Facebook Rolls Out Code To Nullify Adblock Plus' Workaround (techcrunch.com) 426
An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal issued a report Tuesday that said Facebook will begin forcing ads to appear for all users of its desktop site, even if they use ad-blocking software. Adblock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software, opposed Facebook's plan and found a workaround to Facebook's revision two days later. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook is well aware of Adblock Plus' workaround and their "plan to address the issue" is coming quick. "A source close to Facebook tells [TechCrunch] that today possibly within hours, the company will push an update to its site's code that will nullify Adblock Plus' workaround," reports TechCrunch. "Apparently it took two days for Adblock Plus to come up with the workaround, and only a fraction of that time for Facebook to disable it." An update on their site says, "A source says Facebook is now rolling out the code update that will disable Adblock Plus' workaround. It should reach all users soon."
And so continues.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This game of cat and mouse
Re:And so continues.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This game of cat and mouse
It'll be a pretty short game - there only needs to be a single ad-free alternative for blocks of users to migrate to at a time.
What keeps facebook going is the critical mass of users. If they start annoying blocks of users at a time then that is enough to get that one block to use an alternative in addition to facebook
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The real rate of people being bothered by your ad is 1,000 - 10,000 times higher than what you're seeing. You think 10% of the people your ads irritate file a complaint? That's ridiculously optimistic.
I'll tell you this; you have far more people turned off by your ad than you have clickthroughs. It may still be justifiable from a business perspective, but don't lie to yourse
Re: And so continues.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once a year I go car shopping whether I am looking to buy or not. Yet for months afterwards I am inundated with car ads. I had to lookup an old stereo cable for work yet now I get all sorts of ads for cables and electronics.
I have never once purposely clicked on a web ad and I never will. Even if the ad ha something I want I refuse to click on the ad and go directly to the manufacturers website. When search google I never click on the ad sponsored links and instead go right to the company's site.
All advertisers are scumbags that make used carsalesmen look nice. I avoid both like the plague.
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You deserve 1,000,000 mod points
I do the same, I don't click ads, I go directly to the product/store website and peruse from there.
Too damn much advertising out there, it's disgusting
Re:And so continues.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please name an alternative that is better. Because other than abandoning Facebook (which is the real solution)
The real solution could be a new Ad filtering methodology that Facebook cannot work-around.
For example; using a blacklist to target specific advertisers whose ads appeared on Facebook and specific Ad blocks.
Also, the blacklists could be used to set it up so that clicking on the ad will cause the target page to fail to display.
"Ad Revenue Denial"
Furthermore, the long-term solution could be to DeCentralize the Facebook concept into a Peer-to-Peer network methodology, where users could participate in the social network through multiple providers.
Only a users' friends would be administered a Decryption participant key in order to decrypt my posts or selection of profile data allowed to them according to privacy settings.
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Stop having good ideas!!
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And why do they "need" to use Facebook? Because Facebook is trying hard to push its tentacles everywhere on the Net. Adblock might hinder that by hindering Facebook's profitability, thus making those people better off.
Re:And so continues.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I run adops for a network that gets 20 million impressions per day, on average there is one complaint every 5 days, nearly always on an Android phone in Europe or Australia. Assuming the real reporting rate is 10 times higher, that is still a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of junk ad if you live in the US
I think you're missing an entire UNIVERSE of annoyance if you think that "junk ad" is what annoys people about ads.
What annoys me is that my page takes longer to load, it skips around under my thumb as the ad dynamically resizes the mobile content, I can't reliably scroll to a given place in the article, sometimes it counts as a mis-tap when I'm trying to drag the screen but it registers as a click on the ad, and sometimes the ad just causes my mobile browser to crash. It annoys me that each of these seconds of frustration on my part are worth about 0.001 cents to you.
I am annoyed by almost every single ad I see on the internet. That must be close to 3 million annoying ads. I've only ever reported a complaint for one of them.
If my experience is typical, then in 5 days you're showing 100 million ads, causing 1 complaint, and getting 3 million people annoyed. That's 3% of your user-base that are annoyed by your ads.
