Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 133 posts

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#81

Post by svmegatron »

corin_ wrote: post #75
MBCook wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw lots of cognitive dissonance when I worked for a company that was something of an advertising firm. Everyone hates pop-ups and spam... but it's probably OK if we do it. We can turn off the user's pop-up blocker right? What do you mean we can't get around it? How are we supposed to get them to see our side offers if we can't do pop-ups? And the constant discussions about how to keep our emails from landing in sp…

Just to show a little balance - there are those of us in advertising who try to do the best we can for our audience, and don't even need morals to make that decision, since doing the right thing gives us better results than trying to trick people.

That's one of the beautiful things about advertising that a lot of us (well, I assume a lot of us - I can't be the only one, right?) did not realize at first. Especially over the long term, being respectful toward the audience leaves you in a better position to market to that audience. The end result is you make more money.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#83

Post by rallison »

M4v3R wrote: post #4

The article doesn't seem to mention this, but there is another trick in these guys arsenals - fake news articles about their products. They build entire webpages, along with side-stories and article comments that support their product. They look SO real that once I (and I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, having access to Internet for 15 years) fell for it briefly, and then had to explain it to my wife who stumbled…

Indeed they do. I recently looked into a similar scam, although the starting point was a hacked email account that sent out links to everyone in the address book to a hacked wordpress install. It was interesting following the rabbit hole. Here is a quick write-up I did on that instance:

This is what the original wordpress instance looked like (just the frontpage, which did not carry malicious content):

http://i.imgur.com/FeCKUu9.jpg

- However, the malicious page on this wordpress instance redirects to a site named foxrxs, registered a day ago (as of this writing) http://whois.domaintools.com/foxrxs.com - to "Gergo Czako" in Hungary.

- The foxrxs site is made to look like Fox News, but it basically just tries to sell people "raspberry ultra drops" - a diet supplement:

http://i.imgur.com/RHMxj7T.jpg

- Most of the links on foxrxs go to onlineslimdiet:

http://i.imgur.com/e4tdYm1.png

- This site was also registered yesterday (as of this writing): http://whois.domaintools.com/onlineslimdiet.com - in this case to "Uta Kalb" in Germany. However, what is notable is both domains use exactly the same name servers: ns1.dnscentral.ru ns2.dnsmax.ru So, given the same exact registration date and same name servers, chances are, both are owned by the same entity.

- And, this seems to be a common scam: http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/raspberry-ultra-dro... Basically, an email address is hacked one way or another, which then often links to a compromised wordpress blog. That redirects to a new domain that is made to look like fox news. The fake fox news site appears to endorse this miracle diet supplement, with all links pointing to another site where you can actually order the product. People apparently do receive the product, but I'm guessing the product itself is a scam. Nice way to make money - only $60 for two ounces of snake oil!

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#84

Post by MBCook »

corin_ wrote: post #75
MBCook wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw lots of cognitive dissonance when I worked for a company that was something of an advertising firm. Everyone hates pop-ups and spam... but it's probably OK if we do it. We can turn off the user's pop-up blocker right? What do you mean we can't get around it? How are we supposed to get them to see our side offers if we can't do pop-ups? And the constant discussions about how to keep our emails from landing in sp…

Just to show a little balance - there are those of us in advertising who try to do the best we can for our audience, and don't even need morals to make that decision, since doing the right thing gives us better results than trying to trick people.

Gathering data was always a huge problem. The highest traffic site didn't get enough viewes to make any A/B test worthless.

At least in other business likes we could easily track the direction the program was taking and which bits were causing the most problems.

All the end-line employees gated it to various degrees. We just had to hope we could convince the owners we were rigth.

We did our best to deliver what was requested and not blatantly illegal. When one of your top sales people gets a good deal, you'll find you're doing it to make money, not because anyone thinks it will make things better. Without anyone actually able to figure out what might makes a difference you end up with guesses and snake oil.

With no dada or time to expiremet, all they were left with are terrible ideas like pop-ups and spam. Combine that with the sales guys who talk to buddies elsewhere who report that spam "totally works"! and you end up resenting a large chunk of your job.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#85

Post by X4 »

orangethirty wrote: post #59

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…

I would say nice try, but after seeing your EDIT, I'm shocked that it works that good.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#86

Post by lucisferre »

orangethirty wrote: post #59

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…

The value of "tricked" clicks vs. relevant clicks seems dubious to me.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#87

Post by GhotiFish »

X4 wrote: post #85
orangethirty wrote: post #59

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…

I would say nice try, but after seeing your EDIT, I'm shocked that it works that good.

Percentage of those clicks that were bots? Eh?

Also, this context is far removed from any real world scenario. Cracked did a decidedly low brow version of it, everyone clicked through, just because they wanted to see what stunt they would pull.

If you know it's going to be a joke, you might as well see the punchline.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#88

Post by adambratt »

chewxy wrote: post #8
M4v3R wrote: post #4

The article doesn't seem to mention this, but there is another trick in these guys arsenals - fake news articles about their products. They build entire webpages, along with side-stories and article comments that support their product. They look SO real that once I (and I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, having access to Internet for 15 years) fell for it briefly, and then had to explain it to my wife who stumbled…

Eventually they do one better, and actually produce content cheaply - aka Demand Media. Flogs and farticle sites are so 2006 though. Now they use markov chain based generators to generate sites based on content scraped off other sites.

More info on this? Hadn't heard of this being done other than through content spinners

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#89

Post by greesil »

orangethirty wrote: post #59

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javas…

Thank you. Best comment I've seen all year.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#90

Post by faddotio »

dimatura wrote: post #48
CGamesPlay wrote: post #6

http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/

I made this! Please see the slides, they are more "up to date" than the respective papers.

Your site practically made me pee myself with laughter. You totally nailed the tone and presentation.
Post reply on HN