Facebook announced on Tuesday that it plans to block ad blockers on the desktop version of its website, in order to serve ads to all of its 1.7 billion users.
This move could anger many users of the social network who have installed an ad blocking application (198 million users according to PageFair) to avoid invasive or bulky ads, as well as malware.
In a blog post on the company's website, Facebook's vice president of advertising platform Andrew Bosworth acknowledged that for dealing with malicious ads, ad blockers, or AdBlockers, "have been the best option to date."
He also acknowledged that Facebook – like many content publishers – makes most of its revenue through advertising (although a large portion of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile devices).
To appease those dissatisfied with the company's "democratic" decision, Bosworth said that Facebook will provide more options for customizing preferences for displayed ads.
“If you don’t want to see ads from a particular genre, like travel or cats, you can remove that genre from your ad preferences,” Bosworth explained.
“We’ve also heard that many people want to be able to opt out of seeing ads from businesses or organizations that have added them to their customer lists. So we’ve added tools to allow them to block them.”
