Facebook Will Force Advertising On Ad-Blocking Users (wsj.com)

Long-time reader geek writes: Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software (Could be paywalled; alternate source). The social network said on Tuesday that it will change the way advertising is loaded into its desktop website to make its ad units considerably more difficult for ad blockers to detect. "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.

Comments

Good

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Challenge Accepted...

Re:Good

[Wycliffe]

Why would anyone who dislikes ads even use facebook? Facebook is 100% about selling its users to advertisers. I'm surprised it took them this long. This really says less about facebook and more about ad blocking software. The only reason facebook is likely doing this now is because a larger percentage of their users are starting to block ads.

Re: Good

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Invasive malware and 0day attack vectors are a part of the Facebook experience.."

Re:Good

[Kjella]

Why would anyone who dislikes ads even use facebook? Facebook is 100% about selling its users to advertisers. I'm surprised it took them this long.

Because everybody else does, it takes two to be social. Which is probably why they haven't done it earlier, annoy a critical mass of users and they might switch to an alternative. I guess they feel confident enough about their position that you might whine and complain but nobody's going to organize a revolt, there's not even an obvious competitor as Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Snapchat etc. are all quite different from Facebook.

Re: Good

[AmiMoJo]

They really are that clueless. From FTA:

What weâ(TM)ve heard is that people donâ(TM)t like to see ads that are irrelevant to them or that disrupt or break their experience. People also want to have control over the kinds of ads they see.

What is this, 1997? Sure, people don't want irrelevant ads, but they don't want to give you their preferences or be spied on either, so good luck with that. All ads are disruptive, otherwise they would be ignored. The only control they want is an "off" button, which you are now trying to break.

Re: Good

[JackieBrown]

I'm pretty sure the off button (closing the page or not going there) still works.

Re:Good

[pla]

Why would anyone who dislikes ads even use facebook?

The irony here, 99% of the time I go to Facebook, I go there specifically for ads.

Except... Not the ads Facebook wants me to see. I go there for things like menus and hours and contact info for local small businesses (because apparently controlling your online presence by having your own website has become passe).

That said - Challenge accepted, Zuckmeister! Let's see how effective you can block ads (or block those who try). Why, just look how well it worked for the likes of Forbes and Wired!

Re: Good

[MitchDev]

"Won't work. If a website gets aggressive, ad blocking is doomed to fail"

Or that website is doomed to fail.

Facebook isn't just Zuckerberg's baby anymore, it's gone corporate.

(The same thing that destroyed Vegas)

Re: Good

[Aaden42]

Easy. AdBlockPlus Element Hiding Helper. For one, you could block on any 'img' or 'a' tag that had a 'href' or 'src' starting with data:. Next up, you can block by CSS class or DOM ID of any element. If there aren't any identifiers, you block an XPath to the element's location, relative to any other ID's element if necessary. I haven't met an ad that ABP+Helper can't block.

And if none of that works, I close the website & don't come back. I've been *this close* to deleting my FB account since the day I opened it, so it wouldn't take much of a reason to just replace my profile with an email address and "email me if you want me."

Re:Good

[MitchDev]

Check your ToS, are you sure it's actually YOUR device? ;)

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

that is something i don't understand. why the fuck are you advertising someone else's company like that? is facebook really bringing in that much revenue you can ignore your own branding and your own web site?

no. if you aren't a facebook exclusive game publisher, it is not.

the carl jr's-owned chain, hardee's, does that. hardees.com isn't on any packaging, any advertisements, not visible on anything by customers, anywhere.. but

hardees.com

is infinitely better than

facebook.com/hardees with a blue square 'f' next to it.

the only thing i can think of is that companies think their audience or customer base is too stupid to use the internet, and can only 'facebook'. but i think it may be more like the marketing 'geniuses' are the ones that can only 'facebook' or 'instagram' or 'twitter' and don't know what the 'internet' is.

Re: Good

[Diss Champ]

They are the most valuable commodity that facebook sells to the advertisers that are their true customers.

Re: Good

[fluffernutter]

But that doesn't answer my question. Facebook actually talks like there is a way to show an ad to a user and benefit them. When in reality, the best experience is an ad-free experience. There is no way to make ads 'an experience'. That's like saying you can benefit people at a beach by taking away half of the mosquitoes.

Re:Good

[Fire_Wraith]

It's an interesting chicken/egg question. Are they failing because they refuse adblockers, or are they failing already, with that being just a symptom? I know my anecdotal experience has been to stop visiting those two sites ever, but I'm possibly an outlier.

