Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads Those hoping for a quick resolution to the cat-and-mouse game between Facebook and Adblock Plus will be disappointed to know that the back-and-forth battle shows no signs of letting up. On Tuesday, Facebook changed its desktop website so that visitors would see ads on pages even if they are running an ad-blocking plugin. It …
If they've got FaecesBook, they've got email. And they've also got Google+ which is far tamer and can't afford to treat users like shit.
And yes, if they insist on FB, then I just don't need to hear from them. Life's too short to be pissed on by a very condescending ad company.
"And what if the only point of contact you have with someone important ... is through Farcebook because they don't have e-mail...?"
Turn that round.
And what if the only point of contact someone has with you is through e-mail because you don't have Facebook?
>And what if the only point of contact someone has with you is through e-mail because you don't have Facebook?
If you have a mail client - software under your control, then you'll be an advert-free happy camper.
If you run a web-browser to someone-else's mail server, you'll get adverts.
These days, spam is pretty obvious. You could count it as an adverts, but it is relatively innocuous in that downloads aren't generally concurrent with display and they are fairly easy to filter. A decent mail client will filter out html and will also filter the remote content in html.
Makes no sense, If they have an internet connection then they will have an email and phone of some sort.
Haven't checked as I don't use Facebook site but for most services such as Facebook, You probably need an email address to sign up in the first place!
Only reason for me having a Facebook account is so I can sign in to forum posts on other sites instead of creating accounts on every damn one of them with more passwords to try remember.
Only reason for me having a Facebook account is so I can sign in to forum posts on other sites instead of creating accounts on every damn one of them with more passwords to try remember.
I prefer to use a password manager, in my case KeyPass. It can generate the random-like passwords so that each is different, and it keeps all of those passwords away from the cloud (the database may be encrypted, but even I'm aware that one day that encryption might be hacked in some way, however unlikely that might appear, so off the cloud they stay).
Only reason for me having a Facebook account is so I can sign in to forum posts on other sites instead of creating accounts on every damn one of them with more passwords to try remember.
I concede the convenience factor, but if you do that you're telling Farcebook that you use those sites, and letting them see what you post there.
I prefer to keep as much information as possible away from the Zuckerborg.
"And what if the only point of contact you have with someone important (like a member of your family) is through Farcebook because they don't have e-mail or a reliable telephone?"
Then I tell them, if they want to get in touch with me, they can either by 7 different email addresses, or, three regular phone numbers, or, two SIP voip addresses, or, two Skype addresses, or they can leave me alone - there is only so far I'll go, and Facebook is NOT anywhere I'm going.
Deal with it.
I would hope that someone who can actually run a computer or a smartphone would also have a dialable number to go with their app runny thing or a way to confirm/verify their FB account on creation. OK maybe someone with merely a tablet may have neither but then we go to Phase 2, where the real questions are about how important is it to get hold of this person, really-- and how much of their modern isolation YOU can be expected to work around.
TL;DR: Sounds like an extremely rare and contrived sort of scenario.
NB: I actually created an FB acct once so I could send a message to someone who had no obvious public email, immediately after which I deleted it. I still have had one too many FB accts for way too damn many minutes of my life for probably no good reason whatsoever
I'm trying to give you credit but am failing miserably because I can think of no way for someone to have facebook without an internet conenction that would support a multitude of other ways to be contactable.
So, your argument is null and void.
"I'm trying to give you credit but am failing miserably because I can think of no way for someone to have facebook without an internet conenction that would support a multitude of other ways to be contactable."
The Zuck is trying hard to get "free" facebook-only internet into India, so it's something which *may* come to pass one day. And I don't know if Google have ever specified exactly what 'net access they planning to allow via their Project Loon.
"So, your argument is null and void."
Right, I need to find John Smith, no search results for him that include his contact details so I'm just going to spam every variation of John Smith on every email provider I can think of and hope that one of them is correct.
Not sure about the rest of the world but around here mobile phone numbers aren't listed unless you specifically ask them to. Which very few people do.
Or just search John Smith on facebook, check his photo to make sure it's the right person, send him a message.
