
Just doesn’t feel good - coloneltcb
http://www.marco.org/2015/09/18/just-doesnt-feel-good
======
cjensen
Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he
says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't
enjoy controversy. He's hacker enough to want to muck about with how to make a
blocker, but it's not his joy.

Basically, he's what many of us aspire to be.

~~~
bcrescimanno
I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among
those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are
several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can
understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the
moral grey area" I can understand that as well.

What I _can 't_ understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days after
launching the product. I don't think people here are questioning whether
developers are willing to forego their own financial gain for their moral ease
(the very existence of the FSF makes it clear that there is a willingness).
It's simply a very sudden turn for someone who previously demonstrated no such
compunction.

~~~
billyhoffman
2 days is a short period of time, but the context over those days is massively
different.

On Sept 16th, a few dozen beta testers may have been using Peace and giving
Marco feedback. On Sept 18, Peace is the top ranked app in the app store,
displacing MineCraft. MineCraft! Estimates are in the 12000-15000 downloads on
the first day[1]. You look in your iTunes connect account and realize you on
the path to make $100K on an app that, rightly or wrongly, could impact other
people's livelihoods. I can understand how that makes you consider the
morality in ways you hadn't before.

Marco isn't against ads. He's said as much, and he runs ads himself. He's
against oppressive, annoying, UX destroying ads. He wants to encourage
tasteful ads. But within a day he himself had to write a story about how his
own app would block ads from The Deck[2], which he has said is the type of
advertising he finds tasteful and acceptable. Peace wouldn't effect change if
it also impacted 'good' ads, and Marco said in that post he didn't want to be
the arbitrator of what is a good and bad ad. At that point it was only a
question of when he would pull it.

I take him at his word.

[1] [http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-
fro...](http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-from-apples-
app-store-2015-9)

[2] [http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-
ads](http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads)

~~~
antirez
I don't believe he wrote an app hoping to have a small user base, so I don't
believe that the success of the app was the problem. Without to mention that
there are _a number_ of ways to fix that, including finding a price point that
makes it less interesting in order to reduces the installation base. But if
the app was created in the first place, it was because the idea was to make
everybody install it. It's a blackbox since we don't know the details but from
the outside output I don't believe the blog post contains all the facts that
influenced this choice.

~~~
billyhoffman
Thinking you understand what a situation is going to be like ahead of time and
seeing what that situation actually is like when it happens are 2 very
different things.

The world is full of stories of people who attempt something and then get
upset or disheartened or unhappy when it comes to pass. Why does everyone have
to assume something nefarious here?

------
ixtli
I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow
people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I
the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than
everything else?

Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be
creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of
integrating ads into their website in a way that doesn't bother me or detract
from the experience. This is no doubt due to careful consideration of the
needs of both the user and the owner.

~~~
untog
_I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow
people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way._

You could just stop visiting the site that offends you. That would be the
actual principled way to treat this - the content is not worth the price of
admission. Instead, ad blockers let you take the content and sidestep the
price of admission.

I absolutely agree that media companies have not been creative enough in
monetization, but "I'm going to take the content from you until you find a way
for me to pay that I like" strikes me as a very entitled stance.

~~~
Filligree
I'm signed up for Contributor. I blacklist ads on every site where I see them,
which is most of them; as far as I can tell, this also stops Contributor from
working on those sites.

Seriously. Take my money. But you don't get to show me ads. And I'm not going
to bow out of visiting those sites; that would almost cut me off from the
internet entirely.

~~~
untog
_I 'm not going to bow out of visiting those sites; that would almost cut me
off from the internet entirely._

This is exactly the entitled attitude I was referring to.

~~~
Filligree
Is it entitled to want to keep up with society, when I pay $10/GB for
bandwidth?

~~~
untog
Why on earth are you paying $10/GB for bandwidth?

~~~
dublinben
Presumably because that is the price that their provider sells it for. Most
people do not have a choice of ISP, and cannot negotiate the terms of their
service.

~~~
untog
...which is why I'm curious to know who they are getting their service from. A
price point like that ought to be named and shamed if users have no other
option.

