Haven't heard of AdNauseam before but I think I'm going to install it now.
AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
211–220 of 344 posts
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dog, in this case, is protecting their property. They're not in your yard, you're in their yard. So get out of their yard if you don't like the dog.
> So get out of their yard if you don't like the dog. I would if I could! But we are not in a yard. We are in a public area, where I was walking along minding my own business and the dog came up and started barking at me. I never wanted to interact with the dog in the first place. He intruded on my life.
There's no public space on the internet. Everything is somebody's yard.
This is Y Combinator's yard. YouTube is Google's yard. So is the Chrome Web Store.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
... Or, more likely, they will switch to an ad network with more obnoxious, or dangerous ads. Google, Microsoft, and their ilk are a fair bit better as ad networks then some of the less scrupulous players. Yes, the large networks occasionally serve dangerous ads. But by far and large, they have better standards then most of the fly-by-night ad networks.
Or, even more likely, they’ll actually switch to direct negotiations with the advertisers themselves, through more open and manual brokering platforms.
This model works for buying advertising space on ESPN, or in a print magazine, but not on the internet. Economies of scale, need for targeting, the inability to force unskippable 5-minute-long streams of ads on users...
There's a reason why everybody uses ad networks.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#214At 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] whi…
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Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why such "clicks" would be easy to filter on the server side? What distinguishes them so clearly?
Well, tons of them coming from one IP address, on seemingly every site that address visits, for one thing.
"One IP address" as in "the address of the same NAT box"?
With IPv6 it could work, or maybe with the local IP address passed by the script at click time, but the latter would be trivial to forge.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advertising networks create profiles of users based on online activity including searches. It's called profiling. The ads you see are relevant to your interests as it is described in your profile. By randomly clicking on ads you render the profile irrelevant.
But what if you clicked on no ads at all? Doesn't that make the profile equally irrelevant?
Yes and no. If you don’t click on ads you make advertising irrelevant but they’ll still keep collecting data on your behavior. Sure in the long run if everyone stopped clicking on ads it would be game over for the whole advertising industry. But in the meantime we can wreck havoc on their tactics.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, tons of them coming from one IP address, on seemingly every site that address visits, for one thing.
"One IP address" as in "the address of the same NAT box"? With IPv6 it could work, or maybe with the local IP address passed by the script at click time, but the latter would be trivial to forge.
Sure, but most or all ads on every page visited by a given IPV4 address surely throws up red flags, NAT notwithstanding. And all this is assuming that the extension bypasses session tracking and makes resorting to IP address necessary in the first place.
Then again maybe it doesn't, since they bothered to ban this extension. They did seemingly more-or-less give up trying to sort spam search results from low-traffic but high-value sites a few years back, so I guess they can't algorithm their way out of every abuse problem.
[EDIT] all ads on some pages visited by a given IP over some shortish span of time, I should say, in the case of NAT.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#218Why not make a Safari extension? Apple has little incentive to defend Google and Facebook's business models.
because no one who would use the extension (aka tech savy people) would use Safari
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should still be giving Google shit for decisions like that, even if they're not surprised.
Why does Google deserve the shit for stopping people from taking money from them? I wouldn't think to give a department store shit for pressing charges against someone who smashed up a bunch of merchandise, whether or not the act was politically motivated.
Google deserves shit for using market power to stop the purchasers of personal devices from running software of their choice.
If the user does something with their device Google dislikes, Google can block the user from using Google services, or if they're doing something illegal, they can go that route.
This habit of retroactively removing functionality from devices is not OK. If Google relies on a business model other people hate, perhaps they should give some thought in to doing something about that.
Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should still be giving Google shit for decisions like that, even if they're not surprised.
Why does Google deserve the shit for stopping people from taking money from them? I wouldn't think to give a department store shit for pressing charges against someone who smashed up a bunch of merchandise, whether or not the act was politically motivated.
I don't hold any bad feelings towards Google for banning AdNauseam. What I do hold against them is that they are not being open and transparent with their reasons.