Facebook to bypass adblockers

Instead it will offer ad targeting opt-outs so users can exclude certain ads from their feeds.

In a blog post on its site, Andrew Bosworth, vice-president of ads & business platforms hit back at the adblocking companies.

He said: “Some ad blocking companies accept money in exchange for showing ads that they previously blocked — a practice that is at best confusing to people and that reduces the funding needed to support the journalism and other free services that we enjoy on the web. Facebook is one of those free services.

“Rather than paying ad blocking companies to unblock the ads we show — as some of these companies have invited us to do in the past — we’re putting control in people’s hands with our updated ad preferences and our other advertising controls.

“We believe that these expanded controls give people a better experience with advertising on and off Facebook. We also know there’s more work to do, and we’re continually listening to your feedback to make advertising better for everyone.”

Because this is currently only happening on the desktop version of Facebook, mobile adblocking will continue to work.

Adblock Plus responded to the announcement and said: “This is an unfortunate move because it takes a dark path against user choice. But it’s also no reason to overreact: cat and mouse games in tech have been around as long as spammers have tried to circumvent spam filters.”