data across their network is noise.
chrisBob 12y ago
Screw that. If you don't like sites with annoying adds why send them revenue from click throughs? There are also a lot of hard working companies out there that would rather not pay $0.25 every time some ass hole with a browser extension visits a page. edit:toned down.
- easytiger 12y ago
  Not sure if you've used google to advertise with before but they will work out that this user is clicking maliciously and discard them. The whole point is they won't get revenue from this unless you visit very few sites.
  - chrisBob 12y ago
    So does that make it better or worse than just blocking adds?
    - easytiger 12y ago
      I think its an attempt at anarchism. This on any scale might render their data useless. Of course they might just ignore all data from this user meaning it changes nothing.
    - jackmaney 12y ago
      Worse, as ad networks can--and do--block publishers for click fraud.
      - easytiger 12y ago
        well they will be able to identify that the user is responsible, not the host. hopefully
        jackmaney 12y ago
        How?
verroq 12y ago
This is a great way to get your favourite websites blacklisted for click-fraud.
- balazsdavid987 12y ago
  Exactly. This is way more harmful for websites than a simple adblocker.
  - greyman 12y ago
    But that is the point - they want to actively fight against ads who do tracing, and by extension, against sites using those ads.
- ferrari8608 12y ago
  Maybe that will motivate them to try more creative ways of generating revenue. Or they will shut down, and I will be free of my internet addiction. I believe this to be a win for myself either way, but I agree it would be a shame for the admins out there. It's only a matter of time before advertising revenue is no longer a feasible solution. ABP/E are household names now. I like the thought of an ad-free internet where only sites that are worth paying for or those that are doing it for the love of doing it are the ones that last.
joopxiv 12y ago
Good effort in disrupting the online advertisement market, which for many websites is their primary source of revenue.
- ivanca 12y ago
  This is not disrupting; to disrupt you need to replace it with something. This is just destroying.
smcg 12y ago
one of the main reasons why I use adblock is to avoid malware (either from sites that are malicious that I don't know about, or legitimate sites that have been compromised to display malware ads, or legit sites that use an ad provider that has been compromised to display malware ads)... so no, I do not want to click on those ads, thank you very much.
- psykovsky 12y ago
  NoScript and domain blocking using the hosts file is the best I've found to stop tracking. AdBlock is such a resource hog...
  - smcg 12y ago
    my main gripe with NoScript has been performing transactions and buying things online... if you don't allow all JS or enable JS on exactly the right domains then your purchases can fall through or fall in to limbo. and I don't have any resource problems with AdBlock.
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oliwarner 12y ago
Just remember that while targeting the ad networks, you're hurting the small publishers (who can't solicit independent advertising) more than the likes of Google. At least in the mid-term, Google can keep charging the same rate for the clicks and still take their cut. If anything, this is making the networks more money. In the long term, this devalues a click. The very moment things turn, the publisher will bear the full shortfall. I get that some people don't like bad advertising. Point that out directly to a publisher. Shame them publicly if they do nothing about it... But undermining the incoming stream for every little publisher out there is irresponsible.
- GhostCursor 12y ago
  Wrong income stream. Charge directly. The users have control now, better make with the changes or face loss of business.
- cbr 12y ago
  In the long term, this devalues a click. The very moment things turn... Why would you expect a sharp turn? Some fraction of clicks on the internet are already fraudulent, and if people start using this product that fraction goes up. But it doesn't really matter because it's all auctioned. Let's say I run a billing service and I've placed ads on searches for "billing service". I find that it costs me $X of advertising per incoming visitor, Y% of these convert into customers, and a new customer is worth $Z to me. I'm willing to bid up to $X x Y% on ads. Now lets say a lots of people switch from blocking ads to giving them fake clicks and now half the clicks on my ads are from this extension. Y% drops by half, because half the visitors from this source are now just browser-extension bots, so I'm only willing to bid half as much. But so is everyone else, which means my new 1/2 x $X x Y% bid is still competitive, and there's twice as much traffic to bid for, so it all comes out the same. Ad networks take click-fraud very seriously because it's important to their reputation, but the market is actually pretty robust to it. (Plus this browser extension sounds like it would be really easy for the ad networks to filter out.)
- alkonaut 12y ago
  While this is true, the desired effect should be to push those players to a set of white listed as networks that don't use tracking and other such tricks. If course, the same effect could be done with regular ad blocking, and I think that's way better.
androidb 12y ago
Bad idea, ads are also a way to support the site/service you are using. Automatic ad clicks can get that site banned (i.e. Adsense will surely do that) so that's a sure way to kill the site. Google for instance wouldn't have existed without ads. Lots of people on HN saved millennia with help from Stackoverflow (ad supported) and so on. I'm now "ad-aware" so I know how to differentiate content from ads, but I will click on an ad if it's something that's of interest to me. I support the publisher this way and also get some value out of it. I don't like sites filled with ads but my way of "punishing" those is to avoid visiting that site.
- MoOmer 12y ago
  From another perspective, it's a way to punish publishers who work with ad companies which do not respect your privacy. I wonder if it can be disabled for ad networks that don't collect user data.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads. First of all, you're right that it would totally kill sites. Let's say it happens. What's next? I would be ecstatic if sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker died. That'd be great[1]. But it also kills good sites like Stackoverflow. That sucks. Right now people don't have to pay for content. Almost everything is ad based. Because of this people almost never pay for the really great premium content. Well what if there was no free, good content? Would that lead to more great content? Probably not... but maybe! What if suddenly people expected to pay a small subscription fee to a small number of sites in exchange for great content. That'd be, well, great! How do you guys think it would play out? [1] I think they literally make the world a worse place but that's a separate discussion.
  - sheetjs 12y ago
    I'm not convinced that StackOverflow is a good example. The economics of this "HuffPo" model (no ad revenue actually flows to the content producers) seem unsustainable in the long run.
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
sparkzilla 12y ago
Instead of defrauding ad networks and legitimate sites that have ads, there's an even easier way to deal with annoying ad policies: Don't go to sites that have them.
Imerso 12y ago
While I agree that this can be a problem for the webpages you visit, see that the point of the extension is: " [...] to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and tracking by advertising networks." So while it may be a negative side effect the point of the extension is not disrupting online advertisement, but disrupting online tracking. Even though you will be effectively doing both.
- chrisBob 12y ago
  Can someone explain now clicking an ad link prevents tracking?
  - loumf 12y ago
    It's explained on the site. If every ad is clicked by everyone, tracking data is useless.
    - jackmaney 12y ago
      No, it isn't. Ad networks would have a clearer picture of sites that people visit (albeit a muddier picture of ad preferences).
      - rvschuilenburg 12y ago
        Clearer picture? I think just loading the ad is enough info for finding out what sites are visited. This just makes clicks less valuable.
  - Imerso 12y ago
