8 ms·

Facebook rolls out code to nullify Adblock Plus’ workaround

60 points by MrJagil 10y ago

davidgerard 10y ago
How's uBlock Origin go with this? (I use it and still don't see ads.)
- fjarlq 10y ago
  A bug was filed with uBlock Origin 2 days ago, but gorhill closed it[1] because it's a filter-related issue, so it needs to be taken up with the respective filter list support site. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1886#issuecomment-238840144 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1886#issuecomment-2...
  - gorhill 10y ago
    One was opened in the proper tracker issue and fixed: <https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/98> https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/98>.
- j_jochem 10y ago
  Beats my why anybody would still use ABP over uBlock Origin. Their "acceptable ads" program is basically a protection racket scheme.
  - patrickk 10y ago
    Inertia most likely. ABP was around earlier.
  - WayneBro 10y ago
    Because as soon as I started using uBlock "Origin", I started seeing more ads and more sites that didn't work at all where they previously worked with ABP. Because the uBlock "Origin" UI sucks compared to ABP. Because acceptable ads is easy to turn off with one click. And because gorhill is a real asshole when you submit an issue. It's now obvious to me why uBlock had all sorts of drama at launch.
    - erikb 10y ago
      The a-hole part is certainly bad if it is true. Can you show some examples? The "seeing more ads" part can just be the result of having fewer users.
      - gorhill 10y ago
        The "seeing more ads" is baseless, I can easily provide cases where it is the opposite, because ABP is vulnerable to the "display: block !important" trick used by many web sites on Chromium-based browsers, is unable to block popunders, does not support script injections, and many other shortcomings. For instance, just try focus.de with EasyList Germany enabled. I think it's possibly just a case of someone unhappy for whom I declined[1] to take care of their pet issue, so lashing out with vague supposed flaws so as to undermine my work makes him feel better. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+...
        WayneBro 10y ago
        > ... so lashing out with vague supposed flaws ... That's funny. Because the reason I said it was that you close issues without pointing out WHAT item in your huge list of ridiculous guidelines (like "I don't accept pull requests") has been broken. LOL. It's a real asshole move and if anyone actually reads the list of declined issues they can clearly see that people are annoyed by that.
        gorhill 10y ago
        To just respect the guideline to contributing shouldn't be too much to ask keeping in mind the time and work I happily volunteer to this project. Given the amount of invalid issues that keep being opened[1], asking me to spend time to detail why issues marked as "invalid" are invalid is to ask me to spend a whole lot of precious free time on not working to improve uBO. CONTRIBUTING[2] is there to be read and respected. If you disagree with it, best is to not open issues. Countless other people understand why it is needed and respect it, and helps the project get better. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+i... 2. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...
- cocotino 10y ago
  Same here, I see no ads somehow. And if I start seeing them I'll stop using Facebook, after all it is just some kind of RSS reader with built-in dumb comments now.
- wooger 10y ago
  The blocker makes little difference, other than performance. All the popular extensions use separate filter subscription lists, which you can subscribe to some or all of. It's those that provide the blocking logic, and which need to be updated to fix this.
  - gorhill 10y ago
    For uBlock Origin, it makes a big difference: it has its own custom filter lists which make use of extended filter syntax[1]: resource redirection, script injection, more cosmetic filtering options (through which the FB issue is taken care of), etc. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  I'm not a fan of ublock origin because it includes the privacy easylist by default which is breaking so many websites. They put anything in there without understanding what they are blocking. So frustrating.
zer11782oo 10y ago
link?
erelde 10y ago
Immediatly what went through my head: "Maybe Facebook has planned this like a chess game, and planned several moves ahead even before their first move." I wonder how many moves they have in advance.
- n72 10y ago
  If the portrait of 'Boz' in Chaos Monkeys is any indication, not far.
- alexeiz 10y ago
  One. Half-move.
janus24 10y ago
EasyList maintainers are also trying to bypass Facebook ads, with no success for now. https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995 https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995
- zapu 10y ago
  > You have been permanently banned from this board. > Please contact the Board Administrator for more information. > Reason given for ban: Let's play whack a mole > A ban has been issued on your IP address. uhhh ok? I've never visited that forum, even.
  - _kyran 10y ago
    Using a VPN?
ckastner 10y ago
I'd like to know at what point the revenue generated from these ads would surpass the cost of simply acquiring Eyeo GmbH (the company behind Adblock Plus).
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  1) They're a private company, not a public one, so acquiring them would be entirely at their own discretion and pricing. 2) EasyList is maintained by others, and could be used by any other adblocker. Eyeo only maintains the so-called "Acceptable Ads" whitelist. 3) Even if someone managed to acquire the company behind that "Acceptable Ads" whitelist, that list has no value without users. The value of the purchase would evaporate if all the users switched to another adblocker, or a forked version of Adblock Plus itself.
  - ckastner 10y ago
    I agree with all your points, but I'm still curious as to what that price point of item 1) would be, realistically. Also, the remaining user base of item 3) -- the "even if" case -- might still be sufficiently large to warrant a purchase. According to this source [0], which seems to come from their public filings, in 2014 they apparently had "only" €4.32m in revenue. Edit: According to [1], in 2015, they apparently struck a much more lucrative deal with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, among others. [0] http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-gmbh http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-gmbh [1] http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO
