Hello Firefox and Opera. I'm suddenly in the market for a new browser.
AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
21–30 of 344 posts
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#22I find it interesting that this particular Adblocker is being removed, while countless others remain. I suspect that other adblockers like, say, ABP or UBO, are less damaging to the agent fingerprint than an adblocker that clicks everything.
AdNauseam silently clicks the ads as you mention, so they're actively messing with Google's ad statistics. If I was Google, I would consider it an attack too.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#23Perhaps because it was costing them money and making their tracking data less valuable. Perhaps if AdNauseam stopped the clicking portion the ban would be lifted.
This is MY user agent, not google's. I should be able to install whatever the fuck add on I want on it. Removing the add on from computer where it was already installed is incredibly user hostile.
So I installed Firefox and adNauseam on it. I was not a user before.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#24Perhaps because it was costing them money and making their tracking data less valuable. Perhaps if AdNauseam stopped the clicking portion the ban would be lifted.
Making their tracking data useless is kind of the point of the extension. Obviously it's well within Google's interests to stop people using it. I guess if you're privacy minded it's probably best not to use a browser made by a giant ad company.
I'm not sure how I'd feel if something like this became widespread and I was paying Google for clicks.
Well. I guess that's the point. But then surely it's fairly understandable for Google to try and stop them - at least on their own turf?
Google doesn't fund Chrome out of a sense of altruism - they want to have control over those aspects of the web-browsing ecosystem that potentially threaten their bottom line.
And here is that strategy behaving exactly as it should. You want the stuff Google has paid to build? You probably have to accept that "I want to automatically hide and click ads" falls under the banner of "maybe you should use a different browser then".
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#25Wow, 'Do no evil' huh?
I assume AdNauseam's random clicking is viewed as click fraud[1] by Google. Then, I'm guessing click fraud falls under the "Interfering with Third-party Ads and Websites" section[2] of the developer policy.
[1]https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/16737?hl=en
[2]https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/program_policies (ctrl-f, then search for "Interfering with Third-party Ads and Websites")
Edit: Hmm, below is correct. The "single purpose" policy is pretty hard to understand, and the reason Google gave for banning it. The policy above would seem more applicable.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#26Who uses Chrome anyway? .. Question: I'm not a web dev, Ive never heard of this. I currently use adblock plus and privacy badger. Does this do what they do? Would it be a good idea to install them all? If not which solution do you think is the most hardcore in terms of privacy. thanks!
> Who uses Chrome anyway?
Over 50% of all desktop users [0], or, in other words, hundreds of millions of people.
0: https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#27Hello Firefox and Opera. I'm suddenly in the market for a new browser.
I moved the other day from Chromium to Firefox Developer Edition due to some bugs.
It has substantially improved in responsiveness over the past few months, Chrome/Chromium really isn't worth the price of admission.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#28Few month ago we developed and launched an AI-based AdBlocker (called AdFilter) and also had several problems with Google Chrome Web Store. Almost every week they had a "strange reason" to remove our extension from the Google Chrome Web Store. We had more than 380,000 DAU (Daily Active Users) from 36 countries with all good feedbacks on Google Chrome Web Store, but even so, Google always tried to find a way to get us…
It's possible to install Chrome extensions outside of the store: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-on...
> Earlier this week, on Jan 1st 2017, we were informed by our users that Google had banned AdNauseam from its Chrome Web Store. We’ve since learned that Google now also disallows users from manually installing and updating AdNauseam, thus locking users out of their own saved data, all with no prior notice or warning.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#29At the risk of downvotes: Is anyone really surprised?
AdNauseam is silently clicking ads. This directly costs Google money. Google happens to control the extension web store for their own browser. Removing it from the store really isn't that bad. Uninstalling it from existing browsers as malware? A little more malicious, but I would still consider it self defense.
There is even a method to install it directly[1] which AFAIK Google has not blocked.
Granted, if Google were not both running the browser and the ad network, these actions probably wouldn't have been taken. But the whole attitude that this is some sort of tyrannical thing is a little over the top.
1. https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-on...
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is to mess with advertisers' metrics. If people using ad blockers are peaceful protesters, AdNauseam is trying to riot.
Assuming they aren't detected as fraudulent, it's messing with more than metrics. The advertisers, in many cases, are paying per click. Edit: Not making a judgement here, just clarifying that the extension is doing more than messing with metrics.
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