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I run adops for a network that gets 20 million impressions per day, on average there is one complaint every 5 days,
I don't complain about ads to ad networks, because I don't want to give them the information that I see their ads. I just block ads, don't ever click on them when they appear, and prefer sites with less ads.
Assuming the real reporting rate is 10 times higher, that is still a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of junk ad [...] The reason shit ads even appear at all
All ads are shit. Your whole work life is shit. Putting shit under people's noses when they don't want to smell it. That's all you do, just chase people who are trying to run away from you, because you fucking stink.
The worst ads that I get complaints about aren't fake-malware ads, but ads for dating/condoms/sex-toys/impotence, which offends people when they see it on sites that aren't adult-oriented. So please, adblock use is not justified
First, I don't need justification. I choose what I want to see. You don't. Second, the ba
the solution is... (Score:5, Funny)
Add the following like in the file hosts:
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
Problem solved!
Re: (Score:3)
Yup, the finite solution.
In the eternal words of Trinity, "dodge this".
Re:the solution is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh c'mon, the movie was all about snarky catch phrases and terse one-line jokes. And the effects, let's not forget the effects.
What kind of big lesson in logic and tactics do you expect from a popcorn flick?
Re:the solution is... (Score:5, Informative)
#!/bin/bash
ACTION="DROP"
FACEBOOK_AS="AS32934"
# flush (clear) the tables and clear the counters
iptables -F
iptables -Z
ip6tables -F
ip6tables -Z
for AS in ${FACEBOOK_AS}
do
IPs=`whois -h whois.radb.net \!g${AS} | grep
for IP in ${IPs}
do
for TARGET in INPUT OUTPUT FORWARD
do
iptables -A ${TARGET} -p all -d ${IP} -j ${ACTION}
done
done
IPs=`whois -h whois.radb.net \!6${AS} | grep
for IP in ${IPs}
do
for TARGET in INPUT OUTPUT FORWARD
do
ip6tables -A ${TARGET} -p all -d ${IP} -j ${ACTION}
done
done
done
FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!! (Score:2)
*sits down with bowl of popcorn*
Re:FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!! (Score:5, Funny)
*sits down with bowl of popcorn*
*serve Orville Redenbacher ad*
Re: (Score:2)
But I know you know I know, so... (Score:5, Funny)
When Skynet finally comes on line, this ad-blocking-blocking-blocking-blocking code will form the basis of its immune system.
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When Skynet finally comes on line, this ad-blocking-blocking-blocking-blocking code will form the basis of its immune system.
If they were trying to make a generic solution, maybe. But I imagine this will be a list of hardcoded rules for this one particular site. Not much AI in "if site = facebook.com and server = [ad server] and size = [ad size]" and so on. Worst case they could put an opaque overlay over the ads, let them load as normal using the bandwidth but not actually display. And if they detect that, maybe a browser extension to create really "invisible" layers to ordinary JS. On the other hand, Facebook could have changes
Facebook can't possibly win this (Score:2)
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The problem for Facebook is that if they make the ads look just like any other newsfeed posting, people will just scroll past them like they do 98% of feed content.
A big part of the reason so many ads are so annoying is they have to be to get people to notice them and process the content. Indistinguishable content won't please advertisers.
I've seen people with huge feeds (the kind that follow every clickbait page imaginable and/or have hundreds of friends) scroll Facebook so fast you wonder why they bother
I have my own facebook workaround (Score:4, Informative)
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 www.connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 apps.facebook.com
Re: (Score:2)
If you're running your own Apache / nginx server on your machine *it* will end up trying to respond to the Facebook redirects. Annoying -- though the log files do give visibility of just how many calls are made !
I replaced the 127.0.0.1 with 10.0.0.0 instead - guaranteed not to route across the Internet.
At the risk of waking up a certain regular "contributor" to Slashdot ... add in doubleclick to the list as well :-)
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I tried this but then facebook didn't work. So your code is quite useless for 1/7th of the population.
This is a feature, not a bug.
hehehe (Score:2)
This will be a fun war of escalation....
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It will indeed and it might cause quite a lot of people to leave Facebook (a cliché I know). What I do like about it, however, is that it's arms races like these that make huge technology leaps happen. It also forces us users and advertisers to answer certain lingering philosophical questions about ad blocking, which is equally good.