JoshTriplett 10y ago
Adblockers, as a whole, would have so much more legitimacy if the most popular one didn't accept money for whitelisting. If they want to advance an agenda that whitelists ads they consider "not annoying", fine, people who disagree with that agenda can use a better adblocker that blocks all ads. But accepting money allows articles like this one to paint all adblockers with that same brush, making them all seem less legitimate.
- garaetjjte 10y ago
  That whitelist can be disabled by simple disabling one checkbox in settings.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Some spam has working unsubscribe links, but it's still spam.
- pricechild 10y ago
  They're very specific about what ads they will whitelist and only require payment from (roughly the largest) 10% of publishers. https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-moneti... I think there's a general consensus that people aren't against advertising in principle, it's the tracking, the intrusiveness etc. that the game has turned into. I feel it's perfectly fair for an organisation working towards this ideal to take money in somehow in order to pay for it.
vjvj 10y ago
This might still work as fb-only ad blocker: http://www.fbpurity.com/ http://www.fbpurity.com/ I've been using it for years and have turned off my entire news feed on desktop. I don't miss it one bit.
- corobo 10y ago
  That site looks like a scam site.
Dolores12 10y ago
I see where it goes. It goes to real-time Ads reporting by adblock users and real-time blocklists. Facebook can not win that, unless they serve unique ad for every user.
- phire 10y ago
  Facebook can easily serve 'semi-unique' ads, they already personalise them. But that just leads to fuzzy matching of ads. And unless facebook start disguising their ads as actual content (which would get them in huge trouble with the FTC), adblock can always work out what's an ad because it's somehow marked as an ad.
- yousry 10y ago
  I foresee a new area of applications for ai.
  - okket 10y ago
    AI that writes articles, adds ads and is consumed by another AI (bot) that analyses the content, clicks the ads. Fully virtualised money generating cycle, with beautiful statistics and all, just seed the generator AI with a few links/content.
    - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
      Well that's ultimately the kind of economy we're heading into. In ten or so years there will be articles of bots earning more money than a certain percentage of population combined.
  - JoelBennett 10y ago
    Funny you mention this. When I was at university, a lab-mate of mine was working on automatic article summarizing. Essentially, you could point his thing at a long article, and it would try to pick out the important bits and generate questions based on the content. I pointed out that one nefarious use of his work would be to post relevant looking questions on blog posts, but have them still link back to spam. It would become increasingly difficult to identify legitimate questions from the spam ones. But yeah... when does this all stop? Maybe when people realize that 99% of advertising is a complete and total waste of money.
yomly 10y ago
From the link within the parent link[0]: >Facebook commissioned research firm Ipsos to investigate why reports say 70 million Americans and nearly 200 million people worldwide use adblockers. Americans are less than 10% of the online population but around 35% of adblockers? Is this just am exposure thing? [0]https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-web-adblockers-but-offer-ad-targeting-opt-outs/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-web-a...
- Fuxy 10y ago
  it's probably because a more computer savy relative installed it on their computer so they don't get a call constantly when an add pops up saying "Your WiFi was infected with 99.5 viruses call this number so we can scam you out of your money".
  - ultramancool 10y ago
    Yeah... between this and the malware, I can't leave my family without ad blockers.
- Sacho 10y ago
  I think there's a lot of factors in play, and probably more than I am aware of. The first one I can immediately think of is that ads are quite often not served worldwide. I only started receiving ads very recently, first only a couple but now there's an actual variety. I also started using adblock recently :) The next one would be the content consumed. While Facebook is pretty ubiquitous, other countries have their own social networks which may have less common or less intrusive ads. Similarly, other countries would consume local news/blogs/etc, which might have the same characteristics. As an example there, visiting NYT/Forbes/HuffPo/etc always gives me a headache(pre-adblock), but our local online newspapers use fairly light and simple banner ads. The third one would be the level of tolerance for ads. As American media seems to blast ads at a very high rate, American users may have grown extremely intolerant to them. I don't mind our own ads that much, which are comparatively sparse and much less 'attention-grabbing'. Of course, over time, I've grown less and less tolerant(I've already stopped watching TV), but averaged over a whole population there's probably a notable difference there as well. All three of those reasons also touch upon a pretty central one - the type of ads being served. The more obnoxious the ads, the more likely people are to use adblock, and there's definitely a difference in the "advancement" level of ads in different countries.
taigeair 10y ago
Some sites detect adblockers and prevent users from using it until they disable the adblocker. Why doesn't FB do that?
- tekni5 10y ago
  Because if facebook blocked adblock users, then they would lose users that create free content for them, slowly but surely people would begin to abandon facebook.
- dspillett 10y ago
  They don't want to create user friction in their direction. If facebook stops something working because of the ad-blocker, or accidentally cause something to break while trying to do so perhaps even for users without the blocker, the users will see facebook making it difficult for them to do what they want. If on the other hand facebook stops the ad-blocker from being able to work on their site, without breaking other bits of the facebook experience at all, the same users will see the ad blocker failing to do its job.
