It garbles advertisers’ data as a result, but you must disable uBlock Origin to run it; they can’t work simultaneously. I recently moved to it and, so far, am never looking back!
I’ve been recommending this for awhile, it’s nice to see someone else take up the mantle.
Yes, it clicks ads in addition to blocking them. Google removed it from its addon repository even though it wasn’t breaking any rules. They just removed it and kept it removed because there wasn’t sufficient backlash, the scumbags.
It’s the main reason why I use Firefox these days. it’s clear that the cabal will not allow anything that legitimately threatens their power structure, and make advertising less-effective for the same price is a gut punch they need.
Automated ad clicks probably are breaking the rules, TBF.
Monopoly money
That comment is correct on so many levels…
Don’t care. At this point I will take being actively malicious toward them.
You know this is the good shit because when it first came out a few years back google was running a huge disinformation campaign against it. You’d search for “adnauseum” in google and the first result would be an article from some weird advertising company calling is “insecure” and “malware” without any actual argumentation behind those claims, while no other search engine returned that article (I lost the screenshots, so yall are just gonna have to take my word for it). They also delisted it from the chrome store for not discernible reason. They were afraid.
But nowadays I’m willing to bet that they figured out how to detect adnauseum’s fake clicks and filtering it out. Stuff like that needs a talented development team to keep it up to date.
Has the same limitations as uBlock Origin with Manifest v3 and won’t work in Chrome.
If you’re still using chrome at this point that’s on you.
I use Librewolf. The comment was meant as info for those who think that having uBlock as a base still holds significance in light of Manifest v3.
I meant the general “you.” “People” would have worked.
Or a Chrome derivative
I was actually curious about this as we’re forced to use Edge or.Chrome at work.
The solution is simple. Chrome ditches manifest v2? Ditch Chrome.
It’s not even available on chrome because google removed it years ago. They weren’t breaking any rules, but google saw it as a threat and kept it removed since there wasn’t sufficient backlash.
Really wish people would STFU about the “privacy” aspect about this. It gives junk data to trackers because it floods them with all the ads you’re coming across. The main purpose, though, is to charge advertisers money without giving them a service in return.
It’s sad most of you consumers can’t see the real significance of this software, but it really puts into perspective why most people are useful idiots these days.
Consumerism has won.
Is there an aspect of privacy through throwing loads of bullshit data though? Instead of blocking the tracking you flood it with crap
You could try being just a little optimistic if you want to sell your actually good points. Consumerism wins when you let it, and the only way to judge when it has are by your own merits, even now it gets to you with that mindset.
It’s not even available on chrome because google removed it years ago.
They weren’t breaking any rules, but google saw it as a threat and kept it removed since there wasn’t sufficient backlash.
Really wish people would STFU about the “privacy” aspect about this. It gives junk data to trackers because it floods them with all the ads you’re coming across. The main purpose, though, is to charge advertisers money without giving them a service in return.
It’s sad most of you consumers can’t see the real significance of this software, but it really puts into perspective why most people are useful idiots these days.
Consumerism has won.
I always liked using this on the premise of privacy-through-obfuscation. If the powers that be must get information from me, then i’d prefer to give them garbage information.
Exactly. You can’t completely avoid being tracked but you can ensure that your profile is just noise without any value to advertisers
I always like this on the premise of charging advertisers money while giving them no audience in return.
And lots of it.
Couple of issues I’m wondering about…
First, wouldn’t clicking on everything just make you easier to track?
Second, how much bandwidth would all this use?
- not in this way
- not enough to matter
the way it works is sending an HTTP request that registers as a “click” to the advertiser (thus costing them money), but then doesn’t actually let the browser download any content and fetch the webpage, basically pi-holes the destination site and any attached tracking cookies. Combined with the fact that it does this to every ad, it would basically poison any click tracking.
edit: pedants
and before I get any more of you, this is just what I remember reading about adnauseam, do not take it as gospel, go look at AdNauseam’s FAQ.
Thanks for doing your part to spread the truth in this sea of lies and FUD.
It’s clear that most people these days are proud consumers with more money than sense. All they care about is looking good in front of their consumerist friends, and they base all of their actions and decisions around what will support that ideology.
