
Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users - drpgq
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-will-force-advertising-on-ad-blocking-users-1470751204
======
deanCommie
They are welcome to try. And I am welcome to try harder to block them.

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.

~~~
lopatin
Serious question: Why do you block FB ads? I wouldn't say that FB ads are any
more disguised as content as, say, newspaper ads.

And follow up: If FB decided to shut down some features to ad-blocking users,
do you think that would be unfair?

~~~
gramstrong
Facebook already owns my personal data and any content that I publish. Why
should I also have to look at ads?

~~~
supster
That data and content is (near) worthless if they can't serve up ads against
it.

~~~
creshal
That's facebook's problem, not the user's.

~~~
omginternets
You've got it exactly backwards. The service is free, ergo you are the
product, ergo Facebook's problems are your problems.

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.)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Facebook's problems, which are my problems, are solved by opting for choice
#4: use an ad-blocker.

~~~
eva1984
Now this seems going to end very shortly

------
flinty
Facebook makes most of its money on mobile ads which are not affected by ad
blockers. So why make a big deal announcing efforts to block ad blockers? A
smart company like Facebook doesn't make moves accidentally. This announcement
is more targeted towards publishers than it is towards ad blockers. Doesn't
matter how affective the work around is - it sends publishers, who are holding
off from instant articles and more Facebook hosted content, the message
Facebook is the only way out; You will lose the war against ad blockers; sign
up with us for instant articles and other Facebook hosted solutions and we
will fight with and for you.

[http://qz.com/743988/facebook-is-an-unstoppable-force-on-
mob...](http://qz.com/743988/facebook-is-an-unstoppable-force-on-mobile/)

> In the second quarter, mobile sales made up 84% of its $6.24 billion in
> advertising revenue

~~~
freehunter
Ad blockers exist on both iOS and Android now.

~~~
zazpowered
Most people use the Facebook app though

~~~
fapjacks
There are ways around ads in apps.

~~~
pen2l
Such as?

I'm thinking any ways that do exist are extraordinarily difficult to do, at
least for the common lay man.

~~~
angry-hacker
Hosts file / adaway doesn't help with Facebook app? Can't tell myself, I don't
have them installed on my own.

~~~
fapjacks
AdAway _does_ work with apps.

------
SEJeff
Good luck. I suspect in no time uBlock Origin will have found a way to remove
the ad elements from the DOM, even if they are served directly with the html
of facebook and not a 3rd party domain.

~~~
corford
It's going to be hard for facebook because they're such a big target.

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.

~~~
laurent123456
Proxying ads would be a big security risk though since it means they would run
within the same sandbox as the rest of the page, which might be why it hasn't
often been done yet.

~~~
ultramancool
It'd also be a big risk in that it'd be easier to cheat the ads as they'd all
come from the same connecting IP. I doubt advertisers would appreciate that
much.

~~~
cgriswald
Indeed, proxying is basically pointless. At that point, it would be better for
the site and for the advertisers (and users who don't block ads) for the site
to simply self-report. At least then they avoid the extra overhead and load
times (which might, btw, be detectable by ad blockers).

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/](http://www.example.com/626164776F6C66/)
with identifier generated randomly. Plenty of existing content already looks
this way.

~~~
corford
Yeah, this is how I envisage it. Publisher gets a docker image (or whatever)
from the ad-network and hosts it internally on their network. Then you just
need to map a random path from nginx/haproxy. Client IP can be passed through
too.

~~~
ultramancool
I can't see that working out well, it'd just be way too easy to cheat, you
could fake any IP you wanted, pretend to be connecting from the regular
consumer ISPs and generate fake hits, fake clicks and otherwise easily steal
from the ad network. This will never happen, it's a non-starter. They have
enough problems with fake clickers already. There's no way to pass it using a
reverse proxy, docker image, whatever, where the hosting website doesn't have
ultimate control over the data they provide to the ad network.

Basically if this happens I'm switching my career to stealing from ad networks
for fun and profit.

~~~
corford
True it would be an issue for CPC/CPM campaigns but less so for CPA.

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.

------
aantix
FB can't win this cat and mouse game. If the ads are to be distinguishable
then there will be inherent properties that will lead to them getting blocked.