tekni5 10y ago
Would be funny if we eventually end up with some artificial intelligence algorithm that processes content on a webpage and modifies it for the end user to remove any content they don't want to see.
- patall 10y ago
  I totally expect this to happen. Although it will only lead to advertisers also using those programs to check their content and modifying it until it fits. I mean we already have pretty much an always on going evolution in advertising, why should it stop.
- ucho 10y ago
  Readiblity bookmarklet does just that but it is very simple heuristic and is good enough for articles/layouts with single main column.
_ph_ 10y ago
Honestly, if Facebook serves ads from their servers and not just loads them from random ad networks, and takes care, that they reasonably blend with the page in look and appearance (especially no special blinking, noise etc.) and in general curates them, like paper publications do, then I am all fine with ads on Facebook. We have lived with (and sometimes even liked) curated ads in paper publications for decades. If the web just had those kind of ads, it would be great. Web pages need some way of financing, and if there is a reasonable one, it would be good for everyone. The big problem with current web ads, and the reason I do run adblock is, that they are uncharted, often violently annoying and unfortunately a growing security risk. In this sense, I support Facebook in having proper ads.
- sschueller 10y ago
  The problem with this is that you will no longer know what is an ad and what is not. On facebook that may not be such an issues but for example on your local news program. You no longer know if the report you are watching is actually news or a native ad.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    I was assuming that all ads continue to be clearly labeled as such, as they were in print media. And for TV, of course, ads also needs to be clearly labeled. What I was talking about is, that the page showing ads needs to be fully responsible for their content to prevent malware attacks, and of course, should see to that they are aesthetically acceptable.
- busyant 10y ago
  We have lived with (and sometimes even liked) curated ads in paper publications for decades. In the 1970s, my grandfather mailed his local newspaper and asked them to remove the ads when they made his copy of the paper. "I never read them" he wrote. My mother had to explain to him how mass production worked.
xg15 10y ago
I checked the new ad preferences yesterday* that supposedly gives users so much more control over their ads than the "blunt tools" that adblockers are. So far it looks like a thinly-veiled attempt to get users to opt-in to targeted advertising: There is no way to disable certain types of ads (e.g. distractinv video ads) and (obviously) no way to reduce the number of ads. That last point is even stated explicitely: None of the preferences will influence the number of ads shown, only the "quality". The only thing you can do is give facebook some vague hints topics of ads you are particularly interested in and which you are not - with facebook making it clear that you'll get the same results with less hassle if you just opt-in to targeted advertising. What annoys me most about Facebook's approach is their dishonesty. If the just stated "look guys, we have to show you ads cause that's how we make money. We can't let you block them", that would at least show some basic respect for their users. Instead, both the announcements and the preference page seem to recite the tired old fairy tale that users secretly love ads and are only shunning them because they are not "relevant" enough to them. I don't know if they actually believe what they are writing but I don't know anyone who thinks like this. They show the same cynicism in the linked post. Yes guys, we all know ad-blocking is a cat-and-mouse game. But first making it deliberately hard to distinguish ads and content, then blaming ad-blockers that they also remove content smells like a really cheap attempt to shift the blame.
nostrademons 10y ago
It's been interesting to watch the escalating complexity of business models vs. the opportunities to make money by nullifying someone else's business model. Sometimes it seems like capitalism is about to devolve into chaos (in a mathematical sense), and that the flow of money is becoming increasingly arbitrary until it becomes entirely random. It used to be that market economies were simple: you wanted something, you paid for it. Companies would pay their employees a fair wage for their labor, and then those employees would spend that money on consumer products. Their were some exceptions, like advertising on broadcast TV, but they were a relatively small part of the economy. Netscape seems to have opened the flood gates with their "commoditize the browser, and make money selling servers" approach. Suddenly, it became consumers' expectation that things should be free, and business's expectation that you can't actually make money by selling to consumers. And businesses adapted: first it was the dot-com boom, where the business model was "use VC to grow marketshare while losing money on subsidized products, IPO, and have clueless tech stock investors foot the bill for cheap cool consumer products." Then there was Google, which made finding stuff free but extracted huge rents for getting found, and Facebook, which is similar but with more personal data. Then there were all the startups whose only revenue model was to sell to Google or Facebook - sometimes by threatening legal precedents (YouTube) or irrelevance (Instagram/Whatsapp). Consumers don't have money and would never be able to pay for their YouTubing/Instagramming - but Google & Facebook will pay a lot to maintain their business model. Now we have ad-tech to optimize the ads shown; clickbots to make (fraudulent) money for a publisher; more clickbots to bankrupt advertisers; botnets (often distributed through these ads!) to hijack users' computers; clickjacking to hijack users; adblockers so consumers don't have to deal with any of this; and counter-adblockers to block the adblockers. It's like humans are doing their best to never see ads, which