Hey, Reddit. Quick question. All those clicks on my ads. Were they actually real?

Reddit was sued by an unhappy advertiser who claims that internet giga-forum sold ads but provided no way to verify that real people were responsible for clicking on them. The complaint [PDF] was filed this week in a US federal court in northern California on behalf of LevelFields, a Virginia-based investment research platform …

[b0llchit]

The good clickAI

According to Juniper Research, 22 percent of ad spending last year was lost to click fraud, amounting to $84 billion.

That is not enough. We can achieve nearly 100% if we focus!

I suggest we pool our internet resources, create a new AI and use it to click on any ad encountered anywhere it (spider-) finds them. Lets bankrupt the ad industry by making them pay for our collective click of nothingness. And, of course, we only click in a real sandbox. The clickAI will be contained and we never knew it existed.

[sev.monster]

Re: The good clickAI

I know you're joking(?) but this has already been done, without the AI.

https://adnauseam.io

[b0llchit]

Re: The good clickAI

Joking? yes and no.

Adnauseam is nice, but it requires me to actually visit a site before it fucks with the ads and that leaves a trail.

My suggestion is to create a very massively distributed spider network with only one purpose: blindly click on ads. Let many millions of zombie browsers automatically click on all ads found as they go. And, of course, implement random google searches and click on ads presented. No need for interaction. Just a plain distributed fuck-the-ads-and-the-adpushers statement.

[Tron]

Re: The good clickAI

Without the ad industry everyone would have to pay for everything online, erasing most services and locking the poorest out of the benefits of the internet.

Would that make all of you smug, wealthy folk happy?

[jake]

Re: The good clickAI

In the early days of the Internet, not only was there no advertising, but the signal to noise ratio was far, far better overall, and it was growing (number of users) by leaps and bounds, all unsupported by ads.

These days, ads abound, the signal to noise ratio is utterly appalling even when you aggressively block ads (not blocking them makes it worse), and growth has slowed pretty much to a halt.

I know which version of the Internet I'd prefer.

[Tubz]

Re: The good clickAI

Agree, I remember back in the day having 1MB broadband and thought jeez this is loading fast and no blockers, now I have 1GB and TBH loading pages due to all the ads, tracking and all the other shit publishers are using is so much slower, even when using blockers and this is all down to monetarizing greed !

[StewartWhite]

Re: The good clickAI

1MB broadband!? Luxury! We used to have to make do with 9.6K modems!

Modems, don't talk to me about modems. We used to have to make to do with a hard-wired POTS line and an acoustic coupler.

Course, we had it 'ard. Two baked bean cans & a piece of string.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: The good clickAI

I remember those days. I also remember asking several people at IT shows "who's paying for this". No one seemed to know.

[Danny 14]

Re: The good clickAI

yes but we did have those annoying tripod scrolling flashing banners and animated gifs of people digging.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The good clickAI

> Without the ad industry everyone would have to pay for everything online

They basically already have to.

How many content creators have a patreon now?

Hell, I prefer the idea of directly paying for content I want instead of having to put up with this irritating ad middleman, and content creators agree with this. Not to mention, advertisers force websites to censor the content they're displayed next to.

Sorry, I know theres people out there with no money (I was one for a while), but ads are undeniably ruining the entire field of content creation and everyone is looking for ways out of it. They need to die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The good clickAI

> locking the poorest out of the benefits of the internet.

Benefits of the Internet that will still be available for even the poorest, without the ad industry:

Access to .gov(.*) sites for all the licences, taxes we have to deal with (paid for by those same taxes); access to medical info (paid for by taxes or by your insurance); access to banking (paid for by banks using our deposits to make their profits); access to online shopping (paid for by the shop's profits as per usual).

"Benefits" of the Internet that will be taken away from the poorest and only be available to those who can pay for the privilege:

Access to toxic "social media"; access to poisonous "viral videos"; access to lists of 16 famous people who eat spaghetti (number 9 will astound you).

Meanwhile, the *actual* main benefit of the Internet, hauling data around from machine to machine, will just continue as always, paid for by fees to the carriers. And everyone will benefit to the same extent as everyone else, as business and trade use it (or not, whichever is most useful) to continue to get things made and delivered and generally just get on with things.

[David 132]

Re: The good clickAI

> access to lists of 16 famous people who eat spaghetti (number 9 will astound you).

Godsdammit man, you can't leave me hanging like that! Who is it? I HAVE TO KNOW!!!!

[Killfalcon]

Re: The good clickAI

It's Enimem. Lose Yourself was a true story after all!