Facebook as a tool for finding people is pretty good but there's no reason to keep feeding the machine by not swapping phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, Skype details etc.
There truly is very little reason to use Facebook as a sole means of communication, expecially if the communication is 'private' and not on the timeline other than laziness.
And the other advantage of Facebook is that you can cure cancer, defeat terrorism, stop child abuse etc. just by giving it a thumbs up.
I find that if I want to leave a forum comment, but have to have a Facebook login to leave one, then what I wanted to say was probably 1) not worth saying 2) to the wrong audience.
A site that uses Oauth to have logins processed by other sites such as Farcebook isn't necessarily endorsing Farcebook or subscribing to Farcebook's standards. It's not uncommon to offer several proxy authentication routes.
Having said that, I dislike Oauth because it's such a pain to code with, and I'm suspicious of the way it provides a single point of security failure.
"Someone important only has FarceBook? Which institution do they come from?"
Countries where Facebook is free and loaded on to feature phones there while the Internet (including e-mail and all that) is at a premium. Yes, it really exists; try going to some of the less opulent places in southeast Asia.
As for cutting them off, that's kinda harsh for a member of your immediate family (not to mention culturally improper over there).
"The answer is in the excerpt.... feature phone."
You didn't read the whole thing. I mentioned shoddy reception. At least Facebook is a lot like SMS: it works opportunistically (and BTW, SMS costs more than Facebook over there). And compared to back home, we get off light with advertising. Ads over there are everywhere: printed on tarps, plastered on any wall where there's space, legal or not.
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"And what if the only point of contact you have with someone important (like a member of your family) is through Farcebook because they don't have e-mail or a reliable telephone?"
if your family member has no e-mail, sign him up for gmail maybe? you need intarwebs for faceb[itch|ook] and so ANYTHING would work.
Being an old fogy (at least, that's my excuse for not using FB), anyone who wants to contact me is "forced" to use txt or email or heaven forbid, the phone.
Fair enough. And somebody else can say, "The only way you can communicate with me is via Facebook" leaving you with the choice of either using Facebook or not communicating. Given that situation, some of us may value a relationship enough to communicate.
If FB is the only way for me to contact you, then I have no contact with you.
If you want to get in touch with me, get a phone, pay a visit, send an owl, send an email. I see no need to enrich someone else with my personal data just to allow another communications channel.
"If you want to get in touch with me, get a phone, pay a visit, send an owl, send an email. I see no need to enrich someone else with my personal data just to allow another communications channel."
Bad reception, can't afford it, can't afford it. And he's practically my only immediate family, so while YOU may be willing to disown your family over demographics, I'm not. Family comes first.
"And what if the only point of contact you have with someone important (like a member of your family) is through Farcebook because they don't have e-mail or a reliable telephone?"
Just. Say. No!
Offer an alternative if you choose to.
""And what if the only point of contact you have with someone important (like a member of your family) is through Farcebook because they don't have e-mail or a reliable telephone?"
Just. Say. No!
Offer an alternative if you choose to."
WHAT alternative? SMS is expensive for him, he has no-email, and the Facebook comes with his feature phone (meaning it can't be expanded). He lives in an area with poor standards and shoddy reception, and he's about the only family I have left. Plus Far East traditions demand you keep tabs on your family (Death Before Dishonor). He has no option BUT Facebook, and turning my back on him over that is taboo.
Adblock should stop blocking adverts on Mark Zuckerbergs website! Its his website, he created it with no help from anyone else! Stop ruining his creation! He's the greatest human being that has ever lived, EVER! Facebook is the greatest website in the world! Adverts are great! Without adverts we are nothing! I want more adverts on Facebook! Adblock is evil in its purest form! Zuckerberg for President!
But hey, my Facebook account is scheduled for deletion in less than 14 days. I know I'm just one solitary guy saying Fuck You Zuckerberg, but even the mightiest of dams can be brought down from a thousand tiny cracks. If Facebook believes themselves immune to this by saying "fuck you little cracks, were bigger than you", good for them, it will be hubris if they do. And that's what will bring them down. The little cracks become bigger cracks, and then rocks start falling out, and then whole weight of inertia of people leaving just brings the whole fucking damn down around them and they get to feel what's it's like to be powerless for a change.