As a kid, I thought useful idiots were rare. Now I see it’s the exact opposite.
none
Ah great
it works [by] sending an HTTP request that registers as a “click” to the advertiser
Uh, wait a minute. 🤔
Sending a request also uses bandwidth, you know.
A basic GET request, even with a long querystring, will be negligible even on a 1998 dial-up connection.
Right, but thousands of them, possibly every day? Could perhaps affect your data consumption on your phone e.g. 🤷♂️
Edit: I got it guys, thanks.
I don’t know of any data plan that limits on the upload. Caps are usually on the download side, and TFA says it does not download the server response.
You aren’t terribly familiar with how much traffic we generate nowadays… are you? If we were still on 2G and isdn / dsl sure. You’d likely see a slight latency jump. On anything from this last decade+ ? Not a chance.
I’m not, am I. I hadn’t done any calculations regarding this. It was strictly hypothetical, as you can probably tell from the question mark and 🤷♂️. 👍
I’ll be honest - you weren’t really presenting your case in that way. Understand my confusion: you seemed pretty adamant about your concern with no backing data on it. Most people pick their hills with something to back them.
Okay, fine, not enough to matter. Are you satisfied with that?
Jesus, you got defensive quick and hard. Sorry I rustled you.
https://lemmy.world/comment/16187642
🤷♂️
furthermore: lmao.
you’ve got to try a lot harder to “rustle” me, but I like your moxie for thinking you did, sport
doing the math, even the cheapest phone plans that don’t explicitly exclude data, nowadays include at least 1GB of data for free. Usually more. Almost any reachable amount of outbound requests to click on ads would barely put a dent in your data allowance.
You definitely seem rustled.
if you say so, whatever makes you happy.
Now the name calling. Cool, dude.
I’ll concede the data plan dent thing; I hadn’t done any math regarding that. Thanks for clarifying that to me and everyone else!
But you did say “none” so I just pointed out the fact that it’s not none. It’s some. I wasn’t wrong to point that out. No matter how much of a stickler you find me for that.
But that’s no reason to post images implicitly depicting me to be some kind of fat nerd.
You’re a rude person. Autistic or not.
I’ll concede the data plan dent thing; I hadn’t done any math regarding that. Thanks for clarifying that to me and everyone else!
I accept your concession, better luck next time.
But you did say “none” so I just pointed out the fact that it’s not none. It’s some. I wasn’t wrong to point that out. No matter how much of a stickler you find me for that.
pedantry is pedantry, if you interject with “well ACKSHUALLY” over literally a couple kilobytes of data in this, the Year Of Our Lord 2025 where common storage device sizes are in the multiple terabyte range, and 100mbps down/10 up is exceedingly common, expect to be called one. It is functionally none, because it is not 1993.
Autistic or not.
can’t even come up with your own insult for me, just gonna steal that sad attempt at bait from the other guy? how… underwhelming, must do better. 🤡
“I have drawn YOU as the soyjack and ME as the chad, therefore you lose the argument”
Are you autistic?
Yeah.
Is that a fucking problem?
It is when you’re being rude for no reason.
Using autistic as a derogatory slur is rude for no reason.
what a rude thing to say, especially considering I wasn’t talking to you.
I’m gonna keep it that way, best of luck baiting someone else champ.
I mean, that image is pretty rude, too.
lol I know right.
That HTTP request would also show up in the advertisers web logs with your origin IP address.
I think we’re far past caring about a website logging an IP address.
I’m past caring about giving my IP to a website that I want to use, but what this is doing is handing out your information to every single advertiser that is published on any page you visit. In some cases this plugin would match the definition of “leaking personal data”.
You do you though. I won’t stop you.
Most people dont have static IPs. All the ads would see is web requests from random residential ips from a certain country.
When was the last time you checked the length of your DHCP lease?
I don’t know about NZ (or wherever you are), but IP addresses for residential access in the US don’t really change all that much. It’s… concerning.
What are they going to do? blacklist me and stop serving me ads?
Oh no
If you care about your information and privacy, why are you giving them your information for nothing?
You do have a point, but… It’s not for nothing. It’s to hurt the predatory ad industry. And what you give up isn’t much: your IP address and likely the referral (so they know you visited website X that was serving their ad). It’s up to you to decide whether that’s an acceptable privacy cost to conduct this kind of guerilla ad warfare.