    Not sure what might be the exact point. I mean while that would make useless extracting information about your add clicking habits, they would still know what webpages you visit. So it may be counterproductive compared with a normal ad blocker.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    I too am a little confused on that score. The advertisers continue to know your interests (i.e. the sites you visit) and can build a demographic picture of you based on that. The only thing this deprives them of is your ad preferences. But given how few ads most people click on, this information is sparse regardless.
eli 12y ago
As someone who runs an ad-supported site, I would really prefer if you just blocked my ads and did not register fake clicks on them.
- eamonncarey 12y ago
  Totally agree. There's something quite mean spirited about this.
  - forca 12y ago
    There is something also mean-spirited about tracking users. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it's all anonymous, but I've been in the IT industry for a very long time, and I know for a fact they can identify the users with enough time. Because all of this is bought and sold behind the scenes. I would be OK with ads that went straight to the site selling an item with no tracking other than click-thru stats but not using the IP address, not fingerprinting the browsers, etc. It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop users. I've seen this by testing it myself. It's a sham. It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price. Another reason to block ads, since allowing them means you're buying into the way they do business. Nothing mean-spirited about blocking a very strong vector for malware, which we all know ad networks have become. I have a moral imperative to protect machines under my control, so we block all ads, disallow all tracking, use Disconnect, Ad Block Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere, along with other in-place tools to allow users a clean Internet experience. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is saved by adblocking... That alone makes it worth it.
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      Auto-clicking bots will punish the people who run sites, not the people who run ads. They'll get shut down for fraudulent use. Meanwhile, unless this has something like >50% adoption, ad networks won't even notice. Edit: When I say "people who run ads", I mean the ad networks, ad suppliers, etc.
      - 12y ago
rebel 12y ago
It's a shame this is even receiving front page publicity. This is ultimately terrible for everyone except maybe a few anarchists that think they deserve every websites information for free while sabotaging the publishers who work to develop the sites. And if it actually were to take off, it would then be bad for the anarchists who no longer get that free access to the information they wanted. Who wins? Edit: Seriously, how is this a good idea? You disproportionately harm the sites you actually visit, and ultimately the result is A) Big ad networks shut them off .. or B) Independent ads think their ads aren't converting and pull them. This is how you kill the sites you actually visit. They don't magically find a new business model before hosting/payroll/whatever catch up to the fact that their ad revenue has been shut off. I can't fathom what you stand to gain from getting their ads shut off instead of just hiding them for yourself with a standard ad block that is much more acceptable.
- nacho_weekend 12y ago
  I agree; this will do nothing but drive your favorite sites out of business.
- greyman 12y ago
  I wouldn't use this extension, and I also don't use ad blocker, but I kind of understand it. People using this extension considers those ad networks as evil, so they want to fight against them. In my personal opinion, WWW was invented for free spreading of information. The company beyond ad network, or any company for that matter, shouldn't have a guaranteed right, that WWW have to provide a platform for commercially exploit it. Also, those ad network does that by tracing users and selling that information, and that is not ethical to do without visitors content. So I believe such an extension has the right to exist.
- GhostCursor 12y ago
  We don't agree with ads as a means for 'paying for your hosting and content'. Charge people for your content and hosting, but this ad business doesn't work because of one reason: the user has control now. Can't be as shady anymore.
  - 12y ago
forca 12y ago
I realize this won't be popular, but I really have no feelings for ad networks. - They allow shoddy security on their servers - They track users against their will - Info on me is sold w/o my knowledge or consent - Ads are a poor business model since they can be blocked - There is no moral imperative for me to view ads since I've paid to access the Interwebs I block all ads, tracking cookies, beacons, all of it... I whitelist my bank and my email provider. Everyone else gets nothing from me. I lie about my browser agent, I disallow scripts, CSS history, I disallow HTTP/S referrer, DOM storage, I use a European proxy where I need to. This all works great for me, as I have the right to move around the Internet as a customer, not a product. I think if anything, this extension makes ad companies sit up and take notice. I won't be installing it, as I don't need it, but kudos to the authors for throwing the cat in among the pigeons. Ad revenue from most of these sites is based on tracking people and this is something I am against 100%.
- joopxiv 12y ago
  ... since I've paid to access the Interwebs You're paying for data transport, you're not paying for the content.
  - Ntrails 12y ago
    but the content is free - just ad supported. They can construct an "ad-wall" in the same way they construct a "pay-wall" and are free to do so. Otherwise they are offering free content.
  - greyman 12y ago
    Yes, I am not paying for the content, but the content creator also doesn't pay for the right to present his website publicly. It only pays for the webserver space and bandwidth. (I am following your logic). World Wide Web works in a way, that I can create a http request, and then do what I want with it, for example I can only take the text and throw away anything else. I paid for the data transport, as you said, and then I don't have any other obligations after downloading those data.
- carrier_lost 12y ago
chatmasta 12y ago
Nice. I had a very similar idea to this a few days ago: chrome extension for DDOS'ing ad networks. Instead of just blocking the ads, send 10x requests to the networks. Not a nice move, but good social/thought experiment.
teddyh 12y ago
“Most of you have browsers, and most of those browsers show you advertisements, and I’m very puzzled about why. The advertisements are annoying most of the time, they slow you down, they injure the concentration that you bring to whatever task it is that you’re doing, and there’s no reason why they show you advertisements; my browser doesn’t show me any advertisements. I don’t see any ads when I read The New York Times, or go to wherever it is that you are happy going to, because my browser has Adblock in it, and that pretty much ends the story. Even in this town, many of you, indeed, I would guess, most of you are probably using the Firefox browser. That means you’re two clicks away from not having any advertising on the net anymore. All you need to do is google “Adblock Plus”, and say “I’m feeling lucky”, [Laughter] thank you very much. Now you know why my friends – and they are my friends – at the Mozilla Foundation are paid tens of millions of dollars every year by Google – basically, not to bundle Adblock Plus into the default distribution of Firefox. But you also know why all the talk about advertising supported models on the web is just talk, and why it is that in the end, all of those models are fated not to work. Because in digital media, when you give people knowledge, you can’t force them to take advertising, because digital media are filterable – that’s the beauty of them.” — Eben Moglen, Free and Open Software: Paradigm for a New Intellectual Commons, 2009-03-13 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Paradigm_for_a_New_Intellectual_Commons https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Parad...
- orbifold 12y ago
  Hm, so how viable would it be to launch a rebranded Firefox/Chromium that includes Adblock or HttpSwitchboard by default?
  - thesteamboat 12y ago
    Call it BadFox! (Ban ADs fireFOX) The logo can be a fox with sunglasses and a leather jacket.
cornewut 12y ago
Those worried about supporting content creators - there are other ways to do this( e.g. Flattr).
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  This is great if your audience has money to spare for that purpose. What if your audience doesn't?
- rebel 12y ago
  Can you show me a single example of a website making enough to sustain itself on Flattr?
Alupis 12y ago
