If you're an engineer and your job is to defeat ublock origin, your work is not ethical. You're a facebook engineer-- you'll do just fine working elsewhere.
uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
681–690 of 953 posts
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#682They 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.
But can't they just use an xpath expression to test the computed text content of a node, like `/path/to/ad/div[contains(., 'sponsored')]`? In that expression, there could be any number of nested elements inside the terminal ` ` and it wouldn't matter. (And you'd probably have to use a regex test to account for tricky white space.)
The word sponsored in inside an SVG element with a linked `use` tag, so it's not that simple.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#683Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t answer their question, like at all.
Yes it does. Hobbyists are willing to spend their own money, hence their blog doesn't need ads. Businesses make money by selling products/services, so they don't need money. Wikipedia is donation supported. GP is pretty much saying - if it can only survive by running ads, let's do without it.
> Yes it does. Hobbyists are willing to spend their own money, hence their blog doesn't need ads.
Until it is unsustainable which is the majority of cases due to no funding.
> Wikipedia is donation supported.
The majority of websites are not as big as Wikipedia, let alone having donations in the tens of millions.
The GP talks about Mastodon which hobbyists run and users sign up to instances to have their social identity on.
toot.community, mastodon.cloud and many others are closing down this month due to no funding.
And even some organisations don't want to run instances due to it being expensive. (1.)
Even mozilla.social shut down.
Sure, these services wouldn't run ads, but they can't charge users either which leaves donations as the only way to fund it, and 9.9/10 times it doesn't work.
Using Wikipedia as an example to prove a point about donations makes no sense for everyone else who also contribute to the open web for free.
1. https://gfsc.community/why-we-discontinued-our-mastodon-serv...
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#684Controversial 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.…
Do you have something else going on perhaps? The very top item on that FB link was an ad, followed by 2 posts, then another ad
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate how normal ads seem to be to young people (under age 30). Just seeing TikTok videos secondhand on YouTube the videos seems stuffed with people pushing crap. YouTube channels none are without ads either by YouTube or by the channel owners. Plus the "oh you have an add blocker!!" whining if you dare try to slow the firehose of ads coming at you. Yes I do have an ad blocker because it seems my entire existence is…
Lets be fair, here. Traditional TV was ~40 minutes of content with 20 minutes of ads. I still remember televised holiday movies "presented with limited commercial breaks by Folgers, where the best part of waking up..." or whoever was sponsoring it. Radio stations had to power their transmitters and pay their staff, so they had ads. Newspapers use ads to keep themselves affordable. This has always been a business mode…
I believe radio across Europe was largely ad free and had a different business model. The BBC for example.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#686Ads 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…
> I propose a sane rule for all humans: if you see an ad somewhere, or if you suspect a hidden ad ('influencers' trying to promote something), close the tab immediately and never return to that site.
But this very site has lots of ads on it. Up until a few days ago, there was an "Apply to YC Fall 2026" link at the bottom of every page, and the front page usually has ads on it too [0]. So it seems tricky to strictly follow your proposed rule while simultaneously posting here.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#:~:text=Another%20...
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate how normal ads seem to be to young people (under age 30). Just seeing TikTok videos secondhand on YouTube the videos seems stuffed with people pushing crap. YouTube channels none are without ads either by YouTube or by the channel owners. Plus the "oh you have an add blocker!!" whining if you dare try to slow the firehose of ads coming at you. Yes I do have an ad blocker because it seems my entire existence is…
Lets be fair, here. Traditional TV was ~40 minutes of content with 20 minutes of ads. I still remember televised holiday movies "presented with limited commercial breaks by Folgers, where the best part of waking up..." or whoever was sponsoring it. Radio stations had to power their transmitters and pay their staff, so they had ads. Newspapers use ads to keep themselves affordable. This has always been a business mode…
I grew up under communism. On TV, we had full movies without ads. There was 3-5min ad segment right before main evening news, that was it.
I could not understand how people can watch movie interrupted 10x by an add break.
Not wishing the return of communism, but yeah, I would simply ban all ads. No useful purpose to the society, whatsoever. Treat it like smoking and other drugs. Yes, can fill the coffers, but overall it is detrimental to the society.
If you want info about something you need, there are catalogues, consumer groups, enthusiast forums and internet search in general. Yes, the ads can be used to create new needs. Overall (if you really think what this achieves), that is a bug, not a feature.
Yes, there will be ways to sneak-in ads in a shady way, but that can be prosecuted. And the scale of exposure matters, a lot.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying for quality content has been normalized, the price floor for payment is way above what Facebook and the vast majority of Web content offers. That’s why movies and AAA games can clear a billion dollars, but the internet is still dependent on people failing to install ad blockers.
> That’s why movies (...) can clear a billion dollars, And yet somehow I still get 30 minutes of ads before a watching a goddamn movie in a cinema.
Theatres need a piece of the pie too :^)
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should also normalize paying for content at the same time then.
Nah. We should normalize public services and resources to develop knowledge and tools, that are made freely available. Provide incentive programs and reward those that take on such initiatives. There are many such services where I'm from. And the feeling when using them is refreshing. You're not looking for an ulterior motive to be misinformed. They're responsive as they don't load a 10 MiB JavaScript blob to track y…
So, steal from everyone (taxation) whether they want to support or use government-run Facebook, give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government?
What incentive does that mechanism have to spur innovation for government-run Facebook? Does the government fund two Facebooks and scale funding based on market share? Or, like what virtually always happens in government, does it metastasize, realize it's actual "customer" isn't its "users" but is actually the government itself, and act accordingly to protect and grow its own budget?
Everything about a subscription model is better. If it sucks, don't pay for it, and if no one thinks its a worthwhile bargain then they run out of money and it dies. Efficient. If people do like it, then great.
Re: uBlock Origin is giving up the fight to keep ads off Facebook
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those childish comments are so funny. 3 billion people use Facebook regularly, and there are folks that deem themselves superior to all others who claim "I know nobody who uses Facebook". XD
Christ, pipe down little buddy. These “aha gotcha!” responses belong on reddit—but since you’re craving for one too, I’ll bite: “It’s not a childish comment in the slightest, and most definitely not a claim of superiority in any way either. It’s simply a fact. I, too, know a grand total of 0 persons who use Facebook. Three billion people may use it regularly but all the people I know are in the other, let’s say >vast…
Did you get triggered so much to have to create an account to write that comment? I think of us two it's you who need to relax XD