[BurnerBotje]

I have an idea that another way of preventing being tracked is just massively spamming trash in the data layer object, pushing thousands of dollars worth of purchase events and such, pushing randomly generated user details and other such events. Perhaps by doing this your real data will be hard to filter out. A side effect is also that data becomes unreliable overall, helping less privacy aware people in the process.

[chamomeal]

Now there’s a fun idea!! I wonder how difficult it would be to spoof events.

Edit: looks like this might exist already: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

[genewitch]

Since installing it on firefox on this computer (18 months ago or so) Ad Nauseam has clicked ~$38,000 worth of ads, that i never saw.

Between this and "track me not" i've been fighting back against ads and connecting my "profile" with any habits since 2016 or so. I should also note i have pihole and my own DNS server upstream, so that's thiry-eight grand in ad clicks that got through blacklists.

https://www.trackmenot.io/faq

[cj]

[Preface: I hate ads, I love uBlock origin, I use pihole, I'm a proponent of ad blockers]

I manage a Google Ads account with a $500,000 budget. That budget is spent on a mix of display ads, google search, and youtube ads.

If I knew that 10% of our budget was wasted on bot clicks, there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising... we want to grow our business and advertising is how you get your name out there. We also can't stop using Google Ads - where else would we go?

$38,000 in clicks boosts Google's revenue by $38k (Google ain't complaining). The only entity you're hurting are the advertisers using Google. Advertisers might see their campaigns performing less well, but that's not going to stop them from advertising. If anything, they'll increase budgets to counteract the fake bot clicks.

I really don't understand what Ad Nauseam is trying to achieve. It honestly seems like it benefits Google more than it hurts them. It directly hurts advertisers, but not enough that it would stop anyone from advertising.

Google has a system for refunding advertisers for invalid clicks. The $500k account that I manage gets refunded about $50/month in invalid clicks. I'm guessing if bot clicks started making a real dent in advertiser performance, Google would counter that by improving their bot detection so they can refund advertisers in higher volumes. If there's ever an advertiser-led boycott of Google Ads, Google would almost certainly respond by refunding advertisers for bot clicks at much higher rates.

[TeMPOraL]

> I really don't understand what Ad Nauseam is trying to achieve. It honestly seems like it benefits Google more than it hurts them.

Google is part of the problem, but they're neither the only ones nor best to target through bottom-up approaches.

> It directly hurts advertisers, but not enough that it would stop anyone from advertising.

You know the saying about XML - if it doesn't solve the problem, you are not using enough of it.

> there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising...

We know. The whole thing is a cancer[0], a runaway negative feedback loop. No single enlightened advertiser can do anything about it unilaterally. Which is why the pressure needs to go up until ~everyone wants change.

--

[0] - https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

[donohoe]

> Which is why the pressure needs to go up until ~everyone wants change.

I think the point made is that this adds no extra pressure.

[TeMPOraL]

The comment itself is evidence that it does, otherwise no one would even pay attention. But clearly the pressure is nowhere near sufficient.

[malfist]

You know, I'm not too worried that I'm making the lives of people who spy on me harder and wasting their money.

You don't have to buy privacy violating ads. You don't have to buy targetted ads

[paulryanrogers]

> You don't have to buy privacy violating ads. You don't have to buy targetted ads.

Sadly, you do until the monopoly is broken up. Because as is your company probably won't survive in the market, nor you in your role, using anything else.

[Shacklz]

> Because as is your company probably won't survive in the market

Then maybe that business isn't adding all that much value to society to begin with and it's just not that much of a loss if it goes away.

If a company cannot survive without shoving their product into the view of eyeballs appealing to our most basic monkey brain instincts, it's maybe just better if it dies.

[malfist]

There are plenty of companies that A) don't advertise or B) don't use individually targeted ads

An example of A: carmex

An example of B: Ball Homes (sixth largest residential builder in the country), pretty much any lawyer, a mom and pop that buys newspaper space, TV space or a bill board

[sneak]

> I hate ads

> The only entity you're hurting are the advertisers using Google.

That’s fine. Advertising is cancer. Reducing advertisers’ ROI is good too.

You don’t hate ads if you’re spending $500k on them. You just hate receiving ads, which makes you hypocritical.

[mschuster91]

Well, in today's reality you need a job to at least pay rent. And employers need advertising to make money to pay their workers.

It's factually impossible to live in modern society without participating in ethically questionable activities at least indirectly.

[fsflover]

DuckDuckGo is profitable without targeted ads.

[mystified5016]

The point is to poison your ad tracking profile so that advertisers can't figure out who you are and what you'll buy.

No matter how secure your browser setup is, Google is tracking you. By filling their trackers with garbage, there's less that can personally identify you as an individual

[mediumsmart]

Apple bought the patent to do just that 13 years ago … the .Mac observer article about it is now gone - here is the archive record

https://web.archive.org/web/20200601034723/https://www.macob...

Carter invented it and got paid so they can bury it. Must be good tech.

[krageon]

By hurting the advertisers you hurt google. It sucks that you are disadvantaged by it, but the truth of the matter is that once it becomes expensive enough it will not be worth it economically. And it is clear from your own message this is the only language you're willing to speak.

[rvnx]

And you also hurt the people who create the content that you consume, it is a very toxic attitude (and maybe even illegal as it causes intentional financial damage)

[heisenbit]

Ads hurt people by stealing attention and manipulating spending intentions. Being exposed to a firehose of them makes us more stupid and poorer.

