291–300 of 462 posts
Facebook makes most of its money on mobile ads which are not affected by ad blockers. So why make a big deal announcing efforts to block ad blockers? A smart company like Facebook doesn't make moves accidentally. This announcement is more targeted towards publishers than it is towards ad blockers. Doesn't matter how affective the work around is - it sends publishers, who are holding off from instant articles and more…
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Facebook is a social-media advertising company. Their model, boiled down, is to extract the maximum possible value out of me in return for the minimum possible effort from them. Why shouldn't I approach them the same way? And given how often the above describes the way businesses will treat me, why shouldn't I generalize that position?
> Why shouldn't I approach them the same way? Practically: because it leads to a race to the bottom, lowering to their level, the world just gets worse and worse Philosophically: because ethics are a fundamental part of who you are, and strangers acting unethically does not relieve you of their burdens
Facebook will try to track me and my behavior, and tailor ads based on it, regardless of whether I'm a Facebook user and regardless of whether I'm logged in. In theory any link someone sends me might end up trying to connect to Facebook's advertising network and record information about my behavior.
At what point do I "agree" to this? What do I get "in return" for this? What if it's a crappy article that I close right away? Or the page load takes too long and I close it before it finishes (but, in true form, the ad code would already have run)? Since I don't know until I've loaded the page -- at which point you think I have an ethical duty to let Facebook serve ads -- whether it will have ads at all, or whether they'll be Facebook ads, at what point do I find that out and have an opportunity, in your model, to decide I don't want to be a party to that?
(in case you're wondering, the correct answer is "use an ad-blocker to pre-emptively ensure nobody can force ads on you without your agreement")
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You've got it exactly backwards. The service is free, ergo you are the product, ergo Facebook's problems are your problems. You have three choices: 1. Stop using Facebook 2. Pay Facebook to remove ads 3. Look at ads I've opted for option 1, though I'll happily revisit this choice if Facebook (A) finds a way to make money without serving ads and without requiring me to pay out-of-pocket (unlikely) or (B) Facebook star…
Is option 2 even possible at the moment?
They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them. As long as they don't try to force some sort of legislation on how people can use their internet connection, and their internet browser to fetch and display content, there's no problem. The real problem is Facebook is already full of advertising disguised as content. From sponsored posts to content from things you "like". So I'm kind of surprised…
> They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them. Technically, Facebook could insert news feed ads like a post from one of your friend (assume that the friend has liked some page or organization). It could be tough to distinguish between ads and posts much like native advertising.
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That's not bad actually. Hanging out on FB with and ad blocker is literally loitering in their servers. You are racking up costs for them and actively refusing to provide value in return. IHMO, it would be very reasonable for FB to deny service to ad-block users. But, I understand they'd rather attempt to keep you around first.
But it's the cost of doing business for many businesses. Would you consider an air conditioned mall that throws people out if they don't shop in any of the stores "reasonable"?
Shoppers aren't the mall's customers, businesses are. The mall doesn't care about the customers, they care about luring businesses to locate there and pay rent. And if they have a ton of non-shoppers loitering around, that makes their mall more attractive, not less.
For me personally Facebook doesn't matter. I wouldn't care less if it dies. I remember when I joined Facebook as part of my university. I was a hardcore user back then. May be this is a bold prediction. I predict Facebook will die a death like yahoo eventually. Most people I knew who were big Facebook users have all moved on. it'll be like having a Hotmail account.
Being 'avantgarde' these days means having an empty FB account and no Linked-Ins at all. ;-)
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> If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users, do you think that would be unfair? I think "they're welcome to try" is exactly the right response here. Nothing is "fair" or "unfair", at least not in a way that advertisers or ad blockers care about. No matter what they do it's entirely possible to trick their scripts into believing I'm displaying ads, because they run not on facebook's servers but on…
I'm just waiting for the day when websites are rendering themselves inside a DRM-protected container in an HTML5 page. That's where I see all of this inevitably heading. DRM-protected media extensions are almost uniquely positioned for this. They're designed around the abilities to uniquely identify the user and resist tampering. The only thing that's missing right now is interactivity.
I think you're completely right, btw. After AOL, it only took a few years for websites to become rapidly Flash-based. It looks like we're going back to that again (not Flash, but same thing - black boxed).
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Serious question: Why do you block FB ads? I wouldn't say that FB ads are any more disguised as content as, say, newspaper ads. And follow up: If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users, do you think that would be unfair?
When you allow targeted ads into your life, you're putting changes in your behavior on the market each time you touch a device. Those behavior changes are intended to make you give the buyer more money than they paid. The market will find every flaw in your psychology that can be used to take money from your pocket. These flaws exist: Las Vegas is built on them. Targeted ads are the Las Vegas of the mind.
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.
It's going to be hard for facebook because they're such a big target. I think where ad-blockers will start to have problems is with the millions of lesser known sites. Once these publishers swap over to proxying ad-content through their own domains and using a handful of simple evasion tactics (random file name for the self hosted JS file that pulls in the ad, site specific pseudo-random DOM element names for the ad…
Do you know anyone who is doing this already?