
Facebook rolls out code to nullify Adblock Plus’ workaround - MrJagil
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/11/friendblock/amp/
======
nostrademons
It's been interesting to watch the escalating complexity of business models
vs. the opportunities to make money by nullifying someone else's business
model. Sometimes it seems like capitalism is about to devolve into chaos (in a
mathematical sense), and that the flow of money is becoming increasingly
arbitrary until it becomes entirely random.

It used to be that market economies were simple: you wanted something, you
paid for it. Companies would pay their employees a fair wage for their labor,
and then those employees would spend that money on consumer products. Their
were some exceptions, like advertising on broadcast TV, but they were a
relatively small part of the economy.

Netscape seems to have opened the flood gates with their "commoditize the
browser, and make money selling servers" approach. Suddenly, it became
consumers' expectation that things should be free, and business's expectation
that you can't actually make money by selling to consumers. And businesses
adapted: first it was the dot-com boom, where the business model was "use VC
to grow marketshare while losing money on subsidized products, IPO, and have
clueless tech stock investors foot the bill for cheap cool consumer products."
Then there was Google, which made finding stuff free but extracted huge rents
for getting found, and Facebook, which is similar but with more personal data.
Then there were all the startups whose only revenue model was to sell to
Google or Facebook - sometimes by threatening legal precedents (YouTube) or
irrelevance (Instagram/Whatsapp). Consumers don't have money and would never
be able to pay for their YouTubing/Instagramming - but Google & Facebook will
pay a lot to maintain their business model.

Now we have ad-tech to optimize the ads shown; clickbots to make (fraudulent)
money for a publisher; more clickbots to bankrupt advertisers; botnets (often
distributed through these ads!) to hijack users' computers; clickjacking to
hijack users; adblockers so consumers don't have to deal with any of this; and
counter-adblockers to block the adblockers. It's like humans are doing their
best to never see ads, which are only getting clicked by machines, which
aren't actually buying the product but are usually attempts by competitors to
bankrupt their competition. Oh, and of course all of these players are getting
hacked on a regular basis.

Add to this the whole credit-card & consumer debt industry, which is based on
some portion of the population never paying for stuff, but making up the
losses on the interest payments of people who pay for their stuff late.

It's occurred to me that if a financial terrorist wanted to do _a lot_ of
damage to the capitalist system, they need only hand out free credit cards
that are backed by lists of numbers stolen in one of the many data breaches
that have happened this year. It's free money for the consumer, who can buy
whatever they want, anonymously, with no bill. Indeed, with the lists of
credit cards stolen in 2015, someone could pose as the credit card company and
mail out these cards to unsuspecting consumers, who would think they were
using a legit card rather than one with someone else's account number. The
merchants won't care initially until the cards start getting declined, which
may not happen for a month. The CC & government resources dedicated to
investigating card fraud would be overwhelmed if millions of people became
fraudsters at once. And then straightening out the mess of who owes what would
likely be impossible, with goods already "purchased", fenced, converted to
cash, and gone.

~~~
amyjess
> Netscape seems to have opened the flood gates with their "commoditize the
> browser, and make money selling servers" approach.

Netscape originally charged for their browser. They only switched to this
business model after Microsoft began giving away IE for free. Netscape
couldn't compete with a free browser, especially not when that browser is
included with the most popular desktop OS in the world, so they came up with
the idea of using the browser as a loss leader for their server product.

Before IE, the only free browsers were the terrible TCP/Connect II-based
browsers that various ISPs, such as AOL and Interramp, bundled with their
service. Netscape was able to position Navigator as a premium offering, as the
TCP/Connect II browser was horrendously slow and feature-bare. Navigator,
meanwhile, was adding proprietary extensions to HTML such as tables, frames,
the font tag, and blinking text (yes, <blink> was considered a selling point
back then), it was fast for its time, and it had a toolbar with some useful
features (like a button that took you to a search engine; I think Infoseek was
the default). But IE had their own proprietary extensions, and it was about as
good as Navigator, so Navigator was no longer the sole premium product.

