Ask HN: Automatically click on all ads on all pages that I visit | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Automatically click on all ads on all pages that I visit

7 pointsalimoeeny9 comments

Like many of you, I am annoyed that ads follow me. I was wondering if anybody wants to build a browser plugin that automatically clicks on all ads in all pages that I visit. (or is there such a thing already out there). The idea here is to create noise on the advertisers side, and prevent them from having any evidence/insight into what I really like and don't like. Of course this does not work on Google/facebook and others with whom I voluntarily share my preferences (by using their products, search, social ...). But I am not very worried about them personally anyway. I am more annoyed by these other advertisers with whom I don't have any direct relationship (I don't use their free products) and they are also being very dumb about it. Like I once looked at product page (a year ago) and now everywhere I go I see ads for that damn thing.

In summary, anybody wants to feed noise to dumb advertisers. This makes them smarter (or the smarter ones will survive) which makes our experience better (don't know if it makes our lives better, but that is a tall order anyway).

I don't have time to do it myself, but will be happy to help if needed.

EDIT: I really don't want to use an ad blocker, because I want to support content producers who rely on ads (like youtubers ....).

I'm not sure how much you know about tracking cookies and the like but clicking on every ad on every page is not really going to help you. You are better off installing a plugin like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct... or https://disconnect.me/. Those tools take away a lot of the tracking and profiling capabilities of ad networks.

The other problem is that modern ad networks these days are pretty complicated beasts very much like stock exchanges where publishers and marketers come together to bid on the ability to serve ads on specific pages and to specific users. This means a lot of these networks gather and segment information by IP addresses and browser fingerprints. Those pieces of information are much harder to mask and you need to start using anonymizing proxies if you want to hide that information as well.

So the bottom line is that all these tools already exist and they are much better at masking information than clicking on every ad possible.

I don't want to use an ad blocker because, I really want to support people who produce content and rely on ads (like youtubers ...).

Unfortunately, deliberately clicking the ads may get your favorite websites and youtubers banned from their content network. The network will see the abnormal increase in clicks and they'll blame the publisher and will pursue them for click fraud. So...this tactic might be counter-productive.

The tools I suggested do not block ads. All they do is take away the tracking and profiling capabilities. You'll still see plenty of ads but they won't follow you around since tracking capabilities are very strongly tied to being able to plop down cookies.

Get an ad blocker and add an exception to YouTube or whatever site you don't want to see ads.

http://i.imgur.com/1HX7pnD.png

You can retarget / remarket YouTubers, and YT'ers are not the only content producers that rely on ads.

This is a black hat, unethical idea. Distributed click fraud? (yes many ad platforms do consider this fraud) It would never make any of the directories, no one in their right mind would ever touch this.

>build a browser plugin that automatically clicks on all ads in all pages that I visit.

>I really don't want to use an ad blocker, because I want to support content producers who rely on ads (like youtubers ....).

You would be hurting the publishers with these. I work in ad ops, and if there's enough fraudulent clicks I simply place a publisher on a blacklist.

Good idea. Lets also DDoS all new startup websites. The smart ones will learn how to mitigate the attack, and we can weed out the rest!

If you don't want to get retargeted just use ghostery.

Also just install adblock and whitelist youtube/whatever few sites you want to show ads

This would be quite awesome, not for confusing tracking, but messing with advertisers. Imagine hundreds of people visiting a site and clicking on all the ads. Sites would go crazy.

This doesn't seem like a good use of your time.

I suggest installing an advert blocking program, then finding a more ambitious way to put a dent in the universe.

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