AdBlock Plus in two days bypassed the block on Facebook. And then again

AdBlock Plus believes that the game of cat and mouse will continue indefinitely

On Monday, Facebook “switched to the dark side” and introduced a new format of advertising that supposedly cannot be blocked by desktop ad blockers. The idea was that the ad format would be indistinguishable from user-generated content, so that when the blocker is triggered, not only the ad will be hidden, but also the valuable content. According to this insidious plan, people will be forced to abandon the use of blockers.

This is a rather aggressive step on the part of the social network, because a person specifically installs a blocker to get rid of annoying and unpleasant advertising that clogs the screen, consumes computing resources and distracts from useful content. That is, Facebook deliberately went against the preferences and desires of users, pushing them information that they do not want to see. The social network argued that their free service lives off of advertising. Advertising is the only source of their income.

But not for long music played. Only two days passed - and the user community of one of the most popular ad blockers AdBlock Plus found a way to isolate the new ad format and remove it from the page, as it should.

A new filter has been added to the AdBlock Plus EasyList filter list that calculates new ads.

If you want to manually add a filter, here is the code for defining ads.

facebook.com##DIV[id^="substream_"] ._5jmm[data-dedupekey][data-cursor][data-xt][data-xt-vimpr="1"][data-ftr="1"][data-fte="1"]

The AdBlock Plus user community has shown that you can defeat even such a giant as Facebook.



However, from the very beginning it was clear that the game of cat and mouse had begun. AdBlock Plus developers immediately warned that Facebook could break through the filter at any time when it changes the format a bit. “If this happens, then the community is likely to find a new way to block it, then Facebook can again outsmart the filter, and so on,” they warned.

Meanwhile, filters against Facebook were updated by developers and other blockers (see discussionon the uBlock forum). The mouse defeated the cat. But not for long.

The social network was ready for such a turn of events. Very quickly, she updated the format to bypass the filters.

But even faster, the AdBlock Plus community again found a way to block an already changed format.


Animation: Nitrozac & Snaggy.

At this moment, the mouse defeats the cat again. All users are encouraged to update their filters .

In fact, this is not a confrontation between Facebook and ad blockers. This is a confrontation between Facebook and its own users.who have expressed a clear desire to block ads. AdBlock Plus represents the interests of people here, through the Open Source lists of filters that are edited by the community.

Obviously, the confrontation between the corporation and the community will continue. But the resources of the Open Source community with thousands of users surpass even the resources of a powerful corporation, so new filters to block ads will come out again and again, to infinity.

AdBlock Plus developers are sure that the truth is on their side. The user must control the contents of the browser and filter the information as desired. Facebook thinks it knows best what to show to the user, and a single format is suitable for everyone. But the internet does not work that way.

“We will do our best to maintain user control in this apparently endless cycle,” the developers of AdBlock Plus write .

Facebook responds with the argument that it is precisely this that gives users the ability to control: in the site’s settings, people can set what kind of advertising to watch, and ad blockers are a “rough” tool that cuts everything indiscriminately.

But if Facebook continues to change the format of advertising in such a way that the blocker periodically begins to block useful information on the page, then some people still prefer to abandon the blocker. It will be a small victory for the "cat".

The fact that Facebook has become preoccupied with the fight against ad blockers indicates the seriousness of this problem. Recently, the number of users of AdBlock Plus, uBlock and other similar programs has increased markedly. According to statistics from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, among the American audience, 26% (on desktops) use blockers. For some websites this poses a serious problem - they simply cannot exist without ads. Separate resources are detected by ad blockers and display a message to users or completely block their access to the site.

From the point of view of some users, ad blocking is absolutely necessary in order to maintain privacy online and maintain information hygiene.

Facebook emphasizes that it does not pay any blockers to skip its ads. As you know, AdBlock Plus for a small amount allows advertising partners to go through filters. Facebook does not want to work by such methods and will not pay.

In general, it is very likely that the game of cat and mouse will drag on for a long time.