
Facebook with Adblocker makes 2000+ requests - warent
https://twitter.com/ArentWyatt/status/890584334620545024
======
pmlnr
If you have to use FB, just stick to
[https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) \- JS free version.
Fast, ugly, works.

BTW the error is not present with FF + uBlock Origin.

EDIT: there is a less know FB app, called Facebook Lite. When you try to
install it, you'll get a "This app is incompatible with all of your devices."
\- which is not true. It's fully compatible, you're just not in the eligible
geolication. To get it:
[http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/facebook-2/lite/lite-53-0-0-3-9...](http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/facebook-2/lite/lite-53-0-0-3-91-release/)

It's an alternative, tiny app, without the bloat of the "true" FB app, aimed
at developing countries where smartphones are much less powerful.

~~~
yegle
Great! I used m.facebook.com before but it doesn't support chat.

~~~
compiler-guy
You can use your browser to "request desktop site" briefly while you chat, and
then switch it off. There is no technical reason that it doesn't work, but
Facebook gonna face.

~~~
graphitezepp
I remember the day they turned it off. Then for awhile on my device the
request desktop site move used to fix mobile chat, without changing anything
else (still served mobile site I mean) which was fine. Then they took that
away too. Still haven't downloaded the app.

~~~
parthdesai
Download firefox if you are on android! chat works on m.facebook.com on
firefox but not on chrome.

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newman8r
I keep thinking the state of being offline ~90% of the time is the way to go -
my current choice in tech projects is strongly guided by this belief.

rss feeds are a great quality:size ratio, I have a huge list of primary
sources, will export and paste it here if anyone wants - and always appreciate
any good recommendations.

The best way I've found to win the ad blocking game is to get the rss feed
when possible.

~~~
dannysu
This is the same thing that I do. I wrote about my setup in my blog [1].

Basically grab RSS for most things I read.

Use node-red to create RSS feeds for things that don't have one, or use node-
red to pre-filter feeds, as well as for downloading full content for offline
reading.

I read Twitter with RSS. I haven't got time to turn Facebook into RSS yet, but
hopefully at some point.

    
    
      [1]: https://www.dannysu.com/2016/12/29/huginn-to-node-red/

~~~
epiapp
FYI: I created an app that converts any YouTube channel into a podcast. Just
type 'epi' right before 'youtube' in the channel url.

[https://github.com/amtopel/epi](https://github.com/amtopel/epi)

~~~
dannysu
oh awesome! gotta check that out

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stupidcar
It infuriates me when I see people complaining about how slow they think
JS/HTML/CSS is as a developer platform, or how terrible it is to use a JS
framework, when the real cause of slowdown for 99.9% of the web is garbage
like this.

Modern web browsers can preload resources and compile and run JS _incredibly_
quickly. But even the best optimization efforts fail when sites are loading
thousands of scripts from hundreds of different domains.

And yet still I see developer advocates from Google on Twitter trying to shame
people for using React, blaming them for the web's failure to dislodge native
apps. It's utter bullshit.

~~~
5trokerac3
Now you know how Flash developers felt when everyone was saying it was a buggy
platform, because so much of the dev community never did active debugging.

I ran the debugger version of the player and would get error alerts all over
the web - for things that should have been caught with a try/catch or basic
variable checking - even on some of the most prominent web apps of the time.

99 out of 100 times, that was the reason for an app crashing, not the player
itself.

~~~
f137
this

~~~
seanp2k2
But now everyone has a JS debugger, so everyone is a critic :)

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maaaats
I've made a similar bug before. Had an animation that moved a div around on
our page for some seconds. Some adblocker decided to remove that div. The
script then failed to grab that div for the reminder of the animation, 60
times a second. Since we logged all errors to backend, this resulted in
hundreds of ajax calls, making the affected browsers kneel.

Backoff/rate limiting/setting an upper limit, and handling the missing div
were solutions.

~~~
gorhill
> Some adblocker decided to remove that div. The script then failed to grab
> that div for the reminder of the animation.

Blockers do not remove DOM elements, they just apply a `display: none;` style
property to them.

~~~
thefifthsetpin
"Some adblocker" might not be one of the blockers that you are familiar with.

~~~
JCharante
That might be true, but I'd expect the creator of uBlock Origin to be familiar
with a fair amount of ad & wide-spectrum blockers and how they function (to
see if there's any methods they can adopt to improve).

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falcolas
I get that a lot of those are retries... but hasn't anyone there heard of
backoff?

(intentionally fallaciously generalized)

~~~
andreasklinger
to be fair the adblock broke their frontend app

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the8472
networks are not reliable, so adblockers should not be considered any
different than partial network failures. which means backoff is needed anyway

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cr3ative
Looks like scribe_endpoint.php is an error logger for Facebook. I mean, if you
block random bits of JS from it, it'll try to report that back up. Although,
yes, backoff, come on now.

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suyash
Website making 2000 HTTP Requests is beyond ridiculous, doesn't matter if it
is Facebook. Looks like they have architected it very poorly.

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ktta
I knew I saw him somewhere before.

[http://mailchi.mp/mit/how-ocw-transformed-a-learners-
life](http://mailchi.mp/mit/how-ocw-transformed-a-learners-life)

Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14514686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14514686)

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dabber
YouTube will do the same thing with Ublock Origin. I've had a tab open for a
few hours and have blocked 625 requests and counting.

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lousken
One would thought there's already enough reasons to stay out of facebook, but
there's another one.

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amelius
I don't know the details, but perhaps FB sends more requests when it's
blocked?

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manigandham
Why is this such a big deal? You're using an adblocker which interferes with
the site. The requests are blocked immediately and don't hit the network so
its not wasting any resources. Is there really a complaint about requests
being made in the first place now?

~~~
yvesmh
Perhaps it's not wasting any network resources but it's definitely consuming
battery and processing power to keep retrying those requests.

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mambodog
when you haphazardly cut out chunks of an application it doesn't work
correctly? colour me surprised

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overcast
Just a couple requests there. Insanity.

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roryisok
The image says 27 requests, not 2000. The tweet has no further info. Where is
this 2000+ number coming from?

~~~
bhauer
It's a video. Press play.

~~~
roryisok
oops. just came up as an image on mobile

