Creator of Top iOS Ad Blocker Pulls App After Two Days 236
An anonymous reader writes: One of the most important aspects of the iOS 9 launch was that ad blocking software is now allowed on the App Store. Ad blocking apps rocketed to the top of the store's rankings, led by Marco Arment's Peace. A day afterward, Arment talked about the cognitive dissonance he felt from having his software blocking the (admittedly well-behaving) ads on his own website. Now, Arment has pulled Peace from the App Store, saying its success "just doesn't feel good." He continues, "Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit. Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren't black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn't serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we're going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app."
Arment also posted a link with detailed instructions on how to get a refund, if you already bought the app.
Moral outrage! (Score:4, Insightful)
...over something most of us really don't care about. Even in full view of the fact that certain websites exist exclusively on ad based revenue and may stop existing if we are successful in blocking ads. Let them die or be replaced by something else.
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Agreed. I'm not seeing myself losing sleep over the presence of an ad blocker - doubly so on phones, where the stupid ad often blocks content outright.
(Slashdot, this means you, BTW. That stupid little 'popup' ad at the bottom of the screen actually blocks content.)
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I have to leave the ads turned off or slashdot crashes safari on my ipad.
Responsible advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not advertising. The problem is the mechanisms that are in use. Responsible advertising can be done easily -- just source the image or text from your own website. Don't send the user's browser haring all over the intertubes, track them, or otherwise do anything except talk about, and link to, the product being sold.
There are a lot of invested people out there right now that are trying to tell you that ads as they are constituted now, are a good thing, because "that's how content is paid for." This is either disingenuous or bewildered. Content can be paid for without abusing the site visitors. Ads can be served without bringing in other network excursions. No one has to be tracked.
Evil practices we can do entirely without today, without "breaking the internet", include (but are not limited to:
o roll-overs: If I didn't click on it, I DIDN'T WANT IT. Ads, menus, "keywords" -- anything
o tracking -- not unless I say you can
o network traffic outside of the content provider -- just don't
o unnecessarily splitting content over many ad-bearing pages -- I hate you
o pop-up "continue to web site in x seconds" -- will not watch, let finish, or click. EVER.
The solution is right in front of all of us. All you have to do as a web site owner is grasp it. You'll instantly have happier visitors, visitors that stay longer, visitors that are MORE likely to click on your ads.
You'd also be VERY smart to ask users to select between text and graphic advertising. Best thing Google ever did was host text ads. Worst thing they ever did was lose focus on them. Learn from that. Let users select text ads if they prefer them. I would be *much* more likely to click on a polite text ad than the sanctimonious garbage the ad companies are inflicting on us these days.
Re:Moral outrage! (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, this is the same argument as the argument for a la carte cable TV.
The cable companies, not wanting us to stop paying, cry "But a la carte means there will be fewer channels, because some won't survive a subscription basis!" Well, do we need those channels then? Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?
If a website doesn't provide content valuable enough to generate revenue or to be supported by the crowd, perhaps it doesn't have a good argument for its own existence?
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Have you seen sling tv? They claim it is a la carte but you still can not pick only the channels you want. They are going to hang on to packaged plans until it kills them.
What surprises me the most is that afaik no one has ever even made an attempt to sell true a la carte service.
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There's a reason no one has ever tried to sell true a la carte service, and it's because the content providers force "bundling" with their channels. Disney, for instance, is well known for forcing providers to bundle a bunch of crap in with ESPN - their deal with the cable companies is bundle or don't get it at all. Almost every content provider does this in order to sell their less popular channels.
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I really wish they wouldn't spend quite so much on in house content.
I have noticed I am just not sure what to do about it yet.
I still have plenty of things to watch on netflix.
But I know the production of orange is the new black probably cost me several other shows. (no I don't watch that show but its heavily advertised)
I do not and have never had hbo
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Industry should take a look around and notice now many people cut the cord. The old rule that because customers have nowhere to go the companies can keep screwing them with impunity no longer applies. If we cut the cord on cable, we can cut the cord on all those pointless web sites too.
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If a website doesn't provide content valuable enough to generate revenue or to be supported by the crowd, perhaps it doesn't have a good argument for its own existence?
