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Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
- drpgq 10y agoWell it's an arms race.
- tdkl 10y agoOnly use I have for FB with my limited profile is Messenger and with an Electron app there's no ads. [1] [1] https://messengerfordesktop.com/ https://messengerfordesktop.com/
- rmi_ 10y agoI am really interested in the technical details. I think we have yet to see a working (and practical) approach to this.
- Cthulhu_ 10y agoI can think of a few simple tricks already. One: Host from the main facebook.com domain, either inserting it in the basic html page response from the server, or from an API / content location that cannot be predicted. (ad calls should be indistinguishable from 'normal' content calls). Two, do the same with content locations, so no 'div id="ad"' or anything like that. Should be easy enough.
- topspin 10y ago"Host from the main facebook.com domain..." If true I believe that this would actually be an important improvement. This removes some plausible deniability regarding malware and other abuse; Facebook (or whomever else adopts this scheme) must guard more carefully against abuse when the content is coming from their own domains, as opposed to some third party.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoMust they? The uninformed layman probably already things the ads come from Facebook[.com] as that's the address site they're visiting. I expect them still manage to hide behind "common carrier" arguments.
- awad 10y agoAs far as I am aware, all ad creative is hosted and served exclusively by Facebook anyway.
- juliand 10y agoMe too. This is clearly a cat vs mouse game or more like a lion vs mouse and that's what makes it interesting to me.
- waterphone 10y agoThe efforts I've seen so far from other websites include randomized IDs and class names, and base64 encoded images inlined so the file path/hostname can't be used as a parameter for blocking.
- SEJeff 10y agoGood luck. I suspect in no time uBlock Origin will have found a way to remove the ad elements from the DOM, even if they are served directly with the html of facebook and not a 3rd party domain.
- Leynos 10y agouBlock 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.
- ruste 10y agoThen we can possibly block them by matching structural elements?
- ultramancool 10y agoYeah, or visual, anything with this CSS attributes applied (so even if they randomize names it can still be blocked) to it or something. Maybe even the element at this rendered location, which would pretty much guaranteed kill them unless they wanted to change ad locations randomly. In any case this is a pretty trivial problem.
- pseudointellect 10y ago"while you were away" nonsense? A feature that shows you popular tweets from only people you follow. How is that nonsense?
- tomjen3 10y agoBecause thats my twitter feed. Really I don't follow more people than i can keep up with, so I want to read _all_ their tweets. Which is apparently a usage pattern nobody at twitter gets.
- douche 10y agoThere are people that would like Twitter to just be a straight-up, chronological feed of tweets from people that you follow. I'd love it if the infinite scrolling shit went away and I could look at tweets by last hour, last 12 hours, last 24 hours, etc, and then paginate by day after that.
- aantix 10y agoFB 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.
- recursive 10y agoI 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.
- ncallaway 10y agoAh, yes, the 'ol abandon all forms of screen readers and accessibility in order to serve ads gambit.
- JulianMorrison 10y agoIf FB tries this, the awful performance of their site will start putting a drag on their business. But also, adblockers will keep up. If they have to use canned deep-learning neural nets to catch and crush advertising based on how it looks rendered, they will.
- fratlas 10y agoI love the human condition. Managers struggle to motivate for simple coding tasks, but ads? We'll be damned if they intrude our lives.
- nzp 10y agoThat's quite optimistic when you think about it. Most simple coding tasks are pure drudgery with no consequence to positive human values (other than “I have to do this to not starve”). Defeating most online advertising, on the other hand, is a noble community service to your fellow humans.
- deanCommie 10y agoThey 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 they need to go out of their way to explicitly announce that they will be disguising ads. They already have the power to inject it in the middle of content invisibly.
- lopatin 10y agoSerious question: Why do you block FB ads? I wouldn't say that FB ads are any more disguised as content as, say, newspaper ads. And follow up: If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users, do you think that would be unfair?
- ultramancool 10y ago> If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users, do you think that would be unfair? I think "they're welcome to try" is exactly the right response here. Nothing is "fair" or "unfair", at least not in a way that advertisers or ad blockers care about. No matter what they do it's entirely possible to trick their scripts into believing I'm displaying ads, because they run not on facebook's servers but on my computer. Where I get the control.
- denzil_correa 10y ago> No matter what they do it's entirely possible to trick their scripts into believing I'm displaying ads I hope this is true. I still think Facebook can do much more devious things like having posts on your news feeds from friends which look like posts but are ads. Kind of like native advertising.
- paulmd 10y agoI'm just waiting for the day when websites are rendering themselves inside a DRM-protected container in an HTML5 page. That's where I see all of this inevitably heading. DRM-protected media extensions are almost uniquely positioned for this. They're designed around the abilities to uniquely identify the user and resist tampering. The only thing that's missing right now is interactivity.
