Reviews for AdNauseam
AdNauseam by Daniel Howe
Review by TT
Rated 4 out of 5
by TT, 3 years agoIt's honestly a 4-star addon, but I'm temporarily setting this to one star to get the dev's attention. Read on, and you'll see why:
It works great (for now,)and I realize it's Recommended by Mozilla, but I wanted to warn people about Google's increasingly weird TOS, and specifically, this addon's seemingly dangerous interactions with it.
When you allow this addon to run in the background, it clicks on "all ads" or "some ads," which for some reason causes Google to flag your account as "may be under 18." (Maybe it auto-clicked on a Polly Pocket ad? I dunno.)
The ambiguous wording here is, I suppose, by design. They're not accusing you of BEING underage, they're just saying maybe you are, maybe you aren't.
Of course, the only way to find out your account has been flagged in this way is to click the [+] button in the corner of an ad that Google knows darned well has nothing to do with your Recommended videos. Which means the only way you'll even become aware of it this phenomenon in the first place is by running Ad Nauseam, then turning it off again.
(Intriguingly, if you had Safe-Search turned off before you installed the plugin, becoming "maybe under 18" disables the Safe Mode button in a way that literally makes it impossible for you to enable it again. Is Google seriously trying to say that they both think you may be under 18, *and* that they're deliberately going to force you to see NSFW search results???)
The fact that the [+] only shows on ads that are drastically different from your Recommendeds shows that Google already knows exactly what it is doing, here. They're serving incongruous ads on purpose. The question is why?
It's unknown what Google's goals or long-term plan are, but combined with various other clauses in Google's TOS, this "may be under 18" phrase has some unfortunate implications:
The worst-case scenario I can imagine is, Google bans you, (that is, the user, the person, not the account,) from all of their platforms simultaneously, and also flags you in a database as some sort of child molester, ostensibly because you were over 18 when they served you your search results, but under 18 when you viewed them, and by clicking on the search results, you, an adult, were distributing NSFW content to yourself, a minor. And WEI rollout means they *might* have just enough information to track you as you move from account to account, so they could make it stick.
I doubt they'd have a legitimate legal case against anyone, since you literally can't be two ages at once. But if the goal is just to separate the internet into technological haves and have-nots, this is one excuse they could use to make sure anyone running AdNauseam ends up as a have-not, all the while telling regulators that the metrics say they banned a bunch of pedros.
That's just one of the baffling interpretations of the faux-legalease in these TOS that treats each user as a quantum superposition of their browsing behavior, rather than as a person.
(That said, they can also ban any user they want for "not being profitable enough." They added that gem in 2019. Which you'd think would be good enough to let them do away with all accounts that use ad-blockers, across the board, so I'm not sure what the goal of this stealth ad semi-shadowban is.)
I'd say "stay safe out there," but with the FBI demanding that literally everybody run an ad blocker, I'm not even sure I know what "safe" means anymore.
Not a complaint, just an observation. I would add one star if this situation could somehow be addressed by the addon. (But of course, it can't. That's the point.)
I'll set it back to 4 stars if the dev responds. He seems to take one-star reviews very seriously if past behavior is any indication. (Sorry for the inconvenience, Daniel. For what it's worth, I really like the use of negative space on your website.)
Also, apparently, for the guy above me, KOLJAAAA, it auto-clicked on Malware. Yikes! I wonder if Google is also doing THAT on purpose.
It works great (for now,)and I realize it's Recommended by Mozilla, but I wanted to warn people about Google's increasingly weird TOS, and specifically, this addon's seemingly dangerous interactions with it.
When you allow this addon to run in the background, it clicks on "all ads" or "some ads," which for some reason causes Google to flag your account as "may be under 18." (Maybe it auto-clicked on a Polly Pocket ad? I dunno.)
The ambiguous wording here is, I suppose, by design. They're not accusing you of BEING underage, they're just saying maybe you are, maybe you aren't.
Of course, the only way to find out your account has been flagged in this way is to click the [+] button in the corner of an ad that Google knows darned well has nothing to do with your Recommended videos. Which means the only way you'll even become aware of it this phenomenon in the first place is by running Ad Nauseam, then turning it off again.
(Intriguingly, if you had Safe-Search turned off before you installed the plugin, becoming "maybe under 18" disables the Safe Mode button in a way that literally makes it impossible for you to enable it again. Is Google seriously trying to say that they both think you may be under 18, *and* that they're deliberately going to force you to see NSFW search results???)
The fact that the [+] only shows on ads that are drastically different from your Recommendeds shows that Google already knows exactly what it is doing, here. They're serving incongruous ads on purpose. The question is why?
