AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store • Hacker News Board

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#221

Post by wvenable » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

floweringlotus wrote: post #210

ben0x539 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone clicking an ad is not a) making an order or b) pretending to be someone else, which seem kinda instrumental for the fraud in your analogy. The ad didn't get served with a ToS document explaining that by clicking it, you enter into a contract or whatever. It's your decision to pay money based on ad clicks, and it doesn't somehow oblige people who have nothing to do with you to only click ads in the manner you…

Alright, how about an example with no orders? Let's say you think the police state is evil, and you wish to destroy it by wasting its resources. Is making automated empty 911 calls justified? Just because you intend to use the 911 hotline as an emergency resource surely shouldn't impede my right as a phone owner from calling it in the manner you intended. It's my god-given right as a phonebook owner to call whatever…

This analogy is still a stretch. Both are examples of DDOS which prevents legitimate requests from going through.

This is more the equivalent of replying to every piece of physical junk mail that you get using their provided self-stamped return envelopes. I think you'd be hard to pressed to argue that, while being a jerk move, you're still aren't entitled to do it.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#222

Post by fryguy » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

mattlevan wrote: post #124

fryguy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at it as the extension performs fraud, then what Google did is completely defensible. And I feel that it does. You may not feel that way exactly, but it's certainly justifiable that the extensions actions defraud the ad network.

Fraud? If a user wants to automate his browser to click all ads encountered as he surfs, that's fraud?

Yes. The intent is what's important to me. If it were an extension, like in the 90's when everyone was on dial-up, that pre-loaded links, and some of those links happened to be ads then that's one thing. The goal of that extension is to load pages faster since they've already been downloaded. That's not fraud. This extension clearly understands that links are ads and that clicking them will cost the advertiser money with no benefit to them. And then clicks them. That's what makes it fraud.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#223

Post by CaptSpify » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

richardwhiuk wrote: post #212

CaptSpify wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Shitty metaphors are shitty. It doesn't detract from my point. I'd avoid using Google if I could, but they seem dedicated to interacting with me even when I go out of my way to avoid them. I'm not going to accept that I'm the bad guy when I try to fight back.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#224

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #166

notahacker wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both actions are done with the stated intent of costing the target money. Sure, it only involves accessing URLs the public is actively encouraged to visit (in a manner intended to bring the system down) but so do many DDoS attacks...

A lot of things costing a company money are perfectly reasonable and we rightly complain if a company sabotages them. Things like leaving negative reviews/ratings, receiving refunds for defective products or shopping around to compare prices ultimately hurt someone's bottom line, so I think we can expect better from an analogy here.

I think "indiscriminately bombard ad networks with the intent of sabotaging the ad network's business" is a lot closer to my DDoS example (or smashing up a store) than "if a product proves to be disappointing, exercise my statutory right to a refund and/or tell people about it". I'd also feel Google could and probably should remove browser extensions whose distinctive feature was that they automated the process of submitting fake reviews or purchases/cancellations if they stumbled across a class of product the plugin designer disapproved of enough to want to harm the vendors' ability to continue selling it.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#225

Post by tene » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #203

strictnein wrote: post #147

Earlier 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.

Since when is youtube a public area?

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#226

Post by dsl » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

chad-autry wrote: post #120

claudius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the whole attitude that this is some sort of tyrannical thing is a little over the top. This is the exact sort of thing anti-monopoly laws are intended to work against: that a major market force in one market uses that power to intrude or support itself in another market. Since Google Chrome undoubtedly has a sufficiently large market share that this may be a concern and the removal of this extension certainly…

But this isn't a case of two different markets...Google makes no money off of Chrome. They make money off of advertising. The bottom line of Chrome is that it is just there to view advertising. The better they can make it, the more it will be used, and the more advertising will be viewed (hopefully Google's)

Google Assist (enterprise support and management for Chrome) makes a bunch of money.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#227

Post by kuschku » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #213

kuschku wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve done all this myself before – even when running a small Let’s Play site with a few friends we negotiated with publishers directly for advertising, and managed to get quite good deals.

I’m not sure why you think this is so complicated or impossible.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#228

Post by wildrhythms » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #187

wildrhythms wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask if there's a good way to keep bookmarks synced between Chrome and Firefox? I know about Xmarks[1] but I'm just curious if there's another way that doesn't involve storing my bookmarks on a third party. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/

You are looking to sync bookmarks through a server you host yourself? Any other option involves a 3rd party, no? If you don't care about sync / mobile then just use a local .html file. Maybe this could be Dropbox'd around but there's that 3rd party problem!

>You are looking to sync bookmarks through a server you host yourself?

Sure, just a way to keep bookmarks synced when I might switch systems/browsers without having to manually export-import them every time.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#229

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #162

notahacker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their FAQ page AdNauseum reproduce the following definition of click fraud to argue they're not engaging in it: The practice of ... clicking on an advertisement hosted on a website with the intention of ... draining revenue from the advertiser Elsewhere on the same page they've even gone to the extent of explaining how they calculate the average revenue they think each simulated click drains from the entities they…

The difference is that in the classical definition, the revenue is drained from the advertiser to the click fraudster. That's an obvious and prohibited motive for traditional fraud. In AdNauseum's implementation, the revenue is drained from the advertisers to all of the sites where those ads are hosted and where AdNauseum's users browse. Neither AdNauseum nor the users browsing the sites benefit from that revenue. In…

The classical definition AdNauseum reproduced regarded it as fraud if it was to generate revenue or to drain revenue. Wikipedia uses the even more straightforward definition: "Fraud occurs when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser, clicking on such an ad without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link"

Regardless of what a court may decide if it ever gets involved, the term "click fraud" as its most widely used and defined certainly includes clicks aimed at causing a party to lose money as well as than clicks aimed at directly obtaining money.

Re: AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store

#230

Post by codazoda » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

ominous wrote: post #107

waxim wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google HAS to block this and prevent it from ever being run if it can, its click fraud plain and simple and they've been stung too many times with huge bills for fraud it could have prevented and didn't.

Everything that is GETtable risks being GET. Why would Google serve an ad to someone who might click it without the intention of following through with the ad? Because Google chooses who to show the ad to. So it is really Google's fault. Google created click fraud. See how ridiculous this is?

...and, this is how search engines work, on a simple level. They request a web page then they "click" on everything and request all those other pages.

Of course, Google probably detects bots and doesn't count these clicks, but your statement that "Google created click fraud" is correct (although they weren't first) and kinda funny.