4 ms·

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of `<div>`

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of `<div>` so it's very hard to write selectors against. One has to wonder how that div soup affects accessibility as I find it very unlikely that this content is presented nicely to assistive tools. I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this.

c-hendricks 2mo ago
Last I tried writing custom rules for Facebook was years ago, but they did have proper aria attributes, and uBlock origin does have selectors for text content. These are from 2020: facebook.com##span:has-text(Suggested for You):xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..) facebook.com##div[aria-label="Sponsored"] span[aria-label="Sponsored"]:xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..) facebook.com##div[aria-label="Sponsored"]:xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..)
- pimlottc 2mo ago
  What's with the xpath selector? Is that just matching deeply nested elements?
  - c-hendricks 2mo ago
    Going from memory, but that's how many elements are in the tree between what I wanted to be hidden and where the matching text/elements actually lived.
    - pimlottc 2mo ago
      Oh jeez, I hadn’t thought about the blocked element being different than the aria-tagged one. What a nightmare
- ssdspoimdsjvv 2mo ago
  Read up on XPath axes:)
- aembleton 2mo ago
  you can use upward. For example facebook.com##span:has-text(Suggested for You):upward(8) That then goes up elements in the dom.
neuralkoi 2mo ago
I recently found this out the hard way. Instagram’s web app has a super annoying popup. To click the comments button for a post, your cursor has to pass over the username, which just happens to launch a profile preview with the “follow” button exactly where the comments button was, causing you to unintentionally follow the account. I tried to block this popup with uBlock Origin to no avail. No matter what element I selected, it was still there. Finally fixed the problem by deleting my Instagram account.
- greenleafone7 2mo ago
  Best move you could have possibly done.
- srcnkcl 2mo ago
  “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
- zenoprax 2mo ago
  A counter example: I got caught out by the deprecation/sunsetting of anonymous "old.reddit.com" yesterday but it turns out uBlock can filter out the ads, boilerplate, sidebars, join/login buttons etc on the main site. It's actually faster and more usable than the old site now. Small win.
  - dayone1 2mo ago
    How do you filter it out? Do you select each element individually?
    - zenoprax 2mo ago
      Yes, the Element Picker in uBlock Origin. Requires Firefox because of Web Manifest stuff in Chromium.
  - m348e912 2mo ago
    >I got caught out by the deprecation/sunsetting of anonymous "old.reddit.com" yesterday It appears to still be up for me. ??
JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
> so it's very hard to write selectors against This sounds perfectly matched for an on-device LLM?
- pjc50 2mo ago
  The power cost of doing this widely would be staggering, surely?
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    Apple Intelligence? I mean, you're only processing for the time your "AI|browser|agent" is acting as a firewall between you and Meta. Cache locally after processing and filtering. Use alongside the accessibility API. LLMs can, in many cases, reliably solve CAPTCHAs. I find it difficult to imagine they cannot defeat Meta ad blocking countermeasures. EFF: Adversarial Interoperability - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
  - mkeedlinger 2mo ago
    Depending on the model, I’m guessing it’s dwarfed by just about any electron app
  - Terretta 2mo ago
    Worth a white paper to see which costs less energy, using Apple's built in LLM, or downloading and displaying all the FB ads using radio, playback, and screen animation energy.
  - StableAlkyne 2mo ago
    Local models are not the same as the giant ones in data centers. They're in about the about the same ballpark as running a AAA game on max settings. Sure, it's more computationally-expensive than running an HTML selection, but it's also not "staggering" by any reasonable stretch.
    - rmwaite 2mo ago
benj111 2mo ago
Could you not just go after the deeply nested spans? I assume they aren't messing up everything else like that.
- mcintyre1994 2mo ago
  Based on inspect element on their homepage, they probably are.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
acabal 2mo ago
But can't they just use an xpath expression to test the computed text content of a node, like `/path/to/ad/div[contains(., 'sponsored')]`? In that expression, there could be any number of nested elements inside the terminal `<div>` and it wouldn't matter. (And you'd probably have to use a regex test to account for tricky white space.)
- PetahNZ 2mo ago
  The word sponsored in inside an SVG element with a linked `use` tag, so it's not that simple.
esseph 2mo ago
> I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this. So what you're saying is: you want Facebook to pay out something like $200M which is such a small amount it won't even realize, $170M will go to lawyers, everybody else gets $1.30. That seems like how it might pan out.
timbit42 2mo ago
Maybe reverse tactics and block/hide anything that isn't something you want to see.
- Gareth321 2mo ago
  In a few years, I don't think we'll be navigating to Facebook.com. We'll be asking our LLM: "what are my friends up to?" And it will provide a nice UI to browse interesting updates, collated from any open source, including Facebook. No ads, no influencers, no dark patterns, just what the user asks. And it won't require APIs. It will just browse the site itself as an agent and pick out the parts the user cares about. I really think the new internet is going to be a radically different experience soon.
  - timbit42 2mo ago
    At least there is no chance of manipulation and subliminal advertising that way. /s
    - Gareth321 2mo ago
      The risk vector shifts from Facebook to the LLM provider. This is why I'm a big fan of the open weights models. They're not immune to attack, but it's much easier to identify censorship, propaganda, and advertising. They're getting really good, really fast.
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    > No ads, no influencers, no dark patterns, just what the user asks. For a while now, I've seen blogposts from marketers desperate to do to AI what SEO did to search engines. I hope they fail to enshitify the LLM experience the way they enshitified search, but I wouldn't count on it in the absence of AI messing with production so hard that nobody even wants to market stuff in the first place.
kazinator 2mo ago
> very hard to write selectors against. Or was hard to write selectors against before, you know, AI. It seems ironic to give up now. You can probably rig up an agent to automatically look for new div labyrinths and write selectors for them. You can bet Facebook are using AI to generate these labyrinths!!!
A1kmm 2mo ago
Or an unauthorised access / exceeds access to a computer system prosecution in at least one jurisdiction somewhere around the world. If the owner of the system has a 'no ads' policy and a security mechanism to prevent ad servers from accessing their display without their authorisation, it is one thing if a company accidentally circumvents that by changing their page in a way that breaks detection (and unless there are records it was deliberate) they probably get the benefit of doubt from authorities. But if they are blatantly going to quite great effort to circumvent the adblock security system to exceed their unauthorised access without the consent of and against the wishes of the owner of the client system, surely that's a clear-cut criminal case? Of course, prosecutions of these types of things in many countries unfortunately tend to go after individuals who target big companies, but almost never the other way around.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  We need to figure out how this is actually DMCA circumvention. That one seems to have teeth.
inigyou 2mo ago
Who would file an ADA suit for a screen reader being unable to correctly read an ad?
- NL807 2mo ago
  Those who want to do it in spite.
- Gormo 2mo ago
  The same ambulance-chasing lawyers who are already filing spurious ADA suits today.