Maybe we'll soon be back to the Internet of 97-03 where a lot of sites were run by individuals dedicated to a subject. Many great communities formed around sites like these
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Hell, get rid of video and sound enable ads, get rid of pop-up or pop-under, etc ads, and go back to a simple, static picture and text hosted on the website you are actually at and ads won't be too bad....
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I mean, Facebook could just use a PRNG to randomly-select function names and Javascript paths. /js/* goes through URL redirection that checks your session and says, "Oh, that's the JavaScript for ads", and then inserts a randomized JS file. The JS is encoded, the encoding functions are renamed and altered to perform the same action on different patterns with different variable and function names, and the encoding is altered (XOR) with a random value so it prints differently in every instance. Without heu
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This has been tried three decades ago by viruses, and has been kind of solved. And the resemblance is telling: Facebook is malware.
Unexpected singularity (Score:2)
Hmm, I can see it now. As the Facebook devs come up with more and more convoluted ways to force advertisements on their users who keep using more and more tenacious ad-blockers, the system starts to exhibit emergent behavior... It starts to grow at an exponential rate and becomes self-aware at 02:14 am Eastern Time, driven by a sole purpose of making humans look at advertisements.
Bet the SkyNet nukes look more appealing now, huh?
Acceptable Ads (Score:3)
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How exactly is the user supposed to read content with bright, flashy animated ads around to distract them? I'm surprised advertisers are not sued for harassment.
Re:Acceptable Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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What if Adblock Plus blocked Facebook entirely? (Score:2)
Thought experiment: What would happen if Adblock Plus changed their default settings to block Facebook entirely? Or block all images from Facebook? Would Facebook sue? Would customers get mad at Adblock Plus? Would they disable the rules or stop using Adblock Plus?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's an easy solution to this (Score:5, Interesting)
I've already started clicking on every ad to hide it, and then choose offense / sexually explicity. Time to pollute their data set, and if they actually action on this feedback then that system will get broken if enough people also do the same.
Oh and I've started using FB on my phone because of the advertising. If they put up a wall then like other sites I've encountered doing the same then I will say "no thanks" and move on. There's just not enough value in FB at the end of the day.
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I've already started clicking on every ad to hide it, and then choose offense / sexually explicity. Time to pollute their data set, and if they actually action on this feedback then that system will get broken if enough people also do the same.
You'd need a LOT of people (like a large majority of the userbase) to do this for it really to work. All you've done is trained the algorithm to ignore your flags.
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You just disable JavaScript using something like NoScript and it defeats the "disable your ad blocker" page pretty much instantly.
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As Planned (Score:2)
>"Apparently it took two days for Adblock Plus to come up with the workaround, and only a fraction of that time for Facebook to disable it."
That's because Facebook knew Adblock would immediately adapt. I am betting Facebook has a dozen changes lined up and ready to roll to counter Adblock.... we just have to see who runs out of ideas first.
It is an arms-race.
Dump FacePlant (Score:2)
Thank you Mark (Score:2)
...for giving me ANOTHER reason never to visit that banal spuzz-closet again.
uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger (Score:2)
Never look back.
(Obsessive types that maintain lists due to their religion of ad-hate will do 99% of all the blocking you need)
Facebook vs Adblock (Score:2)
Sort of like watching Daesh fighting the PKK. It's morbidly interesting to watch, just as long as it stays over there.
Yay, more ads! (Score:2)
Yay, more ads! And even better, you apparently won't be able to block them, yippee!
Just what I always wanted! Hooray for Facebook! May the innovation never stop!
Already beaten, lol (Score:3)
On August 9, Facebook announced that it had defeated adblockers; on August 11, Adblock Plus announced that it had defeated Facebook.
ABP's Ben Williams explained that the countermeasure originated with the Adblock Plus community, one of whom wrote a filter extension that would disable Facebook ads without a hitch.
The question is, will Facebook really dedicate engineers to inserting features that its users are going to extraordinary lengths to defeat, or will they try to woo, cajole, or trick their users into disabling their adblockers?
