Facebook Will Force Advertising On Ad-Blocking Users (wsj.com) 534
Long-time reader geek writes: Facebook is going to start forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop website, even if they use ad-blocking software (Could be paywalled; alternate source). The social network said on Tuesday that it will change the way advertising is loaded into its desktop website to make its ad units considerably more difficult for ad blockers to detect. "Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they're not a tack on," said Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of engineering for advertising and pages.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Challenge Accepted...
Re: Good (Score:2)
It might be a better approach to fingerprint content (I.e scripts, images) and prevent them from running and then outright block anything that has either sound or animation, replacing it with a "click to play" placeholder.
Re: Good (Score:5, Funny)
"Invasive malware and 0day attack vectors are a part of the Facebook experience.."
Re: (Score:3)
Small and big businesses alike have stopped displaying their own websites in ads and have opted instead to provide a Facebook URL or simply say visit (of like us) on Facebook. The Facebook experience is becoming all to persistent.
Re: Good (Score:4, Interesting)
that is something i don't understand. why the fuck are you advertising someone else's company like that? is facebook really bringing in that much revenue you can ignore your own branding and your own web site?
no. if you aren't a facebook exclusive game publisher, it is not.
the carl jr's-owned chain, hardee's, does that. hardees.com isn't on any packaging, any advertisements, not visible on anything by customers, anywhere.. but
hardees.com
is infinitely better than
facebook.com/hardees with a blue square 'f' next to it.
the only thing i can think of is that companies think their audience or customer base is too stupid to use the internet, and can only 'facebook'. but i think it may be more like the marketing 'geniuses' are the ones that can only 'facebook' or 'instagram' or 'twitter' and don't know what the 'internet' is.
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I remember seeing a billboard in the UK, right about the time when I was thinking about doing a Master's, advertising a Master's in Web Technologies at the university up the road. Perfect!
"To find out more, visit www.facebook..." Arse. Needless to say, I didn't.
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
They really are that clueless. From FTA:
What weâ(TM)ve heard is that people donâ(TM)t like to see ads that are irrelevant to them or that disrupt or break their experience. People also want to have control over the kinds of ads they see.
What is this, 1997? Sure, people don't want irrelevant ads, but they don't want to give you their preferences or be spied on either, so good luck with that. All ads are disruptive, otherwise they would be ignored. The only control they want is an "off" button, which you are now trying to break.
Re: Good (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure the off button (closing the page or not going there) still works.
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Re: Good (Score:5, Informative)
They are the most valuable commodity that facebook sells to the advertisers that are their true customers.
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:4, Interesting)
> When in reality, the best experience is an ad-free experience.
That's not always true. I do hardware design, and enjoy woodworking, and read paper magazines related to both. I find the ads in those magazines useful, because they are very relevant. Now, if I found a penis enhancer ad in either magazine, that would be bad.
If Facebook or any other site offered a checklist of ad topics to serve me, I would find that reasonable. I could pick the ones I was interested in, and not see the rest.
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Ads are a service if you see a product advertised that fills a need you have that you thought didn't exist. Serve me an ad for an Android tablet that will play OTA TV (the needed technology is all inside the tablet, all it would need was programming) I'd buy one in a minute. They would be happy band so would I.
But I don't think that tablet exists; I've looked for it.
Re: (Score:3)
How about insecure ad delivery being commonly intercepted as a channel to deliver "clickless" infections by banking trojans - which is epidemic, not hypothetical.
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Good (Score:3)
The users of Facebook are not it's customers... They're the merchandise.
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It might be a better approach to fingerprint content (I.e scripts, images) and prevent them from running and then outright block anything that has either sound or animation, replacing it with a "click to play" placeholder.
Won't work. If a website gets aggressive, ad blocking is doomed to fail. The simplest solution for a website is if the ad isn't displayed then the content doesn't load either. One simple solution would be to require the user to answer a question about the ad they just saw, forcing them to pay attention to the ad. This would be a highly aggressive strategy and would likely annoy a lot of people but an ad like that would also pay a lot more than a passive ad. Facebook only makes a few dollars per user pe
Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
"Won't work. If a website gets aggressive, ad blocking is doomed to fail"
Or that website is doomed to fail.
Facebook isn't just Zuckerberg's baby anymore, it's gone corporate.
