Facebook ads are so hard to block that uBlock Origin stopped filtering them

https://www.neowin.net/news/facebook-ads-are-so-hard-to-block-that-ublock-origin-stopped-filtering-them/

63•bundie•1h ago

Comments

jcfrei•36m ago

Once LLMs get fast enough at processing real-time images Apple (or anybody really) can just roll out a browser rendering engine that just masks all ads. It will take a few years but the browser ad-business is in it's terminal phase.

Eddy_Viscosity2•28m ago

This is the first and only use-case for LLMs that I am genuinely excited about.

monooso•27m ago

Given that Safari doesn't even have a built-in ad-blocker, I doubt Apple will be leading the charge on this.

Such a move would also presumably be incompatible with Apple's highly lucrative search engine deal with Google.

gdulli•9m ago

It's amazing how people think Apple has a clean reputation because they've added a thin layer of indirection to their participation in the surveillance ecosystem.

metahost•19m ago

Apple sells ads too; increasingly across its surfaces.

vintermann•11m ago

Yes, it's a near-universal legal requirement that humans be able to tell if something is an ad or not. So once they sabotage that, they're in hot water.

mdrzn•35m ago

Original reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1vgcjg5/about...

drcongo•31m ago

It's easy, just block every Facebook owned domain there is. Works for me.

The-Old-Hacker•28m ago

I use a browser extension called F.B. Purity. It's worked across multiple browsers for years.

https://www.fbpurity.com/

damidekronik•26m ago

I was gonna say that uBlock still works for me on facebook, but yea I forgot I had purity quietly working for me for all those years

ImHereToVote•23m ago

I don't understand why websites don't just take ownership of ads. Then it will be impossible to block them.

inigyou•20m ago

Because the ad ecosystem has two sides. I used to think my ISP could just magically support IPv6 and didn't need routing protocols or peering agreements, too. (They support it now)

Websites with ads need to satisfy the ad buyers. This means running a bunch of JavaScript that's adversarial to the website and fingerprints both the website and the browser to determine where and to whom the ad is actually shown. It's like a cloudflare bot challenge is happening behind the scenes. Of course all this stuff doesn't happen on the website's own domain, or the website could manipulate it.

ImHereToVote•11m ago

It's ironic how trust would solve the issue and ads would become impossible to remove. Trust comes at a huge premium of course.

nticompass•22m ago

Man, am I happy that I deleted my Facebook. No regrets.

baggachipz•21m ago

Oh the irony: https://ibb.co/NnxGJyr1

SirFatty•20m ago

that's not irony.

drnick1•20m ago

Blacklisting facebook.com at the DNS level has worked pretty well for me.

wompapumpum•12m ago

[delayed]

akersten•17m ago

They do this by adding a ton of useless markup and splitting words like "ad" into single-letter spans with random class names and 8-layer deep nests of `<div>` so it's very hard to write selectors against. One has to wonder how that div soup affects accessibility as I find it very unlikely that this content is presented nicely to assistive tools. I hope they get all the ADA suits they deserve for this.

XorNot•7m ago

My solution to this was just to stop using Facebook.

Though evidently someone's cut a deal because Facebook groups is all over Google search results these days.

swozey•3m ago

I wonder what percentage of ublock/adblock users still have fb accounts in 2026

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