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Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

forum.palemoon.org

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Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#61

Post by etplayer »

na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

I might agree with you if we were in a world in which there is little cost to provide lots of high quality information, or maintain a digital library etc.

I think it's needlessly dismissive to say that a website deserves to die just because it can't survive without ads. Many very niche but high quality websites can't make enough money to support curation and hosting fees, and as such turn to advertisements.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#63

Post by Rjevski »

chuckdries wrote: post #52
Rjevski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also attacking your ability to track and infect other users with malware, so I am doing a good thing. And no, I am not punishing you - I am punishing a shitty industry for wasting millions of hours of time globally and causing damage with malware. We've seen that pacific methods do not work so the only way to drive change is to actively fight back until the lowlife either adapts (by becoming better) or dies.

You are punishing me and only me. We don't use an ad network, we sell our ad space directly to local businesses. Fake ad clicks have been actively hurting our ability to sell ads for about a year now. Our ads are pictures. Pictures are not malware. Also what ads cause damage? Like sure the ads on porn or piratebay are cancerous but no reputable newspaper will have anything harmful, just potentially annoying.

See my other response above ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15112864 ) about why this extension wouldn't change anything for you.

> no reputable newspaper will have anything harmful, just potentially annoying.

Please look up "malvertising", install an ad blocker if you haven't already then come back and feel free to revise your statement. ;)

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#64

Post by jszymborski »

chuckdries wrote: post #21
userbinator wrote: post #6

From a quick glance at the thread it seems this "extension blacklist" can be quite easily disabled, and the discussion centers more around the position of the author. Perhaps he has a stake in ad companies too? It's not as if it's difficult to revert the change itself either, fork the project, and keep going: https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/Pale-Moon/commit/fe7... Because this extension causes direct and indi…

But it's distinctly passive with ad blockers. Sure, you want to read my content without supporting me (some publications prevent you from doing so, but mine does not). You're just affecting you. With AdNauseum, you are actively attacking our ability to make money off of other users. You're punishing me for writing content that you want to read.

I'm not trying to punish you for writing content I want to read, I'm punishing a horrible and unethical industry that you've chosen to profit from.

The current state of online advertisement is an absolute blight on the internet.

Online ads are the primary source of malware among anyone I've spoken to, and online advertising standards are atrocious.

Just because someone uses the profits of a Ponzi scheme to support the creation of free content doesn't give you the right to complain when that Ponzi scheme gets busted.

I wish you all the best in finding a way to support the creation of your content.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#65

Post by taohansen »

addicted wrote: post #13
na85 wrote: post #7

That AdNauseam causes potential damage to people running ads and generating revenue from ads by devaluing clicks is a feature, not a bug. My understanding of the plugin is that it views advertising as universally bad, and that if a site cannot survive without ads, it must not be worth much at all, and deserves to die. I wholeheartedly agree with this view.

So Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat have no value? Because those aren't just little sites, but entire companies that have value solely because of ads. Take away ads and they don't exist.

it may surprise you to read but there are a non-zero percentage of people out there (inclusive me) who believe exactly the statement you just phrased as a question.

these are companies which actively take advantage of the worst in all of us to deliver products that monopolize our time at the cost of calm, concentration, and patience.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#66

Post by hbbio »

eropple wrote: post #54
zeta0134 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I agree with your sentiment in general. However, it's a double edged sword here. LOTS of people are so sick of advertising networks, tracking, privacy invasion and malware from compromised ad networks that the underlying issue, the idea that click and impression based advertising is fundamentally flawed, is something that people are going to continue to protest. If the system is so broken that it's s…

My understanding--and I pretty much hang out in the virtual duck blind studying vile people as a hobby, this isn't second-hand--is that this is largely being pushed by the 4chan/alt-right/white-supremacist crowd that's mostly mad at Google for not partying down with them. (People in the comments are referring to 4chan's /g/ board in that thread.) You are right that we need to figure out how to evolve advertising-- wh…

How come?

The originator of AdNauseum is https://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#67

Post by donohoe »

wongarsu wrote: post #27

>Generating this kind of traffic does not achieve its intended goal (providing protest against ad networks or causing advertising to fail for ad networks) since the ones punished are the publishers (those who rely on this revenue) and not the ad networks. I don't think I follow? People don't like the ad networks and want them to change or fail. That's achievable by forcing change at either the advertiser, the network…

It doesn't quite work that way.

Yes, it decreases the usefulness of ad networks and hurts them - hopefully inciting change eventually.

But between the reader and the ad network is the website owner. They typically have no say or control over the ad network. As fake clicks are detected they are the ones that will get punished.

Their CPN can drop meaning a real hit in revenue.

If fake ad clicks add up they may be booted form the ad network and then they lose all ad revenue.

That is real harm.

We can all agree that ad networks can be invasive and we need real change. But lets be honest that there is real collateral damage and this does cause it.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#68

Post by belorn »

The idea that ad networks don't care about click rates and clicks generated by bots seems very incorrect and false on even a surface glance. The revenue from ad networks is based on advertisers getting purchases and through that validate a marketing budget. It would be crazy if the networks did't already have several system to handle bad data and clicks generated by bots.

In addition, the argument is that the extension is only punishing the publishers. What it really do is to change the balance between unethical ad networks and ethical alternatives. By only punishing networks that automatically track users, the more ethical networks become better in comparison and will give better returns for each dollar spent on marketing. One could call this strong arming the publisher to chose more ethical, but an other way to see it is to eliminate the race to the bottom and discourage a lemon market. We currently have networks that have no problem with infecting peoples machines with malware, advertising products to children, or target the sick and vulnerable. If I ran AdNauseam and it causes a single website to consider an alternative ad network, I would consider that a major win for the Internet, even if that meant a few % less revenue.

Considering that some site has already gone over to more ethical alternatives in order to resolve the problem of ad blocking, it seems we are already making steps towards this future.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#69

Post by benchaney »

eropple wrote: post #42
hbbio wrote: post #19

The motto of Pale Moon is "Your browser, Your way". But apparently not very so... The current ad system is broken and, although I understand Google decision to protect its own profits, I don't see why an open source project that aims to provide an unbiased browsing experience would follow suit.

How is "modify about:config" not having it "your way"?

You already got to decide which extensions you install. Making them disappear by default is a clear attempt to prevent people from installing an extension they may want.

Re: Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension

#70

Post by notgood »

You guys do realize what's going to happen as soon as a webpage can detect you have AdNauseam installed right? They gonna block you completely from their websites -I mean IP-tables blockage- and rightly so. If you don't like a website just don't use it; it's really really simple; when you start attacking every ad network the creator of the extension deems "evil" you are basically just another bot in his botnet attack; you didn't were part of the committee that heard both parts and made a rightful judgment in a case-by-case basis, you just decided "yeah this random guy who created this extension probably picked the bad ones, lets hurt them"; so you don't even have the moral high ground you pretend.
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