They are trying to bring down the price of ads on the internet, thus making them unprofitable. I hope they succeed.

Yes, tracking and overly intrusive fullpage popups are real issues, but not all ads are inherently evil.

Companies that can't survive by selling a product or service directly probably should go out of business, IMO.

I'd hope that it enables do not track, and also checks for tracking cookies before clicking, but haven't looked carefully.

>not all ads are inherently evil.

All advertising is manipulation. Advertisers are bad and should feel bad.

And frankly, I even discovered products through ads I might have never found otherwise, even though that's not how it should be in a perfect world.

I don't think it is. I'm connecting a producer and a consumer in both of their best interests. When the producer is the one who asks an entity like Facebook "who enjoys this author?" and advertises the new book to them, why is this evil?

People have desires, and without advertising it is very difficult to connect those people with producers who can fulfill them.

I think advertising isn't inherently evil, just some tactics used to persuade people with misinformation.

If you already want something, then the ads are useless because the entire point of an ad is to manipulate me into buying something I didn't want to buy.

If I want to buy the book already because I am interested in the author's books then the books sell themselves without need for ads.

How about search and email? All the major players are ad supported.

Today Google actively removes things from their index at the requests of various governments and entertainment industries. We have very little choice in search, leaving much of the web unlocatable.

I might likely do the same for a search page if such a thing existed and the price was right. Until then I use startpage or duckduckgo to (attempt to) retain some anonymity.

One dimension of that distinction is intent - are you trying to persuade me having my best interests in mind (including not applying the technique if you're not sure about the consequences)? Then I'll probably be fine with it, and consider it an act of friendship. Are you trying to exploit me by convincing me to make self-harming decisions? I'd consider this an act of malice. An attack.

Advertising of all kinds would be fine if it performed just the information function - by honestly trying to paint the whole picture and give all relevant information to enable customers to make a rational choice. As it is today, it's squarely in the malicious, abusive zone.

> essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions

Perhaps the reason for this is that virtual goods have often been for free, because of ads (?)

I've been noticing this trend. I have a pretty extensive hosts file and this one site I visit started displaying ads. I had to double check to make sure my hosts file was correct and it turned out that they were saving the ads from their own CDN.

Edit: Not making a judgement here, just clarifying that the extension is doing more than messing with metrics.

If there's someone who makes content you like to see, why don't you mind draining their wallet?

Why support the middle man who just makes the Internet a worse place when you can directly support an author's efforts?

The advertisement business model just exists to justify the existence of low quality content.

Okay, when was the last time you watched one?

You want to stand by that argument, or admit that you're talking out your butt?

AdNauseum doesn't hurt advertising networks, it hurts publishers. When they get banned for click fraud, the network keeps the money.

Also, increased click fraud on tracking ads lowers their attractiveness, nudging ad revenue toward sites that serve display ads targeted to their content.

This helps funnel money to sites that produce high quality content and away from low quality sites that happen to attract users that view high quality content elsewhere.

They become the publisher. In the grand scheme, this is a misguided effort that will further monopolize publishing.