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How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

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Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#211

Post by johnward »

jokoon wrote: post #162
gorgoiler wrote: post #108

Relatedly, uBlock Origin’s picker has really improved my quality of life on Facebook. I love Facebook, it’s my only remaining connection to some people, and it’s revived many friendships I thought I’d lost. However, as one gets on in life, People You May Know can be extremely emotionally impactful. It is a little part of the web UI that brings back the dead, ex partners I still miss, exes who have moved on, and toxic…

> I love Facebook Interesting, what do you think about the backlash against facebook? I guess there could be arguments in favor of facebook, after all.

Facebook is my only real connection to interact with people. I work remote and spend all of my free time with my family but I don't have any real-life friends. So facebook fills a little bit of a void where I can feel like I have a few "friends". I do understand some of the backlash of them sucking up all the world's data and selling it to advertisers.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#212

Post by gorgoiler »

jokoon wrote: post #162
gorgoiler wrote: post #108

Relatedly, uBlock Origin’s picker has really improved my quality of life on Facebook. I love Facebook, it’s my only remaining connection to some people, and it’s revived many friendships I thought I’d lost. However, as one gets on in life, People You May Know can be extremely emotionally impactful. It is a little part of the web UI that brings back the dead, ex partners I still miss, exes who have moved on, and toxic…

> I love Facebook Interesting, what do you think about the backlash against facebook? I guess there could be arguments in favor of facebook, after all.

I love what Facebook brings to my life and relationships, in a purely practical way.

That positive sense of connection with the world far outweighs what (with respect) The Internet suggests I shouldn’t like about the business or their products.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#213

Post by turc1656 »

I don't use Facebook, but I imagine the easiest way of blocking the ads is like most other websites - to block the connection to the ad-server(s), no? That's how uMatrix operates and, in my opinion, that works exceptionally well. It blocks known domains that are ad-servers and that alone blocks damn near everything because of the way ads are served on nearly every single website.

In fact it works so well that pretty much the only time I've noticed ads has been when I look at uMatrix and I see there aren't direct user connections to the ad servers. For those pages, it looks like the site itself is acting as a middle man and pulling the ads and inserting into the HTML via scripting. But that's a lot more work for developers to do, as well as more bandwidth and overhead. I don't know if those sites are able to tailor ads to individual users when they do this - they would need some sort of identification to pass to the ad server so the ads on those sites might be generic, not sure.

But that's my observation, FWIW.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#214

Post by Lio »

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?

I don’t blame Facebook for trying insist you see ads. I do blame them for dirty dark patterns like blocking copy and paste in calendar events so that you can’t copy them to an external service.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#215

Post by aguyfromnb »

tyingq wrote: post #167
1propionyl wrote: post #53

I'm surprised I haven't seen a single comment say what ought to be the obvious: the easiest way to never see Facebook ads is to just not use Facebook. I should hope I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure, but... quitting really isn't as hard as you tell yourself it is. It's not as essential as you think it is.

"It's not as essential as you think it is." I'm not able to avoid it. Since I can't make extended family members use something else, it's a source for family news. My family is large, both on my side and my spouse's, so FB isn't trivial to replace. Something that could scrape and mirror a curated "family news" would be cool. But given the rate of change at FB, it would be hopelessly brittle.

>Since I can't make extended family members use something else, it's a source for family news.

How did your family accomplish this 10 years ago? How valuable is the family news if you need it curated?

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#216

Post by aguyfromnb »

jaywalk wrote: post #204
wayneftw wrote: post #196

What happens when screen readers can't identify things properly? Can Facebook be sued for not providing proper accessibility, given that their site is deemed to be essential by many? If screen readers can identify something as an advertisement, then so should ad blockers be able to. If not... then aren't we depriving the blind and the sight challenged from valuable advertising equality?

I think you're kind of misunderstanding how screen readers work. You're clearly seeing the "Sponsored" text on the screen, and so is the screen reader. It's not that the text isn't there , it's just that it's put there in a way that is nearly impossible to target with CSS-based ad blocking. That's all.

>It's not that the text isn't there, it's just that it's put there in a way that is nearly impossible to target with CSS-based ad blocking.

