Facebook made it to the news a few days ago when they announced major new ad policies. The company had introduced a way where users would be showed ads even if they had ad blockers installed. While the company thumped their chest over it, and announced it with all their show and pomp, Adblock Plus, the leading name in ad-blocking technologies found a way around it. The company claims to have bypassed all Facebook technologies.
Adblock Plus has said that they are already gearing up for Facebook’s next move. The company wants to ensure that they are ready for Facebook’s response to this move. “This sort of back-and-forth battle between the open-source ad-blocking community and circumventers has been going on since ad blocking was invented; so it’s very possible that Facebook will write some code that will render the filter useless — at any time,” Adblock Plus’ Ben Williams writes in a blog post.
Facebook, in an attempt to bypass ad-blockers removed the code that made ads visible as ‘ads’. With the code having been removed, the ads now appeared on the code as regular Facebook posts. This made it difficult for most ad-blockers to distinguish between ads and regular posts. However, AdBlock Plus found a way around it. Facebook probably knew that they would soon be outsmarted by some ad blocker. However, for this to happen in two days was perhaps beyond Facebook’s imagination too.
Facebook had said that they are attempting to bypass ad blockers because their ads were not annoying. The company also gives the users a much greater control over what kind of ads they want to see than most other platforms. Facebook would have a hard time surviving without ads as most of their revenue comes with the help of advertising. AdBlock Plus has released a before and after image of the ads on Facebook now being blocked.