Well, that, and because my news feed contained more spam than my e-mail spam folder, and it was just a really shit waste of my time from people that I really didn't care about in any way whatsoever.
There's been a lot before FB... Bebo (I think that's how it was spelled), MySpace, Orkut, and others forgotten by the winds of time.
Oh, Bebo will be remembered. Briefly, but intensely. In the interval between the destroyer fleet from Gliese 581c being detected, and the earth being obliterated.
That they will have to deal with the Vogons afterwards will be cold comfort.
Hubris driven by Narcissism.
There's little doubt that there *is* a use for FB; it's an amazing platform for arranging events and selling things (e.g. like eBay without the fees). However, the cost of using FB is way way too high which overrides the benefits.
Costs include the constant vapid drivel; the endless tracking; hours spent looking at cat videos; and the knowledge that you'll never get this time back. Says he commenting on El Reg...
And they're lying bastards. "We need to know your real details to protect your "friends"". Why don't you pay *me* for reading your shite.
I feel like I went into the opium den and had a lucky escape. Life without FB is good.
You are not entirely alone. I've used FB for a couple of years for some specialist interest groups. I used a fake name and never posted any personal information, but since FB have started blocking Adblock, my feed is too spam laden for my taste. They aren't even very well targeted ads. I never play any online games and don't gamble... so I'm getting spam for online gambling sites! Life's too short, so I've closed my FB account. It was too much of a time waster anyway.
The part that says 'but then we'd have no money, and Zuckerberg would have to eat bread and jam like the rest of us."
Somehow, the advertisers have brainwashed huge chunks of the internet industry into the weird idea that the only way to fund anything is through advertising. They manage to peddle this bizarre concept *even though* what they are selling is end users who, on the whole, actually make things, and sell them. Y'know, for cash.
The argument might be made that people won't pay for services - to which the response is: the service is either not good enough, or too expensive.
Isn't it curious that the vast majority of adverts come from clickbait sites? You don't see adverts on the retailer's sites (apart from 'people who bought this also bought); they're up front and they want to sell you *stuff* - their stuff. Not random tat...
"What part of *NO ADS* and *NO INFO TO ADVERTISERS* does this company not get?"
With you on the no information to advertisers - but ads I'm fine with provided they meet certain criteria:
* No bloody Flash. Plain text or simple JPEG or PNG banners, please.
* Not served up with Javascript - or if they are, those scripts must be running on the server of the site I am visiting.
* Not served up from another domain/server.
* Not going to slow my browsing session to a crawl - which is usually either because the remote server is slow (see the above point) or the Javascript is a convulted, inefficient, buggy mess (see the point above the above point).
* The size of the file is kept as small as possible (I sometimes browse on my computer using my mobile phone to provide an internet connection - so I have a monthly 'un'limit to consider).
* Keep them unobtrusive; no obscuring the page content, or other such shenanigans.
* Keep them relevant - and that shouldn't be based on what you think I like because you've tracked me (no info to advertisers, remember); it should be relevant to the page I am reading.
Most of those points are pretty much covered by adhering to the first three - and adverts that do that will mostly appear on my set up >now without me taking any steps to allow them.
VinceH: "With you on the no information to advertisers - but ads I'm fine with provided they meet certain criteria..."
Funny thing: if FB were willing to commit to a few of those criteria, AdBlock would whitelist them and the whole battle would just go away. In fact, most users wouldn't be turning to ad-blockers at all, if the ad ecosystem hadn't been allowed to become a polluted mess.
Guys like Zuck like to call AdBlock "extortion," but AdBlock whitelists are first and foremost based on "Acceptable Ad" criteria. Whether Eyeo (the publishers of AdBlock) would demand some extra payment from a behemoth like FaceBook once it had met the Acceptable Ad criteria is something we may never know, since those (entirely reasonable) criteria have never been met, and likely never will be. FB may verbally disparage obnoxious ads, but they won't willingly give up the option of profiting from them.
That unrestrained greed is the root of their problem.
