If you are a regular on Facebook or visit the site at times, you may have noticed the odd-ad slipping past your content blocker’s defenses. Even with the most powerful tools out there, uBlock Origin for Firefox comes to mind, it happens that you may see advertisement on Facebook.
This is not a one-time slip-off, but the result of a battle between a small team of developers and Meta’s billions. The cat and mouse game has come to an end according to a new post by the uBlock Origin team on Reddit.
According to the post, the content blocker won’t support Facebook going forward. The reason given is that Facebook is countering any bypasses the uBlock Origin team finds for blocking ads and trackers on the site.
For example, Facebook was changing ad labels and markers frequently on its site to cause content blockers to miss them entirely. While content blockers managed to find ways to block ads anew, Facebook then developed new bypasses to show ads once again on its site.
In the end, the team notes that it is too small and lacks the resources to go against a billion Dollar behemoth like Meta. While ads may be blocked for the time being, it sounds as if the next bypass won’t be countered by the team anymore.
This means that Facebook users with uBlock Origin installed will see ads on the site in the long run. It is probably fair to say that most other content blockers, regardless of whether they are native or installed as extensions, faces the same issue.
There is not much that you can do about it. Maybe other content blockers continue their fight against Meta and work most of the time, but that would mean some testing to see which do and which don’t. It is the first time, to my knowledge, that a major content blocker has lowered the flag.