- DeathArrow 10y agoAnd it will last a few hours. :)
- devishard 10y agoI'll add this to my list of reasons why I'm not on Facebook.
- Grazester 10y agoYeah and you wouldn't be missed by them either if you are currently running an ad-blocker
- mtgx 10y agoFacebook can still use his data.
- belorn 10y agoLike how Microsoft wouldn't miss people that pirate windows?
- Grazester 10y agoWhat?!
- patates 10y agoNetwork effect is way more important than the ad revenue.
- belorn 10y agoSorry, I made a quick reference without the link. "Jeff Raikes, head of the company's business group, said at a recent investor conference that while the company is against piracy, if you are going to pirate software, it hopes you pirate Microsoft software" (http://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-software-steal-from-us-microsoft-exec/d/d-id/1052865?cid=rssfeed_iwk_all http://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-softw...) i.e, in the context of Facebook, a ad-blocking user is better than a non-user, since the non-user might then be using a competitor platform and encourage current ad-viewing users/developers to switch to it.
- TamDenholm 10y agoAs the saying goes, if you build a bigger wall someone will use a bigger ladder....
- ben174 10y agoIf Facebook wants a truly global network, then they best not alienate or piss off those that are technically inclined. If they take control away from their power users, they'll lose them.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoI don't think that the "technically inclined" are FB's power users, nor are they their most wanted target demographic.
- ben174 10y agoIt depends on your definition of "power users", I suppose. But they certainly don't want to shrink their network. The moment I meet a fellow like-minded geek and "add me on Facebook" isn't the default way to stay in touch, they're in trouble. And I'm already at the point where I have to ask if they're on Facebook first, since many tech people have already jumped ship due to privacy concerns.
- bertiewhykovich 10y agoWhy does Facebook care about specifically geek usage behaviors? Geeky types constitute a small fraction of the population, only a subset of that already small cohort has the concerns you're expressing here, and only a subset of those care enough to stop using their services. If Facebook can increase add revenues 10% by a change like this, they couldn't care less about losing the maybe 2% of users who will be genuinely put off from them by it.
- intrasight 10y agoThis is a good point. Deeply technical people should be welcome - ad blocking and all.
- Alterlife 10y agoI guess the problem is: 1. Facebook already is a truly global network. 2. Based on history, it's likely that most of the people who care about these kind of things have already left.
- faded242 10y agoAdblock Plus with Element Hiding Helper is pretty damn hard to defeat. Embedding the ads won't help.
- potatolicious 10y agoHonestly, I don't really mind so long as the ads are being served by FB and not third-party networks, and their performance isn't abysmal. The major reason I block ads in the first place is for usability reasons - ad networks are slow as all hell especially on mobile. They also make certain pages completely unusable either through ad overlays, interstitials, or just constantly causing layouts to change as you're trying to use the website. If FB can eliminate all of these pitfalls (and the current model of FB ads is certainly way less intrusive than most web ads) I'm cautiously on board.
- FussyZeus 10y agoAnd if Facebook actually commits to having oversight over what they serve. The idea that websites rent space to ad networks who then sell space on their servers to bad actors who then upload viruses and other such malware which then goes into my computer and everyone in this whole chain just goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is ridiculous. If someone added a billboard to a highway that caused every thousandth car that passed to blow a tire, there would be lawsuits. How they're allowed to get away with it so easily online is beyond me and maddening.
- potatolicious 10y agoYeah, the security angle is a big deal. The long and short of it is that ad networks and publishers are both apathetic to what a gigantic dumpster fire ad-serving is. Publishers are eager to blame ad networks for the terrible performance, while ad networks just can't give enough of a shit to work on it. Publishers also are eager to blame ad networks when they're caught serving scams and malware, while networks just don't care. I'm a huge proponent of making publishers serve their own ads from their own domains, so they are forced to take ownership of both the issue of technical competency and abuse.
- FussyZeus 10y agoEither that, or make the networks directly responsible for the content they're serving. I don't understand why that's not the case now, if websites allow downloading of copyrighted work without authorization, or distribute illegal digital goods, they're held accountable. What makes ad networks invulnerable to this?
- bobajeff 10y agoFrom the article: "From a technical standpoint, Facebook is able to circumvent ad blockers relatively easily because it loads ads into its service itself. Many online publishers and media companies rely on third-party companies to help display ads on their webpages and services, which can make them more easily identifiable to blocking technologies"
- bitmapbrother 10y agoThere's nothing stopping these other companies from doing the same thing Facebook is doing and then presenting the page with all ads integrated seamlessly into the page.
