Facebook's media arms race

Is the social platform protecting its rights or taking away others' in the new battle on ad blockers?

Image Courtesy : Al Jazeera

Facebook has declared war against ad blockers and says that protecting revenues for media outlets was a key motivating factor.

Recently, millions of Facebook users who have applied ad blocker systems have found their feeds littered with advertisements they had already opted out of seeing. 

Facebook was behind this action, blocking the ad blockers in order for these ads to appear once again on user feeds. 

With $6.4bn in revenue in the first quarter of 2016, it is clear to see why Facebook is invested in this cat-and-mouse game with the ad blockers and the open-source community that supports them.

Facebook released a statement regarding the ad blocker situation, claiming "user experience" and not much else as a reponse to why blockers have been overruled.

However, some might argue that the lack of transparency regarding the platform's social media streams may have been echoed by the ad blockers themselves.

With ad blockers using "white listing", that is a payment by publishers to keep ads unblocked, is this media battle truly a matter of moral fabric or simply a series of business decisions? 

We take a look at what the Facebook vs the ad blocker battle really means for users, publishers and for Facebook's own business model.

Talking us through the story are: Ben Williams, PR manager, Adblock Plus; Justin Schlosberg, lecturer in journalism and media at Birkbeck University; Lara O'Reilly, senior editor at Business Insider; and Raghav Bahl, founder of Quintillion Media.

Source: Al Jazeera