In what appears to be a constant back and forth between publishers and ad blocking companies, AdBlock Plus has made the next move. Just a few days ago Facebook announced that they are taking steps to prevent ad blockers from blocking ads on their desktop version of the site. The move made ads get published in a way that is more similar to normal content, which would not get flagged by the ad blockers.
AdBlock Plus, however, just announced that they have made some changes to get around Facebook’s updates. In their notification to users, they said, “We promised that the open source community would have a solution very soon, and, frankly, they’ve beaten even our own expectations. A new filter was added to the main EasyList about 15 minutes ago. You just need to update your filter lists (see below for how).”
They went on to say, “As many of you know, the filter lists “tell” Adblock Plus what to block are in fact the product of a global community of web citizens. This time that community seems to have gotten the better of even a giant like Facebook.”
It almost seems like AdBlock Plus is rubbing the fact that they so quickly got around Facebook’s changes in their face.
This rapid response from the AdBlock Plus community, however, is being matched by Facebook. The company announced a workaround to the changes that AdBlock Plus made, so ads are once again going to be shown on the social network, even for those who use this ad blocking software.
By the time this article gets published, it is quite possible that AdBlock Plus and Facebook will have gone back and forth several more times. There really is no end in sight when it comes to these ‘ad block wars’ that have been causing users, sites, and advertisers significant concern for quite some time.