This is not a good idea... it will get sites you frequent possibly put into review by their ad networks. By clicking ads every time you visit their page, they will grow suspicious quickly... at least Google Adsense will... potentially freezing or seizing all funds in the adsense account (the opposite reaction to the spirit of this product)
randunel 12y ago
The only reason I have installed ABP is google's youtube ads. All the other websites are suffering because of google's politics with youtube, since I encouraged all of my friends to do the same thing, just to watch youtube quietly. I would really like to use this project, though, on websites with paywalled articles, not on others, but I would never bother creating or maintaining a black/white list. So I might just go ahead and install it.. :P
- randunel 12y ago
  Done, installed. While my ABP motivation is youtube, my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge. I know all the other websites are suffering because of this, but as a user, I don't really care, unless I get more problems than benefits.
  - showsover 12y ago
    >my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge. So instead of paying for access (which is a decent way to earn something) you are mad that you don't get everything for free?
ClifReeder 12y ago
It's worth noting that a decent amount of web advertising's "value" is based on viewability, not click through rates.
gglitch 12y ago
I sympathize with anyone who doesn't have the technical knowledge to know whether a given ad is benign or malignant, or even what the real differences are between the two. For that crowd, the unregulated ad-based market (the web) can feel quite predatory, and an adblocker can feel like a very sensible default protective measure. If there were other trustworthy protective measures in place, that gave a user confidence that a given ad or a given page wouldn't do anything alarming or insecure, maybe adblockers wouldn't be necessary.
ivanca 12y ago
> AdNauseam joins a broader class of software systems that serve ethical, political, and expressive ends I have installed ad-blocker; but the level is self-righteousness is the only nauseam thing here. I'm pondering about creating a script that blocks users that use this one; if you weren't expecting a fight back you are delusional.
ganeumann 12y ago
The Internet is already awash with bots that do exactly this: visit sites and 'click' on all the ads. Fraudulent ad networks employ these bots to generate revenue. The adtech industry has already implemented software to ignore these clicks (it's pretty glaring, after all, when all the ads are clicked simultaneously when generally only one in every 500 ads is ever clicked.) This also does not corrupt the algorithms most adtech companies use by even a little bit. Weeding out the bogus clicks of people who would never, ever click on an ad anyway (because only those people would install this extension) does not in any way change the ability to project from the people who do click on ads. And, as others pointed out, by 'clicking' on the ad instead of just blocking it, you provide information to the ad network anyway. If you really don't want to be tracked online, block third-party cookies (or clear your cookies at the end of the day), and turn off flash. (If you don't want to be tracked offline, call your congressperson, and good luck.)
justinpaulson 12y ago
"AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas." Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that information to target advertisements to you later? I never understand the outrage against targeted ads. You are going to get ads no matter what. That is how "free" content works. Would you rather the ads be catered to your interest and show things you that you might actually like an not know about, or would you rather have the ads be random things that you may have no interest in at all. Either way, you are getting ads. The ad companies are using this information to rob your house when you are away on vacation, or to reveal your embarassing secrets on social media, they are using this information to target ads to you and show you things that might actually interest you. Why the anger over this?
- DanBC 12y ago
  i) I see an unfamiliar term. I search for it. For the next X weeks I am showered with stupid useless adverts for something that I have zero interest in. ii) I am[1] a person with alcoholism / gambling addict / person with anorexia / etc. This informs my search habits. Showing alcohol ads is immoral anyway, but showing those ads to a person with alcoholism is sub-optimal for many reasons. iii) I like gory movies. My 5 year old son enjoys watching some YouTube clips. There's no mechanism to prevent fucking YouTube from showing me ads for gruesome videos even when the clip I'm watching is some child's show. iv) I am ad-tolerant. But ads just fucking suck and targeted ads suck about the same as random ads. They don't push what I'm interested in, they push what the ad-buyer wants me to be interested in. When I search for "metal detector" I'm not shown ads telling me how to chose a metal detector or why detectors differ. I'm shown ads from metal detector sellers who are peddling some kit of unknown quality at me. [1] I'm not, but imagine a person that is.
  - justinpaulson 12y ago
    I can see the argument for ii. But the ads could just as easily be for rehabilitation clinics. For i, a single data point is not creating all of your targetted ads. And so what if it is, it is still closer to what you might be interested in than completely random ads. iii. Is your own problem for sharing devices and accounts with a 5 year old when you use it for "adult" things. iv. Sure, ads suck, but that metal detector ad is at least close to something you might be interested in. What if you searched for metal detector and got ads for high heeled shoes and candy bars?? How is the metal detector ad not better? You have made some good arguments though, and I think ii. really makes the most sense. I wouldn't be surprised if that very thing is happening.
crossre 12y ago
That's bog data for you. Works well after a little why. No immune data mining algorithm I know of.
vdaniuk 12y ago
HN is so oblivious about ad industry, it isn't even funny. The ad industry is moving towards action-based model of payment, where advertisers pay for the purchase, lead or download. This ad blocker will just provide more data about users to advertisers. Also if this succeeds, many small publishers will die and large publishers will accelerate the introduction of native ads. Also if this succeeds and most sites switch to paywalls, most poor people(billions of them) won't have access to quality content. The short-sightedness is so strong, I doubt the general ability of the HN community to reach an educated consensus on the topic of ad supported business models.
karmacondon 12y ago
This exposes a fundamental flaw in the internet advertising model. On some level I've known that a script like this could be easily written for a long time, but seeing this working product really made it clear. It's unlikely that millions of people would use something like this, but if they did it would be chaos in the advertising industry. They love online ads because it allows them to gather empirical metrics that can't be gathered from television or radio. It's impossible to know objectively what kind of an impression a tv made, but you can see exactly how many people clicked on a banner. But this could also be a fatal flaw. If a lot of people wanted to, they could destroy payperclick advertising. It would be almost impossible to know which clicks were real and which were fake. Companies would lose a lot of faith in the industry because an update to the script could play havoc with the online ad budget of this company or that on a whim. I don't know why anyone would chose the attack the online advertising industry and it wouldn't be a good idea, but it's interesting to that it's possible. Online ads is a huge market space but also one could also be severely disrupted by a greasemonkey script. They'd better be careful not cross the line with tracking and privacy invasion because this is one of the rare cases where people can take direct action to fight back.
Deregibus 12y ago
Wouldn't this just enforce the existing ad preferences? Say the ad networks determined that you're looking for a car. They then start showing you car ads, this software clicks on them, and now they think that you must really, really want a car. That hasn't messed up the fundamental information, it's just adjusted the scale.
lostcolony 12y ago
