[HN Gopher] AdNauseam - clicking ads so you don't have to
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AdNauseam - clicking ads so you don't have to
Author : notpushkin
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-02-21 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adnauseam.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (adnauseam.io)
| Varqu wrote:
| This is outright fraud and I would not be surprised if the author
| receives a cease and desist from Google and likes.
|
| While I am full for adblockers (your choice not to be exposed to
| ads), this extension is designed to intentionally harm others
| people business and cause them monetary loss which is considered
| a crime in many jurisdictions.
|
| To the mods of HN: why do you allow such grey-zone tools to be
| published here?
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Doesn't this make you a lot more tracked by showing the ads
| owners which sites you visit?
| prophesi wrote:
| I've been using the extension on Firefox for years. Their browser
| context menu for blocking individual HTML elements has been
| really handy for the more aggressive AD-heavy sites, though I
| sometimes miss uMatrix's fine-grained controls.
|
| On the plus side, I can't recall the last time I needed to
| disable the extension to get a site to work; I'm wondering if
| it's due to the ad networks still being able to ping back despite
| the element remaining hidden?
| prophesi wrote:
| And if anyone's interested in this extension, you may also like
| this one: https://www.trackmenot.io/
|
| It sends bogus search requests in the background. And it seems
| like it works as intended, as the extension is banned entirely
| from Google's Chrome store.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I never thought I'd be installing something that describes itself
| like:
|
| > AdNauseam serves as a means of amplifying users' discontent
|
| But here I go.
|
| Edit: It would seem that brave blocks ads in a way that prevents
| adnauseum from clicking them first, bummer. (followed
| instructions here:
| https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/Install-AdNauseam-on...)
|
| Edit: hmm, I can't seem to get the number to go above 0 for brave
| or chrome.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Ads suck. I block them universally. I understand the desire to
| "get back at the man", and I don't begrudge anyone for doing so.
| But we have to ask ourselves, what's the real path forward, away
| from ads?
|
| If a different model existed where users could pay for sites, I'm
| confident some would use it. I'm also confident many more would
| not use it. I expect a lot of users unwittingly want to be able
| to browse the web ad-free, for free, subsidized by the tech-
| illiterate and those too lazy to block ads.
|
| We desperately need a better model for funding the internet. I'm
| aware of the work Brave did, but it doesn't solve the problem of
| the internet being funded by ads. It instead brings users into
| the loop. Donations might work, and the "ad-free" subscription
| tier products seem sustainable. However, at scale, paying to
| waive ads on an individual site-by-site basis seems absurd.
|
| Does anyone have any other ideas?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| No ideas, but I agree.
|
| I personally view all forms of advertisement as a parasite or
| cancer on our eyes and ears. People disregard it as not that
| important, but I feel like it's way more impactful than most
| people think. It's constantly invading our spaces of work,
| casual enjoyment, transit, etc. It's a mental tax we're
| constantly paying.
| chongli wrote:
| _Does anyone have any other ideas?_
|
| Public funding for a noncommercial web. Websites that sell
| things have no problem paying for themselves. The noncommercial
| web would be a place for people to socialize, share media from
| their lives, and enjoy their hobbies.
|
| Amateur radio is noncommercial. We should be able to have a
| similar regime on the web. It shouldn't even really be that
| expensive to host. With peer to peer protocols there should be
| no need for paid hosting companies. Government could mandate
| that ISPs facilitate self hosting. With IPv6 every device
| should have static, publicly-routable IPs.
| dotancohen wrote:
| So, government intervention then? I think that I dislike that
| no less than I dislike the current status quo.
| mattigames wrote:
| Everything needed for you to post that comment had to be
| heavily subsidized by your local government, almost every
| single piece of infrastructure involved, even the protocol
| itself was subsidized by the US government. It reminds me
| of that great quote: "Libertarians are like house cats,
| they naively believe in their fierceness and independence
| while being fully dependant in a system they don't
| understand or appreciate".
| prophesi wrote:
| The actual status quo is Big Tech & ISP lobbyists having
| their way with any government intervention or lack thereof.
| [deleted]
| kawogi wrote:
| I'd love to see a web standard for small donations via the
| browser. Whenever I see an article that helped me with a
| problem or was entertaining to read, I'd like to donate a small
| amount for it.
|
| At the moment I only have the following options:
|
| - clicking on ads on that page, to hopefully intirectly
| generate income for the author (but more likely will cause some
| profiling AI to wreak havoc on my reputation)
|
| - having a paid account upfront, which is usually connected
| with the entire site and not this specific article
|
| - create accounts for numerous payment and donation systems
| (patreon, paypal, buymeacoffee, ...)
|
| - manually reach out to the author and ask them for their bank
| connection.
|
| For me the perfect solution would be a browser-plugin, where I
| click on "Donate for this Article", enter an amount and maybe
| an optional comment and click "ok".
| mickotron wrote:
| Isn't Brave doing this?
| itake wrote:
| I worked at an ad search company for local businesses. This
| question was raised at all hands: what if we provided a paid
| ad-free experience?