You do realize that this argument is what led to the current wasteland that we call "broadcast TV", don't you? It is what leads to good programs being cancelled after five episodes or less, as network execs study the Nielsen's and other viewer numbers.
Cable et.al TV was supposed to be the way to get around tyranny of the majority when it comes to television. The web certainly shouldn't be the next victim.
Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?
Because the people who watch OWN are, in turn, subsidizing the fixed costs of the channels YOU want t
Re:Moral outrage! (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?
Because the people who watch OWN are, in turn, subsidizing the fixed costs of the channels YOU want to watch.
That's right. It's just a hunch, but I bet that people who want ala carte the most have narrower interests, and thus *that* programming needs subsidies more than OWN ( for example).
Started this comment intending to make an "in Soviet Russia" joke (OWN subsidizes you) but now I can't go through with it.
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If I had cable, my monthly subscription fee would subsidize all the barely-qualifies-as-content crap I don't care to watch while they cancel the few things I do...and they have ads. wtf? Pay for ads? How is this justified again? Fuck it. I'm not paying $100+ a month for ad ridden services. Put ads in it and it's worth, at most, $0 to me. Maybe less as I'd like to bill them for my time spent watching/sifting through ads.
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Thing is, there's a lot of good speciality channels that
Re:Moral outrage! (Score:5, Insightful)
Those specialty channels are still part of packages so far. But they've degenerated into a wasteland of reality garbage. Have you looked at the lineup of The Learning Channel [tlc.com] lately? I dare you to justify those shows as educational or informational in any way. Pretty much all the the Discovery channel shows are junk not; as are those on the other channels owned by discovery. The Science Fiction channel is now Syfy and produces Sharknado and ECW wrestling instead of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG1. And you can't even make the joke that the History Channel should really be called the Hitler Channel anymore... not unless the Ice Road Truckers are really searching for a secret outpost of the Third Reich up in northern Canada.
Basically, the bleak future you describe is already here. So why not go ahead and decouple the packages and put those channels out of our misery?
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Well frig If I was paying for the discovery channel as an individual channel and saw cash cab was going to be on every day the only hours I was home to watch tv I would probably drop that channel.
I wouldn't have the scifi channel either WWE, ghost hunters and some kind of makeup show? Where did all the good scifi shows go?
It seems quite apparent that apparently only idiots still have cable else they would have to have something watchable on.
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It has nothing to do with the fact that some channels can't survive on their own. This implies that the cable companies are taking a loss but keep them anyway to benefit the customer (which is obviously bullshit).
The actual reason for selling cable channels in bundles is that it is more efficient in a broadcast model. Cables companies could generate one (or a few) datastream(s) and simply send them to everyone (similar to OTA broadcast). If a customer doesn't want the Oprah channel, it's not as if any re
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But then they would then have exact numbers of who watched what and I bet they would find the vast majority don't want to watch crap like survivor or ghost hunters.
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You just want a free car. C'mon, admit it.
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No but at this point I miss seeing those flashing but quiet and not malicious (ok misleading) "YOU'VE WON A NEW CAR"
They really weren't that bad also:
XKCD new car https://xkcd.com/570/ [xkcd.com]
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So the app author was in a quandary. Make money from selling the app, or make money from serving up undesirable malware (aka, advertisements). Serving up ads takes much less work so that's the choice he made.
Re: Moral outrage! (Score:5, Insightful)
Marco Arment had no such issue with worrying about losing ad revenue.
1. The Deck ads that he uses are very tasteful, not intrusive and what good ads should be.
2. He is already rich - he was the first employee at Tumblr and made out pretty well from his equity when it was sold to Yahoo.
3. He also made some money from selling Instaper to another company after it was one of the early successful apps for IOS.
4. He created one of the most popular podcast apps for iOS - Overcast - and he posted his first year's income.
5. He has one of the most successful Apple related podcast (80,000 unique listeners) - Accidental Tech Podcast - it's only three people involved and going rates for a podcast with that number of listeners is at least $2500 per spot with four spots per episodes.
If he said he didn't feel morally right about it. I believe him.
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You want to make money using ads? put some actual effort into it...