~~~
recursive
I think you're making some assumptions here.

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.

~~~
JulianMorrison
If FB tries this, the awful performance of their site will start putting a
drag on their business.

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.

~~~
fratlas
I love the human condition. Managers struggle to motivate for simple coding
tasks, but ads? We'll be damned if they intrude our lives.

~~~
nzp
That's quite optimistic when you think about it. Most simple coding tasks are
pure drudgery with no consequence to positive human values (other than “I have
to do this to not starve”). Defeating most online advertising, on the other
hand, is a noble community service to your fellow humans.

------
nojvek
For me personally Facebook doesn't matter. I wouldn't care less if it dies. I
remember when I joined Facebook as part of my university. I was a hardcore
user back then. May be this is a bold prediction. I predict Facebook will die
a death like yahoo eventually. Most people I knew who were big Facebook users
have all moved on. it'll be like having a Hotmail account.

~~~
brakmic
Same here. I have a "friendless" account on FB with a few postings liked to my
blog.

Being 'avantgarde' these days means having an empty FB account and no Linked-
Ins at all. ;-)

------
jerf
Why not just allow users to pay to not see ads?

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.

~~~
DanTheManPR
A big issue with paid subscriptions is that it dilutes the strength of the ad
network, since you're specifically excluding desirable target customers.

~~~
jerf
I think that argument is aging fast; it dates from before ad blockers were the
increasingly big deal they are now.

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.

~~~
rlidwka
There is another basic choice: write a code that is intentionally incompatible
with ad blockers.

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.

~~~
sleepychu
I'm happy to continue to modify my ad blocker until it allows me to use enough
of facebook to be happy. How I choose to render the data Facebook sends me, is
up to me.

~~~
fwn
While I think that this is a very bad idea, one could dynamically name them in
a defective way. The relevant information (blocking lists) are openly
available.

~~~
sleepychu
This just demands a new strategy for blocking.

------
devishard
I'll add this to my list of reasons why I'm not on Facebook.

~~~
Grazester
Yeah and you wouldn't be missed by them either if you are currently running an
ad-blocker

~~~
belorn
Like how Microsoft wouldn't miss people that pirate windows?

~~~
Grazester
What?!

~~~
belorn
Sorry, I made a quick reference without the link.

 _" 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...](http://www.informationweek.com/if-youre-going-to-steal-software-
steal-from-us-microsoft-exec/d/d-id/1052865?cid=rssfeed_iwk_all))

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.

------
epmatsw
It's really interesting to me how strongly people dislike actions like this
and the "Please turn off your adblock" thing. If this were a physical store,
it's the equivalent of you taking something and the owner saying "hey man,
that's not free, this is how I make a living". It seems like the right
response would be "Oh wow, sorry, I won't take that any more", not "Go away,
you're bothering me, and I'm going to keep taking this". I love me some
adblockers, but it's sometimes hard to reconcile blocking ad-blocker-blockers
ethically (and from a politeness perspective) in my own mind.

~~~
evunveot
My attempt at the analogy would be: someone offers to come to your house and,
using your Legos, build a little Lego castle in your living room for free, so
you say "Sure," and when they come over they build the castle, but then they
use the rest of your Legos to build a little Lego giraffe.

"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.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
It's more of a situation where you've been informed well in advance that this
person will be building a giraffe, and that your castle is in fact funded by
their giraffe-building activities -- but once they've built the castle, you
try your damnedest to prevent them from completing the giraffe.

~~~
elmigranto
Okay, I bite. Which exact part of Facebook's sign up process informs you that
you are obliged to look at ads, install cookie beacon and not block any of
that? Do I automatically agree to all of that just by typing fb.com and
hitting enter?

------
tomcart
I'm a little surprised they would announce this as a thing they will do in the
future, rather than something they've already succeeded in doing.