|
| The answer was simply: we earn $35/mo per user from ads. Do you
| think people pay that much for an ad-free experience? Our most
| valuable users might can afford that fee, but we earn way more
| from them.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Plus, how many ad companies are there? How many different
| people would we have to pay to browse without ads?
|
| How many companies, once the ad revenue dries up, would
| charge for content? How many would charge for content AND
| heavily lace their websites with ads?
|
| How expensive would the internet be if we had to directly pay
| for every website we wanted to use?
|
| Personally, I think the internet is worth the cost of access.
| I don't think sites are worth an additional premium on top of
| that.
| narag wrote:
| _If a different model existed where users could pay for
| sites..._
|
| The devil is in the details.
|
| "If a different model existed where users could pay for tv
| shows..." and then Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, etc. came.
|
| I subscribed a bunch, the cancelled. Why? Different reasons,
| but in general: I wasn't able to really vote with my wallet.
| Shows that I liked very much got cancelled or, more often,
| degenerated horribly in subsequent seasons.
|
| So any kind of fine-grained payment would be greatly
| appreciated. Not only for web content, but also for any kind of
| media.
|
| I guess it would come with its own set of problems, trying too
| hard to content the public. But I feel that's better than the
| current situation, more on the top-down educating the unwashed
| masses.
| nugget wrote:
| When ads are relevant and contextual enough, they become as
| good as or better than content. The problem isn't advertising.
| The problem is bad, mediocre, even malicious ads and ad
| formats.
|
| The proliferation of terrible ads and ad formats fueled the
| rise of adblock. Adblock is how users fight back.
|
| Adblock companies could collectively start to influence what
| ads are allowed through, but most attempts at this have been
| corrupted in the usual and predictable ways.
| adamrezich wrote:
| I used to think this way too, back in like 2009, but the
| years since then have changed my mind back around to
| completely hating all advertising. when was the last time you
| saw a relevant, useful, unobnoxious, unobtrusive, just really
| great ad? I can't remember the last time I saw one.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I saw one for some tshirt company within the last year.
| Really nice, well-cut shirts.
|
| But their prices were ridiculous.
| stevesearer wrote:
| I think the ads we run on https://officesnapshots.com are
| good quality (we sell and host them).
|
| We have traditional banners as well as micro ads where we
| highlight and link to the specific products found in the
| office design project photos we publish. The latter are
| very helpful for designers in the industry as they are 100%
| contextual.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| I think brave has a good model, but normal cryptocurrency
| shenanigans taint the possibility.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I imagine a scheme that would socialize the burden of hosting
| and create a revenue stream for content creators. The revenue
| would come from those who paid up front for access and then
| didn't pull their weight re: hosting.
|
| ---
|
| 0. content-addressed data (e.g. IPFS) and a web of trust where
| trust means "not a bot, not a malicious human"
|
| 1. participants have a team number (0-255)
|
| 2. either participants are running a node, or they have a
| provider running one on their behalf.
|
| 3. every time your node requests data from another node by CID,
| it hashes the data twice (to get something other than the CID)
| and divides by 256. If the remainder is your team number, your
| node pins that data for a month. Otherwise it pins the data for
| 24h.
|
| 4. randomly, the nodes check to see if their neighbors are
| actually pinning the data they're supposed to, and make a
| naughty/nice list.
|
| 5. at the beginning of the month, participants put $10 into a
| smart contract, unless they have money left over from last
| month
|
| 6. at the end of the month, your node directs the contract to
| split $5 among the top 50% best citizens (re: pinning), paying
| nothing to the bottom 50%
|
| 7. your node also has kept track of which content you've
| requested. If you haven't +'d or -'d any content it just splits
| the other $5 evenly among the users who created the content
| that you requested. Otherwise it splits it according to your
| +'s and -'s.
|
| ---
|
| You can make money if your node is reliably helpful to its
| neighbors, or if you're a content creator. On the other hand,
| if you don't care to run a node, the contract ends up at $0 for
| you at the end of the month and you can just pay $10 again next
| month if you want access to the content. If you run a node but
| your internet connection is unreliable (or your node is
| offline), maybe you end up paying $8 per month because for 80%
| of your neighbors you were in the bottom 50% on the
| naughty/nice list
|
| Probably there's also reward money for people who sniff out bad
| actors and cause them to be excluded from the web of trust on
| the next go-around.
|
| In summary: reciprocity, with a little $ on the line to keep
| people honest. And since power corrupts, so it can't be managed
| by a corporate entity since the corruption would kick in before
| it got big enough to be "the" go-to place for content on the
| web--it's got to be a protocol without privileged roles.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I have a different idea. I think ads can still exist, but in
| the form of more personalized sponsorships. For example, a
| company can send a person a product to try and then they can
| review it. That type of word of mouth is a bit less impersonal
| than a random ad and maybe we can even have models of trust so
| that the content creator is known for being objective. An
| example is Julian Krause on YouTube, who reviews audio gear.
| His reviews are so good and I feel he is very trustworthy based
| on what he says.