[Plest]

Re: The good clickAI

The irony is that back in the early 1990s it was faster to use a browser on dialup than it is today while I sit on the end of a home fibre line I could only have dreamed of in 1995. Funny that websites with almost no graphic content and no ads comes out at about 50kb while today a single page can cost you 8-10mb per hit and I need a 2Ghz chip just handle the JS runtime engine running in my browser!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The good clickAI

I heard Gopher needs a maintainer, surely somebody wearing such rose-tinted glasses as you must be interested in the position ? :)

[sev.monster]

Re: The good clickAI

If my glasses are rose-tinted, yours are solid black.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: The good clickAI

OK, that's the downside. On the upside no more Facebook.

[jmch]

Re: The good clickAI

I know the typical backlash to this post will be "we just hate ads", but actually there is more than a grain of truth in that. The fledgling internet was essentially funded by corporations giving away search and email functionality without any way of making money - hence they all died out. Google survived and thrived because it worked out how to make a fuckton of money off other people's web real estate.

If one had to imagine a new internet paradigm without any ads whatsoever..... well, I don't think it could exist, because such a large part of it is commercially driven. And having everyone pay for search, mapping, translation and a bunch of other online services that we take for granted is for free..... well, for most first-world people a hundred bucks a year* would be peanuts to pay for an ad-free web, but for a large part of people in the world, that's a stretch.

What is the gigantic menace, and far far bigger problem than ads, is the invasive and pervasive tracking and monitoring under the pretext of selling personalised ads. What needs to be done is to completely ban any and all user tracking and data capture beyond that strictly needed to deliver a service. Make mandatory for sites to *clearly* display what they collect and why, and to refresh that every 6 months or so. Make it mandatory to delete any logging data after a statutory period (some logs might need to be kept for anti-fraud for example). Make it mandatory to contact a user every 6 months saying "we hold this data on you, can we keep on having it"? Make it a criminal offence to sell data to another company. (Sure some of those have have some kinks ironed out to work in real life)

*That's approximately Google's yearly revenue per user

[sev.monster]

Re: The good clickAI

I would be fine with reasonably sized, reasonably placed advertisements, if they were specific to the topic of the site (i.e. tech ads on a tech review site) and were never personalized, or at least personalized via opt-in. I am not alone, I stand with all five of us.

[matjaggard]

Re: The good clickAI

In the short and medium term, clicking blindly on all ads will just give money from mostly smaller companies to Google and Facebook.

I do commit ad fraud constantly, assuming the description in the article is correct - I click on adverts for companies I dislike (mostly temu currently) and on some adverts in apps that I do like. I never buy stuff from ads though - with the exception of Google Shopping which is frustratingly helpful.

[tip pc]

Re: The good clickAI

I never buy stuff from ads though - with the exception of Google Shopping which is frustratingly helpful.

use pricerunner.com instead

[bemusedHorseman]

Seems real to me?

Considering almost every ad I see on reddit has been downvoted into oblivion, I assume most impressions the ads get are from real users... Bots would be told to upvote the ads to see them more often and click them more.

[jake]

Re: Seems real to me?

"Bots would be told to upvote the ads to see them more often and click them more."

Not if the programmer was more interested in getting rid of ads, thus saving the irreplaceable bandwidth that they waste.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Seems real to me?

I didn't think you could downvote (or upvote) ads on Reddit, but maybe I'm misremembering or maybe it's changed. (*)

One thing I've said before is that the ads I saw on Reddit were very much "How Do You Do Fellow Kids" in their obvious attempt to ingratiate themselves- and speak in the language of- the stereotypical teen/twentysomething target audience. Maybe it's because I'm much older that it seemed obvious and clunky to me, but I can't imagine it wouldn't have been obvious to them too. (**)

(*) Or maybe it's one of those things you could do under the "new" interface- the more ad-friendly and far less usable one- but not the "old" (original) interface I preferred.

(**) Then again, because I was using the old interface, I was only getting the "between-the-posts-in-a-similar-style" ads, and not the more graphical and in-your-face ones visible with the new interface. So I can't comment on those.

[Dinanziame]

Oracle??

Why would anybody use an Oracle product for something like that?

[David 132]

Re: Oracle??

Oh, all sorts of reasons.

Bitten at the full moon by a lycanthrope. Fell foul of a gypsy fortune-teller. Built a house on an ancient Indian burial ground. Broke a mirror.

Of course, in theory there are Oracle customers who are there of their own free will, but then, in theory there are unicorns at the bottom of my garden.

