Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users
wsj.com
wsj.com
As long as they don't try to force some sort of legislation on how people can use their internet connection, and their internet browser to fetch and display content, there's no problem.
The real problem is Facebook is already full of advertising disguised as content. From sponsored posts to content from things you "like". So I'm kind of surprised they need to go out of their way to explicitly announce that they will be disguising ads. They already have the power to inject it in the middle of content invisibly.
And follow up: If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users, do you think that would be unfair?
I think "they're welcome to try" is exactly the right response here. Nothing is "fair" or "unfair", at least not in a way that advertisers or ad blockers care about.
No matter what they do it's entirely possible to trick their scripts into believing I'm displaying ads, because they run not on facebook's servers but on my computer. Where I get the control.
I hope this is true. I still think Facebook can do much more devious things like having posts on your news feeds from friends which look like posts but are ads. Kind of like native advertising.
DRM-protected media extensions are almost uniquely positioned for this. They're designed around the abilities to uniquely identify the user and resist tampering. The only thing that's missing right now is interactivity.
I think you're completely right, btw. After AOL, it only took a few years for websites to become rapidly Flash-based. It looks like we're going back to that again (not Flash, but same thing - black boxed).
For the follow up, I assume I agree with the parent post by reiterating that what Facebook does on its own site is its own business, but if the company lobbied for legislation that required people to look at ads online, then that would be a problem.
Besides, if Facebook made the experience so detestable that people were willing to leave for another social network, then Google and every other college freshman would leap at the opportunity to be the next big thing.
You have three choices:
1. Stop using Facebook
2. Pay Facebook to remove ads
3. Look at ads
I've opted for option 1, though I'll happily revisit this choice if Facebook (A) finds a way to make money without serving ads and without requiring me to pay out-of-pocket (unlikely) or (B) Facebook starts serving ads I want to consume. (Welcome to native advertising.)
No it doesn't, exactly the point, you can't pay them so you have no transactional or business relation, in fact one SHOULD block the ads that are forced upon you. Linkedin for example prohibit adblocking in their TOS, they can do this because you can pay them to get rid of the ads.
The point was that Facebook's problems are de facto the user's problems. Ad-blocking is, indeed, a solution, but one can't expect Facebook to (re)act in the user's interest.
The only real reason need your personal data is so they can show you Ads with presumably more effective targeting so they can get a greater share of advertising revenue.
It pays to remember that most forms of media - TV, Net, Print etc. are basically funded by money from advertisers.
Because I dont like looking at ads.
The thing is, this already exists and it's called native advertising. The trick is to create advertisements that, while endorsing a product, have real value for me.
A simple example: a tutorial on doing XYZ with Docker on Google Compute Engine might (A) be relevant to my interests and immediately useful, and (B) incite me to use GCE.
Ad-blockers block the scummy, bottom-feeder, AIDS-of-the-internet ads.
Ads don't have to look like ads. And ads can give value, too. Did the local tavern pay me to run a story talking about their new 1/2 off drinks special every Wednesday? They sure did. But people clicked on it and read the article and then visited the bar and took advantage of the promotion. Not because they were tricked into doing so, but because it was interesting to them and they got value from it. And those people will come back to the site again tomorrow and read the next one, because my advertising provides real value to them.
In most jurisdictions, it's a priori legal unless it falls under some special category (e.g. a political campaign ad).
FTC will regulate undisclosed native content advertising content in US: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
The Advertising Standards Authority regulate it in the UK:
https://www.cap.org.uk/Advice-Training-on-the-rules/Advice-O...
About vlogging, but clearly applies to blogging and traditional print media: https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Media-Centre/2014/Maki...
http://blogtacular.com/sponsored-posts-ads-reviews-the-asa-a...
Honestly I'm not sure it is. Sure, it's deceptive, but he's not serving ads that annoy, distract and often serve as a vector for malware. It's not clear (to me) that it's worse than traditional web advertising, which tends to be deceptive, illegal, scummy and annoying, dangerous and distracting.
And again, the trick with native advertising is to provide valuable content for the users, otherwise it's just crap that nobody will read. I don't know if the poster in question is actually doing this, but if he is, I wouldn't be so quick to write it off as scummy; bear in mind that oftentimes such pieces are identified as "sponsored content".
I reject your assertion of "my taboola ads". I don't run any kind of third party ad scripts. All my sponsored content is written by me and labeled as such. And I immediately turn down any ad content I myself would not want to see (I run adblockers, too), since it wouldn't provide any value to my readers.
The browser is our user agent. Facebook can serve whatever it wants, but we're under no contractual or moral obligation to look at it.
Btw. the Black Mirror TV series is awesome.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-netwo...
Also my country's civil law (along with any other reasonable civil laws) throws out the three links below out of our contract, as they're neither at a reasonable length nor clearness when the context is considered.
That some advertisers think they should pay by impression and not by click is their own stupidity.
It's not. Ads can be entirely successful without a click - sometimes it'll just be a reminder of the brand's name the next time you are shopping for their product. "Users running adblockers likely wouldn't click the ads anyway" is a pretty naive view of how the ad industry operates.
All it does is make me avoid the product out of spite.
Not many companies can take off purely on the quality of their product, especially in boring industries. I can't think of an insurance company which I learned about outside of widespread advertising.
Pretty much any advertiser who spends major money on TV is going for impressions - clicks have no real meaning and are merely a bonus.
For instance, think Coke ads - the objective is to create a certain brand association in your mind by showing you imagery in advertising. Your clicking and buying Coke the instant you see an ad is not an objective. They want to make sure you choose Coke when you buy cola, perhaps even think that you are a "Coke person" rather than Pepsi person.