- Philipp__ 10y agoOk, nice, let them come and try, and I will permanently get off this sick internet monstrosity.
- msl09 10y ago>“It just seems like a poor bargain to be forced to choose all or nothing. There’s a middle ground,” Mr. Bosworth said. There would have been a middle ground if the user was actually involved in the discussion behind that decision. If the changes are as successful as facebook hopes, the user can either view ads as much as facebook wants or not use the network at all.
- curiousgal 10y agoIt's really saddening how the world's finest minds are only working on ways to push ads down our throats.
- Grazester 10y agoWell...you think if facebook gave us a paid option with no ads you would subscribe to it?
- curiousgal 10y agoI would if I still relied on it to keep in touch with friends and family members.
- ryandrake 10y agoThat's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
- curiousgal 10y agoThis doesn't just apply to this case but in general, you read about people tinkering with cool tools and coming up with great techniques whose only purpose is to track users in order to serve them ads.
- ryandrake 10y agoNo, I was talking about the "world's finest minds" part :-)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- orbifold 10y agoI'm pretty sure the majority of the worlds finest minds work on other things. The majority of people at Facebook will most likely be above average craftsmen, but not geniuses.
- dhimes 10y agoNow what I want is ad-clicking software... :)
- samwestdev 10y agoFuck facebook
- arthpalme 10y agofacebook is the next AOL+friendster+myspace, they really need to give up.
- chollida1 10y ago> Facebook’s change will open up more online ad space for it to sell, although Mr. Bosworth said that wasn’t the motivation for the move. Facebook now garners 84% of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, which are less susceptible to ad blocking than desktop devices. Something about it being difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on it seems appropriate here. This is what happens when a company becomes big enough to not have to care very much about what their users think. Look at what Google has done on their search site. More than half the visible page is adds now. Facebook now believes that users won't abandon them and they can really start to use/abuse their position to increase their revenue. They in essence have called their users bluff and said even though there is alot of talk about hating ads and leaving, they don't believe that users will really quit the site because of this. I'm willing to bet that Facebook is correct here. I'm an investor.
- FussyZeus 10y agoDoes this really generate anything for Facebook though long term? These companies seem to forget that the best blocking technology is the human brain, and serving us more and more BS we don't want/have any interest in isn't going to make the advertisers more money, just Facebook. That's fine for now but eventually they're going to catch on. This has been a cold war arms race for years now, websites pile in more and more ads, ruin the experience, clutter the content and people just ignore harder and harder, either with actual ad blocking technology or just by knowing exactly what's an ad and what's the actual content and filtering accordingly. My point is, eventually the advertisers are going to pick up on the fact that an impression to a pissed off reader isn't worth anything, even the rock bottom prices they currently pay. This model is dying and Facebook/Google are in hardcore denial about it.
- balabaster 10y agoI only have a sample size of one (me), but I left a couple of years ago and you're not getting me back with an attitude like this... I can't imagine I'm the only one, however, I'm also willing to bet that you're right often enough for this tactic to increase profits.
- 10y ago
- douche 10y agoI 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.
- davidgerard 10y agoSocial Fixer helps a lot.
- recursive 10y agoPresumably, the first time they spend any effort trying to make their ads less trivial to block, it won't be so easy.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoWith Facebook they can serve ads as if they were a regular story, there wouldn't be anything structural, not even image names/sizes, to go on then.
- obsurveyor 10y agoUnless they start misrepresenting stories, you could setup a plugin that keeps track of your friends and only display content from them.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> With Facebook they can serve ads as if they were a regular story With Facebook's paid reach, "regular stories" are often paid ads to start with.
- douche 10y agoFor reference: #rightCol{ display:none; } #contentArea{ width: 700px !important; }
- jerf 10y agoWhy not just allow users to pay to not see ads? It's a crazy idea, but it just might work. Hulu's getting a lot more from me per month for their ad-free tier than they could ever dream of getting from me for ads with my watching habits, probably at least an order of magnitude more.
- DanTheManPR 10y agoA big issue with paid subscriptions is that it dilutes the strength of the ad network, since you're specifically excluding desirable target customers.
- jerf 10y agoI think that argument is aging fast; it dates from before ad blockers were the increasingly big deal they are now. You've got two basic choices with a user who has demonstrated their passion to remove ads, spend money to play an arms-game race with the ad blockers to pound through their defenses, or directly make money from that passion, possibly an order-of-magnitude more money per user. Is it really so obvious that the arms race is the correct solution? If I were a major shareholder of Facebook, I would be asking this question in a pointed manner. There's an argument to be made that they're leaving billions on the table here, and the argument is getting better every month that goes by.