Much smarter, for FB and other services, would have been to embrace AdBlock, and realize that this company was offering to provide them with a valuable service. The quickest way to clean up the ad sewer would be to work with a third party like AdBlock (or others, given that the filters themselves are in an open format). Ultimately, someone will have to take on the task of vetting the ad stream. Users can never trust FB (or its ilk) to do it - there's just too much of a built-in conflict of self-interest.
My prediction: it will happen.
We'll first see major sites embracing some sort of Code of Standards, which will in essence be the AdBlock whitelist, but under their control. This will fail to deliver, and users will continue to subscribe to third-party whitelists. Then, finally, the big Internet players will realize that they need an impartial watchdog even more than their users do.
@Magani - the important and most telling part of the quote you cite is: "it [FB] can eliminate the motivation users have to run ad-blockers."
What this is telling us is that FB see's itself as being the ONLY site its users visit via their browsers; the fact that users also browse third-party sites just doesn't occur to FB !
Because of this corporate blindness, rather than do as many other sites do and politely request their users to disable the use of ad-blocker/content filters on their website (and in so doing effectively getting their users to say they are willing to pay for FB), they have decided to wage war both on the venders of tools that FB's users voluntarily install on their systems themselves so as to enable the discarding of unwanted content and on their users who have decided for whatever reasons to block certain types of content.
"What part of *NO ADS* and *NO INFO TO ADVERTISERS* does this company not get?"
The bit where you assume that they will provide the service for free with no way for them to make money off it. Would you be willing to pay a subscription fee for facebook if it meant no ads, no info to advertisers?
hardly the same thing at all, but, you know, computers ! ! !
further, OF COURSE nekkid apes judge people by the company they keep: it is NOT the same thing to say i hang out with the league of woman voters registering citizens to vote, and: i hang out with an outlawed biker gang at a burned-out shack where moonshine and meth are sold and they bugger chickens...
i mean, they are both 'social contact' organizations, aren't they ? ? ?
same thing, right ? ? ?
equally laudable, correct ? ? ?
lorisarvendu: "Insulting people who use a site for social contact by posting on a forum which is also used for social contact. The irony of the human race."
The real problem here is that an essential service - "social contact" - has been privatized and monopolized. As Max Schremm has pointed out, it's as if the telephone were controlled by a single global monopoly.
What we need to do - urgently - is to declare 'social media' to be an 'essential service,' and therefore subject to open standards. Then, say, Google, could offer it's own FacePalm site, which would differ from Google+ in that it could freely exchange posts with FaceBook (or any other 'social media' service). Users would then have a proper choice. They might pick a paid service, for instance, and see no ads.
Until that happens, consumers turn to companies that can only partially compete - like AdBlock, which offers to take over security and usability, on which FB is clearly failing. Fortunately, the same legal freedom that created the FaceBook monopoly in the first place now protects those new companies' ability to nibble away at it.
"Insulting people who use a site for social contact by posting on a forum which is also used for social contact. The irony of the human race."
Yes, but surely you realise that El Reg is different... It provides a news feed about things that I'm interested in presented in a way that I find appealing, and it provides views that largely agree with my preconceived ideas of the world and rejects those that don't, like Worstall.
Is Zuck going to provide a watertight guarantee to compensate people for damage done by malware from ads on FB? If he's sure that all the ads are safe (and they might well be if it's all in-house scripting around them) then he can do that and take away one of the biggest arguments in favour of ad blockers - the security one is hard for the ad-slingers to argue against.
It's the time of year when malware slingers have opportunity. When the educated or critical ad sales people are on summer holiday, malware slingers dip in at big ad buyers. Malware people -- the ones with money -- pay for ads while nobody is looking at the content or credibility of the buyers..
If you look after desktop PCs, you should expect August and post-Christmas as times for drive-by attacks.
As any fule now, a "better" audience is more valuable to advertisers. "Better" can mean more targeted, or more willing to spend, or both. Conversely, if a media outlet's audience quality declines, they have a big problem.
As el Reg commentards are leaving FB in droves, well, small heaps, it indicates FB's audience quality is getting worse. (Pat on the back for commentards).
So, FB is left with friends and family, a very hard bunch to earn money from ("monetize" for merkins).