(The same thing that destroyed Vegas)
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Re: Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. AdBlockPlus Element Hiding Helper. For one, you could block on any 'img' or 'a' tag that had a 'href' or 'src' starting with data:. Next up, you can block by CSS class or DOM ID of any element. If there aren't any identifiers, you block an XPath to the element's location, relative to any other ID's element if necessary. I haven't met an ad that ABP+Helper can't block.
And if none of that works, I close the website & don't come back. I've been *this close* to deleting my FB account since the day I opened it, so it wouldn't take much of a reason to just replace my profile with an email address and "email me if you want me."
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone who dislikes ads even use facebook? Facebook is 100% about selling its users to advertisers. I'm surprised it took them this long. This really says less about facebook and more about ad blocking software. The only reason facebook is likely doing this now is because a larger percentage of their users are starting to block ads.
Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a way of staying in touch with your friends. It's a way to keep in communication. It's a way to share positive experiences and reach out for support when life kicks you in the face. It allows you to announce things 'safely'; a friend announced the death of his uncle on facebook without having to go through the emotions of telling people face to face.
It's not necessary, but it has become a useful tool in our culture.
Re:Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:4, Insightful)
this will sound elitist (but I don't care) - anyone I can't reach via email or other non-single-company-is-an-internet methods is not worth staying in touch with. there is phone, email and real life ways. some people enjoy texting (I don't).
you are basically lazy, I suppose. you want everyone on one site. I don't. I see no value in that, to be honest. I see the lock-in and the privacy invasion and I stay in touch with REAL friends via email and in person.
fuck fecebook. you think you need it but you'd be surprised how much you can get along fine (better, I would argue) without it.
Re:Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:5, Funny)
Also people who don't bother to use caps. Bunch of wankers.
Re:Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
I have taken a break from my account since October 2015 so totally agree. Tell you what Zuckerberg fuck off with the extra advertising. I wont be back unless someone finds a way to turn it off. Also if your company is only accessible on Facebook, well you can fuck off too.
Re:Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:4, Insightful)
And before that, there were telegrams! And before that, there was mail!
Re: (Score:3)
Unlike email vs telegrams, Facebook adds nothing that didn't already exist before (in email, instant messaging, newsgroups/forums/mailing lists, websites, etc) except ads.
Re:Why use FB? It's a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike email vs telegrams, Facebook adds nothing that didn't already exist before (in email, instant messaging, newsgroups/forums/mailing lists, websites, etc) except ads.
That's NOT true. I'm absolutely NOT a fan of Facebook (and frequently go several months between checking on my account -- I only keep it because there are a few people who seem to only know how to use Facebook to contact people now; they can't figure out email anymore), but the social media experience of Facebook is distinct from all other things you've mentioned.
Namely: you can broadcast information to a specific group of people (your "friends" or subgroups of them), while simultaneously also allowing them the option to "tune in" or "tune out" as they wish.
To do this with previous tech, you'd have to do something like set up a specific email list with all of your friends AND have them simultaneously set up email filters so they could control when they saw your messages (rather than just getting spammed in their inbox by your random posts). AND they'd have to do that for each of their friends individually.
But that's not even it -- because the ability to respond to posts by friends (and have them be visible to specific sets of people) couldn't really work with previous tech without a lot of configuration. Facebook is probably closest to a concatenated set of private blogs from all of your friends (where the typical blogpost is rather short, but you can post comments), but again that wasn't really easy to set up with previous tech.
Again, I'm not a huge fan of the Facebook experience, but it does lead to a different sort of interaction compared to previous social media.
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FB is all about control.
And the truth is, the laziness factor(aka "convenience") is really the main reason people do it, and if you look at human behavior, it's not surprising.
Re: (Score:3)
It's interesting what you said about "safer" way to communicate. To me, my paranoia of FB et al. monitoring means absolutely nothing but the shiny & happy goes on FB. If something "bad" as simple as my cat took a dump on the carpet happened, that's not going on FB. Nevermind somebody died or I'm having a rough time & need help. I've got end-to-end encrypted messaging to simply reach out to my real friends, and face to face meetings for anything more in depth than, "Hey, mind if I come over?"
I mi
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone who dislikes ads even use facebook? Facebook is 100% about selling its users to advertisers. I'm surprised it took them this long.
