I think Facebook is going to face the same problem that Youtube does. They have a lot of skilled users who can easily read through their code and find a loophole.
Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
371–380 of 462 posts
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
They can just not send you the actual content until you've downloaded the advertising content of the page. And in HTTP/2.0 they'll just switch to pushing the ads out to you. In either case they can't guarantee it'll get on the screen, but they assuredly can make sure you download the damned ads. Long term browsers will become more and more closed, DRMed, protected and such so that people have much less control over h…
And as that happens they'll lose users who have become accustomed to the conveniences of ad blocking and open web pages.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#373Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#374What really annoys me is that I always have to see the stupid face of good ol' Zuckerberg.
Facebook always suggest to "follow" him. Facebook does not allow to block him. To have his pic removed by an ad blocker does not work well. They seem to change the image URL of his pic a lot.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#375"Computer vision" doesn't yet appear in the comments. The FTC dictates that FB make it possible for humans to determine what's advertising and what isn't. If humans can tell, computers can too. In the limiting case, ad blockers can run computer vision algorithms on pages and block advertising using graphic overlays that are undetectable for the page hosting the ads. In the end, clients always win.
If you want to defeat adblockers, you first need to ban general purpose computing.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#376People here are still using Facebook? Interesting...
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
But advertising is already regulated, just like any other market. There is no ethics involved. Perhaps one day we (society) come to the conclusion that advertising, as a whole, is doing more harm than good and we decide to ban it entirely. Or we decide set a limit on how much advertising is allowed. Right now adblockers are not against the law (afaik) so I don't see any problem using them. After all, they're a produc…
That is akin to saying that shops have accepted the market price of shoplifting, and that hiring a security guard or secret shoppers is trying to interfere with it.
Shops have to accept the fact that shoplifting is going to cost them money.
I'm not arguing that Facebook isn't allowed to try to stop adblocking. Only question is what means they're allowed to take. Just like security guard isn't allowed to shoot shoplifters on sight.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is available on the condition that you are served ads alongside content.
No one is ever obligated to view ads. I'm not stealing from the billboard company because I keep my eyes on the road, and I'm not a bad person because I mute the television every five minutes when NBC runs ads for things I don't want during the Olympics. The browser is our user agent. Facebook can serve whatever it wants, but we're under no contractual or moral obligation to look at it.
In a not so distant future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tMXKQdc5ZM&t=9m
Btw. the Black Mirror TV series is awesome.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a trap. If you make your ads content-like, and integrate them into your content, then people will say your site is deceptive, hiding ads in content so people read them like factual articles.
You don't need to make them content-like. Have ad sections that are just text. I can't recall the name of the site but that one Mac-related site that does text ads seems to be doing pretty well at it. Please if someone does know the site I mean let me know it's on the tip of my tongue!
The inventor of markdown. Fireball something. But it's really an exception.
Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take action. We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking. Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pis…
Slightly off-topic, but I have to ask: have you tried (or considered) hosting your own ads?
It's really easy to get caught by basic lists. After use garbish/deceptive class names / ID's of DOM or file names, you get more popular and cat and mouse games start with block list maintainers.