It is, but seeing it on HN made me think it was "ruin" along the lines of "throw off Google interest-based ads" not "get you on a list".

I didn't follow the original link, but maybe the point was to get lots of people on a list to show how silly lists are?

Maybe, but it depends on whether the location of the query is taken into account. In that case, the majority of the people who clicked through (which is based in the USA/Europe) won't get picked up as opposed to the small percentage of people located in the MENA area.

I had to read until here in this very thread to get that

There is a small difference between ruining ones search history and being brought to the attention of whatever authority is watching[1]. It does seem like a https://xkcd.com/576/ situation applied to search.

1) I would bet our web filter would be sending me some reports

what part of "ruin" don't you understand ?

Ruining your search history not your livelihood.

"ruin" is completely vague, and you had no idea what it meant until you found out what it ended up meaning.

Funny would be googling fetish porn, not funny would be banning you from international travel.

I didn't click on it since I don't want a site to do anything whatsoever to me ever.

But it wasn't evident at all to me that it was a site that would do what it apparently did.

It seems like having a link like that on a major, moderated website like hn is a serious problem and failing.

Not really... I actually rather expected it to be an article like just about anything else here.

It was not labeled "Show HN" or anything, and apparently only required opening the link (I did not open it myself).

Edit: I guess I was misinformed about this last - micaeked says that you have to click a button on the page.

You do have to click a button after opening the url.

I opened the URL, but saw no button. And tcpdump showed nothing going to Google. So one of the add-ons I use must have blocked it.

"victim"