
Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad blockers on app store - ameshkov
https://adguard.com/en/blog/goodbye-amazon/
======
danpalmer
There seems to be a lot of misinformation about Apple’s stance in this thread.

Apple explicitly allows and provides APIs to develop content blockers.

Apple does not allow content blocking through custom VPN implementations,
seemingly because these a) introduce a performance impact, b) may be confusing
for users as it’s abusing the point of VPNs, and c) may allow more easy abuse,
as VPNs can do a lot more than just block content. This is what the article
linked as evidence for Apple’s policy covers, and the statement provided by
Apple, while not especially clear, does match up with this.

I think the title should be reverted to remove Apple, as they do allow ad
blockers on the store (I personally use 1BlockerX
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/1blocker-x/id1365531024?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/1blocker-x/id1365531024?mt=8)
)

~~~
annabellish
The linked app is a Safari-only adblocker which doesn't cover apps, so I feel
the title is pretty accurate. There have been full system ad-blocking
solutions developed for iOS and apple refuses to host them, it's a statement
of fact.

`a` is permitted for other apps; `b` is, as far as I know, not a criteria
anything else gets judged on; and `c` is the point of having a curated store,
because any app "may allow [...] abuse".

~~~
scarface74
It's not strictly "Safari only*. It works with any embedded web view that uses
the SFSafariViewController.

For instance, ad blocking also works with Feedly - my RSS reader.

~~~
ballenf
That's a rather uncommon exception. Very few apps load ads in a web view.
Mainly because, imo, the ad platforms want a _lot_ more user data than they'd
get that way. And fraud would be a bit harder to detect.

~~~
stephenr
And hey fuck users, the ad platforms are the real good guys in all this right?

------
PaulHoule
I am moving towards the much more radical solution of blocking advertising
supported sites entirely.

I am not against advertising in general. It doesn't bug me that there are ads
for car dealerships on TV, but the flood of personal injury lawyer ads damages
the perceived legitimacy of the government and social system. (As well as the
many other ads that are not aimed at getting people to spend their own money
but instead to get benefits such as the "Medicare Advantage" scam.)

Web advertising and other distractions (pop ins, "will you let this site make
notifications?", Taboolah, Outbrain, "This web site uses cookies...", 20 email
messages a day about IBM Cloud outages that didn't affect me, "GDPR is here
and our policy has changed...") are immediately harmful in terms of cognitive
load (lowers effective IQ,) stress, mistakes, missed appointments,
opportunities, bills not paid on time because you had to delete 200 spam
messages and accidentally deleted something important. That and the phone that
never stops ringing with somebody who wants to lower my interest rates...

I think long term you are training your brain to not accept the cues that
"something is important". After 20 or 30 years of that who knows what that
will do you? (Whenever I show my wife something from a porno site she can't
see the content in the midst of all the lurid and animated advertising.)

It is like Milo Yiannopoulos; it looks like communication but it is better to
think about it as noise, static, or nerve gas.

~~~
downrightmike
I blacklist any site that is anti-adblocker. You should grab an old computer
and install pi-hole on it and you will be able to blacklist sites and just
stop the ads from getting into your home. [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-
hole.net/)

~~~
Liquix
This is a great solution for hacker news types (I run pihole at my home - love
it!) but it's not a feasible solution for most people.

We need a hard brake on adtech and a restructuring of business models, not a
band-aid that only 5% of the population bothers to apply.

~~~
s73v3r_
You mean like the GDPR?

~~~
Liquix
The GDPR is a huge step forward and it would be wonderful to see something
similar happen in the States.

~~~
PaulHoule
GDPR is a disaster. Already I am getting overwhelmed by requests from people
who don't want people to know that they are running a business at such and
such an address and I can only assume they are running a criminal business.

There are two ways that "privacy" can be violated: (1) somebody exploits your
data, or (2) somebody violates your space. Something like GDPR addresses (1)
and might put an end to those shoes from Zappos that keep following you
around, but it does not stop the disincentives that destroyed the world wide
web.

~~~
PaulHoule
(sorry for out of sequence reply but I could not reply directly to the message
in question)

I run a business directory site, or at least used to until this morning. If I
was like many people I would blame GDPR, but really I figured I rather spend
the money I was spending on AWS on something else.

~~~
firmgently
I'm still not getting this... did people get in touch and say "I don't want
people to know I'm running a business at this address"? Or did they say
"Please remove me from your business directory which you added me to without
asking"?... and how does your mind jump to "must be criminals" \- are there
intermediate steps in your logic or is it just: doesn't want me to have their
business address on my database = criminals?