The real solution is for ad companies to agree to allow their ads to be vetted, and hosted on the delivery network's systems. I had no problem with ads up until the point I went to the official online source for a number of print comics, and had my browser forcibly minimized, with a new window spawned in the bottom right corner of my screen designed to look like a Windows alert, trying to trick me into installing malware. At that point I installed an Adblocker, and have never looked back. I don't mind disabling it when reminded (Hulu and the like), for certain sites, but until I can be certain that websites with positive reputations won't deliver such scurrilous ads, it stays on by default.
acomjean 12y ago
More in your face, html5 ads are coming (sigh). If ad blocking gets real popular like an arms race where those that don't block ads suffer the most. Maybe the days of site/advertiser direct partnership will come back (see strobist/ midwest photo exchange or xlr8yourmac.com and otherworld computing.)
rip747 12y ago
this is absolutely moronic and childish if you don't want to see ads, use adblock and be done with it. why do you now have to be a child and "one-up" the ad agencies by sending fake clicks to the them? you do know that legitimate businesses and people advertise on these networks and the only thing you're going to be doing is draining their accounts. if you _think_ you're hurting the ad networks themselves by use this extension, you are living in a fantasy world. i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way to the bank with an extension like this.
- faizanbhat 12y ago
  >i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way to the bank with an extension like this. Definitely not. If this were to catch on, the whole ad ecosystem would feel the impact. Ad networks have advertiser relationships to look after. If the numbers looks fishy, they are held to answer by clients and usually instructed to stop running ads on sites where the suspicious activity originated.
xefer 12y ago
I honestly feel that blocking ads is a win for both the audience and those serving the ads. I don't mean this to sound insulting but if you're not (let's say) "wise" enough to block ads, then you're exactly the target audience for 99% of the stuff out there. This is similar to the way Nigerian scammers purposely use bad grammar to target the less sophisticated. It's a win for the ad network because they're not wasting bandwidth pushing an ad to someone who would never consider whatever they're selling.
- Artemis2 12y ago
  Installing AdBlock Plus = smart? Doesn't looks like a lot of thought went into this comment...
  - xefer 12y ago
    The point is, by installing an ad blocker, the ads that do get through are ultimately seen by those to whom they are move effective. Ad servers get a somewhat smaller but receptive audience.
alkonaut 12y ago
The people behind the adblockers should throw their weight around a bit and issue some guidelines for what kind of advertising is acceptable and just whitelist the good guys. I prefer being shown useles add that don't interest me, than being shown ads for the thing I just bought or googled as it is today. Most as networks and advertisers probably find that completely bonkers "but you get consumer information that is relevant to you!" Get off my lawn
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  AdBlock Plus does this: if you pay the author of ABP money, then he whitelists your ads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_a...
nezumi 12y ago
This would be perfectly fair if there were a reliable way for ad-supported sites to restrict access to only clients which aren't running an ad blocker.
jdalgetty 12y ago
Running this amounts to fraud and will hurt the website owners, ad networks, agencies and the actual advertisers.
lampstack2 12y ago
I don't like ads either, but monetizing the internet is going to be a lot tougher in the age of ad blocking.
cyanbane 12y ago
If you really wanted to cause chaos in the macro scale then having it randomly select Ads to click would be better one would think. If an Ad network has multiple Ads on a page that were clicked I would suspect it would be easy to form some type of filter heuristic for that particular set of users. It may cause a slight bit of obfuscation for that particular "user" on their side, but as for the over all success of an Ad campaign it would not be hard to remove those entities that selected ALL the Ads assuming more than one is served on a page from a given network.
halcy 12y ago
If the end goal is to reduce third-party tracking by ad networks, then actually loading the ads, nevermind fake-clicking, certainly seems terribly misguided, and that's putting aside that anything short of a proper click is probably going to trigger ad networks bot detection measures.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting, blocking and click fraud all in one package :-) As many sites live and die by their "traffic quality score" this seems like it would negatively impact that in a serious way. It seems to me that could get a site in trouble with its ad network, and if it were Google there have been examples where it just gets all of its ad revenue revoked/tossed without resource. So it seems like this might kill smaller indie sites if it became popular. Is that the goal?
secalex 12y ago
The well-meaning but naive people behind this and other ad-disrupting extensions are doing more than anybody to end the era of general purpose computing. These products (several of which are created by for-profit companies that then extort the ad networks) are slowly killing the desktop web as a viable distribution channel for professionally created content. This is pushing publishers to put more and more of their focus on the mobile space, where their content is trapped in a mobile app that can gather way more data and show unblockable ads. We'll look back at the 2000's and 2010's as the golden age of the web, when it was economical to publish content for free without relying upon the DRMish guarantees of the major mobile OSes. In five years the desktop web available to general-purpose browsers will be dominated by pay services (Netflix), micro-payment supported sites, NPR-like fund drives (Wikipedia, Internet Archive), academics who don't need to raise revenue, and sites with super-low cost structures due to their reliance on user-generated content (Reddit).
Rudism 12y ago
I worked in the online advertising industry for a number of years at my last job, and I can pretty confidently say that the worst thing that software like this might do is potentially earn a bit more money for some publishers using the ad networks that are being blocked (if they're lucky enough to be running any pay-per-click campaigns). Nobody in the industry will even take notice that this exists. If they do accidentally come across it, far from being scared or "taking notice," it would at best circulate around a few internal email lists to give everyone a good laugh. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this was actually developed by an ad network as a joke--they know that ad-block users aren't going to be making them any money anyway, so why not put them to use as what would essentially amount to a free bot network of very natural-looking traffic to send to their advertisers? Sure, it might lower conversion rates by a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but any amount of natural-looking traffic coming through to advertisers that isn't obvious bot traffic only increases the perceived quality of the ad network. It's much easier to shuffle the blame for poor conversion rates off to the advertiser themselves than it is to explain away low traffic volume or bot clicks. Bot traffic is usually pretty easy to identify--very low quality traffic all coming from the same block of IPs, geographical region, or publisher. The quality is basically a measure of conversion rate for that subset of traffic compared against the average conversion rate across the entire network. In the (unlikely) event that something like this product catches on and sees a high enough adoption rate to actually affect the numbers across entire ad networks, it would lower traffic quality equally across the board, thus making it essentially undetectable. It's when that starts to happen that advertisers and publishers start to get desperate and we start seeing them play new and shadier games. You might be happy and safe behind your ad-clicking blocker, but grandma and gramps who don't have the technical know-how to protect themselves will start to see new fake download button ads, pop-unders, auto-playing video ads, and other gross tactics being used to try to compensate. My time in the industry has pretty heavily biased me against online advertising quite a bit (I run ad blockers, no-referrer, strict whitelist-only cookie policies, etc), but I can definitely say that running this extension is pretty antithetical to its stated intention.

