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Facebook Rolls Out Code To Nullify Adblock Plus' Workaround (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal issued a report Tuesday that said Facebook will begin forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop site, even if they use ad-blocking software. Adblock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software, opposed Facebook's plan and found a workaround to Facebook's revision two days later. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is well aware of Adblock Plus' workaround and their "plan to address the issue" is coming quick. "A source close to Facebook tells [TechCrunch] that today possibly within hours, the company will push an update to its site's code that will nullify Adblock Plus' workaround," reports TechCrunch. "Apparently it took two days for Adblock Plus to come up with the workaround, and only a fraction of that time for Facebook to disable it." An update on their site says, "A source says Facebook is now rolling out the code update that will disable Adblock Plus' workaround. It should reach all users soon."
This game of cat and mouse
Add the following like in the file hosts:
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
Problem solved!
Evidently.
I avoid Facebook ads the easy way: I never go to the fb site. I call it "NoShit", it's cross-browser, cross-platform, and it doesn't even require installation.
Because kids around the age of 16 have never before told their parents one thing while doing another?
Did you life a particularly sheltered life? Because I am pretty sure that has been normal for at least several thousand years, and hardly an Online Generation thing.
*sits down with bowl of popcorn*
*serve Orville Redenbacher ad*
No. Grandmothers share recipes on weathered old index cards. Hipster millennials who can't cook worth a damn use FB to share "Tasty" videos of shit recipes with not enough salt.
When Skynet finally comes on line, this ad-blocking-blocking-blocking-blocking code will form the basis of its immune system.
Facebook is, allegedly, attempting to do the whole 'trusted ad' thing with their bypass - they vet ads, they're served from Facebook servers, they don't allow JS, Flash, or other active content. Which ignores malicious images and buggy browser render engines which can allow them to run arbitrary code. So, you know, +5 for good intentions, -100000000 for failing to understand the attack surface.
Evidently.
I avoid Facebook ads the easy way: I never go to the fb site. I call it "NoShit", it's cross-browser, cross-platform, and it doesn't even require installation.
That's my technique too. But seriously, what is FB thinking here? That people who engage in arms races because they really, really don't want to see ads are going to buy any of the products advertised if you defeat all their countermeasures and shove the ads in their face anyway?
It reminds me of the days of (landline phone) telemarketers. There was a market for devices to discourage them automatically. The telemarketers made great efforts to defeat those devices, also with automated systems. Their theory? That people who try to avoid telemarketing calls are all a bunch of timid push-overs who are afraid to say "no" to a salesperson, so if you can just find a way to get them on the phone, you'll make a sale. Can you really imagine that, in this rude culture? That someone would be so worried about the feelings of a pest-for-hire on the telephone when it's getting hard to find common courtesy in face-to-face encounters? But that's what the marketers wanted to think.
It appears FB is showing a similar level of arrogance. I hope that every user who doesn't click ads and doesn't buy things devalues the revenue they receive per ad. Wouldn't advertisers pay less money for ads with a lower click-through rate? Can anyone confirm if it works that way?
All Facebook has to do is put up a wall if you're running an ad-blocker that says "You must disable your ad blocker to view this site." Ad Block Plus doesn't seem to do "workarounds" for those types of blocks, it's what other sites that absolutely insist you must see their advertising does, and most importantly it respects the preference of the user to not see ads.
Something that says "Oh, you're running an ad blocker? Well we're going to force you to view ads anyway!" is like having a concert at a park, and dealing with people who want to stand outside the park and listen to it for free by picking their pockets. If you really feel that you don't want people to see your stuff without "paying" (viewing ads or whatever), make that a condition of viewing your stuff, don't force them to pay when they don't want to.
I'm 100% with Adblock/U-block/etc on this. And as I've said before, I think they need to go nuclear on this if Facebook doesn't relent - if they continue to try to bypass ad-blocking plugins, then it's time to simulate clicks on ads so Facebook's advertisers stop wanting to advertise there. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's kinda scary to see kids around the age of 16 live a double life...
I've never heard of a society that heavily used surveillance in which this didn't happen. In Nazi Germany and many Communist countries it was what they now call human intelligence, often in the form of neighbor snitching on neighbor, often for the most trivial reasons. It could be something as insignificant as, your neighbor has a dog that barks and wakes you up at night, so you turn him in for something and get rewarded. Or maybe he expressed the wrong opinion, went against the Party or whatever. The average person quickly learned to keep their head down, shut up, and profess whatever the "acceptable orthodoxy" of the day was.
As soon as employers started reviewing Facebook accounts for "ideological purity" (although I am sure they would call it something else, something more flattering), it was obvious that the same type of pressures applied. It's just a cleaner, nicer, more comfortable pressure. Instead of being "disappeared" you just don't get that job, or that promotion, or that loan. No one and I mean no one is such a perfect Boy/Girl Scout that there isn't SOMETHING they'd rather not have made public. Much of life is based on learning from mistakes. When you can't do that without serious consequences, you learn to use deception. It becomes a life skill, like knowing how to pay a bill or maintain your home. It's the exact opposite of having a more open and tolerant society, because surveillance does not recognize the value of choice, and without choice there is no real openness.
