Facebook to forcefeed you web ads, whether you like it or not: Ad blocker? Get the Zuck out! Facebook will circumvent browser ad-blocking tools to push web adverts onto people's screens. The new policy calls for the social network to serve up ads regardless of the presence of ad-blocking software, and in exchange give users greater control over their ad preferences to cut down on intrusive or annoying ads. The …
> How do they block an element that's in the same domain as the page itself without blocking actual content?
Same way you can currently do in your typical content blockers; find the element hosting the ad (or whatever else you don't want to see) and block it. As a non-ad example, I use the following filter to block the annoying (to me) elements of El Reg;
theregister.co.uk##.dont_miss.dcl
theregister.co.uk###top_tease
theregister.co.uk##.article_img
Adblock tools like ABP/ABL (with the additional element picker) or uBlock come with GUI tools to help you select and block various elements, else just fire up the dev tools and examine the page structure to write your filter manually.
I guess next step in the ad-block wars would be to use randomly named page elements but I've not seen anyone try that yet.
"I guess next step in the ad-block wars would be to use randomly named page elements but I've not seen anyone try that yet."
I've already seen them: hashed elements so they're unique for each visit (and each visit can be traced). It reaches a point where you can't block one element without blocking ALL elements, INCLUDING the content itself which is kept in a separate frame.
Well that is the only redeeming feature of a social media site, is that it's a lot better than blasting a bunch of people with emails in the hope they find it interesting, and not an annoyance or an intrusion.
You can say "I got married" or "I pupped out another brat" or "my car exploded" to whoever finds it interesting, and the "friend's" list is sort of self-curating.
I still don't have a FB account, though. They've sh*t&stirred it so hard, the original purpose is lost.
You know, there is this thing called a telephone...
Or put a line in the Hatch, Match & Despatch column of a newspaper?
Sorry... coat's over there... the one with enough 50p coins in the pocket to afford a 1 minute call from a phone box.
M.
<rant>Would you believe that I found two working phoneboxes within half a mile of each other in a mobile-signal-less part of Mid Wales? They were both working, but neither took cash, neither had a card reader, and when I made a reverse-charge call (not easy as the keypad stopped working as soon as the automated system answered "100") my parents (who were the recipients) were charged NINE POUNDS and SEVENTY FIVE PENCE for a two minute call! Landline to landline!</rant>
<rant>Would you believe that I found two working phoneboxes within half a mile of each other in a mobile-signal-less part of Mid Wales? They were both working, but neither took cash, neither had a card reader, and when I made a reverse-charge call (not easy as the keypad stopped working as soon as the automated system answered "100") my parents (who were the recipients) were charged NINE POUNDS and SEVENTY FIVE PENCE for a two minute call! Landline to landline!</rant>
Near Towyn?
Near Towyn?
't other side - Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.
All I needed to do was get a message to my wife, who had gone to Oswestry. She was intending to contact our landlady while there - i.e. while there was a mobile signal - but I met the lady in the village while at the butcher.
M.
"You know, there is this thing called a telephone..."
You know, there are these things called toll charges. Yes, I know, shocking. As it turns out, in many third-world countries, calls and text cost a decent amount of dosh (especially if international in nature) while they can do short facebook trips free. It's true. I've seen them do it firsthand AND seen the ads.
>You know, there are these things called toll charges. Yes, I know, shocking. As it turns out, in many
>third-world countries, calls and text cost a decent amount of dosh (especially if international in nature)
>while they can do short facebook trips free. It's true. I've seen them do it firsthand AND seen the ads.
ITYF in a lot of 3rd world countries people have cellphones and no computer.
Aside from that, if someone claims to want to know what their friends and relatives are up to yet doesn't want to pay a few pence for a phone call then they quite obviously don't want to know particularly badly. What next - complaining about not getting a free bus/train fare or free fuel for the car when you want to visit them? FFS.
This post has been deleted by its author
You can still allow your wife to use Facebook, whilst blocking all their other tracking on your network.
Just whitelist m.facebook.com whilst blocking everything else.
To to best of my knowledge 99.9% of third party websites do not use m.facebook.com as a domain for their facebook tracking crap.
Using m.facebook.com also stops the autoplay videos as well. (Even on a desktop PC).
Which is nice.
The only adverts you see, is where one of your "friends" has "liked" a particular business or some other crap.
I recommend it.
The problem here is obviously that people aren't letting facebook profile them thoroughly enough. Please fill out the following twenty-six page survey regarding your shopping habits, personal finances and sexual preferences so we can more closely match you to our advertisers.
Or maybe FB's ad pimping isn't as successful as it hoped?
P&G are "scaling back Facebook advertising" as the targeting provided by Facebook didn't provide the expected increase in effectiveness (link to provide full details of claim, you don't have to click it...)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/p-g-to-scale-back-targeted-facebook-ads-1470760949
Considering that when I first started using the internet I had a 14.4k baud modem and I now have a 20M+ ADSL connection, web pages seem to be slower than ever.