~~~
PaulHoule
My directory was generated from public information (the Legal Entity
Identifier)

The EU has been making moves towards financial transparency largely driven by
the UK getting on the open data bandwagon. (Ten years ago they were much worse
than the US in terms of seeing government data as a revenue source, now they
are far ahead of other countries.)

This is endangered by Brexit and GDPR.

One part of the global governance crisis is that legislators have been
captured by a "one dollar one vote" situation and in turn cannot maintain tax
rates that produce sufficient government revenues. Thus the bureaucratic
sectors have focused on keeping the lights on by trying to get people to pay
what they owe. Given massive tax evasion by the rich that has to be a priority
so general transparency around cross-border financial transactions has to
increase.

Perhaps some people who want to be "forgotten" are not criminals, but when you
look for specific cases of people who are making these requests they are
frequently white collar criminals who are hoping they can sweet talk somebody
again into another chance to lie, cheat and steal to pay for gambling or
cocaine or whatever.

~~~
Semirhage
_Perhaps some people who want to be "forgotten" are not criminals, but when
you look for specific cases of people who are making these requests they are
frequently white collar criminals who are hoping they can sweet talk somebody
again into another chance to lie, cheat and steal to pay for gambling or
cocaine or whatever._

This seems like a slightly modified version of the old, “if you have nothing
to hide...” saw and I don’t like it.

~~~
PaulHoule
I will put it this way.

I have an aunt who has a nursing degree, burned down a barn with horses in it
and attempted to kill two people (her mother and her sister) by injecting them
with insulin. At some point in between all of that she drove a school bus and
for some reason decided to slash herself up with razor and claim that she was
assaulted.

We heard that she'd gotten a job as a nurse and we we wonder how that
happened. My father-in-law was in the hospital (not where she worked) and she
changed his IV bag when it ran out and started beeping.

A week later we read in the paper that she was raiding the medicine cabinet at
the nursing home she worked at and found out she was also stealing ADHD
medication from her grandson.

Turned out she failed to tick the box that asked if she'd ever committed a
felony and the employer was too busy to run a background check on her SSN.

Dangerous people are out there.

That kind of behavior is a direct threat to life but I think tax evasion,
corruption, rent-seeking, a lack of responsiveness to problems such as global
warming, homelessness, and affordable housing and similar behaviors threaten
our civilization and one thing we know is that when a civilization goes down
the people left behind turn their back on everything that civilization stand
for. (Ex. look what happened when the Christians took over Rome)

The main thing our civilization stands for is individualism and if you like
the idea of being able to decide anything at all for yourself (or people
50-100 years) you should have been helping turn the ship around 20 years ago
and it might be too late now. (Eg. Listening to people like Frederick Hayek is
the real "road to serfdom")

An Iranian physicist living in the UK threatened to sue me under the UK libel
laws because he thought I brought attention to him that might lead Iranian
grad students to come around looking for job. Well, I was chewed up and spit
out by that system and I was not going to be intimidated by that -- if you are
sitting pretty on a tenured job on the back of young people in an unfair
situation you deserve to hear the voices and see the faces of people who are
harmed by your privilege. It is not such a big thing.

Somehow your domestic intelligence service, foreign intelligence services,
organized criminals, rip-off artists and other people are going to steal your
information and the more that information is pushed underground the more
impunity that they are going to operate under.

(To paraphrase Heinlein: a transparent society is a going concern)

~~~
djsumdog
This is one of the principal reasons the EFF opposes the Right to be
Forgotten. It's more often used for censorship or crimes than anything else.

------
zenovision
So, my next smartphone will be iPhone, even if I prefer open source.
AdBlockers are just too important. Not only they protect your privacy, but
they also stop some malware programs that use ads for spreading. And don't
Google & Amazon already make 30% from app sales?

~~~
ameshkov
Hurry not, Apple did the very same thing last year:
[https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/15/apple-reportedly-shifts-
app-s...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/15/apple-reportedly-shifts-app-store-
policy-to-stop-adblockers-outside-of-safari/)

~~~
tinus_hn
That’s not about adblocking but about using vpns for a purpose that is not a
virtual private network. The general adblock system works in Safari as well as
other apps that use web views though.

