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How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

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Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#21

Post by ACow_Adonis »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #9
oferzelig wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're basically against ad blockers.

You can be in favor of both sides of this argument, I would say I am. I believe in my right to modify what's running on my computer and network, including things like installing adblocker extensions and pi-hole and so on. But I also believe that no organization is obligated to serve their data to me in a way that makes it easy to block those ads. They are wasting CPU hours and man hours on obfuscation features rather…

That's basically my attitude too, and I'd consider myself one of the more pro-adblocker advocates.

I see the internet as a bunch of servers talking to each other. Some make requests to others, some respond to those requests by sending content.

You can block me, you can choose to not send or respond data to my requests, and you can send your website/content in some form that's better suited to Perl golf or the obfuscated C contest. That's your prerogative.

On my end, I get to decide who I send my requests to, how I spend my time and attention, and what I do on my machine with incoming requests and data.

Make your site bad enough, and I (and others) will stop going, and eventually you'll likely sow the seeds of your own destruction (as people move away and create competition), but fundamentally that's your call to make.

Just like its mine to ignore you or your requests that I talk to your affiliated servers, edit and filter the content once it's on my machine/infrastructure, and not pay attention to the nonsense you send.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#22

Post by crispinb »

crakenzak wrote: post #2

Interesting article. I don't blame Facebook for doing whatever they can to properly show ads tho, they provide a "free" service and in exchange serve ads. It's not free to support a company their size and its expected they do everything they can to monetize the site properly. What do you guys think?

There's some justice to that argument for access to strictly discretionary sites, but Facebook has been so 'successful' that it's now approaching monopolistic power, & is something close to required infrastructure. There are an increasing number of online contacts which literally offer no alternative. I have a few fake facebook accounts I'll use where I literally have no alternative, none of which have real data associated with them.

I personally have a 100% no-corporate-propaganda rule. No logos on anything where avoidable, no ads allowed on my network, etc. If ads slip through ad blockers & I notice an ad somewhere I place the advertised product or company on a 'never buy' list.

No-one other than Facebook has any benefit to gain by forcing ads on me, and frankly in the very unlikely circumstance that people do manage to damage Facebook by circumventing its propaganda platform, so much the better. I'd very much like to see it driven out of business (wild fantasy, I know).

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#23

Post by ACow_Adonis »

dannyr wrote: post #7
oferzelig wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're basically against ad blockers.

If a business chooses how they make money to survive, can you just say "I don't like how you make money so I'll just get everything for free"? If you don't like how a company uses ads (regular, spammy, deceptive), no better way than tell them than by not giving them any traffic at all.

The internet/web is USED by businesses.

The internet/web is not FOR businesses.

Perhaps that's the fundamental difference in perspective about who's responsibility it is to make allowances for who serves/receives content...

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#24

Post by jameshilliard »

oferzelig wrote: post #8
shmerl wrote: post #6

Sounds like if CSS could allow matching by patterns, it could still block it out? I.e. something regex / wildcard like? Though performance probably would suffer. More advanced ad blocker can probably use some AI, that could be trained with user's hints about what is an ad. Or it can use some OCR for that purpose. If you can recognize that it's labeled "Sponsored", so can ad blocker potentially.

It's tricky even for Javascript.

Not really, you just need a recursive filtering algorithm such as this:

https://github.com/tiratatp/facebook_adblock/blob/master/src...

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#25

Post by thatswrong0 »

iamkroot wrote: post #14

I continue to be surprised at how few people have heard of fbpurity[1], a fantastic browser extension that blocks all Facebook ads and lets you filter out specific types of content (links, memories, etc.). It's dramatically improved my Facebook experience; I now see exactly the type of content that I want to see (updates on friend's lives) and nothing more. [1] https://www.fbpurity.com/

I mean one look at the website kind of tells you why.

The extension could be a lot less intrusive as well - just compare it to uBlock Origin for example. There doesn't need to be an onboarding message. I don't need to see "F.B. Purity hid:" prominently in the middle of my feed - just put that at the bottom right of the screen in gray text or in the extension. Etc.

I'm probably going to uninstall it because it makes FB even uglier.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#26

Post by LukeWalsh »

paggle wrote: post #18

I cannot understand the people who believe it’s their absolute right to use an ad blocker (a position I agree with) but then don’t believe it’s the site’s absolute right to decide whether or not they will serve you content.

There seems to be a blackjack analogy here. Don’t let the boss catch on!

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#27

Post by jameshilliard »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #25
iamkroot wrote: post #14

I continue to be surprised at how few people have heard of fbpurity[1], a fantastic browser extension that blocks all Facebook ads and lets you filter out specific types of content (links, memories, etc.). It's dramatically improved my Facebook experience; I now see exactly the type of content that I want to see (updates on friend's lives) and nothing more. [1] https://www.fbpurity.com/

I mean one look at the website kind of tells you why. The extension could be a lot less intrusive as well - just compare it to uBlock Origin for example. There doesn't need to be an onboarding message. I don't need to see "F.B. Purity hid:" prominently in the middle of my feed - just put that at the bottom right of the screen in gray text or in the extension. Etc. I'm probably going to uninstall it because it makes F…

Give this a try.

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ad-blocker-for-fac...

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fb_ad_block/

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#28

Post by notafraudster »

crakenzak wrote: post #2

Interesting article. I don't blame Facebook for doing whatever they can to properly show ads tho, they provide a "free" service and in exchange serve ads. It's not free to support a company their size and its expected they do everything they can to monetize the site properly. What do you guys think?

"do everything they can to monetize"

Except, evidently, allow users to pay money to not be subjected to ads.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#29

Post by dannyr »

baroffoos wrote: post #16
dannyr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business chooses how they make money to survive, can you just say "I don't like how you make money so I'll just get everything for free"? If you don't like how a company uses ads (regular, spammy, deceptive), no better way than tell them than by not giving them any traffic at all.

Users are allowed to control how they view content on their own computer. Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free and users may choose to render the content however they wish. Facebook is free to charge for the service.

"Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free".

No, it's not free. Facebook makes money off data from its users.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#30

Post by baroffoos »

dannyr wrote: post #29
baroffoos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are allowed to control how they view content on their own computer. Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free and users may choose to render the content however they wish. Facebook is free to charge for the service.

"Facebook has chosen to give the content out for free". No, it's not free. Facebook makes money off data from its users.

The "free" in this case is the fact that they have not charged any fee to obtain the data.
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