Not only that, but when I try to scroll down a page my browser seems to continually lock up and make my whole machine unresponsive, sometimes for 20 seconds!
Perhaps I've misunderstood the concept of a faster internet connection and that the relationship with how quickly I can view material online is actual an inverse ratio.
Either that or the web has a deadly disease that sucks up all available bandwidth, has memory leaks and poor process queuing to the point where it can lock up a PC.
The day that people wake up and treat intrusive adverts as reasons *not* to buy a particular product from a particular vendor - then the disease just seems to spread and spread and spread.
We're doomed.
Either that or the web has a deadly disease that sucks up all available bandwidth, has memory leaks and poor process queuing to the point where it can lock up a PC.
Its the same disease that causes problems everywhere else - US Corporations. As they are obliged to pay more attention to shareholder remuneration than ethics, customer satisfaction, the law or even good taste combined; human beings are seen as having less relevance than the colour of socks worn by the CFO.
If companies want to be treated like people, they need to act like adult ones.
"Perhaps I've misunderstood the concept of a faster internet connection..."
It's so that the advertisers can load up the web page with dozens of heavy scripts to track you and show you ever more (somehow still irrelevant) ads. It's why we bought more powerful computers with more RAM too-- it's all for the benefit of the advertisers. Whatever we can do to help them invade our privacy!
When I used to read print periodicals for specialty interests (like computers), I used to look forward to the ads-- I wanted to see what was available. Ads for things I would never be interested in still weren't annoying; I simply did not look at them (once I saw that they were of no interest, of course). They didn't blink or flash or make noise or block content or play videos or force me to wait before I could turn to the page I actually wanted to see.
Now, though, even if we ignore the obnoxiousness of modern web ads, they are often far less relevant than when there was no targeting (beyond selecting which publication the ad was going into) and no tracking.
Some time ago, I was on Youtube watching air crash disaster videos and something happened (I must have disabled the ad blocker for testing; I never turn it off under normal circumstances) and I saw an ad. It was for either Boeing or Airbus (I can't remember which). What?? I might be able to afford a scale model of an airliner, but that would be about it.
It's true that I don't usually see ads or allow tracking scripts, and surely this inhibits the ability of the advertisers to track my interests (by design), but nothing I have ever done online would suggest that I am an executive at an airline or any other person who has a role in selecting or purchasing multi-million dollar airliners. At best, the algorithm clumsily matched an ad about airliners with videos about airliners.
The only ads I find annoying are the ones that pop up something over the page you want to see. But I have a solution to that, I never visit the page again. Auto-playing video ads aren't a problem as my audio is normally turned off. As for remaining ads I don't even notice them and have never deliberately clicked on them, my brain just silently filters them out after so long on the web.
Honestly I don't understand how anyone makes money from online advertising.
The only ads I find annoying are the ones that pop up something over the page you want to see. But I have a solution to that, I never visit the page again.
Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? As has already been mentioned: NoScript.
Auto-playing video ads aren't a problem as my audio is normally turned off
Noscript deals with these too, which are a problem even if you don't notice them - they are consuming bucketloads of bandwidth in the background.
It's all relative, I suppose. It's like the text -v- Word processor thing. A 2k plain text file instantly becomes about 10k of ODT, even when you consider that the latter is (I believe) data compressed.
What used to be 10k of HTML "back in the day" with another 10k or so of GIFs to brighten things up is now easily ten times that, even on fairly "restrained" web pages. As I write the big picture on ElReg's front page is over 220k. No idea about the ads, as most of them don't load...
I don't use ad blockers per-se, just NoScript. Seems to deal with the worst offenders, and the others aren't usually a problem.
M.
If the website operators (and the advertisers) are so concerned about ads being blocked, why don't they just buffer up the ads at the website server and deliver them as part of the main page? That way, nobody could block them. Some targeting software would need to be running at the webserver end but it doesn't sound too complicated in principle.
Yes, they do that already and call it "Sponsored Content" or some such thing. South Park has a fun sendup of the term in a trilogy from last season. Yahoo! has been doing it since the front page got updated a few years back, and those are not too bad, you just skim over them and onto the next item... then, you click on some juicy news link and get some more ads, but only two or three extra sentences to the "article" which is then linked to the real hosting provider for it, and I go back and do that again. I get to a real article about once in five tries, which is not bad, but not super clean either. It's like qualifying for a swim event at the Rio Olympics; you win, but will you be swimming in a nicely chlorinated pool, or a local toilet?
"If the website operators (and the advertisers) are so concerned about ads being blocked, why don't they just buffer up the ads at the website server and deliver them as part of the main page?"