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...

~~~
ddalex
Rules of acquisition 392: Never announce that you intend to do something until
you already did it. Asking for forgiveness is better than asking for
permission.

------
Mathnerd314
Original announcement from Facebook:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12255132)

[http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-
the...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/08/a-new-way-to-control-the-ads-you-
see-on-facebook-and-an-update-on-ad-blocking/)

~~~
newscracker
Quote from the FB newsroom post:

> 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. :)

------
niftich
Luckily Facebook still offers APIs to all of its content, so it's entirely
possible to keep using (or build a new) third-party client that would
whitelist content from actual Friends and therefore passively block ads.

Unlike (also-Facebook-owned) Instagram, which has lately made it very
difficult to get the content back out.

------
jamiesonbecker
You know, I don't mind Google search ads or even static display ads (ie
BuySellAds). And even FB's somewhat annoying and usually poorly targeted
display ads don't bother me too much, since they don't slow me down and (very)
occasionally actually show me something of interest.

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.)

~~~
nix0n
For a while, the easiest way to do this was Flashblock... then JS and HTML5
caught up to Flash's anti-feature-set.

There are some ideas here, along the content-type-blocking route:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12131329)

------
noisy_boy
All my school/college friends are on Whatsapp (owned by Facebook yes). We have
setup a group for our class and I get to know whatever that is happening
without any ads. I deleted my Facebook account a while ago (I know its not
really deleted but whatever) and basically it didn't make any difference as
such. Nobody complained that I wasn't on Facebook, I didn't have to see what
people ate last evening or how awesomer their life is compared to mine and it
saves a ton of bandwidth/keeps my phone snappy. For browing via PC, Ublock
Origin filters are working fine for now. I actually feel better without
Facebook.

~~~
vemy
Only a matter of time before they start injecting ads into Whatsapp. They are
owned by Facebook after all.

------
f_allwein
I am also surprised at all the hate against ads. Yes, there are some bad ones
(disrupting, malware etc.), but how does that justify you blocking all ads
(and thereby robbing websites of their only legitimate source of income)?

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](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.

~~~
jeena
1\. All ads are bad 2\. Closing your eyes is not the same as robbing

~~~
f_allwein
Ok,then how should websites/ search engines/ social networks finance
themselves in your opinion?

~~~
jeena
How is that a problem for me to solve? They have to find a way which is
morally ok and still pays enough without pissing off people.

------
potatolicious
Honestly, I don't really mind so long as the ads are being served by FB and
not third-party networks, and their performance isn't abysmal.

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.

~~~
daturkel
I may be in the minority here, but I don't mind Facebook ads particularly
_because_ they track me so much that the ads are very well-tailored. There's
nothing annoying to me about relevant advertisements and I've found decent
stuff before. The ads for crappy pay-to-win flash games in the sidebar, on the
other hand...

~~~
potatolicious
Generally agreed, though the industry's obsession with retargeting makes this
annoying sometimes. Facebook is much better targeted than most, especially
when it comes to interests/hobbies/brands I'd be into, but it's still very
crude if it tries to get any "smarter" than that, especially with retargeting.

Retargeting: the ad technology that believes my home needs 54 couches and 36
vacuum cleaners.

------
rmi_
I am really interested in the technical details. I think we have yet to see a
working (and practical) approach to this.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I can think of a few simple tricks already. One: Host from the main
facebook.com domain, either inserting it in the basic html page response from
the server, or from an API / content location that cannot be predicted. (ad
calls should be indistinguishable from 'normal' content calls). Two, do the
same with content locations, so no 'div id="ad"' or anything like that. Should
be easy enough.

~~~
topspin
"Host from the main facebook.com domain..."

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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Must they? The uninformed layman probably already things the ads come from
Facebook[.com] as that's the address site they're visiting.

I expect them still manage to hide behind "common carrier" arguments.

------
bobajeff
From the article: "From a technical standpoint, Facebook is able to circumvent
ad blockers relatively easily because it loads ads into its service itself.
Many online publishers and media companies rely on third-party companies to
help display ads on their webpages and services, which can make them more
easily identifiable to blocking technologies"

~~~
bitmapbrother
There's nothing stopping these other companies from doing the same thing
Facebook is doing and then presenting the page with all ads integrated
seamlessly into the page.

------
chollida1
> Facebook’s change will open up more online ad space for it to sell, although
> Mr. Bosworth said that wasn’t the motivation for the move. Facebook now
> garners 84% of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, which are less
> susceptible to ad blocking than desktop devices.

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.