Because everybody else does, it takes two to be social. Which is probably why they haven't done it earlier, annoy a critical mass of users and they might switch to an alternative. I guess they feel confident enough about their position that you might whine and complain but nobody's going to organize a revolt, there's not even an obvious competitor as Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Snapchat etc. are all quite different from Facebook.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony here, 99% of the time I go to Facebook, I go there specifically for ads.
Except... Not the ads Facebook wants me to see. I go there for things like menus and hours and contact info for local small businesses (because apparently controlling your online presence by having your own website has become passe).
That said - Challenge accepted, Zuckmeister! Let's see how effective you can block ads (or block those who try). Why, just look how well it worked for the likes of Forbes and Wired [thestack.com]!
Re: (Score:3)
Why, just look how well it worked for the likes of Forbes and Wired [thestack.com]!
Are you sure about the correct cause/effect. I almost made the comment that I wonder if this isn't a sign that facebook is starting to hurt. It seems to me like the companies that try the hardest to block ad blockers are companies that are declining and slowly failing. This could also be said for companies that start using more and more intrusive ads (that pay slightly better per view). It's seem like many times it is a failed attempt to stop the bleeding that is happening for other reasons.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, it's a reasonable argument that anyone using an adblocker wasn't helping their revenue stream to begin with, but that may be too simple an answer. Even adblocked pageviews have value to a site, because people don't simply read web pages in a vacuum. They share stories with their friends, that might not otherwise see them. Cut off the adblocked portion of the internet audience, and you're reaching a lot less people, and that's where you lose the pageviews that pay you. I would also posit that internet users that employ adblock are more likely to be active/heavy users of the internet, but that's conjecture on my part.
Re: (Score:3)
To get the benefits of facebook, without the main disadvantage (ads, that are easily circumvented).
You think that's the main disadvantage of Facebook? I'd have said it was the flagrant and obnoxious lack of respect for anyone's personal privacy.
The only challenge (Score:3)
A lot of
You might be t
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Check your ToS, are you sure it's actually YOUR device? ;)
facebook is not a necessity (Score:3)
Re:facebook is not a necessity (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
They do have a FB page funny enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook is rapidly becoming the MySpace of 2016.
I rather suspect it's already had its' "Elvis Year [urbandictionary.com]", and the decline has already begun. Between the "we know better" on content, the blatant political bias, and now the ad-block bypass attempt. . . .
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One major difference: when MySpace when into decline, it was because everyone moved to Facebook. Where can we move to now? What are the real alternatives?
Re: (Score:3)
Go back to using the perfectly good open technologies that predates all this walled garden social network shit.
Re: (Score:3)
One major difference: when MySpace when into decline, it was because everyone moved to Facebook. Where can we move to now? What are the real alternatives?
The kids have already moved to Snapchat. Old people will no doubt stay with Facebook forever, but that's the end of growth and growth is holy in Silly Valley. FB will become more aggressive in monetizing it's existing user base over time.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I've basically stopped using it on my phone because of the advertising, sponsored links. All advertising is annoying, perhaps especially because I've grown up with the ad-free BBC. There's enough noise already on FB with pictures of people's food and other annoucements about the most banal parts of their lives without throwing more advertising in to the mix.
The funniest bit of the story for me was FB trying to equate itself with journalism. They're far too far up their own arses.
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed. It seems the ratio of undesired content to desired content is continuing to shift further and further towards advertisers that soon we will have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of a page to see one relevant post. Where will it stop!?
Re: (Score:3)
It probably won't stop. Facebook is a company; it exists to make money, and advertisements seem to be much more acceptable to most Internet users than requiring direct payment.
It's ok if someone doesn't like that they got hooked on freebies and now Facebook wants to cash in. It's also ok to dump Facebook. The choice is completely on the end-user; nevertheless I suspect that griping and complaining, followed by acceptance, will be the typical response.
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously, whoever came up with the idea of selling ads to the public as an "experience" (a turn of phrase that is increasingly heard) has lost all connection with reality. People put up with ads at best. And it may entice them to click or buy something from time to time. But no one wants them.
The age of subscription services (Score:5, Insightful)
Will this lead to a paid version of Facebook, that allows paid subscribers to see less or no ads?
Re:The age of subscription services (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably. Which will then lead to a new Facebook program to allow advertisers^W content producers to push their stories to the top of the newsfeeds of the paid version...
Re:The age of subscription services (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of my local newspapers starting blocking people who uses adblock, which I use because of the ads(duh) and the 3rd party tracking.