are only getting clicked by machines, which aren't actually buying the product but are usually attempts by competitors to bankrupt their competition. Oh, and of course all of these players are getting hacked on a regular basis. Add to this the whole credit-card & consumer debt industry, which is based on some portion of the population never paying for stuff, but making up the losses on the interest payments of people who pay for their stuff late. It's occurred to me that if a financial terrorist wanted to do a lot of damage to the capitalist system, they need only hand out free credit cards that are backed by lists of numbers stolen in one of the many data breaches that have happened this year. It's free money for the consumer, who can buy whatever they want, anonymously, with no bill. Indeed, with the lists of credit cards stolen in 2015, someone could pose as the credit card company and mail out these cards to unsuspecting consumers, who would think they were using a legit card rather than one with someone else's account number. The merchants won't care initially until the cards start getting declined, which may not happen for a month. The CC & government resources dedicated to investigating card fraud would be overwhelmed if millions of people became fraudsters at once. And then straightening out the mess of who owes what would likely be impossible, with goods already "purchased", fenced, converted to cash, and gone.
akerro 10y ago
>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. lol they designed it this way. I'm disappointed facebook, but what could I expect from you anyway...
mercer 10y ago
Isn't this ultimately something Facebook cannot win? It seems to me that updating the 'ad detection' in a Chrome plugin is significantly easier than updating the Facebook codebase, so much so that it offsets the potential difficulty of writing the code to detect these ads in relation to code that obfuscates the fact that something is an ad. Or am I missing something?
- corobo 10y ago
  They also have a legal requirement to disclose that an ad is an ad. Eventually you'll just get to a point where you block based on seeing the little "Sponsored" text in a post.
- teaneedz 10y ago
  Yep. Besides the legalese they must include (https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/native-advertising-guide-businesses https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...), they will never win because users control the client/browser. Facebook's efforts to block ads will always be futile. They could block ad blocking users completely, but that would be too much negative PR and hurt their already peaking MAUs.
jokoon 10y ago
I wish there could some discussion about an intrusiveness score of an ad. I'd be glad to block ads that are not too intrusive. As long as ads are hosted on the same server of the website, there is no problem. Until that's done, I'll keep blocking. Google ads were a fine example of unintrusive ads.
erikb 10y ago
As always when this topic pops up: Zero empathy here for the companies that shove ads into users faces. Make money by providing reaosonable services, not by treating your users like cattle.
- Shish2k 10y ago
  > companies that shove ads into users faces ISPs intercepting traffic and injecting ads that neither the user nor the site owner intended, yeah, I can see how that could be classed as "shoving ads in people's faces", but "here's a free service with ads attached, please either take both or leave both"? What part of that is "shoving"?
  - erikb 10y ago
    I see your point. But I can decide which part of your service I want to see. If I want my browser to not show the Hacker News header line, am I doing something wrong? No, I don't think so. And if you still try to circumvent my browser config to show it to me anyways then it is shoving it into my face.
    - Shish2k 10y ago
      That analogy is ineffective because the HN header bar isn't the price that the provider has asked you to pay in exchange for the service. When I walk into a shop I am presented with a similar "here are some objects with prices, please either take the object and pay the price or don't do either". However, it's physically possible for me to decide which part of a transaction I want to take part in. If choose to accept the "taking objects" part of the deal while ignoring the "paying for them" part of the deal, am I doing something wrong? If the shopkeeper then said "hey, you should pay for that", would you have "zero sympathy" for the shopkeeper because they were "shoving capitalism in my face"?
rvern 10y ago
Fixed here: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc834eaf23c665591d68cb28600d https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc83....
throw94 10y ago
I recently worked on an extension to disable Facebook's news feed completely since I (and probably many others) mostly use it for chat and groups. Might be helpful for some people in the HN community! :) Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/hbhdccjdfjcpakliojfnpincocolhcob/reviews https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/h...
anilgulecha 10y ago
Facebook cannot win this. If not ABP, it'll be a browser extension or something else. Fundamentally, they're bringing in something users are against, and hence will take any easy action against. The hard part is the 'easy action'. Installing ABP is pretty easy. If that does not work, and "FB ad block" extension is the easy thing to do, that will be installed. Sooner or later.
textmode 10y ago
On some websites, longtime text-only browser users are seeing new greetings like "I see you are using an adblocker." Usually they are greeted with warnings about lack of functionality because of absence of Javascript, and imperatives that they must upgrade to a "modern browser". Once-free websites that were converted to companies, like Google and Facebook, must survive on web ads. But web ads are built on an unstable foundation; their presence relies on several assumptions. And, quite simply, the web works without them -- without the assumptions and without the ads. Longtime web users, who grew up with early "browser" prototypes, including "text-only browsers", remember this. The network is very fast now. We can move all manner of data across "the web". But the architecture of the internet and the web is still more or less the same. This is, thankfully, why "blocking" (not requesting) web ads is so easy.

