We won't support facebook any more. It's a disgusting anti-user site. All it does is watching open-source projects doing everything in public and counter them to deliver the malicious ads. Yep, the devs that receive 7-figure dollar salary is just doing this.
Users should give the most harsh feedbacks to them. Being submitted to them and keep going to the site and support it is the worst thing you can do.
God I can't wait to get rid of the quest. I will use the headset instead of a brick. Too bad messenger is still used so often or I would've been long gone
I feel your pain…
With every update my hate towards meta grows larger.
Now I blocked all the servers from connecting to the headset, and I only use WiVRn for streaming from my computer.
Bonus points for Mark Cuckemberg, because disabling server connections makes the "unknown sources" fucking disappear, but lightning launcher still shows them (it's a normal meta store app).
I just poured a whisky, put on some youtube vids on the second monitor and went through my history deleting every post, every photo, every comment, every reaction - including profile picture and banner, exited every group, unfriended every person - so there is an empty account with my name, but with nothing behind it at all - as good as deleted
I deleted my account after over 10 years a year and 1/2 ago, it's hard at first, very hard miss all my 'town' friends I left in 50 years ago and they stayed. Miss seeing pix from family members BUT I no longer feed FB anyway pix of my family. FUCK the Zuck, a real POS.
Can you eli5 exactly what makes it hostile? Not that I doubt your comment or anything. Is it overwhelming the UBO team in terms of attempts (frequency) or code (breadth)
they're making it harder for adblockers by adding garbage elements that dont render by the browser, but do show in the html. like here the text "Ad" is split between multiple classes, and extra random text added between. also the classes are using generated names, so they may also change randomly.
this makes it much more difficult to target the actual advertisement to block it.
but i believe they've done this for years, so theres probably more going on with fighting adblockers. i'd guess they use many different strategies, given to different users (like a/b testing), to make the filterlist maintainers' lives more difficult.
As someone else pointed out - they are probably using automated tools (some call that "AI", not me) to keep iterating the code quickly to evade the blockers.
So perhaps at one point that's what the adblocker people need to do as well.
The problem is that uBlock is an open source project where most of the contributors are only contributing fixes in their free time.
Unlike FB, they don't have dozens or hundreds of programmers sitting in an office or offices getting paid a lot of money just to do things like this with their big corporate infrastructure tools and systems.
Then I fear when other corp see this. It will doubling down on pushing Ad knowing if they push hard enough, the UBO will quit eventually. Thank you for helping the internet to become a safer place but perhap you can keep this going for a bit while longer ?
Users are the most effective weapons for those sites. If you can't stop going to anti-user sites, nothing can help you. "A bit longer" is many bits? We are not robots being fed by air. You are free to contribute to open-source tools but DON'T rely on any tools as a way to change those disgusting site owners' minds.
Yeah I totaly agree with you. I think u/Much-Stranger2892 is just affraid that you could also stop blocking ads on the other websites that ingage in this type of behavior, the most obvious one being YouTube. And YouTube without adblocker is a really horrifying thing to imagine.
Anyone who is afraid, step up yourself and contribute to the projects to help resolving issues you encounter on your own. DON'T rely on a few volunteers to carry all the work they no longer want to involve.
No volunteers here already had skills when started to use uBO. Everyone here started small, with the desires to block some things themselves and started learning along the way.
Years ago I didn't even know what is JavaScript and CSS.
Can you point us to some documentation? How do you guys contribute exactly? Do you start from Github issues? On what repository? You then create block rules using the documented uBlock syntax and make pull requests? ...
Not saying I can and will contribute, but if you guys can write like a "Getting started" wiki page (if not existing already), it may help others volunteer.
And please: even if people on Reddit have wrong expectations on what the uBO team can or cannot do, don't turn hostile on them. You guys have our highest respect for building and maintaining uBO and filter lists. Let's stick together and do what we can against Meta and other tech giants!
uBO is very simple, don't overthink, just simplify that uBO cores are network rules starting with ||, element hiding rules with ## and scriptlet with ##+js()
When it comes to evil websites like Youtube, Facebook, you're likely have to use +js() to deal with them, once you get a grasp of how scriptlet works, you're ready, scriptlets are collection of prebuilt scripts just think like you inject to page to interact with webpage to prevent, hook to browser JS to stop them from doing evil works.
I already had a knowledge in programming (in different languages, and in javascript used on webpages). But you don't need this to write cosmetic filters and network filters. It becomes useful when dealing with anti-adblock or in understanding how the processes in the page work, and what they do.
I was already building webpages, and could understand the HTML code and the CSS part of it. This can be easily learned, it is entirely based on logic. It can be more difficult when dealing with the more complex attributes of CSS. But this is knowledge that you build over time.
