The boring life of Jerod Poore, Crazymeds' Chief Citizen Medical Expert.

One Weird Trick to Banish Annoying Facebook Ads

Let me be clear: I have nothing against advertising, even the ultra-targeted ads on Facebook.  I make my living from the ads on Crazy Meds.  Crazy Meds wouldn't exist without AdSense and, face it, Facebook wouldn't be free without ads.  The increased use of things like AdBlocker is having a noticeable effect on how much money I make.

What bothers the shit out of me are ads featuring people with the bizarrely exaggerated chests and hips that are usually found only in hentai (Japanese erotic anime) who are selling "weird," "strange," "soon-to-be-banned," or similar secrets for weight loss, muscle growth, financial success, and other popular spam-subject-line miracles.  Although the most common thing they're selling is dating services.  Why they think those women with freakishly huge tits are attractive is beyond me.

In order to provide a higher quality infotainment experience for their customers (i.e. better ad targeting), FB lets you hide specific ads and asks why you don't like it.  So I hid anything featuring excessively top-heavy people and gave rotating reasons as to why I hid them.  I found all such ads to be one of:
  • Obscene
  • Uninteresting
  • Misleading 

Just like some old episode of Star Trek, the conflicting reasons caused the ad serving software to have an aneurism.  I'm now into day three of no ads on my timeline and far fewer ads on my newsfeed.  The first dating service ads have returned after a 72-hour hiatus, but no bizarre models.  Yet.

I doubt this will last much longer.  I've been disappointed by teh Internets too often.  If they are promising weird hentai I expect to see demi-human schoolgirls in skimpy uniforms toting  MAC-10s in charge of hermaphrodites undergoing forced lactation.  I do have some standards.

Try it for yourself.  If there is one group of excessively annoying ads that are essentially variations on the same theme, give FB contradictory reasons why you don't want to see them.