~~~
Filligree
Ice.net.

And I misremembered the cost; it's actually "only" $5/GB.

------
mitchty
Here is the whole thing about ad supported sites: We are worth a lot less than
you think, and also overall an individuals monthly worth in advertisements is
also small.

[https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/](https://air.mozilla.org/subscribe2web/)

Turns out, we're worth about $6.20/mo in advertising. Lets just round this up
to $10/month to not have ads but still support sites we visit.

If content providers aren't working on an alternative like the above, I'll
continue to block ads. If you want to stop me from accessing the site by
detecting that I will also kill that. If that stops working I won't see your
content.

Forcing me to watch ads with zero alternative though, nope. Google contributor
is a start, but this needs to be across all ad platforms.

I'm not against funding people, I'm against funding ad agencies and their
tracking and their other maladies. Such as trojaned ad networks, silly amounts
of javascript and data, etc....

What I'm saying here is content providers and ad agencies and us ALL need to
fix this. In my opinion though, this is all a result of the Faustian bargain
the content providers have chosen and the inevitable escalation the ad
companies have taken. I value my time and attention and am willing to pay to
not have that taken away from me. Just don't force me to buy into ads, do like
the twit network does if you have to. I've tried out almost all of their
sponsors, not because of the company advertising but because of the person and
people recommending it.

~~~
dannyr
So I can go to a store, I don't like how they make money, I'll just take away
whatever I want for free?

If you don't like how they make money, do not patronize them.

~~~
msandford
If HTTP was a contract whereby you agreed to look at everything that was sent
over then your analogy would make sense. But HTTP is a protocol, not a legally
binding contract. So no.

~~~
anseljh
The terms of service for the site that's delivered to you over HTTP, though--
that is a legally binding contract. Some have no-ad-blocking terms.

~~~
evilduck
Contracts have to be agreed upon by both parties. If you want to have users
agree to a ToS and protect your content, you should 401 their requests for
your content until that happens. Otherwise fuck off, it's a public request.

------
DanBlake
Although I have no direct knowledge, it feels like there is something going on
behind the scenes forcing this reaction. If I had to guess, I would point the
finger at Ghostery causing this. Lifehacker wrote¹ that Ghostery sells some
data to marketers, so perhaps the approach taken with the app interferes with
Ghostery's model and they were not willing to continue allowing access to
their rule list. Alternatively Ghostery saw the success of the app and now
wants to launch their own and shut off access to the data.

*edit- He just said he is handing the app over to Ghostery on twitter. Very interesting.

¹ [http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-
actuall...](http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-
sells-data-to-a-514417864)

~~~
cstross
Alternatively: I am seeing a _lot_ of angry articles by journalists who see
adblockers as an existential threat to them, and Marco also developed
Instapaper. He's almost certainly already getting hate mail from content sites
who don't like the way that Instapaper renders their content readable without
allowing annoying intrusions. Releasing Peace on top of Instapaper set him up
as a high-profile target -- even higher with that #1 app store ranking -- and
that's no fun at all to live with unless you've got a _very_ thick skin.

To those who think the pro-ad folks are right: I'd urge you to meditate on
just what the #1 ranking of an ad-blocker in the app store implies about the
public's appetite for advertising.

~~~
tptacek
Why exactly do you think that's a dispositive argument? Poll the public about
their appetite for paywalls and you'll get an even more vigorous response ---
paywalls are _reviled_ by normal people. And yet logically, if you think ad-
supported content isn't a good model, you should support paywalls. They're
transparent and up-front and don't require cross-site tracking.

Really, this is pretty simple: people just want it both ways. They feel like
it's their device and they're entitled to control what's displayed on it and
what consumes their bandwidth --- and, fair enough, that --- but they also
feel entitled to read or watch anything posted on the Internet on their terms.

~~~
learnstats2
>paywalls are reviled by normal people

Really? Everyone pays for services that they value.

I certainly don't hear people complaining about the 'paywall' for eating a
banana.

In my view, the advertising model exists because most things posted on the
internet are not worth paying for.

What I hear more often is people paying for access and then complaining that a
high level of advertising is served anyway. Paywalls are not the answer to
ads.

What I also hear is people paying for access and then complaining that the
quality is not worth it or reduces over time. Paywalls are not transparent.