Started doing that at least 10 years ago - Ads are small and I limit the number of them to keep them non-invasive. They are from direct advertisers who contact me about advertising on my sites. First I check out the company. If I accept it, they produce a graphic and email it to me, I check it and minimize it. Pages don't call scripts - I keep the graphics on the server.
I do hope adblock stays as good as it is. I use NoScript, Gohstery and AB+ with Firefox for almost all my browsing around.
As to Facebook - No account there. No interest. Some friends and family are on it, but they can call me if they have something to tell me. Same with Twitter - No interest, never go there. Waste of time.
@ElsmarMarc
You get all my upvotes.
We need more people making pages that don't require 3 different blockers just to view them.
Today I tried using my secondary browser that has no blocking enabled to view a blog that seemed to require cookies and JS and all that nastiness...
...Three clicks later the browser jammed solid with a badly scaled reproduction of a Microsoft alert page and two undismissable javascript pop-ups telling me that my computer was infected/hijacked/doomed and to call Microsoft support on the helpfully provided phone number that I'm sure would connect me to a nice Nigerian man who could then explain how "Microsoft" was going to fix this "infection"...
...On my Linux machine.
I'm fair certain the creator of the site didn't intend for that to occur, but when you let every John on the stroll have a go at your CSS it's what's going to happen.
We need more people making pages that don't require 3 different blockers just to view them.
Today I tried using my secondary browser that has no blocking enabled to view a blog that seemed to require cookies and JS and all that nastiness...
...Three clicks later the browser jammed solid with a badly scaled reproduction of a Microsoft alert page and two undismissable javascript pop-ups telling me that my computer was infected/hijacked/doomed and to call Microsoft support on the helpfully provided phone number that I'm sure would connect me to a nice Nigerian man who could then explain how "Microsoft" was going to fix this "infection"...
...On my Linux machine.
Because this is what the internet has become. It is not the "shiny, happy place where everyone is your friend" experience that social media is brainwashing punters into believing. Your web browser is akin to some sort of sci-fi starship exploring space governed by a corrupt coalition that looks the other way when space pirates loot or destroy hapless vessels because of the percentage kickbacked to the coalition.
Shields up! (Ublock, Noscript, Ghostery). Activate cloaking device (Tampermonkey Adblock cloaking script).
Shields up! (Ublock, Noscript, Ghostery). Activate cloaking device (Tampermonkey Adblock cloaking script).
I actually use ublock origin, Self Destructing Cookies, and Https everywhere. But....
Thanks, that was HILARIOUS ! especially considering I'm a Trekie. By the way, if anyone is a Star Trek fan, who loves Fan Films, please consider joining our small "facebook" group. Where I never see ads by the way. Small Access Group,FB
https://m.facebook.com/groups/301105956896777?view=permalink&id=315998535407519&src=email_notif#!/groups/301105956896777?ref=bookmarks
And that's curious, because I have never seen one ad in the couple small groups pages I visit. Even in the main News page I never use, but checked today. Maybe the app wrapper I use for the mobile internet facebook access I use. It is called " Tinfoil for facebook" and in playstore.
Possible, but those serving the ads want to retain control to use them as a tracking tool as well, especially since they have to send some (usually pretty faked) data to those gullible people who actually pay to show ads hoping for some promised return in some future life.
If a site as big as Facebook starts serving ads from their own servers, they'll be blocked by CSS-style blocker rules in no time.
As long as the ads follow a pattern, they can be blocked. FB can use anti-adblock javascript. Stubborn users can use m.facebook.com with JS disabled. FB can make the mobile site JS-mandatory. Users can rebel against JS... on and on it goes...
Not that I care; I was using it a little but deleted my account this year. Even the wife has quit. People are starting to organize events the old-fashioned way. It's dead, dead, dead....
"As long as the ads follow a pattern, they can be blocked. FB can use anti-adblock javascript. Stubborn users can use m.facebook.com with JS disabled. FB can make the mobile site JS-mandatory. Users can rebel against JS... on and on it goes..."
Simple. Ads can be text-based in nature and served inline to the content. No way to block it without blocking the content, too. Image-based ads can be baked into legit pictures from the article, again making it all-or-nothing. Using randomly-generated tags ensures (a) the visit can be traced, and (b) the ads can't be easily blocked because the content has a similar tag. No JavaScript or external content necessary, and the content's loading can be detected server-side, meaning there's no way to avoid it without at least downloading the content, wasting your bandwidth, and triggering the demographics.
@Lost all faith
> > Not that I care; I was using it a little but deleted my account this year.
> No you didn't you merely hid it from view.
I'll never login again, though. It wasn't just Facebook's spying, it was the sum total of affronts that outweighed its slight usefulness to me, even before this adblock outrage.
Now the network effect works against FB when other people realize they're wasting their time there if they hope to reach me. If enough people do this, it's game over for FB. That's the ultimate solution to this problem.
