We all have the same simple question: “Why am I seeing so many ads on Facebook all of a sudden”? Unfortunately, it is impossible to fully remove all the ads from your newsfeed, as it is their revenue source, so the platform (Meta since recent rebranding) made sure that ads are displayed no matter what. Even if you create a new and blank account with no personal information, there still will be ads. So let’s find out what we can do about it.

Option 1: Get an ad blocker

I personally don’t mind seeing 1 or 2 ads once in a while, but Facebook newsfeed has gone out of hand recently, I must say, and almost all I see there is ads, sponsored ads, “recommended posts”, “suggestions”, etc. It’s basically every other post… but can I see what my friends post, or the pages I follow?

So the simplest solution when you’d like to get rid of online ads is getting an ad blocking program, it can be either in desktop application or browser extension format. The most popular and the easiest format, of course, is an extension. If you google it, there are plenty of free extensions - I already have one, probably the most widely used, AdBlock. I see there’s some Ad Blocker for Facebook specifically, and for Chrome browser (which I am using), so let me throw it in as well to see.

Same extensions are out there for Mozilla Firefox, Safari and even Microsoft Edge browsers - just add your browser name to the search, try a few extensions and you’ll see which one suits you. After I got my AdBlock I noticed that sponsored ads were no longer appearing in my Facebook feed, but still plenty of other annoying suggestions.

There’s also a lot of talk about custom filter lists users can add into ad blockers. For example, I've found an article by AdBlock employee Rhana Cassidy that has a section with filter list examples for FB ads, so I can try it out. Basically I should open AdBlock options, go to the Filter lists tab and find Custom lists. Then copy any of these URLs with code snippets inside, paste them and click Subscribe here.

But it failed, I tried all three, not working. This is because Facebook/Meta is constantly counteracting any attempts to hide or block their ads: today a new ad blocker feature/script/list may emerge, tomorrow FB shuts it down. There’s still a chance that some ad blocker extension will introduce an upgrade that will trump those ads, who knows.

In addition to ad blockers in the form of browser extension, you may also get it as a desktop application - the old-school way. All major ad blocker products have Windows and/or MacOS versions.

Bottom line: an ad blocker won’t hide all Facebook ads, or even may not hide any at all, but it will be trying.

How to Block Ads on Facebook

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Option 2: Adjust ad preferences

So, since we cannot fully remove ads and all those recommended posts on Facebook, another solution is to customize it. That is to make it less personal (if you don’t want advertisers to know a lot about you) or vice versa - make ads more relevant to you, it depends on user preference.

Go to your account icon in the top right corner, click it and select Settings & Privacy and then Settings. On the page with all the various Facebook settings, find Ads from the left panel, closer to the bottom. These are the Ad Preferences that include 3 tabs: Advertisers, Ad topics and Ad settings.

In Advertisers you will see the names of companies whose ads have been displayed in your feed (mine is blank because this is a test account). The first option you’d have here is to select Hide Ads from certain advertisers.

Then in Ad Topics you can select the exact ad topics you’d like to see less. Advertisers often use this route and it is logical, if you sell sportswear, you want to show ads to people who are into sports, who are sportsmen themselves, etc.

But if you, as a Facebook user, are annoyed with a given topic of ads, you can find it and set the “See less” preference. For example, I don’t need ads about god and religion, so I find this topic and select See Less. The number of overall ads will remain the same - so I’ll see some other ads instead of religious ones.

Next, go to Ad Settings to manage how your user activity data is used by Facebook advertisers. Well, at least to input your preferences on how this should be done, I’d say, since Facebook still isn’t fully transparent on how they use this data. But they do use it, for sure.

Anyhow, open every sub-section, read carefully and take further actions. “Data about your activity from partners” - so Facebook has partner websites and receives browsing history from them, especially when users make purchases.

The main option you have here is to allow it or not: yes - if you want relevant ads, no - if you don’t want Facebook to get such data on you. But again, we don’t know exactly how this works.

“Categories to reach you”, that is user profile information: your job, location, relationship status, hobbies, etc. By default all of them are ON, to no surprise, but you can disable it one-by-one. There might be other categories based on your activity, so check there too. Similarly, you might be included in certain audience lists, based on your online interactions, so check “Audience-based advertising”.

“Ads shown off-Facebook” - this is interesting. So, user data exchange between FB and partners has 2 ends: it gets user browsing data outside to serve ads, but it also hands user activity data on FB to its partner websites. If you don’t want targeted ads based on your FB activity, select Not Allowed.

One more thing I’d like to highlight is Feed preferences (Settings & Privacy - Feed preferences). There are several options there too that might be helpful. You can set Favorites - people or pages to see first in the feed, Snooze someone - that is to stop seeing their posts temporarily, or Unfollow - and stop seeing their posts or ads permanently.

Finally, you always have the last and the most decisive action at disposal - hide the exact ad or post, say it particularly makes you crazy. Click the three-dots button, top right next to a post or ad, and select Hide post (for this specific one) or Hide all. Same with ads - you can Hide ad, “Hide all ads from this advertiser”, and even report it to Facebook if you think it’s too extreme, sensitive, abusive.

Option 3: Get the Opera browser

Well, one more solution, although also far from 100% efficiency, is the Opera browser. How so? It has a built-in ad blocker both into mobile and desktop versions. It is designed to stop ads and website trackers, ao it could be sort of an extra layer of protection.

Just install Opera (it is free, btw) and enable the ad blocker. It can be done in 2 places: here in the top bar on the right one of the icons is called Privacy & Protection; or from Settings - Privacy and Security. There are only 2 toggles to switch.

The ad blocker has just 2 settings: manage exceptions and manage lists. The first one is basically a whitelist - where I can specify web pages where I don’t want ads to be blocked, and the latter is for filter lists I’ve mentioned in the first chapter. Tech savvy users or programmers will be able to utilize this feature by uploading their custom scripts here.

Another benefit of Opera is that it also comes with a VPN - go to settings to enable it. It can also be used to disguise real personal information from advertisers. By default it is set to the “optimal location” connection, and overall includes Americas, Asia and Europe, but without specifying a country or IP address.

Option 4: Get an adblock app for mobile

Since most users nowadays visit Facebook from their smartphones and mobile devices, one more option we can try is ad blocker apps. I’m opening the Play Store and searching for ad blockers. To be frank, I’ve already tried a few apps, including mobile browsers, and I wasn’t impressed at all. Let me try some different apps, say Adblock Fast and Adguard, since I’ve already used its desktop version.

With Adguard you should be aware that while launching, it requires one of two browsers to be on the phone - Yandex or Samsung browser, without either of those you won’t be able to proceed. So I got the Samsung browser, and now I enable Adguard. Checking the filters… base filter, tracking protection filter, social media filter - all are On, others are Off, although Annoyances I’d rather enable, then search ads, language filters - I leave as is.

I’m launching the Adblock Fast app and going to my Facebook app again. No ads so far, as I’m scrolling and scrolling and scrolling more. Next, I’m checking through the browser too… and here, after a bit of scrolling my feed, I get sponsored ads.

So, the overall impression I get from my experience with ad blocker mobile apps, including this little part I’ve shared with you, is that such apps are only partially efficient, and perform better when I’m using the Facebook app instead of visiting my page from the browser.