Re:Moral outrage! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or they could just stop being assholes with obnoxious-as-hell ads that degrade my experience, slow my computer, eat an inordinate amount of bandwidth, require plug-ins, or inject malware. When web ads were just a static gif banner, or even an image in the sidebar; I never used to block them. Google AdWords are also fine. And I have a fairly large whitelist on my desktop ad-blocker of sites I do want to support and, critically, are not scumbags about their advertising. But the first time I see any of:
- pop-ups
- pop-unders
- overlays
- interstitials
- automatically-playing audio or video
- any sort of graphic that follows, or is triggered by, the movement of my mouse pointer
- Some of the other rage-inducing stupid javascript or HTML5 tricks
- Flash or Java for any reason
I have no hesitation whatsoever to pull the site from my whitelist and let its ads goto the devil.
I get that many sites rely on ad revenue to pay the bills. And philosophically, I don't object to being advertised at. I don't even mind targeted ads, so long as they're well-targeted and not insulting. (i.e. Don't show me ads for Microsoft or any of its products.) But it's all about respect. If the site respects me, by refraining from the behaviors I enumerated above, then I respect it by not blocking its ads. If the site disrespects me; well, screw 'em.
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You sir are an idiot.
You can simply not click on the ads, and you get a website for free. Whats going to replace it is a website that doesn't exist. You won't pay for it, so it won't have any money to operate, so it won't exist.
Do you pay for a slashdot account or use an ad-blocker?
Yea ... I thought so.
You'll cut off your own nose to spite your face, jackass.
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Not sure who you were replying to but if it was me.
Slashdot thinks I am excellent! No adblocker needed.
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Slashdot says I don't need ads, though I never took them up on the offer.
I don't want the ads on my page, they don't interact well, they sometimes play video or make noise, they sometimes display content that is inappropriate for the location I am at, they are sometimes hosted on machines that apparently are located on mars and hang up rendering of the page, they often try to pop up, over, under, around, sideways and generally interfere with the webpage, there are literally hundreds of reasons why Internet
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Even in full view of the fact that almost all websites exist exclusively on ad based revenue and may stop existing if we are successful in blocking ads. Let them die or be replaced by something else.
there, fixed that for you.
i know, if you don't like their ads, why don't you stop consuming their content? oh, but no one gets hurt right? it's just bits right? websites do need to be hosted, and use resources that cost the owner money.
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Youtube. If it was ad free.
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No not unless It was part of a general news subscription service. say $5-$10/mo gets divided among the sites based on how much I use them. Maybe something like Flattr?
Slashdot has considerable value, or can have (Score:2)
I would if they fixed the moderation. No problem. Slashdot at its best is easily the best site on the Internet as far as I'm concerned. It's just rarely able to get there, and specifically because the moderation is for shit. Great anon comments are buried from word one and very rarely brought to light; great logged-in comments get buried by "I disagree" morons; meta-moderation does *zero* to recover these lost comments because the entire effect of meta moderation is on future act
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There's a handful that I entirely would.
For sites that provide a service, or sites which provide new (good) content on a regular basis, I wouldn't mind paying a subscription for them. The two main problems are getting the audience in the first place, and all the sites that are useful but you might only hit once or twice in your lifetime when you were looking for that thing.
But ultimately I don't have a problem with ads either in principle... if only they wern't so shitty. Back in the 90s when sites would ha
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Content creators I care about. Webcomics, YouTube channels.
Fortunately, Patreon emerged as a solution to this.
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I would most certainly pay them a couple bucks a month to have no ads, but it has to be reasonable.
and that's the problem. it wouldn't be reasonable, and the reason is that the revenue they can make from ads vastly outweighs the revenue they can get from trying to get a small number of people to subscribe to their content.
i don't need to prove that. the proof is empirical. how many websites support themselves through subscriptions? why not? is it because no one has thought of it before? is it because it's hard to accept digital payments these days? or maybe it's because people don't like money ... or bet
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Sure. Certain ones definitely. Not much mind you, but I'd wager it'd be a lot more than they get from my ad impressions.
There are probably 5 or 6 forums I regularly visit. I'd be willing to do $1 per month for those.
I already subscribe to Netflix, and am a backer/sponsor of several smaller websites and podcasts (as well as a few Twitch streamers).
I don't mind paying for content - as long as its ad-free and interesting.