c-hendricks 2mo ago

Last I tried writing custom rules for Facebook was years ago, but they did have proper aria attributes, and uBlock origin does have selectors for text content. These are from 2020: facebook.com##span:has-text(Suggested for You):xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..) facebook.com##div[aria-label="Sponsored"] span[aria-label="Sponsored"]:xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..) facebook.com##div[aria-label="Sponsored"]:xpath(../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../..)

pimlottc 2mo ago
What's with the xpath selector? Is that just matching deeply nested elements?
- c-hendricks 2mo ago
  Going from memory, but that's how many elements are in the tree between what I wanted to be hidden and where the matching text/elements actually lived.
  - pimlottc 2mo ago
    Oh jeez, I hadn’t thought about the blocked element being different than the aria-tagged one. What a nightmare
ssdspoimdsjvv 2mo ago
Read up on XPath axes:)
aembleton 2mo ago
you can use upward. For example facebook.com##span:has-text(Suggested for You):upward(8) That then goes up elements in the dom.

neuralkoi 2mo ago

I recently found this out the hard way. Instagram’s web app has a super annoying popup. To click the comments button for a post, your cursor has to pass over the username, which just happens to launch a profile preview with the “follow” button exactly where the comments button was, causing you to unintentionally follow the account. I tried to block this popup with uBlock Origin to no avail. No matter what element I selected, it was still there. Finally fixed the problem by deleting my Instagram account.

greenleafone7 2mo ago
Best move you could have possibly done.
srcnkcl 2mo ago
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
zenoprax 2mo ago
A counter example: I got caught out by the deprecation/sunsetting of anonymous "old.reddit.com" yesterday but it turns out uBlock can filter out the ads, boilerplate, sidebars, join/login buttons etc on the main site. It's actually faster and more usable than the old site now. Small win.
- dayone1 2mo ago
  How do you filter it out? Do you select each element individually?
  - zenoprax 2mo ago
    Yes, the Element Picker in uBlock Origin. Requires Firefox because of Web Manifest stuff in Chromium.
- m348e912 2mo ago
  >I got caught out by the deprecation/sunsetting of anonymous "old.reddit.com" yesterday It appears to still be up for me. ??

