this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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And this is why Google removed Ad Nauseam from being a legit chrome extension, because it blocks ads and also silently clicks on every one, ruining Goole’s data.
That being said, idk how safe it is if it does click on every ad. It probably is, but I’d have to do more research.
I had no clue of the existence of the Ad Nauseam browser extension. I use Firefox and I just added it to my browser.
I read that it's built off of uBlock Origin, which I already trust because of the open source nature of it, so that was a huge plus for me.
It may not necessarily have been your intention to inform people of Ad Nauseam, but I definitely thank you for bringing it up in the first place!
Do you know if it interferes with unlock origin?
It does yes. It also interferes with other privacy related extensions like privacy badger. I have disabled both Ublock Orgin and Privacy Badger in favor of AdNauseam and have been pleased. After using it for about a week, it says I've "clicked" on about $150 worth of ads.
The main thing to note is if you're on a site, and you see ads, you can always flip AdNauseam into "strict" mode. In strict mode, it is less effective at clicking on ads, but better at making sure nothing pops up. There's only one site that I've had to use strict mode on so far. Attached image is of my "ad vault" (the ads that have been clicked). I did hide the NSFW ads:
One thing that worries me about this approach is that it's still generating ad revenue. Sure you don't actually see the ads but it's still an incentive for companies to continue running more and more ads.
But they’re not making the company paying for the ads any profit. It’s a money sink for them. But you’re correct in that whoever is hosting the ads will make their coin.
From the persepctive of the host site, maybe. But for the advertisers, AdNauseam punishes them pretty badly. The idea is to destroy the relationship between the "click through rate" and "conversion rate" of offending sites/ads.
The linked article discusses the phenomena in more detail, but the bottom line is that advertisers want sales. If their ads don't get sales on a certain platform, they will no longer advertise on said platform.
I've also attached a screenshot of the relevant part of the article.
https://www.wordstream.com/average-ctr
That's without even considering how this screws up the data that organizations like Google are trying to track. That data is worth something to them, and this obfuscates it.
Ah, I didn't think of this part. I was going of off click through rate but didn't think about it destroying the conversion rate
Just to clarify, AdNauseam doesn't click on every ad. Certainly not by default. I've noticed that while it does hide ads embedded in YouTube videos, it doesn't seem to click them often. (Though, it does still click on image based ads on YouTube).
Additionally, by default AdNauseam does not click on ads that are "do not track" (DNT) compliant, an emerging standard set by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'll link to the GitHub FAQ post the devs made regarding why they, by default, don't click DNT compliant ads.
https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-and-why-does-adnauseam-make-exceptions-for-non-tracking-ads