Now, it's a reasonable argument that anyone using an adblocker wasn't helping their revenue stream to begin with, but that may be too simple an answer. Even adblocked pageviews have value to a site, because people don't simply read web pages in a vacuum. They share stories with their friends, that might not otherwise see them. Cut off the adblocked portion of the internet audience, and you're reaching a lot less people, and that's where you lose the pageviews that pay you. I would also posit that internet users that employ adblock are more likely to be active/heavy users of the internet, but that's conjecture on my part.

Re: Good

[nealric]

Yes, people do want control of the kind of ads they see. For me, that kind is none at all.

Re: Good

[DanielRavenNest]

> When in reality, the best experience is an ad-free experience.

That's not always true. I do hardware design, and enjoy woodworking, and read paper magazines related to both. I find the ads in those magazines useful, because they are very relevant. Now, if I found a penis enhancer ad in either magazine, that would be bad.

If Facebook or any other site offered a checklist of ad topics to serve me, I would find that reasonable. I could pick the ones I was interested in, and not see the rest.

The age of subscription services

[npslider]

Will this lead to a paid version of Facebook, that allows paid subscribers to see less or no ads?

Re:The age of subscription services

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably. Which will then lead to a new Facebook program to allow advertisers^W content producers to push their stories to the top of the newsfeeds of the paid version...

Re:The age of subscription services

[Bender Unit 22]

Some of my local newspapers starting blocking people who uses adblock, which I use because of the ads(duh) and the 3rd party tracking.
So I asked them: "If I subscribe and pay for access to your full site, will I then be able to see the site ad free as well as free from trackers?".
The answer was: "no".

Ok then, bye..

Re:The age of subscription services

[npslider]

The newspapers are doing this because they are in decline. Every form of mass media is saturated with advertising, The value of ads is going down, as we are become so used to them we are blocking them out like the sound of the train in the background.

Re:The age of subscription services

[squiggleslash]

I'd be totally fine if this were the standard thing. Like this site? Either watch ads or pay a small subscription fee.

The "We insist on force feeding you ads" mentality has to stop though. I wonder whether the right solution is that if a company is particularly obnoxious about bypassing ad-blockers, to code those ad blockers to simulate clicks on ads, preferably in a way that's detectable by the ad buyer, but not the ad seller. For example, if a click goes to:

ad.adseller.com/click?adid=1293481&something&something=else

which redirects to:

ad.adseller.com/out?adid=1293481&user=181

which redirects to:

www.widgetshop.com/product.aspx?id=192

Then exactly those links would be followed, temporarily setting any cookies, showing normal User Agents, etc, each page loaded in a hidden javascript-enabled HTML renderer, but that last link would be rewritten to include additional information:

www.widgetshop.com/product.aspx?id=192&bsclick=1&explanation=http://adblockerdeluxe.com/you-paid-for-a-fake-click-you-sucker.html&source=http://www.facebook.com

(Javascript's location.href would show the URL sans the additional information, preventing any JS on the page designed to send feedback back to the Ad broker from revealing the secret.)

Ad *buyers* would very quickly catch on and start blocking their ads from being shown on offending websites (or else reduce the amount they're willing to pay per click, probably by several orders of magnitude given that click throughs are always low.

Re:The age of subscription services

[Megane]

On the other hand, the ads in dead tree newspapers don't sing, dance, cover the non-advertising content, or attempt to install crap on your computer. In my experience the few sites that actually run their own ad servers tend to have non-annoying ads (for instance, hackaday), but most whore themselves out to ad wholesalers who will sub-whore out to other ad wholesalers, the latter of which are often the ones with the lowest standards. The real bottom-feeding scum are the ones that are used by piracy sites like TPB, but I think they expect their serious users to block ads anyhow.

Perfect Timing

[sciengin]

Just now, when Facebook has started losing users for the first time in its history, and more and more people are turning (finally) to adblockers for self-defense against malware and data charges (also thanks to the ongoing lawsuits in different country against AdBlock), Facebook finally announces that it will inject more ads.

Yeah, I guess with this shovel digging their own grave will become much easier.

My civil disobedience

[OzPeter]

Whenever FB puts an adv. in my feed I flag it as being Offensive and Sexually explicit. It may not screw FB over by much to do so, but it makes me feel good.

(Kinda like yesterday when I strung the Indian "computer support" guy along for 15 minutes by pretending to poking around my windows machine. In the end he asked my what browser I was using, and when I said Safari he swore in his native language and then hung up on me)

Re:My civil disobedience

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Sometimes you have to hang up on them, they won't quit.