- rlidwka 10y agoThere is another basic choice: write a code that is intentionally incompatible with ad blockers. They can name an important navigation element "ad", so ad blocker will hide it for example. Then, when a bunch of users start complaining that the website does not work, point out that it's all ad blocker's fault (because without it everything works). I've seen a few precedents already.
- hajile 10y agoThat works for small websites, but big sites will simply have exceptions listed.
- tomcart 10y agoI'm a little surprised they would announce this as a thing they will do in the future, rather than something they've already succeeded in doing. Either they're arrogant about their ability to implement this (which may be well founded), or they're really doing it to assure less savvy advertisers that they're trying as hard as they can...
- ddalex 10y agoRules of acquisition 392: Never announce that you intend to do something until you already did it. Asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission.
- shmerl 10y agoCat and mouse much?
- bernardlunn 10y agoFB is brilliant at pissing off all their users, then walking it back a bit so we all claim victory. Its a public negotiation and MZ is good at poker.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- paukiatwee 10y agoOne of the way is can we develop a open source FB client that does not have FB ads? That way we can also plug in Machine Learning algorithm to remove spam etc.
- matiasow 10y agoBring'em on
- joeblau 10y agoI really wish I had access to my `/ets/hosts` file on natively iOS so I could block Facebook from there like I do on my laptop.
- motoford 10y agoIn case anyone wants to do this now I found this after a quick search # Block Facebook 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com 127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com Taken from http://cariblogger.com/2010/07/how-to-block-facebook-using-hosts-file/ http://cariblogger.com/2010/07/how-to-block-facebook-using-h...
- gajjanag 10y agoA method that is more complete was described on HN a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052. For OS X implementation, see the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795351 and the linked implementation. For GNU/Linux, no one seemed to have posted something and I could not easily find it. Hence I wrote my own that has been tested successfully on my own machine: https://github.com/gajjanag/config_files/blob/master/block_fb.sh https://github.com/gajjanag/config_files/blob/master/block_f....
- malchow 10y agoI 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 a real business, supporting real people, making real stuff. They know their business better than anyone else. And every day of every month of every quarter, they seem to decide that they need advertising. Once you start thinking about it that way, you start to understand why advertising is one of the oldest industries in the world.
- Dolores12 10y agoSo you have spam filter disabled and read all those great ads in your inbox?
- malchow 10y agoIf you took a look at the inbox of an ordinary consumer, you'd see lots of desired ads – in my case, a weekly email from a high end audio shop I like. You may assiduously unsubscribe from all unsolicited email, but most do not. For most people, what is in Gmail's spam folder is genuine junk – emails from Nigerian princes, emails in cyrillic, etc.
- geekamongus 10y agoThis sounds rather anecdotal. From where did you get this info about what is in most people's Gmail spam folders?
- tmptmp 10y agoAnd 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.
- tomjen3 10y agoFacebook is the only site I turned of my adblock for: They know everything about me, so surely they could come up with some really useful ads for products that I really want to buy? Nope. I keep it of only because the ads always give me a chockle: trying to sell me "magic" amulets (I noted that I am an atheist), getting me to get the exact the degree from the exact university I went to (and, which I proudly listed on facebook) and getting gas from a company 150+ miles from my home. Ads online are a joke, doubly so on Facebook.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoThere's a tension, Facebook also want to increase the number of impressions so small-scale advertisers will pay more. Those ads though are probably just badly chosen campaigns by the people paying for the placements. FB are probably not inclined to stop advertisers wasting money.
- spdionis 10y ago> User adoption of ad-blocking software has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly outside of the U.S. According to estimates by online advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 26% of U.S. internet users now use ad blockers on their desktop devices. Well, where are the numbers backing "particularly outside of the U.S." then? I had the impression it's the other way around, and ad blockers have much higher adoption in the U.S. so i'm interested.
- delecti 10y agoAdditionally, I'd be curious if it's 26% of users or traffic, because I expect the two figures are rather different.
- jamiesonbecker 10y agoWhat concerns me most here is not that FB is going to force ads, but that this sets both a precedent and a HOWTO manual on how to do it. (i.e., same-domain, random JS names, same-site URL redirects, etc.) It won't be long before EVERYONE follows FB's lead and proxied attack vectors will simply be the norm.