[Ace2]

Re: Oracle??

“He ate a lily”

[aerogems]

Re: Oracle??

What about strange planetary alignments beaming bozo rays?

[Alien Doctor 1.1]

"Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser"

So every time I click an ad to see more info and I then don't buy anything, the advertiser can accuse me of fraud? I don't click anyway on the few ads I see, but that implication is rather troublesome for me.

When I watch any commercial channel on TV I always have bbc news as my last channel to switch to during ad breaks; either that or I record the program, watch it later and skip the ads. Fuck 'em all.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser"

Yeah, that's a low bar for "fraud". I need to be more careful to not fat finger my phone then.

[tiggity]

I don't often visit web sites on phone so it's not not got the same extra adblocking as home PCs, but on rare occasions I have visited a page using phone signal (if I access it at home via Wi-Fi, there's a lot of adblocking done on home network so "vanilla" phone experience fairly OK on home Wi-Fi) then ads are horrendous & its near impossible (with delayed loading / how page moves about) to not accidentally click on one, so by their definitions most views from a phone are probably "fraudulent". as they are accidental clicks with no intention to buy.

[Alien Doctor 1.1]

oh no...

I'm being blocked by reddit, how sad, such a pity,who gives a flying?

[FIA]

"Click fraud, the filing explains, occurs when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser"

So every time I click an ad to see more info and I then don't buy anything, the advertiser can accuse me of fraud?

If you intentionally click on an advert because it interests you then no, as you have 'intent'. You're exactly the kind of click the business will be happy to pay for.

Why would the advertiser accuse you of fraud anyway? They're getting paid by the click, they benefit from your clicks being categorised as legitimate, not the other way round.

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you intentionally click on an advert because it interests you

Yes, but what about the far, far, more frequent events when we *aren't* interested, but had a finger fumble - or when the page deviously loads another bit of itself and jumps, causing your click to hit an ad![1]

[1] coincidence? I don't think so, given we know they are literally watching our every mouse move.

[DJO]

I would also call it "fraud" when a page has a close button where only one pixel is active, if you don't hit that single pixel in the middle of the "X" you are sent to a merchant page.

[Dan 55]

So clicking on an ad for more info and then finding out it's not something I want after all is fraud now is it?

[ChoHag]

Visiting to "see more info" counts as "doing business".

The fraud is not the clicking on the advert but the platform charging the advertiser for that click they knew was bogus.

[Yorick Hunt]

... and that just goes back to the original question, how do they know I'm clicking to see "more info" and not just clicking to piss them off? I know analytics reveal a hell of a lot, but I don't think they've quite managed to get to mind reading yet.

[jake]

"Visiting to "see more info" counts as "doing business"."

So if I read a menu outside a restaurant on the high-street, in your mind I now have a business relationship with that restaurant?

Bullshit.

[anonymous cat herder]

I use comskip on recordings, which detects adverts and generates a cut list so the player automatically jumps them. It's getting a bit long in the tooth though, and some broadcasters have learnt how to game the clues it uses to decide. Sounds like a perfect problem for deep learning; has anyone done one that can be used?

[Jellied Eel]

So every time I click an ad to see more info and I then don't buy anything, the advertiser can accuse me of fraud?

Of course. And fraud is a crime. So obviously if ad flingers want to avoid being dragged into court for consipiracy to committ fraud, they need to ensure that fraudsters aren't served ads. As a recidivist click-fraudster, I want my fraudster cookie so I can't be tempted or entrapped into committing more crime!

[jmch]

"So every time I click an ad to see more info... "

The fact that you're going on an ad to see more info indicates at least a willingness to do business. I think it would be more clear to say fraud is when someone clicks on an ad without 'willingness' rather than 'intention'.

[VicMortimer]

Are the clicks fake? YES!

Because screw you, that's why. I hate you, and I hate your ads. So when I'm not just blocking them, I use an extension that clicks on ALL of them so you have to pay money for NO actual human clicks.

Wanna help? AdNauseam

[Vincent van Gopher]

Re: Are the clicks fake? YES!

Done

[xanadu42]

Were the Clicks Denied?

A few years ago, can't remember exactly, there was a big hoo-ha about using Google Analytics and privacy... (may have been here)

I read as much as possible about same over the next few days (weeks/months?? - it was years ago)

As the operator of my site (god mode) I thought the best approach would be to ask the users of my site whether or not they would like Google to track their access and their client access...

100% said NO so I removed Google Analytics...