60 points by MrJagil 10y ago

davidgerard 10y ago

How's uBlock Origin go with this? (I use it and still don't see ads.)

fjarlq 10y ago
A bug was filed with uBlock Origin 2 days ago, but gorhill closed it[1] because it's a filter-related issue, so it needs to be taken up with the respective filter list support site. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1886#issuecomment-238840144 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1886#issuecomment-2...
- gorhill 10y ago
  One was opened in the proper tracker issue and fixed: <https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/98> https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/98>.
j_jochem 10y ago
Beats my why anybody would still use ABP over uBlock Origin. Their "acceptable ads" program is basically a protection racket scheme.
- patrickk 10y ago
  Inertia most likely. ABP was around earlier.
- WayneBro 10y ago
  Because as soon as I started using uBlock "Origin", I started seeing more ads and more sites that didn't work at all where they previously worked with ABP. Because the uBlock "Origin" UI sucks compared to ABP. Because acceptable ads is easy to turn off with one click. And because gorhill is a real asshole when you submit an issue. It's now obvious to me why uBlock had all sorts of drama at launch.
  - erikb 10y ago
    The a-hole part is certainly bad if it is true. Can you show some examples? The "seeing more ads" part can just be the result of having fewer users.
    - gorhill 10y ago
      The "seeing more ads" is baseless, I can easily provide cases where it is the opposite, because ABP is vulnerable to the "display: block !important" trick used by many web sites on Chromium-based browsers, is unable to block popunders, does not support script injections, and many other shortcomings. For instance, just try focus.de with EasyList Germany enabled. I think it's possibly just a case of someone unhappy for whom I declined[1] to take care of their pet issue, so lashing out with vague supposed flaws so as to undermine my work makes him feel better. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+...
      - WayneBro 10y ago
        > ... so lashing out with vague supposed flaws ... That's funny. Because the reason I said it was that you close issues without pointing out WHAT item in your huge list of ridiculous guidelines (like "I don't accept pull requests") has been broken. LOL. It's a real asshole move and if anyone actually reads the list of declined issues they can clearly see that people are annoyed by that.
        gorhill 10y ago
        To just respect the guideline to contributing shouldn't be too much to ask keeping in mind the time and work I happily volunteer to this project. Given the amount of invalid issues that keep being opened[1], asking me to spend time to detail why issues marked as "invalid" are invalid is to ask me to spend a whole lot of precious free time on not working to improve uBO. CONTRIBUTING[2] is there to be read and respected. If you disagree with it, best is to not open issues. Countless other people understand why it is needed and respect it, and helps the project get better. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+i... 2. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...
cocotino 10y ago
Same here, I see no ads somehow. And if I start seeing them I'll stop using Facebook, after all it is just some kind of RSS reader with built-in dumb comments now.
wooger 10y ago
The blocker makes little difference, other than performance. All the popular extensions use separate filter subscription lists, which you can subscribe to some or all of. It's those that provide the blocking logic, and which need to be updated to fix this.
- gorhill 10y ago
  For uBlock Origin, it makes a big difference: it has its own custom filter lists which make use of extended filter syntax[1]: resource redirection, script injection, more cosmetic filtering options (through which the FB issue is taken care of), etc. 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
I'm not a fan of ublock origin because it includes the privacy easylist by default which is breaking so many websites. They put anything in there without understanding what they are blocking. So frustrating.

zer11782oo 10y ago

link?

erelde 10y ago

Immediatly what went through my head: "Maybe Facebook has planned this like a chess game, and planned several moves ahead even before their first move." I wonder how many moves they have in advance.

n72 10y ago
If the portrait of 'Boz' in Chaos Monkeys is any indication, not far.
alexeiz 10y ago
One. Half-move.

janus24 10y ago

EasyList maintainers are also trying to bypass Facebook ads, with no success for now. https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995 https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995

zapu 10y ago
> You have been permanently banned from this board. > Please contact the Board Administrator for more information. > Reason given for ban: Let's play whack a mole > A ban has been issued on your IP address. uhhh ok? I've never visited that forum, even.
- _kyran 10y ago
  Using a VPN?

ckastner 10y ago

I'd like to know at what point the revenue generated from these ads would surpass the cost of simply acquiring Eyeo GmbH (the company behind Adblock Plus).

