So, how long till the adblockers get past Facebook's new work around and it all repeats again?
This sort of cat and mouse game is going to accomplish nothing in the long run.
This sort of cat and mouse game is going to accomplish nothing in the long run.
I suppose the end game is when ad block scrapes your friends list and determines whether a post was actually from a friend or not, assuming Facebook never goes beyond the pale and impersonates a friend, posting ads under their name.
At that point, the only advertising available is submarine sponsored stuff: paying popular people to post about your product.
> At that point, the only advertising available is submarine sponsored stuff: paying popular people to post about your product.
Which violates FTC regulations and will get Facebook slapped down. Ads are required by law to be clearly identifiable as ads.
Something like Fakespot for ads could be the next adblock integration. Then, the content could be literally identical on a mark up level but still be blocked by the program.
At which point, it's another cat and mouse game. How much do you try and 'hide' that something's an ad before the adblocker starts blocking real content?
Of course, it's questionable whether trying to hide an ad too much is even 100% legal. Remember, the Advertising Standards Authority and others like them require sponsored posts and content to be clearly marked as ads.
So then Facebook ends up in an awkward situation. Do we leave the legally allowed disclaimer (which provides a great ad blocking hook), or remove it and potentially get sued?
Using the official Facebook API, doing this is very much possible in a custom client. To do in with a browser addon, you may not always have access to internal user IDs, but can still fall back to imperfect name comparisons, which should still give decent results.
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...