~~~
nostrademons
Netscape was always free for personal non-commercial use. They charged
businesses, but it was pretty common for ISPs to give away Netscape free on
the welcome CDs they sent out when you started subscribing. And you could
always download it off their website (or technically FTP server, IIRC) - I
remember downloading it when I first got on the WWW, June 1995 (before IE 1.0
came out), and thinking how cool it was that all this software was free.

~~~
amyjess
I think it was WinRAR-style shareware, where you were supposed to pay after a
certain number of days but it wasn't enforced.

------
xg15
I checked the new ad preferences yesterday* that supposedly gives users so
much more control over their ads than the "blunt tools" that adblockers are.
So far it looks like a thinly-veiled attempt to get users to opt-in to
targeted advertising: There is no way to disable certain types of ads (e.g.
distractinv video ads) and (obviously) no way to reduce the number of ads.
That last point is even stated explicitely: None of the preferences will
influence the number of ads shown, only the "quality".

The only thing you _can_ do is give facebook some vague hints topics of ads
you are particularly interested in and which you are not - with facebook
making it clear that you'll get the same results with less hassle if you just
opt-in to targeted advertising.

What annoys me most about Facebook's approach is their dishonesty. If the just
stated "look guys, we have to show you ads cause that's how we make money. We
can't let you block them", that would at least show some basic respect for
their users. Instead, both the announcements and the preference page seem to
recite the tired old fairy tale that users secretly _love_ ads and are only
shunning them because they are not "relevant" enough to them. I don't know if
they actually believe what they are writing but I don't know anyone who thinks
like this.

They show the same cynicism in the linked post. Yes guys, we all know ad-
blocking is a cat-and-mouse game. But first making it deliberately hard to
distinguish ads and content, then blaming ad-blockers that they also remove
content smells like a really cheap attempt to shift the blame.

------
_ph_
Honestly, if Facebook serves ads from their servers and not just loads them
from random ad networks, and takes care, that they reasonably blend with the
page in look and appearance (especially no special blinking, noise etc.) and
in general curates them, like paper publications do, then I am all fine with
ads on Facebook.

We have lived with (and sometimes even liked) curated ads in paper
publications for decades. If the web just had those kind of ads, it would be
great. Web pages need some way of financing, and if there is a reasonable one,
it would be good for everyone.

The big problem with current web ads, and the reason I do run adblock is, that
they are uncharted, often violently annoying and unfortunately a growing
security risk.

In this sense, I support Facebook in having proper ads.

~~~
sschueller
The problem with this is that you will no longer know what is an ad and what
is not. On facebook that may not be such an issues but for example on your
local news program. You no longer know if the report you are watching is
actually news or a native ad.

~~~
_ph_
I was assuming that all ads continue to be clearly labeled as such, as they
were in print media. And for TV, of course, ads also needs to be clearly
labeled.

What I was talking about is, that the page showing ads needs to be fully
responsible for their content to prevent malware attacks, and of course,
should see to that they are aesthetically acceptable.

------
JoshTriplett
Adblockers, as a whole, would have so much more legitimacy if the most popular
one didn't accept money for whitelisting.

If they want to advance an agenda that whitelists ads they consider "not
annoying", fine, people who disagree with that agenda can use a better
adblocker that blocks _all_ ads. But accepting money allows articles like this
one to paint all adblockers with that same brush, making them all seem less
legitimate.

~~~
garaetjjte
That whitelist can be disabled by simple disabling one checkbox in settings.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Some spam has working unsubscribe links, but it's still spam.

------
akerro
>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.

lol they designed it this way. I'm disappointed facebook, but what could I
expect from you anyway...

------
davidgerard
How's uBlock Origin go with this? (I use it and still don't see ads.)

~~~
j_jochem
Beats my why anybody would still use ABP over uBlock Origin. Their "acceptable
ads" program is basically a protection racket scheme.

~~~
WayneBro
Because as soon as I started using uBlock "Origin", I started seeing more ads
and more sites that didn't work at all where they previously worked with ABP.

Because the uBlock "Origin" UI sucks compared to ABP.

Because acceptable ads is easy to turn off with one click.

And because gorhill is a real asshole when you submit an issue. It's now
obvious to me why uBlock had all sorts of drama at launch.

~~~
erikb
The a-hole part is certainly bad if it is true. Can you show some examples?

The "seeing more ads" part can just be the result of having fewer users.

~~~
gorhill
The "seeing more ads" is baseless, I can easily provide cases where it is the
opposite, because ABP is vulnerable to the "display: block !important" trick
used by many web sites on Chromium-based browsers, is unable to block
popunders, does not support script injections, and many other shortcomings.
For instance, just try focus.de with EasyList Germany enabled.

I think it's possibly just a case of someone unhappy for whom I declined[1] to
take care of their pet issue, so lashing out with vague supposed flaws so as
to undermine my work makes him feel better.

1\.
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Adeclined+is%3Aclosed)

~~~
WayneBro
> ... so lashing out with vague supposed flaws ...

That's funny. Because the reason I said it was that you close issues without
pointing out WHAT item in your huge list of ridiculous guidelines (like "I
don't accept pull requests") has been broken. LOL.

It's a real asshole move and if anyone actually reads the list of declined
issues they can clearly see that people are annoyed by that.

~~~
gorhill
To just respect the guideline to contributing shouldn't be too much to ask
keeping in mind the time and work I happily volunteer to this project.

Given the amount of invalid issues that keep being opened[1], asking me to
spend time to detail why issues marked as "invalid" are invalid is to ask me
to spend a whole lot of precious free time on _not_ working to improve uBO.