A lot of money out there in the advertising business is ther for this kind of business objective.
Targeted ads are worse than gambling. We made sure everyone's aware of the dangers of gambling, but everyone's in the dark about targeted ads. These companies know what they're doing. If people want to portray ad blocking as stealing, so be it. Steal from them. They deserve it.
No, but acting with honesty and fairness is. Facebook is asking you not to use their service if you are going to block ads. I think it's obvious that the "right" thing to do is to respect their wishes, not sneeringly defy them while using their resources and giving nothing in return.
You're giving them a lot, even if you don't click on ads or see ads. Is it not clear that your data is valuable? You're giving them personal information. Not that people that aren't developers care.
Why shouldn't I approach them the same way? And given how often the above describes the way businesses will treat me, why shouldn't I generalize that position?
Practically: because it leads to a race to the bottom, lowering to their level, the world just gets worse and worse
Philosophically: because ethics are a fundamental part of who you are, and strangers acting unethically does not relieve you of their burdens
Facebook will try to track me and my behavior, and tailor ads based on it, regardless of whether I'm a Facebook user and regardless of whether I'm logged in. In theory any link someone sends me might end up trying to connect to Facebook's advertising network and record information about my behavior.
At what point do I "agree" to this? What do I get "in return" for this? What if it's a crappy article that I close right away? Or the page load takes too long and I close it before it finishes (but, in true form, the ad code would already have run)? Since I don't know until I've loaded the page -- at which point you think I have an ethical duty to let Facebook serve ads -- whether it will have ads at all, or whether they'll be Facebook ads, at what point do I find that out and have an opportunity, in your model, to decide I don't want to be a party to that?
(in case you're wondering, the correct answer is "use an ad-blocker to pre-emptively ensure nobody can force ads on you without your agreement")
I'm talking about being a Facebook user, as in maintaining a profile and logging on and using the site. My contention is that by affirmatively choosing to use their resources, an ethical obligation is created.
There is no coherent position which creates an ethical obligation to view sites in full and unmodified (especially given that one of the primary purposes of web browsers, historically, has been to mangle what a site sent to you into something that's actually a sensible and renderable document tree).
No they aren't (at least, not yet). Where do you think it says this in their terms & conditions?
There is nothing honest or fair about dictating what happens on someone else's computer without user input. That's what malware does. Are you pro-malware?
Keep trying.
The fact of the matter is, most people waxing poetic here about ads infringing on their rights, will still use Facebook when their adblockers don't work. They are willing to pay, they just want to pay less.
This is a very hard position to justify ethically.
Ads are like a donation box, not like a price tag.
Am I being forced to donate?
Well, you're certainly entitled to your own opinion. But realistically, we all consume content that is ad-supported that we might be paying for otherwise. The fact that so many ad-or-pay services exist is proof of this (Youtube with ads, Hulu with ads, etc.) The are both business models.
If you don't like the service at the price, don't buy it. Honestly, no one is forcing you and tons of people get on perfectly fine without Facebook (some people would even say they are better off without it).
Perhaps one day we (society) come to the conclusion that advertising, as a whole, is doing more harm than good and we decide to ban it entirely. Or we decide set a limit on how much advertising is allowed.
Right now adblockers are not against the law (afaik) so I don't see any problem using them. After all, they're a product of the somewhat free market that facebook is part of and they accepted the market price (which is that some people choose to block ads).
I'm not arguing that Facebook isn't allowed to try to stop adblocking. Only question is what means they're allowed to take. Just like security guard isn't allowed to shoot shoplifters on sight.
Here's my perspective: I would pay for an ad-free subscription, but they don't offer one. They literally will not take the money I have to offer.
Imagine walking into Stabucks and having them refuse to take your money but instead handing you a coffee and a booklet of ads. Is it bad to throw the ads in the bin? Would the barista become angry and start shouting ads at you too? Or, more likely, ask you not to come back?
Note: I don't use Facebook on the principle that they want to commoditise me instead of taking my money, but I see nothing wrong with blocking their ads should someone not hold that principle.
Walmart is free to open a business and allow people off the street to shop there, browse their wares, and buy stuff if they want. They cannot force people to buy something for the privilege of visiting, and while they could require a "cover charge" to enter, they're probably going to lose most of their customers if they do this. It's Walmart's job to attract people into the store, and then attempt to convince them to buy stuff when they're in there.
Other shops are the same, and small shops are probably an even better example: while most people will probably buy something in a Walmart if they take the time to go in there, if you check out some weird little specialty shop you happen to walk by in a shopping district, it's quite likely you're not going to buy anything in there.
Someone has to pay for that little shop's rent and utilities and salaries, but that's the concern of the shopkeeper, not the customers. If the shopkeeper wants to stay in business, he'll figure out how to get enough customers to buy stuff to keep the doors open. If he fails, too bad so sad. It's not the customers' fault for not buying enough stuff, it's his fault for not having good enough stuff to buy, having too-high prices, having crappy service, having a poor location or operating hours, having an ugly or dirty shop, having annoying workers, etc.
It's no different with websites. It's their job to figure out how to make money on the site, not yours. If they want to show annoying ads, that's their right. If you want to block those ads (just like refusing to look at aisle displays in Walmart), that's your right. If they don't like that, they can ask you to leave, just like a shopkeeper can ask you to leave. But if your browser makes a request, and their website services that request, then they are not asking you to leave, they're inviting you in. As long as sites don't turn away my browser requests, I consider myself welcome at their sites, even with my ad-blocking. If they (like Forbes) refuse to show me the site/article because of my ad-blocker, then I either leave or disable the blocker, depending on my whim (usually I just leave).