It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don’t think it’s possible, though.
edit: Just found out from their FAQ:
Does AdNauseam respect the browser’s private-browsing/incognito modes?
Yes, AdNauseam does not collect or click Ads that occur on pages loaded in private-browsing or incognito windows, unless manually enabled by the user.It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don’t think it’s possible, though
Potentially possible, but I agree, likely not worth the effort.
so use a VPN? if you’re the sort of user using AdNauseam, and is concerned about tracking, you’re probably also the sort of user who already uses a VPN.
I’m behind SEVEN proxies!
Yeah, I can’t find an answer whether the “click” is behind some obfuscation, or if the “click every ad” is the obfuscation step itself by attempting to poison the data. The latter may work but yes, may actually increase tracking. Wish that answer wasn’t so hard to find on their site.
Did you look at the FAQ?
https://github.com/dhowe/adnauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads
Thanks, I didn’t see this, there was a different embedded FAQ that didn’t have the specific Q & A below.
But, if anything, it seems to confirm the ad itself is just legitimately clicked from the user’s IP address and hidden from the user, and that there is code execution protection, but not that there is any privacy protection? It’s still very ambiguous.
How does AdNauseam “click Ads”?
AdNauseam ‘clicks’ Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a ‘click’ on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam’s clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.
Also wouldn’t this be directing a ton of money to google? (or I guess any other ad provider)
The advertisers are paying for the opportunity either way. Clicks cost them more money than just displaying the ad. Useless clicks cost them money for nothing.
The advertisers could be paying based on interactions and/or their rates could be negotiated around interaction, so unless a sizeable number of people use this it would be giving money to Goog
No, because it devalues their click through, as no sales will result from those clicks.
It’s kinda like printing money, there’s more of it, but the overall value hasn’t increased.
In the short term, I would think so.
In the long run, it makes it less appealing for companies to advertise, because they would have larger costs while having less sales. That, in return, hurts Google as advertisers don’t want to pay as much anymore. If 80% of all users used this extension, advertisers would have to pay more than ever, while having only 20% of all users can be reached (simplified, of course).
Or in short, it’s designed to hurt the system as a whole, not specific companies.
Google has put a lot of effort into detecting and blocking stuff like this. They call it “click fraud”, if you want to look it up.
It’ll just mean they start ignoring clicks from you.
That, I guess, it’s the whole point. Stopping being tracked 🙂
This feels like reverse psychology on a little kid.
“That’s it, I’m not tracking you anymore! >:(”
“Oooh nooo, what have I done! Oh how much I would wish to be tracked :(”
“No, you won’t convince me to change my mind >:(”
“Oh well, guess I’ll have to live without being tracked, what a shame that is.”
They call it “click fraud”,
No, click fraud is using botnets to click ads in your site to increase your revenue.
When Google can’t extract money from you that’s fraud!
They can still get money from this. In fact, they get more money from this than with uBlock.
They recognize how it undermines the digital advertising system, so they did everything in their power to get rid of it before it takes off.
We really should be recommending adNauseam instead of uBlock.
OK… If trust is bro, then they won
But I ain’t no middle schooler, so you need to explain like I am 5 how this solution is in fact superior to uBlock
Is there any proper research on this?
It is literally uBlock. It updates with uBlock, uses uBlock filtering, uBlock options, uBlock UI.
The only difference is that it also does ad fuckery and there is a button that you can press to configure the ad fuckery and see a log of the ad fuckery.
Other than that it is exactly uBlock.
They can still get money from this. In fact, they get more money from this than with uBlock.
They recognize how it undermines the digital advertising system, so they did everything in their power to get rid of it before it takes off. They’re fighting a generational war and don’t want us to even be aware of the tools we have to fight back.
We really should be recommending adNauseam instead of uBlock.
if enough people start doing it might be effective
Not sure how true it was, but there was a YouTuber claiming that their videos were getting entirely demonetized because too many of their viewers had Ad blockers enabled. So even though 75% of people were seeing ads on the video, Google was keeping that ad revenue, withholding it all from the creator because 25% weren’t getting ads. The claim the youtuber made is that this will probably predominantly impact creators with a more tech savvy / privacy aware audience, resulting in less of that niche content.