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BBC news service I would subscribe to. They don't have such an option though as it's funded from fees in the UK and I'm in America. American news is in a shambles, but I never visit them anyway. If someone comes along and says I have to pay or not visit any of the fluffy web sites out there then I'll move on. The important sites don't have third party ads anyway.
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I pay a monthly or yearly subscription to several sites that ask for it. I like the fact that I'm directly supporting the content, and it gives me more of a connection to the sites and community around it.
Google selling rankings (Score:2)
Google sells rankings right now. You can buy your way to the top of any particular search you want.
Am i the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but did Doubleclick recently write any big checks recently?
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Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but did Doubleclick recently write any big checks recently?
Hahaha, it seems pretty ridiculous that somebody that is writting an ad blocker app doesn't know who it works, isn't it?, it's like, oh noes, my app is blocking all ads... well yeah, you wrote it dummy.
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially since the database he was using was from Ghostery. So testing on the desktop would reveal obvious & easy issues, like blocking a revenue source, early on in the development.
Of course, none of the content people want to talk about the cost to users (security/tracking, bandwidth fees, viruses, autoplay ads). They only want to talk about the negative to THEIR pocketbooks. Very hypocritical of them. I've had several of them block me for pointing it out because they just can't see through their own point of views.
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I think he said that was coming in v2.
But he did say this while first thinking about it:
"I was therefore faced with a decision about The Deck. I had to either:
- Omit The Deck from Ghostery’s database, carving out an exception for the advertiser used by me and many of my friends.
- Enforce Ghostery’s database consistently, potentially angering my own site’s advertiser and my friends who use it.
And once I looked at it like that, it wasn’t a difficult decision. It’s uncomfortable,
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I don't see why it was difficult at all. Why not create an exception for a good ad network? As you find more, exclude them also. Make a stand for ad networks that respect users. Why is that a difficult choice at all?
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no but google probably did
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Was not "bought off" (Score:5, Insightful)
It don't make any sense that money was at the root of his choice, at least not his being bought off.
For one thing, he was already making a lot of money outright, and could probably have raised prices.
For another, what good would it do to buy him off? There are a flood of content blockers now, you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle.
If you read his blog I think you'll find that he really does ave concerns that are not monetarily based. Those concerns making sense or not is another matter, but I'm pretty sure the choice to pull the app had nothing do with with him being paid to do so..
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Maybe he was bought off by not having his legs broken with baseball bats.
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There are a flood of content blockers now, you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle.
that's exactly why a payoff does make sense. he was first out of the gate, and attracted the attention of ad providers. being not dumb, he realizes there will be hundreds of ad blockers better than his in a matter of weeks. take the easy money.
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I would respect him more if he just said "Money. It was money."
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He had the number 1 paid app in the app store until he pulled it. Money would be a reason to keep it on the app store.
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:4, Interesting)
He had the number 1 paid app in the app store until he pulled it. Money would be a reason to keep it on the app store.
I think it would have take him years to get the same amout of money Google could offer him in only one check.
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You assume that Google would only have to offer one check. It doesn't take a genius to adapt GPLed ad blocking software for iOS in xcode. If you offer a first check, then you'll need to offer 10 checks, then 100, then 1000...
And only one pain in the ass has to refuse the check...
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($2.99) x (70%) x (~10k downloads) is something easily matchable by most advertising agencies.
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
So... after the time coding and testing, getting to a releasable product, he's just now realizing that a program he wrote to block ads indiscriminately... blocks ads indiscriminately? Like he didn't realize his own site was part of $everywhere_ads_are_served? And he's just now getting the "moral" implications of the code that he specifically wrote to do what it does?
Unfortunately giving him credit for being smarter than that means acknowledging the reasons he states may not be entirely truthful.
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Your post made me think of Oppenheimer for some reason....
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:5, Informative)
Marco Arment is (almost certainly) already set for life after Yahoo bought out Tumblr awhile back, since he was the #2 employee/lead developer at Tumblr for a number of years and had been granted a LOT of stock in it, which likely became worth millions following the sale. He's had decent success since then as well with Instapaper (a very successful iOS app which didn't feel like developing any more and sold off), The Magazine (which was at the time a slightly profitable Newstand app for iOS which looked to be on the decline so he sold off), and now Overcast (a very successful iOS podcast client which he hasn't sold off (yet)). All of which is to say, it's doubtful it's about a check getting written.