A small shop has a sign, and a bucket. "Put $1 in the bucket and test how good you are at some_game."
There is no one there - it's an unmonitored booth.
Do you try your hand at the game and not put in money? They lose nothing, it's a repeatable game with no consumables. There is no one watching you, and there is no line behind you either.
When I visit a website I have no idea what value I might gain from it so having adblock always on is just internet safety and privacy conserving measure, nothing else. If the website has a donation button or sells some services that I might be interested it becomes a whole other issue.
It's that targeted ads are meant to manipulate your decision making. In order to do that, you're tracked, yes. You can prevent them from manipulating your decisions (put your blinders/Adblock on), which is really great even if you can't prevent them from tracking you.
Targeted ads are insidious - as natrius says, they prey on your psychology. By comparison, non-targeted ads are generally just an eyesore.
Psychologists know that humans have certain exploitable weaknesses. I mean, think about any relationship. You become vulnerable when you expose yourself, and so a person has to earn your trust such that you expose yourself to them.
Today, advertisers have made you vulnerable without actually earning your trust. You could argue that "by using Facebook you're saying you trust them," and you'd be right... If humans all had the capability and willpower to understand systems as complex as ad targeting... One of our worst exploitable vulnerabilities.
Put another way, I would say that it's ethical for a team of scientists to sit down and interview you about everything you love/fear/want/need for the purpose of helping you to find more people like yourself so you feel less lonely. I would say that it's unethical for those scientists to radio down the street as soon as you walk out the door to tell street vendors to start hawking goods that play at your insecurities.
Not all advertising is based on exploiting people, but the most effective types are!
> Those behavior changes are intended to make you give the buyer more money than they paid.
That is literally the goal of every merchant everywhere. They need to sell stuff for more than they paid, otherwise they don't make money. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. They aren't forcing you to buy things, their buyers think that what they're selling is worth the amount they're selling it for (or they wouldn't buy it). This is the fundamental basis on which all commerce everywhere operates.
As for the Las Vegas angle, that's complete bullshit. Gambling operates very differently from commerce, and there's really no basis to make this comparison at all. Seeing an ad that's relevant to your interests has pretty much nothing in common with gambling beyond the fact that both of them involve money at some point.
Profit-seeking has led to lots of progress in this world, but its record is decidedly mixed. Keep your eyes open.
This is not about the total gain of both sides: Almost every transaction is positive sum. However; why should I simply accept the 90/10 distribution of the excess in their favor when I can aim for a favorable distribution for myself too?
And I'm also confused by your talk about favorable distribution. Isn't seeing ads relevant to your interests better than seeing ads unrelated to your interests? The problem with targeted tracking isn't that it's targeted, it's that it relies on information whose collection is a privacy violation. But when we're talking about a company that you've already voluntarily given massive amounts of behavioral data to, then you've voluntarily given up your privacy so there's no violation going on.
tl;dw: Advertisers are untrustworthy and act in bad faith. Once we give them an inch, they take a mile. If you met a person like that, would you continue to socialize with them? I wouldn't
Besides scrolling through your feed, is there much you do on FB? It's just a news aggregation site now.
Technically, Facebook could insert news feed ads like a post from one of your friend (assume that the friend has liked some page or organization). It could be tough to distinguish between ads and posts much like native advertising.
(not that I use Facebook, but Tumblr for example, has extremely annoying repetitive offensive ads)
And people still go on about blocking ads being unethical
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! 7/5/2016, 11:09:01 AM https://www.facebook.com/
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! 7/5/2016, 11:09:23 AM https://www.facebook.com/
www.facebook.com###rightCol"Sponsored Stories" and "Promoted Posts" (one of which I expect is what was meant by "sponsored post") are the names of specific kinds of Facebook ads.
We hired a third party anti-adblocker, and it worked great. It went back and forth with the adblockers as they updated to block our anti-blocking.
Most adblock extensions use some standard rules-lists, similar to email spam lists like Spamhaus. I guess we pissed someone off enough and they introduced a rule to block all AJAX requests on our site. This pretty much ruined our site, so we finally relented and removed the anti-adblocking altogether.
If you presented ads that were respectful to the visitor (i.e. weren't offensive) I expect the blocker escalation war would cease.
Unfortunately however I didn't notice it as uBlock Origin had blocked it.
My adblock policy (the same one I use on all friend & family systems) is extremely strict. I'm not going to whitelist your site, or any site for that matter, just to see if your ads are "safe". Your options are to show me they are DESPITE my blocking for a chance at an unblock, or prevent me from viewing your site altogether.
This is absolutely incorrect. Users may install them because they find some amount of ads to be abusive, but damn near nobody (relative to all ad blocker usage) starts out on a white list basis, and the idea that they're diligent about unblocking sites that have "good" ads that get past their blocker is just absurd.
> United Kingdom Not yet available here
Was nice, and I actually started watching videos on my phone / chromecast more. Ads being back is annoying.
Because that seems reasonable.
I'll look at an ad in exchange for viewing your website. I will not let you digitally rape me in exchange for viewing your website.
Until then, they've screwed themselves over.
Well, you've given them permission to try. I doubt they are giving you any such permission, so you're actually presuming quite a bit when you say you're welcome to try as well. This actually matters, because as far as the law is concerned, you don't have any right to to the content beyond what they allow you (excluding laws specific to your submitted content, depending on locality).
I understand ads and ad-blocking stir visceral reactions in people, but really, if you don't like what they are doing, you shouldn't use their service. Anything else is just enabling the behavior you dislike, as even if you are not being marketed to, you are providing a reason for other people to want to use the site that are marketed to.
