If you thought your free ad-blocking software would protect you forever, think again. Facebook is joining the ranks of the growing list of online platforms and publishers that have launched efforts to thwart ad-blocking on their Web sites. Facebook executives say they are reaching the upper limit of how many advertisements they can comfortably show users without scaring them away. Now, the Silicon Valley giant is expanding its rapacious advertising operation into the final frontier: users who have taken deliberate steps to avoid ads altogether.

Facebook users who have installed ad-blocking software on their browsers will now be served with ads on the social network’s desktop Web site, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. Programs like AdBlock will be rendered useless, effective immediately, according to Andrew Bosworth, the vice president of Facebook’s ad and business platforms. At the same time, users will now have greater control over the types of ads they are served. “Rather than paying ad-blocking companies to unblock the ads we show—as some of these companies have invited us to do in the past—we’re putting control in people’s hands with our updated ad preferences and other advertising controls,” Bosworth wrote. Compared to other publishers, which rely on third parties to deliver ads, Facebook is in a unique position where it can make online advertisements indistinguishable from other content because it loads ads directly to the social network itself, The Wall Street Journal notes.

While a slew of high-profile media companies—including the Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times, among others—have previously introduced similar measures (for instance pop-up windows that request readers “white list” their U.R.L.s), Facebook’s decision to get on the anti-ad-blocking bandwagon is notable for several reasons. It is arguably the strongest stance an individual tech company has taken against an increasingly ubiquitous software, but it is also indicative of where Facebook is headed as a company. The social-media juggernaut posted $6.24 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter, mere months after announcing that it was rolling out targeted ads to even non-Facebook users on third-party Web sites and applications within its “Audience Network.” During its second-quarter earnings call, Facebook said that the volume of ads delivered to users was in a “good zone.” Facebook C.F.O. Dave Wehner stressed that the company was focused on not overwhelming users with invasive ad formats, such as video pre-rolls, CNBC reports, foreshadowing Tuesday’s announcement. If Facebook wants to increase its advertising revenue without overwhelming users with too many ads, it needs to deliver ads to people who previously weren’t seeing them. Blocking ad-blockers is a logical, if potentially controversial, solution.

Facebook undoubtedly runs the risk of angering users who it knows are blocking ads for a reason, which is why the company also overhauled its ad-preferences feature in an attempt to “address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software,” Bosworth wrote. Whether or not the additional controls pacify the anti-ad crowd, one thing is clear: the free ride is over.