So there is an add-on for all major browers called "AdNauseam".. It uses ublock-origin as its base, but instead of just hiding the ads like normal ublock-origin does, it also sends fake click signals to every ad on every site you visit..
As you know, advertisers have to pay google for every click; but when they are all mostly fake clicks, the advertiser ends up having to pay google tons of money because their click-through rate sky-rockets but yet none of those fake clicks ends up turning in to a sale..
In these cases google has to end up sending the advertisers refund checks to compensate for all the fake clicks.. While google has always sent refund checks for invalid clicks, the amount usually is never very high......until very recently when 4chan decided to start a fake-click war against google as retribution for the adpocalypse on youtube and the censoring and shutting-down of "hate speech" websites and the banning of gab from the play store..
This meteoric spike in fake clicks has affected google more than they are willing to let on, because they are afraid that if people know it is affecting their #1 source of income (advertising) they are afraid that more people will join in on it and hurt their revenue even further.. They have now even gone so far as to outright ban the plug-in from the chrome add-ons website, but you can still install it on chrome from the main adnauseam github site.. The firefox version is still completely downloadable straight from the firefox add-ons site..
The reason it hurts google so much is because it is causing their advertisers to lose trust in google.. The advertisers them selves can't tell how many clicks were fake or real, and I'm not sure google can always tell either, so when they send refund checks the advertiser can't be sure if google is paying them back the amount they deserve, so that loses a little bit of trust already.. Some of the advertisers are already complaining about the lowish level of refunds they are getting compared to how many fake clicks they are receiving, and they are demanding that google provide them more detailed information about how many of these clicks are actually real.. And the advertisers are getting annoyed about the insane amount of fake clicks any way, so it throws any type of analytics way off to the point of being useless..
Hundreds and hundreds of advertisers have already been affected by this, so it is already instilling a major impact..
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You can download the latest version of the add-on here: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/releases
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[–] [deleted] 0 points 9 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago
[–] 10584047? 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Perf answer, thanks.
Running now, testing it on reddit, already block-clicked my first ad. Great start to the weekend!