Much has changed for the worst since Facebook went public in 2012. The days that Facebook did not bother with advertisements are long behind us. These days your timeline and newsfeed are not only cluttered with ads, but also ‘Pages you may like’, ‘People you may know’, ‘Trending videos’ and many other related posts. Facebook does not offer their users a way to opt out of this new form of advertisements, but, powerful browser extensions do.
Adblock Plus
There are plenty of extensions available for Chrome and Firefox, which claim to remove Facebook ads, but, Adblock Plus can be considered as one of the only trustworthy solutions. Out of the box, it blocks all online ads on the web, and you can easily configure it to block non-sponsored elements.
How to remove Facebook ads
You can install Adblock Plus within a few seconds. After installation, you will automatically be protected against Facebook ads.
- Go to www.adblockplus.org.
- Install Adblock Plus for Chrome or Firefox.
- Block non-sponsored annoyances such as “Games you might like” can be blocked manually within a few clicks.
How to manually remove other annoyances
Other annoying Facebook features such as ‘People you may know’ and/or ‘Games you may like’ can easily be removed by manually adding a few filters to Adblock Plus.
For Firefox
For Firefox, click the red Adblock Plus logo on the bottom-left your browser: select “Filter preferences…” > “Custom filters” > “Add a filter group” > Right-click it and choose “Show/Hide Filters”, and then go to “Add filter” on the right.
For Chrome
For Chrome, right-click the ABP logo in the address bar, and click “Options” > “Add your own filters”.
Then, in the text-box, you can copy-paste the following code:
- To block “People you may know”, “Games you may like”, and “Recommended pages”, paste the following code in the text area: facebook.com##.egoOrganicColumn
- “Games your friends are playing” can blocked by adding: facebook.com##.-cx-PRIVATE-ogAggregationTrendingList__wrap
- To remove “Trending videos”, “Most Shared”, “Upcoming Concerts” or “Games Your Friends Are Playing” from your news feed, paste this: facebook.com##.uiStreamAttachments ._4hh
- To remove “Recently Released Albums”, use the following code: facebook.com##.uiStreamAttachments ._4hl
- To block “Page X is posting about Page Y” use this filter: facebook.com##.storyContent > .storyUnconnectedPost
With the instructions described above, you will be able to block all the sponsored content on Facebook, as well as unsolicited elements that may harm your Facebook experience.