He's been doing a lot of public hand-wringing over this topic in podcasts and on his blog prior to the release of iOS 9, since most of his income right now is from his podcasts and his blog, both of which are supported by ads. Even so, he definitely doesn't stand beside the tracking and other practices that advertisers are engaging in these days, which is why the ads he serves don't use them. Likewise, most of the folks in his corner of the blogosphere use ads from the same ad network (The Deck), which doesn't use tracking scripts, so he's been taking flak from his friends (e.g. John Gruber of Daring Fireball) for developing a tool that hurts all of them.
Re: Am i the only one... (Score:2)
As I've already posted. Marco is not exactly a poor developer struggling to support his family. He made a few million at least when Tumblr was sold to Yahoo from his equity stake being the first developer for Tumblr.
Re:Am i the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it does.
Its not that he didn't know his website's ads would be blocked, its that he didn't realize how dramatic the effect would be for his revenue stream.
Once he realized that it would crush his revenue stream completely, he then realized that 'hey ... blocking all ads may not be the best idea, it might actually be bad for some people and legitimate products because ... I'M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IT HURT'
He just had a realization when he felt the effects himself. When he realized he was shafting himself out of cash when he wasn't being an 'evil advertiser' or anything, he realized that he was nuking it from space instead of maybe a pistol or two.
Sometimes we don't immediately fully realize the effect we have on others until we see it directly for ourselves. Thats all this was.
Wonder who paid them off? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry but that's what this looks like to me.
Bad apples. (Score:4, Insightful)
Like how the saying goes a few bad apples can ruin the whole batch.
I don't mind unobtrusive ads but popunders,interstitials,click redirects and malware are too much.
I use an adblocker because of sites like those, however most blockers operate on a whitelist policy unless you go out of your way to not block the ads on a website they are blocked by default.
Sites that have polite advertising aren't being singled out they just happen to be collateral damage from a few bad apples.
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closer to 50% bad apples.
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Even ads that are "polite" are still hosted by third-party ad networks, which means they're still tracking, collecting, and monetizing your behavior. Since that is entirely unacceptable, all ads have to be blocked regardless of how unobtrusive they are.
That does not bother everyone (Score:2)
which means they're still tracking, collecting, and monetizing your behavior.
Heres the thing; none of that matters to me.
For a site I like, I am happy that they can make money through ads.
I also LIKE ads being more targeted to my interests, that really does make ads more interesting and useful to me (yes, ads can be useful as I like knowing something I'll enjoy exists).
What happened though, is that over time the ads starting getting more and more pushy. Full-screen blocking ads that make you wait 10 secon
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I use adblock everywhere. I am the member of some forums that ask, politely to not block. One of which, the one I use most (homebrewtalk for the curious), I am a paid supporting member. So no, I will not unblock the ads, even though theirs are vetted and simple. it is principle. The industry is built on deception and annoyance.
Change that industry wide and you can live. Otherwis
Why pull instead of improve? (Score:5, Insightful)
If he found the blocker was blocking ad-networks he considered to be well-behaved, why not update the app to simply not allow blocking of ad-cblockers he felt were good citizens?
Instead by pulling the app, all that means is people will move to ad-blockers that are less concerned with the effects of blocking, and simply block everything outright.
His app, popular as it was, could have been a real voice for moderation in blocking, a reasonable compromise between advertising that is respectful and that which is not. What good did it do anyone by pulling it?
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He can still improve it without it being sold you know?
Sometimes an App gets on the store and its just broken. Not in the way that testing noticed, but it really isn't doing what its supposed to do and instead of continuing to do bad things to new people, you stop selling it. Fix it. Return it to the store.
If you read what he said, thats pretty much a given that he's doing just that.
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But if you issue a quick fix it can stop doing bad things to EXISTING users too.
The thing is, the app is not "broken" from a user standpoint, it blocks things just fine. It's only "broken" in the sense he wasn't happy with some of the things it was blocking, which was easily resolved using a permanent white-list the app would always allow.
