Online advertising is less and less about forcing a pitch to conversion in the moment its viewed. Even if someone with an ad blocker would never click on the ad anyway, repeat "impressions" build implicit trust just through exposure. Six months or even a year from then, when that user is looking for a specific SaaS tool, for example, the brand they saw 40 times already is the one that feels established and safe, and it's more likely to lead to a conversion without ever clicking the original ad.

The second part of putting so much effort into getting past ad blockers is tracking & fingerprinting, especially across devices.

In general, ads work by anchoring a brand name in your memory for when you eventually are looking for said product or service, the goal isn't always to force a conversion on the spot.

Ads are for surveillance as much if not more than they are for money

Do we no longer habitually install an ad block for friends and family? There's gotta be some naive users with an ad blocker that way, or default within brave or whatever

Aren’t ads payed also via „impressions“, like 10k people saw your advertisement so please pay x money?

I believe tracking and privacy invasions cannot be solved through technological means, it needs to be solved through laws and regulations.

We need to prod our representatives to ban the selling of our private information. Websites themselves can use the information but they're prohibited from selling it to anyone else. Why? Because the data changes hands and borders several times after which we lose all control over it.

I go a bit further - if something penetrates firefox + ublock origin combo, I'll go out of my way to make sure I'll never, ever buy such product or service if I can avoid that (not always possible but reasonably frequent).

Its quichotesque effort but the only thing that can move the needle a bit since everybody involved cares only about money here - waiting for some toothless legislation is useless when harm is happening now.

If you're still using Facebook, it's because you're required to or you're the kind of person who won't be fazed by this.

With 104 comments at the moment, that’s where the bulk of the discussion is happening.

Maybe a better approach is to convert the page to an image, run OCR over it, use an LLM to remove the ads, present the result to the user.

remember the amazing show "community"?

Elroy: “I got a job through LinkedIn.”

Annie: “What? That’s crazy! People use LinkedIn?”

Elroy: “No, LinkedIn hired me to help figure out why people don’t use it.”

Those childish comments are so funny. 3 billion people use Facebook regularly, and there are folks that deem themselves superior to all others who claim "I know nobody who uses Facebook". XD

> I think it’s purely to massage their Active Monthly User numbers to show growth.

I don't think so. They want you to use the App because through the they have way more ways to track you.

Shitter? Edit: Ah, I assume you're referring to X (previously Twitter -> shitter taunt)

the ONLY way my county communicates emergency alerts is facebook. it's absolutely wild. how do I know if I'm in a state of emergency? facebook. :)

It's where the GenX-ers and boomers are at who have money to spend

Well, uBlock is entirely open source so...

Other adblock tools have gone the route of allowing "good" ads through and only blocking "bad" ads. Of course the definition of good vs bad might depend on who sponsors the dev.

AFAIK creators these days earn via additional channels like merch, tiktok etc. Direct views of some videos aren't prime for quite some time.

People dont have issue with creators getting paid, they have issue with absolutely evil platforms that host that and scoop up most of the value between creators and consumers. Platforms that willingly promote ie racist content because it simply drives more views/clicks.

Are you not using uBlock Origin?

Apropos of nothing, I noted @markoff said they liked John Markoff in the 80s. As a complete aside, may I recommend to readers Markoff's book "What the Dormouse Said." From 2005, it's a deep-dive into the relationship between 60s counter-culture and 70s / 80s era microcomputer movers and shakers. Want to read about Doug Engelbart tripping balls in the Santa Cruz Mountains? It's in there. Or maybe I just made that up in a LSD fueled trip to the center of my mind. But that KIND of thing is in there. Abbie Hoffman somehow influenced Steve Jobs fascination with PARC derived WIMP systems. An image of Richard Nixon getting his face punched was burned into the original PC BIOS ROMs. Tim O'Leary developed software in the 80s. One of these is not true, but you have to read the book to find out which.

https://search.worldcat.org/title/57068812

Not for me (Wipr2 on Safari), loads fine without ADS.

It works here.

try loading it with JS off

why not "just" do it for them?