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
It's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US, viewed as a scheme to defraud advertisers by generating invalid clicks that cause financial harm, by depleting their budgets and push them to spend for fake traffic), but in practice it's way easier to just blacklist that IP / user.

The big networks filter such traffic, the small networks benefit from it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1pq6kgp/is_it_legal_...

You may also get accidentally get your own website blacklisted or moved to a lower RPM tier, or provoke shadow-ban websites that you like to visit, or... generate more ad revenue for them.

>>rvnx+b8
click fraud consists of the person who runs a website themselves clicking, running bots to click, paying someone else to click, etc ads on their own website. it becomes fraud first because they have contractually agreed not to do that, and second because they are materially benefiting from it. an unaligned third party clicking (etc) on ads has neither of those conditions being true, and hence isn't fraud or otherwise illegal.

>>bmanda+Wm
Doubtful.

If you intentionally loop-download large files or fake requests on websites that you don't like, in order to create big CDN charges for them, then what ?

Without reaching the threshold of Denial of Service, just sneakily growing it.

Nobody benefits, except for the weird idea of the pleasure of harming people, still illegal.

>>rvnx+pn
Doubtful

Not doubtful at all. He literally laid out the definition of click fraud for you.

As someone who ran ads on web sites as far back as 1995, that has been the term the industry has used forever.

Replying with a dismissive "doubtful" demonstrates that you don't know what you're talking about.