I suppose there's also the question of who is responsible for the content. Content checking, management, hosting, click logging, etc. all takes time and money.
And If you end up unwittingly serving up a nasty trojan-bearing ad the reputational damage is all yours! Using an ad broker at least spreads the blame around a bit.
"And If you end up unwittingly serving up a nasty trojan-bearing ad the reputational damage is all yours! Using an ad broker at least spreads the blame around a bit."
If you serve up a nasty from your own servers then you're open to actual damages so have good reason to be careful after the first time.* Irrespective of using an ad-broker you're likely to get the reputational damage anyway - the users don't see the broker.
*Or maybe a whole lot of times if your CEO happens to be a baroness and you're a bit slow moving.
Lumped with it
My wife set up an account for me!!!
So I fill it up with as much rubbish as possible.
Great place to shove gameplay videos on, pictures from within games, anything to fill it up, use from a OC, er no.
I wonder what happened to the PSN trophy auto posting? That would nicely fill up fartbook as well.
Photomode in Uncharted 4, how about those for interesting posts?
Quote:
"I suppose there's also the question of who is responsible for the content. Content checking, management, hosting, click logging, etc. all takes time and money.And If you end up unwittingly serving up a nasty trojan-bearing ad the reputational damage is all yours! Using an ad broker at least spreads the blame around a bit."
Only yesterday I was shown a fraudulent advert by this very website:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/08/10/Jamie_Jones_Scam_adverts_served_by_The_Register/
Who do you think you are, Windows 10?
Between my browser's security settings & my HOSTS file, good fucking luck feeding me a damned thing. The fact that I don't have a FB account, don't visit the site, have blocked all your cookies, & will gleefully give you The Finger on both hands might be another hurdle you'll have difficulty clearing.
Mister Fuckerberg can just Zuck right off.
Thank you. Facebook now probably has enough information to identify you. You probably haven't ID ALL of Facebook's domains, and they probably share some with legit sites so you can't block them without collateral damage. Next thing you know they'll have a fast-flux system so you end up playing whack-a-domain trying to stop them.
Basically, the only way to stop them tracking you (whether you go to their site or not) is to get off the Internet. And who knows? Maybe they'll start tracking you through the post...
...is to bin Facebook in the first place. Don't use it. Never did. Never will.
Of course, if you really like the "Facebook experience," that may be worth it to you, so your mileage may vary. My wife would be lost without it, and many others fall into that category. But I can't imagine wanting to use it or anything that basically sells my personal data to make money (bad enough), then wants to make yet MORE money by shoving ads at me that I can't block. Of course, this is an accepted business model - see Google et al.
And now we have Microsoft going this one better: 1) They slurp your data, 2) They sling ads *AND* 3) They want you to *PAY* them for the "privilege" of using their operating system. You could even add a fourth item "while it's still in development and, at best, a beta version."
P.T. Barnum was right, I guess.
"Of course, if you really like the "Facebook experience," that may be worth it to you, so your mileage may vary. My wife would be lost without it, and many others fall into that category. But I can't imagine wanting to use it or anything that basically sells my personal data to make money (bad enough), then wants to make yet MORE money by shoving ads at me that I can't block. Of course, this is an accepted business model - see Google et al."
I'm quite happy for Facebook to see my personal data to make money, since the only data they are selling is my anonymous Facebook account data. I have no data on my profile about where I work, what part of the country I'm in, or even my true age (I had to put something down, so input 1st January 1980). I had an argument with someone at work about this recently. They claimed that we were slurping data about our users, while I tried to point out that all they were picking up was our users' account names, which were linked to nothing about their actual real identities. He still didn't accept that N0458301942@our.company.co.uk didn't tell anyone anything about the person who the username belonged to, since it wasn't linked to their real name, address, age, sex, political affliation...in short nothing worthwhile.
Going back to the ads though, there are two extremes here - legitimate web sites that have to use advertising and banners (remember them?) to generate revenue to offset the masses of free traffic that the site owner has to pay for, while at the other end we have sites that are practically unreadable through endless pop-ups and secondary pages that obscure the single page you actually want to read. Ad-blockers were created in response to the second of these, while unfortunately also scuppering the first.
Facebook's ads can be annoying, but they appear to try and tread a middle ground between giving you the experience you want (and keeping you using the service) and funding the very page that you use for free.
The alternative to this is the Paywall model, which should give a relatively ad-free experience, but which of course people also object to. "The Web Should Be Free!" they cry, ignoring the fact that it costs money to deliver web content, and where's that money going to come from? If ad-blockers had existed twenty years ago, sites like Twitter and Facebook (hell, even Google and Yahoo) probably wouldn't exist by now. And before you say that might be a good thing, bollocks to you. My Facebook friends list consists almost entirely of my extended family who are spread out all over the country, and there isn't a day goes by that I don't get to see and enjoy photos and videos of my young nephews, neices and cousins as they learn to walk and talk, play in their gardens, start at their new schools, attend their proms, graduate from their Universities, and eventually post their own videos of themselves getting wasted in fancy dress.
