uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by necovek » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:31 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #477

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, ads are a resource drain that should not be taking over our personal systems. The web started as this proposition: you send a request to remote computer. Request says "Hey... can I read a document named this?" and the computer shows you the document. Now this may have included images and external links and sound, and whatnot. But today, the web is more of an application delivery system too. So many reque…

But today, the web is more of an application delivery system … I would prefer not to transact--at all--with any remote system that wanted to freeload on my resources What I really want is a non-executable web. I first started using the web in the mid-90s and most websites were like that. HTML, images, colours, fonts (but only from a pre-defined short list), and the occasional sound. If a site used JavaScript at all,…

Unfortunately, there are already techniques that track you through static elements on a page (think tracking pixels, but any resource load is sufficient).

Considering the money in advertising on the internet, if web moved to more of a content delivery platform, we'd have both 1. content start including ads inline (you see that on Youtube already), and 2. static/server-side tracking techniques improve even further.

Even if we disallow cross-site resources, site owners will implement tracking server-side, though that obviously introduces a trust question between trackers and hosters.

With those two, an ad network with sufficient tracking support from web sites would still be able to cross-link the traffic on a single user and achieve similar results.

This does not mean we should not fight it. But this would just be a step in the cat-and-mouse game, but a very expensive and hardly achievable one too :)

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

#512

Post by necovek » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

ygra wrote: post #510

magicalhippo wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's also note that they did say "25 years ago". UX research then and now was, at the very least, different, and there was less experience with web-specific behaviour. I'd also note that it was mostly graphic designers doing web design back then, or maybe that's just me.

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

#513

Post by bastardoperator » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

DJBunnies wrote: post #224

ck2 wrote: post #220

I haven't been on Facebook for years Why are people on anything meta or musk? Then again I figured we'd be back to personal blogs by now since "AI" can set one up in seconds

Some of us plan events / engage socially.

What's your favorite type of event to plan on Facebook?

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

#514

Post by butt_her_churn » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

Let the butter churn! This is exciting. Someone will step up and build a superior tool with GenAI. Maybe we can just say, "Hey Claude, write me an adblock solution to replace ublock origin!." Claude responds with, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." UH OH HERE WE GO AGAIN!

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

#515

Post by Barbing » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

phoghed wrote: post #458

frollogaston wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like this with YouTube. It's fair that they don't want me blocking ads and will try their best to prevent it. If they ever succeed, I'll leave without complaint. Already never use it on my phone cause adblocking is annoying on there.

I just pay them a pittance in exchange for no ads for the whole family across all devices.

Not a pittance but worth it. So fast, so reliable, such incredible engineers and comedians sharing such amazing things.

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

#516

Post by robocat » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

sodapopcan wrote: post #410

robocat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you notice any change in the adverts targeting you after an impulse purchase?

Good question but I honestly can't remember, even though it wasn't even that long ago. I've given up services slowly over the past few years, but since I used all the big stuff: Google search/email, instagram, and facebook, and am (still) addicted to YouTube that the ads were already soooooo specific to me that I doubt they got any more specific. I would assume that after I bought that stupid sponge that didn't work…

Cheers.

A silicone sponge seems so oxymoronical: that was my responsible impetus.

Hard to avoid commercial interests. Sell poets on the block.

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

#517

Post by alex1138 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:43 AM UTC

classified wrote: post #99

This barf bag of a company is making the internet a war zone. If at all possible, the best you can do is to never touch their toxic mess.

This is literally true. I've heard their AI scrapers are especially vicious. I can imagine (I don't know this for sure, it's just what I assume) Gemini (or others, idk) kind of are classy about it. When Google pre-LLM was scraping the internet, I don't remember too many complaints about "Google is pinging my server so often it's a strain on resources"

Facebook? They've always been the worst at this. By "this" I guess I mean the internet

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

#518

Post by Barbing » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:47 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #370

wildzzz wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Sites will start streaming in the whole webpage using DRM so the only thing that can actually see the ad is your monitor. If it comes that, I'll put my real monitor in front of that DRMed monitor (doable with flat screens) and I'll have a private LLM, in real-time, pushing on the real monitor (the one I look at), an ad-free version of the DRM'ed monitor. DRM is nasty but private AI models are already more powerful…

They’re really going to make us drink the verification cans :(

…require a refundable purchase of a sponsored product, maybe. Then our bot has to buy it, or in another scenario with the already-used tactic: take the quiz on which ads we saw or whatever. Then we’ll need a robot with human eyes to blink at the camera over the screen when that’s a requirement. Have to hook it up to a nervous system when the bodysensor monitor wants to make sure we did responded to the jumpscare or got emotional at the right place.

Spot checks by humans knocking on your door (lifetime ban from all ad-funded businesses if you don’t answer).

Will have to settle for friends rehashing content until encryption’s illegal and so is any retelling. Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this xyz, without the express written consent of abcd, is prohibited.

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

#519

Post by dombiscoff » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:51 AM UTC

A lot of people are saying to stop using facebook as if its such a simple, catch-all answer. For a lot of people, and a lot of countries, facebook (whatsapp, too) is still the primary(only) way of communication. If not with your friends, then with your family. There's a big demand from those people to have a way of interacting with this pseudo-essential service without having to oblige to complete data rape.

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

#520

Post by kart23 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

jcfrei wrote: post #3

Once LLMs get fast enough at processing real-time images Apple (or anybody really) can just roll out a browser rendering engine that just masks all ads. It will take a few years but the browser ad-business is in it's terminal phase.

apple has ads in the os. that seems deeply anticompetitive