CONTRIBUTING[2] is there to be read and respected. If you disagree with it,
best is to not open issues. Countless other people understand why it is needed
and respect it, and helps the project get better.

1\.
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+i...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues?q=label%3Ainvalid+is%3Aclosed)

2\.
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

~~~
dingaling
You might wish to rename CONTRIBUTING.md to something like
SUBMITTING_ISSUES.md.

In most open source projects, contributing refers to _contributing code_ not
opening tickets for issues or requests. Even Github's help documents align
with this understanding:

[https://github.com/blog/1184-contributing-
guidelines](https://github.com/blog/1184-contributing-guidelines)

I have never used uBlock or looked at its project pages before now and would
have skipped-past CONTRIBUTING.md if I was looking for issue-reporting
guidelines. The current title doesn't even tally with the first line of the
document. There is also no reference to the appropriate issue-reporting
process from README.md.

~~~
gorhill
The link to CONTRIBUTING appears at the top of the issue template when one
click the "New issue" button. This the top line which appears when opening a
new issue:

> Read first:
> <[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#>)

~~~
erikb
Okay. For me it looks like the complaint was unsubstantiated. Thanks for the
detailed discussion, gorhill.

And thanks for maintaining uBO. Using it happily since it became a topic on
HN.

------
Dolores12
I see where it goes. It goes to real-time Ads reporting by adblock users and
real-time blocklists. Facebook can not win that, unless they serve unique ad
for every user.

~~~
Maarten88
I also think Facebook cannot win this. What if someone makes a plugin that, on
top of removing the Ad, also sometimes virtually clicks it (without the
browser actually showing the Ad page) thereby completely ruining any way of
knowing who really clicked the Ad, hurting the advertiser instead of Facebook?

~~~
r721
This exists:

"As online advertising is becoming more automatic, universal and unsanctioned,
AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating all ad-clicks universally
and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock-Origin, AdNauseam
quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on the ad networks
databases. As the data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user
profiling, targeting and surveillance becomes futile."

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

------
mercer
Isn't this ultimately something Facebook cannot win? It seems to me that
updating the 'ad detection' in a Chrome plugin is significantly easier than
updating the Facebook codebase, so much so that it offsets the potential
difficulty of writing the code to detect these ads in relation to code that
obfuscates the fact that something is an ad.

Or am I missing something?

~~~
teaneedz
Yep. Besides the legalese they must include ([https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
advice/business-center/guidance/nat...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
advice/business-center/guidance/native-advertising-guide-businesses)), they
will never win because users control the client/browser. Facebook's efforts to
block ads will always be futile.

They could block ad blocking users completely, but that would be too much
negative PR and hurt their already peaking MAUs.

------
erelde
Immediatly what went through my head:

"Maybe Facebook has planned this like a chess game, and planned several moves
ahead even before their first move."

I wonder how many moves they have in advance.

~~~
n72
If the portrait of 'Boz' in Chaos Monkeys is any indication, not far.

------
janus24
EasyList maintainers are also trying to bypass Facebook ads, with no success
for now.

[https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995](https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=31995)

~~~
zapu
> You have been permanently banned from this board.

> Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.

> Reason given for ban: Let's play whack a mole

> A ban has been issued on your IP address.

uhhh ok? I've never visited that forum, even.

~~~
_kyran
Using a VPN?

------
yomly
From the link within the parent link[0]:

>Facebook commissioned research firm Ipsos to investigate why reports say 70
million Americans and nearly 200 million people worldwide use adblockers.

Americans are less than 10% of the online population but around 35% of
adblockers? Is this just am exposure thing?

[0][https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-
web-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/09/facebook-will-bypass-web-
adblockers-but-offer-ad-targeting-opt-outs/)

~~~
Fuxy
it's probably because a more computer savy relative installed it on their
computer so they don't get a call constantly when an add pops up saying

"Your WiFi was infected with 99.5 viruses call this number so we can scam you
out of your money".

~~~
ultramancool
Yeah... between this and the malware, I can't leave my family without ad
blockers.

------
textmode
On some websites, longtime text-only browser users are seeing new greetings
like "I see you are using an adblocker."

Usually they are greeted with warnings about lack of functionality because of
absence of Javascript, and imperatives that they _must_ upgrade to a "modern
browser".

Once-free websites that were converted to companies, like Google and Facebook,
must survive on web ads.

But web ads are built on an unstable foundation; their presence relies on
several assumptions.

And, quite simply, the web works without them -- without the assumptions and
without the ads. Longtime web users, who grew up with early "browser"
prototypes, including "text-only browsers", remember this.

The network is very fast now. We can move all manner of data across "the web".
But the architecture of the internet and the web is still more or less the
same.

This is, thankfully, why "blocking" (not requesting) web ads is so easy.

------
ckastner
I'd like to know at what point the revenue generated from these ads would
surpass the cost of simply acquiring Eyeo GmbH (the company behind Adblock
Plus).