You can't send 10 minute videos of junior winning the egg and spoon race at Sports Day by email, and you certainly can't send it through a land-line.
The world is full of ads, from billboards to shop-windows, to newspapers and magazines. Facebook is no different.
and there isn't a day goes by that I don't get to see and enjoy photos and videos of my young nephews, nieces and cousins as they learn to walk and talk, play in their gardens, start at their new schools, attend their proms, graduate from their Universities, and eventually post their own videos of themselves getting wasted in fancy dress.
Either you have an inordinate amount of relatives spread over a large age-range, or they live somewhere where time works differently to the rest of us!
"Either you have an inordinate amount of relatives spread over a large age-range, or they live somewhere where time works differently to the rest of us!"
I'm 54 years old. I have 3 children, 3 grandchildren, 2 nephews, 1 niece, 4 cousins, and 2 great-nephews under the age of 2. So yes I do see new pictures and videos every day. I assure you this isn't an unusual amount of relatives and time works perfectly normally where they are.
Or he could simply have/come from a large family, covering a wide age range. Some of us do - I have over half a dozen siblings who between them have over twenty kids. Ages range from young enough to still be in nappies all the way up to mid-twenties.
And that's without considering my cousins and their kids.
"They claimed that we were slurping data about our users, while I tried to point out that all they were picking up was our users' account names, which were linked to nothing about their actual real identities. He still didn't accept that N0458301942@our.company.co.uk didn't tell anyone anything about the person who the username belonged to, since it wasn't linked to their real name, address, age, sex, political affliation...in short nothing worthwhile."
That's what YOU think. But the beauty about DE-anonymization is that they can build relationships between two seemingly unimportant pieces of data...which in turn get linked to other bits of data UNTIL one of them is linked to an important piece of data. All of a sudden, the entire chain of bits gets connected.
"the only data they are selling is my anonymous Facebook account data" and that of "my extended family who are spread out all over the country, and there isn't a day goes by that I don't get to see and enjoy photos and videos of my young nephews, neices and cousins as they learn to walk and talk, play in their gardens, start at their new schools, attend their proms, graduate from their Universities, and eventually post their own videos of themselves getting wasted in fancy dress."
"He still didn't accept that N0458301942@our.company.co.uk didn't tell anyone anything about the person who the username belonged to"
But if someone tags you in a photo, that facial information can - and will - be used to identify you in other images, either on facebook, or if the rumours are to be believed, anywhere on the interwebs, and using javascript see which other web sites you read, who your relations are - they will scan for keywords, e.g. grandson/father, nephew, etc, and from that, sure as eggs are eggs, facebook will put together exactly who n0458301942 is, where they live and where they work.
There is no anonymity on the internet any more.
I do wonder why the people who are concerned about loss of anonymity on the web not only still post on The Reg's forum, but probably several other forums as well. There kind of seems to be an underlying sense that being a member of Slashdot, Bitcointalk, Linuxquestions, TheRegister (to name but a few) is nice and safe (probably because they're cool) but because Facebook, Google and Yahoo are a) Bad Corporations and b) frequented by everyone else who isn't cool (i.e. Joe Public) then there's some sort of difference.
I only post on the register using triple VPNs, on triple level VM's, on triple level encrypted drives, each with their own browser filled to the gubbins with other peoples cookies, thus masquerading as those poor schmucks.
I usually do this whilst sat outside your house, using your wifi.
Ouch.
"I only post on the register using triple VPNs, on triple level VM's, on triple level encrypted drives, each with their own browser filled to the gubbins with other peoples cookies, thus masquerading as those poor schmucks.
I usually do this whilst sat outside your house, using your wifi."
And then you get hit with a Red Pill and it makes its way all the out to the metal. Game Over, man.
Never allow someone who uses social media to take your picture. You might not see them doing it, so it's probably best to never hang out with such a person in the first place. And if I don't have a presence in FB, what would they tag me with? It's usually a link to some other person's profile, isn't it?
"..for vetting each and every ad that runs on their network, 24/7/365.25, to ensure that it does not deliver a virus / ransomware / spyware / browser hijack payload to users."
They're going to need to, aren't they? Because every slip gets to be expensive.
Has anyone noticed FaceBook is smeared all over the Interwanks in much the same way that Google is and as such is spawning their cookies into your InterLooker such that even if you are not a 'member' they are still going to try and sell you the socks you bought last week.
You can also find them, and the usual suspects, including doubleclick on the nhs.uk, page that deals with your itchy knob problem that might be Gonorrhoea but you did not wish to ask 'The Partner' so you went to a 'Trusted Source' who you thought would not share it with 'others'...