~~~
tptacek
It's especially easy to rationalize not paying when technology makes it so
easy to free-ride.

We're all getting the Buzzfeed we deserve.

~~~
learnstats2
Availability of quality journalism is higher than it has ever been. You're not
obliged to visit Buzzfeed.

------
publicfig
I'm really disappointed by the amount of support he has gotten for this. He
has directly mislead consumers into buying a product with an intent of
support, and then immediately pulls it and forces the user into a difficult
process with Apple to reclaim that money. Anyone that is unsuccessful in the
process will have their money go directly to the developer. I understand the
possibility change of heart, but that doesn't change the fact that every
action of this matches what would happen in a scam, other than the fact that I
truly believe he didn't set out to intentionally scam users. He really should
have thought about this before releasing the app, and I feel like the support
he's getting will convince him or other developers that this is at all a
decent move.

I think Apple should be at least overly cautious any time he attempts to
release another application. I know many developers that would have been
effectively blocked for less, but he has the fortune of being in good with
Apple so I don't see that happening.

~~~
kaolinite
I think you're forgetting the fact that this application still works. Sure,
when iOS 10 is released it may break - but the same could be said for any now-
abandoned app.

It's a shame but he gave people notice (instead of just stopping development)
and recommended people request refunds. This is nowhere close to being a scam.

~~~
drakenot
This isn't an ordinary application. Ad blocking applications live and die by
their blocklist. Many people purchased this application with the implied
assumption that the blocklist would continue to be updated for the foreseeable
future.

Without an updated blocklist, this app will quickly become useless.

~~~
sangnoir
Ghostery is providing the blocklist, not Marco.I doubt they are going to stop
anytime soon as they also have a browser extenstion that relies on it

~~~
uptown
Doubtful.

"The app is completely my code, using a copy of Ghostery’s tracker database
hosted on my server that the app periodically checks for updates."

So since he's abandoned the app, and broken his agreement with Ghostery, I'd
assume he'll no longer be receiving an updated database from Ghostery.

~~~
kaolinite
He confirmed on Twitter that it'll keep being updated for the foreseeable
future.

[https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/645060381778571265](https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/645060381778571265)

------
Osmium
> I’m sorry to all of my fans and customers who bought this on my name,
> expecting it to be supported for longer than two days.

Well, that was me. Funnily enough I haven't had a good experience with
Overcast either (vs. Pocket Casts), so I think next time Marco releases a
product I'll be a lot more skeptical. It's an awkward position too: I know I
should request a refund since the app will become progressively less useful as
its blocklist becomes out of date, but I would've liked to keep using it until
then.

As for the alternatives, I chose to support _Peace_ instead of _Purify_
because the latter has seems to be involved with some mild controversy [1], in
addition previous controversy the developer was involved with previously over
uBlock [2]. I honestly have no idea if this is innocent misunderstanding or a
genuine attempt to mislead on the developer's part (because wording on the
uBlock website does seem to have been clarified now), but it was enough to
give me pause. So I guess this just leaves Crystal as the main alternative at
the moment?

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3leyux/say_purify_ge...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3leyux/say_purify_get_gilded/)
[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ub...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/cte0a3n)

~~~
vermontdevil
Agreed. I recommended his app to many friends because of Marco's stance on web
ads, his passion for quality, etc.

Oops - my mistake. Pulling an app two days after a long period of development
without really thinking through seemed odd to me. But that's his choice.

My choice - I won't buy anything from him again. Life goes on.

~~~
Osmium
> Pulling an app two days after a long period of development without really
> thinking through seemed odd to me. But that's his choice.

Right, absolutely it's his choice. I wouldn't even go as far as saying I'll
never buy a product from him again, just that I wouldn't on day one. It's not
that I necessarily disagree with what he's saying (I'm glad the conversation
is being had), I'm just surprised he didn't anticipate this reaction.

