The Way Forward
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.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