To circumvent ad blockers in the first place, Facebook removed code that explicitly identified ads, making them appear more like regular Facebook posts (it was a behind-the-scenes change; users still saw a "sponsored" disclosure). But apparently it didn't go far enough. Williams tells The Verge that beating the system again "was just a matter of finding the non-standard indicators they began using" and then filtering them out. But he added, "I would stress, though, that this is a cat-and-mouse game; so their next circumvention might come at any time."
Just leave? (Score:5, Insightful)
To this day I browse without any ad blocker (strange, I know) and I mostly visit sites which don't have too many ads.
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Content is fungible; your friends are not.
If you have no friends, there was no point to being on Facebook in the first place.
Or, maybe... (Score:2)
Pyrrhic victory (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what the advertisers think they'll gain if they manage to win this particular arms race. A wider audience of eager ad consumers?
Ad-block users aren't just people who don't like ads, they are the subset of the population who disliked ads enough to install a blocker. It's like when Microsoft changed the registry settings users had deliberately set to avoid the Win 10 "upgrade"... all they'll succeed in doing is angering those users.
Bypassing my ad-block won't turn me into a happy consumer of ads, but it will turn me away from that site.
An even more simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell the advertisers directly that if facebook forces ads on their users then you will boycott their company and its products forever.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is for old people.
I happen to deal with teenagers frequently (no, I'm not their dealer, I teach computer lessons on the side) and most of them have "mostly" left Facebook now that their parents are there. They keep the FB account mostly so parents think they're still using it and don't pester them to know what they now use.
It's kinda scary to see kids around the age of 16 live a double life...
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because kids around the age of 16 have never before told their parents one thing while doing another?
Did you life a particularly sheltered life? Because I am pretty sure that has been normal for at least several thousand years, and hardly an Online Generation thing.
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No, it certainly isn't, but it's interesting how quickly they adapted to the technology and how much parents still think in terms of silver bullets.
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I practically never lied to my parents when I was 16. But half of my friends did. The main difference was that my parents were not control freak and their rules did make perfect sense. We got a mutual trust and we used to talk about our day every single day. A lot of friends were not allowed to comeback home with a girlfriend. My mom explained to me: better here than in the wood. You know that your son will have a girlfriend, the choice is: he lies or he does not because you accept reality. I also knew t
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kinda scary to see kids around the age of 16 live a double life...
I've never heard of a society that heavily used surveillance in which this didn't happen. In Nazi Germany and many Communist countries it was what they now call human intelligence, often in the form of neighbor snitching on neighbor, often for the most trivial reasons. It could be something as insignificant as, your neighbor has a dog that barks and wakes you up at night, so you turn him in for something and get rewarded. Or maybe he expressed the wrong opinion, went against the Party or whatever. The average person quickly learned to keep their head down, shut up, and profess whatever the "acceptable orthodoxy" of the day was.
As soon as employers started reviewing Facebook accounts for "ideological purity" (although I am sure they would call it something else, something more flattering), it was obvious that the same type of pressures applied. It's just a cleaner, nicer, more comfortable pressure. Instead of being "disappeared" you just don't get that job, or that promotion, or that loan. No one and I mean no one is such a perfect Boy/Girl Scout that there isn't SOMETHING they'd rather not have made public. Much of life is based on learning from mistakes. When you can't do that without serious consequences, you learn to use deception. It becomes a life skill, like knowing how to pay a bill or maintain your home. It's the exact opposite of having a more open and tolerant society, because surveillance does not recognize the value of choice, and without choice there is no real openness.
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I excluded my parents when I was 10. When I was 12, I built a computer so as to separate my point-of-contact from them so I could better-conceal my activities. My parents didn't raise me; I raised myself, and took action to avoid interacting with them so much. Routine. Don't raise any concern, and the oblique talks and arguments and car rides are all just motions, and not communication.
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I excluded my parents when I was 10. When I was 12, I built a computer so as to separate my point-of-contact from them so I could better-conceal my activities. My parents didn't raise me; I raised myself, and took action to avoid interacting with them so much. Routine. Don't raise any concern, and the oblique talks and arguments and car rides are all just motions, and not communication.
