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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

#421

Post by SilasX »

robrenaud wrote: post #413
SilasX wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Is it an AI-complete problem to do email spam classification? Why is determining if a facebook post is an ad or not so different than spam classification?

It's AI complete to do it with human level accuracy, yes. If you don't mind blocking random friends' posts, you can craft the ad blocker to remove them all.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#422

Post by type0 »

wang_li wrote: post #162
corford wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

I'm also pessimistic about where it's going. As if the segregation on the web isn't bad enough already. We might end up with two kind of webs- one independent and open, another capitalized and closed. Just the fact that indieweb.org needs to exist tells us what's waiting.

Tim Berners Lee would cry if we end up with 2 webs.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#423

Post by Falkon1313 »

awqrre wrote: post #280
reiichiroh wrote: post #206

I love FB Purity and would hate for it to stop working. It's what makes my FB feed useful.

FB purity? like how they show you posts in the order that they choose? reloading the page changes the order too...

That's exactly one of the many things that FB Purity fixes - you can set it to chronological mode. (In addition to filtering out noise and junk.) It also had a "Do not autoplay videos" setting well before Facebook added an option for that.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#424

Post by type0 »

fapjacks wrote: post #322
sadfounder wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once these publishers swap over to proxying ad-content through their own domains Do you know anyone who is doing this already?

They will, once the "free money" of normal shitty ads stops working. Then, once the amount of work required to serve proxied ad-content through their own domains is more than the benefit of the "free money" of shitty ads, the force of human nature means that most publishers will move to that model. Personally, I think this will become a machine learning battlefield in the next handful of years.

> Personally, I think this will become a machine learning battlefield in the next handful of years.

Everyone will get their own personal AI stalker bot from the birth. I have such high hopes for humanity. When we at it maybe also replace politicians with AI, I'm sure they will do a better job than we mortals.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#425

Post by youngButEager »

amateurpolymath wrote: post #312
youngButEager wrote: post #239

Arrogance from a seller of a good or service alienates/pisses off their customers. SCENE: You walk into a large retail TV/tech/stereo store. There are monitors displaying ads. NOT in a ubiquitous way; in an annoying ubiquitous way (ie. every 5 feet you walk in the store aisles, a monitor drops from the ceiling and displays an ad and you get used to counting your steps and every 5 feet you have to duck around the ad-b…

> Monopolies don't last. This is simply untrue.

No it's actually true, and everyone knew from the context I meant commerce monopolies in capitalist economies, such as Microsoft, IBM (in the early days of computers you apparently could get fired for writing a P.O. for a non-IBM machine), etc. Not talking about utilities. I meant commerce monopolies in a competitive market place, a monopoly that develops with 'network effects', 'switching costs', etc.

Here's all it takes for a monopoly to fail:

(switching costs become low enough) + (current monopoly has become a pain/overpriced/etc.) = get thee down satan and the monopoly is gone.

Friendster, Myspace lost their market as we all know. SO WILL FACEBOOK. There is no 'secret sauce' there, just network effects, and minor switching costs of transferring/losing the data you've put on your FB account.

Switching costs for desktop operating systems are dropping incrementally for obvious reasons.

Lloyds of London has been around a long time but that doesn't mean they're a monopoly.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#426

Post by blahi »

elmigranto wrote: post #390
blahi wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chatting with your friends and looking at their pictures are not services? The lengths to which you guys will go to for justification of your sense of entitlement is staggering.

No one ever asked me to pay for it. I never agreed to look at ads. If anything, I might argue that I am providing FB with a service of sharing my personal info and typing messages to people, so others will be motivated to stay/join the website. But expecting to get compensation for that is as much nonsensical, as expecting me to "pay" for free website (which is exactly what is promoted and offered — free place to sta…

Then don't. You don't think the tradeoff is worth it, just don't go to the site.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#427

Post by blahi »

elmigranto wrote: post #388
blahi wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chatting with your friends and looking at their pictures are not services? The lengths to which you guys will go to for justification of your sense of entitlement is staggering.

They are but not in a sense in which, for example, Netflix is, where terms are clear — pay and enjoy content. FB is also a service as an ad platform — pay and we will show your ads to people. Anyone with FB profile is not "getting serviced", they are a commodity same as peanuts at the store, but it instead of storing boxes in a warehouse, FB hosts your photos. There is expectation that most of users won't block ads,…

The terms are not clear only in the heads of people who think they can have their cake and eat it too.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#428

Post by f_allwein »

jeena wrote: post #394
f_allwein wrote: post #366

I am also surprised at all the hate against ads. Yes, there are some bad ones (disrupting, malware etc.), but how does that justify you blocking all ads (and thereby robbing websites of their only legitimate source of income)? As Immanuel Kant said (loosely translated): Act in such a way that you actions could serve as the foundation for a general legislation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative I.e.…

1. All ads are bad 2. Closing your eyes is not the same as robbing

Ok,then how should websites/ search engines/ social networks finance themselves in your opinion?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#429

Post by flukus »

curried_haskell wrote: post #403
legohead wrote: post #167

Earlier 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…

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.

Exactly. When and if the ad industry learns to regulate itself I will stop blocking ads.

Until then, they've screwed themselves over.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#430

Post by flukus »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #37
jerf wrote: post #33

Why not just allow users to pay to not see ads? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work. Hulu's getting a lot more from me per month for their ad-free tier than they could ever dream of getting from me for ads with my watching habits, probably at least an order of magnitude more.

A big issue with paid subscriptions is that it dilutes the strength of the ad network, since you're specifically excluding desirable target customers.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of those desirable customers are also the ones using ad blockers.
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