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uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

digitalescapetools.com

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Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#421

Post by ajsnigrutin »

echelon wrote: post #381
SCLeo wrote: post #377

As much as I understand their decision, I hope they didn't stop. I don't use Facebook myself but now I am worried YouTube now knows that if they try a bit harder uBO would just give up.

Let's just build a new Facebook. We have the tools to make this orders of magnitude easier. We can do this to all of social media. Big tech gave us the magic space runes (LLMs) we can use to undo them. They have no idea what they've done. All of their value distilled into powerful exoskeletons we can run from home. Already, it's become apparent that the world is distancing itself from American Big Tech, and they're u…

Building a facebook is easy, getting people there and hosting it is expensive, and to get that money, you need ads, and to keep getting money for those ads, you have to obfuscate your code so ublock doesn't work anymore, and you're back at the beginning.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#422

Post by inigyou »

hn_submit wrote: post #187
wkjagt wrote: post #164

I know this is probably a very naive question, but what is the end goal putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers? Surely, someone with an ad blocker installed is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway. I don't really know what I am talking about, but I guess it's all about ad impressions that generate money, but doesn't this strategy end up making less money, because the mo…

I believe tracking and privacy invasions cannot be solved through technological means, it needs to be solved through laws and regulations. We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over…

It can be solved through technological means, but these ones aren't sufficient. I remember how that Luigi guy tried to solve a different problem by technological means and it worked for a few months.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#423

Post by inigyou »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #259
kakacik wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go a bit further - if something penetrates firefox + ublock origin combo, I'll go out of my way to make sure I'll never, ever buy such product or service if I can avoid that (not always possible but reasonably frequent). Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happe…

There is a ton of shady stuff that UBO let's through. Some of it can be filtered with the optional lists but not all. You really need NoScript and LocalCDN in the arsenal to pare back the invasive abuse of privacy.

Literally nothing works through NoScript any more since all the bootcamps started teaching React.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#424

Post by inigyou »

akersten wrote: post #17

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of ` ` so it's very hard to write selectors against. One has to wonder how that div soup affects accessibility as I find it very unlikely that this content is presented nicely to assistive tools. I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this.

Who would file an ADA suit for a screen reader being unable to correctly read an ad?

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#425

Post by inigyou »

neuralkoi wrote: post #39
akersten wrote: post #17

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of ` ` so it's very hard to write selectors against. One has to wonder how that div soup affects accessibility as I find it very unlikely that this content is presented nicely to assistive tools. I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this.

I recently found this out the hard way. Instagram’s web app has a super annoying popup. To click the comments button for a post, your cursor has to pass over the username, which just happens to launch a profile preview with the “follow” button exactly where the comments button was, causing you to unintentionally follow the account. I tried to block this popup with uBlock Origin to no avail. No matter what element I s…

Never delete your account. That account has a bunch of associated signals that scream "real user". Therefore you should sell it on an account marketplace to a spammer, if you really hate the platform.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#427

Post by asadotzler »

wildzzz wrote: post #312
jimrandomh wrote: post #282

Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad. I am significantly less tolerant of ads than average people seem to be. (I think average people are making a horrible mistake about this, and are badly cognitively damaged by ads in ways they don't realize). If my choices are to look at ad…

Sites will start streaming in the whole webpage using DRM so the only thing that can actually see the ad is your monitor.

That's far more costly, requires an entirely new setup, and a whole different set of expertise from what most companies have today. It won't happen because the cost benefit analysis just doesn't work out.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#428

Post by inigyou »

A1kmm wrote: post #308
akersten wrote: post #17

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of ` ` so it's very hard to write selectors against. One has to wonder how that div soup affects accessibility as I find it very unlikely that this content is presented nicely to assistive tools. I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this.

Or an unauthorised access / exceeds access to a computer system prosecution in at least one jurisdiction somewhere around the world. If the owner of the system has a 'no ads' policy and a security mechanism to prevent ad servers from accessing their display without their authorisation, it is one thing if a company accidentally circumvents that by changing their page in a way that breaks detection (and unless there ar…

We need to figure out how this is actually DMCA circumvention. That one seems to have teeth.

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#429

Post by inigyou »

echelon wrote: post #381
SCLeo wrote: post #377

As much as I understand their decision, I hope they didn't stop. I don't use Facebook myself but now I am worried YouTube now knows that if they try a bit harder uBO would just give up.

Let's just build a new Facebook. We have the tools to make this orders of magnitude easier. We can do this to all of social media. Big tech gave us the magic space runes (LLMs) we can use to undo them. They have no idea what they've done. All of their value distilled into powerful exoskeletons we can run from home. Already, it's become apparent that the world is distancing itself from American Big Tech, and they're u…

The problem with building a new Facebook is, what is a Facebook, actually? Like, can you even write down a list of things that make up a Facebook?

Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook

#430

Post by ajkjk »

inigyou wrote: post #409
ajkjk wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping we can mostly ban ads in my lifetime (on the basis that companies should not be allowed to freely try to manipulate unconsenting strangers. and that it makes the world suck to live in and we don't have to put up with that). Nothing would make me happier honestly.

Who's we? Politicians?

Well, the populace. But yeah presumably via politicians. It certainly might require winning a few elections.
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