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.
Related Stories
Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software. The social network said on Tuesday that it will change the way advertising is loaded into its desktop website to make its ad units considerably more difficult for ad blockers to detect. “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
(Score: 5, Touché) by frojack on Monday August 15 2016, @05:48PM
"We're disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook
....
Who is is that is punishing people on facebook with ads?
I suspect that Facebook, seeking to end-run adblockers is actually boobytrapping users posts to discourage use of adblock. But since nothing of value was lost, I suspect most users will notice nothing missing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday August 15 2016, @08:36PM
> Who is is that is punishing people on facebook with ads?
Advertisers?
They have always punished people with ads. On billboards. In newspapers. Magazines. Radio. TV. Cable TV. On the internet.
Advertising has always ruined every medium in which it has ever appeared.
Coming soon: micro screens forcibly installed on the inside of your eyelids at birth so that you can enjoy ads even with your eyes closed.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @09:29PM
Sorry, something like that already was invented [wikia.com] last century!.
In Futurama's 31th Century advertisements are beamed straight via gamma radiation into people's brain as they sleep.
(Score: 2) by snufu on Monday August 15 2016, @05:52PM
If ad blockers block desired user content, Facebook get the blame. Win-win!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 15 2016, @05:57PM
There's no desire. Facebook addiction is simply an alleviation of terminal boredom. It requires few neurons to fire and it doesn't matter what content the algorithm shows you.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday August 15 2016, @05:56PM
"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."
No, adblockers aren't blunt until you specifically start trying to fight them. Then they become more blunt to get around your counters.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday August 15 2016, @05:59PM
And honestly, I find myself manually blocking all sorts of shit anyways.
The blunt instrument is great for those wonderful static elements that take up 15% of your screen so you can be reminded which blog you're reading instead of actually reading it.
Or nuking the auto-play videos for a news site you actually want to read.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday August 15 2016, @06:15PM
For me the problem is not the lost real-estate, it's the malware.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 15 2016, @08:38PM
The malware was just the final straw. I was still sick of ads before the malware. (And I have never used Facebook in my life.)
If advertisers don't like the backlash, then they should have policed themselves long ago.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NCommander on Monday August 15 2016, @06:17PM
It says a lot that soylentnews.org tends to be much more functional and faster than most "Web 2.0" websites by basis that our design is essentially from 2001.
Still always moving
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:58PM
Just that I can run SN without having to enable *any* JS makes me sigh appreciatively!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 15 2016, @09:29PM
Best thing about soylent? Not a single 3rd party script loaded, not even Google or content provider scripts . Probably the only site I visit that doesn't rely on 3rd party scripts.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 15 2016, @09:57PM
Full disclosure: We did have piWik for a time, but self-hosted it and announced it was running and it was going away. We don't currently log anything beyond a request and a URL to the site.
We've considered re-running piWik, or reconfiguring nginx to log more information to get a more interesting cross-section of the site but the "meh" factor is fairly high since we get general information on how much traffic is coming and going through Linode.
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 16 2016, @03:57PM
Baseline mediawiki and mediawiki as used on wikipedia are self-reliant. You probably visit there from time to time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @09:33PM
Now also try it with a 2001 browser, you'll be amazed how lighting fast it is! Not joking.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 16 2016, @02:56AM
I would, except that Soylent will no longer speak to Netscape 3 (still my fave browser).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 15 2016, @10:48PM
As of right now, with 28 comments, this page weights an astronomical 16631 Bytes.
It's about 1% of the average "modern" webpage.
I apologize for making if slower to download by an extra 1%.
(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.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:19PM
Correction, they used to be blunt, it's just that ABP hasn't kept up. uBO and Adguard can block elements based on content. Facebook uses a div with the text " sponsored" and another div inside with the ad? Block able with almost no overhead. The real problem is the ABP-only whitelisting in easylist, which makes detecting an ad blocker easier but is necessary due to their lack of feature parity with competitors; almost all of which have specific filters to clean up the mess that causes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @07:03PM
If they do dumb shit like that you can write the block yourself. I use self made block to filter linkedin feed and take out all sorts of nonsense, and I run it on interval so it kills any new things as I scroll down and additional items are loaded. If they want ads that cannot be removed they would have to step up their game, like editing posted images to add ad content directly to the image (not overlay) etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @09:38PM
While Ublock0 is my main ad auto decrapifier, many times end using Greasemonkey since also can quickly customize pages to my taste.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 15 2016, @06:57PM
Well, as others pointed out, ZuckerJew's little intelligence operation makes money by things other than ads -- like psychological profiles, daily routines, associations, keyword mining, returns on investment from lobbying and institutionalized censorship, abuse of the H1-B program, and record requests from law enforcement; to name a few.
