Oh yeah aunt Greta, I’m still friends with you, but it’s so weird how I can’t see your anti vax “facts”

It sure might be, but the one friend who got blocked is just casually posting stuff from his personal life, nothing spammy going on there. Either facebook is screwing with me, or they are playing out some friend’s posts in the ad-network stream so you are actually losing some genuine content. That would be evil (and totally something Meta would do), but I really couldn’t care less.

I took a peek at my feed for the first time in years. It’s all junk lol, no one I care about is posting anything

The only thing worth seeing is my local Buy Nothing group, but there are other services popping up which do something similar.

It’s probably made-up garbage. If they knew my ad-blocker had actually blocked a friend, I’m sure they would have found a way not to get anything blocked.

Or alternatively they are now displaying some friend’s posts on the same channel normally reserved for ad networks so they are indistinguishable via software? But then it should be way more than one, unless this is some early A/B testing crap.

They probably are detecting your ad blocker, and choosing to block random posts as a strange kind of disciplinary behavior.

I saw sometimes ads that was claiming that one of my friends like that product too. My bet is on that.

Since user posts aren’t ads, yes! But wouldn’t be surprised if on their end what appears to be normal user posts (and are) are served through the ad system, so that it actually works that way.

Yes same for me, whatsapp is pretty much the only “genuine” communication channel. I only keep a presence on facebook since I have to move countries frequently for work, and the “expats in $city” groups are quite helpful to find people, and then move the discussions off-platform :-)

I'm trying to encourage people to move to peertube. Not much content there, but i'll reward what intersting content I find. You should too

There are other ways to contact business. Don't let that be an excuse to give Zuckerberg your data

Someone on here linked to odysee.com which appears to be a better version of YouTube so far, even Louis Rossman is there talking about YT’s new adblock situation as one example: odysee.com/…/youtube's-adblock-war-is-backfiring-…

It’s YouTube (piped when I can but the servers seem to be down) and old.reddit.com for me.

Better late than never

Best decision I ever made

Definitely. Ads are eye cancer at best, and infiltration channels for malware at worst. Compromised ad networks pumping out executable code via javascript (or back in the days, Flash) are still a major source of trojan infections.

if ads were just static PNGs with a link you went to if you clicked I wouldn't have ever bothered. but ads became a major malware and tracking risk so plugging that security hole became mandatory.

Yeah, there’s no proper screening process and companies aren’t help liable for malicious advertisements. It’s the Wild west out there, and companies take money from anyone due to there being no consequences. Internet advertising has no proper screening process like network television.

It’s true. I work in a computer shop and we see literally thousands and thousands of dollars lost from people clicking on ads that look like normal buttons (things like “Download”, “Next”, etc). And not just the elderly either. Everyone has a a combination of inputs to get scared and comply. Folks that are otherwise extremely competent and savvy can get scammed too.

The best security you can have online is adblockers, only beaten by using trusted websites.

And just to add to your important point, Ad Blockers are really Content Blockers. They allow the user to delete annoyances that have nothing to do with advertising. We should all start calling them Content Blockers.