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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[–] TheTrigger ago
You have no idea how many times lynx/links2 has saved me from having to do a reinstall, because I somehow managed to screw up X and/or display drivers on it. One of the first things that I make sure is installed, on any linux computer that I use, is a command-line browser. :p
I use Icecat on linux and Waterfox on Windows, tbh. Although I might ditch Icecat all-together. It breaks too many websites, in a non-fixable way. With uBlock, Secret Agent, and NoScript on Waterfox— you get the same security anyways, and can easily whitelist websites on a case-by-case basis.
Also, I don't know if you've used a 64-bit Firefox-variant before, but oh boy are they fast; especially this one.
[–] belphegorsprime ago
Hahahah this made me laugh. Sadly, I have reinstalled for similar reasons in the past, before I become more comfortable on the command line. I've mostly messed around with w3m, and you are right, sometimes it can save you from disaster (though these days I usually have an extra device around like a smartphone to look up what I did wrong in one of my config files). I only laugh because I understand the pain.
I will have to try out waterfox. I'm due for a browser change. I remember when chromium wasn't bloatware.