This is ZuckerJew once again pissing on your heads and telling you its raining. Those of you who, for some reason or another, cannot quit outright should bamboozle JewBook in every way possible - use of TOR and VPNs, User-agent randomizers, AdBlock/NoScript/Self-destructing cookies and especially by posting Pro-Trump and anti-migrant trolls.
With enough effort we can render JewBook as irrelevant as MySpace is.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by butthurt on Monday August 15 2016, @07:57PM
news item: [soylentnews.org] "An Israeli rights group is suing Facebook for $1 [billion] on behalf of families of victims of Palestinian attacks."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 15 2016, @06:17PM
Block the adservers instead.* http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm [mvps.org] Install onto your own computer, or onto your router, as you please.
*No, I haven't even looked to see what servers Facebook is using. I don't see ads, so I haven't messed with my setup. The browser that I use to look at facebang only uses a few addons - Better Privacy, Privacy Badger, Request Policy, and uBlock (not uBlock Origin). The router I am currently using has no custom firmware or anything, so the router has nothing to do with it. Apparently, facebang isn't doing the job they wish they were doing.
Or, maybe I do see advertising. Every time I open the page, theres a hint that I should like or follow Suckerberg. And, I'm overwhelmed with the number of young women who post selfies of their cleavage. Is that advertising?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:35PM
> No, I haven't even looked to see what servers Facebook is using.
Facebook uses their own indistinguishable servers for ads on facebook. That's because facebook is an ad system first and foremost.
As if adblockers can't do host based blocking already, the hostname is in the damn url after all.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday August 15 2016, @07:06PM
For the longest time that worked but a couple of days ago it stopped and I noticed them. I make use of that list as well as a few others that are listed here [github.com] and just use dnsmasq on the router to block them. It does stop a lot of the crap I see flowing and it looks I will have to go and update uBlock Origin.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 3, Informative) by len_harms on Monday August 15 2016, @07:14PM
Host files/DNS filtering only work to a point.
http://someadserver.com/youradd.jpg [someadserver.com] http://randomname.someadserver.com/youradd.jpg http://siteyouarevisting.com/youradd.jpg http://siteyouarevisting.com/randomname.jpg -- ad blocker has to understand the random name generator and might still work or fail if the items you want to keep are named similarly, host file again does not work here
Adblockers work better if they can use regex. But even that has limits.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:18PM
Three little maids from school are we
Pert as a school-girl well can be
Filled to the brim with girlish glee
Three little maids from school
Everything is a source of fun
Nobody's safe, for we care for none
Life is a joke that's just begun
Three little maids from school
Three little maids who, all unwary
Come from a ladies' seminary
Freed from its genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school
One little maid is a bride, Yum-Yum
Two little maids in attendance come
Three little maids is the total sum
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school
From three little maids take one away
Two little maids remain, and they
Won't have to wait very long, they say
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school
Three little maids who, all unwary
Come from a ladies' seminary
Freed from its genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
Three little maids from school
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 15 2016, @06:31PM
I know most people who are heavy Facebook users will never do it, but that's really the correct solution here.
I use ad blockers, and I don't think there's anything wrong with blocking content when you download HTML from, say, a public website and don't want random other stuff coming along. (Some of which may be targeting you with malware, etc.)
However, I also believe that private businesses have their own right to do business as they wish. If they insist that serving you ads is the only way to make money, and they're trying to circumvent your ad blocker, I believe the moral choice for users is simply to stop using the service. It's one thing to say, "Meh -- I just want the relevant HTML and I don't want all the images and other crap." It's another to go to a site that says, "We don't want adblockers here. If you want our service, you shouldn't use them," and still use the site. To me, the latter is more morally questionable.
Facebook has effectively declared it doesn't want users who want to use ad-blocking. If only the mass group of people who'd prefer no ads would simply leave.
Unfortunately, they're just going to keep putting up with it, and it will get progressively worse. And if you don't believe that it will, just take a look at what the WWW looks like now, compared to what it was 15 years ago. I thought ads were starting to annoy me then, but I could not have imagined what much of the web looks like today.
The longer people stay with Facebook, the worse it will get. And the harder it will be to leave, because that's where everyone else is or whatever.