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago

> so it's very hard to write selectors against This sounds perfectly matched for an on-device LLM?

pjc50 2mo ago
The power cost of doing this widely would be staggering, surely?
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  Apple Intelligence? I mean, you're only processing for the time your "AI|browser|agent" is acting as a firewall between you and Meta. Cache locally after processing and filtering. Use alongside the accessibility API. LLMs can, in many cases, reliably solve CAPTCHAs. I find it difficult to imagine they cannot defeat Meta ad blocking countermeasures. EFF: Adversarial Interoperability - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
- mkeedlinger 2mo ago
  Depending on the model, I’m guessing it’s dwarfed by just about any electron app
- Terretta 2mo ago
  Worth a white paper to see which costs less energy, using Apple's built in LLM, or downloading and displaying all the FB ads using radio, playback, and screen animation energy.
- StableAlkyne 2mo ago
  Local models are not the same as the giant ones in data centers. They're in about the about the same ballpark as running a AAA game on max settings. Sure, it's more computationally-expensive than running an HTML selection, but it's also not "staggering" by any reasonable stretch.
  - rmwaite 2mo ago

benj111 2mo ago

Could you not just go after the deeply nested spans? I assume they aren't messing up everything else like that.

mcintyre1994 2mo ago
Based on inspect element on their homepage, they probably are.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

acabal 2mo ago

But can't they just use an xpath expression to test the computed text content of a node, like `/path/to/ad/div[contains(., 'sponsored')]`? In that expression, there could be any number of nested elements inside the terminal `<div>` and it wouldn't matter. (And you'd probably have to use a regex test to account for tricky white space.)

PetahNZ 2mo ago
The word sponsored in inside an SVG element with a linked `use` tag, so it's not that simple.

esseph 2mo ago

> I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this. So what you're saying is: you want Facebook to pay out something like $200M which is such a small amount it won't even realize, $170M will go to lawyers, everybody else gets $1.30. That seems like how it might pan out.

timbit42 2mo ago

Maybe reverse tactics and block/hide anything that isn't something you want to see.

Gareth321 2mo ago
In a few years, I don't think we'll be navigating to Facebook.com. We'll be asking our LLM: "what are my friends up to?" And it will provide a nice UI to browse interesting updates, collated from any open source, including Facebook. No ads, no influencers, no dark patterns, just what the user asks. And it won't require APIs. It will just browse the site itself as an agent and pick out the parts the user cares about. I really think the new internet is going to be a radically different experience soon.
- timbit42 2mo ago
  At least there is no chance of manipulation and subliminal advertising that way. /s
  - Gareth321 2mo ago
    The risk vector shifts from Facebook to the LLM provider. This is why I'm a big fan of the open weights models. They're not immune to attack, but it's much easier to identify censorship, propaganda, and advertising. They're getting really good, really fast.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  > No ads, no influencers, no dark patterns, just what the user asks. For a while now, I've seen blogposts from marketers desperate to do to AI what SEO did to search engines. I hope they fail to enshitify the LLM experience the way they enshitified search, but I wouldn't count on it in the absence of AI messing with production so hard that nobody even wants to market stuff in the first place.

kazinator 2mo ago

> very hard to write selectors against. Or was hard to write selectors against before, you know, AI. It seems ironic to give up now. You can probably rig up an agent to automatically look for new div labyrinths and write selectors for them. You can bet Facebook are using AI to generate these labyrinths!!!

A1kmm 2mo ago

Or an unauthorised access / exceeds access to a computer system prosecution in at least one jurisdiction somewhere around the world. If the owner of the system has a 'no ads' policy and a security mechanism to prevent ad servers from accessing their display without their authorisation, it is one thing if a company accidentally circumvents that by changing their page in a way that breaks detection (and unless there are records it was deliberate) they probably get the benefit of doubt from authorities. But if they are blatantly going to quite great effort to circumvent the adblock security system to exceed their unauthorised access without the consent of and against the wishes of the owner of the client system, surely that's a clear-cut criminal case? Of course, prosecutions of these types of things in many countries unfortunately tend to go after individuals who target big companies, but almost never the other way around.

inigyou 2mo ago
We need to figure out how this is actually DMCA circumvention. That one seems to have teeth.

inigyou 2mo ago

Who would file an ADA suit for a screen reader being unable to correctly read an ad?

NL807 2mo ago
Those who want to do it in spite.
Gormo 2mo ago
The same ambulance-chasing lawyers who are already filing spurious ADA suits today.