The source is here:<p><a href="https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam</a><p>This actively poisons the advertiser/publisher relationship, which in my opinion is a much harder stance than simply blocking ads.<p>edit: I've tried it using the abp/adnauseam combo but it only worked on one out of 5 heavily ad laden pages. It's funny, I have so many layers of this stuff running that it took me quite a while before I managed to see any ads at all and then to re-enable just ABP. So, on FF at least, not really recommended by me, maybe someone else has a different experience. (tried it on two different machines)
Maybe I misunderstand. Although it's nice not to load and see ads, and it's really nice not to be tracked and correlated, it's really really nice for an advertiser not to be aware of me personally, at all, correlated or not.<p>So this thing poisons the stream, but it also says "there's a person here, put him in the database." It's like responding to spam; there's no future in it.<p>I don't mind <i>advertising</i> at all, and when I used to read physical magazines and papers, none of the ads bothered me, I'd either look at them, ignore them, or throw away a whole section if that's all it was.<p>It's <i>tracking</i> ads, and the ad networks more generally, that I object to.<p>If a site just sold and showed static ads, with no information about me personally sold to or detected by the ad buyer, I'd be among the first to whitelist such a site. Until then ... fuck off.<p>EDIT: Actually I guess there'd be no need for whitelisting, the ad would just show up with the editorial content. So, Wired, when you whine at me for using a blocker, why not instead just show me a picture of Suntory? <a href="http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory" rel="nofollow">http://whiskey.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Murray_and_Suntory</a>
"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."<p>Douglas Adams
This looks interesting. I personally think the anti-tracking brouhaha is overblown and don't mind if "corporations" send me fewer irrelevant ads thanks to tracking. But for those militantly opposed, this seems like a clever way to fight back.
When you install an ad blocking browser extension, you are trading limited, specific, mostly non-personal data sharing with publishers, for complete, unrestricted, uncensored data sharing with extension providers.<p>Extensions can see the entirety of every page a user visits. This includes their bank account, what they searched on google, what they searched on duck-duck-go when they didn't want their search to be recorded, what sites they are a member of, how frequently they visit those sites, at what times they visit those sites, what emails they have sent and received, what they typed in their encrypted proton-mail account, what 20 word passphrase they chose for their bitcoin wallet, what they posted anonymously on 4chan...<p>From a pure privacy perspective, it's a huge net loss.<p>Even if you only enable extensions on non-sensitive sites, the difference in the amount of data being given to the extension provider vs the data being restricted from the ad provider, is very large during that time.
Are you people really that naive? Any decent adtech company will detect this as click fraud and filter it. This does nothing but waste computing and network resources for everyone.
As someone who runs a number of blogs, I have been following the "adblocker wars" with interest. Here is my opinion on a not malicious alternative for publishers looking to monetize:<p><a href="http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving-and-thriving-amidst-adblocker.html" rel="nofollow">http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/surviving-an...</a>
<a href="http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-paypal-tip-jar.html" rel="nofollow">http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-...</a><p>I will suggest you promote that idea if you really want to see fewer ads and not have to debate (internally) the morality of whatever of poisoning the stream, etc. I think it is a payment model that can work. Your readers need to value what you offer, but, ideally, they should be there for that reason anyway.
This will only help advertisers. If a large group of users click ads and bounce immediately it will be obvious they are using this service. Send them a fake ad, see it they click. If they do, don't count/charge for their clicks anymore. Now Google has effectively found everyone who don't convert with ads, and doesn't target them. This makes normal ads more targeted, increases conversions rates, increases ctrs, and lets Google charge advertiser more.
Why is Hacker News encouraging a project that aims to defraud advertisers and websites? It's hard enough to run an ad-based business without having to deal with getting blocked by Google from fraudulent clicks. If you don't like ads, the solution is simple -- don't go to sites that have them.
What a waste. If you can detect the ads and trackers, just block them instead.<p>Besides which, their claim that 'targeting and surveillance becomes futile' is untrue. You're still letting all the ad networks and trackers watch every web site you visit.
Well this is amazing!<p>I honestly think if a majority of people start using this, Click Fraud will eventual become indistinguishable from clicks made my AdNauseam and ad companies for once will worry about milking the ad-cow.<p>But then... I know this will die in someway or the other.