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Don't want the new Facebook ads? In a brilliant demonstration of the arms race between ad companies and content filtering software, uBlock Origin already blocked them. This occurred hours after being introduced by Facebook.
The commit was here: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/commit/773512c844ab0e92e0dbb1fd9c00291d1ae0ba38
And from PC World:
Thursday morning, Adblock Plus announced that a new filter for banning Facebook's ads has been added to the main EasyList filter list used by the extension. Here's how to force Adblock Plus's filter list to update if you want in on the adblocking action.
Update: Facebook already rolled out new code to break Adblock Plus's workaround, according to Techcrunch. And then Adblock Plus rolled out a new filter to block the new workaround. And then Facebook released another patch to break the new Adblock Plus filter. Whack-a-mole indeed.
But you might not rush to do so. Adblock Plus's blog post warns that the new filter hasn't been heavily tested and may block additional content. An initial response sent out by Facebook suggests it may indeed be doing so.
"We're disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don't just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages," a spokesperson told AdAge. "This isn't a good experience for people and we plan to address the issue. Ad blockers are a blunt instrument, which is why we've instead focused on building tools like ad preferences to put control in people's hands."
[...] If you see an ad in your Facebook News Feed, click the drop-down arrow on the top left of the ad, and then choose "Manage your ad preferences." There, you'll be able to see which topics Facebook thinks you're into, and advertises against. Deleting them all should eliminate hyper-targeted ads—though not all ads, and Facebook will repopulate the list over time. Blocking ads via ad blockers isn't possible in Facebook's mobile apps, only in-browser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @08:36PM
To be clear, I don't use Facebook.
However, isn't what they are doing what people have been asking for? The biggest verbal complaint I hear about advertisements is that they are a vector for malware (followed by a privacy argument, and then a bandwidth argument). I've heard numerous times that "if they advertisers would guarantee the advertisements are clean and host it on their own servers, then I wouldn't have a problem."
I assume Facebook is vetting the advertisements and they are hosting it on their own servers... so now that the malware argument is countered people are moving the goal posts?
Or maybe it's that the first group is happy, so the second group (bandwidth in this case, as I'm sure people concerned with privacy are not using Facebook anyway) are complaining about their particular concerns?
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Monday August 15 2016, @08:58PM
Well, the anti-malware is pretty much accomplished by FB only letting you use text/images (no JS/Flash) in the advertisements. Although, I suppose some images can be badly coded. That seems automatically detectable.