'Hippocratic Oath' and such stuff...
http://urlquery.net/domain_graph.php?id=1470769733369
Ooops. Now DoubleClick, the advertising arm of Alphabet formerly known as Google along with the other Interlocutors.. and there will be more, knows you think you might have a Gonorrhoea problem.
Presumably Mr Zuch (Known for his Zukkhini sized Penis Zucchini), Page, Brin and Pichai will be checking before they decide to 'get wet' with you whilst they sell off all of your data and pocket the profits from "Compare The Knob Cream Dot Com".
For the last 5+ years, yup. Facebook, Twitter, Addthis... and Google's the worst. Some sites won't even function if you block google.com - they rely on google to serve JS and such.
My solution: don't use those sites. (If I really must, I open them in a separate "google crap" browser profile.)
Blocking all of Google is likely to cause problems, but you can still block some of it... googletagservices and google-analytics are universally blocked on mine, but everything still works.
You might want to try Privacy Badger (addon), if it is available for your browser. It sits in the background and simply watches until it sees tracking activity, at which time it blocks the tracking domains while leaving the rest of them available. If the page stops working, you can easily revert the tracked domains from red (full block) to yellow (allow but destroy cookies that are set) to green (allow all) as you see fit.
Unless ads are using IP addresses instead of FQDNs, it will.
There are a number of domains my DNS claims to be authoritative for, telling anyone on the LAN that 0.0.0.0 is the right address for anything in for instance doubleclick.net. Saves a lot of effort keeping hostsfiles up to date.
Yup. Set up with Ghostery. make a note of the ads coming in that are slipping past ABP or uBlock, and add to the hosts list. Problem solved.
I run my browser with NoScript, uBLock and also have a monstrously edited hosts file and nothing gets through. I also haven't had a single site lock up on me in well over a year, which I credit to the hosts file.
"Facebook is one of those free services, and ads support our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected."
Our mission of getting people to tell us the most intimate details of their lives so we can mine the hell out of the data and flog it to advertisers, to the greater glory of our shareholders.
What me live in a place where I bought up the whole street so people couldn't invade my privacy? Nothing to see here, data subject, move along.
that we like ad content, and indeed won't use FB if the ads aren't there. In my case the opposite is true, FB is a means for me to keep in fairly regular contact with relatives and friends on 3 continents, the only thing that makes it usable is a collection of filters in ABP along with the facebook annoyances blocker. (http://facebook.adblockplus.me/)
Filters for ABP
facebook.com###u_0_0
facebook.com##._4-u2._5v6e.cardRightCol._4-u8
facebook.com##._4-u2._19ah._2ph_._4-u8
facebook.com##.rhcFooterWrap
facebook.com##.back
facebook.com##.stickyHeaderWrap.clearfix
Even though I finally succumbed and installed an ad blocker, it wasn't because I have any great resentment to being served ads by the likes of Facebook or Twitter, it's because 98% of what they served up was entirely pointless, of no interest, and a waste of both my and the advertisers' time and money.
Google, despite their faults, actually managed to push ads for stuff that I might want.
Do advertisers really not understand that they're paying large amounts of money to have their message delivered to people who don't give a rats' ass about their product?
Print media would never allow that - they sell a specific demographic to advertisers, and do it very well.
You would think that, given the volume of data collected, on-line publishers could do the same.
If ad blocking software is working properly, the ads are blocked, how is Facebook getting around it? Are they serving them from facebook.com URLs indistinguishable from the URLs that serve content, so there's no way for the blockers to know what to block? Or are they detecting the presence of ad blocking and refusing to serve you anything unless it is disabled?
It is all irrelevant anyway, as I never visit Facebook on a browser, only on my phone. There's no way to block ads in the mobile app, though fortunately the ads (i.e. sponsored pages) are fairly innocuous. The real problem with ads is when you leave Facebook to visit a site linked from Facebook, and you have to endure the horror of what the web looks like without ad blocking software (since it is using a browser built into the app instead of opening it externally via your phone's app, and their built in browser doesn't support the OS ad blocking or at least it doesn't on iOS)
I imagine Facebook is probably getting a cut of those ads on linked sites, so they ought to be able to drop ads within the site itself entirely. Or I should say they "could" do it, but they won't because they're fucking greedy bastards.
> It is all irrelevant anyway, as I never visit Facebook on a browser, only on my phone. There's no way to block ads in the mobile app
There's your first mistake. The FB app wants to slurp all your phone data - I guess at least now it's castratable with the permissions setting ability in Marshmallow, but up til then...
As an alternate, view FB in the phone browser - giving you the chance to ad-block it if you can be bothered to install it and use that specific browser. Or indeed just add the ad-block plus extension to chrome - only a bit of a faff on unrooted phones
@JetSetJim
"There's your first mistake. The FB app wants to slurp all your phone data ..."