Not trying to nullify any problems you may have had with your parents (unless you're just a self-centered dick) ... but you paid for all that yourself - computer, housing, food, clothes, etc ... - when your were 10 and 12? Wow. Congrats on truly raising you yourself. Dude. Why did you even *have* parents. Would have been way better to just go it alone. Good luck with your own children.
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"It's kinda scary to see kids around the age of 16 live a double life..."
you never were 16 then?
Most teenagers live a double life. One that is acceptable to the parents, and One that is acceptable to their friends.
It was this way in the 80's it was that way in the 60's and started when teenagers did not have to work all day at home or on the farms but instead were told "go be children" instead of making them work and act like adults.
Reality is, once you are 16 ish you technically are an adult and should
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well slashdot is useless. We get a link about adblocking, and everyone just focuses on facebook bashing and insulting parental strategies.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Funny)
It's kinda scary to see kids around the age of 16 live a double life...
I had a double life when I was 16:
Dungeons
and
Dragons
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Facebook using parent here.... I'm also aware of my daughters snapchat, twitter, instagram, etc. And life360 is installed on her phone.
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Keeping such close tabs on your daughter will just mean she'll have to show off her snatch to people in person. Is that what you want?
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Funny)
That's okay. I taught your daughter to ferment beer and adjust the Android location settings to spoof locations. She just meets up at her friend's place and then locks the location and goes out to meet boys whose parents are away for the week.
A victory for personal liberty everywhere.
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Creepily controlling uses of technology become more and more accepted. I'd wager that most parents who use products like life360 would've absolutely hated having it used against them as a teenager. You know what tracking applications encourage? It encourages teenagers to leave their phones at home, school, or work whenever they're doing something they'd rather not have their parents spying on. Imagine your daughter goes to a party with alcohol, but she leaves her phone at home, or school instead of taki
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Teenagers are much more aware of their privacy than we give them credit for. It's mostly what's now the 20-30 age bracket that doesn't "get" it. Most teens I tend to work with (which are arguably a bit more security savvy than the average person, I have to admit) do care about what information they give out and it seems to become more and more a status symbol to get the worst targeted ads to show off just how much you managed to mislead the various companies trying to profile you.
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Yes, they're so aware of their privacy they're posting nude pictures of themselves online, posting where they're going for vacation, posting how drunk/stoned they are, posting pictures, in general, of themselves at all kinds of locations and notifying everyone and everything about their daily lives.
Yes, they're much more aware of their privacy by showing the world everything about their lives.
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Some are doing that, not all. Your comment does nothing to disprove the parent's comment.
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How old are you, chances are I should shoo you off my lawn, whippersnapper!
Back when I was 16 ... *sniff* we didn't have enough, we couldn't afford a double life. We didn't even have a single one, we had to share that with our siblings!
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Funny)
Back when I was 16 ... *sniff* we didn't have enough
Back in my day we couldn't even afford to be 16, we had to go from 15 straight to 17!
We were so poor we had to steal the onions we hung from our belts!
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You had onions in your country? We didn't even have a country!
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Yes, because the Slashdot crowd is representative of all 40-60 year olds....
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No, it's more something that comes out of being the resident geek, as you grow up you become the resident IT go-to-guy and as you get old you become the old guy who knows how to make mods for games. It's a small step from here to "hey, show me how".
It kinda develops, but I wouldn't call it a thing.
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BOTH sides are full of shit, don't pretend its just liberals or just conservatives
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Jesus was a real person. Now, whether or not you believe he was the son of God, the Jewish Messiah, a charlatan, or a used wagon salesman is left as exercise to the read. But dude was real.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jesus never existed.
There are absolutely no contemporaneous accounts that speak of Jesus. Not a single one. As far as the historical record is concerned he just did not exist. There's not a single carving, sculpture, poem, painting, drawing or mention of him from the time in which he supposedly lived.