- jamiesonbecker 10y agoYou know, I don't mind Google search ads or even static display ads (ie BuySellAds). And even FB's somewhat annoying and usually poorly targeted display ads don't bother me too much, since they don't slow me down and (very) occasionally actually show me something of interest. I draw the line with potential attack vectors/XSS injections, interstitials, youtube video ads, ads that keep me or slow me down from accessing content, auto-starting video, ad-block blocking interstitials, etc. I can't imagine that I'm in a tiny minority, so why isn't there a uBlock list that only blocks the worst ads? (no, I'm not talking about ABP here.. but an actual privacy-aware ad list.)
- nix0n 10y agoFor a while, the easiest way to do this was Flashblock... then JS and HTML5 caught up to Flash's anti-feature-set. There are some ideas here, along the content-type-blocking route: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131329
- niroze 10y agoGame on.
- chakalakasp 10y agoThe arms race continues.
- provoc 10y agoIt seems strange to me how many people feel entitled to block the main source of revenue that allows sites such as Facebook to operate, while continuing to enjoy the benefits of the site. It's very dishonest behaviour, and tantamount to theft. Even worse of course are companies like Adblock Plus, who essentially hold sites to ransom, by removing them from their blocking lists in exchange for a substantial chunk of their ad revenue. The bottom line is, if you don't want to see the adverts, don't use the site at all.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoChallenge accepted.
- forrestthewoods 10y agoI will never cease to upgrade my malware protection.
- joeblau 10y agoYou right
- tomcart 10y agoFirst line of the article: > Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software.
- swasheck 10y ago“We’re doing it more for the principle of the thing. We want to help lead the discussion on this.” I must not have been invited to that conversation where this discussion took place. Also, I don't trust Facebook advertising because a few of their ads injected pictures of my friends' faces/pictures into them to make them more appealing (erm. deceptive) to me.
- geekamongus 10y ago"lead the discussion" is AKA "control the narrative."
- Mathnerd314 10y agoOriginal announcement from Facebook: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132 http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-the-ads-you-see-on-facebook-and-an-update-on-ad-blocking/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-the...
- newscracker 10y agoQuote from the FB newsroom post: > When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads. The ads on FB are annoying and are disrupting regardless of how well targeted they are. Unless FB decides to completely change the advertising market and allow only a handful of nicer brands and ads (along with the drastic reduction in the amount of money it can make), nobody is going to believe that the ads are anything but annoying, intrusive and disruptive. I'd be really interested in knowing how many Facebook employees use the platform from a desktop browser and resort to ad blockers to have a better experience. :)
- epmatsw 10y agoIt'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 taking this". I love me some adblockers, but it's sometimes hard to reconcile blocking ad-blocker-blockers ethically (and from a politeness perspective) in my own mind.
- beagle3 10y agoIt'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.
- corysama 10y agoThat'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.
- madflame991 10y agoYour mere presence provides value for them as you are part of the reason why your friends are on FB.
- beagle3 10y agoBut 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"?
- freehunter 10y agoVery good. There are a lot of mall walkers who don't buy anything, just take advantage of the large indoor space and its climate control. And much like the "network effect" people like to talk about, malls don't want to be empty. They would rather be full of non-shoppers than 1/10th full of customers, because perception is everything. If no one is at the mall, why would businesses come to the mall? Shoppers aren't the mall's customers, businesses are. The mall doesn't care about the customers, they care about luring businesses to locate there and pay rent. And if they have a ton of non-shoppers loitering around, that makes their mall more attractive, not less.
- jcoffland 10y agoFB's decline began a long time ago this will only accelerate it. Of course any company who starts to see it's users as the enemy is in trouble.
- nikki-9696 10y agoEh, FB becomes less relevant to me the more it shows me ads and sponsored content and crap, instead of the content from my friends and family that I actually signed up for the service to see in the first place. Eating up my mobile data with video and ads just makes me not bother to visit the site as much.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoThis was an inevitable outcome because it was only a matter of time before large companies started foiling ad blockers and their rule sets. We're now entering the cat and mouse stage on a grand scale. A lot of people seem to think ad blockers are impervious and can quickly be updated to get around any countermeasures. Unfortunately, it's very easy to get around the rule sets for ad blockers and I suspect the method Facebook is going to use will be unblockable unless of course you want to turn off all images on the site and degrade the experience.
- noisy_boy 10y agoAll my school/college friends are on Whatsapp (owned by Facebook yes). We have setup a group for our class and I get to know whatever that is happening without any ads. I deleted my Facebook account a while ago (I know its not really deleted but whatever) and basically it didn't make any difference as such. Nobody complained that I wasn't on Facebook, I didn't have to see what people ate last evening or how awesomer their life is compared to mine and it saves a ton of bandwidth/keeps my phone snappy. For browing via PC, Ublock Origin filters are working fine for now. I actually feel better without Facebook.
- vemy 10y agoOnly a matter of time before they start injecting ads into Whatsapp. They are owned by Facebook after all.