On a broader note, if he is concerned about the ethics of ad blocking, perhaps
it would've been better to maintain control of one of the most popular ad
blockers? Then he would at least have been able to influence the outcome, e.g.
encourage his users to adopt whitelists or similar.

------
shanecleveland
I applaud the move on his part, but should have had some forethought before
releasing it. He has skin in the game: profited from Instapaper (essentially
an ad-stripper), sells ads on his blog and produces a podcast that profits
from ad sales. His advertising may be more acceptable in terms of aesthetics
and privacy, but it is an acknowledgement, nonetheless, that advertising is
the best possible monetization model and one that is depended upon by many to
support what they do. Can it be done in a better way? Sure. Is jeopardizing
"publishers'" livelihood the answer? No.

By saying "But my ads are blocked, too," as he did, was not an acceptable
solution. If a big chunk of people visiting his site already paid him $3 to
defer his advertising, then he's already won. But nobody else with their ads
blocked will see that money.

He makes good arguments about both aesthetically and privacy intrusive
advertising, but A definite conflict of interest on his part.

~~~
derefr
He expected to make a tiny ad-blocker nobody cared about, and then keep
tinkering with it. Instead, he captured the majority of the market—at which
point he realized that his ad-blocker is not nearly "nice" enough (in the ABP
"whitelist sites that display non-intrusive ads" sense of nice) to make sense
as the one the majority of iOS users use, and he has no idea how to do the
work required to get it there (I.e. building a manual whitelist of all "good"
sites ever) without stepping on millions of toes.

Basically, he just never planned for success.

~~~
shanecleveland
He announced it on his highly trafficked blog and Twitter account. He carries
pretty significant weight within a large circle of folks likely to install
such an app. This isn't his breast feeding timer app we are talking about.

~~~
derefr
Alright; he expected to be _competitive_ , perhaps, but I still don't think he
expected to _win_. He's never won a market before, so why would he think his
current base is enough to start winning now?

Instead, he likely expected it to be another Instapaper: an app existing
amicably along with a few other similar offerings, one of which is an entire
company (Pocket), and one of which is Apple's own service (Reading List).

------
micahgoulart
This series of tweets from Anil Dash might give some insight into why Marco
decided to pull Peace. Basically while the big publishers of content can adapt
to ads being blocked and create native ads or sell "featured content", small
publishers like blogs dont have the time to work on that and rely on third-
party ad tech like Google AdSense for monetization.

Worth a read:
[https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644560336369119232](https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644560336369119232)

> @anildash Okay, ad blocking advocates and users (I am one, sometimes!),
> we're going to have a new conversation. You ready?

~~~
aw3c2
It is my honest belief that small, _valuable_ sites can finance themselves
through their communities. If they can't, then maybe they not worth running.

------
msoad

        * I don't want ads
        * I don't want native advertising or sponsored content 
        * I don't want to pay for content
        * I don't want my tax goes to government sponsored content 
        * I want free independent content
    

That's me nowadays... I don't even know what's the answer!

~~~
te_chris
There isn't one, because your position is idealistic and naive.

~~~
Spivak
There is one, and I can name an easy example. The Welcome To Night Vale
Podcast.

All of their content is completely free and isn't supported by ads at all.
They make money through live shows, merchandising, and donations, and I guess
now book sales.

It's exactly the model he's describing, free content that's not sponsored, has
no strings attached, and is still hugely successful.

~~~
mjklin
Also: Answer Me This, whose recent content is free but who charge for older
content, special "albums", their book, and merch. Helen and Olly seem to be
doing quite well.

------
Moshe_Silnorin
If you are getting money from a legal activity you consider morally unsound,
consider donating the profits to a charity GiveWell recommends. Some other
service will pick up the slack, so throwing in the towel and your profits is a
very inefficient means of stopping that act you consider to be morally
unsound. In fact, you're subsidizing those without moral scruples.

Stopping this because it "feels wrong" is odd. Donate the profits to a
charity. At the absurd extreme, If you honestly feel adblocking is a moral
problem, donate the profits to an anti-adblocking lobby. Throwing away your
money is throwing away your leverage.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Do what you feel is morally wrong, and give away the profits? That's... bad
ethics.

"It's wrong, but it's for the greater good, so it's OK!" should be a _major_
red flag. It says that what you're doing is wrong, you know it's wrong, and
you're rationalizing. What lies down that road is the destruction of such
morals as you currently have. Don't go there.