The other half found out the hard way that the FB app for iOS "helpfully" backs up all the photos on your phone to Facebook. How kind (not)! Even by Facebook standards this is the most monstrous invasion of privacy as the app should only be uploading photos specifically selected for the purpose not quietly deciding to upload the whole bloody lot. Even with the granular permissions of iOS there are still risks to allowing these slurping apps permission to do anything.
@ Charles 9
"Except I believe Facebook paid ABP to get whitelisted."
I'd be surprised at that considering Zuck's claims about ABP and the whitelist charges in the article. That said, have you ever read through the whitelist? After sifting through pages of Google ad slinging and tracking shit I wondered why anyone would allow whitelisted ads to be shown as they do all the creepy tracking that you'd want an ad blocker to prevent.
That said, have you ever read through the whitelist? After sifting through pages of Google ad slinging and tracking shit I wondered why anyone would allow whitelisted ads to be shown as they do all the creepy tracking that you'd want an ad blocker to prevent.
Bloody hell! Thanks for the headsup. Turn that off and consider looking up the alternatives when I can be arsed.
Thanks muchly for pointing out AdBlock's whitelist includes the crap you'd want to block most!
I've been getting that zuckload of ads for a couple of weeks now making Facebook look like Yahoo News. You can click "Hide all ads from..." for an advertiser but it's useless against what seems to be infinite permutations of advertiser names.
And by selecting "Hide all ads from..." you're playing right into their hands of sorts as you're giving them more information on your advert preferences (other than the one you'd really like to give which is stuff your ads up your chuff, Zuck) which makes their targeting even more valuable (or so the theory goes).
I use adblockers. But not merely to get rid of annoying advertisements and pop-ups (my browser can handle the pop-ups on its own) but mostly to ensure the safety of my computer!
When I go to a website then I have a good idea what kind of contents I can expect. But it'll always be a mystery to me where the advertisements are coming from. Worse yet: what is going to happen when the source of advertisements gets compromised and starts spreading malware or other virusses (don't try to argue that this could never happen, events from the recent past clearly proof otherwise)?
So yeah, the moment a website tries to force me to remove my adblocker then the effect is very simple: said website will be removed from my favorites list(s) instead. There are tons more websites which can provide me with the same experience, thank you very much.
But back to my initial comment: this is a disaster just waiting to happen. Because what's going to happen when FB's advertising source gets compromised and its proven that FB has (indirectly) started spreading malware and other junk?
Their desire for more revenue could very well lead to their own downfall.
"So yeah, the moment a website tries to force me to remove my adblocker then the effect is very simple: said website will be removed from my favorites list(s) instead. There are tons more websites which can provide me with the same experience, thank you very much."
So you say, but after Kickass went down, no viable alternative appears. If there's only ONE source for the same experience, is it "Walking on the Sun" time?
"But back to my initial comment: this is a disaster just waiting to happen. Because what's going to happen when FB's advertising source gets compromised and its proven that FB has (indirectly) started spreading malware and other junk?"
The option has been open for a long time now: just have Facebook itself and the world's your digital oyster.
When websites used to put out to tender for advertising, and it was all fairly target market orientated and relevant? All hosted on the site locally, under the webmasters control. Good days. Probably paid more too.
I used to run one of the largest community websites for a very popular war sim and the developers and publishers used to sign contracts with us for six months of ad hosting for their other related titles for, if I recall, £200-£300 a month based on our pagehits which were huge.
Life was simpler.
From the article (and FB, apparently): The social network notes that, as a free service, it has to use the ads to bring in revenues.
Let's nail this one right away: do not Facebook claim that it is free because it is not. You ARE paying for Facebook (and some may say dearly) by supplying it with access to your personal life and even that of your friends (for which Facebook doesn't need to have any of their permission as that is a large omission in privacy laws).
I would actually like to ask El Reg for stopping to perpetuate the myth that services like Facebook, Google and Twitter are free. As long as your data and activities are analysed, as long as Terms & Conditions claim free access to your information and content and as long as you cannot prevent any of that without losing what is laughingly referred to as a "service", a claim of things being "free" is misleading enough that it ought to be picked up by Trading Standards, together with "Free" WiFi when you need to provide your details first.
Stop this myth, please.
100%
Even when you block ads, you're gifting your copyrighted material to Facebook. Content which attracts people who do click ads.
Since Facebook create nothing themselves, and bandwidth only ever gets exponentially cheaper over time, you are the only thing of value in their business.
Even when you block ads, you're gifting your copyrighted material to Facebook. Content which attracts people who do click ads.
Worse, even when you're not even IN Facebook you're being tracked by all those nice "Facebook" buttons on other webpages (ditto for any of those other data grabbers such as Goggle and Twatter) which is why filtering webpages is now pretty much mandatory - they quite happily do this without your permission as the worst they can expect is a minuscule fine.