So they force-feed ads anyway they can, foie gras-style. (BTW it won't be long before we see this from LI. Microsoft?)
I run uBlock Origin and Noscript. On Facebook today, I have not seen any sponsored ads. It did use to offer my most played games on the right hand side of the screen, which were also missing today. The games are not a big deal though, as they still show up in the left hand side listings.
"I run uBlock Origin and Noscript."
apparently your whitelist is too leniant (farce-bitch still works). All I ever see is a re-direct page with a blocked script icon, if I get sent to an FB page by 'whatever'. which is fine. I don't want their persistent cookies nor 3rd party embedded ad scripts on other web sites [including that damnable 'F' icon image] feeding my browsing info back to "mother Zucker"
With Firefox lined in uBlock, NoScript and Bluhell Firewall, I haven't seen an ad on a Facebook page for about 2 years (or on the Reg for that matter). The more they fight to feed this rubbish to my screen, the more I will ensure it is blocked.
A simple message for all the ad mongers to understand, they should be getting it by now surely....
I've never seen an ad on FB as I've never used it, I've never seen the need and I've never had anyone convince me of its use case.
El Reg on the other hand I like, but I block all ads and deny El Reg any revenue via that route.
If Vulture Central were to offer a subscription model I would probably cough up the wonga, why not give it a go?
HTTPS would be a bonus if you could get round to it please...
Duck season
Wabbit season
Duck season
Wabbit season
Duck season
Wabbit season
Duck season
-ad time was optional, usually seen as a good time to channel surf
-the ads were somewhat lucidly matched to the audience, not by genuine robots
-the ads didn't leave any lasting impression on (i.e. damage) your television
tbh, I second the D'oh because we have no basis for comparison, no way to know what it would be like to grow up in a world that wasn't hooked on entertainment whose delivery was all but entirely financed by friendly spam. Well there's the 3rd world but we can't go be 5-yr-olds there and now, can we...
Here's a hint to the sites that depend on ad revenue. You want people to see ads on your website? Stop using the fucking ad-mongers as your providers. Stop using ad services whose SOLE goal is to track people across multiple sites, and invade people's privacy just to sell them shit.
Just post your ads locally. Manage your own ads. Most ad blockers won't block local images or ads. They mostly only block the centrally managed, downright unethical ad tracking agencies that so many of you seem to be keen to use. Know what? I have nothing against tasteful ads. But the instant you gave up control over what ads show on your sites, and allowed tracking, privacy invading asshats to display any kind of garbage, then you lost any claim to calling us "freeloaders".
You want me to see your ads? Then make sure they're YOUR ads. Not inappropriate garbage created by 3rd parties that have nothing to do with your site, or your audience.
As for Facebook, I haven't seen an ad on their platform so long as I use my blocking quartet of uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Ghostery, and NoScript.
You want me to see your ads? Then make sure they're YOUR ads. Not inappropriate garbage created by 3rd parties that have nothing to do with your site, or your audience.
I find that NoScript + Ghostery alone does exactly what you describe 99% of the time. No adblockers required. Interestingly, I very very rarely see any adverts so very very few site ever bother to run "local", unscripted ads.
Actually I mainly credit NoScript. Which is why I refuse to use a browser that doesn't have similar functionality. Not the broken version that Chrome perpetrates, for instance. Understandably, seeing as it's created by one of the worst advertising/tracking monsters out there, so why would they make it easier to block their profitable privacy destroying tools?
But the others have their uses, as I've found.
First date with my wife at the movies.
That little promo plays, and in the cartoon a hot dog bun opens itself up and the hot dog jumps in.
My wife starts laughing hysterically, after a pause the rest of the audience joins in.
I guess none of us had realized what a filthy little advert that was until then.
When subjects have accepted the conditioning and believe the road to happiness is paved with 'stuff' then adverts are not considered detrimental to their website experience but essential. Information dense & tailor made portals to improve the quality of their lifestyle.
Gotta go I'm the 1,000,000th visitor to a friends blog and I've won a games console :)
"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,"
Hold on, isn't this like a hostage taker shooting someone and then saying that the police really did it by not giving him what he wanted?