Actually it may be, if their terms of service say you aren't allowed to use devices such as that. For example, lynx, or some programming language user agent.
That said, I wasn't really specifically addressing legality. There's a legal argument, and a ethical argument. The legal argument is quite clear IMO. The ethical argument is what's interesting in my view. People have justified actions that are clearly against the expressed interest of the content providers and producers in some cases, and I find it interesting to explore the reasoning. I myself do this, as I use an ad blocker, but I've drawn my own line and reasons for doing so, and have my own complicated feelings about it.
Having has this conversation multiple times here, invariable security comes up as a big reason for some people why they feel justified, when they do feel conflicted in other areas. Having a content provider serve their own ads weakens the position of security argument quite a bit, so I'm interested in seeing how people react in that case.
Edit: s/moral/ethical/
If I rip out all ads in a print magazine, or throw away the flyers in a magazine - which I do first after buying a mag - then I shouldn't buy the magazine? (magazines are paid for by ads not by me buying them).
Ethically? Maybe not? I don't know, I'm just exploring the problem space. I understand nobody likes advertisements, but while whether I like something may affect whether I allow it personally, I try not to let it affect whether I think it's an ethical thing to ignore.
What this means in practice is that I use an ad-blocker, mostly for security reasons, but understand that it hurts the bottom line of every source it's effective for. In cases where a site puts up a small notice at the top asking me to not block the ads, I generally do so or choose not to consume the content. This wasn't always the case, but it's where I arrived at.
The whole system is broken, I understand that, but I don't necessarily think increased ad-blocker usage will lead us to the solution we eventually need. That will probably require some sort of legislation, but I'm honestly not sure which interest will get served first, and thus more favorably. I'm slightly afraid it will be the commercial interest, barring some really nasty massive breach of aggregated data from advertising companies that's used to very bad effect, and in that case we lose quite a bit as well.
http://qz.com/743988/facebook-is-an-unstoppable-force-on-mob...
> In the second quarter, mobile sales made up 84% of its $6.24 billion in advertising revenue
I've permanently switched to Nexus devices because other vendors fill their phones with crapware.
I've permanently switched to Firefox on my Nexus 6P because Chrome is weak an ineffective.
If ads start to creep outside of the harmless bottom 120px stolen by apps then I will root my phone and install native adblockers.
Mobile ads enjoy their place now only because in-app ads are generally benign.
I'm thinking any ways that do exist are extraordinarily difficult to do, at least for the common lay man.
I use both and I've not seen ads for years.
Several of my non-tech-inclined friends have switched to using only the mobile site (on their own, not from ranting on my part) due to concerns about location tracking, constant notifications, and battery life.
Which is apparently a usage pattern nobody at twitter gets.
I'd love it if the infinite scrolling shit went away and I could look at tweets by last hour, last 12 hours, last 24 hours, etc, and then paginate by day after that.
You're not going to please everyone. Even people who will like it a month down the line will hate it when you first roll out the change. And we should you have to support (|feature|!) different websites?
Like or is being exploited based on genetical brain responses to like because of the result of the "quest for new information" ?
This behaviour is psychologically engineered to trigger more dopamine fueled hits and with it fueling site engagement.
I hope you don't like music, movies, amusement park rides, love, etc., because I have some bad news for you.
That's why I have been beefing up the DOM filtering code in the latest versions -- there are already sites doing this.
There is a lot of untapped potential with the new operators, I am waiting for opportunities to put them to test, and fine-tune them if needed.
If you can't filter on classes or id's, what else? Dom element ordering? Image size properties? Structure of ad text?
> That's why I have been beefing up the DOM filtering code
Isn't it all done through CSS selectors? Could you share more?
How about leveraging other heuristics such as HTTP headers (response cookies for starters) or timing information?
But you still have to identify features and use an algorithm that basically goes "users identify images with features A, B, and C as ads, and they identify images with features X, Y, and Z as not ads, so put positive weights on A, B, and C and negative weights on X, Y, and Z, and block anything with a negative enough score".
I think where ad-blockers will start to have problems is with the millions of lesser known sites. Once these publishers swap over to proxying ad-content through their own domains and using a handful of simple evasion tactics (random file name for the self hosted JS file that pulls in the ad, site specific pseudo-random DOM element names for the ad spaces, not using an obvious sub-domain to load proxied ad content from); stopping ads getting through is going to require a lot more effort than blacklisting a few ad-server domains.
Alternatively, advertisers could host a server on the site's domain. A subdomain or specific path would be easily blocked, but a random path wouldn't be, e.g. http://www.example.com/626164776F6C66/ with identifier generated randomly. Plenty of existing content already looks this way.
Basically if this happens I'm switching my career to stealing from ad networks for fun and profit.
Not sure what the solution would be for CPC/CPM - off the top of my head maybe a random CNAME that pointed to an ad-server controlled IP so they could cross-audit client IPs via a JS drop in file? Presumably ad-blockers would easily pick that up though.
Other than proxying I can't see how advertisers and publishers solve the ad-block problem without completely rethinking how ads are bought,sold,tracked and delivered.
Proxying seems to be one of the lowest-friction ways for them to continue business as usual, security be damned.
Right now the usual defense seems to be "we just buy 'em", but that's going to be a lot less convincing once Forbes.com is actively serving malware from their own site.
Alternatively, as mentioned in another comment, proxying might mean simply installing a managed ad-server within the publisher's infrastructure. So from an end-user PoV it looks like it's coming from the publisher's server but in reality it's still being served from a third party managed box.
