Facebook Claims "Moral Imperative" In Fight Against Ad Blockers

I know "ad-blocking" is a sensitive subject here but let's be realistic. If companies are going to stream pop up video ads with sound, eating my limited bandwidth, then I am going to block them at every opportunity. They have the right to run ads, I have the right to block them if they are hindering my user experience. Now the "big guns" are coming out to prevent you from blocking this crap.


motherboard.vice.com...

Hope you weren’t too used to browsing Facebook without seeing any ads.

The company on Tuesday will begin preventing ad blocking software from blocking ads on the desktop version of the Facebook.com website. The move, which Facebook couched in moral terms in interviews with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, is perhaps the highest-profile salvo by a website against users who actively seek to avoid ads.

“We’re doing it more for the principle of the thing,” Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of engineering for advertising and pages, told the Journal, claiming that the company isn’t doing this to recoup lost ad revenue.

Eyeo, the German company behind AdBlock Plus, characterized Facebook’s decision to block desktop ad blocking software as a “dark path against user choice.”

Well, guess someone is losing advertising revenue

“We’re doing it more for the principle of the thing,” m

Yeah.........right

a reply to: infolurker

#1 Good.
#2 don't blame the websites for their ads, please blame the ad providers.

They choose the content, and it's really really hard as a companies that doesn't make millions to find ad providers that don't ruin your users experience.

The Content Delivery Networks or CDN's are the problem. And adblocking is effectively holding smaller websites hostage and extorting them for money.

(FYI, I am a proponent of adblocking for malicious and annoying CDN's)

~Tenth

a reply to: infolurker

Facebook is getting too big for their boots.

They are big ... but bigger fish have fallen before!

I thought the entire industry should have learnt from Sony's experience ... don't pee off your loyal customers.

They can fight back .... as Sony found out the hard way.

Same old, same old.

What moral high ground. They are just a bit of communication software.

P

Playing to "moral" card? Facebook. Perfect.

When ads are so intrusive that you can't hardly run the page, it's awful and should not be forced on the user.

I have a pretty good machine built, and it runs some pages no better than my clunker desktop at work thanks to the ads. I mostly avoid those sites. I should be able to read an article without having to reload multiple times and stop "long-running script" multiple times.

Oh, and then Facebook went and spoiled who won the women's gymnastics team competition before it aired tonight. I guess the NYT is also guilty, but it's at the top of your newsfeed right now if you want to go see.

Didn't Facebook just ban gun ads?

Kind ironic, don't you think

Fact is, if you use them here you're in violation if T&C. I use AdBlock, but it's turned off for ATS. Companies are getting more sophisticated at detecting that you are running it. This will lead to an escalating arms race as I'm sure AdBlock and others will attempt to change their signature and become stealth to the AdBlock blockers, the same way some radar detectors are immune to radar detector detectors. There will be a huge incentive for the blockers to get around Facebook's safeguards.

To me Facebook is a non-essential service. Whether it goes or stays is of little consequence to me. But a lot of businesses use it as a cheap way to have a web presence, so I'm thinking Facebook has decided it has a captive audience and can start screwing them over.

I think people should invest in technology to support the services they like to provide, and be clever enough to generate revenue outside of adverts.

I hate ads, and I hate marketing. If something is good enough on its own, people will organically spread the awareness of it. If you need ads to support your service, then you're slave to a system outside your control.

I know that's not a logical view in many people's mind, but I feel this way deep down. My father and I have never used ads to support any companies we run. We earn reputation and people recommend the service.

originally posted by: thinline
Didn't Facebook just ban gun ads?

Kind ironic, don't you think

Facebook is chock full of progressives, social justus warriors and special snowflakes, what do you expect. These wankers are going to pull the progressive card of choice whenever they see the potential for dollar signs. There's nothing moral about it after all, out of millions of companies that are run as dictatorships, how many left over are run as democracies lol.

It's all about the Benjamin's ;-)

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: infolurker

Reason 1,999,999 why NOT to use Facebook.

Well it's no surprise that they are doing this, Facebook acquired live rail which at the time was the 3rd biggest video ad seller.

On the topic of ads that auto play i think they should be banned from auto playing, fair enough they don't take that much bandwidth and if you have unlimited downloads it's not really a money problem. But when it comes to mobile phone data I paid for my small amount of data and I should be the one deciding how I use it. It's a bit of a scam they steal your data and then make money from it. And all we get is an annoyance and our data(money) wasted.

To be perfectly clear, ads don't bother me so long as they are mostly unobtrusive and can be easily controlled by the person browsing.

originally posted by: ketsuko
To be perfectly clear, ads don't bother me so long as they are mostly unobtrusive and can be easily controlled by the person browsing.

In my email, I go so far as to block even the frames. The spam folder is one thing, but cluttering up the rest of my inbox is a full on hell no.

I understand the need for ads for websites, and I understand the frustration of folks who fall prey to the occasional nefarious ad...

Why can't there be a system of advertising on the web that allows the site to choose which ads run on their site?

IT seems to me that the sites are paying the price of the free for all ad agencies sucking up money and not protecting the sites that allow their ads...

seems a bit assbackwards to me...

Let's be honest, ads are vital to keeping websites running, the larger the footprint, the larger the cost of keeping the site online...

If the advertising folks won't effectively screen out the most annoying ads, they should give the website the opportunity to filter out ads that would cause issues with their site base...

Stop counting your money and get real.... and let those who are trying to make their way on the web do so without the punishing experience of dealing with the effects of advertising tactics that have no interest in their customers' existence..

YMMV

Why can't there be a system of advertising on the web that allows the site to choose which ads run on their site?

One word, greed. it is what makes the business world go round. Most people have just given up and accepted what is forced upon them.

I use NoScript plugin for Firefox. Probably there is something similar for other browsers. This plugin by default disables all client (browser) side scripts from running. On first hit I enable only scripts located on site I'm currently visiting and if needed I whitelist other sites.
Most of you will be surprised by number of sites connected to display full page of say ... guardian.co.uk .

Here is interesting question: For example I really do not want any script from say facebook/google/ms clusters to run on my OS. Why? They are Big Brother. so I use NoScript as solution. In same time they are vendors of ads. It is bit Catch 22 on conspiracy site ...

NoScript is blocking by default ALL sites, also ad sites. This will probably fall into realm of "Ad Blocking SW". But if I edit my /etc/hosts and send ad.distribution.com to mighty 127.0.0.1 am I using ad blocking software?

Problem is that current ad distribution model is by design intrusive (use of client side scripting) while there are many occasions when malware was/is distributed through such sites.

In short: There is strong self defense view in this battle.

a reply to: infolurker

One can always vote with feet, and walk away from their ad-space, - will that be Fecesbook or what not. There is no might in the world to dictate yourself being subjected to their terms and conditions, if you resign being their kosher.

a reply to: infolurker

Hmm ,yeah they definitely have the principle of the thing down. Now if they could just find a valid reason besides we're a free site to run the ads. If they can't sooner or later I'm sure people will find valid reasons to leave the site.