As it is there are a lot of people who bought Ghostery who will keep using it to do things he's not happy with, which could have been altered in an update.
It sure did not
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The odd thing is, his app was based on the Ghostery database (which he licensed), and he was talking about a 1.1 update to do exactly what you suggest - hand picking what not to block.
But like I said, if he thought there were some things that shouldn't be blocked, don't let them be blocked and allow people the choice of blocking/not blocking everything else. That would be something.
It's not like there are not a LOT of other content blocker choices (soon to be far more after everyone saw what a financial hi
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Maybe an ad-blocker should default to showing the ad and then just let you manually "hide ads like this" by clicking on them.
Too late. By then, the malware has already pwned your machine.
"just doesn't feel good." (Score:4, Insightful)
Remind me to never, ever buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
The trouble with ads (Score:3)
For those of you around at the beginning, ads were static images, with a hyperlink to the place it was going. Ok, not bad, but I could deal.
The came pop-ups, and that was frowned upon. It became so wide-spread, every browser in existence at the time had a built-in pop up blocker, and those that didn't, had to deal with external programs like Ad Muncher and the like.
But still, vexing, irritating, but not a serious problem.... ...until flash based ads.
Then it went from bad, to nuclear.
On the desktop, ad blockers, whether plug-ins, or built-ins, proliferated and because, not just a good idea, but mandatory, if you wanted to browse the web sanely. It's been a chicken and the egg issue since day one. Did ad blockers force advertisers to escalate how they placed ads on websites, or did ad blockers come into existence because plain text ads weren't "good" enough?
Regardless or the origination, the end result is what we have now. While desktops are safe, mobile browsing is still problematic, I know on my Samsung Android phone I get ads on websites, enough to crowd out the information I'm looking for. So sooner or later, ad blockers will be like desktop browsers, mandatory.
There is a larger issue here, how websites are supposed to make money/survive/pay bills/etc. without ad-revenue stream, but I have yet to see a viable discussion on a working alternative.
What I do see is like it or not, ad blockers are here to stay, and will evolve with every new ad-pushing "tehcnology". I'm sorry the software creator in question here is uncomfortable with this concept, but I'm sure he put *some* thought into this problem before creating his software.
Note: the lack of (until this point in time) ad blockers was the primary reason I jumped ship from Apple.
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I use mobile Firefox on my Android phone with the same ad-blocking extensions I have on my desktops.
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For those of you around at the beginning, ads were static images, with a hyperlink to the place it was going.
For those of us around at the beginning, there were no ads.
It was good.
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What I expect to see is more DRM extensions for browsers, similar to Microsoft's Trusted Audio Path, to ensure nothing can block content between the site and user's screen. It already is happening as sites go completely all Flash.
Then no-one will go to their sites. Like no iPad user goes to those 'all Flash' sites.
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As An ipad user I can say I do miss those flash site's. most websites work without flash now. But much remains broken to this day. I used to like albinoblacksheep but it's pretty worthless on the ipad. Some of the videos have been put on youtube but none of the games work.
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As someone with a non jailbroken ipad I can vouch this is mostly true.
However there will only be more and better ad blockers. That piracy argument will never fly as long as webmasters continue to allow malicious intrusive intrusive ads.
Bad Ads vs Good Ads (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the new things I am seeing is ads that prevent you from scrolling away from them. Cracked has this kind of crap and it really pisses me off when I attempt to scroll past an ad and the ad prevents me from doing it until I close the ad by clicking on a small, hidden x.
Any attempt to prevent you from not seeing the advertisement is pretty much my definition of a bad actor. If a person is scrolling past your ad, they are not going to suddenly change their mind and watch because you stop them.
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You are being irresponsible if you don't block ads.
It used to be you could tolerate ads to give your favorite websites extra revenue, but now it is too dangerous.
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All ads are bad ads.
Nobody has the right to tell me what content I am required to receive. End of story.
Open ecosystem = ya snooze, ya lose (Score:2)
Since access to the Internet is more-or-less something which can be done via a wide variety of devices and operating systems and browsers, a significant subset of which are free and open source software and are extremely, explicitly customizable, you *cannot* be the odd man out by being a platform that is deliberately less flexible and less usable than the others.