Anyway, this is anecdotal, but I wouldn’t put it past Google to pass the issue to the creators for the actions of their consumers, even though it’s not their fault.
google has way too much power. its threat to everything
Creators who care about privacy should not support Google’s monopoly by using YouTube as their platform of choice.
legit, there are so many platforms out there, idc which one they use, but pretty please, just mirror your content. Why’s it so hard 😵💫. The group im referring to doesnt even have the “money ads” argument as what most small creators earn on yt is peanuts.
Throw in a dash of track-me-not (https://www.trackmenot.io/) and maybe they’ll start ignoring your search queries too! Worst case my actual searches are so buried in the bs deciding what to market would be easier from my screen-name.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing! What is the best, current Firefox fork of this one, if you know?
it’s a browser extension for Firefox, not a fork of Firefox. Or did I misunderstand you?
I was reacting to its GitHub:
This project is NOT currently being maintained. Code is made available for developers to fork. This is the FireFox version of the project, for Chrome see https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot-Chrome.
So I’m wondering which active fork is best to go off of for Firefox. I could’ve been clearer; my bad.
can confirm. You know those ‘google rewards’ things? they slowly stopped going for the results from trackmenot lol
it was nice to get $1 a month off my VPN subscription lol
Then that achieves the same goal. If they’re ignoring clicks from you, and you’re blocking their trackers, then they probably don’t have a good profile on you, because whatever they do have is either old, poisoned, or both.
This would still make a connection to the ad servers that can then track me though.
I guess with a hardened browser and a VPN it would be alright.
At this point I think it’s better to poison the well.
Good start. Now make a version that clicks each ad a random number of times from randomly generated IP addresses.
That’s not how IP addresses work.
What if we use a Visual Basic UI to hack the IP address by netmask?
Yes, but this only works if you connect your VPN via 3 block chain proxies.
Make sure you’re behind a 54mghz ram modem firewall
Is it from this? https://youtu.be/hkDD03yeLnU
maybe we can setup a botnet to poison advertiser data.
click all the ads, all over the planet!
Why are you people so concerned about “the data?” Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
This is an effective tool to charge advertisers money without having their ads shoved in our faces. It directly undermines the integrity of the digital advertising ecosystem, and you people are obsessed with “privacy” because your priorities have been decided for you by your oppressors.
what oppressors want me to worry about privacy? what planet are they in?
those people are literally using it to sell us fascism…
I liked your post ❤️
Feed it SQL injections?
Have it form connections to all the other browsers using the extension and they all send a click.
deleted by creator
“He who save his country does not violate the law” 😏
Naw, it’s an MMORPG.
Is the botnet itself breaking the law or is breaking the law with a botnet breaking the law?
deleted by creator
Okay okay, how about a counter that is updated with each user clicking on an ad, and the client can decide what they want to do with that information, totally not a botnet right?
peer networks are not illegal if the peers are consenting members.
It just changes the user agent instead…
It does if it reports the URL to click home somewhere and users can opt in to pull the list to auto click.
It would DDoS the ad servers. Muwhahahaa
Yes. That’s just what I want. An extension sending all ads served to me to a central location, so my fingerprint can be very easily indexed and stored on a definitely never hacked, leaked, or sold database.
And it would totally never get abused or hit a false positive.
Totally doable if this was a distributed service.
ok not randomly generated, but you know
Nothing is random
In bot cases like this you would have a proxy list that it “randomly” picks from
No, he means that’s literally not how IP addresses work. It’s not about “nothing being random.”
You don’t just “pick an IP address” from a list lmao and send it as though it’s not your actual IP. You would need to literally connect to a proxy and send the request through that proxy in order for ads to see an IP different than you own.
My god, are you people trolls or just the next generation taking hold? The dumbing down of Western society is in full force.
You would need to literally connect to a proxy and send the request through that proxy in order for ads to see an IP different than you own.
Yes that is what was proposed, you’re the only one who seems unclear on it
Where is it being proposed?
You can fake your IP. There isnt really any authentication at the IP level. Just make a packet and overwite the IP field.
Edit: I was corrected. The TCP handshake requires you to have a valid IP you can respond from. So even though you can fake your IP, you can’t use that to talk to most websites.