And in HTTP/2.0 they'll just switch to pushing the ads out to you.
In either case they can't guarantee it'll get on the screen, but they assuredly can make sure you download the damned ads.
Long term browsers will become more and more closed, DRMed, protected and such so that people have much less control over how stuff is displayed on screen.
Tim Berners Lee would cry if we end up with 2 webs.
Do you know anyone who is doing this already?
Everyone will get their own personal AI stalker bot from the birth. I have such high hopes for humanity. When we at it maybe also replace politicians with AI, I'm sure they will do a better job than we mortals.
The logical end-game is that FB writes their own rendering engine in javascript and targets a single canvas element, handling all the interaction events themselves. In fact, I think it can go significantly further than that. Ad blockers will need to get much fancier to deal with that kind of weaponized ad delivery.
But also, adblockers will keep up. If they have to use canned deep-learning neural nets to catch and crush advertising based on how it looks rendered, they will.
Ultimately, there isn't a good way to dictate what a user does when you're in a sandbox.
If there was a viable path, they would have already done it. I think Facebook has enough engineers there where they know going down some obfuscation path is futile.
FB is a too simple target for ad-blocking so FB should just admit defeat and sell the info for use in advertising elsewhere. (I have no idea of whether it's economically comparable as a business model compared to in-FB ads though of course).
In other words, they make a ton of money selling ads on their own properties. Their publisher products (Adsense, DFA, Audience Network, Audience Platform) extend their reach to third parties certainly, but AFAIK each of them still make more money from their own inventory.
Run the page in a sandbox, then classify the pixels as ad/non-ad with a neural net and only present the non-ads to the eyes of the user. It would also be possible to reflow the page to fit to a different screen size if the words are clearly identified by their containing rectangles. User interactions would be sent back and forth to the sandbox.
Of course, best would be to drop FB altogether. Being a member on FB, even an ad-blocking one, creates an incentive for other users to remain on FB as well.
Absolute security is impossible but that doesn't keep it from being an arms race that has some sort of equilibrium. Ad blocking has the same qualities.
There's a separate issue that as they try harder to block ads they will also make it less clear what's an ad. For example many ad blockers don't work on google search results because they're fed back with the result content, but it also becomes less and less obvious what's an ad and what's a search result on google.
Those add css properties to page elements that make the element disappear. Here is an example for advanced cosmetic filter options: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#...
edit: nvm my amazon comment. I spent the last hour vaguely understanding xpath to create a filter for (German) Amazon sponsored search results.
amazon.de##:xpath(//*[@id="s-results-list-atf"]/li/div[1]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/h5[text()="Gesponsert"]/../../../../..)Being 'avantgarde' these days means having an empty FB account and no Linked-Ins at all. ;-)
It's a crazy idea, but it just might work. Hulu's getting a lot more from me per month for their ad-free tier than they could ever dream of getting from me for ads with my watching habits, probably at least an order of magnitude more.
You've got two basic choices with a user who has demonstrated their passion to remove ads, spend money to play an arms-game race with the ad blockers to pound through their defenses, or directly make money from that passion, possibly an order-of-magnitude more money per user.
Is it really so obvious that the arms race is the correct solution?
If I were a major shareholder of Facebook, I would be asking this question in a pointed manner. There's an argument to be made that they're leaving billions on the table here, and the argument is getting better every month that goes by.
They can name an important navigation element "ad", so ad blocker will hide it for example. Then, when a bunch of users start complaining that the website does not work, point out that it's all ad blocker's fault (because without it everything works).
I've seen a few precedents already.
Oh well, I've been suggesting this for a long time to no avail.
If they are making $10 dollars a year, then charge me $10. Up to me. I can get it for free with ads, or pay without.
The only reasons I see some people who're concerned about privacy using FB are because there is no better alternative and it's hard to move your network out, even if it's only for specific circles of people in your life.
"Jeff Raikes, head of the company's business group, said at a recent investor conference that while the company is against piracy, if you are going to pirate software, it hopes you pirate Microsoft software" (http://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-softw...)
i.e, in the context of Facebook, a ad-blocking user is better than a non-user, since the non-user might then be using a competitor platform and encourage current ad-viewing users/developers to switch to it.
IHMO, it would be very reasonable for FB to deny service to ad-block users. But, I understand they'd rather attempt to keep you around first.
Shoppers aren't the mall's customers, businesses are. The mall doesn't care about the customers, they care about luring businesses to locate there and pay rent. And if they have a ton of non-shoppers loitering around, that makes their mall more attractive, not less.
It's more like a "store" owner who makes his products free and supports it by selling advertising on the ceiling. Then complains when people realize they can avoid the obnoxious advertising by staring at the floor.
You have a right to protect your property but you have no right to protect your business model. Blocking ads has nothing to do with property rights, it's just a business model thing.
If these companies really wanted to force people to view ads, they'd make users sign a contract agreeing to do so. But of course that would scare everybody off. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Don't suck up my bandwidth on your crappy ads.
Have you ever considered that some contents are only available there? It's more the fault of some users that post required informations there, but it's a reality.
Personally I rarely go there, and would rather never have to go there.
But my main concern, as other people mentioned it here too, is rather about the safety of the displayed ads: malevolent ads are an important security (and privacy) risk. And I doubt ads sellers would cover any damages occurring to me because of them (moreover proving it seems difficult).
If some friend of yours handles invitation through FB, that is because facebook provides a very good infrastructure to handle those things. In order for them to do that, they have to hire all sorts of people which kind of need salaries. Those salaries are paid by their business model. You are blocking their business model, consuming their resources and denying their employees and shareholders. Because...?