~~~
balabaster
I only have a sample size of one (me), but I left a couple of years ago and
you're not getting me back with an attitude like this... I can't imagine I'm
the only one, however, I'm also willing to bet that you're right often enough
for this tactic to increase profits.

~~~
sdoering
It does - at least in the short term. The network effect can also work in the
opposite direction.

And it hopefully does.

------
jamiesonbecker
What concerns me most here is not that FB is going to force ads, but that this
sets both a precedent and a HOWTO manual on how to do it. (i.e., same-domain,
random JS names, same-site URL redirects, etc.)

It won't be long before EVERYONE follows FB's lead and proxied attack vectors
will simply be the norm.

------
Animats
Just write a browser add-on to delete the entire right hand column of Facebook
pages.

------
tdkl
Only use I have for FB with my limited profile is Messenger and with an
Electron app there's no ads. [1]

[1] [https://messengerfordesktop.com/](https://messengerfordesktop.com/)

------
faded242
Adblock Plus with Element Hiding Helper is pretty damn hard to defeat.
Embedding the ads won't help.

------
quotemstr
"Computer vision" doesn't yet appear in the comments. The FTC dictates that FB
make it possible for humans to determine what's advertising and what isn't. If
humans can tell, computers can too. In the limiting case, ad blockers can run
computer vision algorithms on pages and block advertising using graphic
overlays that are undetectable for the page hosting the ads. In the end,
clients always win.

If you want to defeat adblockers, you first need to ban general purpose
computing.

------
spdionis
> User adoption of ad-blocking software has grown rapidly in recent years,
> particularly outside of the U.S. According to estimates by online
> advertising trade body the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 26% of U.S.
> internet users now use ad blockers on their desktop devices.

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.

~~~
delecti
Additionally, I'd be curious if it's 26% of _users_ or _traffic_ , because I
expect the two figures are rather different.

------
paukiatwee
One of the way is can we develop a open source FB client that does not have FB
ads? That way we can also plug in Machine Learning algorithm to remove spam
etc.

------
TamDenholm
As the saying goes, if you build a bigger wall someone will use a bigger
ladder....

------
swasheck
“We’re doing it more for the principle of the thing. We want to help lead the
discussion on this.”

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.

~~~
geekamongus
"lead the discussion" is AKA "control the narrative."

------
_RPM
Knowing Zuck, he'll probably lobby to make it illegal to use ad blocking
because Ads Make The World A Better Place (tm)

------
douche
I already have a whole set of CSS rules I apply to Facebook now, just to make
their UI less awful, remove the massive amounts of crud I never want to see,
and resize the few things that I do want to see up from their stock postage-
stamp sizes.

Blocking .ad-unit or #pagesYouDontCareAbout is easy.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
With Facebook they can serve ads as if they were a regular story, there
wouldn't be anything structural, not even image names/sizes, to go on then.

~~~
obsurveyor
Unless they start misrepresenting stories, you could setup a plugin that keeps
track of your friends and only display content from them.

------
reiichiroh
I hope this doesn't break FB Purity. Social Fixer is undergoing a long overdue
re-write as well.

------
reiichiroh
I love FB Purity and would hate for it to stop working. It's what makes my FB
feed useful.

~~~
awqrre
FB purity? like how they show you posts in the order that they choose?
reloading the page changes the order too...

~~~
Falkon1313
That's exactly one of the many things that FB Purity fixes - you can set it to
chronological mode. (In addition to filtering out noise and junk.) It also had
a "Do not autoplay videos" setting well before Facebook added an option for
that.

------
nv-vn
>“It just seems like a poor bargain to be forced to choose all or nothing.
There’s a middle ground,” Mr. Bosworth said.

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.

------
Esau
I actually don't mind advertising. I think it is fair in return for free
content. But I have problems with the way many sites do it, because:

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.

