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

#781

Post by guhcampos » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #686

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…

> 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 f…

I draw a line on advertising for myself: if it's just letting me know a service or product exists, it's fine. It's a business necessity. If I ever start a business, I need a way to communicate to potential customers that my business exists, that's fair use.

When the ads start being misleading, manipulative, emotional, irrational - then we're out of the fair use field and into the "this should be a crime" field.

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

#782

Post by tiznow » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #771

mrngld wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

Yes. We should stop listening to idiots that say taxation is theft.

Taxation isn't theft but poor fiscal policy is larceny.

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

#783

Post by tiznow » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

bialpio wrote: post #671

Retric wrote: post #593

Earlier 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.

Part of this is baked into the experience though, if "ads" here are trailers for upcoming films. I don't know if theaters are now showing ads for products, I haven't been in forever.

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

#784

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #769

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you want to pay for things, the companies will find ways to extract more money from you. Plex lifetime pass is now over $700 dollars My dashcam that used to let me use the app to locally pull down videos now requires an account to view the files on my camera that is putting out it's own password protected wifi network, just so the company can harvest more data and track me easier. This device cost several h…

Plex is just a nice UI and a DB wrapping lots of open source libraries and tools, you could replace it with a few days of AI assisted coding.

[deleted]

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

#785

Post by docjay » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

okamiueru wrote: post #694

mrngld wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

Not sure to what extend, if at all, I should engage here, as you do have some strong preconceptions that probably makes it less likely productive. > Steal from everyone (taxation) [...] give the money to government-run Facebook, and everything will be great because Government Not touching this. As an exercise, take it upon yourself to figure out how much it cost per meter (or, I assume more familiar to you -- footbal…

The earlier link you provided is indeed refreshingly quick to navigate. What a joy that’s unnecessarily rare. It renders like trash and is unusable on my intentionally-not-updated iPhone, but still. Yay.

“Provide incentive programs and reward those that take on such initiatives.”

We have that too, we call it capitalism. It’s not very unique, but we heavily market it under the “land of opportunity” moniker. Do a thing of value and your reward is the lion’s share of that value. “You get what you’re given” seems to make some countries happy, but I’m sure you can understand the appeal of “you get what you earn”, even if neither of them matches the brochure. The scholars can debate the pros and cons of it, and where it goes wrong, but you’re talking about investment reward structures like it’s a fresh concept coming out of Scandinavia.

On that note, let’s set aside the endless conversation around “government Facebook” and talk foundational: Size, diversity, and population. It’s funny when I see comments from micro->small nation states with relatively homogeneous citizens throwing up their hands like “Everyone should just agree on what to have for dinner, like we do.” Oh I’m sure you’re aware that ‘America be big’, maybe even visited New York and were impressed by all those not-tall non-blonde people waking around, but perhaps without fully appreciating that it alone has a 50% higher population than your whole country. Something more your speed would be the Atlanta metro area, which still has a ~10% higher population. Getting everyone to happily chip in a few bucks on a half pepperoni/vegetarian pizza (or, I assume more familiar to you — “Grøt med smør eller rørte bær”) is a lot easier when everyone can be fed by that pizza.

But that leads to the larger point: we don’t have as much of a problem getting our Norway sized cities to provide various communal welfare services to the local residents, the problem is in scaling that up to 65 Norways.

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

#786

Post by podocarp » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

conmod278 wrote: post #652

x______________ wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On your resources too! Your electricity, processing power and network bandwidth are all being abused without any incentives to cover the costs.

But Zuck has to put high-quality beef on his table which involves raising Wagyu and Angus cattle on a diet of macadamia nut meal and local beer. Zuck is not gonna do charity.

Do they actually raise cows on beer? I will believe the macadamia part.

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

#787

Post by duxup » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

guhcampos wrote: post #777

I'm with the developer here. At some point the effort is just not worth it anymore. Facebook, as a platform, has long since lost the relevance as a social network, it is basically just an ad platform these days. So why keep wasting resources on trying to block ads from an ad platform? A user who does not want to see ads on Facebook probably should just stop using Facebook altogether. I get the appeal for staying on I…

> Facebook, as a platform, has long since lost the relevance as a social network

I don’t understand how this is determined.

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

#788

Post by mistyvales » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #769

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you want to pay for things, the companies will find ways to extract more money from you. Plex lifetime pass is now over $700 dollars My dashcam that used to let me use the app to locally pull down videos now requires an account to view the files on my camera that is putting out it's own password protected wifi network, just so the company can harvest more data and track me easier. This device cost several h…

Plex is just a nice UI and a DB wrapping lots of open source libraries and tools, you could replace it with a few days of AI assisted coding.

Or just use Jellyfin

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

#789

Post by vivzkestrel » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

sire-vc wrote: post #732

vivzkestrel wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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

Every social media site that has tried a paid option has given up or vanished because nobody pays, full stop. Whatsapp is popular because it's free and no other reason.

working just fine for x

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

#790

Post by genewitch » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

Sophira wrote: post #399

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…

> 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. That isn't enough for me. I don't just want to not see the ads, I want to stop them being fetched entirely. There are two big problems with ads. * The ad network can build up a very complete profile of what you like, dislike, and general…

counterpoint: The "adblocker" AdNauseam. not only does it fetch every ad, it clicks them. every single ad is clicked. It keeps a running tally of how much money it's cost advertisers.

So, it is war, then.