Facebook Ads Are All-Knowing, Unblockable, and in Everyone’s Phone

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/facebook-ads-are-all-knowing-unblockable-and-in-everyone-s-phone

by tim_sw • 11 years ago

59 57 11 years ago

bloomberg.com

pmlnr2• 11 years ago

Wrong.

No FB app, adaway + ublock + pale moon.

y0ghur7_xxx• 11 years ago

Why adaway + ublock? Are those not redundant if you don't have the FB app?

pmlnr2• 11 years ago

No always, unfortunately. Adaway is ip based while ublock is regex based, achieving different end results.

raverbashing• 11 years ago

I use Fb but the Fb app is a disgrace, and not only because of privacy reasons

It usually shows me what's happening last week instead of the latest posts

forgottenpass• 11 years ago

the Fb app is a disgrace, and not only because of privacy reasons

Having it installed also kills your battery life. Probably a knock-on effect from the privacy invasion (but at least I have a reason not to use facebook that doesn't weird out normies).

thewarrior• 11 years ago

Just browse FB in safari with an ad blocker ?

onion2k• 11 years ago

What people don't seem to have considered is whether or not unblockable ads in FB's app would be enough to make users who install ad blocking abandon FB. There's a tacit assumption that FB is more important to users than blocking ads, but until that's been tested I think we ought to remain skeptical whether such an assumption is correct.

I think it's reasonable to think that someone who pays money not to see ads would be willing to leave FB if their app fails to respect that wish, and FB might well allow blocking to avoid any sort of cascading network effect a core group of users leaving might have.

pjc50• 11 years ago

.. or at least uninstall the app and switch to the website.

In any case, the same dynamic applies as on the web: people aren't very motivated by privacy when installing ad-blockers, but visual intrusiveness, annoyingness, offence and exploitativeness will push people over the edge into looking for a solution.

vjoshi• 11 years ago

Agreed, I switched to using the browser and now that's to in-cognito mode also On doing so, a few friends followed . Whilst privacy intrusion does irritate me, completely correct that visual instrusiveness as you put it, especially adds appearing very close to where I'm trying to click and then I end up clicking on them. I did use adblocker for a while but it wasn't 100% affective hence the switch over

ousta• 11 years ago

answer is simple to me. I deleted facebook a while ago when I saw the targeted ads targeting a bit too well and Im pretty sure many people will remove FB the more FB is becoming relevant as a business

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

I agree. Every time I go on I feel like I'm signing another waiver for Facebook's social experiments. I hardly go on anymore, except to message friends to call by phone or Skype instead.

martingordon• 11 years ago

Facebook ads are far better citizens than web ads. If all web ads were like FB ads, I don't think there would be such an uproar about ad blocking.

The other big difference is that we give a lot of targeting information to FB voluntarily that otherwise needs to be inferred by web ad networks through the use of tracking. I've told Facebook that I'm a 30 year old male with X, Y, & Z interests, so they don't need a super-cookie tracking me across the web to infer that information based on my browsing history (FB does track users across the web AFAIK, but I think they could do just fine without having to do so).

dialtone• 11 years ago

That FB can do just fine without tracking users outside of FB is true but debatable given how widely adopted is their WCA product, and the fact that they are looking into using their like buttons to track people's activity online to be used for their advertising machine learning.

At the same time the data that you voluntarily give to Facebook, while certainly useful for look-a-like campaigns and such, is not exactly that predictive when talking about DR campaigns for which you need to establish an imminent intent of buying something. Using their various tracking pixels, that ad networks cookie match with, they start to collect also that dataset. At the moment they also have 3 different ways to cookie match with partners, all 3 basically required, this also contributes to added latency when loading pages, would be better to have 1.

The ad tech market is fairly complex and unfortunately often people make assumptions about datasets, their predictive power or reasons behind why the situation is the way it is without necessarily having done the research about it.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

Should restaurants respect the wishes of people who want to eat without paying? If they kick them out they might leave a bad Yelp review.

aleh• 11 years ago

Absolutely. Even if particular restaurant provides food for free it is still a subject for regulations e.g. concerning health and fire safety.

Retra4• 11 years ago

You don't get unilateral power to trade free services for arbitrary obligations. If you have a restaurant where you've decided to list all your menu items at zero cost, that doesn't automatically grant you the power to kick people out because they refuse to eat off the floor.

Your customers must first explicitly agree to such a thing before you should be able to enforce it. You don't get to make all the decisions for both parties. That's obviously exploitative.

drdaeman2• 11 years ago

No idea about how things are on iOS, but on Android there is Xposed with MinMinGuard that does the job of removing in-app ads really well. Not absolutely perfect (some apps may crash in rare cases, but they're really rare), but at least on par with in-browser ad blocking. Or, given than there aren't too many ad libraries (way less than web-based ad networks), maybe even better.

soylentcola• 11 years ago

There's also AdAway for more "traditional" system-wide ad blocking via hosts file or applications like "Tinfoil Hat" which opens the mobile Facebook site in a sandboxed wrapper so you are essentially able to view the site without using their dedicated app or needing to open an incognito tab in Chrome or Firefox before visiting the mobile site.

