[badloginagain]

How "far fetched" this is from click fraud is the central argument, and I can easily see a range of arguments from both sides.

On one hand, distributing and marketing a tool that is explicitly designed to harm trackers can be seen- ie lobbied- as fraud.

On the other, this isn't a targeted campaign of misclicking, this is essentially random noise on a user by user basis.

At scale though, this fucks with a whole lotta peoples paychecks.

[nradov]

This tool doesn't in any way meet the legal definition of fraud. Any if everyone working on online advertising loses their paychecks then that is an acceptable outcome.

[beachy]

Yep, people toss the word fraud around, and lawyers love to use it to scare the shit out of the opposition, but it's a very high bar to meet legally. An automated tool that clicked randomly on web page elements for no financial gain to the user or supplier of said tool would in no way reach the threshold of fraud.

Obligatory IANAL.

[j33zusjuice]

Except a few walled gardens, like search and social media (FB and Google do not share much of your data with advertisers, and nearly none with other adtech companies), ads are bought through real-time bidding. And the bid is paid regardless of how you respond to the ad.

The majority of ads are bought this way, so your click does not harm the advertisers whose ad would otherwise have been blocked. This could impact the relative value of the publisher’s website, but the industry in general is not overly inhibited by ad-blocking, so I don’t think this extension would have much impact in any sense.