Comment by 63stack

Don't tell me I'm not allowed to click buttons you put in my face.

Any jurisdiction where this is supposedly illegal, it hasn't been court tested seriously.*

Per your link: "What you're describing is essentially the extension AdNauseam. So far they have not had any legal troubles, but they technically could." That stance or an assertion it's not illegal is consistent throughout the thread, provided you aren't clicking your own ads.

"The industry" thinks you shouldn't be allowed to fast forward your own VCR through an ad either. They can take a flying .. lesson.

* Disclaimer: I don't know if that's true, but it sounds true.

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.

Wrong. There is no law saying you cannot click every link on a website within your browser. It would not only be impossible to prove but also entirely wrong interpretation of existing laws.

Now if you had an AdWords account and ran a botnet that visited your property and clicked ads, that’s fraud.

You're all over this thread spreading misinformation. AdNauseam has been around since 2014. It is specifically banned in the Chrome store so Google knows of it's existence. If you check the wikipedia page you'll see that they have landed in the press and taken multiple actions against the extension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdNauseam

Usually when it's brought up people say it doesn't work or try to spread fear that it is illegal. Google banning them but taking no action otherwise indicates to me and the thousands who use it that it is in fact effective and Google has no other recourse other than their control over the most popular browser.

It's also illegal in many jurisdictions (e.g. in the US

Never in the history of HN has a [citation] been so [needed].

And from an actual lawyer, not just some rando cosplaying M&A in his mom's basement.

A plugin that does pre-fetch is illegal?

A "scheme to defraud advertisers", how infuriating.

Advertisers are stealing my time and attention. Why is this not illegal also then?

Seriously? What laws catch it out?

>> This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad.

It lowers the effectiveness of internet advertising. When advertisers feel they're paying too much for the business the ads generate, they'll stop advertising in that way. That's probably the thinking anyway. A less generous stance would be: I hate advertisers so I'm gonna get back at them by making them pay more.

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.

Google is selling their data to advertisers. If you poison their data, you are making the thing they sell less valuable

As a user you still don't have to see the ads but you are also "fighting back" rather than just "hiding from" the advertisers

I think it's great

When the advertiser is paying a bunch of money to Google for ad impressions but not getting increased sales, what will they do?

it's actually the opposite, google adsense and every major ad-network will ban you or put a hold on your account if they think the ad impressions or clicks are automated, so this is a good way to get someone blocked from the ad-network

I view it in the same vein as the thing where people waste scammers' time by pretending to be falling for it and being slow/unhelpful

If that's the case, it makes it all the more curious as to why Google banned the extension[0] on Chrome.

[0] https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html

Scams and malware are unacceptable. It doesn't matter if it's all the ads or only some of them. No justification there.

Assuming those numbers are accurate that’s over 8,200 ads per day, every day. Absolutely staggering.