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AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

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Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#81

Post by andrewflnr »

aeyes wrote: post #28
neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

“click fraud”? That is very very far fetched. I’m just following links your website serves me. If you don’t like it you don’t have to serve your ads to me.

It's only far fetched if you look at it rationally. Whereas if ads pay your salary, it's obviously click fraud. GP is describing an angle that some people might take for personal benefit, not an actual argument.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#82

Post by CodeSgt »

coldtea wrote: post #24
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What economic model would you like to supplant the one which is currently serving a whole load of websites to us all for free?

One that has us pay for websites would be far better. Including services like Gmail and such. We would be paying customers, not eyeballs for sale, and only websites deemed worthy of that level of loyalty would survive. Any websites that prefer it could still be free then, but the costs to host them would have to be paid by their owner (like most personal or business websites today), not sponsored by ads.

You’re speaking from the position of someone clearly privileged enough to afford all the services you’d like to continue using. There are vast swaths of t people for whom an additional monthly subscription to watch YouTube, have access to email, read the news, browse social media, etc just isn’t financially tenable.

Especially in the year 2023 where technology and internet access is so crucial to survival, I’d prefer for a low-income family to not have to choose between a meal and renewing their monthly email subscription.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#83

Post by quanto »

Online advertising industry is at the point of negative externality. If everyone is blasting ads to users, the effectiveness of each ad goes down, and thus an advertiser need to blast even more ads. All this is at decreased quality of user experience and increased resource serving ads (screen real estate, servers, developer hours) while the economic efficiency (matching willing sellers and buyers) is no longer increased. In other words, between online advertisers, it is a zero sum game -- there are only so many willing buyers' eyeball-hours.

It's difficult to imagine how to end this negative (externality) spiral. A legal ban on online ads could reduce drastically, but that is throwing the poor baby out with the bathwater. I wonder if something like phantom clicking ads could tip the economic scale for advertisers such that it is no longer cost effective for them to blast ads at people.

There is a serious game theoretic optimization going on in this trillion-dollar field (and I worked in this field before) and a novel tech or paradigm can change the game completely.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#84

Post by J_Shelby_J »

j33zusjuice wrote: post #78
jrflowers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this reasoning. Either we voluntarily stop behaving in a way that advertisers don’t like or we will be forced to stop behaving in ways that advertisers don’t like. The only likely or rational future is that we all stop acting in ways advertisers don’t like, one way or another. We may be best served by proactively rethinking all of our computing habits to make sure they more closely align with AdSense’s goals f…

I’ve seen an incomplete proposal from an adtech CEO that suggests we have a global user ID that we set somewhere, somehow (the tech details aren’t worked out, but the data would be stored centrally in some ad watchdog type org, something like the PCI-DSS Council), and publishers could offer varying levels of access to their site for varying levels of access to your data for advertisements. The user would be able to r…

The government in which the majority of google employees live under will control everything.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#85

Post by beachy »

nradov wrote: post #76
badloginagain wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How "far fetched" this is from click fraud is the central argument, and I can easily see a range of arguments from both sides. On one hand, distributing and marketing a tool that is explicitly designed to harm trackers can be seen- ie lobbied- as fraud. On the other, this isn't a targeted campaign of misclicking, this is essentially random noise on a user by user basis. At scale though, this fucks with a whole lotta…

This tool doesn't in any way meet the legal definition of fraud. Any if everyone working on online advertising loses their paychecks then that is an acceptable outcome.

Yep, people toss the word fraud around, and lawyers love to use it to scare the shit out of the opposition, but it's a very high bar to meet legally. An automated tool that clicked randomly on web page elements for no financial gain to the user or supplier of said tool would in no way reach the threshold of fraud.

Obligatory IANAL.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#86

Post by totetsu »

jrflowers wrote: post #32
neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

I like this reasoning. Either we voluntarily stop behaving in a way that advertisers don’t like or we will be forced to stop behaving in ways that advertisers don’t like. The only likely or rational future is that we all stop acting in ways advertisers don’t like, one way or another. We may be best served by proactively rethinking all of our computing habits to make sure they more closely align with AdSense’s goals f…

I think you’re beginning to grasp the power relationship now

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#87

Post by beachy »

quanto wrote: post #83

Online advertising industry is at the point of negative externality. If everyone is blasting ads to users, the effectiveness of each ad goes down, and thus an advertiser need to blast even more ads. All this is at decreased quality of user experience and increased resource serving ads (screen real estate, servers, developer hours) while the economic efficiency (matching willing sellers and buyers) is no longer increa…

> if everyone is blasting ads to users, the effectiveness of each ad goes down, and thus an advertiser need to blast even more ads.

Things have really gone full circle now. If I visit a site (happens rarely) that has a clean design and puts all the ads into a plain column down one side of the page, I'm pretty sure I'm more likely to look at those ads than I am on the typical crappy site where I need to swat away ads like blowflies off a horse turd just to begin to see the underlying content.

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#88

Post by [deleted] »

ben0x539 wrote: post #34
3np wrote: post #3

Past discussions: AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886300 - Feb 2023 (69 comments) AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25043165 - Nov 2020 (11 comments) AdNauseam: Browser extension to fight back against tracking by ad networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20048216 - May 2019 (63 comments) AdNauseam – clic…

man people really post about this browser addon ad nauseam

[deleted]

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#89

Post by somenameforme »

neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

This would likely just create a massive backlash. When you look at most of any survey on things like privacy [1] and other topics, people are not apathetic in the least. Most people know their data is being harvested, misused, and exploited. But because this all happens pretty much invisibly, people feel powerless. Trying to create very visible and ham-fisted laws forcing people to engage in behavior that most all of us are opposed to, beyond any typical partisanship, would be amazing in the unified backlash it would create.

I also don't even really think this would fly in DC. Advertisers are certainly indulged because they provide an endless mountain of surveillance information to spook organizations, and can also be used to try to influence elections. But most politicians are people too, and with acts like this you'd be passing laws to piss on yourself, your family, and your friends as much as the rest of society.... for the sake of advertisers. I think that would face substantial opposition from DC itself, let alone the small but growing chunk of libertarian or social minded politicians. This isn't like the MPAA or whatever, where your average politicians might think you're talking about rafting if you speak about torrenting.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...

Re: AdNauseam: uBlock Origin fork silently clicking ads on behalf of users

#90

Post by paulryanrogers »

imglorp wrote: post #25
neilv wrote: post #20

As someone who's been interested in tracker defeating since that became a thing around 25 years ago, I'm just a little concerned that something like this AdNauseum -- if ever adopted significantly -- could invite blowback that also hits more conventional tracker blocking, or other current liberties. Not making certain HTTP requests seems to be protected right now. However, click fraud, with which this might be confla…

> force even more invasive user identity requirements or device attestation I think those are both coming. All the major forces are aligned against users: governments, content holders, advertisers, police, and authoritarians everywhere. It's inevitable unless we take the power back.

What does taking back the power look like?
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