165 points by eamonncarey 12y ago

mpeg 12y ago

I don't understand this, they say it prevents tracking but, actually, this helps ad companies track you since they will now know you will click their ads whenever you are visiting a certain site. With ad blockers that prevent the HTTP request, those third party sites aren't able to track you. The publisher can always track you but that won't be shared with their advertisers or networks. Disclaimer: I work in the adtech industry.

hobs 12y ago
You have my upvotes, while you may think "well now they know nothing because they think I like everything!" instead it will be "I just told every ad network that I visit this website, another notch in the information about me belt." You cant get around that fact, and the information is not some firehose they cant take or something ( also this kind of behavior is eminently detectable by the ad network, nobody clicks ALL of the ads).
jackmaney 12y ago
Thank you, I was about to post more or less the exact same thing. I used to work in the adtech industry.
adjwilli 12y ago
I'm not endorsing AdNauseam, but the idea is that the information the ad companies track will be useless since the target person will appear to have clicked on every ad regardless of true interest in the product. For instance it will make it appear that a single, heterosexual male is interested beauty products or diapers.
- cbr 12y ago
  "this user clicks on absolutely everything we put in front of them" seems really easy to filter out...
  - zmmmmm 12y ago
    It would almost certainly be filtered out as an outlier in any sensible algorithm. With all the bots that routinely scan web pages for all kinds of reasons I am sure that filtering out the "clicked on every ad" behavior is probably particularly well handled at this point.
    - adjwilli 12y ago
      Yeah, you're probably right. AdNauseam would do better to click on only a percent randomly.
- mpeg 12y ago
  Yes and that will screw up the advertiser's stats, but in terms of tracking you actually give more third parties access to your data. All they need to track you is either access to your device (by serving you code, or saving data in it, like cookies), or ip address + http headers and timestamp (which they would definitely get if the HTTP request goes through by clicking on the ad).
pb2au 12y ago
In addition, the overzealous, erratic clicking originating from an obscure extension could make it pretty easy to detect these users. The only result would be filtering out their traffic from counting towards any PPC ads and more accurate tracking of the individual users. There isn't an upside to running this extension.
tomp 12y ago
Doesn't the ad network get that information already when you load the ad?
- psykovsky 12y ago
  They don't get any information if you use the hosts file to send all the requests for their (sub)domains straight to localhost or even /dev/null
- mpeg 12y ago
  In addition to psykovsky's comment, the ad network is not the only player in this space (or the one you should be more concerned about) When you see and click on an ad, you might be also getting tracked by DSP / retargeter / affiliate / analytics companies.
josho 12y ago
Their hypothesis is that bad data (I click everything) is worse for the ad networks than no data (ad blocker). I suspect the hypothesis is wrong for two reasons. Those clicks make the network money, and a small percent of bad data across their network is noise.

chrisBob 12y ago

Screw that. If you don't like sites with annoying adds why send them revenue from click throughs? There are also a lot of hard working companies out there that would rather not pay $0.25 every time some ass hole with a browser extension visits a page. edit:toned down.

easytiger 12y ago
Not sure if you've used google to advertise with before but they will work out that this user is clicking maliciously and discard them. The whole point is they won't get revenue from this unless you visit very few sites.
- chrisBob 12y ago
  So does that make it better or worse than just blocking adds?
  - easytiger 12y ago
    I think its an attempt at anarchism. This on any scale might render their data useless. Of course they might just ignore all data from this user meaning it changes nothing.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    Worse, as ad networks can--and do--block publishers for click fraud.
    - easytiger 12y ago
      well they will be able to identify that the user is responsible, not the host. hopefully
      - jackmaney 12y ago
        How?

verroq 12y ago

This is a great way to get your favourite websites blacklisted for click-fraud.

balazsdavid987 12y ago
Exactly. This is way more harmful for websites than a simple adblocker.
- greyman 12y ago
  But that is the point - they want to actively fight against ads who do tracing, and by extension, against sites using those ads.
ferrari8608 12y ago
Maybe that will motivate them to try more creative ways of generating revenue. Or they will shut down, and I will be free of my internet addiction. I believe this to be a win for myself either way, but I agree it would be a shame for the admins out there. It's only a matter of time before advertising revenue is no longer a feasible solution. ABP/E are household names now. I like the thought of an ad-free internet where only sites that are worth paying for or those that are doing it for the love of doing it are the ones that last.

joopxiv 12y ago

Good effort in disrupting the online advertisement market, which for many websites is their primary source of revenue.

ivanca 12y ago
This is not disrupting; to disrupt you need to replace it with something. This is just destroying.

smcg 12y ago

one of the main reasons why I use adblock is to avoid malware (either from sites that are malicious that I don't know about, or legitimate sites that have been compromised to display malware ads, or legit sites that use an ad provider that has been compromised to display malware ads)... so no, I do not want to click on those ads, thank you very much.

psykovsky 12y ago
NoScript and domain blocking using the hosts file is the best I've found to stop tracking. AdBlock is such a resource hog...
- smcg 12y ago
  my main gripe with NoScript has been performing transactions and buying things online... if you don't allow all JS or enable JS on exactly the right domains then your purchases can fall through or fall in to limbo. and I don't have any resource problems with AdBlock.
- deleted 12y ago
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- deleted 12y ago
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oliwarner 12y ago

Just remember that while targeting the ad networks, you're hurting the small publishers (who can't solicit independent advertising) more than the likes of Google. At least in the mid-term, Google can keep charging the same rate for the clicks and still take their cut. If anything, this is making the networks more money. In the long term, this devalues a click. The very moment things turn, the publisher will bear the full shortfall. I get that some people don't like bad advertising. Point that out directly to a publisher. Shame them publicly if they do nothing about it... But undermining the incoming stream for every little publisher out there is irresponsible.

GhostCursor 12y ago
Wrong income stream. Charge directly. The users have control now, better make with the changes or face loss of business.
cbr 12y ago
In the long term, this devalues a click. The very moment things turn... Why would you expect a sharp turn? Some fraction of clicks on the internet are already fraudulent, and if people start using this product that fraction goes up. But it doesn't really matter because it's all auctioned. Let's say I run a billing service and I've placed ads on searches for "billing service". I find that it costs me $X of advertising per incoming visitor, Y% of these convert into customers, and a new customer is worth $Z to me. I'm willing to bid up to $X x Y% on ads. Now lets say a lots of people switch from blocking ads to giving them fake clicks and now half the clicks on my ads are from this extension. Y% drops by half, because half the visitors from this source are now just browser-extension bots, so I'm only willing to bid half as much. But so is everyone else, which means my new 1/2 x $X x Y% bid is still competitive, and there's twice as much traffic to bid for, so it all comes out the same. Ad networks take click-fraud very seriously because it's important to their reputation, but the market is actually pretty robust to it. (Plus this browser extension sounds like it would be really easy for the ad networks to filter out.)
alkonaut 12y ago
While this is true, the desired effect should be to push those players to a set of white listed as networks that don't use tracking and other such tricks. If course, the same effect could be done with regular ad blocking, and I think that's way better.

androidb 12y ago

Bad idea, ads are also a way to support the site/service you are using. Automatic ad clicks can get that site banned (i.e. Adsense will surely do that) so that's a sure way to kill the site. Google for instance wouldn't have existed without ads. Lots of people on HN saved millennia with help from Stackoverflow (ad supported) and so on. I'm now "ad-aware" so I know how to differentiate content from ads, but I will click on an ad if it's something that's of interest to me. I support the publisher this way and also get some value out of it. I don't like sites filled with ads but my way of "punishing" those is to avoid visiting that site.

MoOmer 12y ago
From another perspective, it's a way to punish publishers who work with ad companies which do not respect your privacy. I wonder if it can be disabled for ad networks that don't collect user data.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads. First of all, you're right that it would totally kill sites. Let's say it happens. What's next? I would be ecstatic if sites like BuzzFeed and Gawker died. That'd be great[1]. But it also kills good sites like Stackoverflow. That sucks. Right now people don't have to pay for content. Almost everything is ad based. Because of this people almost never pay for the really great premium content. Well what if there was no free, good content? Would that lead to more great content? Probably not... but maybe! What if suddenly people expected to pay a small subscription fee to a small number of sites in exchange for great content. That'd be, well, great! How do you guys think it would play out? [1] I think they literally make the world a worse place but that's a separate discussion.
- sheetjs 12y ago
  I'm not convinced that StackOverflow is a good example. The economics of this "HuffPo" model (no ad revenue actually flows to the content producers) seem unsustainable in the long run.
- mkr-hn 12y ago

sparkzilla 12y ago

Instead of defrauding ad networks and legitimate sites that have ads, there's an even easier way to deal with annoying ad policies: Don't go to sites that have them.