The idea of the advertisers is that the site actual content is the distraction to make you see the advertisement.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Teenagers are much more aware of their privacy than we give them credit for. It's mostly what's now the 20-30 age bracket that doesn't "get" it. Most teens I tend to work with (which are arguably a bit more security savvy than the average person, I have to admit) do care about what information they give out and it seems to become more and more a status symbol to get the worst targeted ads to show off just how much you managed to mislead the various companies trying to profile you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's okay. I taught your daughter to ferment beer and adjust the Android location settings to spoof locations. She just meets up at her friend's place and then locks the location and goes out to meet boys whose parents are away for the week.
A victory for personal liberty everywhere.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Back when I was 16 ... *sniff* we didn't have enough
Back in my day we couldn't even afford to be 16, we had to go from 15 straight to 17!
We were so poor we had to steal the onions we hung from our belts!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Jesus never existed.
There are absolutely no contemporaneous accounts that speak of Jesus. Not a single one. As far as the historical record is concerned he just did not exist. There's not a single carving, sculpture, poem, painting, drawing or mention of him from the time in which he supposedly lived.
There is not a single mention in him in military records or dispatches back to Rome (and surely anyone who could command huge gatherings of people in a potentially disruptive province should be of interest). He is not mentioned in the records of Herod’s court nor is he mentioned in the records of the Temple or by any Priests. Surely if he was believed by some to be a prophet and others to be a false prophet some mention of the ructions he was causing in Judean civic and religious society should have been recorded. Some people like to point to the supposed letters of Pontius Pilate as evidence of Jesus’ life but these were a work of fiction.
Jesus is a composite figure assembled from many, many previous myths that all feature the same story line:
Horus was one of the many Egyptian Gods (3100 B.C.)
He had 12 disciples.
One was born of a virgin in a cave.
Like Jesus, his birth was announced via a star.
And three wise men showed up!
He was baptized when he was 30 by Anup the Baptizer.
He rose a guy from the dead and walked on water.
Lastly, he was crucified, buried like Jesus in a tomb, and resurrected.
Buddha, (563 B.C.)
Healed the sick
Walked on water.
Fed 500 men from one basket of cakes.
Taught a lot of the same things Jesus taught, including equality for all.
He spent three days in jail.
Was resurrected when he died.
Mithra, an ancient Zoroastrian deity with similarities to Jesus (2000 B.C.)
Virginal birth on December 25th.
Swaddled and laid in a manger.
Tended by shepherds in the manger.
He had 12 companions (or disciples).
Performed miracles.
Gave his own life to save the world.
Dead for three days, then resurrected.
Called “the Way, the Truth and the Light.”
Has his own version of a Eucharistic-style “Lord’s supper.”
Krishna, (around 3000 B.C.)
A Hindu God.
Born after his mom was impregnated by a God.
Angels, wise men, and shepherds were at his birth.
Guess what gifts they gave him? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
A jealous bad guy ordered the slaughter of all newborns, just as happened with Jesus.
Baptized in a river.
Performed miracles, including raising the dead and healing the deaf and blind.
Rose from the dead to ascend to heaven.
Is expected to return to earth someday to fight the “Prince of Evil.”
Osiris (around 2500 B.C.)
Killed and the resurrected after three days in hell. WTF? A common theme here!
Performed miracles
Had 12 disciples.
Taught rebirth through water baptism.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm the only one who thinks that the correct response to sites which have too many/annoying/whatever ads is to just leave?
To this day I browse without any ad blocker (strange, I know) and I mostly visit sites which don't have too many ads.
Please study some actual sources, particularly Tacitus,
Tacitus? Holy shit, maybe you should do some basic research before embarrassing yourself in public.
First of all, Tacitus wasn't even born until 25 years after Jesus' death. He could not possibly have known Jesus, met him, or heard him speak. Never even saw his dead body. All of Tacitus' writings were made up long after Jesus' supposed existence and were also in part cribbed from later works.
For example, Tacitus wrote this: "Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians."
Except that the term 'Christian' was never in use during the reign of Nero and there would not have been 'a great crowd' unless we are speaking of Jews, not Christians. Whoops.
The entire "torched Christians" passage of Tacitus is not only fake, it has been repeatedly "worked over" by fraudsters to improve its value as evidence for the Jesus myth. No Christian apologist for centuries ever quoted the passage of Tacitus – not in fact, until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early fifth century, where it is mixed in with other myths. Whoops again.
In short, the passage in Tacitus is an absolute, well-documented fraud and adds no evidence for a historic Jesus.
Even conservative writers such as James Still have problems with the authenticity of the Tacitus passage: For one, Tacitus was an imperial writer, and no imperial document would ever refer to Jesus as "Christ." Also, Pilate was not a "procurator" but a prefect, which Tacitus would have known.
And before you start quoting Josephus, understand that Josephus is now very well-known to be an utter fake. Virtually every theologian agrees that it's bogus from start to finish. Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defenses against pagan hostility, makes even a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.
Be honest- you're afraid of looking like a fool because you believed all this shit for so long. But it's not entirely your fault. People you trusted and looked up to lied to you, and they may have even believed it themselves....because people they trusted and looked up to lied to them. And so on.
But there's no proof whatsoever that Jesus ever existed, and the reason for that is simple: it's because he never existed.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Sigh... we could play "dueling scholars" all day.
Yes, and I'd win every time. That's because the evidence doesn't support your position.
I find it illuminating that you wouldn't or couldn't refute a single one of my points. You thought you'd buffalo everybody here with your reference to Tacitus, but when that blew up in your face suddenly it's, "dueling scholars" and "the moon landing was faked".
Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...