You need a TCP handshake prior to sending any http payload.
Oh yeah. Forgot about that.
Just make a packet and overwite the IP field.
I can tell I’m getting old by the amount of proudly-dumb shit I keep reading.
It’s only going to get worse. Sigh.
I misremembered my internet class. Sucks that it made ya feel bad.
Edit: and you can put whatever you want as your source IP at the IP level. Though idk how modern security deals with that. I know I was taught that that was a way to DoS attack, so I imagine it’s protected against.
If you just do it on your own computer, the packet will be already dropped by your own gateway. You can fake whichever address in your local subnet, but those are very likely remapped anyway in your gw to the one given by your ISP.
If you would have access to the switch port used by your ISP in the Internet exchange point (IX), you would have more liberties in choosing the IP.
Ad Networks use browser fingerprinting to detect duplicate clicks, which is tied to your hardware, system locale, installed fonts etc.
Sounds like a solvable problem
Chameleon add-on for Firefox, randomly rotates your browser, OS, screen size, timezone, device type, language, and other customizable parameters every x minutes.
I’ve set it to do so every 5 minutes, and to omit desktop & tablet as device types (else some websites display the respective page) and timezones (messed up 2FA).
I also disabled blackberry and windows phone from the manufacturer ID, that would have the opposite effect from obscuring me.
For the rest of it, it’s working great.
Tell me how, then, because I don’t know how to get around the font thing. Everybody’s computer has a different set of fonts, and blocking browsers from seeing what fonts you have installed would help identify you even more.
A browser extension that limits webpages to default Windows fonts only would eliminate that factor from contributing to identification without flagging it as suspicious. A slightly more robust version could frequently cycle between multiple subsets of default Windows fonts. Say Windows comes with 100 fonts. So you could have thousands of configurations with different subsets of those.
“Just” remove a random 2.5% of the fonts, a different random set per request (context).
Just have everyone agree on a set of fonts to report and report those.
I think that reveals you aren’t a “normal” request. Since “normal” user requests don’t have that exact list of fonts. I’m anonymous, but aberrant.
That would solve the anonymity problem but not the “obscure when requests are duplicates” problem
That one browser which everyone hates despite it being the best adblocker and anti-surveillance browser out there randomizes your fingerprint.
which one
Brave
I don’t know, just sounds like I’d be contributing to the marketers metrics so they can show “it works”. it’ll only make them invest in ads more. if anyone thinks capitalists are these genius level manipulators who know how everything works I only refer to the richest person alive being the least charismatic, least knowledgable, unfuckable troglodyte who keeps making an ass of himself.
if any of these companies suffer any losses or reduced profits they’ll just fire hardworking people, not one of them will turn around and say maybe the ads aren’t working when you actively work to show them that it is working.
… until they keep having to dismiss people and go, “… huh.” This is a marathon we’re playing. You certainly don’t have to use it, but I think the philosophy makes sense, especially given how AdNauseam doesn’t click on acceptable ads that don’t track you.
they will never go “huh”. you give way too much credit to corporate management.
I’ve used this for a while. Also, I love filling out corpo surveys because I feed them bad data. It’s the little acts of chaos.
Another great extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fake-data-haterapps/
If they want real information, they can pay me, and even then, well… :) Don’t work for free.
Ha, this is as hilarious as it is creative. Interesting find; got any more?
Depends on the situation really, it makes me feel the joy of a naughty child. Roll with it. Where you can feed people bad data, do it. Where you cannot, strip it and block it. Obtusify and randomise how your computer connects to the internet (browser spoofs, VPNs, SPN, etc.), use containers (Firefox), support others breaking rules (https://snowflake.torproject.org/), contain your applications (https://safing.io/), spoof things like location etc. This is my little everyday act of anarchism. If people want to fight back against this bullshit, they should learn to stop complying with the folks putting everyone and everything in boxes. People are so used to mindlessly complying. It’s my nerdy kind of fun. Make your phone & computer a poisoned apple when you have time.
Dang, I had no idea of Portmaster! I wish I talked to you years ago and will check these out, thanks, and I fully agree with your stance as well.
