Why not just set up a build pipeline to have AI view the page, check for ads, then do the whack a mole until it removes them, or have I missed something that needs human in the loop?
Most people aren't going to pay for an AdBlocker.
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
#562As 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.
Given that YouTube already has a suite of anti-adblocking checks in their UI code [1] (e.g. submit a fake request to the /player endpoint and see if anything removed the ads from it - which also tells you exactly which fields you need to remove from which request, lol), I don't know why they don't have someone looking at the latest filters and reacting to them.
Twitch did that a while back and uBlock Origin was ineffective against their video ads within a few months.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#563Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions. That's horrible, worse than attacking a machine with malware, damaging persons and societies. Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'. But we shouldn't accept being under constant attack of brain worms. I propose a sane rule for all humans: if…
> Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain.
Ads are an attack aimed at your computer too. They download malicious code to spy on you and gather intelligence data about everything you like, you visit, you buy,... it is malicious software hacking into your computer. The fact that some of the richest companies in the world are the criminals does not make it less of a crime.
The propaganda part is, of course, also totally true. Lies, manipulation, etc. has been normalized when a few years back will have been considered a crime.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#564Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions. That's horrible, worse than attacking a machine with malware, damaging persons and societies. Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'. But we shouldn't accept being under constant attack of brain worms. I propose a sane rule for all humans: if…
> Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. Ads are an attack aimed at your computer too. They download malicious code to spy on you and gather intelligence data about everything you like, you visit, you buy,... it is malicious software hacking into your computer. The fact that some of the richest companies in the world are the criminals does not make it less of a crime. The propaganda part is, of course, also totally…
On your resources too! Your electricity, processing power and network bandwidth are all being abused without any incentives to cover the costs.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#565Ads are an attack, aimed at your brain. They try to inject malware into your thinking, manipulating your worldview and your actions. That's horrible, worse than attacking a machine with malware, damaging persons and societies. Decades of ad propaganda have tricked people into seeing them as something 'normal'. But we shouldn't accept being under constant attack of brain worms. I propose a sane rule for all humans: if…
We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
You think Meta would spy less on us and show us less ads if we payed to access their services ? They would just keep doing what they've been doing for ages and they would have even more money to keep their enshitification going.
We are already paying too much for all the services with subscription. Like Spotify, Netflix and others...
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#566I'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.
Doesn’t your HAR file have everything an agent would need to send requests to FB as if it was you? I hope it was an aged one.
Yes, but the token expires upon logout, and, after reading your comment, I just double-checked the expiry (got 400 from all related endpoints).
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No it can't. The only thing you'll end up with is an arms race. An arms race companies like Google and Facebook are destined to win because they have unlimited budgets to fight ad-blocking because it's what made them filthy rich.
uBlock Origin is one guy holding back the sea with his finger in the dike.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
You think Meta would spy less on us and show us less ads if we payed to access their services ? They would just keep doing what they've been doing for ages and they would have even more money to keep their enshitification going. We are already paying too much for all the services with subscription. Like Spotify, Netflix and others...
Plenty of other services (like Spotify) stop showing you ads if you pay them enough money.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#569The last time I went on Facebook, the ads were so similar to posts it was near impossible to tell one from the other. The problem is compounded by elderly relatives liking or sharing weird AI posts, and an algorithm that seems to be random and non deterministic
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#570uBlock team is the modern times heroes fighting the good fight for us. Thanks to them I've been navigating the web with peace of mind for a long time.
Sometimes I find myself thinking how our lives would be if couple of guys didn't build shitty tech startups. We've gone from creative advertising to these manipulative online marketing scams, that attack our brains, especially targeting young generation, which effects how our societies, behaviours, art and culture develop.
Recommend watching:
"We're building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says technosociologist Zeynep Tufecki. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren't even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us -- and what we can do in response."