~~~
saagarjha
> as well as other apps that use web views though

Actually, they only work in the specific case of SFSafariViewController. This
isn't available for any old webview to implement.

~~~
tinus_hn
I was under the impression that Firefox Focus blocked ads in some other apps
as well but that doesn’t appear to be the case indeed, at least not in Chrome.

~~~
saagarjha
Firefox Focus ships with a content blocker extension, I think, so it can block
ads in Safari and third-party apps using SFSafariViewController. Chrome uses a
webview, so the content blocker won't work there.

------
vaishaksuresh
In my home network, I run [https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net) on a
Raspberry Pi that is plugged into a USB port in the wall where it can't be
seen. Almost all generic ads are blocked and those that do get through can
easily be blacklisted. No need for any help from Apple/Google/Amazon. I wish I
could somehow make it portable.

~~~
subway
Don't worry, the marketers will get to you soon enough.

Google has already wedged themselves in as the "gold standard" dns provider.
My gut says eventually Apple/Google/Amazon will start forcing blessed devices
to use their own name services. For the good of the user, of course. Ahem.

~~~
imglorp
That's okay if you run your own router. Point your device to that as default
gateway, then the router can catch any DNS connections and do pi-hole style
lookup mapping.

Pfsense is one good example.

~~~
subway
That's a hard game to win in the end. Odds are the new and improved name
services you're required to use won't really look much like DNS today.

Initially they'll be implemented as DNS over HTTPS, with devices being shipped
preconfigured to favor those HTTPS endpoints over name servers provided by the
local network. From there the traditional DNS bits will eventually be removed
in favor of whatever proprietary mechanisms defined by Google/Amazon/Apple.

The only way to use Google/Amazon/Apple services will be by bootstrapping from
hardcoded list of bootstrap ips in their product, secured by a similarly
hardcoded CA certificate.

------
Spivak
> They need to realize that it is your device, your personal data, and it is
> you who should be in control.

The idea is sound but it doesn't apply to Amazon, or Google's stores. They're
under no obligation to host any app in particular and it should be expected
that apps that bite the hand that feeds them would be quickly removed.

~~~
Maybestring
If people don't like it, they are free to direct their governments to enact
and enforce anti-trust laws that address these platforms.

~~~
staplers
Laws don't protect consumers or enforce moral obligation and you know it. They
serve as a facade to the population to keep society from disintegrating.

Direct boycotting of companies forces change very quickly.

~~~
Maybestring
I don't know it. Laws get written and enforced for lots of reasons, enforcing
morality and protecting the population are among them.

------
air7
IMO there's a moral problem with ad blocking, which is that it's basically
stealing.

Like it or not, many popular websites and services online gain income from
advertising. By using them while blocking their ads you're basically getting
something for nothing by gaming the system. It's probably against their ToS
(but who reads that right?). It probably says: We serve ads. If you don't like
that don't use this site.

One might say that ads are distracting, annoying, resource heavy, and
sometimes downright malicious. I think so too. However that is essentially the
"price" of ads, and this price is known in advance. Blocking ads for these
reasons while continuing to use the sites is not unlike eating at a restaurant
and leaving without paying because you think their prices are exorbitant: It
might seem morally justified but it's theft because the prices were known in
advance.

I think one of the main reason people don't dine-and-run (yet install
adblockers) is that it's hard to do a moral wrong so close to the source, e.g
seeing the waiters, being there in person, risking an unpleasantness drama,
etc. (This is well known psychological phenomenon which name I can't recall.)
In contract installing an adblocker is fast and feels totally unrelated to the
2nd party. It makes it easy to feel like you're fighting the bad guys (ads and
the terrible ad-tech) and forget whose revenue you are withholding for your
own benefit.

Personally I resisted installing adblockers for a long time though eventually
I caved in (ad-tech got really bad). I honestly don't know what the solution
is.

~~~
manfredo
I don't agree. If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out
all the ads are they committing theft? If I mute my radio while ads play, am I
a thief? I'd bet that most reasonable people would say no. The content
providers serve the ads, how end users interact with them is up to said users.

Ad blocking, in my view, is analogous to muting your radio. The content
provider delivered the ads, how the user interacts with them is up to each
individual.

