It's purpose is to get you to look at things from the other side: what would you do if one of your customers was intentionally harming your business?
To pre-empt a personal attack against me: I do not make a living from advertising.
(I'm just guessing that's what they might call it.)
That doesn't make acting in such blatantly bad faith until you are able to take legal action forgivable.
Sure, Google wants to make money on ads and they're under no obligation to let people use their infrastructure to undermine that goal. But likewise, the people who get fucked over by Google compromising the Chrome ecosystem to defend their ad income are under no obligation to be particularly enthusiastic about it.
Sending automated clicks to ads arguably meets all the elements of common-law fraud:
(1) A false representation of fact (that the user clicked on the ad);
(2) Knowledge of the falsity (by the user installing and using the extension);
(3) Intent to deceive the party by making the false representation (that is the extension's stated purpose!);
(4) Reasonable reliance by the innocent party (by believing the "click" was real and intended);
(5) Actual loss suffered (by paying the owner/operator of the page containing the ad)
In my view, therefore, "fraud" is an applicable term.
But the advertising company is supposed to well-qualify their targets, right? It's on them for serving and charging for advertisements to people who don't want them or will 'click them' regardless of content.
They deserve shit for lying.
If the user does something with their device Google dislikes, Google can block the user from using Google services, or if they're doing something illegal, they can go that route.
This habit of retroactively removing functionality from devices is not OK. If Google relies on a business model other people hate, perhaps they should give some thought in to doing something about that.
I agree that Google should probably remove browser extensions that are convincingly designed to facilitate actual fraud. I'd also be on board with Google removing a browser extension that was designed by a site operator to produce artificial clicks on ads on that particular site, since now there's someone involved who probably signed a thing saying they won't produce artificial clicks.
But my point with my examples was that you can harm someone's bottom line without it being fraud or otherwise illegal, so it doesn't just follow that if you harm someone's business, you're doing the equivalent of a DoS or smashing up their merchandise.
(Not saying that I do that, of course. Entirely hypothetical.)
That does not describe the situation in the least. AdNauseum is more akin mailing junk back to junk mailers using their paid postage. You show me an ad, which I did not ask to see? Fine, I'll click it, automatically. Enjoy.
"A party does not have a right to rely on a representation if she is aware the representation is false, not enforceable, or not made to her."
It's clearly arguable that the ad network knows that a browser is able to click on an ad in an automated fashion. Thus, they do not have a right to rely on that representation, as it is not enforceable.
[0] - http://www.mitchell-attorneys.com/legal-articles/common-law-...
Am I stealing money from advertisers?
There is no such rule for online adverts. So what is a parent to do?
By blocking them and obfuscating through clicking I am protecting my own sanity, and that of my children. This is my "No/No" sticker.
"A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury."
Blocking an ad/tracker is being "not particularly cooperative", and fulfils the goal of not seeing ads or being tracked pretty well. The entire point of modifying an existing ad blocker to click everything, as stated by the creators is to disrupt the metrics to the point where the system doesn't continue to work as intended, and cost the indiscriminately clicked ad-purchasers an average of $1.58 per wasted PPC click, as they've taken the effort to estimate (see their FAQ).
I can't see how anyone can honestly argue that a tool whose creators openly state that its purpose is to indiscriminately "obstruct" and "resist" an industry to force it to change its business model by rendering its analytics worthless and wasting PPCers budgets isn't sabotage, irrespective of whether they agree with the desirability of the end goal.
This would be like if you are a dairy farmer and you notice people who buy cookies usually buy milk, so to make things simple you make an agreement to pay a store 25 cents for every cookie they sell (because you want to incentivize them to sell more cookies and therefore more milk). You couldn't then accuse a customer of fraud when they buy cookies but not milk. They never agreed to always buy milk when they buy cookies, that was just an assumption you made.
Indeed it is marginally safer for one to simply use a strong adblocker and protect themselves. And it is also safer to stay at home rather than to attend a protest. But safety is not the only concern. Using an adblocker does little to change the status quo. AdNauseam, and the obfuscation strategy in general, instead presents a possible avenue for collective resistance; a means of questioning and perhaps, eventually, changing the system. But this is not for everyone. If your goal is primarily self-protection, it may not be for you...
