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

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

#491
post #218

Controversial opinion: This entire thread reads like a game of cat-and-mouse. People trying to block intrusive ads, and FB reaching into the depths of code and making it nearly impossible for anyone to do so en masse. I've been there. Tried to uncheck all the boxes on their ad platform; used all manners of ad blockers, etc; used incognito mode; used Tor; etc. etc. etc. At some point, you realize that the only way to…

I keep waiting for people to understand that algorithmic social media communities that serve ads and harvest info are pure poison. The problem is that everyone thinks they've got it under control, for them it isn't a problem or it's a manageable one. My personal view is that if you take a personal, not a preaching stand early and often people just learn that's who you are. I've never had a Myspace or FB or IG, or any…

> You just have to make your own choice and stick with it, firmly and politely.

100%

That's the way to go.

And tbh, not being on FB hasn't affected my social life. I'm in touch with people {friends | family | colleagues | etc} the way I want. And if I miss any social events, that's Ok. No FOMO here. Mostly JOMO.

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

#492
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online advertising is less and less about forcing a pitch to conversion in the moment its viewed. Even if someone with an ad blocker would never click on the ad anyway, repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. Six months or even a year from then, when that user is looking for a specific SaaS tool, for example, the brand they saw 40 times already is the one that feels established and safe, and…

> repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. This is exactly why I don't want to see their shit, ever. It just doubles my resolve to not see it. They are targeting my underbrain, my subconscious, and do not want it . There's one particular insurance company that continued to evade my ad blocking attempts for literally years. I will never buy from them. My current insurance is fine and the ad-mon…

That's logical, but the parent comment "I'm immune to ads, I won't click them" falls flat because no one is immune to ads. That's why it's such a big industry.

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

#493
post #335
post #310

This is the correct decision, IMO. I only use Facebook in a limited capacity (one phenomenal private group whose usefulness is unfortunately simply unmatched elsewhere, one infrequently updated page and a very locked-down, minimal personal profile). I think people need to understand what the purpose of Facebook is in terms of its function and constituent parts, in the Stafford Beer sense, and I think if enough people…

Where Facebook has gone, I fear other U.S. social media is headed. Reddit recently blocked access to old.reddit.com for users who are not logged in, which suggests they're doubling down on user tracking. On top of that are the increasing privacy, censorship, and disinformation concerns that come with using any U.S.-based social media. There is clearly a need for facebook/reddit alternatives for useful groups like the…

Social media in general is doomed. Adverts, invasive tracking, and AI slop have killed it.

Rather than creating tiktok but open source, we should just dump the idea entirely. Social media was a net negative to society.

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

#494
post #373
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This browser extension is so inimical to online advertising Google (world's largest advertising corporation) banned it from the Chrome web store. https://adnauseam.io/ It loads every ad, and clicks them without display them. So the advertiser still pays for the click but the user never sees ads.

I feel that could easily backfire if your account or IP gets marked as an agent for malicious click-fraud.

Oh cool, one more feature for the "Malware that quietly launches a copilot image query every 10 seconds in the background" idea bank. It can quietly click every ad too!

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

#495
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most activity on Facebook is via phone. I bet Facebook would prefer to get rid of the website entirely; the age of adding Facebook like buttons and comment sections to websites is long past. I can't think of anything that works on the website better than the phone app.

>I bet Facebook would prefer to get rid of the website entirely For some parts they did. I tried Facebook Dating, and it's only available on phones. Also, to save you the trouble, don't use Facebook Dating. It is, to use a technical term, a fermented shitpile.

Open the developer console and change your device mode to a mobile one, worked the last time I tried it.

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

#498
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.

Youtube offers a fairly reasonable subscription to remove ads. As far as I'm aware FB doesn't offer the same.

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

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketplace. It's horrible, but the area I live in has mostly abandoned craigslist and if you want to buy/sell used stuff, marketplace is where you have to be.

I feel like Craigslist squandered its effective monopoly with online classifieds. While I do not think that the company needed to modernize the site’s UI, it baffles me that their anti-spam tools are so rudimentary. Most searches yield irrelevant keyword-bombed results, and, such results tend to be nearly identical listings. I had yearned for a viable Craigslist alternative for years. Sadly, Facebook Marketplace won.…

It wouldn't have helped. In Australia we have Gumtree which has a UI that is just as modern as Facebook but it was still crushed. No one can compete in a space that lives on network effect.

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

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something is seriously broken with computers and we can't seem to face it. It's not computers that are the problem, it's people. We've normalized (and even embraced) the situation where relationship between businesses and customers is adversarial. The phenomenon you're describing, known as "banner blindness", is just brain filtering out noise, but the thing is, that noise didn't get there by accident. What I can't…

> What I can't wrap my head around is, businesses are run by people, and all these entrepreneurs are making explicit decisions to abuse their fellow human beings This is a thought I want to pull on I have a view that organisations, with their network of misaligned incentives, mean that companies act something like an alien lifeform. Something with a decentralised brain, unable to plan beyond immediate stimuli Compani…

Corporations are too complex for any single person to truly control. Attention of leadership necessarily dilutes with each additional layer of management. The result is this weird corporate chaos where nobody is completely in charge because everybody has to take charge of something, however small, to progress, or the whole could accomplish nothing at all.

The result is this flailing tentacled monster where each appendix seems to have a mind of its own and sometimes littlw regard for even the other parts of its own body.

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