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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

#881

Post by rldjbpin »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #620
rldjbpin wrote: post #612

since the leadership change, youtube has been on a similar crusade against adblocking. however, despite all the things that happened, ublock, even in the lite version, is able to work on the website. this has been quite well-covered and even discussed here. however, found it interesting that fb was able to quietly win the battle. however, it is a shame that nothing can be done on the mobile front, at least inside the…

> however, found it interesting that fb was able to quietly win the battle. I think it's just because nobody actually cares. Too much effort for marginal gains. Who even uses Facebook in 2026? Instagram I get it, but Facebook? YouTube is a completely different matter.

> Who even uses Facebook in 2026? Instagram I get it, but Facebook?

i don't think non-fb apps are only running the meta's ad revenue, which is meant to overtake google's.

while i personally don't use it, does not mean they are not getting enough eyeballs.

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

#882

Post by mariusor »

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…

I had a period before I dropped Facebook where I actually manually removed every add from the timeline with the added option of "I don't want to see ads from this company ever again", and frankly it worked.

After a period of a doing this I started to get new ads only periodically, and after a couple of sessions of removing every one of them, the rest of the month was quiet.

I fucking beat the Facebook ad department.

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

#883

Post by account42 »

miki123211 wrote: post #740
abirch wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficult thing is people don't want to pay for things. Ads are a way to mitigate that so that people/companies can capture some value that they create.

Ads are progressive taxes in disguise. If you make the kind of content that costs a lot to create but almost nothing to copy, you have a dilemma: Set the price too high, and you aren't getting any money from the poor at all at all, even though they're willing to pay far above your copying costs. Set the price too low, and you aren't extracting as much profit from the rich as you could be. Ads let you serve the same p…

And slavery provides free housing and meals, without it many would starve.

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

#884

Post by account42 »

ptaffs wrote: post #749
techdmn wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. It's hard to escape ads even by paying for things, with cable TV being a common (though increasingly outdated) example.

the example is good and those ads are less awful because the same ad it sent to a demographic, rather than an individual, eg everyone in Michigan get the same ad or everyone watching Friends at 8pm in Cincinnati gets the same ad. Facebook's specialty is targeting a user with an ad. And a side effect or bonus is that few others see it to talk about how inaccurate it might be.

They may be less awful but they are still awful and we should not accept them.

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

#885

Post by account42 »

sbarre wrote: post #713
techdmn wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. It's hard to escape ads even by paying for things, with cable TV being a common (though increasingly outdated) example.

What you pay(paid) for cable TV was never enough to actually cover the total cost of the service you were receiving. You were splitting that cost with the advertisers. This is not a defence of advertising, just a reality check on this bad example.

It was enough when cable companies were new. And your argument fails because entertainment is not priced to cost anyway.

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

#886

Post by account42 »

nekusar wrote: post #714
techdmn wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. It's hard to escape ads even by paying for things, with cable TV being a common (though increasingly outdated) example.

In European countries websites (various, mostly news), I'm seeing more of "Accept all cookies and ads" OR "sign up and pay".

Always remember the third option: "close the tab and don't give them your time"

If they are willing do sell you to data harvesters then that won't be the only unethical thing they are willing to do. Be thankful that they have voluntarily outed their publication as untrustworthy and move on.

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

#887

Post by Gareth321 »

timbit42 wrote: post #742
Gareth321 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

At least there is no chance of manipulation and subliminal advertising that way. /s

The risk vector shifts from Facebook to the LLM provider. This is why I'm a big fan of the open weights models. They're not immune to attack, but it's much easier to identify censorship, propaganda, and advertising. They're getting really good, really fast.

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

#888

Post by account42 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #800
yoyohello13 wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion but if people don’t want to pay for a thing, it’s probably not worth a whole lot to n the first place.

That's for people and businesses to decide. Market clearly values Facebook a lot, over a trillion dollars in fact.

The market would also value sacrificing children to moloch if that were allowed.

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

#889

Post by account42 »

c7b wrote: post #727
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…

There is some utility to ads. Knowing that my favorite shop has a promotion, that a movie, game or book I've been waiting for is out, or something other that might interest me has some usefulness. The problem isn't the ad per se, it's optimization through A/B-tests and the like, mass psychological experiments with all the rigor of scientific studies and none of the academic ethical safeguards for human subject experi…

All those cases can be served you you voluntarily signing up to relevant notifications. The problem is the push model that incentivizes companies to show you things that will serve them and not you.

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

#890

Post by Gareth321 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #762
Gareth321 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we've got two years tops before local LLMs are proficient at this and ads are dead. Google, Apple et al. will drag their feet but they won't be able to stop it.

Traditional internet banner style ads are dead. "Paid promotion" influencer ads are going to take over (they already are).

No doubt, and there is a lot of discussion and theory on how humans will remain superior in "taste" for at least a few more years. People enjoy following other people which entertain and inspire them. At first these will be real people, but very soon they'll be LLMs. They'll look and act and talk and think like people, but they won't be people.

I had a shocking experience a few years ago with my wife. I installed pihole on our home network. She immediately began complaining that the internet was broken. On enquiry, I discovered that all the ads she had been tapping and clicking on were gone. She liked and used those ads. I worry that for many people, the line between entertainment and advertisement is already gone. They're more than willing to be advertised to, provided they are entertained.

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