So they're aware of the fact this is worse at protecting privacy than a simple blocker, and equally unambiguous about their objectives being to change the status quo by damaging ad networks' business models. And yes, they've calculated the direct cost of some of those clicks too:
As the precise cost generated by clicks is not visible to the client, AdNauseam calculates an estimate using an average value of $1.58 for each clicked Ad.
Now, if the advertiser knows that people are clicking things through a script, and has some clause with their agreement with the company that says 'We won't charge you when this happens' but charges them anyway, that would be deceit. But it'd be on the part of the advertiser to the company buying the advertisements.
Wow, that's actually kind of amazing. I wish we had that in the US...
But here, they are wasting their money because they decided that they'd pay some amount per click. That doesn't somehow confer a legal or moral obligation on me, some random third party, to behave in such a way that this is actually a good deal for them.
That whatever they measure when my browser follows an ad corresponds to some amount of human attention is a gamble they're making, and in no way comparable to the expectation that in civilized society, someone doesn't walk into your store and smashes your merchandise without being punished for it.
Next we're going to go around and fine people for leaving their TVs running without paying attention to the commercials...
You don't think so? Isn't the whole point of this extension to try and trick advertisers into paying for non-existent user engagement?
That's why the relevant criterion here is is this software written for the express purpose of fucking up their shit?, to which the answer is obviously, yes and they've said as much, and acknowledged that if you just don't want to be tracked you're better off with a proper adblocker anyway.
If you want to leave your TV running without paying attention to the commercials, regular adblockers exist and are amongst the Google Web Store's most-downloaded apps.
No it doesn't, it is to obfuscate the results about your interest and make the information they sell about you - useless. They are not giving me any money so I have no obligation to provide truthful ad clicks either.
> (in a manner intended to bring the system down) but so do many DDoS attacks...
You can't be serious, it's not comparable to DDoS attacks. It is just obfuscation, pure and simple. It is not in any way unethical either, digital surveillance that ad companies practice is on the other hand very much unethical. When I visit one website, why should dozens of third parties be able to sella and that information? When did they ask my consent? The only way to make that info useless is to have automated add-on like this, if the majority would use it, we wouldn't have as big problems of ad networks spreading malware and proving government agencies with surveillance information.
Well that actually might happen someday. Not sure where, but some podcast on youtube was discussing almost just that. Electronics companies might strike a deal, where you have a smart tv with a camera and face recognition, where you get a good deal of channels cheaper if you watch the commercials. Also when you rent a movie via their streaming partner, you pay depending on how many eyes are watching.
Off course we all know how easy it is to game face recognition now, but in the future it might not be as Ai algos keep improving. Sadly I hate to see this day when we get to the level where most people will obediently watch the commercials because they can't pay trice the price. This kind of future seems both comical and disheartening, like someone would combine 1984 and They Live.
Oligarchs abusing there power? Not so bad, as long as it hits somebody else backyard. Even better, if it just never makes its way into the news.
All even, the democratic powers playing the great game again, condemning every country who doesn't want to be a feudal servant and go for a "Leave me alone" nuke-stance? And after all - hey we are still here, aren't we- so its not so bad.
People vanishing every night? Guess, one can get used to that, nobody of the vanished has ever complained. And hey, dropping housing prices, finally a solution to that.
To actually get a accurate, neutral moral "measurement" you would have to take a group and enclose them in the isolate standards of the past- and then have them write about how they perceive today.
The interesting measurement question- if there is one, is what is left that those in power could do- they wouldn't get away with? That couldn't be swept under the rug, that once really tied the room together?
I think you are deceiving everyone that you are indeed an attorney.
Whatever the merits of that argument might be in the general case, using an extension which expressly advertises its function to include falsifying clicks to mislead ad networks makes it hard to make the argument in that context.
It's up to the advertiser to accurately classify user behaviour, and the user has no responsibility to make that easy for them.
Most large tech companies want to get a noose around users' necks. If you stick your head in the noose, guess what happens?
It is generally understood and indeed reasonable to assume that in order for most users to click an ad they must first see it. This extension intentionally violates that in order to deceive that same advertiser.