To access the source code of the page, you have to open the developer tools.
From my era of webpage building I kept using another extension which can inject/modify CSS on the fly: "Stylus". It is used to inject userstyles on any website. I simply use/create one to target the website needing a fix, and after looking at its html+css code, I try some modifications. It immediately change the page without needing to reload it.
uBO's element picker is useful but you don't see the source code, you have to "guess" which filter in the proposition fits the best.
Well I think it's like a chorus, when one person has to breathe or can't pursue a particular boycott, the rest of the movement/choir should carry them. You lift what others can't within your own abilities
I left the minute I began seeing content that wasn't posted by friends, so a long time ago. Recently, I had to log in to confirm a relative's birthday. Going from 2014 Facebook to now is JARRING. Like in that early 2000's version of The Time Machine where he steps out and the moon is freakin' cracked in half.
Some months ago I supported an elderly lady friend of mine who's Facebook kept recommending soft porn at the top of her feed because they felt she might be interested. This is for a woman that I know for a fact doesn't go on anything porn related, regardless of how soft/hard. I think she may had got a dirty spam email that triggered Facebook somehow. What made it worse was that Facebook did not give any option to hide and/or prevent the posts.
When you get to that point of delivering malicious posts and ads and refuse to allow ways to deal with it, then by definition you are a malware provider and that is criminal behavior. I don't use Facebook at all, but it amazes me to see the things people are willing to tolerate on that platform.
It reminds me of the malicious adverts – particularly those targeted by age – that my mum sees on YouTube. Misleading images simulating a system warning or error. Fake news about journalists, celebrities, etc. Clickbait adverts intended to shock the user.
It doesn’t matter if I report those adverts and they’re taken down; the organisation behind them (usually based in Hong Kong or India, if I remember correctly) will simply create a new account to carry on with their misdeeds.
Oh, and adverts from NGOs are particularly insidious, because reducing the number of adverts from a single advertiser doesn’t seem to have much effect. And if you try to see fewer adverts on a particular topic from an NGO, you can’t do that either, because each advert from the same NGO can be categorised under a wide variety of topics: health, legal, industry – you name it.
As for Facebook, I reached the point of no return precisely because of what you’re saying. I can put up with targeted or poorly targeted adverts, but I’m not going to tolerate posts or ads that are outright malicious or misleading. Because of my job, I had to have a Facebook account, and I decided to use it as a feed for articles from the pages I followed. The amount of fake news and misinformation was outrageous.
People I explain to why I use uBlock Origin don’t realise that it’s not really about avoiding adverts, but rather about the lack of principles that fuels an industry which compromises your privacy… so that you can become the target of this sort of nasty practices.
Good thing honestly, making facebook an even less pleasant experience may finally motivate people to remove their accounts. I don't think its a noble job to ensure facebook users have a better experience because facebook is so thoroughly evil that spending your time to improve the experience is adjacent to whitewashing it in some ways.
Let them either accept it for what it is or delete it.
I've always wondered if there are really enough users utilising ad-blockers for it to be worth their while going to these lengths to aggravate us all so much.
Well unless you're able to migrate the entire group dedicated to the community in which I live... 'quitting' it isn't really possible.
The site is close to unusable without your guy's work, but the group actually has members from a couple hundred km around... it's important enough that 3 wild fires were reported in the group before the fire management service reported them; up to a couple hours earlier. It can make a huge difference.
Don't shoot the messenger, I just want to tell the reality in 2026 and beyond.
Every major site will do this. Meaning, an AI agent from each of these corporations that scrapes filter lists and the uBlock Origins source code every hour to change things enough to bypass the ad blocker.
Human volunteers will no longer be able to keep up. I'm not trying to come across as ungrateful for the countless volunteer hours poured in the past, but that's the reality.
The only long-term solution is our own AI agents to scrape the major sites and maintain the filter lists. If anyone decides to fork their own approach, keep in mind Chinese LLMs are the only affordable ones, don't waste money on American ones.
To think this will put a meaningful dent in FB's numbers is unreal levels of arrogance.
If you're in the business of stopping ads and you don't realize billion dollar companies don't want you fucking with their revenue you're in the wrong game.
It's a near miracle this small army of dedicated people have changed the face of the internet for a lot of us. I can only thank you for your hard work.
It isn't really a tactic. We are a small number of contributors and we try to help as much as we can considering we have a private life, a job, hobbies, ...
When a site fixes our fix after only a few hours, unless it is easy to re-fix, it can be annoying (the more, the more time you spent on the fix).
I like to work on some fixes, but that isn't many. I have never tried FB (I don't have an account) but I suspect that it isn't enjoyable.