If you do, the thing that happens is exactly what Apple has seen happen: you end up losing sales (of your OS, hardware, etc.) to competitors whose
For users it's black and white that ads = malware (Score:5, Insightful)
All ad networks serve up malware at multiple times. All of them. They can't help it. The Russians are more devious than they are, and more motivated - text-only ads are less dangerous, but even those have been compromised with scripting holes.
So as a user, you have to block ads or get pwned - removing Flash and Java helps a lot, but it's not sufficient.
Move to a Patreon or other microsubscription model - Dave Kellett (Sheldon) just did so after a bit of user request. He already had a Patreon, but wasn't highlighting it and was still running ads. So he did a 'replace the ads' drive and now I believe he's up to enough supporters to get rid of ads entirely. I subscribe to sites like Ars Technica for the same reason - I want to support them but am not willing to view their ads.
Then there's the entirely separate issue of bloat, like The Verge's terrible pages which are 10000 : 1 crap to content. But that's secondary to the malware.
A Better Solution (Score:2)
Web sites can offer two tiers of service.
1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means you are free of ads AND tracking. (most people are creeped out by tracking).
2) Selective Ad supported access. Select from a list of ad categories (more granularity, the better) and be allowed access to the site. The site serves up only those ads which you are interested. Once again though, tracking needs to be addressed here in some manner. Ad companies need to know the number of impression
Re: (Score:2)
Web sites can offer two tiers of service.
1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means
they can't afford proper security on their shoestring budget and your credit card information is stolen
Translation: (Score:2)
all the alternatives suck (Score:2)
If you sign up for the service and pay them money, then they will get hacked, and then you will get hacked too.
if you don't use an ad blocker then you will get hacked
so all the ways that they have of making money are unacceptable.
Ads purposely deceptive, even on 'respectful' site (Score:3)
"Fair to call it advertising"? (Score:3)
But Peace uses the Ghostery database, and Ghostery includes The Deck. It’s classified as “Advertising”, and even though it’s far nicer than most other entries in the category, it’s fair to call it advertising.
"Fair to call it advertising"?
That would be because it IS advertising.
I don't think Marco was paid-off. I think Ghostery was. And, or, he's received threats, because this certainly does tick-off plenty of people with minimal morals.
For most of us that use ad blockers, it is NOT about ads being "poorly behaved". We just don't want to see ads. Get it?
I guess not. Smart people can be idiots, too...
Maybe he got one of those "letters" from the (Score:2)
government saying that he has to put a back door to stop blocking of tracking cookies and sites, and that he'll go to jail if he complains.
Really, these letters are a serious threat to freedom. We need a first amendment challenge.
It's simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I block all 3rd party content on any website and I don't use 3rd party content on my own websites. If you require libraries, ads etc. you should host them yourself, a client should not have to trust a 3rd party to provide 'clean and safe' content because they simply cannot be trusted and it reflects badly on your own site.
If CNN provides malware through their ad system, it reflects on CNN, not on the 3rd party ad provider and thus those provider have no incentive nor intention to provide safer content.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't seen any in years...
Then you haven't tried web-browsing on an iPad... Having done so, I honestly can't imagine trying to use the web on a regular basis without an ad blocker.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it has the exact effect people want. It blocks everything. I don't want to see any ads, ever. If one comes through, that's a bug to be fixed. That's what most people want.
Re: (Score:2)
I use noscript on my desktop. It will give you the total number of javascript scripts running for a webpage. Go to any news website, for instance washingtonpost.com and you'll see they run 40 to 50 separate scripts per page. Too much for my tablet to handle.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, the two most important features of iOS9 are:
1. The keyboard shows you which case you're typing.
2. Ad blocker support.
Don't much care about being able to swipe Twitter in from the side of the screen at any moment, or whatever else they added.
Re: (Score:2)
If you are looking for open source options you can try BlockParty - https://github.com/krishkumar/... [github.com] and Adios - https://github.com/ArmandGrill... [github.com]. You no longer need a developer's license to deploy software to your own iOS devices. I've been using Adios on a device that doesn't officially support content blocking (as per Apple's rules) and it works fine.
Re: (Score:2)
That said, I don't think this guy is going to be releasing the source anytime soon.