~~~
robotresearcher
Governments do this on a massive scale with lotteries. I agree it's very dodgy
ethically.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Governments have a monopoly. In this case, new services will take all his
customers. It's very different.

~~~
robotresearcher
They don't have a monopoly on gambling opportunities in most places.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
They do have a monopoly on lotteries.

------
draw_down
Well that was quick.

I see things as he does, the ads are terrible, but it's silly to try to
pretend like ad-blockers are an unalloyed good. This situation will continue
to worsen, and as I see it, will hasten the popularity of Facebook's new
instant-article feature and similar.

------
joesmo
I think the war analogy is right, but it's a one-sided war where the only
people losing money in the ad game are the consumers. It takes a significant
amount of energy and bandwidth to download those ads. On the other hand,
publishers are not really losing money because you can't lose what you don't
have. It's unlikely that people who use ad blockers would click on ads anyway,
further driving the point home. Nevertheless, one sided wars do exist and this
is one of them.

------
tylersgordon
I wonder why he made this decision after launching. The consequences and
economics of ad-blocking are nothing new or surprising, and I'm sure he knew
this while developing the app. Sounds like he was threatened or blackmailed.

~~~
markbnj
Meh, who knows, but tossing the word "blackmailed" in there is unnecessarily
sensationalist, imo. All sorts of things can be "known" in the abstract, and
still feel far more intense when experienced in reality.

~~~
tylersgordon
Yeah, I agree.

------
stock_toaster
After this (pulling the app after 2 days) I will be very hesitant to ever buy
anything made by Marco again. Hopefully Apple processes my refund.

------
ixtli
Also relevant to this discussion: [http://peakads.org/](http://peakads.org/)

------
Rainymood
What did Peace do? European here I have no clue ...

~~~
slig
It was an adblock app for iOS 9.

------
endymi0n
There seems to be quite some confusion around "tracking" and "tasteful" ads.
Reality is, "tastefulness" is mostly a personal feeling based on relevance to
the user which usually is a direct consequence of tracking (and taking the
right action on it). I'm not talking about intrusiveness, which is a whole
different UX issue and the only thing I think we all agree on.

But from all my experience in AdTech I don't think there's a single ads
provider that "does not track", as it's basically the same as having a store
that does not have a cashier's desk. "We don't track" is simply a big lie.

But tracking isn't black and white. At least, networks will track impressions
and clicks, otherwise publishers won't get paid. But then there's Cookies.
Advertising IDs. Audiences. You can even break it down on the individual user
level. The biggest problem is simply responsibility and where to stop. Most
large ad networks enforce responsibility by mandating minimum sized audiences
by now, but with RTB it's possible to break down the last barriers.

The ecosystem is mostly based on trust in the advertisers right now and only
the worst offenders get pulled, but mostly after the fact.

Marco made a good choice by not even trying to be judge, police and
policymaker in the same person. It's an impossible task to begin with.

------
masterleep
I don't care about the money, but it's annoying that he wasted my time and
some of my credibility (because I recommended the app to some of my friends).