- bitwize 10y agoRemember, "your contract with the network is you're going to watch the spots." By ad blocking, you are not upholding your end of the "bargain", therefore you're technically committing theft of service. And companies have few ethical qualms concerning thieves.
- jawilson2 10y ago> "your contract with the network is you're going to watch the spots." Where is this from?
- bitwize 10y agoFormer Turner Broadcasting chairman Jamie Kellner, explaining to us why DVRs are to television what the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone, said "Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. […] Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming." This was the same guy who cancelled Animaniacs and Freakazoid, btw.
- jackmaney 10y agoWhat contract?? You can't find a single example of any such contract that I've ever signed.
- xedarius 10y agoMaybe they should build the FB browser that can only access facebook.com and amazon, completing the consumer cycle.
- reiichiroh 10y agoI love FB Purity and would hate for it to stop working. It's what makes my FB feed useful.
- awqrre 10y agoFB purity? like how they show you posts in the order that they choose? reloading the page changes the order too...
- reiichiroh 10y agoIt's a browser addon to cleanup Facebook: www.fbpurity.com
- Falkon1313 10y agoThat's exactly one of the many things that FB Purity fixes - you can set it to chronological mode. (In addition to filtering out noise and junk.) It also had a "Do not autoplay videos" setting well before Facebook added an option for that.
- flinty 10y agoFacebook makes most of its money on mobile ads which are not affected by ad blockers. So why make a big deal announcing efforts to block ad blockers? A smart company like Facebook doesn't make moves accidentally. This announcement is more targeted towards publishers than it is towards ad blockers. Doesn't matter how affective the work around is - it sends publishers, who are holding off from instant articles and more Facebook hosted content, the message Facebook is the only way out; You will lose the war against ad blockers; sign up with us for instant articles and other Facebook hosted solutions and we will fight with and for you. http://qz.com/743988/facebook-is-an-unstoppable-force-on-mobile/ http://qz.com/743988/facebook-is-an-unstoppable-force-on-mob... > In the second quarter, mobile sales made up 84% of its $6.24 billion in advertising revenue
- ihsw 10y ago> mobile ads which are not affected by ad blockers I've permanently switched to Nexus devices because other vendors fill their phones with crapware. I've permanently switched to Firefox on my Nexus 6P because Chrome is weak an ineffective. If ads start to creep outside of the harmless bottom 120px stolen by apps then I will root my phone and install native adblockers. Mobile ads enjoy their place now only because in-app ads are generally benign.
- freehunter 10y agoAd blockers exist on both iOS and Android now.
- zazpowered 10y agoMost people use the Facebook app though
- reiichiroh 10y agoI hope this doesn't break FB Purity. Social Fixer is undergoing a long overdue re-write as well.
- pdkl95 10y ago> Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of engineering for advertising and pages. I offer a sincere apology; I never expected that introducing "Boz" to computers and programming during our time in 4-H could lead to Facebook and the damage it has done to society. Maybe he would have ended up the same. Maybe learning BASIC in my 4-H programming project was insignificant in the long term. I just wish I wasn't responsible, even in a tiny way.
- lookupmobile 10y agoIf they do it - there might be a short term (1 or 2 Qs) benefit of buying their stocks, since their ad revenue will increase quite drastically. Again - I am talking about the short term.
- _RPM 10y agoKnowing Zuck, he'll probably lobby to make it illegal to use ad blocking because Ads Make The World A Better Place (tm)
- youngButEager 10y agoArrogance from a seller of a good or service alienates/pisses off their customers. SCENE: You walk into a large retail TV/tech/stereo store. There are monitors displaying ads. NOT in a ubiquitous way; in an annoying ubiquitous way (ie. every 5 feet you walk in the store aisles, a monitor drops from the ceiling and displays an ad and you get used to counting your steps and every 5 feet you have to duck around the ad-bearing monitor). You find a device online that disables the 'monitor drop' and bring it with you to that store. Staff notice this and tell you "either turn off your device or leave." What will you do? Phucking leave and never come back, that's what. What if Best Buy was the dominant seller of TV/tech/stereos and the only place to get the Best Buy experience? Monopolies don't last. Especially arrogant monopolies. It might take a while but if Best Buy was forcing people to view ads every time they visit the store -- and their customers started not showing up after being harassed by staff to 'stop using your monitor-drop blocker device' -- Best Buy would either 1) stop annoying their customers and find other ways to monetize 2) go out of business The thing that people may forget here is the arrogant belief of this particular monopolist (Zuckerberg et al). That belief is "we got them locked, they can't get this experience anywhere else, we're #1"). Well that's a mistake on their part. Can you imagine Jeff Bezos saying "effective immediately we're employing a FB ad model and stopping our users from ad-blocking -- I want more money." Bezos is 100% opposite Zuckerberg. - Bezos knows Amazon is the monopoly - and yet he still he busts his bauls to make the site as non-annoying as possible; read a case study of how much attention Jeff pays to no-friction interaction for users of the Amazon site Arrogant monopolists die. Zuckerberg needs to find a different way to monetize. The mere fact that the dummazz thinks so little of his users that he comes up with "we'll force them to consume ads" instead of a Bezos "make users as happy as possible" shows Zuckerberg is an azz. But then we all knew that because he stole the FB idea from someone else. NO FREAKING RESPECT. No respect extended from the guy -- so NONE GIVEN.