------
ben174
If Facebook wants a truly global network, then they best not alienate or piss
off those that are technically inclined. If they take control away from their
power users, they'll lose them.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't think that the "technically inclined" are FB's power users, nor are
they their most wanted target demographic.

~~~
ben174
It depends on your definition of "power users", I suppose.

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.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
Why does Facebook care about specifically geek usage behaviors? Geeky types
constitute a small fraction of the population, only a subset of that already
small cohort has the concerns you're expressing here, and only a subset of
those care enough to stop using their services. If Facebook can increase add
revenues 10% by a change like this, they couldn't care less about losing the
_maybe_ 2% of users who will be genuinely put off from them by it.

------
benologist
This won't end well for Facebook. Nobody joined or visits to view ads, no
person wishes they were "more relevant". Forcing the ones who explicitly opted
out to disable their ad blockers is forcing them to evaluate whether they want
to visit your site at all. The only thing unique about Facebook is people
collectively like it more than the alternatives right now.

------
joeblau
I really wish I had access to my `/ets/hosts` file on natively iOS so I could
block Facebook from there like I do on my laptop.

~~~
motoford
In case anyone wants to do this now I found this after a quick search

# 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...](http://cariblogger.com/2010/07/how-to-block-facebook-using-hosts-
file/)

~~~
gajjanag
A method that is more complete was described on HN a while back:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791052).

For OS X implementation, see the comment
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795351](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...](https://github.com/gajjanag/config_files/blob/master/block_fb.sh).

------
drpgq
Well it's an arms race.

------
msl09
>“It just seems like a poor bargain to be forced to choose all or nothing.
There’s a middle ground,” Mr. Bosworth said.

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.

------
jagermo
Ok, so here is my idea: Most adblockers use lists or block scripts that are
loaded from third party sites.

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.

------
xedarius
Maybe they should build the FB browser that can only access facebook.com and
amazon, completing the consumer cycle.

------
nikki-9696
Eh, FB becomes less relevant to me the more it shows me ads and sponsored
content and crap, instead of the content from my friends and family that I
actually signed up for the service to see in the first place. Eating up my
mobile data with video and ads just makes me not bother to visit the site as
much.

------
bitwize
Remember, "your contract with the network is you're going to watch the spots."
By ad blocking, you are not upholding your end of the "bargain", therefore
you're technically committing theft of service. And companies have few ethical
qualms concerning thieves.

~~~
jawilson2
> "your contract with the network is you're going to watch the spots."

Where is this from?

~~~
bitwize
Former Turner Broadcasting chairman Jamie Kellner, explaining to us why DVRs
are to television what the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone, said
"Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch
the spots. […] Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're
actually stealing the programming."

This was the same guy who cancelled Animaniacs and Freakazoid, btw.

------
tabeth
Assuming you're not super hungry for facebook, isn't it trivial to just block
the main newsfeed and only permit it when you click on a specific friend's
profile? IIRC ads aren't displayed when you click on a specific person's
profile.

------
tiatia
What really annoys me is that I always have to see the stupid face of good ol'
Zuckerberg.

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.

------
youngButEager
Arrogance from a seller of a good or service alienates/pisses off their
customers.

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.

~~~
amateurpolymath
> Monopolies don't last.

This is simply untrue.

~~~
youngButEager
No it's actually true, and everyone knew from the context I meant _commerce_
monopolies in capitalist economies, such as Microsoft, IBM (in the early days
of computers you apparently could get fired for writing a P.O. for a non-IBM
machine), etc. Not talking about utilities. I meant _commerce monopolies_ in a
competitive market place, a monopoly that develops with 'network effects',
'switching costs', etc.

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.

------
0xmohit
This seems to be the new strategy after Free Basics [0] failed?

[0] [https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-
internet...](https://info.internet.org/en/story/free-basics-from-internet-
org/)

------
corobo
Does anyone serve adverts using websockets yet? I'm surprised it hasn't been
tried and intrigued as to why it doesn't work if they have.

Might take a day or two for adblockers to catch up and start inspecting
websocket streams anyway.

------
DeathArrow
And it will last a few hours. :)

------
malchow
I do not think that ad blockers can win this cat and mouse game. Ads don't
annoy a large-enough percentage of humans. And the ad industry is the
lifeblood of several other business communities, each of which is many times
the size of the ad blocking industry.

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.

