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AdNauseam Browser Extension Quietly Clicks On Blocked Ads
New submitter stephenpeters writes The AdNauseam browser extension claims to click on each ad you have blocked with AdBlock in an attempt to obfuscate your browsing data. Officially launched mid November at the Digital Labour conference in New York, the authors hope this extension will register with advertisers as a protest against their pervasive monitoring of users online activities.
It will be interesting to see how automated ad click browser extensions will affect the online ad arms race. Especially as French publishers are currently planning to sue Eyeo GmbH, the publishers of Adblock. This might obfuscate the meaning of the clicks, but what if it just encourages the ad sellers to claim even higher click-through rates as a selling point?
If you were an advertiser you should reconsider using annoying adds.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
And if you don't want people to be able to use your site in different ways than you intended, don't put it on the internet. it's that simple :p.
It's always easy to say don't use something if you don't agree with it, but a lot of things are just too big to ignore and if you can just work around the issues and enjoy it how you want it, why the hell not?
I don't see how it's fraud for a user to choose how to voluntarily use a service that they're not obligated to use, when there's no signed contract or even terribly binding agreement between the user and the entity from whom they're retrieving content. If the entity serving the content doesn't like what the user is doing, they're free to block the user.
Remember, these are the same people that complain when you fast-forward through commercials, and have tried to make legal arguments to prevent one from being able to do that.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you lack the technical skills to prevent me from blocking your ads, don't piss and moan if I do. If you do have the technical skills to force me to see ads, you'll never see me again because your site will be complete crap.
It's a self leveling problem.
But don't act like you are legally entitled to me seeing or clicking on ads and allowing all of the trackers and analytics companies to provide you with information. That's not my problem.
If you're a big and successful site, you won't notice the small amount of reduction in ads from me (which I was never going to click on anyway). If you're a crappy and struggling site ... well, that's kind of your problem.
Blocking those analytics and ads companies is what I'm gonna do. You do what you want to do, and either your web site will succeed or fail.
But I don't owe you advertising revenue. I don't have an obligation to your advertisers. I don't owe you a damned thing, and you don't owe me anything.
Either I can view your site with the crap blocked, or I can't. But the internet is full of other websites. Just don't expect that I'm going to give permission to 3rd parties to track me just to help you pay the bills.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, the reality is ... you as an advertiser don't get a vote what I do in my browser.
You want me to view and click ads? Well, you'll have to pay me. Paying some other guy to embed shit in his web pages which I'm "required" to view? Kind of bullshit, and not happening.
If you're not paying me, then you don't matter, and I don't owe you a damned thing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The justification is that it's not the site's revenue, it's the advertisement company's revenue. What you're doing is stopping them from harvesting your private data. The dick move is the company trying to grab my data, not me trying to stop them.
That doesn't mean they're entitled to good data. Or any data at all.
In the old days, people paid for advertising, and you have no way of knowing if it worked unless you asked people. Everybody saw the same ad on TV and in the newspaper.
The modern analog on the interweb is kind of like having a bunch of advertisers put a tracking device on your car, or a tag in your ear like livestock so they can track everything that you do.
Why the fsck should we accept this just because it's digital? The answer is, we don't need to.
You want to put ads on your site? Go ahead. You think I'm not going to block them then you're a moron. You think I owe your advertisers good analytics data just so you can make money? Yeah, fuck that.
People shouldn't be willing to accept tracking, analytics, and violation of their privacy just to see a website. We don't know your privacy statement (assuming you have one), we don't know what you do with this data, and we have no recourse for what you do with it.
We wouldn't accept this is the 'real' world, but we're supposed to accept it in the digital one?
Which means the only sensible thing is to either deny them the information, or make sure their information is useless.
If your poor website goes under because your advertisers can't figure out if I wear boxers or briefs ... boo fucking hoo .
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
Some people are annoyed by all advertising. But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads. Since this extension "clicks" on ads which have been blocked, that means that the unobtrusive ads won't be false-clicked.
I find pretty much all advertising obtrusive. It doesn't necessarily make me buy shit, but advertising does influence mood. Some say only if you are malleable, but I have this nagging suspicion that it's more than that. They say that if you don't yawn when other people yawn, you may be a psychopath. I don't know that not reacting to colors and motions in typical ways makes you a psychopath, but I do think it is related to a lack of presence and alertness. Being brought to a state of alert by motion is a feature, it's what helps permit you to not get run over by some distracted moron in a parking lot for example. But it also means that moving advertisements (for example) are particularly annoying. Advertisers also exploit known effects of color to get attention and influence mood — whether it induces a sale or not, it still affects you. Or, again, if it doesn't it's because you've built some sort of structure in your brain which deadens your sensation. Otherwise, you couldn't possibly watch Ow, My Balls with 8/9 of the screen dedicated to ads.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually he's not painting over the ads. What he is doing is lying to the ad company about who he is, what he does, what he likes and other personal info about himself. Lying to advertisers is a right. I don't have to tell them anything and I'm under no obligation to tell them the truth. Other people who come there are not affected by this. They are free to either block or cooperate with being tracked and spied upon. If my lying to the admakers causes them harm that's too bad. I am under no obligation to cooperate with them.
But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads.
I don't, and everyone I set up doesn't either, and it isn't because I hate all Ads. It's because I hate Removing Adware and viruses.
All of the unobtrusive ad's I've seen from adblock plus contain some link to a malicious download. Don't believe me? do the VLC Test.
1) Turn on Unobtrusive ads
2) Go to Google (or Bing, or Yahoo, Or Ask, ETC.)
3) Search for "VLC Media Player" (As a side note, DuckDuckGo is the few Search engines that do this right, but still serves malicious ads once in awile. Use "Libreoffice" or "Openoffice" Instead of VLC for an example)
4) Click on the first link you see. If the first link you see is an ad, click on it.
5) Download the installer ***WARNING!! Do not run it unless you Enjoy Cleaning viruses for fun!***
6) Go to virustotal.com, and submit the file for analysis
7) Watch the detections go off the charts.
I get roughly 3-7 pc's a week in our shop infected by adware caused by malicious ads that would be otherwise considered unobtrusive. If ad firms would clean up their act, and refuse malicious content ads or obvious scams then I would be more receptive of turning it on. Until then They're no different than a trojan downloader to me.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
If you really want to avoid detection and behavior tracking, I highly suggest you entirely disable cookies entirely (yes, I realize this is not worth it at all), otherwise you will not have accomplished what you had hoped.
Self-Destructing Cookies is pretty nice for those who find it impractical to disable cookies entirely.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
def is_annoying(ad):
# Problem too trivial to need AI.
return ad is not None
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