Imerso 12y ago

While I agree that this can be a problem for the webpages you visit, see that the point of the extension is: " [...] to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from surveillance and tracking by advertising networks." So while it may be a negative side effect the point of the extension is not disrupting online advertisement, but disrupting online tracking. Even though you will be effectively doing both.

chrisBob 12y ago
Can someone explain now clicking an ad link prevents tracking?
- loumf 12y ago
  It's explained on the site. If every ad is clicked by everyone, tracking data is useless.
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    No, it isn't. Ad networks would have a clearer picture of sites that people visit (albeit a muddier picture of ad preferences).
    - rvschuilenburg 12y ago
      Clearer picture? I think just loading the ad is enough info for finding out what sites are visited. This just makes clicks less valuable.
- Imerso 12y ago
  Not sure what might be the exact point. I mean while that would make useless extracting information about your add clicking habits, they would still know what webpages you visit. So it may be counterproductive compared with a normal ad blocker.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I too am a little confused on that score. The advertisers continue to know your interests (i.e. the sites you visit) and can build a demographic picture of you based on that. The only thing this deprives them of is your ad preferences. But given how few ads most people click on, this information is sparse regardless.

eli 12y ago

As someone who runs an ad-supported site, I would really prefer if you just blocked my ads and did not register fake clicks on them.

eamonncarey 12y ago
Totally agree. There's something quite mean spirited about this.
- forca 12y ago
  There is something also mean-spirited about tracking users. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it's all anonymous, but I've been in the IT industry for a very long time, and I know for a fact they can identify the users with enough time. Because all of this is bought and sold behind the scenes. I would be OK with ads that went straight to the site selling an item with no tracking other than click-thru stats but not using the IP address, not fingerprinting the browsers, etc. It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop users. I've seen this by testing it myself. It's a sham. It's the seedy side of capitalism. Everyone should get the same price. Another reason to block ads, since allowing them means you're buying into the way they do business. Nothing mean-spirited about blocking a very strong vector for malware, which we all know ad networks have become. I have a moral imperative to protect machines under my control, so we block all ads, disallow all tracking, use Disconnect, Ad Block Plus, and HTTPS Everywhere, along with other in-place tools to allow users a clean Internet experience. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is saved by adblocking... That alone makes it worth it.
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Auto-clicking bots will punish the people who run sites, not the people who run ads. They'll get shut down for fraudulent use. Meanwhile, unless this has something like >50% adoption, ad networks won't even notice. Edit: When I say "people who run ads", I mean the ad networks, ad suppliers, etc.
    - 12y ago

rebel 12y ago

It's a shame this is even receiving front page publicity. This is ultimately terrible for everyone except maybe a few anarchists that think they deserve every websites information for free while sabotaging the publishers who work to develop the sites. And if it actually were to take off, it would then be bad for the anarchists who no longer get that free access to the information they wanted. Who wins? Edit: Seriously, how is this a good idea? You disproportionately harm the sites you actually visit, and ultimately the result is A) Big ad networks shut them off .. or B) Independent ads think their ads aren't converting and pull them. This is how you kill the sites you actually visit. They don't magically find a new business model before hosting/payroll/whatever catch up to the fact that their ad revenue has been shut off. I can't fathom what you stand to gain from getting their ads shut off instead of just hiding them for yourself with a standard ad block that is much more acceptable.

nacho_weekend 12y ago
I agree; this will do nothing but drive your favorite sites out of business.
greyman 12y ago
I wouldn't use this extension, and I also don't use ad blocker, but I kind of understand it. People using this extension considers those ad networks as evil, so they want to fight against them. In my personal opinion, WWW was invented for free spreading of information. The company beyond ad network, or any company for that matter, shouldn't have a guaranteed right, that WWW have to provide a platform for commercially exploit it. Also, those ad network does that by tracing users and selling that information, and that is not ethical to do without visitors content. So I believe such an extension has the right to exist.
GhostCursor 12y ago
We don't agree with ads as a means for 'paying for your hosting and content'. Charge people for your content and hosting, but this ad business doesn't work because of one reason: the user has control now. Can't be as shady anymore.
- 12y ago

forca 12y ago

I realize this won't be popular, but I really have no feelings for ad networks. - They allow shoddy security on their servers - They track users against their will - Info on me is sold w/o my knowledge or consent - Ads are a poor business model since they can be blocked - There is no moral imperative for me to view ads since I've paid to access the Interwebs I block all ads, tracking cookies, beacons, all of it... I whitelist my bank and my email provider. Everyone else gets nothing from me. I lie about my browser agent, I disallow scripts, CSS history, I disallow HTTP/S referrer, DOM storage, I use a European proxy where I need to. This all works great for me, as I have the right to move around the Internet as a customer, not a product. I think if anything, this extension makes ad companies sit up and take notice. I won't be installing it, as I don't need it, but kudos to the authors for throwing the cat in among the pigeons. Ad revenue from most of these sites is based on tracking people and this is something I am against 100%.

joopxiv 12y ago
... since I've paid to access the Interwebs You're paying for data transport, you're not paying for the content.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  but the content is free - just ad supported. They can construct an "ad-wall" in the same way they construct a "pay-wall" and are free to do so. Otherwise they are offering free content.
- greyman 12y ago
  Yes, I am not paying for the content, but the content creator also doesn't pay for the right to present his website publicly. It only pays for the webserver space and bandwidth. (I am following your logic). World Wide Web works in a way, that I can create a http request, and then do what I want with it, for example I can only take the text and throw away anything else. I paid for the data transport, as you said, and then I don't have any other obligations after downloading those data.
carrier_lost 12y ago

chatmasta 12y ago

Nice. I had a very similar idea to this a few days ago: chrome extension for DDOS'ing ad networks. Instead of just blocking the ads, send 10x requests to the networks. Not a nice move, but good social/thought experiment.

teddyh 12y ago

“Most of you have browsers, and most of those browsers show you advertisements, and I’m very puzzled about why. The advertisements are annoying most of the time, they slow you down, they injure the concentration that you bring to whatever task it is that you’re doing, and there’s no reason why they show you advertisements; my browser doesn’t show me any advertisements. I don’t see any ads when I read The New York Times, or go to wherever it is that you are happy going to, because my browser has Adblock in it, and that pretty much ends the story. Even in this town, many of you, indeed, I would guess, most of you are probably using the Firefox browser. That means you’re two clicks away from not having any advertising on the net anymore. All you need to do is google “Adblock Plus”, and say “I’m feeling lucky”, [Laughter] thank you very much. Now you know why my friends – and they are my friends – at the Mozilla Foundation are paid tens of millions of dollars every year by Google – basically, not to bundle Adblock Plus into the default distribution of Firefox. But you also know why all the talk about advertising supported models on the web is just talk, and why it is that in the end, all of those models are fated not to work. Because in digital media, when you give people knowledge, you can’t force them to take advertising, because digital media are filterable – that’s the beauty of them.” — Eben Moglen, Free and Open Software: Paradigm for a New Intellectual Commons, 2009-03-13 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Paradigm_for_a_New_Intellectual_Commons https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Software:_Parad...

orbifold 12y ago
Hm, so how viable would it be to launch a rebranded Firefox/Chromium that includes Adblock or HttpSwitchboard by default?
- thesteamboat 12y ago
  Call it BadFox! (Ban ADs fireFOX) The logo can be a fox with sunglasses and a leather jacket.

cornewut 12y ago

Those worried about supporting content creators - there are other ways to do this( e.g. Flattr).

mkr-hn 12y ago
This is great if your audience has money to spare for that purpose. What if your audience doesn't?
rebel 12y ago
Can you show me a single example of a website making enough to sustain itself on Flattr?

