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[–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

just block all of Facebook itself... don't target the ads, Facebook is the ad.

why do people INSIST on playing inside the dragons den? seal the fuckers up and block them entirely.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    There are things for which Facebook is currently irreplaceable if a certain group decided to use it. Local hobbyists, support groups etc. Facebook became indexable to search engines recently and it became apparent that it might be a decent alternative to Reddit for niche stuff (quality-wise). The vibe in those groups is much better because you’re not anonymous which leads to less jerks too.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Facebook is currently irreplaceable

    false. no website is irreplaceable.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago*

    Bro, what strawman are you debating? Literally if the Local group you’re interested in is hosted on Facebook, and there’s no replacement available, then, at least in the short term, it is, by definition, irreplaceable.

    Example: There’s a local mountain biking group. They exclusively interact and coordinate through a Facebook page. If I want to interact and ride with them, I have to go to Facebook. Plenty of groups set up all their stuff on Facebook, and it’s not really possible to get them all to move platforms as much as we would want them to.

    That’s the spirit of what OP is saying. If the thing is on Facebook, and you want to do the thing, you have to go to Facebook.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Bro, what strawman are you debating? Literally if the Local group you’re interested in is hosted on Facebook, and there’s no replacement available, Then, at least in the short term, it is, by definition, irreplaceable.

    Example: There’s a local mountain biking group. They exclusively interact and coordinate through a Facebook page. If I want to interact and ride with them, I have to go to Facebook.

    Plenty of groups set up all their stuff on Facebook, and it’s not really possible to get them all to move platforms as much as we would want them to.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    This is bad news, and I think it's quite short-sighted to assume that this will only affect Facebook.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Facebook is particularly skilled in preventing scraping and ad-blocking among all of big tech platforms. Reddit and Twitter still can’t manage to block third party clients/viewers for example. Facebook experience with those was always awful.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Facebook and Instagram are the worst offenders in my experience too, but is there really anything that would prevent them from repackaging and selling their solutions to other companies? Or a competitor attempting to make a copy of it?

    If I've learned anything from looking at competing products over the years, it's that every company will attempt to lower itself to the bar of the worst but successful company. And if uBO developers give up, that's blood in the water all these sharks can smell.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago

    For Instagram there’s Imginn and you can set automatic redirect with an extension. Instagram is a much less complex as a website though.

    Facebook is a behemoth of various functionality they accumulated over the years. This complexity is probably what allows them to obfuscate so much of it. Reddit is kind of screwed as long as old.reddit.com exists. If I had to guess Meta treats it as a competitive advantage or „a moat”.

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  • 37 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [+] 80 points 2 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 33 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    Assuming that there isn't a better extension out there for people to switch to, this move might push some people into quitting Facebook completely.

    If you're using uBlock origin, then you won't see ads anywhere else. Meanwhile on Facebook, every few posts will be an ad.

    🚮

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I mean I do too, but I've just gotten around to installing unlock on my in-laws laptop to save them from the deluge of ads and the misadventures of fake ads that are really scams.

    As they are reluctant to stop using Facebook, it was the perfect solution.

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  • [–] 62 points 2 months ago*

    They just randomize the DOM. Which is a pretty terrible thing to do. So I can completely understand why they stop blocking ads on that terrible site.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    That stinks. Today is Facebook. Tomorrow it’s a site you use. I guess that means I’ll have to figure out how to block this shit elsewhere.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Oh, it's rather simple actually.

    I have Facebook, Meta, and all their various domains blacklisted on my PiHole.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I thought the story was that they aren't individually hard to block, they just keep doing the same thing ublock was doing and directly countering the changes

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago

    In my rich fantasy life, this announcement is just a ruse, to get Facebook to drop its guard.

    Real life is never as good as my rich fantasy life though.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    That’s why I block facebook entirely with DNS based blocking.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Is the shotgun approach not useful? Every post has to contain "Ad" or "sponsored", could you not exclude every post that has those words?

    I am an idiot speak slowly.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    From the article

    The same post talks about some of Facebook’s tactics for bypassing the adblockers. A user in the thread described trying to use uBlock's element picker to block the word "Sponsored" on ads, only to find Facebook splits the word into individual letters, each wrapped in its own line of code. A member of the uBO development team confirmed this isn't new, and that the technique has been in use for roughly five years. They also added that Facebook has at times gone further by randomizing letter order and inserting fake characters to throw off pattern-matching filters.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Facebook splits the text “Ad” in the code so you have an “A” and “d” defined separately and then through some magic make them appear together when rendered… and then they change the exact locations and naming frequently.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Facebook and youtube would crumble completely without ads. That's where the real money is.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I accidentally saw a youtube ad today. It was a fake product with ai video and voice over. Complete scam. It was several minutes unskippable so i assume that's expensive. They must be hoping to scam a lot of people. I had no idea it had gotten so bad.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    I only check FB at home. I have a separate Firefox profile just for it. Using Pihole. I almost never see ads. Maybe one or two will slip by. But I only spend maybe 10min on the site. 1-2 times a week.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    I thought I read a post on here earlier today that said that ublock will continue to block facerook ads?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    uBlock Origin really needs to find a way to define content-based rules for sites which use DOM randomization. After all, the ads still have places where they can go and ad content is structurally always very different from actual content.
    If they let Facebook win, YouTube will do it next. And a year later, uBlock Origin will have stopped working on half the web.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    "They" don't use Facebook anyway and all the people using their free labor acting as through they are paying customers finally got to them. I'm with the uBlock guys on dropping Facebook when it's such thankless painful work

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    I thought of a possible solution. The close to 7 figure engineers are probably vibe-coding and automating their scrambling algos already. uBO, or someone else, just needs to set up a pipeline with agentic AI analyzing the current block-blocking method to unscramble it. Release daily builds. Could be a site specific addon too, doesn't have to be a general adblock addon.

    Fight AI with AI.

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  • [+] 10 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    I'm stuck using fucking facebook, messenger and whatsapp. Facebook and messenger are where all the non-techie people in my kids' sports communicate, and I've got some dear people far away that uses whatsapp.

    I had deleted my account back before it was called meta, but had to get a new one. Fuck me if I'm going to install their app though.

    If we could wean people off of meta it'd be great.

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  • 7 comments in c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se view that post
    [–] 12 points 3 months ago

    A company that removes garbage opts to stop serving the dump.

    News at 11

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Fair. Better to focus on ads embedded everywhere else. Not much point trying to block the ads once you're inside the ad store.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago

    Facebook's business is ads not social interaction so that is where their efforts are channelled.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    If you're using facebook, there isnt much ublock could do for you.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    If you still use Facebook you don't deserve an ad free experience

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago*

    0.0.0.0 facebook .com

    I also have no life opportunities with people that make this place worse. Which is basically everyone. All because of a stupid website.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I have been off Facebook for 11 years now. Feels good man.

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