So I asked them: "If I subscribe and pay for access to your full site, will I then be able to see the site ad free as well as free from trackers?".
The answer was: "no".
Ok then, bye..
Re:The age of subscription services (Score:5, Insightful)
The newspapers are doing this because they are in decline. Every form of mass media is saturated with advertising, The value of ads is going down, as we are become so used to them we are blocking them out like the sound of the train in the background.
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Re:The age of subscription services (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
At least those ads don't install malware on your computer...
Re: (Score:3)
Key difference - Most of the ads in a dead-tree paper occur in one or two dedicated sections. Many people buy the paper specifically for the ads. Even the small number that manage to creep into other sections don't leap out and nag you, they just sit there quietly and well-behaved as you read around them and probably don't even notice they exist.
Compare that to the "experience" at most newsp
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Perfect Timing (Score:5, Interesting)
Just now, when Facebook has started losing users for the first time in its history, and more and more people are turning (finally) to adblockers for self-defense against malware and data charges (also thanks to the ongoing lawsuits in different country against AdBlock), Facebook finally announces that it will inject more ads.
Yeah, I guess with this shovel digging their own grave will become much easier.
Re: (Score:3)
Some people will leave. However, there are far too many addicted users that would have an easier time kicking a heroin habit than giving up Facebook.
My civil disobedience (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever FB puts an adv. in my feed I flag it as being Offensive and Sexually explicit. It may not screw FB over by much to do so, but it makes me feel good.
(Kinda like yesterday when I strung the Indian "computer support" guy along for 15 minutes by pretending to poking around my windows machine. In the end he asked my what browser I was using, and when I said Safari he swore in his native language and then hung up on me)
Re:My civil disobedience (Score:5, Funny)
My personal best was 37 minutes before I finally let the guy know I was stringing him along. I was working at home and had a whole lot of completely mind numbing tasks when the guy called so I could continue to work and mess with the guy.
I acted all concerned and said, let me get to my computer room, it is on the other side of the house and put the phone down for 2 minutes. Then I picked up he was still there so I said, hold on, it is booting...which one, I have 4? I told him, they are old and slow and will take a bit to boot hold on, another 2 minutes of putting the phone down.
Then I started playing along, acting like the horrible end user who is totally illiterate and can barely use a computer. Had "monitor issues" because it was unplugged. Didn't know where anything was. He told me to open a command prompt and type things in, which always resulted in Unknown command because i was "misspelling" what he told me because I was bad at typing or thought it was a different letter because of his accent.. He then switched to Alpha, Sam, Sam, designation and I pretended to type in alpha, sam, sam.
Then I used the bathroom, picked up stuff around the house a bit and finally needed to get back to actual work and told him, I will level with you, I do PC security stuff for a living, I have been messing with you the entire time.
He said, well this entire time I have been hacking into your machine and stealing all of your files and if you don't pay me, I will not let you have them back. I laughed and said, no you aren't to which he said, never underestimate the power of the common man. I told him, you are a common criminal and not that good of one and that lead to the tirade of swearing and he hung up!
Re: (Score:3)
Kinda like yesterday when I strung the Indian "computer support" guy along for 15 minutes by pretending to poking around my windows machine. In the end he asked my what browser I was using, and when I said Safari he swore in his native language and then hung up on me
A friend of mine did this and imagine how angry the guy on the other side was when he realized my friend was describing the panel of a microwave. I find it even funnier because microwaves typically have a "Start" button.
Re:My civil disobedience (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes you have to hang up on them, they won't quit.
Oh no, I make them hang up. They called me, so now they've become my prey. They're in my arena now, lol. And I've got all day to fuck with them and talk about their mom is banging the goat next door.
Sometimes I mimic their accent, which REALLY seems to enrage them. Or I just go over and over how they're "stuck in a shitty chair in a shitty cubicle", and how I'm making more just telling them to piss off than they can even if they work a 12-hour shift.
Sometimes I'll make them listen to a few selected youtube videos, or I make them wait on a hold for a while. But either way my goal is to force them to hang up, and I always win, always.