Just stop. This is a war you simply won't win long-term against Facebook with your adblocker. So far, they aren't quite ready to alienate people enough by actually blocking people with adblockers. But they'll eventually find ways to make it harder and harder for you to use their service with them. So if you really want to make this work long-term, leave now. Encourage all your friends to do so. But again, for those who are addicted to Facebook, they mostly just aren't able to conceive of doing such a thing, even if it would actually be the most moral thing to do.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 15 2016, @06:41PM
I'd love to quit Facebook. However, too many people I know use it near exclusively to the point its the only way to keep touch with them or contact them. This is the point where people tell me SMS and email exist.
Which doesn't help me when SMS rarely works when I'm abroad or when I try to contact someone in say Africa. As long as the vast majority of my social contacts are only reachable through FB, then I'm more or less stuck
Still always moving
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Monday August 15 2016, @10:19PM
However, too many people I know use it near exclusively to the point its the only way to keep touch with them or contact them.
Why are you in so MANY asymmetric social relationships? Where you must acquiesce to their preferred exclusive communications channel, but they won't lift a finger to to consider using one of your preferences? That's just inconsiderate and entitled. Its not like you're demanding carrier pigeons... email and SMS are pretty universal.
People who require you to use facebook to be in touch with them have no sincere interest in being in touch with you -- if they cared, they'd make the effort. They'll let you do all the work, if you want to do it, but they won't lift a finger. That is an asymmetric relationship. And if you find yourself in a lot of them, you need to find better friends.
I understand it when people maintain an FB account to stay in contact with some relative somewhere, where that relative doesn't value the relationship and would make no effort to keep it going. Where for example, a parent, doesn't want to lose touch with that child or something, even if the child is a self centered uncaring ass... its still their kid. I get that. They have a facebook account... they have that person as their one friend, and they login a few times a month to stay in contact. They may technically be on facebook, but they've practically quit.
But if its just some random distant cousins, or people you knew in high school... if they aren't willing to put in a little effort... and expect you to do all the work, dump them. If your best friend would vanish off the earth and never call you if you quit facebook... that's not much of a friend.
As long as the vast majority of my social contacts are only reachable through FB, then I'm more or less stuck
Have you tried? Have you said, hey, I'm taking a break from facebook, but I'd like to stay in touch, what's the best way? Will it work for all of them? No. But then you might be surprised how many others are also facebook 'fatigued' and just staying for the same reason as you.
Which doesn't help me when SMS rarely works when I'm abroad
I guess I don't know where you are going... or coming from... or how much you travel... but really? For me, if I couldn't reach all my friends on some tropical vacation... good. I'm on vacation. Alas, SMS worked fine the last few. roaming SMS etc has gotten a lot better over the last 10 years in my experience. As the GSM/CDMA divide has been mostly left to the past, and most phones work pretty much everywhere now.
or when I try to contact someone in say Africa
Ok... if he's in a village in Africa connecting via the village wifi hotspot ... keep your FB for that guy, and just unfriend everyone else.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday August 15 2016, @10:45PM
Why are you in so MANY asymmetric social relationships? Where you must acquiesce to their preferred exclusive communications channel, but they won't lift a finger to to consider using one of your preferences? That's just inconsiderate and entitled. Its not like you're demanding carrier pigeons... email and SMS are pretty universal.
People who require you to use facebook to be in touch with them have no sincere interest in being in touch with you -- if they cared, they'd make the effort. They'll let you do all the work, if you want to do it, but they won't lift a finger. That is an asymmetric relationship. And if you find yourself in a lot of them, you need to find better friends.
Um. No. I talked with people regularly by status posting or messenger. Sometimes people post they're having a bad day, I shoot them a message to talk to them, etc. If I want to talk to someone extended 1:1, then I usually call them if not FB messenger. But passive communication via wall posts and commenting goes a lot more in staying involved in their life or not. Most of my friends are spread over the world; I've lived out of a backpack for many years and some I haven't seen in real life for upwards of a decade.
Have you tried? Have you said, hey, I'm taking a break from facebook, but I'd like to stay in touch, what's the best way? Will it work for all of them? No. But then you might be surprised how many others are also facebook 'fatigued' and just staying for the same reason as you.
Yes. I find I only get contacted for emergency stuff and not day-to-day social because I'm not there in real life. Are you really going to SMS someone that they did X randomly?
I've spent the last decade near constantly travelling. I haven't lived in one place for more than a year or two tops. Roaming only works if you're willing to use a carrier simcard. Normally I need to have a local number which means I have an international number, not a +1 country code in which case it falls over. I use Google Voice which helps partially with this issue but a lot of people can't successfully SMS me from international numbers.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:24AM
But passive communication via wall posts and commenting goes a lot more in staying involved in their life or not.