*. Does anyone working at Facebook actually believe this? FB is a cult, with the head priest a kind of data-sociopath. Think about it... It would help explain how Zuk sleeps well as night knowing he's really tracking users down to their behavioral DNA.
*. Why else would FB sanction experiments to influence user emotion via news feeds! So what's next in connecting the world? Influencing public opinion on a range of issues important to Facebook & its real *paying* users....
*. How long until elections are decided by FB commentary ala Fox-TV-News... Or Government policy... Or Corporate agendas / spin.... Its already happening...
*. But soon it'll be on a whole other level, as 'shared data' (just posts you pause on) are used to re-influence your opinion towards that of Facebook! No tinfoil, its real:
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-07-03/what-else-is-facebook-doing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36854292
How do they intend to circumvent the Ad-Blocker software?
Do the ads come from the facebook.com domain, or somewhere else? If the latter, then they ought to be blocked by default using FireFox RequestPolicy addon (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/) or similar.
Using a common Facebook login for website comment sections and forums is possibly one of the most privacy-intrusive ways of using Facebook. Rather than just trivia about what your cats are doing today, they can reveal your thoughts and opinions across a wide range of interests.
Failbook needs to up their advertising game.
I only have an account to keep track of my sisters family in the UK but just about every ad they post is one of those "horny women in your area" friggin' things that you can find on most pr0n sites.
Obviously Failbook doesn't consider itself a "family" site.
You know that the internet is optional? You guys can go back to writing your own content on A4 paper? Or you could start a movement so that everyone pays for access to sites!!! whats that you dont want to pay? People blocking ads will mean less people use them which will mean more garbage ads and less content. the ads most people hate are sites that no one would want to advertise on or providers desperate for revenue. By blocking ads surely your just making this worse? And to those who say "If i have to see ads i'll go somewhere else" You chose to use an ad blocker rather than avoid a site so i doubt that.
"You know that the internet is optional? You guys can go back to writing your own content on A4 paper? Or you could start a movement so that everyone pays for access to sites!!! whats that you dont want to pay? People blocking ads will mean less people use them which will mean more garbage ads and less content. the ads most people hate are sites that no one would want to advertise on or providers desperate for revenue. By blocking ads surely your just making this worse? And to those who say "If i have to see ads i'll go somewhere else" You chose to use an ad blocker rather than avoid a site so i doubt that."
Have your 1st upvote. I wish I could give you more.
"You guys can go back to writing your own content on A4 paper?"
Last I checked, we don't have matter transporters yet and not everyone has a facsimile machine, so instant global communication that isn't point to point raises issues.
"Or you could start a movement so that everyone pays for access to sites!"
Unless your content is both high-demand and exclusive, paywalls tend to be a downvote for you, history has proven.
"By blocking ads surely your just making this worse?"
Worse to the point they have to make a leap of faith: either go all in or check out.
"You chose to use an ad blocker rather than avoid a site so i doubt that."
Wanna BET? For many, they think the Internet is becoming a cesspit and are checking out of the Internet...COMPLETELY. At least back in reality they just have to deal with cold calls, billboards, and junk mail.
"At least back in reality they just have to deal with "
"cold calls" reported for calling a TPS line - fines incoming
"billboards" very few here - it's rural area - and easily ignored
"and junk mail" goes back into the post box - I don't care whether it's the advertisers or their side-kicks, the Royal Mail who pay for return to sender, they're all the same to me.
""cold calls" reported for calling a TPS line - fines incoming"
Call comes from an international number: sovereignty kicks in and the fine is unenforceable.
""billboards" very few here - it's rural area - and easily ignored"
Except probably on the trunk roads which are your key ways in and out. Can you say "chokepoint"? It's certainly true in America.
""and junk mail" goes back into the post box - I don't care whether it's the advertisers or their side-kicks, the Royal Mail who pay for return to sender, they're all the same to me."
Except it's the people who pay for the mail ultimately, through postage fees and stamp rates. Keep doing that and you can expect the rates to go up, meaning the people STILL foot the bill.
This will only be viable for me if they include the option to say 'all ads are intrusive and no valid for me'
Otherwise, Adblockers will continue to be my choice (I have to use the un-adblocked internet at work, and it can make reviewing a whole bunch of website an exercise in painful browsing)
Though I'm not sure how the business model works if inserted ads are not subsequently clicked (do you convince advertisers that the 'potential' for clicking exists, and that they should therefore pay to have the ad displayed?), until/unless the sites injecting the ads into of the content I actually want to see pay me for the bandwidth they consume from my data plan, I'll block all ads all the time from everyone with any method available.
This utter waste of my money has been estimated at between 25% and 40% of my data usage (http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/08/blocking-ads-can-cut-network-traffic-25-to-40-study-shows/). I don't care if some business 'relies' on web advertising...the data I pay for monthly is not theirs to use. Pay me or find another income method. But stop griping about 'your' loss when I'm footing the bill.
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