~~~
bad_user
> _If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out all the ads
> are they committing theft?_

While cutting the ads you'll get such a good look at them, ads companies will
be thrilled and beg you to do it :-)

> _If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief?_

The behavior of people watching TV or listening to radio is well studied.
Here's some facts:

1\. even if you change the station, you'll still see or hear some ads,
especially if you want to get back to what you were watching, as people keep
changing back and forth — and those ads are for brands mostly, therefore it's
enough for you to see Coke's logo for you to pick it in a store as the "safe"
choice

2\. many TV and radio stations synchronize their ads breaks

So are you committing theft when skipping commercials? If you use automation
for it, the jury is actually still out and there have been several lawsuits
already.

Also skipping ads might be legal still, but there are always legal loopholes.
For example circumventing DRM is not legal and it's only a matter of time
before media networks wise up.

And note there have been other doomsday scenarios in the past. For example the
rise of VHS was a similar event, allowing people to record shows and skip ads.
But even so, ads kept being efficient and publishers and media networks
survived. However this time the automation has reached a level unprecedented
in history.

What do you think will happen if companies start going out of business due to
ad blockers? They'll start lobbying of course and lobbying works.

~~~
manfredo
For magazines you could have a friend or a robot cut out the ads, for radio
you could switch to a CD while the ads run. Basically, I'm trying to get at
the more fundamental question: do users have an obligation to consume the ads
that are served to them, in the manner that the content provider dictates? And
if so, how should this be enforced?

~~~
BoorishBears
>Do users have an obligation to consume the ads that are served to them

Yes, if it's part of the content and they want more of that content. But they
have no obligation to want that content.

> in the manner that the content provider dictates

They don’t dictate how you consume ads, they try to predict it and adjust for
it, but they don't dictate your actions

>And if so, how should this be enforced?

Legally it shouldn’t be. The advertiser can do whatever they want to their
content to get you to consume ads, but they shouldn’t be able to do anything
past the boundary of their content.

------
michaelbuckbee
I don't know anything about AdGuard in particular, but the general category of
"Adblocker that is a really a VPN that really just loads a DNS server to block
ads" is really problematic as:

\- cause lots of weird networking issues (impacting perceived stability)

\- are often "Free" b/c they are swapping in their own ads and malware [1]

\- are just in general a poor way of loading a hosts/dns file that in many
cases they don't even own (they're just pointing to a freely available one)

1 - [https://www.cloudwards.net/worst-free-
vpn/](https://www.cloudwards.net/worst-free-vpn/)

~~~
ballenf
I used adguard and still do without any issues. Maybe there are weird issues,
but they are vastly overwhelmed by the immense data and processing savings
from no data siphoning happening.

Adguard was/is a paid app that didn't substitute any ads nor collect data.

------
cmsimike
I am running pi-hole at home and push out that pihole DNS to my VPN clients
and my phone is always connected to my VPN. I never trusted any of these phone
platforms to do anything in my best interest anyway.

Related, I cannot wait for the Librem 5

------
49bc
Last time I looked at a “system-wide” adblocker, it was just a vpn service
with proxied your traffic (not just DNS) through a who-knows-what server. That
seemed really sketchy to me, and I doubt most users knew the implications of
it.

~~~
ameshkov
You may have looked on a bad one.

System-wide blockers on both iOS and Android do use the VPN API, but the idea
is to intercept your outgoing traffic on the TUN interface, emulate the TCP/IP
stack, and filter it locally, right on your device.

~~~
49bc
How do you know which one the app is doing? From my perspective the vpn was
“on”

~~~
hedora
Not perfect, but you could connect to wifi, and look at the connections the
phone makes.

Of course, it could change its behavior if it detects a cellular connection...

~~~
saagarjha
A better way would be to download the app and reverse engineer the binary.

~~~
49bc
And do that every single time there’s an update?

------
pweissbrod
Bans like this seems to increase the opportunity/value for "alternate" app
stores outside the recommended vendor, offering things that the vendor wont.

EDIT: Point is that many apps receive a ban because they conflict with the
interest of the phone vendor, but they can still be of great use to users.

~~~
s73v3r_
Why would I want to put my apps in a store that is also going to aid users in
bypassing my means of revenue?