Oh no, I make them hang up. They called me, so now they've become my prey. They're in my arena now, lol. And I've got all day to fuck with them and talk about their mom is banging the goat next door.

Sometimes I mimic their accent, which REALLY seems to enrage them. Or I just go over and over how they're "stuck in a shitty chair in a shitty cubicle", and how I'm making more just telling them to piss off than they can even if they work a 12-hour shift.

Sometimes I'll make them listen to a few selected youtube videos, or I make them wait on a hold for a while. But either way my goal is to force them to hang up, and I always win, always.

Re:My civil disobedience

[Rogue974]

My personal best was 37 minutes before I finally let the guy know I was stringing him along. I was working at home and had a whole lot of completely mind numbing tasks when the guy called so I could continue to work and mess with the guy.

I acted all concerned and said, let me get to my computer room, it is on the other side of the house and put the phone down for 2 minutes. Then I picked up he was still there so I said, hold on, it is booting...which one, I have 4? I told him, they are old and slow and will take a bit to boot hold on, another 2 minutes of putting the phone down.

Then I started playing along, acting like the horrible end user who is totally illiterate and can barely use a computer. Had "monitor issues" because it was unplugged. Didn't know where anything was. He told me to open a command prompt and type things in, which always resulted in Unknown command because i was "misspelling" what he told me because I was bad at typing or thought it was a different letter because of his accent.. He then switched to Alpha, Sam, Sam, designation and I pretended to type in alpha, sam, sam.

Then I used the bathroom, picked up stuff around the house a bit and finally needed to get back to actual work and told him, I will level with you, I do PC security stuff for a living, I have been messing with you the entire time.

He said, well this entire time I have been hacking into your machine and stealing all of your files and if you don't pay me, I will not let you have them back. I laughed and said, no you aren't to which he said, never underestimate the power of the common man. I told him, you are a common criminal and not that good of one and that lead to the tirade of swearing and he hung up!

Re:facebook is not a necessity

[grub]

Use the FB Purity extension for all major browsers. It does a lot of nice customizable things to FB, even an unfriend notifier.

Re:whatever

[lawaetf1]

LOL.. yeah, "social pariah." Goes to show just how far down the rabbit hole you've gone. why don't you try stepping away from the screen once in a while. Join a club. Volunteer. 95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.

Re:At the risk of getting downvoted into oblivion.

[npslider]

On today's Internet, an Ad-blocker does more to protect your computer than traditional anti-virus software. What a world, what a world...

Not My Problem

[sjbe]

Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they're not a tack on,

A) Yes the ads ARE tacked on after the fact. B) Facebook being ad supported is Not My Problem (tm). If they want to negotiate a deal directly with me for cash money whereby I will no longer block ads I'm willing to have that conversation but it won't be cheap. Certainly will cost them more than the shitty services they currently provide. I will actively fight anyone who thinks they have a right to put advertisements in front of me without my explicit permission.

Why use FB? It's a social network

[Bruce66423]

It's a way of staying in touch with your friends. It's a way to keep in communication. It's a way to share positive experiences and reach out for support when life kicks you in the face. It allows you to announce things 'safely'; a friend announced the death of his uncle on facebook without having to go through the emotions of telling people face to face.

It's not necessary, but it has become a useful tool in our culture.

Re:Why use FB? It's a social network

[TheGratefulNet]

this will sound elitist (but I don't care) - anyone I can't reach via email or other non-single-company-is-an-internet methods is not worth staying in touch with. there is phone, email and real life ways. some people enjoy texting (I don't).

you are basically lazy, I suppose. you want everyone on one site. I don't. I see no value in that, to be honest. I see the lock-in and the privacy invasion and I stay in touch with REAL friends via email and in person.

fuck fecebook. you think you need it but you'd be surprised how much you can get along fine (better, I would argue) without it.

Re:Why use FB? It's a social network

[Anonymous Coward]

Also people who don't bother to use caps. Bunch of wankers.

Re:Why use FB? It's a social network

[coastwalker]

I have taken a break from my account since October 2015 so totally agree. Tell you what Zuckerberg fuck off with the extra advertising. I wont be back unless someone finds a way to turn it off. Also if your company is only accessible on Facebook, well you can fuck off too.

Re:Why use FB? It's a social network

[SirSlud]

And before that, there were telegrams! And before that, there was mail!

Re:Why use FB? It's a social network

[AthanasiusKircher]

Unlike email vs telegrams, Facebook adds nothing that didn't already exist before (in email, instant messaging, newsgroups/forums/mailing lists, websites, etc) except ads.

