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Facebook Adds Ads To News Feed

Posted by Unknown on from the worse-than-mafia-wars dept.

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article at ZDNet: "As expected, Facebook has started displaying ads in users' News Feeds. You may not be seeing them yet as the company is rolling them out gradually, like it does for all its changes. ... Last month, a Facebook spokesperson said the company hoped to 'show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day.' This is no longer the case, as Facebook now says you may see more Featured stories 'if you visit your News Feed a lot.'"

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Only If You Have Liked Those Pages by DCTech · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article clearly notes (and shows screenshot) that the ads that will be displayed on your news feed are from pages you have liked. I only like pages I want to get updated information from (like Team Fortress 2 and some bands), and I get their news updates already. So what's the problem?

    1. Re:Only If You Have Liked Those Pages by Scutter · · Score: 3, Informative

      The article clearly notes (and shows screenshot) that the ads that will be displayed on your news feed are from pages you have liked. I only like pages I want to get updated information from (like Team Fortress 2 and some bands), and I get their news updates already. So what's the problem?

      The article seems to suggest that your friends will see it in their news feed (of you) if you've shared it with them in the past.

      --

      "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
    2. Re:Only If You Have Liked Those Pages by s.d. · · Score: 2, Informative

      The article clearly notes (and shows screenshot) that the ads that will be displayed on your news feed are from pages you have liked

      Actually, what it says is: "...you must have already Liked Ben & Jerry's Facebook Page, or one of your friends must have interacted with Ben & Jerry's Page."

      So you can (and likely will) see ads from a page that your friend liked but you've never visited.

    3. Re:Only If You Have Liked Those Pages by Americano · · Score: 4, Informative

      there apparently is not a way to rescind a "Facebook Like".

      That'd be downright nefarious and dastardly, if it were even remotely true. From Facebook's online help system:

      How do I unlike something?

      You can unlike a piece of content or a Page on Facebook.
      To unlike a piece of content that you or a friend has posted, just click the Unlike link that appears beneath the content itself.
      To unlike a Page (which will also remove it from your profile/timeline), go directly to the Page and click the Unlike link in the lower left-hand column.

  2. No real opt-out by Ron2K · · Score: 5, Informative

    TFA implies that there isn't any opt-out, other than unliking pages or nuking individual ads:

    Since these ads are just stories, they cannot be stopped completely (although ad blockers may find a way around this). Users do, however, have three options provided by Facebook to limit the ads: click hide to remove individual stories, limit the volume of stories you see from a specific friend to only important posts, or unfriend the person and/or unlike the Page to stop seeing certain kinds of stories altogether.

    This is going to piss off more than a few people...