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Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

wsj.com

21–30 of 462 posts

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#22

Honestly, I don't really mind so long as the ads are being served by FB and not third-party networks, and their performance isn't abysmal. The major reason I block ads in the first place is for usability reasons - ad networks are slow as all hell especially on mobile. They also make certain pages completely unusable either through ad overlays, interstitials, or just constantly causing layouts to change as you're tryi…

And if Facebook actually commits to having oversight over what they serve. The idea that websites rent space to ad networks who then sell space on their servers to bad actors who then upload viruses and other such malware which then goes into my computer and everyone in this whole chain just goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is ridiculous. If someone added a billboard to a highway that caused every thousandth car that passed to blow a tire, there would be lawsuits. How they're allowed to get away with it so easily online is beyond me and maddening.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#24
> Facebook’s change will open up more online ad space for it to sell, although Mr. Bosworth said that wasn’t the motivation for the move. Facebook now garners 84% of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, which are less susceptible to ad blocking than desktop devices.

Something about it being difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on it seems appropriate here.

This is what happens when a company becomes big enough to not have to care very much about what their users think. Look at what Google has done on their search site. More than half the visible page is adds now.

Facebook now believes that users won't abandon them and they can really start to use/abuse their position to increase their revenue. They in essence have called their users bluff and said even though there is alot of talk about hating ads and leaving, they don't believe that users will really quit the site because of this.

I'm willing to bet that Facebook is correct here. I'm an investor.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#26
I already have a whole set of CSS rules I apply to Facebook now, just to make their UI less awful, remove the massive amounts of crud I never want to see, and resize the few things that I do want to see up from their stock postage-stamp sizes.

Blocking .ad-unit or #pagesYouDontCareAbout is easy.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#27
post #11

If Facebook wants a truly global network, then they best not alienate or piss off those that are technically inclined. If they take control away from their power users, they'll lose them.

I don't think that the "technically inclined" are FB's power users, nor are they their most wanted target demographic.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#29
post #11

If Facebook wants a truly global network, then they best not alienate or piss off those that are technically inclined. If they take control away from their power users, they'll lose them.

This is a good point. Deeply technical people should be welcome - ad blocking and all.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#30
post #5

Good luck. I suspect in no time uBlock Origin will have found a way to remove the ad elements from the DOM, even if they are served directly with the html of facebook and not a 3rd party domain.

uBlock can already do this (I use it for hiding the Twitter "while you were away" nonsense), although I suspect that the next step is Facebook scrambling DOM classes and ids with no discernable pattern.
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