[BrenBarn]

I think the idea is that hurting entities who are pushing out a lot of ads is a good thing.

[freeone3000]

Hopefully it puts my browsers on an bot blocklist, which then invalidates the tracking profile and eliminates targeted advertising entirely.

[michaelt]

The problem with being on google's bot blocklist is you'll suddenly discover that recaptcha is used in a heck of a lot of places.

[thatguy0900]

My assumption with something as hostile as ad nauseum is that you were running the risk of Google profile bans

[freeone3000]

oh no! anyway.

[aziaziazi]

> It honestly seems like it benefits Google more than it hurts them. It directly hurts advertisers, but not enough that it would stop anyone from advertising.

GP fights agains ads, not Google. And not being able to win 100% of the gain shouldn’t restrain someone from taking action it they consider the win share worth the pain.

> $38,000 in clicks boosts Google's revenue by $38k

You should include costs here, and if (big if) a substantial part of the clicks comes from bots and get refunded, the associated cost comes on top of the bill. At the end the whole business is impacted. I agree 50/50k is a penny through.

> I hate ads […] I manage a Google Ads account

[no cynism here, I genuinely wonder] how do you manage your conscience, mood and daily motivation? Do you see a dichotomy in what you wrote and if so, how did you arrive to that situation? Any future plan?

I’m asking as you kind of introduce the subject but if you’re not willing to give more details that’s totally fine.

[ddtaylor]

> I'm guessing if bot clicks started making a real dent in advertiser performance, Google would counter that by improving their bot detection so they can refund advertisers in higher volumes.

They already have methods to detect a lot. Like you said yourself, customers have no alternative, so why would they refund money they don't have to?

[wodenokoto]

I’d hope you’ll find an advocacy group to join who’ll sue google for billions in fraud and lost revenue.

[jorvi]

> want to grow our business and advertising is how you get your name out there

Or.. you know.. offering a quality product?

[econ]

Tiny trafic but everyone is buying things. High praise in the reviews, not a single organic link.

[remram]

> I hate ads, I love uBlock origin, I use pihole, I'm a proponent of ad blockers. I manage a Google Ads account with a $500,000 budget.

If you can write this without seeing how you are the very worst of our enemies, then I do hope your business die, there is obviously nothing that will make you understand. I still can't believe you put those words together, honestly.

Do you see yourself as a separate breed from your lowly users or something? How can you inflict and even try to justify what you yourself avoid and say you "hate"?

[Spivak]

Probably just doesn't want to take his work home with him :P

In a way I get it, I wouldn't buy or recommend the product I currently work on. Still cash the paychecks though. I also am the stereotypical tech person who avoids technology. I can't exactly blame anyone for playing the game. The guy who works at the sausage factory but won't eat sausage due to what he's seen is a pretty common refrain.

[behringer]

This is great. I seek out competitors to the companies that advertise so I can get the product without rewarding advertisers.

Man scape? Nah, generic women's razers. Pcbway? Nope. JLCPCB.

Screw your ads. Find a better way.

[pests]

JLCPCB does tons of sponsored segments on YT. I see them more than Pcbway.

[1n4007]

JLC advertise constantly, just look at the eevblog forums.

[dotancohen]

  > JLCPCB

How are they?

[snickerdoodle12]

I've only used them once for my first (and so far only) PCB, so as a complete amateur, it was great. They rejected my first design which had an obvious flaw, and my second design was in my hands a little over a week after I uploaded it. I paid 2.60EUR for 5 (tiny) PCBs and 7.50EUR for the shipping. They even placed and soldered components for me.

[snickerdoodle12]

Oh well. Advertisers are the scum of the earth, the only thing worse is those facilitating them. Driving a wedge between advertisers and googles is a win.

[Wowfunhappy]

I would worry about being labeled a bot and denied access to websites at all.

[wglb]

What do you expect this to do, long term? I’m curious.

[zelphirkalt]

Even if it merely makes using Google shenanigans unattractive for advertisers, that would be a huge win against one of the biggest perpetrators, privacy and data protection violators out there.

[wglb]

How unattractive do you think it will make it for them?

[genewitch]

about -$25,000 a year, give or take.

[culi]

You're talking about Adnauseum

https://adnauseam.io/

Chrome banned it from their add on store but it can still be installed manually

[jeroenhd]

AdNaueam works against ads, but does it also work against Google Tag Manager?

I've already got most ads blocked by simply Piholing them, but GTM tracking my every move using first-party content is a different kind of interaction to attack.

[redeeman]

just block GTM

[mmsc]

Would be nice to have something similar to this for Mixpanel and Amplitude

[dylan604]

I’d imagine that by this point in time, they are able to filter this specific type of noise out of the dataset. They have been tracking everyone for so long that I doubt there’s anyone they don’t know about whether directly of shadow profiles. These randomly generated users would just not match up to anything and would be fine to just drop

[3036e4]

I have a quite common name in my country and snatched [e-mail] for that name many years ago. Many use it by accident somehow when registering for things. Possibly (hopefully!) half of all leaks containing my email address are for other people. Never thought of what it might do for ad profiling, but hopefully it is adding at least some noise to it.

Maybe I could manually improve a bit on that by deliberately register myself for various random services and just clicking around a bit to pretend I am interested in things I have no interest in. On the other hand with 20 years of tracking I think Google has all my interests and habits nailed down anyway.