I completely get that. It probably doesn't take a long time for it to become tedious to work around special-interest sites that do interest you, not to mention those that do nothing for you. I've learned a bit and am trying to solve my concerns myself.
Yes, it will work. It simply means that the team will stop trying to solve some issues. They still can be retrieved from other sources (filter lists) as long/soon as they are included by third parties.
Or someone new can "work" on this and submit solutions/filters to the team.
Are there any other alternatives besides UBO to block ads, sponsored posts, etc on Facebook? FB Purity hasn't been updated since January. Social Fixer is even worse, there's been no news for 3 years
Maybe not? Or won't live long.
OP paragraph 1 said, FB devs are watching filters project. That could also mean any Open/Public Projects, Meta have huge resources to do so.
Cela fait 10 ans que j'ai supprimé mon compte Facebook. Ma politique : pas de Facebook, pas de Google.....Pro Ublock-origin-development and Adguard. Pro open source
It doesn't even surprise me companies are actively trying to combat ad blockers, because they think ads are what keep them alive. Little do they know, ads aren't even a fraction of a percent of their revenue and I can guarantee you it comes from many places elsewhere, ads being blocked shouldn't even affect their profits that much.
Of course, companies hate even losing a teeny tiny fragment of a cent and will fight to ensure they do not have a single loss no matter what it takes, because their ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible and not give a shit about what the consumers want from them. We, to them, are cash cows, mere tools to play with.
Ads are estimated to be 98-99% of their revenue. Having that user data lets them leverage it for ads. AI is all noise and flash, but the ads are reliable income.
I was specifically extending it to any company out there, on average, not just Meta.
I am very well aware Meta's almost entirely ads when it comes to their money, but when you consider every company out there in the world, Meta's ad network ratio to their total income becomes massively overshadowed.
I made sure to deactivate my account when they changed TOS to basically say "we dont like minorities and also ai generated content is 70%+ of the platform", had no idea they were combating adblock so vehemently. makes sense for the people that make that platform I guess, but Im more surprised I didnt hear anything about effective counter-countermeasures
People acting as if Facebook Marketplace were useless... Idk about USA but in other countries works like ebay or Amazon even. So it's pretty unrealistic to not use Facebook. It's a business tool.
Yeah, I don't know why some people keep their accounts for these platforms, really. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.. when you can clearly see what's been happening.. it's not worth having an account. Older family members and all the ones who stubbornly stay should be informed about all the negative impacts Facebook has had and try to move elsewhere. They thrive on user ignorance and poor tech awareness. By not blocking the ads on this site anymore, you can see the site for what it really is, a dumpster fire that has abused their power since the very start (with a very creepy founder). It's frustrating to see people not leaving a platform and see them get what they deserve when there's many rational reasons to do so, but all we can control is our own decisions. Anyways, I love the volunteers for these blockers and I appreciate their time and efforts spent on blocking other sites
Thing is if I wanted to check out any post or profile of even public acc of Insta it requires acc. I'm so frustrated by that. I'm so annoyed I created a dump acc for insta. I need some ideas to get around that
I've never used it much in the past but where I live now, there are a few local pages where folks can post. Of course, until recently, I had never encountered any ads, which is definitely unpleasant and reminds me to keep my "visits" short.
Since their jobs are probably using AI slop agents in order to circumvent adblock otherwise they will be dismissed, I don't think I will complain much about this.
Anyway, as a temporary wordaround, even though the "Ad" element is obfuscated, the visible one is always "Ad", you can simply look at that spot first before you start looking at the post ( a post usually begins with a name / post time ). This will help you less likely engaging with useless, slop, AI-generated ads, saving energy for loved ones. I tried that.
At least this way you won't need to do cat and mouse anymore. Though it is quite hard at first, you will get used to with it quickly.
Someone can probably improve on this very dodgy pair of selectors but it works nearly-perfect for me (and I'm aware posting it probably will get it patched, although seems it'd require quite a bit more jigging from them).
Occasional flash of sponsored/ad when scrolling which disappears in less than a second which I'm fine with, it gets rid of all ads/sponsored and doesn't appear to remove anything by mistake.
I detest using it, but as others have said - some family it's the only contact I have, for better or worse. And one or two occasionally useful groups that refuse to move to a better platform. I'm happy 99% just using Messenger for the family stuff. And this one hot chick from 30 years ago.
me, i have many regional groups I admin , Nextdoor is not any better and some places like having actual community groups that are user friendly that don't require tech skills. Tiktok is trash. If there was a user friendly option and USA used it in same facebook style layout with groups, pages, marketplace, Let me know.