I can see enabling adblock for the internet at large and sites you don't care about, but you KNOW that facebook relies on ads and you repeatedly use them.
I also want to hear if you use google and adblock them too. Do you rarely go there too?
I would have missed an exam, because the place and date were only communicated through that medium.
> I can see enabling adblock for the internet at large and sites you don't care about, but you KNOW that facebook relies on ads and you repeatedly use them.
As I said, I rarely go there (maybe two or three times per year?). I'm more a statistical noise at that level. I doubt it threatens their business model, they seem to be doing pretty well recently.
In fact I'm probably making them and their partners save some money by not loading ads for products I would not buy anyway, it seems way more ethical to me.
And in fact all of this is dwarfed by the fact that ads in general are a big security risk.
There is nothing unethical about it. If you want to be paid for your content, charge me for it and let me decide, voluntarily, to pay and receive it, or not.
This argument comes up every time there's discussion about ad-blockers: if your writing, music, poetry, punditry or photography is good, people will pay you for it. You don't "deserve" income merely by throwing something up on the web and having a user stumble onto it.
By putting up the blocker blocker, the site has clearly indicated how you can compensate them for the content, and the only ethical way I can think of around it would be to not consume it.
In fact it's hilarious how “anti-blocking” people here think they're somehow philosophically and ethically upholding Facebook's part of the deal–by driving people away from Facebook. It's the exact opposite of what FB wants and needs!
"Why'd you build a giraffe, too? I just wanted a castle."
"I get paid to do that by the National Council on Giraffes."
"Well, sorry, these are my Legos and this is my living room, so I'm going to take your giraffe apart and build a drawbridge for the castle."
An ad-blocker is just a robot that automatically takes apart Lego giraffes so you can use those Legos for other things.
And given all the above data, you're so incompetent at selling that you come into my house and deposit a giraffe on my coffee table. I kid you not, the above paragraph results in a giraffe. Get out of my house, git out now ... The situation with modern 2016 advertisement is so awful, so incompetent, so inappropriate, its too insulting to even look at. Like going to a bar and asking for a beer and get handed a hard boiled egg instead, total WTF reaction, they're so bad at their job that a few decades ago this would be a candid camera reaction, like where's the dude with the hidden camera making fun of me?
As an eye rolling experiment, no exaggeration or hyperbole, I disabled all my blockers and went to facebook to see what they'll sell me... A Home Depot brand marine/boating deep cycle battery. Thanks guys, nice targeting. Ready, Fire, Aim. No, I don't currently own a boat, or a trolling motor, never bought a deep cycle marine battery. Unbelievable. Well, guess I'm not missing much by ad blocking, and the world economy isn't losing much sales by my using ad blocking.
Internet advertising in 2016 is a complete waste of money and when the people paying the bills figure it out, the crash is going to be epic. Someone at home depot paid good money to try and sell me a deep cycle boat battery. Nobody should be giving FB ad money, that's for sure, a fool and their money are soon parted. I believe the blame toward ad blocker users is a compensation reaction, can't blame the people who can't sell competently, so we'll attack someone less defensible, like ... those freeloading end users. In the long run, however, willfully not understanding the real problem is just going to make the crash sooner and deeper.
Either they're arrogant about their ability to implement this (which may be well founded), or they're really doing it to assure less savvy advertisers that they're trying as hard as they can...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-the...
> When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads.
The ads on FB are annoying and are disrupting regardless of how well targeted they are. Unless FB decides to completely change the advertising market and allow only a handful of nicer brands and ads (along with the drastic reduction in the amount of money it can make), nobody is going to believe that the ads are anything but annoying, intrusive and disruptive.
I'd be really interested in knowing how many Facebook employees use the platform from a desktop browser and resort to ad blockers to have a better experience. :)
Unlike (also-Facebook-owned) Instagram, which has lately made it very difficult to get the content back out.
I draw the line with potential attack vectors/XSS injections, interstitials, youtube video ads, ads that keep me or slow me down from accessing content, auto-starting video, ad-block blocking interstitials, etc.
I can't imagine that I'm in a tiny minority, so why isn't there a uBlock list that only blocks the worst ads? (no, I'm not talking about ABP here.. but an actual privacy-aware ad list.)
There are some ideas here, along the content-type-blocking route: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131329
As Immanuel Kant said (loosely translated): Act in such a way that you actions could serve as the foundation for a general legislation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
I.e. "if there are some bad ads, nobody should have to look at any ads" would be a bad law.
But the advertisers completely ignored that very clear message. Rather than avoiding bad behavior and being good citizens of the society, they instead found ways to circumvent the blocks, achieve the same effects, and make things worse. And now they want us to feel sorry for them. To feel guilty for not letting them victimize us with their bad behavior. Blocking all ads is a reasonable response. We gave them a chance to behave. They blew it.
Besides, if their ads have, (hypothetical number) just a 3% chance of serving malware that might cost $1000 in time (or otherwise) to repair, then each ad would cost each consumer (on average) $30. So who's robbing who? (Admittedly 3%/$1000 are probably high numbers, but arguing that is no longer arguing whether the advertisers are committing an offense, just arguing the degree of the offense.)
The major reason I block ads in the first place is for usability reasons - ad networks are slow as all hell especially on mobile. They also make certain pages completely unusable either through ad overlays, interstitials, or just constantly causing layouts to change as you're trying to use the website.
If FB can eliminate all of these pitfalls (and the current model of FB ads is certainly way less intrusive than most web ads) I'm cautiously on board.
