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Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

wsj.com

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Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#241

Post by tmptmp »

Dolores12 wrote: post #85
malchow wrote: post #61

I do not think that ad blockers can win this cat and mouse game. Ads don't annoy a large-enough percentage of humans. And the ad industry is the lifeblood of several other business communities, each of which is many times the size of the ad blocking industry. I had lunch with one well respected publishing CEO last week, who told me that his single largest advertiser was Smuckers. The peanut butter maker. Smuckers is…

So you have spam filter disabled and read all those great ads in your inbox?

And he/she/it seems happy also to allow arbitrary code to run on his/her/its machines. I may even accept getting occasionally distracted by benign ads (just plain text or images or even videos as on newspapers/TV) but I cannot and will not accept advertisers or their agents running their arbitrary code on my machines at all.

I fully support adblockers.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#242

Post by ubernostrum »

hsod wrote: post #198
natrius wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's profitability is not your problem. It's their job to figure out how to get paid. It's your job to protect your mind. Targeted ads are worse than gambling. We made sure everyone's aware of the dangers of gambling, but everyone's in the dark about targeted ads. These companies know what they're doing. If people want to portray ad blocking as stealing, so be it. Steal from them. They deserve it.

> Facebook's profitability is not your problem. No, but acting with honesty and fairness is. Facebook is asking you not to use their service if you are going to block ads. I think it's obvious that the "right" thing to do is to respect their wishes, not sneeringly defy them while using their resources and giving nothing in return.

Facebook is a social-media advertising company. Their model, boiled down, is to extract the maximum possible value out of me in return for the minimum possible effort from them.

Why shouldn't I approach them the same way? And given how often the above describes the way businesses will treat me, why shouldn't I generalize that position?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#243

Post by chillydawg »

mayneack wrote: post #230
denzil_correa wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them. Technically, Facebook could insert news feed ads like a post from one of your friend (assume that the friend has liked some page or organization). It could be tough to distinguish between ads and posts much like native advertising.

I actually created a custom adblock filter to block the whole news section. They already show "news" about stuff like prime day sales, so it might as well be advertising.

Care to share?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#245

Post by uremog »

gorhill wrote: post #117
Leynos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock can already do this (I use it for hiding the Twitter "while you were away" nonsense), although I suspect that the next step is Facebook scrambling DOM classes and ids with no discernable pattern.

> scrambling DOM classes and ids with no discernable pattern That's why I have been beefing up the DOM filtering code in the latest versions -- there are already sites doing this. There is a lot of untapped potential with the new operators, I am waiting for opportunities to put them to test, and fine-tune them if needed.

Thank you for your service.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#246

Post by blahi »

FoeNyx wrote: post #210
blahi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't suck up my bandwidth on your crappy attitude. You know facebook is ad supported. If you don't want to look at ads, why do you keep going there?

> why do you keep going there? Have you ever considered that some contents are only available there? It's more the fault of some users that post required informations there, but it's a reality. Personally I rarely go there, and would rather never have to go there.

I fail to see why that consideration should make a difference. Facebook provides a service, if you want to use the service, you see ads. If you don't want to see ads, don't use the service. Your livelihood is not threatened if you don't see some information hidden through a facebook login.

If some friend of yours handles invitation through FB, that is because facebook provides a very good infrastructure to handle those things. In order for them to do that, they have to hire all sorts of people which kind of need salaries. Those salaries are paid by their business model. You are blocking their business model, consuming their resources and denying their employees and shareholders. Because...?

I can see enabling adblock for the internet at large and sites you don't care about, but you KNOW that facebook relies on ads and you repeatedly use them.

I also want to hear if you use google and adblock them too. Do you rarely go there too?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#247

Post by uremog »

epmatsw wrote: post #132

It's really interesting to me how strongly people dislike actions like this and the "Please turn off your adblock" thing. If this were a physical store, it's the equivalent of you taking something and the owner saying "hey man, that's not free, this is how I make a living". It seems like the right response would be "Oh wow, sorry, I won't take that any more", not "Go away, you're bothering me, and I'm going to keep t…

More like if, at a free event where donations were voluntary, the staff all complained loudly about people who didn't donate.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#249

Post by beagle3 »

corysama wrote: post #171
beagle3 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "don't come in to use the AC and shade in the store if you're not going to buy anything". I am not making an opinion on the practice, only on your analogy.

That's not bad actually. Hanging out on FB with and ad blocker is literally loitering in their servers. You are racking up costs for them and actively refusing to provide value in return. IHMO, it would be very reasonable for FB to deny service to ad-block users. But, I understand they'd rather attempt to keep you around first.

But it's the cost of doing business for many businesses. Would you consider an air conditioned mall that throws people out if they don't shop in any of the stores "reasonable"?

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#250

Post by mjevans »

legohead wrote: post #167
deanCommie wrote: post #7

They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them. As long as they don't try to force some sort of legislation on how people can use their internet connection, and their internet browser to fetch and display content, there's no problem. The real problem is Facebook is already full of advertising disguised as content. From sponsored posts to content from things you "like". So I'm kind of surprised…

I worked for a company that got most of its revenue from online ads. When I started, adblockers were 20%. When it got up to 35% the boss decided to take action. We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking. Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pis…

Have you tried leaner, less obtrusive, ads? Something like straight simple text?
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