Ads and tracking aside, it's worth it even if just for the lowered system resource usage (my battery life improved by a decent margin even though I still check out Facebook every 1-3 days on my phone).

jrs235• 11 years ago

I have as few phone apps as possible. Undesired ads and asking for waaaaaay too much access to my phones data and features, no thanks I'll just use my browser and view your page. I'm sure many in the HN crowd practice similar behaviors however for the majority of people I'd assume this article holds more weight.

unclebucknasty5• 11 years ago

FB continues to promote the self-serving fallacy that users really, really want ads.

According to FB, users just desparately want those ads to be highly targeted and relevant. And, that's awesome, because it just happens to correspond exactly with what advertisers want.

Most amazing is that advertisers continue to believe it. Testament to the power of desparation and wishful thinking.

magic_man• 11 years ago

No one really wants ads, but people do want facebook for free.

ams6110• 11 years ago

In other words, they only want facebook because it's free?

unclebucknasty5• 11 years ago

Of course. But, that's not exactly the pitch they sell to their advertisers is it?

bryanrasmussen2• 11 years ago

actually I want ads that are really relevant. I sometimes get them in Gmail, most of the time not though. Don't like or use Facebook.

I remember I had a talk with a coworker once and we talked about if the ad was good enough to give you what you really wanted to buy when you searched and he thought it should be the first result, which I don't agree with because of course what is most helpful to me at some point might not be what I want to buy in relation to the search but something else. But definitely the thing I want to buy should be presented to me when I want to buy it so that I can buy it with the least amount of fuss.

But unfortunately that is not what I get.

unclebucknasty5• 11 years ago

actually I want ads that are really relevant. I sometimes get them in Gmail, most of the time not though

I would suggest that you simply appreciate the occasional ad that happens to be relevant, especially given that most aren't (as you noted). But that is a far cry from really wanting to be inundated with or demanding ads, relevant or not.

dexterdog2• 11 years ago

Well Facebook brings in about $50/year per user in revenue. If the alternative is to pay $50/year to keep the ads and tracking off for your account will that many people really pay that? They would have to charge more than that as well because once they let people opt out the rest of the data loses value for not being complete.

fwn• 11 years ago

Since the group of users that would consider paying a yearly fee is also the most valuable group to advertisers, the devaluation might end up being very drastical.

unclebucknasty5• 11 years ago

If the alternative is to pay $50/year to keep the ads and tracking off for your account will that many people really pay that?

But, of course, that doesn't mean they want ads. The reality is that they want neither.

Your comment points to exactly the fallacy I referenced: this idea they peddle to advertisers that people want relevant ads. No, they will stomach ads if they must, because it's the lesser of evils.

snorrah• 11 years ago

All that talent at Facebook, and they use it to come up with creepier and more invasive ways of ad targeting. I could not help laughing at the quote about it being for "the greater good". Hot Fuzz flashbacks ahoy.

gkanai• 11 years ago

The same can be said about Google, no?

eru2• 11 years ago

We also make self-driving cars, to keep our conscious clean.

deanCommie• 11 years ago

Absolutely, like at any company that has to differentiate between a "customer" and a "user" for the core moneymaking part of the business.

jordigh• 11 years ago

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."

http://www.fastcompany.com/3008436/takeaway/why-data-god-jef...

Retra4• 11 years ago

I would say that this is a person who is clearly misinformed about who has the best minds.

themark• 11 years ago

If you need to preface anything with "It may sound creepy but.." then it is creepy and you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

mrbig4545• 11 years ago

They're not in my phone, I don't use facebook on it.

skrebbel• 11 years ago

What a spammy title. The ads are only "in your phone" if you use a Facebook app.

Breaking news! Ad-powered app shows ads in its app!

Does anyone know whether Facebook also tracks you into and out of WhatsApp, by the way?

martinko2• 11 years ago

Does anyone know whether Facebook also tracks you into and out of WhatsApp, by the way?

It most certainly does. I have contacts in WhatsApp that I have no other contact with (nor do they with me, dont know my name etc.), yet after the first time I chat with them on WhatsApp, they are in my recommended friends on facebook. Pretty infuriating.

degenerate• 11 years ago

$19B well spent... ha

drdaeman2• 11 years ago

Does both WhatsApp and Facebook use (and were actually allowed to use) phone's built-in contact/address book subsystem?

Honest question, I don't use either app, so no idea. Just thought this could be a possible that WA had created a contact in the system-wide address book and FB saw it.

cognivore• 11 years ago

Um, not if you don't use Facebook?

rndmind• 11 years ago

Not for people that refuse to use it.

newscracker• 11 years ago

Isn't it an exaggeration to say the ads are unblockable even on apps on phones? The apps generally do have more control on what's shown and what's not. To start, couldn't the ads be filtered and masked from one's router or on a (home) proxy server that one uses? The apps could be written such that they detect if an ad is being replaced with empty content, but I don't think the apps are there yet.

On this topic, what are the latest alternatives available for routers/proxy servers that are as good as uBlock Origin (or ABE) on the desktop (sharing the same popular block lists)?

Facebook Ads Are All-Knowing, Unblockable, and in Everyone’s Phone

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