Publishers are eager to blame ad networks for the terrible performance, while ad networks just can't give enough of a shit to work on it. Publishers also are eager to blame ad networks when they're caught serving scams and malware, while networks just don't care.
I'm a huge proponent of making publishers serve their own ads from their own domains, so they are forced to take ownership of both the issue of technical competency and abuse.
Retargeting: the ad technology that believes my home needs 54 couches and 36 vacuum cleaners.
I block ads because I hate it when a tab starts playing sound without being asked. I hate getting malware from ads. I hate having pages take 30 seconds to a minute to load because of ads. Or when the page loads fine, but then a minute later the article I'm reading jumps because an ad loaded. Or changed. Or popped up on a timer.
I hate ads because ads hate the user experience.
I'm easily amused. Those nutty Likes tend to amuse me.
If true I believe that this would actually be an important improvement. This removes some plausible deniability regarding malware and other abuse; Facebook (or whomever else adopts this scheme) must guard more carefully against abuse when the content is coming from their own domains, as opposed to some third party.
I expect them still manage to hide behind "common carrier" arguments.
Something about it being difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on it seems appropriate here.
This is what happens when a company becomes big enough to not have to care very much about what their users think. Look at what Google has done on their search site. More than half the visible page is adds now.
Facebook now believes that users won't abandon them and they can really start to use/abuse their position to increase their revenue. They in essence have called their users bluff and said even though there is alot of talk about hating ads and leaving, they don't believe that users will really quit the site because of this.
I'm willing to bet that Facebook is correct here. I'm an investor.
This has been a cold war arms race for years now, websites pile in more and more ads, ruin the experience, clutter the content and people just ignore harder and harder, either with actual ad blocking technology or just by knowing exactly what's an ad and what's the actual content and filtering accordingly.
My point is, eventually the advertisers are going to pick up on the fact that an impression to a pissed off reader isn't worth anything, even the rock bottom prices they currently pay. This model is dying and Facebook/Google are in hardcore denial about it.
And it hopefully does.
I read that Facebook experimented with injecting random crashes in their Android and iOS apps to measure how much app stability affected user retention and usage. The answer was there was no effect! People wanted to use Facebook so much that the experiment's random crashes did not deter them.
It won't be long before EVERYONE follows FB's lead and proxied attack vectors will simply be the norm.
If you want to defeat adblockers, you first need to ban general purpose computing.
Well, where are the numbers backing "particularly outside of the U.S." then?
I had the impression it's the other way around, and ad blockers have much higher adoption in the U.S. so i'm interested.
I must not have been invited to that conversation where this discussion took place.
Also, I don't trust Facebook advertising because a few of their ads injected pictures of my friends' faces/pictures into them to make them more appealing (erm. deceptive) to me.
Blocking .ad-unit or #pagesYouDontCareAbout is easy.
With Facebook's paid reach, "regular stories" are often paid ads to start with.
#rightCol{
display:none;
}
#contentArea{
width: 700px !important;
}Is the "middle ground" really to serve ads that track you without asking? I think a middle ground is having non-tracking ads and the user choosing not to block them (though they could try to make these harder to block, for example serving them in the same way user's posts are served). Of course, this is Facebook we're talking about, so even if their ads don't track you, you can be sure as hell that they are.
1. I don't want autoplay videos (annoying)
2. I don't want animated gifs (makes it hard to concentrate and read)
3. I don't want to be tracked as I browse the Internet (privacy)
4. I don't want malware (security)
Number 4 is particular really gets my goat, because I feel that websites are being civilly negligent by not taking any effort to screen what is being sent to visitors.
Frankly, at the point, I often find myself hoping someone will resurrect Gopher.
But they certainly don't want to shrink their network. The moment I meet a fellow like-minded geek and "add me on Facebook" isn't the default way to stay in touch, they're in trouble.
And I'm already at the point where I have to ask if they're on Facebook first, since many tech people have already jumped ship due to privacy concerns.
1. Facebook already is a truly global network. 2. Based on history, it's likely that most of the people who care about these kind of things have already left.
# Block Facebook
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net 127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com 127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com 127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
Taken from http://cariblogger.com/2010/07/how-to-block-facebook-using-h...
For OS X implementation, see the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795351 and the linked implementation.
For GNU/Linux, no one seemed to have posted something and I could not easily find it. Hence I wrote my own that has been tested successfully on my own machine: https://github.com/gajjanag/config_files/blob/master/block_f....
There would have been a middle ground if the user was actually involved in the discussion behind that decision. If the changes are as successful as facebook hopes, the user can either view ads as much as facebook wants or not use the network at all.
If I load my ads from my own servers, using standard images or gifs, maybe have a script alter the size a few pixel each time, wouldn't that defeat most adblockers?
On the upside (for users): No external tracking through ad networks.
Where is this from?
This was the same guy who cancelled Animaniacs and Freakazoid, btw.
Facebook always suggest to "follow" him. Facebook does not allow to block him. To have his pic removed by an ad blocker does not work well. They seem to change the image URL of his pic a lot.
SCENE: You walk into a large retail TV/tech/stereo store. There are monitors displaying ads. NOT in a ubiquitous way; in an annoying ubiquitous way (ie. every 5 feet you walk in the store aisles, a monitor drops from the ceiling and displays an ad and you get used to counting your steps and every 5 feet you have to duck around the ad-bearing monitor).
You find a device online that disables the 'monitor drop' and bring it with you to that store.
Staff notice this and tell you "either turn off your device or leave."
What will you do? Phucking leave and never come back, that's what.
What if Best Buy was the dominant seller of TV/tech/stereos and the only place to get the Best Buy experience?
