This week has been an emotional roller coaster for people who hate seeing advertisements on Facebook, as the social network has been in an intense battle against ad blockers, and it is still not clear who will win.

The fight with AdBlock Plus began on Tuesday when Facebook released an update that supposedly made the code for its ads indistinguishable from regular posts, making them harder to block.

“We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software,” Facebook said at the time. “When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads. As we offer people more powerful controls, we’ll also begin showing ads on Facebook desktop for people who currently use ad blocking software.”

The creators of popular browser extension Adblock Plus criticized Facebook’s actions in a blog post, calling the move “anti-user.” Less than two days after Facebook’s update, Adblock Plus announced that it had discovered a workaround that would once again block ads on Facebook, and all users needed to do was insert a short snippet of text into their Adblock Plus filter. Unfortunately for ad haters, Facebook quickly found a way to plug up that hole. Unfortunately for Facebook, however, Adblock has already found a new hole that requires only an updated filter.

Adblock Plus: “We merely enforce the will of the people”

“We’re disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don’t just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch. “This isn’t a good experience for people and we plan to address the issue. Ad blockers are a blunt instrument, which is why we’ve instead focused on building tools like ad preferences to put control in people’s hands.”

Meanwhile, AdBlock plus continues to call Facebook’s tactics anti-user, and argues that users should be allowed to have the choice of using an ad blocker.

“The important thing is that at its heart this is a contest between consumers and Facebook … we called it a cat-and-mouse game, but it doesn’t mean we like it,” the Adblock Plus team said in a blog post announcing the newest workaround.

“Anger or blame toward ad blockers is misdirected; we merely enforce ‘the will of the people’ (via the open-sourced filter lists). Should Facebook circumvent again, I’m sure another solution will arise from that open source community. And so on … What is the solution? We invite publishers and websites to work with Adblock Plus and our whitelisting process, rather than circumventing consumers’ expressed concerns.”

Image courtesy of AdBlock Plus