The linked post points to a Reddit note from the uBlock Origin side saying Facebook has become too labor-intensive to keep filtering. Meta keeps rewriting the feed with deeply nested, obfuscated markup and “Sponsored” labels that are hard to target reliably, so maintaining Facebook-specific rules now burns effort that could go elsewhere. Readers who only know ad blocking from generic banner rules may miss what changed here: this is not about one missed selector, it is about a first-party platform that controls both the app and the ad stack, and can change the structure continuously until volunteer maintainers give up.
Most people took that as a rational surrender, not a scandal. The dominant view was that Facebook is no longer a normal website with ads on top. It is an ad machine with just enough social utility left to trap people through groups, Marketplace, school updates, local alerts, family messaging, and small-business discovery. That made “just leave” emotionally satisfying but incomplete. Plenty of people said they had left years ago and were happier for it. Just as many said they still need Facebook for local groups, emergency information, selling used goods, or because entire communities and customer funnels live there. The practical conclusion was grimly simple: Facebook has real network effects in specific local and commercial niches, but those same niches are exactly why Meta can afford to be openly hostile to user control.
A second strong theme was that blocking visible ads is only part of the problem. Even if you hide sponsored posts, Meta still gets the behavioral data from what you view, pause on, search for, and click across its ecosystem and beyond. Several comments pushed back on purely visual “cover it with a black box” ideas for that reason. Others replied that masking still helps by corrupting attention signals like dwell time, even if it does not stop collection outright. Either way, people treated tracking and malware risk as the deeper reason ad blockers matter. Ads were described not just as annoying but as a surveillance channel, a resource drain, and still sometimes a malware path.
The most forward-looking part of the conversation was about where the arms race goes next. Many expect ad blocking to move from hand-written selectors to models that look at the rendered page, identify ad-like elements visually, and either hide them, rebuild the page in a clean client, or drive a headless browser that extracts only wanted content. That idea came with caveats. If you detect ads after rendering, you may still fetch the tracking and malware payloads. If platforms respond by making all content look like ads, or all ads look like content, the distinction moves into product placement, creator sponsorships, and algorithmic boosts rather than obvious sponsored cards. That is why some people saw regulation, not tooling, as the only lasting answer.
The discussion also sharpened the business point behind Meta’s behavior. Facebook does not need ad-blocked users to click. It gets paid on impressions, profile quality, brand exposure, and attribution models that are opaque enough for advertisers to keep spending even when outcomes are fuzzy. That makes even ad-resistant users worth fighting for, especially if they are affluent or technically literate. Put bluntly, the commenters’ landing zone was that Meta is spending engineering effort where its incentives are strongest, while uBlock Origin is correctly refusing to waste volunteer effort on a platform structurally built to nullify it.
If your product or community still depends on Facebook, assume the user experience will keep degrading and defensive tooling will get less reliable. Start building alternate channels now, because the thread’s practical consensus was that Meta’s incentives make this arms race unwinnable at the filter-list level.
Overwhelmingly negative toward Facebook and broadly sympathetic to uBlock Origin. The mood was resignation mixed with anger: Meta was seen as acting exactly like an ad-driven monopoly would, while uBlock’s retreat was viewed as a sensible choice in an unwinnable volunteer-vs-corporation fight.
Key insights
01
Facebook remains sticky through local utility
What keeps Facebook alive is not affection for the feed. It is dependency on Marketplace, neighborhood groups, school and library updates, emergency alerts, and small-business discovery. That changes the usual advice from “users should leave” to “communities need replacements first,” because the strongest lock-in is hyperlocal coordination rather than entertainment.
If you run a community, school, local service, or marketplace workflow on Facebook, treat that as operational risk. Stand up email lists, RSS, simple websites, or alternate group channels before the next policy or product change makes migration urgent.
Hiding ads is not the same as stopping surveillance
Masking ads on the screen solves only the visible annoyance. Meta still learns from what you load and often from what you linger on, so the cleaner visual result does not erase the profiling pipeline. Even so, obscuring ads can still deny a valuable signal by replacing genuine attention with noise or zero engagement.
Do not treat cosmetic ad removal as a privacy solution. Pair it with account isolation, cookie controls, separate profiles, or total avoidance if your goal is to reduce tracking rather than just improve the page.
Facebook’s advantage is structural. Because Meta serves its own ads inside its own product, it can freely mutate markup, split labels across nested spans or SVG structures, and break selector-based rules faster than volunteers can repair them. That is much harder than blocking third-party ad networks on ordinary sites, where reusable patterns and shared infrastructure still exist.
Expect first-party platforms with integrated ad stacks to be the hardest surfaces for rule-based blockers. If your tooling relies on static selectors, budget for constant breakage or move up a layer to reader modes, extraction clients, or rendered-page analysis.
Several comments explained why Meta fights so hard for people who seem least likely to click. Impressions still matter for brand recall, attribution is murky enough that advertisers keep spending, and privacy-conscious or high-income users can be especially valuable audience segments. In other words, an ad-resistant user is not worthless inventory. They may be premium inventory.
If you buy ads, be skeptical of platform reporting and attribution claims. If you build on ad-funded platforms, assume the platform will optimize for exposure and profiling even when direct click behavior looks weak.
The most credible AI path was not “LLMs will save us” in the abstract. It was using vision or page-understanding models as a fallback that finds ads on rendered pages, then trains cheaper rules or powers alternate clients. But comments also nailed the core limitation. If the ad has already loaded, you may have hidden the nuisance while still paying the privacy, security, and bandwidth cost.
Watch for hybrids, not pure AI magic. The useful architecture is likely model-assisted detection feeding deterministic blockers or custom clients, with prefetch prevention wherever possible.
A distinct camp argued that once Facebook becomes too hostile to clean up, the right unit of blocking is no longer the ad but the company. People described DNS-level and firewall-level blocking of Meta domains and IP ranges as the only reliable way to avoid the ecosystem entirely. That is less an ad-blocking tactic than a governance decision about what software and services get network access.
For managed devices or privacy-sensitive environments, consider domain or network-level policies against Meta rather than relying on browser extensions alone. The tradeoff is blunt but predictable.
The “Facebook is dead” line flatters a tech bubble more than it describes reality. One reply pointed to billions of active users, while another noted that the product has shifted from friend feeds to groups, messaging, and Marketplace. That does not make Facebook good. It means many critics are evaluating the wrong use case when they declare it irrelevant.
Do not let your own habits become market analysis. If you compete with or depend on Meta, segment by actual use case and age cohort instead of assuming the platform’s cultural decline means its utility has vanished.
A few comments pushed back on the idea that Meta can print money from ad loads regardless of outcomes. Serious advertisers do care about performance, and large brands or agencies often negotiate around cost per click, attribution, and funnel stage. The useful correction is that ad economics are messy, not fictional. Facebook cannot ignore results forever, even if its measurement systems are opaque.
When thinking about platform incentives, avoid the simplistic model that only viewability matters. Revenue durability still depends on advertisers believing the spend works, which creates openings for regulation, auditing, or independent measurement.
One commenter argued that using an ad blocker on a service you choose to visit is a form of bad faith. In that framing, the site offers a bargain of free access in exchange for attention, and modifying the display to dodge the bargain is taking value without payment. Most people rejected that premise, but it usefully surfaces the moral and legal frame platforms themselves rely on when they escalate the anti-blocking fight.
If your business depends on ad-supported access, expect a growing clash between user autonomy and platform terms of service. You need a clearer value exchange than “accept surveillance or leave” if you want paying or loyal users over time.
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