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Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#401

Post by _v7gu »

mgbmtl wrote: post #160
denzil_correa wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ads already affect the experience significantly, this would do so even more. (not that I use Facebook, but Tumblr for example, has extremely annoying repetitive offensive ads)

Do you remember the time when staff broke the audio ads and they kept looping with no way to stop whatsoever?

And people still go on about blocking ads being unethical

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#402

Post by _v7gu »

eridius wrote: post #367
natrius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re-reading your comment, it strikes me as extremely anti-capitalistic. > Those behavior changes are intended to make you give the buyer more money than they paid. That is literally the goal of every merchant everywhere. They need to sell stuff for more than they paid, otherwise they don't make money. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. They aren't forcing you to buy things, their buyers think that what th…

While they're welcome to improve their odds in our imperfect-information game, we should also be allowed to play in our interest by disallowing them information.

This is not about the total gain of both sides: Almost every transaction is positive sum. However; why should I simply accept the 90/10 distribution of the excess in their favor when I can aim for a favorable distribution for myself too?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#403

Post by curried_haskell »

legohead wrote: post #167
deanCommie wrote: post #7

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…

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…

When 99.99% of ads on 99.99% of sites are horrible monstrosities of Javascript and browser tracking and fingerprinting scripts, they will all be blocked and stay blocked.

I'll look at an ad in exchange for viewing your website. I will not let you digitally rape me in exchange for viewing your website.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#404

Post by _v7gu »

blahi wrote: post #175
hodder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Serious question: Why do you block FB ads?" Because I dont like looking at ads.

Why do you feel entitled to use facebook's resources?

Because they openly state: "It’s free and always will be.", not "It’s free and always will be if you view the ads we serve in your browser.".

Also my country's civil law (along with any other reasonable civil laws) throws out the three links below out of our contract, as they're neither at a reasonable length nor clearness when the context is considered.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#405

Post by SilasX »

mattmanser wrote: post #185
denzil_correa wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a legal requirement in most countries to clearly distinguish ads from content.

Distinguish them to human viewers, not to computers. If the aggregate effect of all the CSS and element classes is to make ads look one way and non-ads look a different way (each with slight variations), it's an AI-complete problem infer an answer to "given these elements and this CSS sheet, which subset of them looks different and add-like to a human?"

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#406

Post by bbradley406 »

zazpowered wrote: post #315
freehunter wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blockers exist on both iOS and Android now.

Most people use the Facebook app though

This is true for the time being, but there is a small percentage who will switch if the advertising becomes obnoxious past a degree.

Several of my non-tech-inclined friends have switched to using only the mobile site (on their own, not from ranting on my part) due to concerns about location tracking, constant notifications, and battery life.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#407

Post by corford »

SEJeff wrote: post #262
corford wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea, I'm not a lawyer. Assuming liability is a real problem presumably this is fixed by ad networks improving their vetting and offering some sort of insurance to publishers in the event malware sneaks through. Alternatively, as mentioned in another comment, proxying might mean simply installing a managed ad-server within the publisher's infrastructure. So from an end-user PoV it looks like it's coming from the p…

Until the adserver serves malicious ads (which has happened dozens of times on high profile sites in the past year or so), and then the website is sued.

Yeah but if the adserver is a black box that's managed by the ad network I would have thought the website could pass the liability on to them (and state this in their ToS somewhere)

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#408

Post by Esau »

I actually don't mind advertising. I think it is fair in return for free content. But I have problems with the way many sites do it, because:

1. I don't want autoplay videos (annoying)

2. I don't want animated gifs (makes it hard to concentrate and read)

3. I don't want to be tracked as I browse the Internet (privacy)

4. I don't want malware (security)

Number 4 is particular really gets my goat, because I feel that websites are being civilly negligent by not taking any effort to screen what is being sent to visitors.

Frankly, at the point, I often find myself hoping someone will resurrect Gopher.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#409

Post by delecti »

spdionis wrote: post #72

> User adoption of ad-blocking software has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly outside of the U.S. According to estimates by online advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 26% of U.S. internet users now use ad blockers on their desktop devices. Well, where are the numbers backing "particularly outside of the U.S." then? I had the impression it's the other way around, and ad blockers have m…

Additionally, I'd be curious if it's 26% of users or traffic, because I expect the two figures are rather different.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#410

Post by exadeci »

pen2l wrote: post #373
fapjacks wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways around ads in apps.

Such as? I'm thinking any ways that do exist are extraordinarily difficult to do, at least for the common lay man.

As others said AdAway is the first step to prevent ads to load the next step is MinMinGuard on an Xposed android it removes the ads fragments/view the same way Ublock/Adblock do it on your computer. https://i.imgur.com/qhmJx2w.png

I use both and I've not seen ads for years.

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