~~~
JoshTriplett
1) They're a private company, not a public one, so acquiring them would be
entirely at their own discretion and pricing.

2) EasyList is maintained by others, and could be used by any other adblocker.
Eyeo only maintains the so-called "Acceptable Ads" whitelist.

3) Even if someone managed to acquire the company behind that "Acceptable Ads"
whitelist, that list has no value without users. The value of the purchase
would evaporate if all the users switched to another adblocker, or a forked
version of Adblock Plus itself.

~~~
ckastner
I agree with all your points, but I'm still curious as to what that price
point of item 1) would be, realistically.

Also, the remaining user base of item 3) -- the "even if" case -- might still
be sufficiently large to warrant a purchase.

According to this source [0], which seems to come from their public filings,
in 2014 they apparently had "only" €4.32m in revenue.

Edit: According to [1], in 2015, they apparently struck a much more lucrative
deal with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, among others.

[0] [http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-
gmbh](http://de.statista.com/unternehmen/434815/eyeo-gmbh)

[1] [http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO](http://on.ft.com/1CmZiBO)

------
jokoon
I wish there could some discussion about an intrusiveness score of an ad. I'd
be glad to block ads that are not too intrusive.

As long as ads are hosted on the same server of the website, there is no
problem. Until that's done, I'll keep blocking. Google ads were a fine example
of unintrusive ads.

------
vjvj
This might still work as fb-only ad blocker:
[http://www.fbpurity.com/](http://www.fbpurity.com/)

I've been using it for years and have turned off my entire news feed on
desktop. I don't miss it one bit.

~~~
corobo
That site looks like a scam site.

------
tekni5
Would be funny if we eventually end up with some artificial intelligence
algorithm that processes content on a webpage and modifies it for the end user
to remove any content they don't want to see.

~~~
patall
I totally expect this to happen. Although it will only lead to advertisers
also using those programs to check their content and modifying it until it
fits. I mean we already have pretty much an always on going evolution in
advertising, why should it stop.

------
throw94
I recently worked on an extension to disable Facebook's news feed completely
since I (and probably many others) mostly use it for chat and groups. Might be
helpful for some people in the HN community! :)

Link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-
modifier/h...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fb-feed-
modifier/hbhdccjdfjcpakliojfnpincocolhcob/reviews)

------
anilgulecha
Facebook cannot win this. If not ABP, it'll be a browser extension or
something else. Fundamentally, they're bringing in something users are
against, and hence will take any easy action against.

The hard part is the 'easy action'. Installing ABP is pretty easy. If that
does not work, and "FB ad block" extension is the easy thing to do, that will
be installed. Sooner or later.

------
taigeair
Some sites detect adblockers and prevent users from using it until they
disable the adblocker. Why doesn't FB do that?

~~~
dspillett
They don't want to create user friction in their direction.

If facebook stops something working because of the ad-blocker, or accidentally
cause something to break while trying to do so perhaps even for users without
the blocker, the users will see facebook making it difficult for them to do
what they want.

If on the other hand facebook stops the ad-blocker from being able to work on
their site, without breaking other bits of the facebook experience at all, the
same users will see the ad blocker failing to do its job.

------
rvern
Fixed here:
[https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc83...](https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1fb0590737b4fc834eaf23c665591d68cb28600d).

------
erikb
As always when this topic pops up: Zero empathy here for the companies that
shove ads into users faces. Make money by providing reaosonable services, not
by treating your users like cattle.

~~~
Shish2k
> companies that shove ads into users faces

ISPs intercepting traffic and injecting ads that neither the user nor the site
owner intended, yeah, I can see how that could be classed as "shoving ads in
people's faces", but "here's a free service with ads attached, please either
take both or leave both"? What part of that is "shoving"?

~~~
erikb
I see your point. But I can decide which part of your service I want to see.
If I want my browser to not show the Hacker News header line, am I doing
something wrong? No, I don't think so. And if you still try to circumvent my
browser config to show it to me anyways then it is shoving it into my face.

~~~
Shish2k
That analogy is ineffective because the HN header bar isn't the price that the
provider has asked you to pay in exchange for the service.

When I walk into a shop I am presented with a similar "here are some objects
with prices, please either take the object and pay the price or don't do
either". However, it's physically possible for me to decide which part of a
transaction I want to take part in. If choose to accept the "taking objects"
part of the deal while ignoring the "paying for them" part of the deal, am I
doing something wrong?

If the shopkeeper then said "hey, you should pay for that", would you have
"zero sympathy" for the shopkeeper because they were "shoving capitalism in my
face"?

------
zer11782oo
link?

