zlacker

>>surpri+(OP)
What would happen (theoretically) if ublock would be changed to not only hide the ads, but click on each and every one of them. Would that disincentivize ad networks to run ads because the data would be poisoned?

>>63stac+d7
Adnauseam (https://adnauseam.io/) does this

>>rahimn+q7
I've never understood the use-case of Adnauseam. This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad. Unless every single person uses it, it's not going to stop business from advertising, it just makes the likes of Google get more revenue.

>>figmer+9b
Assuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about), it increases the cost on the business putting up the ad (presumably targeting you). It acts as a small punishment to the business buying the ads I guess.

>>digiow+hb
>Assuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about),

Which it probably doesn't, given that it uses XHRs to "click" on ads, which is super detectable, and given the proliferation of ad fraud I'd assume all networks already filter out.

>>gruez+Qc
The other assumption here is that ad networks want to filter out all clicks but the most legitimate.

I don't think that's a very lucid assessment of how advertisers operate on the Internet. We all agree that they could take these steps. If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers), I don't think they want to cut it out from their revenue and viewer analytics.

>>Lalaba+kf
>If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers)

You think ad networks don't have logs more sophisticated than default nginx/apache logs? XHRs are trivially detectable by headers alone.