I'm confused too, then.

If the screen-reader can see the word "sponsored" easily, why can't any other code? What is the difference between how a screen reader finds "sponsored" vs an ad-blocker?

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#217

Post by tyingq »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #215
tyingq wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not as essential as you think it is." I'm not able to avoid it. Since I can't make extended family members use something else, it's a source for family news. My family is large, both on my side and my spouse's, so FB isn't trivial to replace. Something that could scrape and mirror a curated "family news" would be cool. But given the rate of change at FB, it would be hopelessly brittle.

> Since I can't make extended family members use something else, it's a source for family news. How did your family accomplish this 10 years ago? How valuable is the family news if you need it curated?

"How did your family accomplish this 10 years ago?"

I don't see how that matters. I'm not going to be successful convincing 100+ people flung across the country to go back to how we used to do things. They like Facebook, and likely aren't interested in their crazy uncle's rant about Facebook. They post their news there, and not anywhere else.

"How valuable is the family news if you need it curated"

FB is my source for things like "who graduated", "who is pregnant", "who got married", "who got a new job", "how that horse on cousin Fred's ranch is doing" and so on. I like to know these things.

By "curated", I mean something like a scraper that could pull out posts from family people and put it somewhere so I wouldn't need to log into Facebook and get exposed to a bunch of other stuff I don't want to see...and the pervasive tracking. I also mentioned it's probably not practical.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#218

Post by a13n »

kelnos wrote: post #126
a13n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't work. Users who are willing to pay to make ads go away are the most valuable audience for advertisers because they have money to spend. Therefore FB would have to charge a TON of money to make up for their billions in lost ads revenue, and nobody would pay that amount anyway.

That doesn't really make sense to me. I'm willing and able to pay for an ad-free experience. I will never ever click on an ad. Ever. I adblock like crazy. I don't see how I'm at all valuable to advertisers. And I suspect I'm nowhere near alone when it comes to people who would pay for no ads. A quick search claims FB's annualized average ad revenue per user for 2018 was just under $25[0]. If I got value out of FB (I…

It's not as simple as charging ad revenue per user.

Only a small subset of users can/would afford to pay $25/yr for Facebook, and these users are arguably the most valuable to advertisers. Therefore by letting them skip ads, FB would lose out on more than $25/yr/user.

It might be profitable at something like $1,000/yr, but who would pay that?

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#219

Post by Jamwinner »

phito wrote: post #110
1propionyl wrote: post #53

I'm surprised I haven't seen a single comment say what ought to be the obvious: the easiest way to never see Facebook ads is to just not use Facebook. I should hope I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure, but... quitting really isn't as hard as you tell yourself it is. It's not as essential as you think it is.

I never liked facebook so I never really used it, deleted my account 3 years ago. I always was (and still am) against their practices and business model. I have a hobby which is growing carnivorous plants and last year I started a small side business selling my extra plants. The entire community is now on facebook (before that it was mostly forums) and I had to reopen an account to be part of it. Sadly it is essentia…

Its funny, I have a few hobbies that have settled on fb as the central hub of discussion. Yet, a single friendship irl still yeilds me more info. If the caliber of person guiding my hobby feels facebook is the best forum, I might already be ahead of the pack.

Stop making excuses for sidlining your personal integrity, you are now just another part of the problem.

Re: How Facebook Avoids Ad Blockers

#220

Post by Jamwinner »

grogenaut wrote: post #41
tjpnz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have issues with Facebook and do everything I can to limit my interaction with the platform, but for some situations it's unavoidable - RSVPs to events where there is no alternative, some things relating to births/deaths or marriages, close family members who I've failed to coax off their messaging platform all come to mind. In those situations I'm not going to compromise my own security or privacy.

You can only rsvp over facebook, not via text, email, phone, in person, etc? I've never found there to be no alternative. Hell for most events unless the outlay to throw it was extensive you can just show up, I've never actually had an issue with this, and if they actually want you to show they'll call YOU.

Its amazing when you find out who are actually your friends, and who just likes you at their parties, or associated with their event.
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