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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

#581

Post by Gareth321 »

timbit42 wrote: post #278
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.

Maybe reverse tactics and block/hide anything that isn't something you want to see.

In a few years, I don't think we'll be navigating to Facebook.com. We'll be asking our LLM: "what are my friends up to?" And it will provide a nice UI to browse interesting updates, collated from any open source, including Facebook. No ads, no influencers, no dark patterns, just what the user asks. And it won't require APIs. It will just browse the site itself as an agent and pick out the parts the user cares about.

I really think the new internet is going to be a radically different experience soon.

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

#582

Post by intended »

Parae wrote: post #565
bkaae wrote: post #555

Earlier 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...

If we say ads are an attack on our attention, time and money - then it’s a different ball game entirely.

Their incentives would be aligned to users, not advertisers.

The ideological changes alone would be like living in a different world entirely.

Heck, maybe micropayments would become viable at that point.

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

#583

Post by Cpoll »

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…

In my experience, conversations on Facebook also cause cognitive damage.

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

#584

Post by CarpeNecopinus »

I get their reasoning, but it still saddens me to see them surrender like that.

Pretty much every site that lives off of ads nowadays is "disgustingly anti-user" the same degree that Facebook is. The main difference being that Facebook had the capacity and confidence to wage a full-on war on ad blocking like this. Now, with this method proven by Facebook, it's likely that more websites will follow suit.

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

#585

Post by skybrian »

snickerer wrote: post #549

Ads 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…

Skill issue? Some people are clearly more vulnerable than others. You can occasionally get useful information from ads.

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

#586

Post by wodenokoto »

stinos wrote: post #579
aanet wrote: 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…

you realize that the only way to not get served ads on Facebook -- and thereby not benefit the company itself -- is to get rid of it completely You're probably right when it comes to benefiting the company, but technically - at least for me - using only https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr means no ads/sponsored/whatever. Only the posts I actually want to see, and chronologically so easy to continue where you left off.…

What does `?sk=h_chr` in the URL mean?

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

#587

Post by intended »

bkaae wrote: post #555
snickerer wrote: post #549

Ads 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.

Sure - why not ?

We are already paying for the externalities from ad tech. We’ve got entire worlds of predatory information behavior and near zero defenses for humans.

If you are on HN, you hopefully know enough to keep yourself clean and safe, but the rest of humanity is essentially getting mugged, defrauded and addicted 24/7.

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

#589

Post by magicalhippo »

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.

To be fair it was quite a long time ago, and as I recall the person guiding and asking questions was from the market research company. The web designers and whatnot was not in the room, but viewed the session remotely and could tell the person with me what to ask and such.

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

#590

Post by Gareth321 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #469
joshuat wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the fall of Reddit to be particularly upsetting. In its prime it was one of the best social networks I'd ever used and I found incredible value in it - but after having my app blown up by their API changes and the continued (unsurprising) push away from their old open platform to a more "curated" experience, it doesn't feel like the same place anymore.

Honestly? Reddit is a massive public manipulation platform. Consider that the daughter of the guy who purposefully weakened his product's encryption on behalf of Mossad (and was considered a hero of the state), the same daughter who was rubbing elbows with the world's richest and most powerful people, was a reddit powermod with moderation power on a huge number of major subreddits . Anyone who thinks that the ~500 mo…

I couldn't agree more. I suspect 80%+ of all comments now are bots. Paid for by the highest bidder. The entire front page is undoubtedly bought and paid for, as well. Subreddits are only allowed to survive if they don't threaten the paid for messaging and advertising.
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