It ’s a game of cat-o'-nine-tails and mouse . On Tuesday , Facebookannouncedit would begin circumventing ad blocking software in an effort to show more advert in the News Feed . The advert - block communitywas pissedand vowed to fix the problem . Two sidereal day later , Adblock Plus contributors made good on their promise andreleased a workaround , correcting what it described as Facebook ’s “ non-white path against drug user alternative . ” Now , it looks like Adblock Plus ’s workaround is dead .
We ’re disappointed that advertizing blocking fellowship are punishing people on Facebook as these fresh endeavour do n’t just block ads but also brand from friend and Pages . This is n’t a good experience for mass and we plan to address the issue . Ad blockers are a blunt instrument , which is why we ’ve alternatively focused on building tools like ad predilection to put control in hoi polloi ’s bridge player .
Facebook ’s biggest ill with the Adblock Plus workaround is that it include subject from friends and Pages . However , there are other live third - party tools that let people manipulate content from Facebook users admit theWall Street Journal ’s “ Blue Feed , Red Feed”tool .
Facebook has not commented on why dick like Blue Feed , Red Feed are allowed to live while others like Adblock Plus are n’t . Our unspoilt guess is that it has to do with the company’s$6.24 billion in Q2 advertising tax income .
Although Adblock Plus ’s later workaround has been subdue , the hacking war still rages on . When the initial workaround was eject , Adblock Plus acknowledged that Facebook would likely reply in a swift manner . The organization conclude that the battle would be fought for long time to come :
Facebook might “ re - circumvent ” at any time . As we wrote in the previous military post , this kind of back - and - forth battle between the open source advertising - block community and circumventers has been going on since advertizing blocking was invented ; so it ’s very possible that Facebook will compose some code that will render the filter useless — at any time . If that chance , the advertising - block community will likely find another workaround , then Facebook might skirt again , etc .
Adblock Plus is facing an rising battle , though , because it often requires user to update software to receive the full benefits of the tool . In the previous workaround , it even ask user to manually cut their filter lean — which is an added barrier of entry that most masses wo n’t bother to bilk .
The social media giant trust that by providingopt - out settingson its targeted advertizing , it is execute the same role as ad blockers . Whether that ’s actually the grammatical case should believably be up to the user to resolve .
The whole back - and - forth has reignite the argumentation over ad - blocking and maintain track of every company ’s posture is long and complicated . In 2015,Apple sided with ad blocking programme , let them to be install on the Safari web browser app in iOS 9 . This year , Googlebanned ad blocking appsin the Google Play Store , but allowed them to persist in background and fluid internet browser .
Of of course , Facebook is n’t bear for or creating any of the subject from news publishers who are leave to “ flow on scraps , ” as a Bloomberg executive director latterly say .
Your move , Adblock Plus .
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