Hacker News Reader

Comment by AugustoCAS | Hacker News Reader

Google makes money, so they are happy to look away. The scams (e.g. Mr Beast fake video) are identical so it would be trivial to automatically kick them from the platform. The crypto bro's ads are also pretty much identical.

The crypto bro ads are hilarious and it looks like they all use the same platform. I wonder if all of them are part of a ponzi scheme in which someone sells a course to sell crypto courses.

Something I do, which is a bit silly, is to click the ad just to burn money from the scammers.

View on HN

You might be interested in AdNauseum [0]

> Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks' databases.

[0]: https://adnauseam.io/

Thanks for the tip!

For a while I've been thinking of setting a VM that navigates the interwebs clicking on random links to generate tracking noise. I need to find out how to do that :D.

I love the idea after reading the site, this line, however, scares me about the addon:

    Access your data for all websites

It needs access to all websites' data as it needs to see & interact with the tabs to be able to detect & simulate clicks on those ads.

uBlock Origin has the same requirement. Basically, to block ads on any website, it needs access to the data on any website. The wording of the permission is a bit weird maybe.

Yeah, it's a catch-all permission that says the extension wants to examine the DOM and HTTP requests. Absolutely necessary for any browser-based ad blocking.

It kinda has to do that to be able to click on the ads.

> Something I do, which is a bit silly, is to click the ad just to burn money from the scammers.

And give it to Google? I don't know which is worse.

Google makes money, so they are happy to look away.

I personally think they know this about kids being addicted to YouTube too. I see so so so many kids in my life spend hours on end watching Minecraft videos and the likes. I get it, "the parents"!!! However if a child's parents don't have the time to police their kids internet usage, they fall victim to this pray very, very easily.

I have some friends who don't have a lot of money and they both work together running a cafe. The kids basically have to look after themselves because the parents are just too busy working. The kids just spend practically all their free time watching this shit.

Google cannot be so naive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com