I'm willing to let people I have no reason to call or message drift away. I'm willing to not talk to someone for two years and then call them up out of the blue when I'm heading to their locale, or shoot them an email out of the blue. I don't need or want or value "passive communication via wall posts and commenting" as a proxy for actually being involved in someones life. I can be involved in the lives of people around me. And I do make the effort to call truly close family and friends oversees. That's enough. Some people have drifted away that I could surely have kept 'on life support' on facebook' but so what... I'm not lonely.
If you value that sort of relationship, and don't want to let people drift away; and want to keep in touch with people "via wall posts and passive commenting" then; I guess facebook is for you; you seem to want that in your life. I don't. But to each their own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @11:13PM
What happens when the Next Big Thing comes along and everyone leaves Facebook? It will happen.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 16 2016, @05:03AM
Probably not. What will happen though is the next generation won't actively use it because mom and dad are on there and watching everything. Little Timmy and Jessica even had to root their android just to get rid of the parental spyware.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:49PM
Way ahead of you, because I never joined Facebook. The trouble is though, because everyone joined Facebook and I didn't, I got left behind. Now I don't exist, because I'm not on Facebook. If you want to be socially isolated like me, by all means, leave Facebook. Just expect to be alone forever.
(Score: 4, Funny) by jdavidb on Monday August 15 2016, @07:16PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday August 15 2016, @08:04PM
I should leave FB, but instead I use the account as little as possible. Often go for a month between logins.
One reason for the limited usage is the significant other. She monitors my every FB post and gives me hell if it contains anything she doesn't like, and there's a whole lot she doesn't like. She'd go ballistic over this post, but she pays no attention to Soylent News, way too tech nerdy for her taste.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 15 2016, @09:33PM
Maybe instead of leaving Facebook, you should leave something else...
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by julian on Monday August 15 2016, @10:10PM
That's actually how I got out of Facebook. I was in a relationship my first couple years at University that ended rather badly, with infidelity on her part as well as a lot of irrational jealously regarding my Facebook interactions (more bizarre in hindsight since she was the one cheating, not me). I came to understand that cutting her out was going to cost me most of my social circle but it was something I had to do. The upside was it made Facebook unnecessary since the couple true friends who stuck with me didn't use Facebook either. That was more than five years ago now.
The quality of my life greatly improved by quitting; her and Facebook.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @07:01PM
Yep, pretty much everyone I know at least uses Facebook for organizing parties and events as it's easier and nobody wants to go around calling/texting/emailing dozens of people anymore if they don't have to. If you're that one holdout who never checks Facebook then you're just forgotten about.
Once in a while the ads are useful when targeted correctly, there is at least once great concert I would have missed out on if I hadn't received a targeted ad telling me that they'd be performing in my town that very week. Too many times I found out about events after they already happened or when the show was already sold out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @07:54AM
I guess I'm lucky. My family has finally gotten e-mail, so now I can just fire off one e-mail to all of them, instead of phoning each one individually.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday August 15 2016, @10:10PM
I completely disagree. Facebook has NOT publicly declared they don't want users who use ad-blocking; you're reading that into their actions. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing I care about is what their site serves my browser when it makes a request. If they serve me a useless page that says "turn off your ad-blocker or you're not seeing anything", then I'll go elsewhere. If they serve me useful HTML, then I'll look at that.
I have EVERY right to make a request to their website. They have every right to either answer that request or refuse it. If their answer includes a request that I download some advertisement from someplace, I have EVERY right to decline that request. If they don't like that, they don't have to send me any more content. But as long as they do, I have every right to view it.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday August 15 2016, @10:48PM
I completely disagree. Facebook has NOT publicly declared they don't want users who use ad-blocking; you're reading that into their actions.
Well, from the story in the Wall Street Journal linked the other day [wsj.com]:
“Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform.
So, yeah, he didn't literally say, "We don't want users who use ad-blocking." But I think the meaning here is pretty clear: "Ads are fundamental to our business model. Don't block them."
I have EVERY right to make a request to their website. They have every right to either answer that request or refuse it. If their answer includes a request that I download some advertisement from someplace, I have EVERY right to decline that request. If they don't like that, they don't have to send me any more content. But as long as they do, I have every right to view it.