The vast majority of Facebook users just don't give a shit about the adverts.
Facebook succeeds because it provides something that the majority value - the ability to post rich content once and have it visible from then on to friends, family and anyone else who might or might not need it. The down sides don't impinge on their consciousness.
The can also snoop on others to their hearts' content.
They also like it because it is (in direct monetary terms) free.
Facebook are well aware of this, and also well aware of the problems involved in putting the content behind a paywall - a long and mainly fruitless battle fought by the newspapers.
However powerful now, all it needs is a small change in the market place and a new "free" system will gain traction.
With the greatest respect to the Commentards posting here, if we all stopped (or didn't even start) using Facebook the effect would be much the same as a gnat bite on the Matterhorn.
Using ad blockers is a direct attack on the current funding model for the Internet and is having enough impact to provoke advertising funded sites to try and kick back. Interesting times.
However beware the law of unintended consequences. If all advertising on all sites is permanently blocked, how will the Internet be funded?
Dedicated Commentards may well pay a subscription to El Reg; I would.
However there is a limit to how much I am prepared to pay per month for Internet content.
Still using an ad blocker, including El Reg (apart from the recent dodgy downloads reported, they also seem to be aiding the DRM Police) but I am aware that ultimately TANSTAAFL.
Still as I said, intersting times.
Popcorn at the ready.
David Roberts: "Dedicated Commentards may well pay a subscription to El Reg; I would. However there is a limit to how much I am prepared to pay per month for Internet content."
AdBlock guesstimates that a regular visitor (like a Reg reader) is worth about 1 Euro per month in ad revenue. The amount would be higher for services like FaceBook.
Would I pay that much to the handful of sites I use heavily? You bet! (In fact, I've already sent contributions to a few.) The one caveat: it has to be easy. But there are schemes in place for this, like Flatter. The Reg could lead the way, run it as an experiment.
The ad industry's greatest success has been in convincing us that ads are necessary, even inevitable. They're not. And business models do change. Cars threw blacksmiths out of work, and the Internet has shut down a lot of newspapers. Now it's the ad parasites' turn.
at the risk of teachin' Grandma to suck eggs, you may want to investigate a couple of options, first is the 'Element Hiding' helpers and such like in Adblock plus and Ublock, and probably a few more.. it can be a little bit of a pain to correctly hide the bits of the webpage you dont want to see, but it's generally successful, and slims page load times down too, so try it if you haven't, and a with little trial and error and you can stop much visual noise, on almost ANY website.
Secondly there are userscripts, Userstyles.org and the Stylish extension for Firefox, Safari and Chrome, is a community which lets you customise sited in your browser, for example i hate white backgrounds and dark text, it all seems eye damaging to me, so i use Stylish and a script like the 'Midnight surfing' one to make all webpages light text on a dark background.. sheer bliss. however, for Facebag adverts there are advert and other panel removers and customisations aplenty ...
Wow, didn't think I needed another reason not to have a Facebook account, but here we are anyway.
Until the day that adverts on the internet are at least unobtrusive and guaranteed not to be malicious, I am continuing to use adblockers. Banner ads along the top or sides, such as El Reg uses, are OK to me, as I can tune them out and the site probably wouldn't be here without them.
However, flash popups forcing me to look at them and stealing my mobile data allowance can fuck off. As can any ad man who accuses me of "stealing" by blocking his content. I did not give you consent to use the small allowance of data my mobile operator gives me. TV , radio and print advertising may be annoying, but at least I'm not going to get malware or worse from it.
"Until the day that adverts on the internet are at least unobtrusive and guaranteed not to be malicious, I am continuing to use adblockers. Banner ads along the top or sides, such as El Reg uses, are OK to me, as I can tune them out and the site probably wouldn't be here without them."
Then you'll be doing it for the rest of your days, I'm afraid. The main reason ad slingers stopped using them is because people tended to ignore them. It's like with much else ad-based. Eventually, the common man is able to tune it out. Been known for over a century. So the ad people have no choice but to be more ostentatious in order to court a jaded audience.
I can sum all of this up with one irrefutable statement:
Facebook is to the Internet, what genital herpes is to the human body.
