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AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

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Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

harigov wrote: post #85
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may seem nice at the beginning, but as you saturate the service with fake clicks, the PPC value will drop to near-zero.

Assuming they don't know how to separate fake clicks, which can be done within a reasonable level of accuracy. It ends up being a war between digital ad agencies and the users. I can see who has the most motivation here and therefore higher chances of winning.

Tangential, but makes me think: could all those happy campers who like to DDoS GitHub and Freenode in their spare time target an ad bidding node instead? I'd love to see that happen. Do it for teh good old-school lulz.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#92

Post by criddell »

elorant wrote: post #31

I don’t like this. While I strongly oppose tracking and have a variety of privacy extensions installed on my browser, clicking on ads is simply wrong. Someone will have to pay for those clicks. Not to mention that if something like this gets wide adoption then it will make click fraud detection even harder. A bunch of browser sessions randomly clicking on ads will have no difference from a bot doing the same thing.

> Someone will have to pay for those clicks. Not to mention that if something like this gets wide adoption then it will make click fraud detection even harder. A bunch of browser sessions randomly clicking on ads will have no difference from a bot doing the same thing.

I believe that's the point of it.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#93

Post by sanswork »

dumb-saint wrote: post #83
sanswork wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are paying the content providers who are paying you in content. They are free to take "counter measures". But that doesn't stop the fact that they are paying for both your time and the content.

Nope, they are not paying me for anything. Again, I did not enter into any agreement. I just clicked a link. They are expending their resources in an attempt to capture and profit from my attention. Those are very different things. Many times they also payed to make it hard for me to get to the content that I actually wanted. This is commonly known as SEO.

>I just clicked a link.

Because you want to consume what they've produced. That is how they are paying you.

You keep saying "I did not enter into any agreement" like it changes anything. It's juvenile.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#94

Post by eloff »

jalfresi wrote: post #58
CaptSpify wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, because many of the content producers and curators won't waste their time for no return. Great! I'd personally love it if they went away. If it's good content, people have definitely shown to be willing to pay for it. "essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions" - https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AdSupportedWebD...

People have been shown to create good content for free too. I'm not convinced advertising is required.

You're both right in that people make good content for free and for pay websites, but you're dead wrong if you think advertising dollars is not also a motivation. You will lose good content.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

sanswork wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your time is so important why are you wasting it visiting pages with ads? Because I get linked to them. Also, social objects - other people are visiting those pages, so I have to check them out too in order to participate in the conversation. Also, YouTube. > Surely you'd just stick with the better content that doesn't use ads all the time right? Yeah, and I mostly do.

So you just follow random links people send you? That seems like a horrible waste of your most precious commodity. YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?

> So you just follow random links people send you? That seems like a horrible waste of your most precious commodity.

See my point about social objects.

> YouTube offers a way to pay for an ad free experience. Are you a paying member?

They don't offer it in my country, so no. But I do am a paying subscriber of Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime Video, FWIW.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#96

Post by intrasight »

sbarre wrote: post #19
WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

I'm out on this. 1. They say it's legally not click fraud. To me it sounds like regular fraud: "deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right". I'm not concerned with breaking the law I just don't want to act in the spirit of it. 2. This could hurt small startups that are very carefully managing an ad budget. They say the market will adjust, but until it does small startups take…

I think #3 is the key thing here.. Is this really activism or just vandalism?

If I don't have to worry about the police coming and knocking on my door then it is not vandalism.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#97

Post by sanswork »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #54
aninhumer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think micro-payments just don't sit well with people psychologically. Even if you know the totals are going to be tiny, being on a meter just adds mental overhead to every click. And moreover most of the time people don't know if something is worth paying for until they've seen it, and they probably resent paying for some things.

Maybe mini-payments would be better than micro-payments, so long as there's a good it-just-works technology for doing them that minimizes user interaction. Did you like this comment? Leave a tip: 50c - $1 - $5

The history of the web is littered with the corpses of tipping companies because almost no one wants to tip on the web.

Same for micropayments. No one wants to think about if they should pay for an article even if it is only 1c.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#98

Post by k1m »

_m7bj wrote: post #35
WhitneyLand wrote: post #14

I'm out on this. 1. They say it's legally not click fraud. To me it sounds like regular fraud: "deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right". I'm not concerned with breaking the law I just don't want to act in the spirit of it. 2. This could hurt small startups that are very carefully managing an ad budget. They say the market will adjust, but until it does small startups take…

>3. I dislike activism without clear objectives. I see no list of guidelines here or good behavior that companies could adopt to immediately place them on the side of the good guys. The goal highly specific. It is to make Internet advertising artificially expensive, and it is to make harvested data about users inaccurate. There are no "good guys" on the other side. People shouldn't track me, that one's obvious, but t…

> There are no "good guys" on the other side. People shouldn't track me, that one's obvious, but they also shouldn't advertise at me, ever.

Agree. I think it's unfortunate that so much of the debate around advertising, especially from many on the side of ad blocking, focuses only on the evils of tracking and privacy erosion. This project does it too. From their FAQ: "It is not advertising we are protesting, but advertising insofar as it represents a dominant means of tracking users without their consent." But advertising itself should be protested. I don't know why so many shy away from that. I've been working on a project to promote ad blocking. It's been discussed here on HN before, but I'll link to it anyway. https://blockads.fivefilters.org/acceptable.html

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#99

Post by eloff »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #38
eloff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments have never worked well on the internet, not for technical problems, but likely more that the market isn't really there. I know I just want free stuff and I'm not going to pay to read a news article or blog post no matter how well written or researched. So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content. Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, bec…

I disagree. If you can't fund your content without ads then you have a bad business model. We should kill ads and any content that dies in the collateral is an acceptable loss. Micropayments also don't work because no one has done it well, not because it's inherently not going to work.

Then do it well and become a billionaire. I think many have tried and there's a fundamental problem with the idea if it never works. It's not just a matter of doing it well, you have to fix whatever everyone else has missed. I think the problem is the idea itself, it would explain why nobody gets it right.

Re: AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy Abuse

#100

Post by eloff »

aninhumer wrote: post #39
eloff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Micropayments have never worked well on the internet, not for technical problems, but likely more that the market isn't really there. I know I just want free stuff and I'm not going to pay to read a news article or blog post no matter how well written or researched. So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content. Kill advertising and you'll take the content with it, bec…

>So at the end of the day there is still no viable alternative to advertising supported content. Yes there is. Many creators successfully support themselves entirely based on Patreon.

Patreon is not going to replace all of the advertising supported websites...
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