Sure, in a legal sense, you probably have the right to view a public website. Just like if a guy set up a booth with some "Wonder of the World -- Admission $5" and I found a crack in the side of the building and bought a telescope and stood across the public street with it, I'm probably legally within my rights to view the "Wonder of the World." But is that really the most moral way to act? At some point if an executive from a site essentially says "Ads aren't optional," you're now entering the moral world of "I'm just gonna take it anyway, without paying. I figured out a way to do it, and I don't care what they request for me to do."
Do I think it's a major moral failing to do so? No. Particularly not when we're talking about some amoral morass of nonsense like Facebook.
That's just me. Anyhow, that's pretty much irrelevant to my larger point, which is that this is only going to get worse.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 16 2016, @01:04AM
But I think the meaning here is pretty clear: "Ads are fundamental to our business model. Don't block them."
No, I don't think it's clear at all. He never said "Don't block them". And even if he did, I don't care: he needs to fix his site so his site will block my browser's requests. How his site responds is what determines the site's actual policy, not some news article alleging that some guy said something somewhere.
Just like if a guy set up a booth with some "Wonder of the World -- Admission $5" and I found a crack in the side of the building and bought a telescope and stood across the public street with it, I'm probably legally within my rights to view the "Wonder of the World."
That's a stupid analogy.
Here's a better analogy: some guy sets up a booth with some "Wonder of the World -- Admission FREE! *please look at this promotional material" So you go in the booth, and he asks you to view the promotional material, and you say "no, thank you, I'm not interested in looking at that" (or better yet, you don't respond at all, and don't even acknowledge him when he asks). After your refusal, he goes ahead and shows you the wonder anyway!
But is that really the most moral way to act?
Yes, given my analogy above. If someone is going to show you something even after you refuse to view their advertising, you have every right to look at it. If that comes down to them being technically unable to easily block you, too fucking bad. Forbes.com seems to have their anti-ad-blocker working just fine (and it works for me too; it keeps me from looking at their horrible articles when I randomly click on some link). If stupid forbes.com can do it, anyone can do it, and certainly a site with the resources of facebook.
At some point if an executive from a site essentially says
Where did this supposed executive say this? Did he tell *me* this? No. This was never communicated to me. Some news article somewhere does NOT constitute a public announcement. If they don't want me looking at their site, they need to block me, just like Forbes does. Again, if Forbes can do it on their shitty half-assed website, anyone can do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @08:00AM
No, the most moral thing to do with advertisers is the chair. Scumbags the bunch of them.
When advertisers put their name on my monitor without my permission, it's called advertising, but if I put my name on their building without their permission, it's called graffiti.
If they want permission to put ads on my screen, they can pay for the privilege, like they used to do to put ads in newspapers or on race cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @06:42PM
Facebook has the right to require you to view ads to use the service. But I hope that people stop using it.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Monday August 15 2016, @07:32PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @06:00AM
No, I can do what I want with my browser legally, period.
Ad-blockers are not illegal.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:24PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 15 2016, @09:04PM
with uBlock Origin, but they kept coming back. So I sent a message to Facebook help telling them "If I see any more ads in my friends/family feed I and my entire family will delete our accounts". The next day the feed ads stopped, not sure if it was a coincidence or if someone actually pulled the switch. We do have an alternative set up just in case... https://ello.co [ello.co] The anti-facebook.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Capt. Obvious on Monday August 15 2016, @09:06PM
I'm sure it was a coincidence. After all, talk is cheap, and really quitting is hard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 16 2016, @12:27AM
It is an arms race. One day the blocker is on top and the next the website is. If you ever see ads, the first step is to update your filters, as most times someone has reported it and they've been updated.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 15 2016, @09:36PM
Just blocking the shitposting and linking to sites like Buzzfeed would make Facebook useless to me. I don't give two shits if someone I know comments on someone I don't know's post. I don't give two shits about "trending topics". FBP [fbpurity.com] to the rescue.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Tuesday August 16 2016, @04:00AM
If the new filters have been put into place for the copy of Easylist that one uses with ABP for Chrome (yeah, yeah, I realize the irony), they aren't working. Guess Facebook devs already worked around the filter.
The worst part of these damned ads isn't their existence or that they try (and almost succeed) to fit into the rest timeline, is that occasionally something looks genuinely interesting at first, until I spot that "Sponsored" identifier, at which point the interest disappears instantly. That level of clickbait has never worked on me before, so this is at least a bit disturbing; I refuse to willingly give my time to a site that sits at the other end of a sponsored post/ad.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:38AM
Don't use ABP. Use uBlockOrigin - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm [google.com]