~~~
xfer
Then you should sell your app not user-data.

~~~
s73v3r_
I wish I lived in a world where that was the more feasible route. Sadly as it
is, ad-supported is much more effective than the traditional model of paying
for software.

------
cheeze
Why should Amazon care? Because Amazon is a large advertiser?

~~~
ameshkov
At least because of this:

* [https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads](https://developer.amazon.com/mobile-ads)

* [https://aws.amazon.com/mobileanalytics/](https://aws.amazon.com/mobileanalytics/)

Not as large as Facebook or Google (at the moment ~5% of top Android apps
connect to their servers). Apparently, they are going to grow.

~~~
hendersoon
Yes, that's exactly it. FireOS is a fork of Android with all Google's stuff
pulled out, and Amazon wants their piece of the mobile advertising pie as
well.

------
danmg
I couldn't think of a better advertisement for AdGuard.

------
mortdeus
I think ads are just fact of life nowadays and not necessarily a bad thing.
Ads shouldn't be annoying nor should they be creepy. Like for example, if you
google tips to lose weight, you shouldn't be bombarded by pictures of half
naked dudes with six pack abs. Nor should you be seeing things you buy
frequently due to the fact that you used an in-store membership card. I wish
Google, Facebook and Apple would provide a way to say what kind of ads they'd
like to see. Like I have no problem in seeing ads related to cool kickstarter
projects, music equipment, tech devices, software development related tools,
etc etc.

I mean sometimes that is what I only see and i am like happy with the fact
that I am forced to see ads. And then other times I am starting to see things
that I really don't care about simply because I had a whim to go down some
rabbit hole on Google.

I think some developers use ads very responsibly and I think that overall
denying those developers the right to generate money off your usage prevents
them from growing their business and creating better products. I tend to think
of flappy bird when I think of great ad placement. The ads don't get in the
way of the game. They don't pop up while you are in mid game to try and trick
you into clicking. They only appear after you died and they aren't full screen
and annoying with a tiny little x you might miss.

I mean that is the kind of ads that I can live with and I think everybody else
should have to live with too. Hell I even might give them a click every now
and then despite the fact that I am not interested in buying the advertised
product.

I just think of it like throwing some change in the hat of a busking street
artist. It's the least I could do to encourage them to continue pursuing their
art.

------
userbinator
The only way to consume content the way _you_ want to on locked-down devices
is to basically MITM your traffic and run it through something like
Proxomitron[1] or Proximodo[2].

I continue to find it ironic that the very same technology, often detested in
discussions here, and present in the middleboxes that companies use to
block/filter/inspect the traffic between their networks and the Internet, can
also be used under your control to enhance your computing experience. I
believe that everyone should have complete ability to modify the traffic that
flows to/from the devices they own, and this is something which those who
strongly support making connections "more secure" and harder to MITM often
fail to consider.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron)

[2] [https://github.com/amate/Proxydomo](https://github.com/amate/Proxydomo)
(Japanese)

------
zeta0134
I use a VPN service that happens to include an ad blocking feature. I wonder
if that will be blocked too? It's PIA, which is very popular.

Of course the feature goes unused; I simply refuse to install an application
that includes advertising code. Instead, if available, I pay for the ad-free
version of the app. Bonus points if that's the only option. The play store
helpfully points out most advertising built into apps, so this is pretty easy
to do. Combined with Firefox for Android which lets me run uBlock Origin, I
have a completely ad-free mobile experience.

------
diafygi
Don't system wide ad blockers rely on using a VPN to block ad traffic?
Wouldn't that mean that you could just install the OpenVPN app and use a
special ad-blocking proxy?

~~~
adtac
If you're going down this route, I strongly suggest PiHole.

------
adblockuser123
System-wide Adblocker at the Apple App Store that doesn't exist according to
the article:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id69121579?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adblock/id69121579?mt=8)

Creates a fake VPN that does the filtering

------
ryandrake
At home, I just block ads and the DNS level. Run dnsmasq, send all known ad
serving domains to 0.0.0.0, and have DHCP point clients’ DNS to your dnsmasq
server. Done! Site-wide ad blocking that works on all clients and platforms,
without a VPN and without permission from any vendor.

~~~
makecheck
The problem on iOS and other mobile devices is that, when not using WiFi, you
don’t have any place to put such a block.

I find iOS content blockers work decently but it is still possible to have an
overwhelmingly better experience on the desktop due to the multiple crap-
blocking mechanisms available.

------
scarface74
How hard is it really to run your own VPN from home, connect to it from iOS
and have your home VPN block ads?

[https://github.com/BobNisco/adblocking-
vpn](https://github.com/BobNisco/adblocking-vpn)

Why trust a third party that can monitor your traffic?