Alupis 12y ago

This is not a good idea... it will get sites you frequent possibly put into review by their ad networks. By clicking ads every time you visit their page, they will grow suspicious quickly... at least Google Adsense will... potentially freezing or seizing all funds in the adsense account (the opposite reaction to the spirit of this product)

randunel 12y ago

The only reason I have installed ABP is google's youtube ads. All the other websites are suffering because of google's politics with youtube, since I encouraged all of my friends to do the same thing, just to watch youtube quietly. I would really like to use this project, though, on websites with paywalled articles, not on others, but I would never bother creating or maintaining a black/white list. So I might just go ahead and install it.. :P

randunel 12y ago
Done, installed. While my ABP motivation is youtube, my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge. I know all the other websites are suffering because of this, but as a user, I don't really care, unless I get more problems than benefits.
- showsover 12y ago
  >my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge. So instead of paying for access (which is a decent way to earn something) you are mad that you don't get everything for free?

ClifReeder 12y ago

It's worth noting that a decent amount of web advertising's "value" is based on viewability, not click through rates.

gglitch 12y ago

I sympathize with anyone who doesn't have the technical knowledge to know whether a given ad is benign or malignant, or even what the real differences are between the two. For that crowd, the unregulated ad-based market (the web) can feel quite predatory, and an adblocker can feel like a very sensible default protective measure. If there were other trustworthy protective measures in place, that gave a user confidence that a given ad or a given page wouldn't do anything alarming or insecure, maybe adblockers wouldn't be necessary.

ivanca 12y ago

> AdNauseam joins a broader class of software systems that serve ethical, political, and expressive ends I have installed ad-blocker; but the level is self-righteousness is the only nauseam thing here. I'm pondering about creating a script that blocks users that use this one; if you weren't expecting a fight back you are delusional.

ganeumann 12y ago

The Internet is already awash with bots that do exactly this: visit sites and 'click' on all the ads. Fraudulent ad networks employ these bots to generate revenue. The adtech industry has already implemented software to ignore these clicks (it's pretty glaring, after all, when all the ads are clicked simultaneously when generally only one in every 500 ads is ever clicked.) This also does not corrupt the algorithms most adtech companies use by even a little bit. Weeding out the bogus clicks of people who would never, ever click on an ad anyway (because only those people would install this extension) does not in any way change the ability to project from the people who do click on ads. And, as others pointed out, by 'clicking' on the ad instead of just blocking it, you provide information to the ad network anyway. If you really don't want to be tracked online, block third-party cookies (or clear your cookies at the end of the day), and turn off flash. (If you don't want to be tracked offline, call your congressperson, and good luck.)

justinpaulson 12y ago

"AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent with advertising networks that disregard privacy and facilitate bulk surveillance agendas." Is it really a privacy issue to track what ads you click and use that information to target advertisements to you later? I never understand the outrage against targeted ads. You are going to get ads no matter what. That is how "free" content works. Would you rather the ads be catered to your interest and show things you that you might actually like an not know about, or would you rather have the ads be random things that you may have no interest in at all. Either way, you are getting ads. The ad companies are using this information to rob your house when you are away on vacation, or to reveal your embarassing secrets on social media, they are using this information to target ads to you and show you things that might actually interest you. Why the anger over this?

DanBC 12y ago
i) I see an unfamiliar term. I search for it. For the next X weeks I am showered with stupid useless adverts for something that I have zero interest in. ii) I am[1] a person with alcoholism / gambling addict / person with anorexia / etc. This informs my search habits. Showing alcohol ads is immoral anyway, but showing those ads to a person with alcoholism is sub-optimal for many reasons. iii) I like gory movies. My 5 year old son enjoys watching some YouTube clips. There's no mechanism to prevent fucking YouTube from showing me ads for gruesome videos even when the clip I'm watching is some child's show. iv) I am ad-tolerant. But ads just fucking suck and targeted ads suck about the same as random ads. They don't push what I'm interested in, they push what the ad-buyer wants me to be interested in. When I search for "metal detector" I'm not shown ads telling me how to chose a metal detector or why detectors differ. I'm shown ads from metal detector sellers who are peddling some kit of unknown quality at me. [1] I'm not, but imagine a person that is.
- justinpaulson 12y ago
  I can see the argument for ii. But the ads could just as easily be for rehabilitation clinics. For i, a single data point is not creating all of your targetted ads. And so what if it is, it is still closer to what you might be interested in than completely random ads. iii. Is your own problem for sharing devices and accounts with a 5 year old when you use it for "adult" things. iv. Sure, ads suck, but that metal detector ad is at least close to something you might be interested in. What if you searched for metal detector and got ads for high heeled shoes and candy bars?? How is the metal detector ad not better? You have made some good arguments though, and I think ii. really makes the most sense. I wouldn't be surprised if that very thing is happening.

crossre 12y ago

That's bog data for you. Works well after a little why. No immune data mining algorithm I know of.

vdaniuk 12y ago

HN is so oblivious about ad industry, it isn't even funny. The ad industry is moving towards action-based model of payment, where advertisers pay for the purchase, lead or download. This ad blocker will just provide more data about users to advertisers. Also if this succeeds, many small publishers will die and large publishers will accelerate the introduction of native ads. Also if this succeeds and most sites switch to paywalls, most poor people(billions of them) won't have access to quality content. The short-sightedness is so strong, I doubt the general ability of the HN community to reach an educated consensus on the topic of ad supported business models.

karmacondon 12y ago

This exposes a fundamental flaw in the internet advertising model. On some level I've known that a script like this could be easily written for a long time, but seeing this working product really made it clear. It's unlikely that millions of people would use something like this, but if they did it would be chaos in the advertising industry. They love online ads because it allows them to gather empirical metrics that can't be gathered from television or radio. It's impossible to know objectively what kind of an impression a tv made, but you can see exactly how many people clicked on a banner. But this could also be a fatal flaw. If a lot of people wanted to, they could destroy payperclick advertising. It would be almost impossible to know which clicks were real and which were fake. Companies would lose a lot of faith in the industry because an update to the script could play havoc with the online ad budget of this company or that on a whim. I don't know why anyone would chose the attack the online advertising industry and it wouldn't be a good idea, but it's interesting to that it's possible. Online ads is a huge market space but also one could also be severely disrupted by a greasemonkey script. They'd better be careful not cross the line with tracking and privacy invasion because this is one of the rare cases where people can take direct action to fight back.

