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It's being reported on HackerNews that the Pale Moon Browser is blocking the AdNauseum extension, an ad blocking extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from tracking by advertising networks.
The main story link is to the Pale Moon Forum which summarises the issue as follows:
After investigating the AdNauseam extension's behavior and the results for web publishers, the extension has been added to the Pale Moon blocklist with a severity level of 2 (meaning you won't be able to enable it unless you increase the blocking level in about:config to 3). For those unfamiliar with this extension: it generates false ad "clicks" to ad servers in an attempt to generate "noise" for the ad networks in a protest against the advertising network system as a whole.
While the premise behind this is similar to poisoning trackers with false fingerprints (which we are proponents of, ourselves), and we normally let users decide for themselves what they want to do with their browser, we are strictly against allowing extensions that cause direct damage (including damage to third parties). There is a subtle but important difference between blocking content and generating fake user interaction.
[...] Because this extension causes direct and indirect economic damage to website owners, it is classified as malware, and as such blocked.
From the forum threads this decision has been slightly controversial with some users.
If you're not familiar with Pale Moon, it is an Open Source web browser, forked from a mature Mozilla code release, and has been covered on SN before.
[Update: Added text re: blocking level; bolded text that was bold in the original posting. --martyb]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 28 2017, @06:46PM
I agree.
Let me add more argument in support.
If I were NOT to use an ad blocker and see the ads, and then click on every single ad, just out of spite, have I committed a crime? Does intent matter?
If I have not committed a crime, then why does it become a crime if I automate the process for my own convenience?
Maybe advertisers have caused at least as much economic damage by letting ads run completely amok. But I suspect advertisers are completely blind to the harm they inflict upon others. After all, it's just an ad. I could argue, after all, it's just a click on an ad. But if you spam me with a hundred ads on a single page, then why complain about a hundred clicks?
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