tomludus

I would be stunned if this is how Google views the situation.

The comments here are so bizzarly positive for HN. Makes me feel that this might not be all genuine.

This is just someone following Ryan Levesque's ask format for getting info on what business to build.

Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any Business to the Next Level https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1939447720/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_...

This really made me laugh. You are also totally right, we have better solutions to this problem already.

Yes this is a very good point. I asked an Uber driver in London if they put any restrictions on driving time and he confirmed that they did not. Might have to rethink that one.

Really made me laugh!

Is it not quite amusingly ironic to be giving general advice that advises you to ignore general advice?

  One reason that leaders as diametrically    opposed as Obama and Trump can be aligned on surveillance is simple: The majority of Americans don’t care.

I keep seeing the "platform" error issue time and time again. It has become very hard to believe this is a mistake. When I speak to the staff at these networks they basically refuse to comment.

They all stick to the script which usually goes along the line of "unfortunately we can't help with the tracking on your website, all I can say is that those user have definitely clicked".

Which sounds a lot like "yeah we tracked a click somewhere, we don't really care if it was accidental and despite having the ability to see if these people end up on your website we don't want to do that"

I have noticed that I personally click on several ads per day by accident and in fact these ads are more and more commonly being put in places where an accidental click is more likely or worse they pop up an ad and hide the close button.

You can imagine a future where our colleagues say to us "so you really believed that every click the ad network sent you was a real person because 'they said it was'. Did you never get any actual evidence? Were there no independent inspectors? Do you think that was a bit naive?"

Completely.

There are also a huge number of people using as blockers which actively block many of the tools people use to calculate users.

Furthermore these ad networks charges are based on this "traffic" with some vague and highly opaque promises that the bot traffic is filtered out.

Makes you wonder how much money is wasted on bot traffic.

Ducks!