Just curious- if ads are for something illegal, couldn’t this expose me to liability for theoretically “clicking” it from my IP/device? And if ads are for something unsavory ( like a “chat with local cougars” site or something similar), wouldn’t they start to deliver me more such ads, thinking, wow this IP is the only one clicking every sex chat ad, send them more!
How many websites do you browse with links to truly illegal content?
If you live in a country with truly abysmal human rights, definitely don’t bother with this plugin, but in most cases you should be fine on the illegal side.
Even if somehow the website you’re browsing has some super sketchy ad to
buyillegaldrugshere.comor whatever, to get in trouble with the law in most civilized places you’d have to actually buy the illegal drugs, not just ping the illegal drugs IP. Especially since you can pretty easily prove to a judge that your system fetches ad links automatically and without further engagement.Not saying it can’t happen, just that it’s really unlikely you would be served an ad for something so illegal just clicking on it is a liability. The literally only case I can think of coming close is CSAM, but even then, if you’re regularly browsing websites that advertise CSAM, maybe find other websites to occupy your time? And I can just about guarantee any website serving CSAM ads is already doing illegal shit, so you should probably be more worried about that than an ad-click…
I’m not sure how many ads on different sites are sketchy. I don’t feel like finding out, that’s why I block it. There have been plenty of reasons that all sorts of illegal stuff gets inserted on well-meaning sites, so it seems like it’s inviting all sorts of trouble to automatically click stuff without consideration.
Interesting, was wondering about this. This would also “help” the websites with more ad income right?
if thats true, brb setting up a website and a bot farm
Haha I imagine they need at least unique ip addresses to count. Now I wonder if for clicks to count you need to properly click through and load the target website with the same “browser fingerprint”.
Careful: that then enters the world of ad fraud, which randos like us doing the clicking isn’t considered as.
Yes. I prefer this to the whole “ethical ad” debacle people have had prioritized for them.
Potentially.
Why can’t uBlock Origin and this thing work at the same time?
because it’s a modified uBlock Origin, so it’s like running two ad blocking plugins at once, which isn’t recommended. and if uBO blocks an ad first, AdNauseam won’t be able to detect it and click on it.
anyway, I remember reading a long time ago how that approach isn’t going to harm ad companies anyway, because [technical reasons that I don’t remember at all].
I use it because otherwise I’d use ublock anyways. So it either does it thing and if not, it’s the same result as ublock.
It’s a bit redundant to run both at the same time, considering they both practically do the same thing and one is built off of the other.
It’s not even practically the same thing, it is exactly the same plugin as uBlock Origin, same UI, blocklists, etc but with added features.
This would just give money to the advertisers.
This transfers money from the advertiser to the advertising agency, without creating a sale for the advertiser. This devalues the services of the agency.
I still don’t want to give those fuckers money. If I just use uBlock, the ad is never seen, thus no sale is made and the slimy ad company gets money.
Totally, it’s up to you. The idea for fake-clickers is the long game: the marketers think they’re landing clicks over months or possibly even years, but
willmay slowly realize (gotta account for the stubborn ones) that it’s ineffective and eventually pivot to different approaches, hopefully ones that involve less tracking (I can’t imagine what any worse approach could be, at least).
Can’t tell if 4/1 gag or not! Brilliant!
This has been around for years. It’s legit.
Oops, lol, I forgot about the date. This has existed for years.
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard, you’d have to be deranged to want an extension clicking random shit.
Edit: I’ve actually read it now and while not so bad, I still wouldn’t use this on a computer that has my stuff on it.
it doesn’t actually click on stuff. it “clicks” so that the advertisers’ and your digital footprint’s statistics get messed up, but you never see the results of the clicking, nothing pops up, nothing gets downloaded
It also adds noise to the site metrics and recommendation algorithm making them less valuable overall.
It’s like the application that will watermark images with digital noise designed to throw off AI training that uses that image.
You’re no longer a user who is able to be profiled (because you ‘like’ things completely at random). If everyone was using a plugin like this then advertisers wouldn’t be able to serve targeted content because they wouldn’t know what content types work best for each user because every user clicks ads randomly and so there is no detectable signal, just noise.
You get the same effect, but reduced, if less people are using it.
In addition, if half of the users on a website are using adblockers and suddenly those users start clicking ads, then it costs twice as much to advertise while not providing any additional customers which makes spending money on web advertisement less attractive.
