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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

#501

Post by smaudet »

tredre3 wrote: post #487
ProAm wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a small understanding as to how ads work and what they know.

Blocking ads is intended to prevent the ad network from tracking you. But: 1. Facebook already knows everything you see and do on facebook 2. Facebook is the ad network and serves its own ads. Therefore blocking ads on facebook won't prevent facebook from knowing everything you do. GP seems to have a fair understanding of the situation, care to explain why you think it's wrong?

I think the obvious answer is, that you are the product, and you are worth $$$$, possibly $$$$$, even $$$$$$

When did you agree to be sold without representation and a contract, again? Something about malicious contracts nobody reads? Pretty sure that behavior remains...criminal.

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

#502

Post by Marsymars »

yaportmax wrote: post #362
Marsymars wrote: post #72

The immediate fix to this is regulatory action. Facebook has made itself indispensable in a number of areas that are in the public interest and should be treated as a public good for these purposes. Ads are pollution, and Facebook is forcing people to choose between ingesting pollution and using facebook marketplace, or throwing their used but functional goods in the garbage.

Are you proposing banning advertising on Facebook? You know this will effectively destroy Facebook, Google, every free ad supported website on the internet?

I think there are a variety of potential solutions, but one where the public marketplace is taxed/polluted by a private entity in a way that can't be avoided isn't an acceptable status quo.

Requiring FB to provide a paid ad-free option with a price commensurate with their cost of providing service would be one approach. Prohibiting them from actively breaking adblockers would be another. I wouldn't wholesale ban ads, but banning them on FB marketplace would be reasonable - either we get an ad-free marketplace, or FB abandons the product and we get alternatives.

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

#503

Post by rand_flip_bit »

stubish wrote: post #393
npilk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, 100%. I played around with building this last year and even a simple version was already fairly effective: https://notes.npilk.com/experiments-with-ai-adblock One interesting thing is that it also removed some "internal CTAs" to engage (like "Start your day with our podcast!"). These aren't technically ads, so something like uBlock doesn't remove them. But honestly, I don't really mind having those filtered out…

I'm hoping those NP chips ending up in some new computers will be able to run something like this. Thanks for your work! A general purpose system, especially if trained by the users, would be more than just an adblocker. It could be trained to block out spiders or other phobia triggers for instance. Even regenerate the photo but with a kitten. Blur our tabloid clickbait 'in other news' links. The killer app for AR gl…

> It could be trained to block out spiders or other phobia triggers for instance. Even regenerate the photo but with a kitten. Blur our tabloid clickbait 'in other news' links.

Sounds like the plot of a Black Mirror episode :)

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

#504

Post by baking »

I've been thinking about extensions designed for specific sites. Imagine a version of Facebook from the good old days that only showed you posts from your friends and put them in reverse chronological order, also known as a timeline.

I would also like a version of LinkedIn that shows me what I click on without loading whatever extraneous stuff it is that's crashing my laptop if I open too many LinkedIn tabs.

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

#505

Post by vivzkestrel »

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…

- there is also a 3rd option

- its called 9$ a month with a blue check mark on all facebook groups and pages

- you gotta wonder why zuck hasnt done that

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

#506

Post by askvictor »

baking wrote: post #504

I've been thinking about extensions designed for specific sites. Imagine a version of Facebook from the good old days that only showed you posts from your friends and put them in reverse chronological order, also known as a timeline. I would also like a version of LinkedIn that shows me what I click on without loading whatever extraneous stuff it is that's crashing my laptop if I open too many LinkedIn tabs.

This exists for facebook.

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

#507

Post by miohtama »

smaudet wrote: post #501
tredre3 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking ads is intended to prevent the ad network from tracking you. But: 1. Facebook already knows everything you see and do on facebook 2. Facebook is the ad network and serves its own ads. Therefore blocking ads on facebook won't prevent facebook from knowing everything you do. GP seems to have a fair understanding of the situation, care to explain why you think it's wrong?

I think the obvious answer is, that you are the product, and you are worth $$$$, possibly $$$$$, even $$$$$$ When did you agree to be sold without representation and a contract, again? Something about malicious contracts nobody reads? Pretty sure that behavior remains...criminal.

You agree when you click I accept Terms of Service

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

#508

Post by esjeon »

I've just let Claude analyze an HAR file containing XHR traffic on the Facebook timeline. It happily wrote a script for extracting contents, fetch images and videos, and rebuilt the timeline into a single HTML -- highly responsive, with ZERO ads.

Now, parry this.

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

#510

Post by ygra »

magicalhippo wrote: post #400
titzer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my brain developed that as a defense mechanism. The web cultivated a certain kind of blindness where I literally don't look at certain parts of pages because my brain has learned that there is never anything useful there. Sometimes I just cannot see things unless I force my eyes to move across the page linearly, top to bottom. This is pathological. Like I find myself not ever looking at the top result in a se…

I was asked to test the redesigned web page of a large bank. They had eye tracking cameras and such hooked up to study how I used the web page. They ran through some scenarios, and one was how to get a car loan. I studied the homepage and found nothing, then clicked the menu and found loans, but no car loan on the loans page. I ended up searching and found it. After each scenario they asked me some questions, and the…

Also known as banner blindness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness). I'm genuinely surprised that a UX person doing usability testing (for a website!) has never heard of this. But I guess there's people missing basic knowledge in every field.
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