- amateurpolymath 10y ago> Monopolies don't last. This is simply untrue.
- youngButEager 10y ago
- 0xmohit 10y agoThis seems to be the new strategy after Free Basics [0] failed? [0] https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-internet-org/ https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-internet...
- Raphmedia 10y agoAt that point I'm really considering pulling my own feed and displaying in my own client.
- newscracker 10y ago> “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of engineering for advertising and pages. I get the point that Facebook is ad-supported. But to spin that as "ads are a part of the Facebook experience" is like saying that 'throwing up is part of a rollercoaster ride experience' (please make a better analogy if you will). I don't use the FB apps because apps are more intrusive with respect to the information collected and don't give me adequate control. Instead, I use the FB site from a desktop browser with an ad blocker to have a cleaner experience. And I know it really is clean because I do try to turn off the ad blocker every once in a while to see how crappy it can be. The FB experience on the desktop is terrible with ads. I don't want to see "earn so much in a day", "play poker and make money" and all kinds of nonsense on the right. These ads are in addition to the sponsored stories and stuff that get pushed into the news feed. I don't want to really tell Facebook what ads I like and what my interests are so that I can be fooled by some brand or seller into paying more, part of which would fuel Facebook ads even more. For a long time, people who've been reading about the web and online advertisements have known about banner blindness. [1][2] For some strange reason, those who want to serve ads ignore this or don't want to acknowledge this. Facebook's ads on the desktop are easily ignored by banner blindness, but I don't want to even get those downloaded and waste my bandwidth or Internet traffic limit. While Facebook claimed a big victory with "native ads" on mobile, I'd be willing to bet that many users on mobile have learned banner blindness to these too and just quickly scroll past these ads or sponsored stories inserted into news feeds. They're very easy to spot and take perhaps a few hundred milliseconds for the brain to recognize and act on. For the advertisers paying for impressions, this is a bad deal because it's not valuable at all. But of course, Facebook can make (false) claims that this is better than sidebar ads. People generally do not like ads on any medium because they waste people's time and keep them from the content they're interested in. People do not want to get targeted ads if they know that all their actions are being tracked and be given the euphemism of "a better experience" with it. It doesn't matter how you spin it or what excuses you make for shoving ads into a user's experience. Given a chance, people will skip ads in every communication medium. The only ads people enjoy are the ones that are really thoughtful or funny or move them in some way to make the world a better place. These are really few and far between, and even they have a limit to the number of times people will put up with or want to see and share. The rest of the ads are just examples in wasting money and human thought. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness [2]: http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-findings/ http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-fin...
- pklausler 10y agoIt's important to remember that Facebook usage is entirely optional. I won't miss it when I get fed up and leave.
- benologist 10y agoThis won't end well for Facebook. Nobody joined or visits to view ads, no person wishes they were "more relevant". Forcing the ones who explicitly opted out to disable their ad blockers is forcing them to evaluate whether they want to visit your site at all. The only thing unique about Facebook is people collectively like it more than the alternatives right now.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nojvek 10y agoFor me personally Facebook doesn't matter. I wouldn't care less if it dies. I remember when I joined Facebook as part of my university. I was a hardcore user back then. May be this is a bold prediction. I predict Facebook will die a death like yahoo eventually. Most people I knew who were big Facebook users have all moved on. it'll be like having a Hotmail account.
- brakmic 10y agoSame here. I have a "friendless" account on FB with a few postings liked to my blog. Being 'avantgarde' these days means having an empty FB account and no Linked-Ins at all. ;-)
- aianus 10y agoWhat did you move to? IMO FB Messenger is the best IM network available. Their competitors are really awkward or impossible to use from a laptop.
- demarsch 10y agoBlock the blocker who blocked the blocker
- jagermo 10y agoOk, so here is my idea: Most adblockers use lists or block scripts that are loaded from third party sites. If I load my ads from my own servers, using standard images or gifs, maybe have a script alter the size a few pixel each time, wouldn't that defeat most adblockers? On the upside (for users): No external tracking through ad networks.
