Live data from Hacker News

Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

wsj.com

11–20 of 141 posts

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#11

while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe. Or you can just block all requests to their domains. I have *.facebook.com and a few others blocked.

The European initiative demands to activate 3rd party cookies, so that they are able to connect to these ad networks for me to be able to change my settings.

Also they "detect" me using Safari (while I am on Chrome). Seems so trustworthy to me.

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#12
post #3

Surprised they weren't doing that already. Facebook has javascript injected on a lot of sites, always assumed that they'd collect a shit ton of data whether you are a user or not. Also, all ad blockers block google analytics like tracking services but social plugins are generally opt in. I guess they should be blocked by default too.

I know a lot of AdBlocking Tools/List that do not block Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics by default. Do you know the ones that do?

Ghostery, uBlock Origin. Running both in combination seems to get most bugs.

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#13
post #3

Surprised they weren't doing that already. Facebook has javascript injected on a lot of sites, always assumed that they'd collect a shit ton of data whether you are a user or not. Also, all ad blockers block google analytics like tracking services but social plugins are generally opt in. I guess they should be blocked by default too.

I know a lot of AdBlocking Tools/List that do not block Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics by default. Do you know the ones that do?

uBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger is a really powerful combo and works fine

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#14
They have been doing this since forever and if I remember correctly, the EU told them to stop. I don't remember if they really did stop (at least, I'm not sure if they say they did, nobody knows what they really did of course).

/me opens article

Oh, it's about showing ads to non-users, not about tracking. The article doesn't even claim they didn't track non-users before. Clickbait?

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#15

while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe. Or you can just block all requests to their domains. I have *.facebook.com and a few others blocked.

So in order to protect my digital privacy, I should register myself at some alliance's website. It just doesn't make sense.

Either this whole internet advertising thing turns out to be a bubble after all — in that case; let it pop, see if we can't figure out something better. If using ad-blockers and tracker-busters helps achieve that goal; good.

Or we end up with an internet where all users settle somewhere on the privacy spectrum in an uneasy equilibrium. On the one extreme of this spectrum we have those who accept ads served them through exclusive IOS or Android apps and unprotected browsers, and on the other extreme those who refuse to play along and use ad-blockers and other privacy tools, and simply shun services that require you to opt-in to data harvesting (e.g., Facebook and websites that refuse to show content when they detect an ad-blocker).

I think we may currently have the latter — I wonder how stable that situation is.

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#16
post #7
post #2

All the more reason to block their widgets on other websites, using something like Ghostery or Disconnect.

Another alternative is EFF's PrivacyBadger: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger All this in addition to an ad-blocker (such as uBlock Origin) of course.

I prefer uMatrix[0] (by the uBlock author) which gives absolute control over third (and first) party requests.

I don't even subscribe to the built-in Adblock filter because of my default-deny rule. It also negates the need for Privacy Badger and similar.

See the screenshots for how it works (similar to, but more granular than, uBlock advanced mode).

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Very-bare-walkthroug...

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Examples-of-useful-r...

0: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#18
post #8

while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe. Or you can just block all requests to their domains. I have *.facebook.com and a few others blocked.

wc -l /etc/hosts == 11846 About 90% are blocked sites. The rest is local (privat and business) dev configuration.

Are you sure it's not more than 90%, or do you actually have almost 1200 dev configuration in your hosts file?

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#19

Again, I deplore the colossal waste of human effort and talent that is going into building a sophisticated panopticon for the noble purpose of better targeted advertising . For fuck's sake, what a waste of the best minds of our generation.

Well said! A company that has literally all the resources in the world comes up with better advertising and engagement through memes and addictive games. I guess that is what we deserve.

Re: Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites

#20

Again, I deplore the colossal waste of human effort and talent that is going into building a sophisticated panopticon for the noble purpose of better targeted advertising . For fuck's sake, what a waste of the best minds of our generation.

I hate when people say that people who waste time on Facebook just need to show some willpower. As you say it's some of the best minds working on it. Pitching the willpower of a 15 year old against the combined minds of the Facebook engineers tasked with keeping them on the site, of cause the 15 year old (or 50 year old for that matter) will lose.

And all that, so some company can blast us with adverts.

Post reply on HN