It used to be easy and obvious to figure out how to block advertisers on Facebook, so then Facebook changed it. Here is how you do it now:
In the upper righthand corner of the ad, there are three dots; click the three dots and choose “Why am I seeing this ad?” from the pull-down menu that appears. As if you care / don’t know.
(screenshot from Facebook.com)
This will bring you to a little screen that says “It’s because you are a cash cow for us and we make our money by selling your eyespace to advertisers!” In the upper righthand corner of that justification, click on Options, then click on “Hide all ads from this advertiser.”
(screenshot from Facebook.com)
Do this one hundred billion times, until you have blocked all possible advertisers on the planet Earth. This is a lifelong task. Just keep doing it, knowing you are working for good.
On my own Facebook page, and I don’t know if this is the same on yours, I’ve noticed that I get a whole bunch of new ads, and I block them all and it feels like there are a million of them, and then suddenly all is quiet and there are no ads to block. Time goes by. I forget about ads. Then, one day: ADS EVERY THIRD POST AGAIN. I get back to work, systematically blocking them all. It feels like there are a million of them and I never be done. Then, quiet and no ads. And so on.
My tireless energy and fervor for blocking individual advertisers, despite the endless cyclical futility, reminds me of my childhood best friend’s elderly neighbor, who could be seen in the dawn hours hacking with righteous vigor at individual dandelions, not only in his own yard but all over the neighborhood. The futility of the task did not defeat him. The battle was its own justification, and its own reward.
Thank you! I’m going through a rough personal time and every single ad seems to be targeted towards that area of my life. I’ve been reporting the ads as offensive but it doesn’t work. I’m excited to start blocking advertisers!
There’s an app (? add-on? I’m not sure what it’s called), called Fluff-Busting purity, easy to google, easy to find, easy to install. You can add it to your FB and then use it to tell FB not to show you (among other things) any ads. And then … you’re done. No ads. Love it. I love it so much I have actually given money t it (it is free, but you can contribute if you feel so moved. After seeing how it improved my FB experience, I did).
Same observation (cycle of no ads then lots) and same action plan. Someday! I will! Block! Them all!
I’ve gone a different way with it, and I’ve begun curating my ads. I click on specific ads that don’t annoy me (for me, that means things like ModCloth or EShakti) and click around the site for a few seconds. For the next week or so, I get only those ads in my feed. As long as I remember to click on them occasionally, it’s just FB adding pretty dresses to my feed, rather than a bunch of ads about Single Cowboys for Jesus (a real ad I got many years ago) or whatever.
I do this too, with Modcloth! Better yet, I put a dress that I am thinking about in my cart, and BOOM- I see the dress everywhere for a few days. Helps me decide if I really want it.
Another selective ad viewer/vetoer here. I don’t mind ads, which are a way of paying for the service I use, but I am super-hostile to intentional weight loss ads. I used to click on the box that said I didn’t want them because they’re misleading (which they are), but then I’d get a patronizing message that it’s hard to see things you don’t agree with, so now I just say the ad isn’t relevant to me.
While I know it’s an exercise in futility, it’s really satisfying to do. I’ve been doing this every time I got to facebook
I think I don’t use FB enough to notice the ads. I continue to be memorized by the ads that pop up while I am on my email. How do they know what I just looked at in Amazon? (don ‘t answer that – just an exaggeration). I thoroughly enjoyed the comparison to the elderly dandelion stalker. HA!!
I’m printing this out: “The futility of the task did not defeat him. The battle was its own justification, and its own reward.”
And framing it. Not kidding. :)
I do the same with the FB ads. Gives me a little thrill of victory every time.
(I also tackle the dandelions in my yard one at a time even though there are hundreds of them. My husband thinks it’s an exercise in futility, but every time I uproot one, I think to myself, “That’s ONE LESS STUPID DANDELION I have to look at and now it can’t spread million of seeds for next year.” Sometimes, if I am very diligent (and I often am not), I can purge the entire yard of them for a good week or two.)
Right now I’m trying to decide whether or not to buy one of those mattress-in-a-box things, so I deliberately like or click on a few ads so I can see them all for comparison. (And if you have any recommendations for Canadian mattresses, send them my way!) My problem is when I eventually buy something the ads continue ad nauseum, so I’ll use this little trick then!
And I LOVE dandelions – their flowers are good for bees, and the greens were great to pick and give to my guinea pigs until they both crossed the rainbow bridge this past year, and I find their yellowness and tenacity very cheering. I’d be pretty unhappy if a neighbour took it upon him or herself to root them out of my lawn!