~~~
Dolores12
So you have spam filter disabled and read all those great ads in your inbox?

~~~
malchow
If you took a look at the inbox of an ordinary consumer, you'd see lots of
desired ads – in my case, a weekly email from a high end audio shop I like.

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.

~~~
geekamongus
This sounds rather anecdotal. From where did you get this info about what is
in most people's Gmail spam folders?

------
lookupmobile
If they do it - there might be a short term (1 or 2 Qs) benefit of buying
their stocks, since their ad revenue will increase quite drastically. Again -
I am talking about the short term.

------
JulienRbrt
Good luck Facebook because we have this:
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

~~~
hello_newman
this might sound like a dumb question, but how do you use that giant file?
Just copy/paste in your hosts file? I use my hosts file for blocking a handful
of sites I find distracting (reddit), but would a ~30k line host file cause
any adverse effects?

What has your experience using this file been like?

~~~
JulienRbrt
Yes. And everything works fine, but as it is not a real ad-blocker you can
still see the place of the ads (e.g. Google Ads, you can see them but if you
click it won't work, same for pop-up.)

------
pducks32
I think Facebook is going to face the same problem that Youtube does. They
have a lot of skilled users who can easily read through their code and find a
loophole.

------
jcoffland
FB's decline began a long time ago this will only accelerate it. Of course any
company who starts to see it's users as the enemy is in trouble.

------
bitmapbrother
This was an inevitable outcome because it was only a matter of time before
large companies started foiling ad blockers and their rule sets. We're now
entering the cat and mouse stage on a grand scale. A lot of people seem to
think ad blockers are impervious and can quickly be updated to get around any
countermeasures. Unfortunately, it's very easy to get around the rule sets for
ad blockers and I suspect the method Facebook is going to use will be
unblockable unless of course you want to turn off all images on the site and
degrade the experience.

------
bernardlunn
FB is brilliant at pissing off all their users, then walking it back a bit so
we all claim victory. Its a public negotiation and MZ is good at poker.

------
tomjen3
Facebook is the only site I turned of my adblock for: They know everything
about me, so surely they could come up with some really useful ads for
products that I really want to buy?

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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
There's a tension, Facebook also want to increase the number of impressions so
small-scale advertisers will pay more.

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.

------
pklausler
It's important to remember that Facebook usage is entirely optional. I won't
miss it when I get fed up and leave.

------
pdkl95
> Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of engineering for
> advertising and pages.

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.

------
dhimes
Now what I want is ad-clicking software... :)

------
curiousgal
It's really saddening how the world's finest minds are only working on ways to
push ads down our throats.

~~~
Grazester
Well...you think if facebook gave us a paid option with no ads you would
subscribe to it?

~~~
curiousgal
I would if I still relied on it to keep in touch with friends and family
members.

------
Raphmedia
At that point I'm really considering pulling my own feed and displaying in my
own client.

------
chad_strategic
Interesting, why would anybody still use Facebook in the first place? It's so
2007.

------
ams6110
I already block all facebook domains in my hosts file, so no impact to me.

------
newscracker
> “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience;
> they’re not a tack on,” said Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s vice
> president of engineering for advertising and pages.

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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness)

[2]: [http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-
fin...](http://nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-new-findings/)

------
forrestthewoods
I will never cease to upgrade my malware protection.

------
dbg31415
People here are still using Facebook? Interesting...

------
demarsch
Block the blocker who blocked the blocker

------
fapjacks
Go home, Facebook. You're drunk.

------
chakalakasp
The arms race continues.

------
matiasow
Bring'em on

------
Overtonwindow
Challenge accepted.

------
niroze
Game on.

------
joeblau
You right

~~~
tomcart
First line of the article:

> Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its
> desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software.

------
shmerl
Cat and mouse much?

