Like Facebook, But Not the Ads? No FAds!

eric — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:44:17 -0600

I like Facebook. I do. The problem I have is with the ads. I'm a happily married man and father and I don't want to see ads targeting me with large-chested women, scantily clad women with sports cars and risque mafia-related ads.

I know a lot of people would say, "Well, don't use Facebook, then. It's their platform and they can monetize it how they want."

I agree. Here's my problem, though.

Facebook misleads users into thinking that closing those ads and selecting one of these choices to classify the ad: Misleading, Offensive, Uninteresting, Irrelevant, Repetitive, or Other will mean you won't see those types of ads anymore. The dialog box states: "Thanks for your feedback. Over time, this information helps us deliver more relevant ads to our users."

Now, this may be true for the future, but it doesn't do anything to date as I still have the same ads showing up over and over no matter how I classify them. If I find an ad offensive or misleading and because of the form they have provided, I tend to expect that I'm not going to see that type of ad anymore. On the contrary, I seem to see them MORE when I do try to get rid of the offensive ones. (I believe this is part of the reson why so many have abandoned MySpace.)

No FAds!

To fix this for myself, I've been working on a stylesheet to load into their my browser to hide Facebook ads. Thus No FAds! was born.

Turn This:

Into This:

To Use

Save the nofads.css stylesheet to your computer
Open your browser of choice and load it as your custom stylesheet.
Viola! No more pesky ads

This is a work in progress and I welcome any ideas on this as I expand it.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with Facebook making money off of their platform. I just have a problem with misleading your users into thinking they have control over the types of ads they see (based on the dialogs Facebook provides). If this changes, I'm more than happy to ditch my NoFAds.css file.

Random Things From This Weekend

eric — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:21:32 -0600

We went to the Dallas area this past weekend for my sister's wedding.

Here's my random thoughts on the weekend:

1. Frisco, TX is a great place to stay; loads of places to shop and look around. The Hampton Inn & Suites is a very nice place to stay while being very affordable.

2. Our children are crazy, but most of the time, it's the good kind.

3. You can sing about IKEA to the tune of "Zacchaeus was a wee little man..." (In reference to #2 above)

4. When the kids got too rowdy in the truck, we threatened to thump them if they didn't settle down. When the other two got wound up again, this inspired our middle one to announce, in a sing-songy manner: "Thump is comin'!" This was said often by all of us from then on.

5. My son is well-acquainted with Facebook, now. Upon an embarrassing episode he experienced right outside the hotel lobby (after the laughter had died down a bit), he said, "Do NOT put that on Facebook."

6. At the hotel, we met a friendly, older gentleman, Jack, who was obviously from New York. He kept going on about how sweet and precious all of our kids were. He got tickled just listening to them talk. Later, when I went to get juice for the kids, He was in the lobby watching the World Series. I learned that he has been rooting for the Yankees all his life. He told me I reminded him of Yankees' first baseman Mark Teixeira. We look nothing alike so maybe Mark Teixeira is a dorky family man, too, I don't know.

7. There is a Hello Kitty store in Grape Vine Mills Mall. Most male children will find it boring. It takes a while for female children to decide on what they want from that store.

8. There Lego store in Stonebriar Mall (Frisco). Most female children will find it okay for a few minutes, but will be ready to leave pretty quickly. It takes a while for males to decide on what they want from that store. The same can be said for their male offspring.

9. Plugging your iPhone into the power strip base of a lamp at a hotel isn't recommended. It fried something in my phone that got it stuck in "Restore Mode". Praise God, we had an AppleCare warranty and the Apple store in Frisco got us an appointment quickly. After trying to fix it for about 30-40 minutes, they gave me a new phone.

9. Getting doused with gasoline isn't a grand experience. It's not the best way to break in brand new shoes (or old clothes, for that matter).