|
| In my mind, if companies get a few of their products out there
| and get people to talk about them, it's better than random
| advertising in several ways. The only downside to companies is
| that it doesn't rake in as much profit, but I think they can
| still be profitable, just not as much as they are.
|
| But then again, it'd be much better if we had a society where
| people bought things only if they really needed them, not if
| they are assaulted with ads left right and center. In my
| opinion, such a model is more along the lines of people buying
| things that really improve their life, rather than accumulating
| stuff because it seems in vogue.
|
| One consequence is that advertising companies like Google and
| Facebook will be vastly less profitable, and that's okay. Too
| much wealth is concentrated to them anyway, and their employees
| are vastly overpaid in comparison to the value they actually
| deliver to society.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Seems like this is very straightforward for any half competent ad
| network to filter out. Very chaotic idea though.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Perhaps, but then they have to spend time and money doing that,
| only for their ads to still not be shown.
| geek_at wrote:
| I tried AdNauseam for a few days but for some reason it broke so
| many sites. Sites stopped loading for me and I had to uninstall
| it.
|
| Like the idea though
| dymk wrote:
| I didn't have to anyways
| soared wrote:
| Similar thing I made a landing page for but never built to take
| utms from other users and attach them to your links, break GA
| sessions, etc to make your traffic adversarial and attempt to
| make a sites GA data not so good.
|
| https://hello-kill.github.io/
| Beaver117 wrote:
| Extremely based, everyone should install this
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _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 - clicking ads so you don 't have to_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936 - March 2019 (164
| comments)
|
| _Pale Moon blocks AdNauseam extension_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15112524 - Aug 2017 (246
| comments)
|
| _AdNauseam - Clicking Ads So You Don 't Have To_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109251 - Aug 2017 (174
| comments)
|
| _AdNauseam Banned from the Google Web Store_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327228 - Jan 2017 (329
| comments)
|
| _AdNauseam: Fight Back Against Advertising Networks and Privacy
| Abuse_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13222733 - Dec 2016
| (276 comments)
|
| _AdNauseam Browser Extension: Clicking Ads So You Don 't Have
| To_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611594 - Nov 2015
| (72 comments)
|
| _Ad blocker that clicks on the ads_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8515398 - Oct 2014 (238
| comments)
| iseanstevens wrote:
| Love this. They want clicks? Give them clicks. Gradually bring
| the value of "ad impressions" to zero.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Been using this for a while, and I forget about it just as much
| as I did when using ublock (which is what this uses under the
| hood). I think I've had it installed for 2 months, and my ad
| spend is calculated to be about $400. Not bad.
|
| It feels like the nuclear option, but the absolute lack of
| respect that advertisers seem to have for me has gone entirely
| too far, and it's nice to be able to punch back in my own small
| little way.
| bravoetch wrote:
| We need an extension that filters out hn submissions like this
| one. They come around once a year-ish and they're not news,
| they're just artificially boosted content.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Artificially boosted how?
| Syntonicles wrote:
| They are boosted by people like me, who haven't seen it before.
| People on social media have this strange notion that we're all
| a perfect bloom filter. I don't have the time or energy to keep
| up with tens of thousands of posts per year, and new users are
| coming all the time. Reposts are inevitable.
|
| A personalized bloom filter may be useful. That shouldn't be
| hard to implement in either JavaScript or Emacs Lisp.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| From HN guidelines: Please don't post
| insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading,
| foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is
| usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email
| hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
| Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a
| story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious
| comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please
| don't also comment that you did.
| werds wrote:
| no marketer optimizes for clicks, they optimize for conversions.
|
| so unless this bot is going to go onto the advertisers site and
| purchase something, which can then be attributed back to the
| viewed impression, then this will just be ignored by ad tech like
| any other bot click
| lethologica wrote:
| It's still costing them per click though, is it not?
| jefftk wrote:
| Not necessarily: all ad networks try to filter out spammy
| clicks before billing, and some advertisers work on a cost-
| per-action [1] basis.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action
| doodlesdev wrote:
| That's exactly why the extension works. Imagine paying for
| advertisements thousands of dollars just so that people keep
| autoclicking to cost you a few cents out of spite. The
| advertiser loses money but doesn't get conversions, Google gets
| the advertisers money but loses them as a customer in the long
| term. If everyone did this then the model would become
| unsustainable and we would be finally forced to find an
| alternative.
|
| Whether that's the right to solve the issue or not is another
| matter altogether, but the fundamentals of this extension are
| sound.
| jefftk wrote:
| You're missing that ad networks can detect and exclude these
| spammy clicks. And on many networks advertisers can choose to
| be charged on a per-conversion basis.
| meghan_rain wrote:
| Google claims this because their entire business model
| relies on people believing it but is it actually true?
| jefftk wrote:
| I used to work on ads at Google, and knew folks who
| worked on invalid traffic detection. They seemed to spend
| most of their time on much more subtle sorts of problems,
| so given how simple AdNauseum is I'd be surprised if they
| had trouble filtering it out.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I sometimes click ads, go through almost through the entire
| funnel, but bail at the last minute. It's very funny.
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(page generated 2023-02-21 23:02 UTC)