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They just randomize the DOM. Which is a pretty terrible thing to do. So I can completely understand why they stop blocking ads on that terrible site.
I found a trick to block Facebook ads without an extension...
Me too, I quit 15 years ago.
I never joined in the first place....
I am sure there are dozens of us!
At least
echo "127.0.0.1 facebook.com" >> /etc/hosts
For a hosts file, shouldn't that be 0.0.0.0?
They both work.
I mean I do too, but I've just gotten around to installing unlock on my in-laws laptop to save them from the deluge of ads and the misadventures of fake ads that are really scams.
As they are reluctant to stop using Facebook, it was the perfect solution.
Bots hate this one simple trick!
Assuming that there isn't a better extension out there for people to switch to, this move might push some people into quitting Facebook completely.
If you're using uBlock origin, then you won't see ads anywhere else. Meanwhile on Facebook, every few posts will be an ad.
🚮
Facebook and youtube would crumble completely without ads. That's where the real money is.
I want them to crumble.
I accidentally saw a youtube ad today. It was a fake product with ai video and voice over. Complete scam. It was several minutes unskippable so i assume that's expensive. They must be hoping to scam a lot of people. I had no idea it had gotten so bad.
The majority of the YouTube ads I get are for dick pills. I'm a 50 year old woman who watches critical role, videos on curly hair and chunky blanket knitting. Their algorithm sucks.
In the last couple weeks it’s constant Mormon ads lol, the church put a cute girl on YouTube hawking their fairy tale book and are blitzing the male demo
Too bad for YouTube, there's a really nifty way around ads
That stinks. Today is Facebook. Tomorrow it’s a site you use. I guess that means I’ll have to figure out how to block this shit elsewhere.
No, Facebook is a different beast.
And nobody should be using it.
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.
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.
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
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.
Oh, it's rather simple actually.
I have Facebook, Meta, and all their various domains blacklisted on my PiHole.
When other corps see that Facebook ads are unblockable they will copy the mechanism and uBlock Origin will become useless.
Similarly, using a dnscrypt domain filter:
That’s why I block facebook entirely with DNS based blocking.
I thought the story was that they aren't individually hard to block, they just keep doing the same thing ublock was doing and directly countering the changes
My guess would be almost all routinely updated Filterlists will continue to block Facebook ads, and probably even more relentlessly now.
I only check FB at home. I have a separate Firefox profile just for it. Using Pihole. I almost never see ads. Maybe one or two will slip by. But I only spend maybe 10min on the site. 1-2 times a week.
uBlock Origin really needs to find a way to define content-based rules for sites which use DOM randomization. After all, the ads still have places where they can go and ad content is structurally always very different from actual content.
If they let Facebook win, YouTube will do it next. And a year later, uBlock Origin will have stopped working on half the web.
"They" don't use Facebook anyway and all the people using their free labor acting as through they are paying customers finally got to them. I'm with the uBlock guys on dropping Facebook when it's such thankless painful work
Right? Even people commenting here with "all ubo has to do..."
If it's so easy, go help them out!
In my rich fantasy life, this announcement is just a ruse, to get Facebook to drop its guard.
Real life is never as good as my rich fantasy life though.
I thought of a possible solution. The close to 7 figure engineers are probably vibe-coding and automating their scrambling algos already. uBO, or someone else, just needs to set up a pipeline with agentic AI analyzing the current block-blocking method to unscramble it. Release daily builds. Could be a site specific addon too, doesn't have to be a general adblock addon.
Fight AI with AI.
Or; dont block anything and wait for people to stop using meta products altogether :)
I'm stuck using fucking facebook, messenger and whatsapp. Facebook and messenger are where all the non-techie people in my kids' sports communicate, and I've got some dear people far away that uses whatsapp.
I had deleted my account back before it was called meta, but had to get a new one. Fuck me if I'm going to install their app though.
If we could wean people off of meta it'd be great.
I thought I read a post on here earlier today that said that ublock will continue to block facerook ads?
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2026
134 points (97.2% liked)
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