> it automatically clicks all ads your browser encounters hundreds of times

I think it would be hard to deny that clicking every ad hundreds of times is straying into uncoordinated DDoS territory, considering the installed userbase. I don't see that as enlightened or forward thinking.

I agree with gorhill on this and would rather decrease connections to 3rd parties. After all, part of the reason the web is so slow is that browsers make so many 3rd party connections! With that in mind, my approach to ad blocking is to combine DNS blocks, MVPS /etc/hosts + my own entries, JS blocking, and uBlock Origin. This setup catches more junk and is more likely to work while transitioning or temporarily changing my setup.

I would say the goal of AdNauseam is obfuscating ad profiles. It not necessarily clicks all ads, the rate can be set in the preferences.

Personally, I would welcome similar extensions for social media, automated follows/likes/post/retweets, let facebook backup GBs of generated pictures per users for facial recognition or Gmail mine random emails. A more noble use case for lifefaker if you will.

Who pays for the content you consume then? I am assuming you are a paid subscriber to all of the sites you visit?

Sites that offer paid and ad sponsored alternatives are fine. It’s sites that don’t offer subscriptions that should just change their business model, if it’s now based on intrusive tracking ads from ad networks.

And no, I don’t mind consuming contents from hundreds of ad financed sites while simultaneously wanting the majority of them to simply disappear because they could likely never sustain a different business model than ads.

There are other ways to fund content that doesn’t involve slapping a bunch of third party trackers and running retargetted display ads.

Some examples other than subscriptions would be sponsored content and creating a product such as an ebook or selling products that are related to your content.

I am a subscriber to all the German-language news site I visit, or they're all paid with taxes.

I run my own image host, my own irc bouncer service, and many many more for all the use cases where I'd have to rely on ad-infested services.

good for you, and how are lower income countries going to do it?

How are they doing it today? Ads from lower income countries pay less as well.