uBlock Origin Is Giving Up the Fight to Keep Ads Off Facebook

77 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by Markoff

44 Comments

wkjagt

15 minutes ago

I know this is probably a very naive question, but what is the end goal putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers? Surely, someone with an ad blocker installed is not going to click on their ads and buy the advertised products anyway. I don't really know what I am talking about, but I guess it's all about ad impressions that generate money, but doesn't this strategy end up making less money, because the money that's put into circumventing ad blockers isn't really generating more sales.

It's like a door to door sales person thinking that if only they could find a way to unlock my door I would buy their stuff.

Lammy

4 minutes ago

Ads are for surveillance as much if not more than they are for money

SvenL

11 minutes ago

Aren’t ads payed also via „impressions“, like 10k people saw your advertisement so please pay x money?

hn_submit

20 minutes ago

The only way to keep ads off Facebook is to stop using Facebook.

qbane

an hour ago

I wrote and shared uBlock Origin filters for Facebook, shared on Reddit and up to a week later they changed the DOM structure bypassed the filters. After some attempts I no longer publish the filters.

amelius

an hour ago

Maybe a better approach is to convert the page to an image, run OCR over it, use an LLM to remove the ads, present the result to the user.

ImJamal

an hour ago

How would you comment or watch a video if you did that?

amelius

an hour ago

You can still do that.

The only thing I'm proposing is to do the filtering on graphical data (what the user actually sees) rather than on the DOM (which can be obfuscated; and which may change every week).

fsuts

5 minutes ago

Facebook and instagram constantly email me trying to entice me to use the app. As I haven’t used it for years.

I think it’s purely to massage their Active Monthly User numbers to show growth.

curt15

3 minutes ago

"What do you do for work?"

"I find ways to defeat adblockers"

mattrighetti

23 minutes ago

I'm more surprised by the fact that people still use Facebook

skeeter2020

17 minutes ago

remember the amazing show "community"?

Elroy: “I got a job through LinkedIn.”

Annie: “What? That’s crazy! People use LinkedIn?”

Elroy: “No, LinkedIn hired me to help figure out why people don’t use it.”

la_fayette

an hour ago

ok thanking the team for this work over the years. i hope yt will stay ad-free :-)

conradfr

an hour ago

Not sure detailing how Facebook demoralized them is the best idea.

mattrighetti

18 minutes ago

Well, uBlock is entirely open source so...

dzonga

2 hours ago

the tragedy is 'mainstreet' runs on Facebook.

not shitter, google but fb. some local business don't even have their own sites but maintain an insta / fb page.

zamadatix

an hour ago

Shitter? Edit: Ah, I assume you're referring to X (previously Twitter -> shitter taunt)

ravetcofx

an hour ago

It's where the GenX-ers and boomers are at who have money to spend

SV_BubbleTime

38 minutes ago

I love how Facebook has one reputation, an Instagram has another and they often don’t match at all even though we all know it’s the exact fucking service with a different skin and theme.

makerofthings

21 minutes ago

What's with this current trend of grouping GenX with Boomers? I am GenX and the difference between us and Boomers is wild. My GenX friends are on here. Boomers I know are afraid of self-checkout machines.

kotaKat

30 minutes ago

the ONLY way my county communicates emergency alerts is facebook. it's absolutely wild. how do I know if I'm in a state of emergency? facebook. :)

MrDrMcCoy

19 minutes ago

Your country has sold your safety to private interests. Demand better from them.

iugtmkbdfil834

an hour ago

It is an interesting experiment. Ads on my network are mostly blocked, but wife did notice a spike on her FB stuff. Now that she knows how nice ( edit: well, not automatically awful ) net is without ads, lets see if accepts the trade off.

bmurphy1976

an hour ago

All the more reason to block Facebook completely.

vachina

an hour ago

uBlock hit them where it hurts. Facebook's entire existence hinges on serving ads.

dabber21

an hour ago

Out of spite they should have a block list, blocking every meta related service, disabled by default... for now

tonyhart7

14 minutes ago

I know this is gonna be unpopular take

but for modern social media to function, they need showing ads to pay creator

many people livelihood depends on it, creator make content in turn of revenue sharing that user get for free

maxwellito

an hour ago

Hot take: uBlock origin could insert even MORE ads into Facebook? Discouraging people to use Facebook, and also make some money on the side.

(this is a joke obviously, but boy that would be fun and against the T&C)

Rebelgecko

an hour ago

Other adblock tools have gone the route of allowing "good" ads through and only blocking "bad" ads. Of course the definition of good vs bad might depend on who sponsors the dev.

zeafoamrun

an hour ago

I misread the domain as "digital cesspools" and that is indeed what Facebook is. If you're still on there you're going to get subjected to their abusive practices.

OhMeadhbh

3 hours ago

Oh! The Irony! This page doesn't load when your ad blocker is turned on.

Pooge

15 minutes ago

Are you not using uBlock Origin?

OhMeadhbh

3 hours ago

Apropos of nothing, I noted @markoff said they liked John Markoff in the 80s. As a complete aside, may I recommend to readers Markoff's book "What the Dormouse Said." From 2005, it's a deep-dive into the relationship between 60s counter-culture and 70s / 80s era microcomputer movers and shakers. Want to read about Doug Engelbart tripping balls in the Santa Cruz Mountains? It's in there. Or maybe I just made that up in a LSD fueled trip to the center of my mind. But that KIND of thing is in there. Abbie Hoffman somehow influenced Steve Jobs fascination with PARC derived WIMP systems. An image of Richard Nixon getting his face punched was burned into the original PC BIOS ROMs. Tim O'Leary developed software in the 80s. One of these is not true, but you have to read the book to find out which.

https://search.worldcat.org/title/57068812

delduca

an hour ago

Not for me (Wipr2 on Safari), loads fine without ADS.

squigz

an hour ago

It works here.

rosstex

an hour ago

why not just run a 24/7 agent to do the work for them?

seritools

an hour ago

why not "just" do it for them?

sleepybrett

34 minutes ago

Another reminder that facebook is abhorrent and not worth your time.