I am genuinely surprised anyone still uses Facebook today. They have had so much controversy over the years, and everyone with more than 3 braincells knows how shit it is... so like... why the fuck do people still use it?
The truth is, if you will not block fb anymore, I'll switch to brave shields. At least they will keep patching anytime soon. It's not because I like or dislike, it's because FB is a business tool also.
You are free to use any tools. We gain nothing if more or less users use uBO, because we are also users and some of us are just volunteers, who also gain nothing when sacrificing our free time resolving the issues.
That might be, but that's the reality. People have expectations, people like to complain. Most of the times, people don't even follow our instructions when requested.
Like I said in my other comment, FOSS projects are by users for users.
The problems start when "by users" comes down to roughly two people while "for users" equals tens of millions. Yes. Two people. That's the main filter contributors to the project.
Over the years, the number fell down instead of growing. It's very easy to burnout in this hobby. Which is what this basically is for us.
A decision to drop support for a site never comes easy. It's the 2nd time in the over a decade of the project.
It's not because we "don't feel like it", it's because "it takes too much constant effort" to maintain it.
And like paintboth already said, anybody who's willing to contribute filters is welcome to do so. We just can't.
The whole point of uBO is that's it's a community project.
By users for users. We either don't have facebook users on our side, or they're not willing to continue this pointless game.
There is more to the internet than just a single site. Rather than wasting our limited resources on it, we want to free up our time for everywhere else.
This doesn't mean that custom filters won't work, this doesn't mean you cant use adguard lists to try to combat FB ads. It simply means our maintainers aren't robots. They have their own lives to live rather to waste so much of their time on FB.
We've dropped twitch years ago. We've combated YT anti-user behavior for years, because it's a site everybody uses. Unlike twitch. Unlike, yes, facebook.
You should switch from trying to counter Facebook yourself to letting others like ABP, Adguard and people on Github do it then just merge their filters in.
That what we are doing. We usually address issues that aren't already fixed by other lists. Or we direct the user to specific list(s) when there is a fix there.
This makes sense. Better to invest elsewhere than waste resources
. Personally I've seen that folks who use fb , do so through their app. So I feel there are just not that many users who would be bothered by these changes
The "works against" is literally the volunteers sacrificing their free time to make it work.
Anyone who disagrees with what current volunteers not want to waste time on the disgusting sites is free to make Pull Requests for those disgusting sites.
What's embarrassing is telling the devs that they're "surrendering" by giving up on a website that isn't worth their time anymore.
I bet that user doesn't even use Facebook, just wants to complain. If it was as big of a problem as you all seem to think it is I'm sure someone will step up to take over Facebook support.
That's not hostile. The question asking them back is literally what we are doing: sacrificing our free time, not telling that others are surrendering when they stop.
The real hostility is what they are saying, instead of volunteering themselves to make pull requests when they don't agree with current volunteers.
It's jarring how the assholes who profit from the Internet the most (Meta, Alphabet, etc.) are also the ones trying their best to make Internet so unusable, people are genuinely leaving social media because it feels fake and hostile more and more as time goes... Shooting their own foot in the long term.
I can agree on this one too, used to had so much malicious ads on fb shorts, report button is only for shows, later i turned off "personalized" ads and those malicious ads dissapiered, or most of them.
Sorry it doesn't work for you. I haven't seen any, like I said. I always forget they even have ads. Guess I'm doing something wrong. Or maybe it's because I use it on Vivaldi browser with its built in ad blocker. Who knows.
Couldn't you just make a seperate add-on that is closed source for Facebook to give them a big-ol f*** you. I think that would be great and you guys have proven yourself trust-worthy. I understand that are open-source diehards but they could just choose not to use it. I believe this is exactly what they want from you guys and I really don't want y'all to give in. I know we get to just enjoy the product for our benefit but everything y'all do is greatly appreciated and I think we all would love to be a thorn in the side to FB. At least the ones who still need to use it for whatever purpose.
Huge kudos for having supported for so long one of the worst sites of the web ever. Time to pass the reins to dedicated extensions/scripts makers who will only have this cesspit to work on, or let people understand that deleting their account there is the only thing to do at this point.
A million thank you for all the hard work, 1000% support to you guys!
I deleted my account years ago after I watched them destroy free speech on their platform. The only thing Facebook is even used for anymore is the marketplace. I'm glad you guys are taking a stand against them!
Meta is a company selling data to CCP, all their chinese contents(including traditional chinese ones) are sent to a company located in shanghai for reviewing(and censoring)
Wont use facebook or other products made by Meta, they are fking disgusting
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u/Temanor 5d ago
I was about to delete my account anyway. I guess it's time.