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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

#441

Post by douche »

douche wrote: post #26

I already have a whole set of CSS rules I apply to Facebook now, just to make their UI less awful, remove the massive amounts of crud I never want to see, and resize the few things that I do want to see up from their stock postage-stamp sizes. Blocking .ad-unit or #pagesYouDontCareAbout is easy.

For reference:

    #rightCol{
      display:none;
    }
    #contentArea{
      width: 700px !important;
    }

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#442

Post by jeeva »

corobo wrote: post #398
hehheh wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW YouTube now offers an ad free service for a monthly fee, bundled with Play Music. $10/mo in the US.

I'll be first in line when it gets here (seriously) > United Kingdom Not yet available here

Annoyingly, it worked for a bit when it was first released (as I was subscribed to GPlay Music at the time).

Was nice, and I actually started watching videos on my phone / chromecast more. Ads being back is annoying.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#443

Post by hehheh »

backtoyoujim wrote: post #415
hehheh wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW YouTube now offers an ad free service for a monthly fee, bundled with Play Music. $10/mo in the US.

So are you suggesting that the sites that are collateral damage pay for my youtube red service? Because that seems reasonable.

I don't understand the connection.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#444

Post by chiph »

wutbrodo wrote: post #303
chiph wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point of the question - people install adblockers typically because they find the ads are intrusive (full-screen graphic overlays, etc), or their machine gets infected with ad network-delivered malware. If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease.

> people install adblockers typically because they find the ads are intrusive (full-screen graphic overlays, etc), or their machine gets infected with ad network-delivered malware. If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease. This is absolutely incorrect. Users may install them because they find some amount of ads to be abusive, but…

I'm OK with being shown a moderate amount of ads, if they're relevant and not obnoxious. I realize the site needs ads to bring in revenue and that they don't always publish out of altruism. But over the last 5 years .. whew! I've started reconsidering following any links: "Do I really want to take the risk?"

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#445

Post by JulienRbrt »

hello_newman wrote: post #355
JulienRbrt wrote: post #335

Good luck Facebook because we have this: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

this might sound like a dumb question, but how do you use that giant file? Just copy/paste in your hosts file? I use my hosts file for blocking a handful of sites I find distracting (reddit), but would a ~30k line host file cause any adverse effects? What has your experience using this file been like?

Yes. And everything works fine, but as it is not a real ad-blocker you can still see the place of the ads (e.g. Google Ads, you can see them but if you click it won't work, same for pop-up.)

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#446

Post by visarga »

recursive wrote: post #75
aantix wrote: post #6

FB can't win this cat and mouse game. If the ads are to be distinguishable then there will be inherent properties that will lead to them getting blocked.

I think you're making some assumptions here. The logical end-game is that FB writes their own rendering engine in javascript and targets a single canvas element, handling all the interaction events themselves. In fact, I think it can go significantly further than that. Ad blockers will need to get much fancier to deal with that kind of weaponized ad delivery.

Ingenious, but let me try to counter that with another step up in ad blocking:

Run the page in a sandbox, then classify the pixels as ad/non-ad with a neural net and only present the non-ads to the eyes of the user. It would also be possible to reflow the page to fit to a different screen size if the words are clearly identified by their containing rectangles. User interactions would be sent back and forth to the sandbox.

Of course, best would be to drop FB altogether. Being a member on FB, even an ad-blocking one, creates an incentive for other users to remain on FB as well.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#448

Post by freehunter »

angry-hacker wrote: post #381
freehunter wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually run a local-interest blog for my small city, and whenever I talk to people about it they're amazed I don't have ads all over the place. "How do you make money", "why would you run this site without making money", "you should be getting something for it", etc. They don't immediately realize that 90% of the content on the site is advertising, and I actually am getting paid for it. I'll write an article about…

Well, that is deception unless you are honest with users. In many countries illegal, and as scummy, if not more, than your taboola ads.

I took the concept directly from Cult Of Mac, so I have a page detailing how I run sponsored posts, and every sponsored post says "Sponsored by Company X" in italics at the top of the post.

I reject your assertion of "my taboola ads". I don't run any kind of third party ad scripts. All my sponsored content is written by me and labeled as such. And I immediately turn down any ad content I myself would not want to see (I run adblockers, too), since it wouldn't provide any value to my readers.

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#449

Post by freehunter »

elmigranto wrote: post #329
freehunter wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually run a local-interest blog for my small city, and whenever I talk to people about it they're amazed I don't have ads all over the place. "How do you make money", "why would you run this site without making money", "you should be getting something for it", etc. They don't immediately realize that 90% of the content on the site is advertising, and I actually am getting paid for it. I'll write an article about…

Do you disclose that content is sponsored? If not, is it legal?

Yes, I took the concept from Cult of Mac, and I run it exactly like they do. I have a page where I detail my ad policy and every sponsored post says "sponsored by..."

Re: Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users

#450

Post by mayneack »

chillydawg wrote: post #243
mayneack wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

here's my facebook filters. I don't really do this systematically, I just use the ublock element picker until I'm happy. I think you probably want the trending topics one.

  ! 7/5/2016, 11:08:51 AM https://www.facebook.com/
  www.facebook.com###pagelet_trending_tags_and_topics > ._5mym > ._5spf._2sns 
  
  ! 7/5/2016, 11:09:01 AM https://www.facebook.com/
  www.facebook.com###u_jsonp_3_0
  
  ! 7/5/2016, 11:09:09 AM https://www.facebook.com/
  www.facebook.com###u_jsonp_3_1  
  
  ! 7/5/2016, 11:09:13 AM https://www.facebook.com/
  www.facebook.com###rightCol > ._5v6d._5rzs > ._64a > div:nth-of-type(2)
  
  ! 7/5/2016, 11:09:23 AM https://www.facebook.com/
  www.facebook.com###rightCol
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