zlacker

Someone clicking an ad is not a) making an order or b) pretending to be someone else, which seem kinda instrumental for the fraud in your analogy. The ad didn't get served with a ToS document explaining that by clicking it, you enter into a contract or whatever. It's your decision to pay money based on ad clicks, and it doesn't somehow oblige people who have nothing to do with you to only click ads in the manner you intended.

>>ben0x5+(OP)
Alright, how about an example with no orders? Let's say you think the police state is evil, and you wish to destroy it by wasting its resources. Is making automated empty 911 calls justified?

Just because you intend to use the 911 hotline as an emergency resource surely shouldn't impede my right as a phone owner from calling it in the manner you intended. It's my god-given right as a phonebook owner to call whatever numbers I see fit in whatever quantities I want to.

It doesn't even have to be 911. You can DDOS the phone lines of any business to make them less effective. Is this ethically defensible?

>>flower+x3
This analogy is still a stretch. Both are examples of DDOS which prevents legitimate requests from going through.

This is more the equivalent of replying to every piece of physical junk mail that you get using their provided self-stamped return envelopes. I think you'd be hard to pressed to argue that, while being a jerk move, you're still aren't entitled to do it.

>>flower+x3
I'm not sure I am a fan of the analogy, but either way, I think we've moved away from calling it fraud so I'll accept that.

>>wvenab+m6
Used to actually do this back in the day. I would send them back their offer with something like "I regret to inform you that I am not interested in your offer. Have a nice day." on the top page. I figured that going out of my way to let them know that they shouldn't expect a sale from me was simply being polite. I used their handy return envelope to send it back to them.

There were stories of people who would attach their return envelopes to heavy objects and try to send those back to them.

Maybe some day advertisers will come to understand that if their ads affect me negatively, then I will do my best to make it unprofitable for them to present them to me.