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134

Facebook ads are so hard to block that uBlock Origin stopped filtering them (www.neowin.net)

submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 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.

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

You gotta wonder what the hell facebook execs are thinking, knowing that people who specifically go out of their way to block ads are the ones their engineers are fighting tooth-and-nail to show ads to.

Anyways my solution to this on youtube, anyways, is to click every ad i dislike, training my algorithm to advertise shit i dont want to me and bleeding money from them while promoting the creators i like/YouTube

[–] toph@feddit.uk 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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.