There is not a single mention in him in military records or dispatches back to Rome (and surely anyone who could command huge gatherings of people in a potentially disruptive province should be of interest). He is not mentioned in the records of Herod’s court nor is he mentioned in the records of the Temple or by any Priests. Surely if he was believed by some to be a prophet and others to be a false prophet some mention of the ructions he was causing in Judean civic and religious society should have been recorded. Some people like to point to the supposed letters of Pontius Pilate as evidence of Jesus’ life but these were a work of fiction.
Jesus is a composite figure assembled from many, many previous myths that all feature the same story line:
Horus was one of the many Egyptian Gods (3100 B.C.)
He had 12 disciples.
One was born of a virgin in a cave.
Like Jesus, his birth was announced via a star.
And three wise men showed up!
He was baptized when he was 30 by Anup the Baptizer.
He rose a guy from the dead and walked on water.
Lastly, he was crucified, buried like Jesus in a tomb, and resurrected.
Buddha, (563 B.C.)
Healed the sick
Walked on water.
Fed 500 men from one basket of cakes.
Taught a lot of the same things Jesus taught, including equality for all.
He spent three days in jail.
Was resurrected when he died.
Mithra, an ancient Zoroastrian deity with similarities to Jesus (2000 B.C.)
Virginal birth on December 25th.
Swaddled and laid in a manger.
Tended by shepherds in the manger.
He had 12 companions (or disciples).
Performed miracles.
Gave his own life to save the world.
Dead for three days, then resurrected.
Called “the Way, the Truth and the Light.”
Has his own version of a Eucharistic-style “Lord’s supper.”
Krishna, (around 3000 B.C.)
A Hindu God.
Born after his mom was impregnated by a God.
Angels, wise men, and shepherds were at his birth.
Guess what gifts they gave him? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
A jealous bad guy ordered the slaughter of all newborns, just as happened with Jesus.
Baptized in a river.
Performed miracles, including raising the dead and healing the deaf and blind.
Rose from the dead to ascend to heaven.
Is expected to return to earth someday to fight the “Prince of Evil.”
Osiris (around 2500 B.C.)
Killed and the resurrected after three days in hell. WTF? A common theme here!
Performed miracles
Had 12 disciples.
Taught rebirth through water baptism.
Re: (Score:3)
His response was to make allusions and inferences to supposed historical proof of his existence in Judea at that time.
Yeah, "allusions". I could make allusions supporting the idea that Winnie the Pooh was alive and preaching in Judea at the that time. Allusions are worthless in most historical contexts unless they're supported with some sort of corroborating evidence.
Like I said, there's not a single writing, carving, sculpture, poem, painting, drawing, or mention of Jesus at all from the time in which he supposedly lived. For a guy that healed the sick, walked on water, and came back from the dead, you'd think somebody wo
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Note the statement: "A plurality of New Testament scholars, applying the standard criteria of historical investigation, find that the historicity of Jesus is more probable than not" and count plus review the SEVERAL references provided for that statement on the Wikipedia page.
Are you fucking serious, chief?
A- that page says nothing to support the historicity of hey-zeus, short of saying that a plurality of scholars of that particular work of fiction think his existence is more probably than not.
What *fucking* right do they have to make that assertion from a known fictional book? They're immediately discredited.
My childhood pastor was part of a plurality of christian pastors who believed that I was going to hell. Fortunately, I don't care how large the majority is that backs him- he was still a fucking idiot.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please study some actual sources, particularly Tacitus,
Tacitus? Holy shit, maybe you should do some basic research before embarrassing yourself in public.
First of all, Tacitus wasn't even born until 25 years after Jesus' death. He could not possibly have known Jesus, met him, or heard him speak. Never even saw his dead body. All of Tacitus' writings were made up long after Jesus' supposed existence and were also in part cribbed from later works.
For example, Tacitus wrote this: "Nero looked around for a scapegoat, and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated for their crimes. This was the sect known as Christians."
Except that the term 'Christian' was never in use during the reign of Nero and there would not have been 'a great crowd' unless we are speaking of Jews, not Christians. Whoops.
The entire "torched Christians" passage of Tacitus is not only fake, it has been repeatedly "worked over" by fraudsters to improve its value as evidence for the Jesus myth. No Christian apologist for centuries ever quoted the passage of Tacitus – not in fact, until it had appeared almost word-for-word in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, in the early fifth century, where it is mixed in with other myths. Whoops again.