Seems Reasonable (Score:2)
Re:Seems Reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Not My Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they're not a tack on,
A) Yes the ads ARE tacked on after the fact. B) Facebook being ad supported is Not My Problem (tm). If they want to negotiate a deal directly with me for cash money whereby I will no longer block ads I'm willing to have that conversation but it won't be cheap. Certainly will cost them more than the shitty services they currently provide. I will actively fight anyone who thinks they have a right to put advertisements in front of me without my explicit permission.
FB Purity (Score:3)
It is an arms race (Score:3)
Sorry FB, you can go shove it. The blockers will find a way. The industry must change or it will collapse under its problems.
And soon enough... (Score:3)
"15 million facebook users infected with malware in a popunder ad."
Shouldn't a good ad-blocker be undetectable? (Score:3)
A good ad-blocker should let the page think it is being rendered exactly as requested, but actually removing the display of the ads to the user.
What manner of Javascript trickery or feedback loops do large site owners use to try to get around that?
It seems like the paradigm needs to be a sort of sandbox for the page and its anti-adblocker scripting, and then the page is delivered to the user sans ads completely unknowingly to the page.
I guess the one thing Facebook could do to make it very hard to remove the ads is to make them look exactly like a user post. you would need a sort of fingerprinting as another poster mentioned to get around it.
Re: (Score:3)
While I personally like that idea, the counterargument I've heard against it is that it defeats the bandwidth- and CPU- and memory-saving purposes of blocking ads, and gets you only the security and anti-annoyance features. Combining your sandbox idea with some kind of resource-limiter on the sandbox (so the site can only use a reasonable amount of bandwidth, CPU, memory, etc) seems like it could alleviate some of those concerns, but then I suspect that the actual parts of the site the user wants to interac
Re: (Score:3)
1. Put "ads.js" on your page. All ad blockers will block it. In it, just create a small div or something:
var e=document.createElement('div'); e.id='someAdDivHere'; e.style.display='none'; document.body.appendChild(e);
2. Check to see if the div was created, and if not take action: // put in code to hide all content or
if(document.getElementById('someAdDivHere')){ alert('Blocking Ads: No'); } else { alert('Blocking Ads: Yes');
Predict a fix in less than 24 hours (Score:3)
I predict I will be able to go back to my ad-blocking ways in less than 24 hours after this.
I really see no reason to support the ad supported business model. Most of the internet's history shows that ads have been a burden on the proper functioning of the network, and ad revenue was not a significant contributor to the maintenance, function and expansion of the internet. I laugh in the face of anyone who tries to convince me that removing ads from the Internet will be the downfall of the service and of civilization. (to be fair, I live in Silicon Valley, so the people I interact with are usually micro-CEOs for some nonviable pipe-dream start-up)
If you want to operate a business online, great. If you want to send virtual flyers to your repeat customers who opt-in, fine. Do I need every video player and social network covered with CSS overlays for ads? no way!
Okay FaceBook lets make a deal (Score:5, Interesting)
I will turn off my adblocker for your site if
1 ads are STATIC IMAGES ONLY (text ads are fine and you may script ad swapping/updating) ..)
2 you take responsibilty for the content of the ad (no outsourcing to an outsourcer that
3 this includes paying to have my system rebuilt if a bad ad gets served to me
4 give me the capability to block types of ads i do not want to see (yes you can datamine this info as you would like)
oh and clearly separate ad content from "real" content
Sériously ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
People hate advertising.
Ad blockers allow people to endure some services. Without them, the choice between being harassed or not using the service seems trivial.
Bar a couple of exceptions, any service that asked me to disable my adblocker just got me closing the page and looking for the next choice.
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Re:At the risk of getting downvoted into oblivion. (Score:5, Insightful)
On today's Internet, an Ad-blocker does more to protect your computer than traditional anti-virus software. What a world, what a world...
Re:At the risk of getting downvoted into oblivion. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if, in forcing users who are blocking ads to load them anyway, Facebook is willing to accept liability for the inevitable occurrence of embedded malware infecting users through a browser exploit. This is no joke: we know for a fact that ads containing malicious code have been served to users, who then have their systems compromised. If Facebook makes money from selling these ads to users, then they should have a legal obligation to not circumvent ad blocking software as a security measure.
