Adblock Plus Defeats Facebook’s Anti-Adblocking Measures

Facebook announced earlier this week that it has developed a new method of serving ads to users who have ad blockers enabled on the desktop version of its website. It will now be able to show those users ads even if they have the ad blocker switched on. Adblock Plus, a popular extension used by millions to block ads, has announced today that it has already defeated Facebook’s anti-adblocking measures.

Just yesterday, Adblock Plus called Facebook’s decision to bypass ad blockers “anti-user.” Today it signals that it’s ready for battle and will not back down regardless of how many times Facebook tries to create a workaround for this.

Adblock Plus’ Ben Williams mentions in the blog post that this back-and-forth battle between the ad blocking community and online services has been going on ever since ad blocking was invented, “so it’s very possible that Facebook will write some code that will render the filter useless.”

He also pointed out that this cat and mouse game between the ad blocking community and Facebook will continue, “If that happens, the ad-blocking community will likely find another workaround, then Facebook might circumvent again, etc,” he added.

It goes without saying that Facebook will respond to this by making changes to the way it delivers ads because it’s determined to not let the ad blocking community triumph in blocking ads on the social network. Let’s not forget that ads are Facebook’s primary source of revenue even if the bulk of them are served to users on mobile.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: ad blocker, Facebook