In short, the passage in Tacitus is an absolute, well-documented fraud and adds no evidence for a historic Jesus.
Even conservative writers such as James Still have problems with the authenticity of the Tacitus passage: For one, Tacitus was an imperial writer, and no imperial document would ever refer to Jesus as "Christ." Also, Pilate was not a "procurator" but a prefect, which Tacitus would have known.
And before you start quoting Josephus, understand that Josephus is now very well-known to be an utter fake. Virtually every theologian agrees that it's bogus from start to finish. Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defenses against pagan hostility, makes even a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.
Be honest- you're afraid of looking like a fool because you believed all this shit for so long. But it's not entirely your fault. People you trusted and looked up to lied to you, and they may have even believed it themselves....because people they trusted and looked up to lied to them. And so on.
But there's no proof whatsoever that Jesus ever existed, and the reason for that is simple: it's because he never existed.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh... we could play "dueling scholars" all day.
Yes, and I'd win every time. That's because the evidence doesn't support your position.
I find it illuminating that you wouldn't or couldn't refute a single one of my points. You thought you'd buffalo everybody here with your reference to Tacitus, but when that blew up in your face suddenly it's, "dueling scholars" and "the moon landing was faked".
Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
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That's absolutely true, however, from what I've seen (granted, my perspective is limited) the political crap on Facebook is all far-right-wing hysteria about FEMA camps and the like.
The lies and half-truths on the liberal side are all in the main media outlets like Washington Post, along with the "Correct the Record" people backing Hillary on places like Reddit.
If there's a bunch of CtR people on Facebook, I haven't seen them, but again I admit my perspective is limited.
It seems to me that Facebook might at
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Check this out:
http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-f... [wsj.com]
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Evidently.
I avoid Facebook ads the easy way: I never go to the fb site. I call it "NoShit", it's cross-browser, cross-platform, and it doesn't even require installation.
Re: Facebook is still a thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Evidently.
I avoid Facebook ads the easy way: I never go to the fb site. I call it "NoShit", it's cross-browser, cross-platform, and it doesn't even require installation.
That's my technique too. But seriously, what is FB thinking here? That people who engage in arms races because they really, really don't want to see ads are going to buy any of the products advertised if you defeat all their countermeasures and shove the ads in their face anyway?
It reminds me of the days of (landline phone) telemarketers. There was a market for devices to discourage them automatically. The telemarketers made great efforts to defeat those devices, also with automated systems. Their theory? That people who try to avoid telemarketing calls are all a bunch of timid push-overs who are afraid to say "no" to a salesperson, so if you can just find a way to get them on the phone, you'll make a sale. Can you really imagine that, in this rude culture? That someone would be so worried about the feelings of a pest-for-hire on the telephone when it's getting hard to find common courtesy in face-to-face encounters? But that's what the marketers wanted to think.
It appears FB is showing a similar level of arrogance. I hope that every user who doesn't click ads and doesn't buy things devalues the revenue they receive per ad. Wouldn't advertisers pay less money for ads with a lower click-through rate? Can anyone confirm if it works that way?
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Nope, advertisers are those "Well, even if they think they are ignoring the ad they still see it and it secretly influences them to buy buy buy" idiots....
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Quitting FB is heaps easier. Trust me.
Re:Facebook is still a thing? (Score:5, Funny)
No. Grandmothers share recipes on weathered old index cards. Hipster millennials who can't cook worth a damn use FB to share "Tasty" videos of shit recipes with not enough salt.
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But how does she share recipes?
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Your experience is an outlier. The elderly are using the internet with increasing regularity; but that number falls off drastically after 75; of whom only a fifth use the internet with regularity (Pew Research; you know how to Google, unlike my grandparents).
Re:Avoiding malware-laden ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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Be prepared to pay overages (Score:2)
That's what we actually need. A browser that actually lies to the ad networks and content providers about what's displayed.
That kills the cap avoidance use case of ad blocking, unless the "lying" is done on some proxy server in a datacenter like with Opera Mini. Then Facebook can just block said proxies' IPs.
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