JoshTriplett 10y ago
1) They're a private company, not a public one, so acquiring them would be entirely at their own discretion and pricing. 2) EasyList is maintained by others, and could be used by any other adblocker. Eyeo only maintains the so-called "Acceptable Ads" whitelist. 3) Even if someone managed to acquire the company behind that "Acceptable Ads" whitelist, that list has no value without users. The value of the purchase would evaporate if all the users switched to another adblocker, or a forked version of Adblock Plus itself.
- ckastner 10y ago
  I agree with all your points, but I'm still curious as to what that price point of item 1) would be, realistically. Also, the remaining user base of item 3) -- the "even if" case -- might still be sufficiently large to warrant a purchase. According to this source [0], which seems to come from their public filings, in 2014 they apparently had "only" €4.32m in revenue. Edit: According to [1], in 2015, they apparently struck a much more lucrative deal with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, among others. [0] http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-gmbh http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-gmbh [1] http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO

JoshTriplett 10y ago

Adblockers, as a whole, would have so much more legitimacy if the most popular one didn't accept money for whitelisting. If they want to advance an agenda that whitelists ads they consider "not annoying", fine, people who disagree with that agenda can use a better adblocker that blocks all ads. But accepting money allows articles like this one to paint all adblockers with that same brush, making them all seem less legitimate.

garaetjjte 10y ago
That whitelist can be disabled by simple disabling one checkbox in settings.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Some spam has working unsubscribe links, but it's still spam.
pricechild 10y ago
They're very specific about what ads they will whitelist and only require payment from (roughly the largest) 10% of publishers. https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-monetization https://adblockplus.org/blog/acceptable-ads-explained-moneti... I think there's a general consensus that people aren't against advertising in principle, it's the tracking, the intrusiveness etc. that the game has turned into. I feel it's perfectly fair for an organisation working towards this ideal to take money in somehow in order to pay for it.

vjvj 10y ago

This might still work as fb-only ad blocker: http://www.fbpurity.com/ http://www.fbpurity.com/ I've been using it for years and have turned off my entire news feed on desktop. I don't miss it one bit.

corobo 10y ago
That site looks like a scam site.

Dolores12 10y ago

I see where it goes. It goes to real-time Ads reporting by adblock users and real-time blocklists. Facebook can not win that, unless they serve unique ad for every user.

phire 10y ago
Facebook can easily serve 'semi-unique' ads, they already personalise them. But that just leads to fuzzy matching of ads. And unless facebook start disguising their ads as actual content (which would get them in huge trouble with the FTC), adblock can always work out what's an ad because it's somehow marked as an ad.
yousry 10y ago
I foresee a new area of applications for ai.
- okket 10y ago
  AI that writes articles, adds ads and is consumed by another AI (bot) that analyses the content, clicks the ads. Fully virtualised money generating cycle, with beautiful statistics and all, just seed the generator AI with a few links/content.
  - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    Well that's ultimately the kind of economy we're heading into. In ten or so years there will be articles of bots earning more money than a certain percentage of population combined.
- JoelBennett 10y ago
  Funny you mention this. When I was at university, a lab-mate of mine was working on automatic article summarizing. Essentially, you could point his thing at a long article, and it would try to pick out the important bits and generate questions based on the content. I pointed out that one nefarious use of his work would be to post relevant looking questions on blog posts, but have them still link back to spam. It would become increasingly difficult to identify legitimate questions from the spam ones. But yeah... when does this all stop? Maybe when people realize that 99% of advertising is a complete and total waste of money.

yomly 10y ago

From the link within the parent link[0]: >Facebook commissioned research firm Ipsos to investigate why reports say 70 million Americans and nearly 200 million people worldwide use adblockers. Americans are less than 10% of the online population but around 35% of adblockers? Is this just am exposure thing? [0]https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-web-adblockers-but-offer-ad-targeting-opt-outs/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-web-a...

Fuxy 10y ago
it's probably because a more computer savy relative installed it on their computer so they don't get a call constantly when an add pops up saying "Your WiFi was infected with 99.5 viruses call this number so we can scam you out of your money".
- ultramancool 10y ago
  Yeah... between this and the malware, I can't leave my family without ad blockers.
Sacho 10y ago
I think there's a lot of factors in play, and probably more than I am aware of. The first one I can immediately think of is that ads are quite often not served worldwide. I only started receiving ads very recently, first only a couple but now there's an actual variety. I also started using adblock recently :) The next one would be the content consumed. While Facebook is pretty ubiquitous, other countries have their own social networks which may have less common or less intrusive ads. Similarly, other countries would consume local news/blogs/etc, which might have the same characteristics. As an example there, visiting NYT/Forbes/HuffPo/etc always gives me a headache(pre-adblock), but our local online newspapers use fairly light and simple banner ads. The third one would be the level of tolerance for ads. As American media seems to blast ads at a very high rate, American users may have grown extremely intolerant to them. I don't mind our own ads that much, which are comparatively sparse and much less 'attention-grabbing'. Of course, over time, I've grown less and less tolerant(I've already stopped watching TV), but averaged over a whole population there's probably a notable difference there as well. All three of those reasons also touch upon a pretty central one - the type of ads being served. The more obnoxious the ads, the more likely people are to use adblock, and there's definitely a difference in the "advancement" level of ads in different countries.

taigeair 10y ago

Some sites detect adblockers and prevent users from using it until they disable the adblocker. Why doesn't FB do that?