For three months a Google Search for a "Unique" (deliberately listed on my site only with co-operation of author) did not appear on Google searches

Two days after my client placed the same listing on a "Northern American" website they saw results...

Which proved to them, in that single interaction, how the "big guys (US corporate) suggestions/advice" (adversely) affected how they could earn more...

Me now wondering why Win10/11 (by default) hides ALL of the REALLY IMPORTANT messages (from "real" Anti-Malware products warning of potential breaches) but allows "Crap Anti-Malware" demanding you buy additional protection which (many years ago was provided in the base package)...

How gullible can you be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving up the IP addresses violates (1) User Privacy (....guffaw), (2) Reddit's "ownership" of it user's privacy and its right to monetize it for themselves. Which might seem like a contradiction, because it absolutely is.

[Filippo]

Nonetheless, LevelFields's effort to obtain IP address data to verify the ads it was billed for went unfulfilled. The social media site "provided click logs without IP addresses," the complaint says. "Reddit represented that it was not able to provide IP addresses."

The investment firm argues this is false "because Reddit has to know where traffic was coming from for security and monitoring purposes."

I very much do not want Reddit to provide my IP address to advertisers, thank you.

[Alien Doctor 1.1]

That is one of the main reasons I use a rotating vpn.

[icesenshi]

Yes, it should have been specified better. Giving exact ips is a big no no, but the first two octets is usually standard. Google provides that much, or at least it used to. So if you get a lot of clicks from a country you don't do business in, like say Malaysia or similar, you may be the victim of a click farm. Vpns also sometimes share similar ip numbers, but again, possibly clicks you don't want.

[jake]

Obligatory.

Ads? What are these things you call "ads"?

[aerogems]

Re: Obligatory.

I call them the reason I have uBlock Origin installed on my browser.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Obligatory.

> What are these things you call "ads"?

Those are the things that you hear in the quiet of the night, scrabbling against your PiHole, scraping their Javascript fingernails down the sides of NoScript, always creeping, creeping, looking for a way in.

You may sit at your screen, happy and safe in your cocoon, but still you know the ads are out there, in the wastelands of the 'Net: you will see their ghosts as hideous voids rent into the very fabric of Register stories. Surely, no mortal goodly man can view those holes in reality without an occasional shudder of empathy for those poor souls whose very sanity is threatened by their exposure those vile excrescences. For despite their mocking, their refusal to heed your warnings, to take your guidance and follow the links to installation manuals, despite all of their flaws and their ill-formed opinions, even they are, deep down, of the same humankind as you.

You try to push from your mind all memory of these horrors, and proudly declaim "I know nothing of these ads, nothing I tell you, NOTHING!". And yet, and yet...

[David 132]

Re: Obligatory.

Once, a while ago, my Pi-Hole stopped responding because my NAS was rebooting. My network devices all fell back to the DHCP-specified alternate 8.8.8.8 DNS.

Unknowing, I browsed the web on my phone.

The horror. The horror!

(rocks back and forth, sucking thumb and keening like a baby)

[Steve K]

Re: Obligatory.

You have my sympathy!

This is why I have 2 synced Pi-holes!

[jake]

Re: Obligatory.

Nah. I just block 'em as bad actors. Simples. No angst involved.

[navarac]

Re: Obligatory.

I have started to call them boycott buttons, as someone else on El Reg said recently.

[Ace2]

I don’t think I’ve intentionally clicked on an ad more than five times in the past 20 years. It boggles the mind that so much effort is put into this crap.

[Andy Non]

Ditto that. Most ads are blocked anyway, but the odd few that get through are ignored. I just don't trust the ads anyway, scammers and snake oil as far as I'm concerned. I've never bought anything from an ad on the internet ad and I've been using the internet since its inception.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear. On Google and DDG, I habitually scroll past the ads in the search results to use the real hits. Even when the ad looks to be going to the same place as the link (like when DDGing a company name).

[aerogems]

I could see being willing to pay a rate of X for just displaying the ad on a sub where there's a good chance of people being interesting in your product/service see it, and then paying a rate of Y for confirmed clicks. Maybe even a rate of Z* if you can confirm that the person actually bought your good/service after seeing the ad on a Reddit sub. Of course if the company can't, or won't, cough up info on demand so I can audit those "confirmed" clicks my answer is going to be that they'll get rate X for them and be glad for it or else they can get nothing.

* X < Y < Z

[David Newall]

We all pay for the ads

In the good times, web pages were tiny. Images would be measured in low kilobytes and total load time in tenths of a second. Now, it's common to load multiple images into carousels, each being tens of megabytes, and JavaScript nonsense libraries which are just as big. Load times takes many seconds, even tens of seconds.