That's NOT true. I'm absolutely NOT a fan of Facebook (and frequently go several months between checking on my account -- I only keep it because there are a few people who seem to only know how to use Facebook to contact people now; they can't figure out email anymore), but the social media experience of Facebook is distinct from all other things you've mentioned.

Namely: you can broadcast information to a specific group of people (your "friends" or subgroups of them), while simultaneously also allowing them the option to "tune in" or "tune out" as they wish.

To do this with previous tech, you'd have to do something like set up a specific email list with all of your friends AND have them simultaneously set up email filters so they could control when they saw your messages (rather than just getting spammed in their inbox by your random posts). AND they'd have to do that for each of their friends individually.

But that's not even it -- because the ability to respond to posts by friends (and have them be visible to specific sets of people) couldn't really work with previous tech without a lot of configuration. Facebook is probably closest to a concatenated set of private blogs from all of your friends (where the typical blogpost is rather short, but you can post comments), but again that wasn't really easy to set up with previous tech.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of the Facebook experience, but it does lead to a different sort of interaction compared to previous social media.

Re:Challenge Accepted!

[NotARealUser]

Wait, you "accepted the challenge" and then passed the buck on to somebody else? I do not think that phrase means what you think it means. :-)

Re:Seems Reasonable

[AchilleTalon]

You are totally wrong. Every user on Facebook generates revenues even if he uses adblockers. The reason is simple, because every user interact with others and keep others interacting with him and among these others there is some who are not using adblockers. That's the essence of social media. The attraction phenomena is driven by the users themselves. If you start to lose users, you are starting lose market, no matter if it reflects immediately on your revenues or not.

Re:At the risk of getting downvoted into oblivion.

[wickerprints]

I wonder if, in forcing users who are blocking ads to load them anyway, Facebook is willing to accept liability for the inevitable occurrence of embedded malware infecting users through a browser exploit. This is no joke: we know for a fact that ads containing malicious code have been served to users, who then have their systems compromised. If Facebook makes money from selling these ads to users, then they should have a legal obligation to not circumvent ad blocking software as a security measure.

Of course, Facebook and its customers (read: the advertisers) will accept no such responsibility for their shitty security practices. It's all on the users. It's your fault, and yours alone, if there are any negative consequences of choosing to share information about yourself through the site; your fault if your system is compromised through an advertisement that hides malicious code, even if you try to protect yourself by blocking ads. And while many people who refuse to use Facebook (myself included) on principle might say caveat emptor and that you don't have to use Facebook, the practical reality is that that horse has long since left the barn and that the only logical position for ourselves is to protest Facebook's practices, because if our acquaintances get hacked, that has clear ramifications for the security of our own personal information even if we did not share it with Facebook.

Re:What if I don't use FB ? EOM

[Phusion]

Didn't you have ads in the 21st century? Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.

Re:whatever

[OzPeter]

95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.

95% of my friends on FB are relatives that live on 3 different continents.

Okay FaceBook lets make a deal

[laurencetux]

I will turn off my adblocker for your site if

1 ads are STATIC IMAGES ONLY (text ads are fine and you may script ad swapping/updating)
2 you take responsibilty for the content of the ad (no outsourcing to an outsourcer that ..)
3 this includes paying to have my system rebuilt if a bad ad gets served to me
4 give me the capability to block types of ads i do not want to see (yes you can datamine this info as you would like)

oh and clearly separate ad content from "real" content

Re:Challenge Accepted!

[Anonymous Coward]

A true manager in the making!

Re:whatever

[danomac]

It's amazing how 20 years ago everyone looked down on anyone who sat at a computer on bulletin board systems all the time. Now everyone's doing it, it's OK. F*cking hypocrites.

Social media is not being social. I recently told someone this and they gave me a blank stare. You have to go out and meet people face-to-face and put your damn facebook app away. I'm personally not on facebook and never will be.

Re:whatever

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

That explains why I see less posts from people...

Fewer. You see "fewer" posts from people.

You can have less milk or gas or oxygen but not fewer.
You can have fewer chairs or bullets or pillows, but not less.

This concludes the Grammar Nazi(tm) post on "Countable and Uncountable Nouns" for August 9th, 2016.

We now return you to our regularly-scheduled flame-throwing, already in progress.

Sériously ?

[Thanatiel]

Ha ha ha ha ha.
People hate advertising.
Ad blockers allow people to endure some services. Without them, the choice between being harassed or not using the service seems trivial.

Bar a couple of exceptions, any service that asked me to disable my adblocker just got me closing the page and looking for the next choice.