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A comment on AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage. Parent comment

Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by digiown on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:20AM (#46856339)
Assuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about), it increases the cost on the business putting up the ad (presumably targeting you). It acts as a small punishment to the business buying the ads I guess.
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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by gruez on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:29AM (#46856436)
>Assuming it actually works (which I'm not sure about),

Which it probably doesn't, given that it uses XHRs to "click" on ads, which is super detectable, and given the proliferation of ad fraud I'd assume all networks already filter out.

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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by Lalabadie on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:43AM (#46856590)
The other assumption here is that ad networks want to filter out all clicks but the most legitimate.

I don't think that's a very lucid assessment of how advertisers operate on the Internet. We all agree that they could take these steps. If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers), I don't think they want to cut it out from their revenue and viewer analytics.

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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by gruez on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:59AM (#46856756)
>If AdNauseam doesn't look like outright fraud in the logs (which they don't if it's all distinct IPs and browsers)

You think ad networks don't have logs more sophisticated than default nginx/apache logs? XHRs are trivially detectable by headers alone.

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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by Larrikin on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:52AM (#46856680)
Google wouldn't have gone out of their way to block it on Chrome if it didn't work.
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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by malfist on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:47AM (#46856636)
It also pollutes the data collection on you by advertisers. If you're seemingly interested in EVERYTHING they have no clue about you.
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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by mminer237 on Monday February 02, 2026 @06:41PM (#46863947)
I mean, you're also telling them almost every site you visit. That's strictly worse from a privacy perspective than blocking ads outright.
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Re:AdBoost: A Browser Extension That Adds Ads To Every Webpage by prophesi on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @01:47AM (#46867406)
https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3112/ObfuscationA-User-s-G...
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