I value my bandwidth, as well as my time, and I'll be dammed if I let advertisers steal either.

It's not only ads that bloat webpages, but they are a main contributor. I hardly ever see ads because I use NoScript (why would anybody run programs served by unknown and unwanted third and fourth parties?) and my load times are generally sub-second. Plus, I sometimes see interstitial gaps where the ads don't appear.

[Rgen]

Who actually clicks on ads??

[Doctor Syntax]

Bots?

[ecofeco]

Ad fraud is as old as dirt

See title.

It been going on since the first ad was carved in stone (or pelt and hides). Long before any of us were born.

[navarac]

Hitch hikers Guide ....to advertising

In one of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy books by the late great Douglas Adams (I think it was "So long and thanks for all the fish), all the telephone cleaners and hair dressers were sent off planet as an advance guard of humanity. Perhaps we should do the same with all advertising personnel? Tell them of the Inter-stellar opportunities, send them off on "Voyagers", and then forget to follow them! Wishful thinking, but that would be an answer to the scourge of advertising on the Interweb.

[David 132]

Re: Hitch hikers Guide ....to advertising

Either that or take a tip from Futurama and grind them up into Torgo’s Executive Advertiser Powder - it has myriad uses!

[xyz123]

reddit is [allegedly] well-known for running its OWN bot-clicking systems.

basically they [allegedly] mega-click an ad (from a larger company that may not dispute costs) and take a fee for adverts processed by that company. (i.e. we give you 50million clicks, you give us $$$)

Reddit [allegedly] makes out like [alleged] kings through this system. Now that they're a publicly-traded entity, this should be investigated by government bods. Reddit will [allegedly] have a hard time explaining some of the MASSIVE server systems they have that aren't related to running Reddit and actually appear externally to "do nothing at all" except run up large energy bills.......

[jake]

"Reddit will [allegedly] have a hard time explaining some of the MASSIVE server systems they have that aren't related to running Reddit and actually appear externally to "do nothing at all" except run up large energy bills......."

As a consultant, I see that fairly often, for varying values of MASSIVE. It's always crypto mining, not something more nefarious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they need Reddit to supply the IP address? They are the ones on the other end of the click. Billed for 500 clicks then check your own logs.

[WolfFan]

Idiots

I am currently connected to Ye InterTubes thanks to a connection at an IHOP (their coffee is both better and cheaper than Starbucks, not a high bar, and the pancakes at this location are pretty good; some IHOPs and every single Denny’s that I've tried manage to do the impossible and fuck up pancakes, so this is not a given,) while using a VPN. A check without the VPN says my IP is in Miami; I am nearly 100 miles away. IHOP seems to have centralized its internet connections. With the VPN, I'm in Kansas. I'm really in Florida. It's trivial to screw with those wanting to see your IP. You know VPNs have gone mainstream when a VPN company (Nord, not the guys I use) runs ads on the Super Bowl broadcast. And they say straight up that they would prevent others from seeing your actual location. Free VPN-like things are built into Apple OSes and available from CloudFlare and others. As far as I know, Apple’s stuff is turned on by default, while it's trivial to set up CloudFlare. Free VPNs tend to be limited; if you need more control, pay up. I suspect that Microsoft and Google have something like Apple’s stuff, but I trust them even less than I trust Apple, and I can't be arsed to go look. There would be a reason why I use a 3rd party VPN…

Not to mention that if you use institutional internet, your IP will be that of the institution. A large college-level institution here in Deepest South Florida might have tens of thousands of users; Miami-Dade College is the largest tertiary-level institution in the US, with 170,000 plus students. Broward College has maybe 50,000, and Palm Beach State has over 60,000. A lot of housing developments and condo associations have deals with various IDPs, so everyone who lives there will be coming from a limited set of IPs. There will be a lot of duplicate hits. Lots of people will be hiding their IPs. Getting the IPs of those who clicked on ads would not necessarily generate the data the admongers want.

This is, of course, over and above any privacy questions. If the admongers did force Reddit to cough up the IPs, it would be difficult to do as the admongers aren't cops and will have difficulty getting court orders; furthermore, they are setting themselves up for massive class-action lawsuits—lots of them. Be careful what you ask for; you might get it.

[FlippingGerman]

Fraud and proud

when a person or program clicks on an ad with no intention of doing business with the advertiser“

That would be me, then, because every time I’ve ever clicked (or tapped, more frequently) on an advert has been accidental.