There is no getting rid of it, it's always lurking in the cells, waiting for an opportunity to infect it's victims with ugly, painful blisters.
No account but other people occasionally link to drivel they have hosted there, usually Politicians. Can someone explain to me what the fascination is because I see little to no merit in what is being presented or the way it is being presented. At a personal level, assuming it is sooo good, I do not understand why someone has not already ripped it off and hosted it on Amazon.
I've received numerous email invitations to FB pages from public-spirited organizations, including major environmental groups - and even some privacy-focused 'civil liberties' groups! (They also use commercial mailing services, coded tracking links, and every other dirty trick you can imagine.)
I usually respond by pointing out that there's more than one fight going on. It's great that they want to clean up our Planet Earth ecosystem, but that's no reason they should be helping pollute the online ecosystem. I add that there are plenty of free, open and privacy-respecting alternatives.
So far, not one group has agreed.
Facebook don't seem to understand that their value as a site is determined by the content generated by users, and not the amount of ads they show (which is just a side effect of the aforementioned content).
So a user who doesn't personally view ads still generates value for facebook, as they generate content that others without ad-blockers view. Without the ad-block user, the content doesn't exist so facebook doesn't get paid for the adverts that would have been shown alongside it.
It's the same with consumption only sites where the ad-blocking user doesn't directly add value to the site. They still read articles, and might mention something they read in conversations or share it on social media, which drives ad viewing users to the site to read it for themselves.
It's like the bloke in the pub that never buys a round. The landlord doesn't mind him, as his (misguided) friends buy him drinks, and without him they might not have come to the pub. So the landlord is better off even though he doesn't receive a penny from the skinflint.
This model works as long as there aren't too many ad-blockers, so it's helpful to the advertisers to keep the existence of ad-blocking quiet. So it's another complete fail for facebook to start a full on media circus war with ad-blockers, as now a whole load more people know about ad-blockers and may be convinced to install one, just so that they can observe the battle first hand.
Yes, it is very easy to solve these problems once and for all. Go to Settings and Delete Account. Enjoy watching all the other idiots in the world freak out about poor Facebooks advertisements being blocked. This said, I am heading to Ad Block and Site Block to donate some funding.
It is so easy for web sites to be compromised that it makes good sense to run an ad blocker as well as tools like no-script. Very few sites actively enforce a rapid patch policy to guard against new attacks. Most large scale hosting providers are months behind the bleeding edge of attack vectors. This also seems to apply to operating system vendors (but they are getting better).
Facebook is to be commended for vigorously enforcing security measures to provide a safe space for users, but that ignores the fact that over 90% of the web sites that use anything beyond simple HTML are subject to attack via tools like SQL injection. To expect us to manually disable our ad blockers every time we use Facebook is silly. A word to the Facebook engineers: focus your efforts on taking down the script kiddies and work with the backbone providers to stop infected content at its origin. Facebook marketing: ads don't have to be intrusive to be effective.
""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"
How much chutzpah does it take to make a statement like that?
Isn't it Facebook punishing people here?
They're the ones sneaking in the ads posing as posts by other users.
One line bugs me:
Facebook has accused the blocking tool developers of trying to make money by forcing it and other publishers into paying for inclusion on their "whitelists" of permitted ads.
For the 25th time, ABP doesn’t have a whitelist. They just plain old don’t. They have this “non-intrusive” list that you can click on to chose to let them through – or you can tell it to block each and every ad, regardless of anything they pay to ABP.
Maybe if Failbook stopped those stupid "a woman x miles from you" adverts. that quite frankly you can get enough of from p0rn sites, I just might give them the time of day.
I only use the damn site to keep track of family in the UK.
BTW Failbook, I live in Australia where we use kilometer's, if you're going to post this trite at least update the ads. for the location you are trying to target, you muppet's.
We`re funded entirely by adverts. You may be running an adblocker. You can see where we are going here ...
UK, Channel 4, you are banned for having an adblocker installed regardless of it being active ....
Just d/l and content you want to see on BitLord or uTorrent or search the content online, someone will have it.
Does Zuck own Channel 4? or El Reg? or the InterWeb?
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