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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

#941

Post by alex1138 »

account42 wrote: post #921
alex1138 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not leaving It's hard to leave a monopoly, and you can't contact your friends any other way https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 Anecdotally, someone I know deleted their account, had it reactivated (the site did this) and now they show up on People You May Know. Plenty of other people have tried deleting it and found it nigh impossible

I think its more accurate to say that it seems hard, which admittedly is likely enough to get a lot of people to not try. Friends you can only contract through Facebook are not very deep friends.

Yes but it's like saying the only social media you need is email

That's great if you already can reach everyone. But Facebook in theory is meant to cater to the lost-touch-with-person years ago thing

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

#942

Post by alex1138 »

tkel wrote: post #602
alex1138 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want someone to actually smack Steve Huffman. Not hard, but enough to get through the veneer of We Take Your Feedback Very Seriously And- No. Enough. The community is fucking screaming at you Someone that loves their users does not fire the mods in response to API change protest. And censorship galore, and too much power concentrated in the mods and site

If you want the community to be in control of the platform, you should be pursuing a community-controlled platform, not a capitalist-controlled one.

This is not an excuse. He needs to be better. He seems pretty scummy

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

#943

Post by colesantiago »

devilsdata wrote: post #934
colesantiago wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ident…

> 9.9/10 times it doesn't work I'll concede that it doesn't work out a lot of the time. This is not very different from for-profit websites. Also, your number of 9.9/10 is probably pulled out of your ass. I'm note sure what the real number is, but I'd wager it's lower than 9.9/10. I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s there were so many community forums; most of them survived. Even if it doesn't, the c…

Yes, 9.9/10 times it doesn't work.

For every Wikipedia or Thunderbird that gets millions in donations you get thousands of others that cannot live off sparse donations alone.

And since you are lazy to read the article:

"After three years of running our Fediverse server, we're shutting it down. Not because we've given up on the Fediverse, but because it isn't safe or sustainable enough for a community org like ours to run a server on a shoestring...

...Since 2024, all of our core funding and funding bids have fallen away. The server dwindled to three active users, and the operating costs and effort of keeping it maintained were no longer worth it for our economy of scale. It was a bigger cost, and more effort, than the rest of our hosting put together."

This is one of many examples of hobbyist / community run instances of what you describe, as donations didn't even work for them and they shut down.

Remember, they cannot do ads or subscriptions, so donations are their only way to be sustainable.

> I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s...

Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are talking about now.

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

#944

Post by devilsdata »

colesantiago wrote: post #943
devilsdata wrote: post #934

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 9.9/10 times it doesn't work I'll concede that it doesn't work out a lot of the time. This is not very different from for-profit websites. Also, your number of 9.9/10 is probably pulled out of your ass. I'm note sure what the real number is, but I'd wager it's lower than 9.9/10. I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s there were so many community forums; most of them survived. Even if it doesn't, the c…

Yes, 9.9/10 times it doesn't work. For every Wikipedia or Thunderbird that gets millions in donations you get thousands of others that cannot live off sparse donations alone. And since you are lazy to read the article: "After three years of running our Fediverse server, we're shutting it down. Not because we've given up on the Fediverse, but because it isn't safe or sustainable enough for a community org like ours to…

Honestly did not see the article, I apologise.

The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this?

> Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are talking about now.

From my perspective, what is the point of continuing this conversation if you won't address an example in the past where my argument worked?

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

#945

Post by colesantiago »

devilsdata wrote: post #944
colesantiago wrote: post #943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, 9.9/10 times it doesn't work. For every Wikipedia or Thunderbird that gets millions in donations you get thousands of others that cannot live off sparse donations alone. And since you are lazy to read the article: "After three years of running our Fediverse server, we're shutting it down. Not because we've given up on the Fediverse, but because it isn't safe or sustainable enough for a community org like ours to…

Honestly did not see the article, I apologise. The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this? > Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are t…

> The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this?

You go an admit that you haven't read the article and then you knowingly make a strawman argument saying I support "social media sites using moderation centres from poor countries"

Where did I even explicitly say I supported this? You just made that up and you know it.

The argument is about funding without ads, those that run hobbyist federated social media like Mastodon cannot use Ads or subscriptions, so they need to use donations (which is unsustainable)

Even if you throw in moderation, isn't even worth it if you're running a costly Mastodon instance and no donations are coming in.

> From my perspective, what is the point of continuing this conversation if you won't address an example in the past where my argument worked?

Because they simply don't work today and at scale. We have new problems today that didn't exist in the past.

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

#946

Post by frollogaston »

phoghed wrote: post #458
frollogaston wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like this with YouTube. It's fair that they don't want me blocking ads and will try their best to prevent it. If they ever succeed, I'll leave without complaint. Already never use it on my phone cause adblocking is annoying on there.

I just pay them a pittance in exchange for no ads for the whole family across all devices.

YT Premium makes sense, I just don't personally care enough to deal with yet another subscription.

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

#947

Post by sleepybrett »

Marsymars wrote: post #309
jonesy827 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist?

Effectively non-existent in Canada. Kijiji nominally exists, but I dual list everything I'm trying to get rid of on both kijiji/facebook out of principle and get like 20x more interest on facebook.

i've been using offerup, same argument here, stop using facebook marketplace use other platforms and others will also stop using facebook marketplace.

I personally would love to see someone create a platform for selling secondhand computer equipment specifically. Poshmark for bitpushers in effect.

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

#948

Post by brikym »

account42 wrote: post #896
brikym wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. At least you can switch them off on the web but now big-ad is putting bright flickering digital billboards in sight of every public place. Politicians won't do a thing because they're some of the biggest customers. Obey.

> Obey. We do have the technology to make those glasses now.

It's worse. You'll _have_ to use the glasses to block the billboard ads which will be replaced with more subtle ads.

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

#949

Post by devilsdata »

colesantiago wrote: post #945
devilsdata wrote: post #944

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly did not see the article, I apologise. The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this? > Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are t…

> The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this? You go an admit that you haven't read the article and then you knowingly make a strawman argument saying I support "social media sites usi…

> You go an admit that you haven't read the article and then you knowingly make a strawman argument saying I support "social media sites using moderation centres from poor countries"

To clear it up, I read the article before my most recent reply to you. The very article that you linked mentions that private social networks use moderation centres from poor countries. Did you read the article you linked to me before sending it?

> Because they simply don't work today and at scale. We have new problems today that didn't exist in the past.

So your response is just to throw your hands up and say "won't work". Buddy, let me tell you, we could squeeze out a lot more performance to run social networks if we needed to. The hard part is the moderation, as you correct identified. But private-run social networks use questionable labour to moderate anyway (as per the article you linked).

In the past running a hobbyist social media worked, it can work again.

Mastodon isn't a good example. It's written in Ruby and serves up a heavy React application. A light version of it could be written in something much faster, and served up on something much smaller.

You haven't provided a coherent argument to suggest otherwise. Goodbye and thanks for the discussion.

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

#950

Post by eipi10_hn »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #58
The-Old-Hacker wrote: post #6

I use a browser extension called F.B. Purity. It's worked across multiple browsers for years. https://www.fbpurity.com/

Same. FBP has been effectively perfect for over a decade now. I don't understand how uBlock Origin can't just take what FBP is doing and apply it there.

You don't understand that the problem is not about the solutions. Every issue has solution.

The problem is every time a solution is added to uBO, they will counter that. An extension will work great if the websites don't target on that.

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