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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: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 15 2016, @11:12PM
Once again, I'm at a loss to explain why everything feels like AJAX and the such helped to make the web a better place. I semi-understand it for actively updating progress bars and such but the fact is you could "streamline" our UI without using much if any JS and still be faster than 99% of pages on the net.
I feel like AJAX exists solely to allow bloated pages to avoid refreshes.
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday August 15 2016, @11:40PM
There's nothing mysterious about it, and that's partially the answer. It's too allow *all* pages to do that.
You can make an entire site work with just refreshes, like Soylent does now, but it's not all that enjoyable. If the refresh was 1/1000th of a second, then maybe. However, a refresh isn't anywhere near that fast in real life. Especially with 50 tabs open. Moreover, even with aggressive caching of content, each reload is still wasteful.
AJAX allows you modify a document based on the data within that document and user actions, combined with whatever the server decides as well. It's functional and not intrinsically bloating the document with code. AJAX is actually pretty light IMO, and you don't even need that many lines of code to effect beautiful and functional components.
The problem isn't JS, but who is implementing it, how they are implementing it, and why they're implementing it. You can make efficient beautiful pages with AJAX and JS, "can" being the operative word. I'm 100% convinced that Soylent has the chops to create a JS based submission system where I don't have to leave the original page to post anything, and that it can be done efficiently without bloat.
Of course, without JS you can kiss client-side code good bye, and that's not a good thing. At least, not without a replacement. I understand people don't like it, but what else are we supposed to do? Allow the web to devolve into a simple distribution method for signed native apps compiled on your own machines from fully open code? They'll be talking back to servers just the same as a browser would be and how/why would we be any more confident with that code versus a trusted site?
I hate refreshes and find them incredibly disruptive to the experience on a website. Do you think you could watch a movie with 100 refreshes throughout it? I can't enjoy that myself, and I hate reloading web pages. Takes too damn long, even with Soylent and no JS.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:04AM
I understand what client-side code does. I don't follow why it's valuable. Refreshes don't happen randomly while reading. They happen in response to a user action. And, I don't even know why you would even need to refresh, absent user action. I like being able to read all the replies, and then see the new ones when I want, as opposed to having them slip in unnoticed.
There is no reason to refresh background tabs, so 1 or 50 tabs shouldn't matter.
P>It also breaks the back arrow functionality, which I like.
But bottom line, there is no way to make a scripting system that enforces security or good practices. So I spend a while killing out of control JS processes, and 99% of sites are blacklisted by NoScript.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:52AM
If you want to expand some comments in a thread then that is a perfect use for AJAX. No need to fetch a whole page. If you want to moderate a post without full page changes (or iframe trickery) then AJAX is the way to go. Plenty of good reasons to use it.
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