It's unknown what Google's goals or long-term plan are, but combined with various other clauses in Google's TOS, this "may be under 18" phrase has some unfortunate implications:
The worst-case scenario I can imagine is, Google bans you, (that is, the user, the person, not the account,) from all of their platforms simultaneously, and also flags you in a database as some sort of child molester, ostensibly because you were over 18 when they served you your search results, but under 18 when you viewed them, and by clicking on the search results, you, an adult, were distributing NSFW content to yourself, a minor. And WEI rollout means they *might* have just enough information to track you as you move from account to account, so they could make it stick.
I doubt they'd have a legitimate legal case against anyone, since you literally can't be two ages at once. But if the goal is just to separate the internet into technological haves and have-nots, this is one excuse they could use to make sure anyone running AdNauseam ends up as a have-not, all the while telling regulators that the metrics say they banned a bunch of pedros.
That's just one of the baffling interpretations of the faux-legalease in these TOS that treats each user as a quantum superposition of their browsing behavior, rather than as a person.
(That said, they can also ban any user they want for "not being profitable enough." They added that gem in 2019. Which you'd think would be good enough to let them do away with all accounts that use ad-blockers, across the board, so I'm not sure what the goal of this stealth ad semi-shadowban is.)
I'd say "stay safe out there," but with the FBI demanding that literally everybody run an ad blocker, I'm not even sure I know what "safe" means anymore.
Not a complaint, just an observation. I would add one star if this situation could somehow be addressed by the addon. (But of course, it can't. That's the point.)
I'll set it back to 4 stars if the dev responds. He seems to take one-star reviews very seriously if past behavior is any indication. (Sorry for the inconvenience, Daniel. For what it's worth, I really like the use of negative space on your website.)
Also, apparently, for the guy above me, KOLJAAAA, it auto-clicked on Malware. Yikes! I wonder if Google is also doing THAT on purpose.
Developer response
posted 3 years agoHey TT, thank you for your extensive review, we had never come accross such an issue before, could you share with us some more info regarding it on the issue ticket I just created on our github page: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/issues/2439
We are discussing some possible implementation that can help deal with such unwanted ad visits here as well, feel free to share your opinion: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/issues/2440
We are discussing some possible implementation that can help deal with such unwanted ad visits here as well, feel free to share your opinion: https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/issues/2440
661 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19790807, 6 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by KMantle42, 13 days agoThere's not a single ad blocker that blocks every ad, so I have multiple ad blockers enabled. The single one that has a problem with it is AdNauseam, who whenever I open Firefox it turns itself off and asks me to delete every other ad blocker.
No, I'm not doing that. I rather delete AdNauseam - Rated 5 out of 5by Chill, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by mrlol, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by StubbleName, a month agoThe best ad blocker of all time. Better than uBlock Origin, because it is a fork of uBlock Origin, but with a few features that make it MUCH nicer to use. Also for those wondering, it does block ads on YouTube.
Brief:
1. It worked as expected, and worked beyond my expectations.
2. Features I love:
a. Ad vault: all past ads in a timeline with links and images
b. Blocked count is of ads, not of total elements or features
c. The message it is trying to push: websites must stop tracking the user with ads.
d. The way it pushes that message: poisining data and costing websites that track money
e. The performance and reliability: never have I seen an ad not blocked
f. Works on youtube
g. User choice regarding costing websites that don't track money and blocking non-tracking ads
h. Still has the uBlock UI easily accessible for element blocking and beyond
3. It is extremely useful
4. It is dead easy to use
5. I will continue to use this extension until the end of time itself.
I urge you to try it. Please. It is worth it, I promise. - Rated 5 out of 5by Rukas, a month agoThis extension was made for the purpose of screwing with advertisers and making them lose their money...
That's why I recommend using it! :D
The only issue I have is that the logo looks like... Something odd... Y'know what I mean? - Rated 5 out of 5by Pondering Wanderer, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Mirusa, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by crshzy, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Kataiser, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by mana, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Hm946, 3 months agoBest AD blocker I've ever had. Works on all the websites I've went 2. Nothing else really much 2 say, it's an amazing AD blocker. Would recommend 10/10
- Rated 5 out of 5by Injee, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by marzilla, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by BAMBAH, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by LemonMeringueTy, 4 months ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 13248877, 5 months agoWorks extremely well on YouTube ads and similar things. Many other sites don't seem to be supported, though. Fragrantica, for example, is just a mess even with this installed. Blocking elements doesn't even matter because they reappear within seconds. I'd love to completely replace uBlock origin with this, but it seems like this has a lot of compatibility issues which uBlock doesn't have. Probably switching back soon.
EDIT: Ads also weren't being blocked at all on the Smithsonian site, which seems to use the same type of ad delivery as Fragrantica. I'd much rather have an adblocker which actually works. Messing with advertisers is awesome, but not at the cost of seeing ads on the internet again. Back to uBlock for me. - Rated 5 out of 5by TheLTrain, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Zazza, 6 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17882170, 6 months ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by insertname, 6 months ago