tekni5 10y ago
Because if facebook blocked adblock users, then they would lose users that create free content for them, slowly but surely people would begin to abandon facebook.
dspillett 10y ago
They don't want to create user friction in their direction. If facebook stops something working because of the ad-blocker, or accidentally cause something to break while trying to do so perhaps even for users without the blocker, the users will see facebook making it difficult for them to do what they want. If on the other hand facebook stops the ad-blocker from being able to work on their site, without breaking other bits of the facebook experience at all, the same users will see the ad blocker failing to do its job.

tekni5 10y ago

Would be funny if we eventually end up with some artificial intelligence algorithm that processes content on a webpage and modifies it for the end user to remove any content they don't want to see.

patall 10y ago
I totally expect this to happen. Although it will only lead to advertisers also using those programs to check their content and modifying it until it fits. I mean we already have pretty much an always on going evolution in advertising, why should it stop.
ucho 10y ago
Readiblity bookmarklet does just that but it is very simple heuristic and is good enough for articles/layouts with single main column.

_ph_ 10y ago

Honestly, if Facebook serves ads from their servers and not just loads them from random ad networks, and takes care, that they reasonably blend with the page in look and appearance (especially no special blinking, noise etc.) and in general curates them, like paper publications do, then I am all fine with ads on Facebook. We have lived with (and sometimes even liked) curated ads in paper publications for decades. If the web just had those kind of ads, it would be great. Web pages need some way of financing, and if there is a reasonable one, it would be good for everyone. The big problem with current web ads, and the reason I do run adblock is, that they are uncharted, often violently annoying and unfortunately a growing security risk. In this sense, I support Facebook in having proper ads.

sschueller 10y ago
The problem with this is that you will no longer know what is an ad and what is not. On facebook that may not be such an issues but for example on your local news program. You no longer know if the report you are watching is actually news or a native ad.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  I was assuming that all ads continue to be clearly labeled as such, as they were in print media. And for TV, of course, ads also needs to be clearly labeled. What I was talking about is, that the page showing ads needs to be fully responsible for their content to prevent malware attacks, and of course, should see to that they are aesthetically acceptable.
busyant 10y ago
We have lived with (and sometimes even liked) curated ads in paper publications for decades. In the 1970s, my grandfather mailed his local newspaper and asked them to remove the ads when they made his copy of the paper. "I never read them" he wrote. My mother had to explain to him how mass production worked.

xg15 10y ago

I checked the new ad preferences yesterday* that supposedly gives users so much more control over their ads than the "blunt tools" that adblockers are. So far it looks like a thinly-veiled attempt to get users to opt-in to targeted advertising: There is no way to disable certain types of ads (e.g. distractinv video ads) and (obviously) no way to reduce the number of ads. That last point is even stated explicitely: None of the preferences will influence the number of ads shown, only the "quality". The only thing you can do is give facebook some vague hints topics of ads you are particularly interested in and which you are not - with facebook making it clear that you'll get the same results with less hassle if you just opt-in to targeted advertising. What annoys me most about Facebook's approach is their dishonesty. If the just stated "look guys, we have to show you ads cause that's how we make money. We can't let you block them", that would at least show some basic respect for their users. Instead, both the announcements and the preference page seem to recite the tired old fairy tale that users secretly love ads and are only shunning them because they are not "relevant" enough to them. I don't know if they actually believe what they are writing but I don't know anyone who thinks like this. They show the same cynicism in the linked post. Yes guys, we all know ad-blocking is a cat-and-mouse game. But first making it deliberately hard to distinguish ads and content, then blaming ad-blockers that they also remove content smells like a really cheap attempt to shift the blame.

nostrademons 10y ago

It's been interesting to watch the escalating complexity of business models vs. the opportunities to make money by nullifying someone else's business model. Sometimes it seems like capitalism is about to devolve into chaos (in a mathematical sense), and that the flow of money is becoming increasingly arbitrary until it becomes entirely random. It used to be that market economies were simple: you wanted something, you paid for it. Companies would pay their employees a fair wage for their labor, and then those employees would spend that money on consumer products. Their were some exceptions, like advertising on broadcast TV, but they were a relatively small part of the economy. Netscape seems to have opened the flood gates with their "commoditize the browser, and make money selling servers" approach. Suddenly, it became consumers' expectation that things should be free, and business's expectation that you can't actually make money by selling to consumers. And businesses adapted: first it was the dot-com boom, where the business model was "use VC to grow marketshare while losing money on subsidized products, IPO, and have clueless tech stock investors foot the bill for cheap cool consumer products." Then there was Google, which made finding stuff free but extracted huge rents for getting found, and Facebook, which is similar but with more personal data. Then there were all the startups whose only revenue model was to sell to Google or Facebook - sometimes by threatening legal precedents (YouTube) or irrelevance (Instagram/Whatsapp). Consumers don't have money and would never be able to pay for their YouTubing/Instagramming - but Google & Facebook will pay a lot to maintain their business model. Now we have ad-tech to optimize the ads shown; clickbots to make (fraudulent) money for a publisher; more clickbots to bankrupt advertisers; botnets (often distributed through these ads!) to hijack users' computers; clickjacking to hijack users; adblockers so consumers don't have to deal with any of this; and counter-adblockers to block the adblockers. It's like humans are doing their best to never see ads, which are only getting clicked by machines, which aren't actually buying the product but are usually attempts by competitors to bankrupt their competition. Oh, and of course all of these players are getting hacked on a regular basis. Add to this the whole credit-card & consumer debt industry, which is based on some portion of the population never paying for stuff, but making up the losses on the interest payments of people who pay for their stuff late. It's occurred to me that if a financial terrorist wanted to do a lot of damage to the capitalist system, they need only hand out free credit cards that are backed by lists of numbers stolen in one of the many data breaches that have happened this year. It's free money for the consumer, who can buy whatever they want, anonymously, with no bill. Indeed, with the lists of credit cards stolen in 2015, someone could pose as the credit card company and mail out these cards to unsuspecting consumers, who would think they were using a legit card rather than one with someone else's account number. The merchants won't care initially until the cards start getting declined, which may not happen for a month. The CC & government resources dedicated to investigating card fraud would be overwhelmed if millions of people became fraudsters at once. And then straightening out the mess of who owes what would likely be impossible, with goods already "purchased", fenced, converted to cash, and gone.