Of course, Facebook and its customers (read: the advertisers) will accept no such responsibility for their shitty security practices. It's all on the users. It's your fault, and yours alone, if there are any negative consequences of choosing to share information about yourself through the site; your fault if your system is compromised through an advertisement that hides malicious code, even if you try to protect yourself by blocking ads. And while many people who refuse to use Facebook (myself included) on principle might say caveat emptor and that you don't have to use Facebook, the practical reality is that that horse has long since left the barn and that the only logical position for ourselves is to protest Facebook's practices, because if our acquaintances get hacked, that has clear ramifications for the security of our own personal information even if we did not share it with Facebook.
Re: (Score:3)
Facebook will have as much danger facing liability for malware as Microsoft faces for botnets.
Big BIZ is immune and deaf to the cries and powerless threats of the little man.
Big BIZ owns the government and keeps it in the folds of it's deep wallet.
Bug BIZ gets what it wants, and we are at best an ant on it's road to profit.
Unless a sizable percentage of users check into Facebook Unanonymous and successfully complete detox, nothing will change anytime soon.
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Can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block ads that come from the same domain of the content?
For example, if I'm visiting "https://example.com", and it serves ads sourced from "https://example.com/ads/", can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block them?
Because that's what Facebook is going to do to try thwarting ad blocks, including thwarting APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit.
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I need my FaceBooks (Score:3)
How else am I going to farm my pixels? I have to keep harvesting them every day
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"Your proposal is acceptable."
Re:whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL.. yeah, "social pariah." Goes to show just how far down the rabbit hole you've gone. why don't you try stepping away from the screen once in a while. Join a club. Volunteer. 95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.
Re:whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.
95% of my friends on FB are relatives that live on 3 different continents.
Re: (Score:3)
LOL.. yeah, "social pariah." Goes to show just how far down the rabbit hole you've gone. why don't you try stepping away from the screen once in a while. Join a club. Volunteer. 95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.
The CEO of a company I once worked at remarked at a social event that some famous person was a friend. I said to her "You mean you actually know her or they are a name on a list on a social networking site?". She sheepishly said "Facebook". I didn't get fired.
Re:whatever (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing how 20 years ago everyone looked down on anyone who sat at a computer on bulletin board systems all the time. Now everyone's doing it, it's OK. F*cking hypocrites.
Social media is not being social. I recently told someone this and they gave me a blank stare. You have to go out and meet people face-to-face and put your damn facebook app away. I'm personally not on facebook and never will be.
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95% of your "friends" on facebook are anything but that.
For some yes for others who don't have a metric shit ton of "friends" it is likely that 100% of their friends on facebook are real friends or relatives who they actually like. It is actually fairly useful for keeping in contact with far flung real friends in an almost broadcast like manner. It is also really useful when planning a get together of 12 people who are spread across 6 contents and 7 countries. That said I only have about 35 or so Facebook friends and they are either relatives or were friends in
Face to face friends are better (Score:3)
You have every right in the world to ditch facebook, but you will become a complete social pariah in 2016 doing that.
If you actually believe that then you probably are severely lacking in real world friends. Just because someone "friends" you on Facebook doesn't actually mean they are your friend. If your "friends" treat you like a social pariah for not looking at their banal Facebook scribblings then they probably aren't someone you really need to be spending time interacting with anyway.
Re:whatever (Score:5, Funny)
That explains why I see less posts from people...
Fewer. You see "fewer" posts from people.
You can have less milk or gas or oxygen but not fewer.
You can have fewer chairs or bullets or pillows, but not less.
This concludes the Grammar Nazi(tm) post on "Countable and Uncountable Nouns" for August 9th, 2016.
We now return you to our regularly-scheduled flame-throwing, already in progress.
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Don't read the following text if you wish to avoid the before mentioned crappy product.
Please advert eyes to really avoid...
Facebook.
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Once it becomes Illegal to disconnect your neural implant from the 'Net' you will have no choice but to view endless ads 24 hrs a day, awake and asleep. The day is coming.
And we though the survivalists were preparing to escape people with guns... no it's to avoid the mandatory ads, ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court decision of 2022 under the individual mandate...
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Re:Challenge Accepted! (Score:5, Funny)
A true manager in the making!
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The thing is, facebook needs to make a 'target' (a site that works around ublock origin and hosts solutions), at which point, developers will tear that target down. Right now, facebook is ad-free if you have the filter on your display-device. When that changes, a new filter will be made. Everyone saying stuff like "oh it's super easy to stop ad blockers" don't realize that the fundamentals are, a remote server has a document, and you display it locally according to a set of your own rules. They don't co