# AdNauseam 22 Hacker News commenters recommended AdNauseam and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it to poison ad profiles by clicking every hidden ad, wasting advertisers' money. Critics say ad networks easily detect the fake clicks. ## Why people recommend it - Poisons advertiser profiling with false data (7 comments): "We need to proactively add buckets of junk data for advertisers - that's the only way to get them to stop collecting so much." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250443)) "blocking is not as good as intentionally poisoning with something like Ad Nauseum" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46289261)) "I prefer poisoning my ad profile instead of passively blocking with Ad Nauseam" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46187111)) - Reported to work in practice (6 comments): "Google banning them but taking no action otherwise indicates to me and the thousands who use it that it is in fact effective" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856896)) "If it didn't work, Google wouldn't have banned it well ahead of them banning the working version of uBlock Origin." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46188315)) "In my experience, this has basically 'neutered' personalised advertising for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016063)) - Costs advertisers money through clicks (5 comments): "Even better, block them and click them all with the Adnauseam extension." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846640)) "It clicks on all ads it hides, polluting metrics, wasting money." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47857872)) "It uses same uBlock under the hood, but it clicks all the ads." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189526)) - Goes beyond plain ad blocking (4 comments): "blocking is not as good as intentionally poisoning with something like Ad Nauseum" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46289261)) "I prefer poisoning my ad profile instead of passively blocking with Ad Nauseam" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46187111)) "going full send and using Ad-Nauseaum instead of simply using an ad-blocker" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021752)) ## What people warn about - Fake clicks easily detected as fraud (4 comments): "AdNauseam not loading the response to the "click" request makes it trivially easy to flag as fraudulent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054260)) "AdNauseam's fake clicks are so detectable that it's hard to imagine any ad networks are fooled by it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673019)) "Ad Nauseam is silly because ad companies know they are fake clicks and don't count them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019784)) - Downloads ads and adds tracking exposure (3 comments): "you still pay the cost of downloading and running all the advertising JS and you still get tracked by the ad networks, all for nothing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053298)) "gives ad networks massively more information and data points to track you than if you just straight up blocked the ads" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46896562)) "clicking on every ads leak your browsing history because in the URL there is a unique tracking ID" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856842)) - Rewards ad networks with money (2 comments): "This just, essentially, allows the adbroker (e.g. Google) to get more money from the business putting up the ad." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856331)) "How will it stop ads if it rewards them with money?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053129)) - Google flagged it; triggers captchas (2 comments): "Google did flag the Ad Nauseam Chrome extension as malware, so that was a definite abuse of power." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47595727)) "eventually stopped when I was getting captcha'd left and right" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49115101)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [SponsorBlock](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sponsorblock.md): 137 recommend - [Firefox Multi-Account Containers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/firefox-containers.md): 76 recommend - [NoScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/noscript.md): 61 recommend - [Consent-O-Matic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/consent-o-matic.md): 36 recommend - [LibRedirect](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libredirect.md): 35 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "AdNauseam", https://hackerapproved.com/p/adnauseam/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).