akerro 10y ago

>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. lol they designed it this way. I'm disappointed facebook, but what could I expect from you anyway...

mercer 10y ago

Isn't this ultimately something Facebook cannot win? It seems to me that updating the 'ad detection' in a Chrome plugin is significantly easier than updating the Facebook codebase, so much so that it offsets the potential difficulty of writing the code to detect these ads in relation to code that obfuscates the fact that something is an ad. Or am I missing something?

corobo 10y ago
They also have a legal requirement to disclose that an ad is an ad. Eventually you'll just get to a point where you block based on seeing the little "Sponsored" text in a post.
teaneedz 10y ago
Yep. Besides the legalese they must include (https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/native-advertising-guide-businesses https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...), they will never win because users control the client/browser. Facebook's efforts to block ads will always be futile. They could block ad blocking users completely, but that would be too much negative PR and hurt their already peaking MAUs.

jokoon 10y ago

I wish there could some discussion about an intrusiveness score of an ad. I'd be glad to block ads that are not too intrusive. As long as ads are hosted on the same server of the website, there is no problem. Until that's done, I'll keep blocking. Google ads were a fine example of unintrusive ads.

erikb 10y ago

As always when this topic pops up: Zero empathy here for the companies that shove ads into users faces. Make money by providing reaosonable services, not by treating your users like cattle.

Shish2k 10y ago
> companies that shove ads into users faces ISPs intercepting traffic and injecting ads that neither the user nor the site owner intended, yeah, I can see how that could be classed as "shoving ads in people's faces", but "here's a free service with ads attached, please either take both or leave both"? What part of that is "shoving"?
- erikb 10y ago
  I see your point. But I can decide which part of your service I want to see. If I want my browser to not show the Hacker News header line, am I doing something wrong? No, I don't think so. And if you still try to circumvent my browser config to show it to me anyways then it is shoving it into my face.
  - Shish2k 10y ago
    That analogy is ineffective because the HN header bar isn't the price that the provider has asked you to pay in exchange for the service. When I walk into a shop I am presented with a similar "here are some objects with prices, please either take the object and pay the price or don't do either". However, it's physically possible for me to decide which part of a transaction I want to take part in. If choose to accept the "taking objects" part of the deal while ignoring the "paying for them" part of the deal, am I doing something wrong? If the shopkeeper then said "hey, you should pay for that", would you have "zero sympathy" for the shopkeeper because they were "shoving capitalism in my face"?

rvern 10y ago

Fixed here: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc834eaf23c665591d68cb28600d https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc83....

throw94 10y ago

I recently worked on an extension to disable Facebook's news feed completely since I (and probably many others) mostly use it for chat and groups. Might be helpful for some people in the HN community! :) Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/hbhdccjdfjcpakliojfnpincocolhcob/reviews https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-modifier/h...

anilgulecha 10y ago

Facebook cannot win this. If not ABP, it'll be a browser extension or something else. Fundamentally, they're bringing in something users are against, and hence will take any easy action against. The hard part is the 'easy action'. Installing ABP is pretty easy. If that does not work, and "FB ad block" extension is the easy thing to do, that will be installed. Sooner or later.

textmode 10y ago

On some websites, longtime text-only browser users are seeing new greetings like "I see you are using an adblocker." Usually they are greeted with warnings about lack of functionality because of absence of Javascript, and imperatives that they must upgrade to a "modern browser". Once-free websites that were converted to companies, like Google and Facebook, must survive on web ads. But web ads are built on an unstable foundation; their presence relies on several assumptions. And, quite simply, the web works without them -- without the assumptions and without the ads. Longtime web users, who grew up with early "browser" prototypes, including "text-only browsers", remember this. The network is very fast now. We can move all manner of data across "the web". But the architecture of the internet and the web is still more or less the same. This is, thankfully, why "blocking" (not requesting) web ads is so easy.