How to block/remove advertisements from FaceBook and MySpace

Posted on August 28, 2007 at 3:48 pm

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could browse your FaceBook or MySpace without all of the ads and clutter? Personally, I don’t mind text ads, but I can’t stand those annoying animated flash banner ads that takes longer to load than the rest of the page!!! Why wait an extra few seconds on every page for ads to load up if you’re not going to click on them.

I have found that FaceBook is not quite as terrible as MySpace, where I can barely see anything on my profile page with the header ad, the text ad, the Featured Profile ad, and the footer ad! Luckily, there’s a great tool that you can use that’s part of FireFox to stop all of those annoying ads.

GreaseMonkey, if you’ve never heard of it, is a add-on for FireFox that allows you to manipulate the way a web page is displayed by using small pieces of JavaScript code. So, for example, you can replace buttons, add items to a web page, or add completely new functionality to a web page. To install GreaseMonkey, you’ll need FireFox.

Once you have installed GreaseMonkey, you’ll see it under Tools and also a small monkey face icon in the bottom status bar.

Make sure the Enabled menu option is checked. Now go to the script resource web site at http://userscripts.org/ to install the FaceBook and MySpace scripts. Simply click on the Install Script button at the top right and wait for a minute or so while it installs. You won’t receive a message acknowledging that the script was installed, but you can check by choosing Manage User Scripts from the Tools - GreaseMonkey menu item. If it’s listed there, that means it’s installed.

For me it’s done wonders! Here’s what my MySpace profile looks like without the ad removing script:

There are three huge ads in this screen shot and there’s another one that’s a little lower, but not shown here. Once I installed the script, now my profile page looks like this:

Far better than what it was like before! Same thing applies to FaceBook, though I really don’t mind FaceBook’s ads since there really is only one and it’s off to the side.

There are many more ad blocking scripts that you could install, such as for eBay, Amazon, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Digg, GMail, Mininova, Anandtech, Rapidshare, Photobucket, IMDB, etc, etc. These will make your browsing much cleaner and much faster!

If you want to block ads while browsing any web site, you can install a FireFox add-on called AdBlock Plus, which blocks most advertisements on the Internet automatically. If something is not blocked, you can right-click on an image and tell it to block that ad manually!

If you want to block text ads from Vibrant Media, AdBrite, Kontera, LinkWorth and EchoTopic use this GreaseMonkey script called Disable Text Ads. Using these four to five add-ons and scripts, your web browsing experience should be ad free!

Any questions, post a comment!

Technorati Tags: block ads, how to block ads, block internet ads, ad blocker, block advertisements, remove ads, how to stop ads

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» Filed Under Computer Tips

6 Responses to “How to block/remove advertisements from FaceBook and MySpace”

Eddie said on : November 15th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

Is there a way to remove the myspace ad banner for Internet Explorer?

IGE OLUWASEYE said on : December 5th, 2007 at 2:25 am

Dear Sir

I really enjoyed reading through your website and those vital information which I found here.

Please, I wish to make an enquiry if it is possible to block stolen laptop from usage. My laptop was stolen some months ago and want it to be blocked from usage.

Is it possible? Kindly let me know via my e-mail address. Thanks.

IGE

Weasel said on : January 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

To Eddie:

Yes, it is possible to do the same thing in Internet Explorer. Here’s how:

Go to Tools->Internet Options, and click on the “Security” tab. Next, click the icon for “Restricted Sites” and the “Sites” button should become enabled. Click that, and it’ll bring up a dialog where you can add individual domains and sites to IE’s blocking list.

The other part is that you’ll have to log into MySpace, and “View Source” on the HTML, and figure out where/what domains the ads are coming from. I think they’re generated by Javascripts which come from “x.myspace.com” but I’m not 100% sure.. It’ll vary from site to site.

Example: view source on this page right now. You’ll see right below the AdSense ads, a script coming from “ads.pubmatic.com” — You could add that domain to the blocked sites list, and voila! You’d be viewing this page minus the AdSense block. But DON’T DO IT HERE!

Of course, you don’t want to do that because you’d be depriving our beloved webmaster Computer Guy of his ad revenue, which defeats his entire idea of monetizing this site, which leads to his overhead costs coming out of his own pocket, all because he wants to provide you and I with this helpful information. So don’t do it here, I was just showing you as an example.

MySpace is a poorly-designed ad-whoring juggernaut, so your blocking of a tiny fraction of their zillion-dollar-a-day ad income won’t make much difference to them, but it’ll make a world of difference to the web browser of you, the end user!

–Weasel

Lisa said on : March 1st, 2008 at 8:49 pm

Excellent, thank you!

Jimmy said on : April 8th, 2008 at 6:24 pm

Um, hmmm. Here’s how to block ads, but just please don’t do it on our site.

I don’t think so…….

dhen said on : April 24th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

I want to block the ads on my profile on tagged, but I don’T know how…please HELP me! I don’T mind if it is just text ad but I hate those ads with disgusting pictures I want them OUT on my page! T_T