zlacker

>>yuvada+(OP)
"Company which makes its money from advertising bans automated click fraud extension from being used in its browser."

>>nimbix+K8
Not that I'm really surprised by Google's action, but "fraud" is a pretty strong word for what's happening, and pretty disingenuous IMO. No one's pretending to be anyone they're not.

>>acobst+ue
Click fraud is a standard industry term for robot initiated clicks, which this is a case of. What this extension generates are certainly not legitimate clicks form interested users, or even unintentional clicks that happen due to various reasons (some HN readers like to blame them on dark patterns, but they're really just of a consequence of the fact that ad tech is just not that great in general).

>>nimbix+Ng
No, it is not. It is an industry term for robot initiated clicks for the purpose of profiting, that is the "FRAUD" part, just clicking random ads is not defrauding any party to the benefit of another, it just wastes resources.

>>kylebe+Wh
Do you think it is fraud to order a pizza to be delivered to someone else's house, because you are a vegetarian and wish to destroy the business model of meat-based pizza?

How about doing this to every pizza store you encounter that serves meat?

You're not profiting..just wasting a business's resources by misrepresenting your identity and intentions.

>>flower+Dk
Either that or tracking clicks is a terrible way of keeping track of ad effectiveness, and therefore cannot rise to the definition of fraud.

What if I had a billboard with a camera that used face recognition to determine how many people looked at that billboard. Is it fraud to put on a mask to prevent my face from being detected? Is it fraud to put a bunch of faces on a poster-board and parade it in front of the billboard to confuse it?

Websites only provide information that I then can choose to render/manipulate however I want, and what I do on my application on my end with that information is my business.