Deregibus 12y ago

Wouldn't this just enforce the existing ad preferences? Say the ad networks determined that you're looking for a car. They then start showing you car ads, this software clicks on them, and now they think that you must really, really want a car. That hasn't messed up the fundamental information, it's just adjusted the scale.

lostcolony 12y ago

The real solution is for ad companies to agree to allow their ads to be vetted, and hosted on the delivery network's systems. I had no problem with ads up until the point I went to the official online source for a number of print comics, and had my browser forcibly minimized, with a new window spawned in the bottom right corner of my screen designed to look like a Windows alert, trying to trick me into installing malware. At that point I installed an Adblocker, and have never looked back. I don't mind disabling it when reminded (Hulu and the like), for certain sites, but until I can be certain that websites with positive reputations won't deliver such scurrilous ads, it stays on by default.

acomjean 12y ago

More in your face, html5 ads are coming (sigh). If ad blocking gets real popular like an arms race where those that don't block ads suffer the most. Maybe the days of site/advertiser direct partnership will come back (see strobist/ midwest photo exchange or xlr8yourmac.com and otherworld computing.)

rip747 12y ago

this is absolutely moronic and childish if you don't want to see ads, use adblock and be done with it. why do you now have to be a child and "one-up" the ad agencies by sending fake clicks to the them? you do know that legitimate businesses and people advertise on these networks and the only thing you're going to be doing is draining their accounts. if you _think_ you're hurting the ad networks themselves by use this extension, you are living in a fantasy world. i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way to the bank with an extension like this.

faizanbhat 12y ago
>i'm sure the ad networks are laughing their way to the bank with an extension like this. Definitely not. If this were to catch on, the whole ad ecosystem would feel the impact. Ad networks have advertiser relationships to look after. If the numbers looks fishy, they are held to answer by clients and usually instructed to stop running ads on sites where the suspicious activity originated.

xefer 12y ago

I honestly feel that blocking ads is a win for both the audience and those serving the ads. I don't mean this to sound insulting but if you're not (let's say) "wise" enough to block ads, then you're exactly the target audience for 99% of the stuff out there. This is similar to the way Nigerian scammers purposely use bad grammar to target the less sophisticated. It's a win for the ad network because they're not wasting bandwidth pushing an ad to someone who would never consider whatever they're selling.

Artemis2 12y ago
Installing AdBlock Plus = smart? Doesn't looks like a lot of thought went into this comment...
- xefer 12y ago
  The point is, by installing an ad blocker, the ads that do get through are ultimately seen by those to whom they are move effective. Ad servers get a somewhat smaller but receptive audience.

alkonaut 12y ago

The people behind the adblockers should throw their weight around a bit and issue some guidelines for what kind of advertising is acceptable and just whitelist the good guys. I prefer being shown useles add that don't interest me, than being shown ads for the thing I just bought or googled as it is today. Most as networks and advertisers probably find that completely bonkers "but you get consumer information that is relevant to you!" Get off my lawn

sbierwagen 12y ago
AdBlock Plus does this: if you pay the author of ABP money, then he whitelists your ads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_ad_filtering_and_ad_whitelisting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_a...

nezumi 12y ago

This would be perfectly fair if there were a reliable way for ad-supported sites to restrict access to only clients which aren't running an ad blocker.

jdalgetty 12y ago

Running this amounts to fraud and will hurt the website owners, ad networks, agencies and the actual advertisers.

lampstack2 12y ago

I don't like ads either, but monetizing the internet is going to be a lot tougher in the age of ad blocking.

cyanbane 12y ago

If you really wanted to cause chaos in the macro scale then having it randomly select Ads to click would be better one would think. If an Ad network has multiple Ads on a page that were clicked I would suspect it would be easy to form some type of filter heuristic for that particular set of users. It may cause a slight bit of obfuscation for that particular "user" on their side, but as for the over all success of an Ad campaign it would not be hard to remove those entities that selected ALL the Ads assuming more than one is served on a page from a given network.

halcy 12y ago

If the end goal is to reduce third-party tracking by ad networks, then actually loading the ads, nevermind fake-clicking, certainly seems terribly misguided, and that's putting aside that anything short of a proper click is probably going to trigger ad networks bot detection measures.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interesting, blocking and click fraud all in one package :-) As many sites live and die by their "traffic quality score" this seems like it would negatively impact that in a serious way. It seems to me that could get a site in trouble with its ad network, and if it were Google there have been examples where it just gets all of its ad revenue revoked/tossed without resource. So it seems like this might kill smaller indie sites if it became popular. Is that the goal?

secalex 12y ago

The well-meaning but naive people behind this and other ad-disrupting extensions are doing more than anybody to end the era of general purpose computing. These products (several of which are created by for-profit companies that then extort the ad networks) are slowly killing the desktop web as a viable distribution channel for professionally created content. This is pushing publishers to put more and more of their focus on the mobile space, where their content is trapped in a mobile app that can gather way more data and show unblockable ads. We'll look back at the 2000's and 2010's as the golden age of the web, when it was economical to publish content for free without relying upon the DRMish guarantees of the major mobile OSes. In five years the desktop web available to general-purpose browsers will be dominated by pay services (Netflix), micro-payment supported sites, NPR-like fund drives (Wikipedia, Internet Archive), academics who don't need to raise revenue, and sites with super-low cost structures due to their reliance on user-generated content (Reddit).

Rudism 12y ago

I worked in the online advertising industry for a number of years at my last job, and I can pretty confidently say that the worst thing that software like this might do is potentially earn a bit more money for some publishers using the ad networks that are being blocked (if they're lucky enough to be running any pay-per-click campaigns). Nobody in the industry will even take notice that this exists. If they do accidentally come across it, far from being scared or "taking notice," it would at best circulate around a few internal email lists to give everyone a good laugh. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this was actually developed by an ad network as a joke--they know that ad-block users aren't going to be making them any money anyway, so why not put them to use as what would essentially amount to a free bot network of very natural-looking traffic to send to their advertisers? Sure, it might lower conversion rates by a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but any amount of natural-looking traffic coming through to advertisers that isn't obvious bot traffic only increases the perceived quality of the ad network. It's much easier to shuffle the blame for poor conversion rates off to the advertiser themselves than it is to explain away low traffic volume or bot clicks. Bot traffic is usually pretty easy to identify--very low quality traffic all coming from the same block of IPs, geographical region, or publisher. The quality is basically a measure of conversion rate for that subset of traffic compared against the average conversion rate across the entire network. In the (unlikely) event that something like this product catches on and sees a high enough adoption rate to actually affect the numbers across entire ad networks, it would lower traffic quality equally across the board, thus making it essentially undetectable. It's when that starts to happen that advertisers and publishers start to get desperate and we start seeing them play new and shadier games. You might be happy and safe behind your ad-clicking blocker, but grandma and gramps who don't have the technical know-how to protect themselves will start to see new fake download button ads, pop-unders, auto-playing video ads, and other gross tactics being used to try to compensate. My time in the industry has pretty heavily biased me against online advertising quite a bit (I run ad blockers, no-referrer, strict whitelist-only cookie policies, etc), but I can definitely say that running this extension is pretty antithetical to its stated intention.