~~~
make3
downloading the global ad blockers from the web (instead of the app store) is
a more practical option

~~~
scarface74
As long as you don't care about your privacy. Everything going through a third
party VPN is yet another app that has access to your data.

With the built in web and web view ad blocking framework on iOS, the ad
blocking app doesn't see your browsing history. It installs a JSON file that
Safari uses to know what content to block.

It's not a complete system wide solution but it does protect your privacy.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Yes, I’m positive that the security/privacy risk is the reason why Apple
banned VPN based ad blockers. There’s no way for Apple to verify that VPN apps
aren’t siphoning off data, making the whole thing a gamble and huge PR
disaster waiting to happen (“Apple found to have allowed internet siphoning
apps on store for years”). Loss of blocking ads in apps is a casualty, not a
goal.

If it didn’t mean a revolt from countless app devs I’m sure they’d be
perfectly happy to implement something similar to Safari’s content blocker
system for the entire OS.

~~~
scarface74
Exactly. What does Apple have to gain from not blocking advertising? It makes
no money from adverting. Blocking advertising not only hurts it's major
competitor but would also force apps to monetize via actually getting people
to pay for apps. They would get a cut from the revenue. Apple makes no money
from free advertising supported apps.

------
_bxg1
For those on Android, here's a great one that's open source. Get it on
F-Droid, XDA, or build from source: [https://github.com/julian-
klode/dns66](https://github.com/julian-klode/dns66)

------
gwbas1c
I don't mind advertising...

I just object to how advertisers screw things up. Moving text while I'm
reading. Hijacking the page and navigating away. Auto-playing loud videos.

(These problems are really symptoms of poor design in JavaScript)

All I want is a good ad blocker for my mobile browser!

~~~
milcron
Firefox for Android supports full extensions, so you can install uBlock Origin
or even uMatrix.

~~~
gwbas1c
Yeah, but then I'd have to use Firefox for all my browsing.

Tabbed browsing on Firefox is abysmal. I also like going back into my browser
history.

It's like Firefox was only designed for viewing porn.

~~~
milcron
>I also like going back into my browser history.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Firefox has browsing history, if that's
what you mean.

There is a different product Firefox Focus which erases your history when the
browser closes, maybe you're thinking of that.

------
JTbane
I'm a big fan of AdAway on F-Droid, which blocks using the hosts file.

It does require root, however.

------
TekMol
How can an app block ads system wide? I would have thought that apps are
sandboxed. Just less strictly then websites.

Can an app intercept the network communication at will? Can an app call any
operation system function?

------
hokkos
I use AdGuard and it is great. It is not only ads that I happily block, but
all the analytic, it is unbelievable all the requests that are made by apps,
even when not using them.

------
on_and_off
That's an unpopular opinion but I am ok with that.

I would rather pay for the apps I use (with money, not eyeball time) than
continue this course to the bottom.

------
paulie_a
Maybe they should focus on the quality of ads, because currently they are
complete garbage. And privacy invading.

~~~
kinsomo
> Maybe they should focus on the quality of ads, because currently they are
> complete garbage. And privacy invading.

I prefer low quality ads because I can be more confident that they won't
effectively manipulate me. I like to avoid the influence of pure product-
propaganda on my decisions.

------
greggarious
"It's not antitrust if we all do it right?"

------
s73v3r_
I mean, you could just not use apps that rely on ads for revenue.

I personally like getting paid for my work, and being able to buy food and pay
rent.

~~~
kazagistar
There are many other other ways you can do that, so I simply cannot find a
reason to care for your "plight". I hope the ad industry burns in flames and
everyone who works in it finds other, better things to build then garbage no
one is willing to pay for.

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myf01d
I use ad blockers since forever, howver I just find it extremely mean and
unethical that a company like Adguard makes profit by depraving others from
their lawful profits by blocking ads. Ad blocking by its nature should not be
commercialized.

~~~
always_good
Brave (browser) is even worse.

Except they get bonus points for inventing their own coin which only exists to
make the creator money, along with replacing ads with their ads.