- Animats 10y agoJust write a browser add-on to delete the entire right hand column of Facebook pages.
- niftich 10y agoLuckily Facebook still offers APIs to all of its content, so it's entirely possible to keep using (or build a new) third-party client that would whitelist content from actual Friends and therefore passively block ads. Unlike (also-Facebook-owned) Instagram, which has lately made it very difficult to get the content back out.
- JulienRbrt 10y agoGood luck Facebook because we have this: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- hello_newman 10y agothis 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?
- JulienRbrt 10y agoYes. 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.)
- corobo 10y agoDoes anyone serve adverts using websockets yet? I'm surprised it hasn't been tried and intrigued as to why it doesn't work if they have. Might take a day or two for adblockers to catch up and start inspecting websocket streams anyway.
- fapjacks 10y agoGo home, Facebook. You're drunk.
- nv-vn 10y ago>“It just seems like a poor bargain to be forced to choose all or nothing. There’s a middle ground,” Mr. Bosworth said. Is the "middle ground" really to serve ads that track you without asking? I think a middle ground is having non-tracking ads and the user choosing not to block them (though they could try to make these harder to block, for example serving them in the same way user's posts are served). Of course, this is Facebook we're talking about, so even if their ads don't track you, you can be sure as hell that they are.
- f_allwein 10y agoI am also surprised at all the hate against ads. Yes, there are some bad ones (disrupting, malware etc.), but how does that justify you blocking all ads (and thereby robbing websites of their only legitimate source of income)? As Immanuel Kant said (loosely translated): Act in such a way that you actions could serve as the foundation for a general legislation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative I.e. "if there are some bad ads, nobody should have to look at any ads" would be a bad law.
- jeena 10y ago1. All ads are bad 2. Closing your eyes is not the same as robbing
- Falkon1313 10y agoBrowsers added built-in popup blockers and the option to disable flash for just this reason - to enable users to block only the bad behavior. Well-behaved ads would continue to work just fine. But the advertisers completely ignored that very clear message. Rather than avoiding bad behavior and being good citizens of the society, they instead found ways to circumvent the blocks, achieve the same effects, and make things worse. And now they want us to feel sorry for them. To feel guilty for not letting them victimize us with their bad behavior. Blocking all ads is a reasonable response. We gave them a chance to behave. They blew it. Besides, if their ads have, (hypothetical number) just a 3% chance of serving malware that might cost $1000 in time (or otherwise) to repair, then each ad would cost each consumer (on average) $30. So who's robbing who? (Admittedly 3%/$1000 are probably high numbers, but arguing that is no longer arguing whether the advertisers are committing an offense, just arguing the degree of the offense.)
- pducks32 10y agoI think Facebook is going to face the same problem that Youtube does. They have a lot of skilled users who can easily read through their code and find a loophole.
- tiatia 10y agoWhat really annoys me is that I always have to see the stupid face of good ol' Zuckerberg. Facebook always suggest to "follow" him. Facebook does not allow to block him. To have his pic removed by an ad blocker does not work well. They seem to change the image URL of his pic a lot.
- quotemstr 10y ago"Computer vision" doesn't yet appear in the comments. The FTC dictates that FB make it possible for humans to determine what's advertising and what isn't. If humans can tell, computers can too. In the limiting case, ad blockers can run computer vision algorithms on pages and block advertising using graphic overlays that are undetectable for the page hosting the ads. In the end, clients always win. If you want to defeat adblockers, you first need to ban general purpose computing.
- dbg31415 10y agoPeople here are still using Facebook? Interesting...
- ams6110 10y agoI already block all facebook domains in my hosts file, so no impact to me.
- chad_strategic 10y agoInteresting, why would anybody still use Facebook in the first place? It's so 2007.
- Esau 10y agoI actually don't mind advertising. I think it is fair in return for free content. But I have problems with the way many sites do it, because: 1. I don't want autoplay videos (annoying) 2. I don't want animated gifs (makes it hard to concentrate and read) 3. I don't want to be tracked as I browse the Internet (privacy) 4. I don't want malware (security) Number 4 is particular really gets my goat, because I feel that websites are being civilly negligent by not taking any effort to screen what is being sent to visitors. Frankly, at the point, I often find myself hoping someone will resurrect Gopher.
- tabeth 10y agoAssuming you're not super hungry for facebook, isn't it trivial to just block the main newsfeed and only permit it when you click on a specific friend's profile? IIRC ads aren't displayed when you click on a specific person's profile.