Monopolies don't last. Especially arrogant monopolies. It might take a while but if Best Buy was forcing people to view ads every time they visit the store -- and their customers started not showing up after being harassed by staff to 'stop using your monitor-drop blocker device' --
Best Buy would either
1) stop annoying their customers and find other ways to monetize
2) go out of business
The thing that people may forget here is the arrogant belief of this particular monopolist (Zuckerberg et al). That belief is "we got them locked, they can't get this experience anywhere else, we're #1"). Well that's a mistake on their part.
Can you imagine Jeff Bezos saying "effective immediately we're employing a FB ad model and stopping our users from ad-blocking -- I want more money."
Bezos is 100% opposite Zuckerberg. - Bezos knows Amazon is the monopoly - and yet he still he busts his bauls to make the site as non-annoying as possible; read a case study of how much attention Jeff pays to no-friction interaction for users of the Amazon site
Arrogant monopolists die. Zuckerberg needs to find a different way to monetize.
The mere fact that the dummazz thinks so little of his users that he comes up with "we'll force them to consume ads" instead of a Bezos "make users as happy as possible" shows Zuckerberg is an azz.
But then we all knew that because he stole the FB idea from someone else. NO FREAKING RESPECT. No respect extended from the guy -- so NONE GIVEN.
This is simply untrue.
Here's all it takes for a monopoly to fail:
(switching costs become low enough) + (current monopoly has become a pain/overpriced/etc.) = get thee down satan and the monopoly is gone.
Friendster, Myspace lost their market as we all know. SO WILL FACEBOOK. There is no 'secret sauce' there, just network effects, and minor switching costs of transferring/losing the data you've put on your FB account.
Switching costs for desktop operating systems are dropping incrementally for obvious reasons.
Lloyds of London has been around a long time but that doesn't mean they're a monopoly.
[0] https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-internet...
Might take a day or two for adblockers to catch up and start inspecting websocket streams anyway.
I had lunch with one well respected publishing CEO last week, who told me that his single largest advertiser was Smuckers. The peanut butter maker. Smuckers is a real business, supporting real people, making real stuff. They know their business better than anyone else. And every day of every month of every quarter, they seem to decide that they need advertising.
Once you start thinking about it that way, you start to understand why advertising is one of the oldest industries in the world.
You may assiduously unsubscribe from all unsolicited email, but most do not. For most people, what is in Gmail's spam folder is genuine junk – emails from Nigerian princes, emails in cyrillic, etc.
I fully support adblockers.
They will need to learn to coexist. This FB initiative is futile.
Yes they do. It's just that most people don't know ad-blockers exist. I installed ublock on one of my (elderly) relative, she then recommended it to her friends. She just can't surf without it turned on now, it changed her surfing experience, for the better.
What has your experience using this file been like?
Nope. I keep it of only because the ads always give me a chockle: trying to sell me "magic" amulets (I noted that I am an atheist), getting me to get the exact the degree from the exact university I went to (and, which I proudly listed on facebook) and getting gas from a company 150+ miles from my home.
Ads online are a joke, doubly so on Facebook.
Those ads though are probably just badly chosen campaigns by the people paying for the placements. FB are probably not inclined to stop advertisers wasting money.
I offer a sincere apology; I never expected that introducing "Boz" to computers and programming during our time in 4-H could lead to Facebook and the damage it has done to society. Maybe he would have ended up the same. Maybe learning BASIC in my 4-H programming project was insignificant in the long term. I just wish I wasn't responsible, even in a tiny way.
I get the point that Facebook is ad-supported. But to spin that as "ads are a part of the Facebook experience" is like saying that 'throwing up is part of a rollercoaster ride experience' (please make a better analogy if you will).
I don't use the FB apps because apps are more intrusive with respect to the information collected and don't give me adequate control. Instead, I use the FB site from a desktop browser with an ad blocker to have a cleaner experience. And I know it really is clean because I do try to turn off the ad blocker every once in a while to see how crappy it can be.
The FB experience on the desktop is terrible with ads. I don't want to see "earn so much in a day", "play poker and make money" and all kinds of nonsense on the right. These ads are in addition to the sponsored stories and stuff that get pushed into the news feed. I don't want to really tell Facebook what ads I like and what my interests are so that I can be fooled by some brand or seller into paying more, part of which would fuel Facebook ads even more.
For a long time, people who've been reading about the web and online advertisements have known about banner blindness. [1][2] For some strange reason, those who want to serve ads ignore this or don't want to acknowledge this.
Facebook's ads on the desktop are easily ignored by banner blindness, but I don't want to even get those downloaded and waste my bandwidth or Internet traffic limit. While Facebook claimed a big victory with "native ads" on mobile, I'd be willing to bet that many users on mobile have learned banner blindness to these too and just quickly scroll past these ads or sponsored stories inserted into news feeds. They're very easy to spot and take perhaps a few hundred milliseconds for the brain to recognize and act on. For the advertisers paying for impressions, this is a bad deal because it's not valuable at all. But of course, Facebook can make (false) claims that this is better than sidebar ads.
People generally do not like ads on any medium because they waste people's time and keep them from the content they're interested in. People do not want to get targeted ads if they know that all their actions are being tracked and be given the euphemism of "a better experience" with it. It doesn't matter how you spin it or what excuses you make for shoving ads into a user's experience. Given a chance, people will skip ads in every communication medium.
The only ads people enjoy are the ones that are really thoughtful or funny or move them in some way to make the world a better place. These are really few and far between, and even they have a limit to the number of times people will put up with or want to see and share. The rest of the ads are just examples in wasting money and human thought.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness
[2]: http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-fin...
> Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software.