------
privacy-lover
My money is on Ghostery terminating the tracker database license deal with
Marco. I wouldn't be surprised if a Ghostery client made a complaint to the
CEO.

~~~
ihuman
I wouldn't be surprised if they talked about this before he pulled the
application, and that none of what you said would happen.

------
braum
Marco lost my trust after I purchased Overcast app and it has been mostly
ignored by him other than fixing bugs. The Overcast app has seen very few new
features. There is still no streaming (100% download before playing) and no
bookmarking (so you can come back to something interesting). He mentioned on
his blog that he had made a few minor fixes but nothing major.

------
yattahri
If we got to the point that we need ad blockers to navigate the internet
peacefully without interruption, I’m sorry to say but it is the publishers’
fault. They had a right and they abused it. Maybe now they will put a little
more UX consideration before they plaster ads everywhere in your face. I
personally tend to avoid the buzzfeeds, the CNNs and a lot of other sources of
all crappy journalism for lack for better words. This is the only weapon we
have as consumers to help us fight back or voice our choice. Customer is
always king and always will be. Produce something that works for me and I’ll
buy it. But if I make it to your restaurant and while I’m eating you are
having a round of people sit across from me and speed pitch me while using
sometimes unacceptable methods… then don’t be surprised if I fight back. One,
ad fine. two ads, fine. A gazillion ads… what am I here for again?

------
nugget
I have a huge amount of respect for Marco but this decision makes no sense to
me. Was he afraid of hurting journalist friends and losing invites to the
hottest media parties around NYC? Or pissing off other friends and ex-
colleagues who now work at analytics and optimization companies? I hate to be
a cynic but that's how his post read to me - this launch had cast a personal
shadow that he didn't want to deal with. Some % of users don't want to be
tracked and they downloaded an app to stop it. It's not like he removed the
Safari API that enabled this. Now that Peace is gone, it will just be replaced
by other similar apps, likely from far less scrupulous authors (such as ABP
with their ''acceptable ads'').

------
mrsaint
Let's say I don't care about a refund but I want to continue using it, albeit
unsupported.

The developer says, "It’ll keep working for a long time if you already have
it, but with no updates."... but this is what I am not so sure about.

I looked at my iTunes backups and didn't see Peace. It's also not in the list
of my updated apps in iTunes, presumably because it got pulled from the store.
Suggestion to the developer: how about a heads up next time you're planning
something like this? It wouldn't have hurt anyone.

Do you know of any way how I can backup Peace that is currently sitting in my
phone, in case I need to do a full iPhone restore?

~~~
smoser
You can always download previously purchased apps from your purchased list
unless it was removed due to a legal reason.

~~~
mrsaint
There we go... muchas gracias.

------
zyxley
I wonder how many people will be unable to get a refund from Apple for the
app.

~~~
ChrisLTD
My refund was processed immediately.

~~~
stock_toaster
Mine has not been processed yet, but it has only been a few hours.

~~~
davidcollantes
The app is still listed under recent, which will not give me the option to ask
for a reimbursement. Unsupported new app should be sufficient reason.

------
daxfohl
Robin Hood the thing. Give exactly 100% of the money to starving children.
Literally. Personally, not through some charity. Literally go to a 3rd-world
nation (on your own money, don't dare touch money collected through the app),
find parents of starving children, and give them each a $100 bill.

Start a trend. Start _that_ trend. Be _that_ person. Not just the person who
had a hit iOS app. Be the person who eliminates hunger by setting a simple,
obvious, example. Does _that_ feel good?

------
napoleoncomplex
There's no need to make up dark motives on Marco's side, his blogpost on
blocking The Deck ([http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-
ads](http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads)) pretty
clearly showed where the cracks were. A lot of people and business will get
hurt in this, plenty of them not at fault or at least with no better way to
monetize.

Now to be clear, I use ad blockers on the web myself, and intend to install
the Android ones once I root my phone. But it's getting tiring reading people
standing on some moral high ground to justify their use of ad blockers. There
is no scenario where this leads to better-behaving ad networks, or to better
monetization models for the web. The final winner of this ad blocker war is a
no-frills ad blocker that blocks as much ads as possible, regardless of the
quality of the ad network and its ads. The majority won't go and fiddle with
the settings to approve ads on sites they like, or from ad networks that are
cool. Give people a chance to block all ads and they will, even if some
"innocent bystanders" get hurt. And I think Marco saw that scenario unfolding
in real life with Peace's success.

One example, Daring Fireball is proud of how his monetization strategy is
working out for him, and justly so, he hand picks his promotions and packages
them into little promotional posts. But that's basically a native ad. So let's
say the next big idea from everyone hurt by blocking is that native ads are
the big thing now (not that it isn't already being used heavily), and everyone
should hide them among the real content, undetectable to current ad blockers.
So ad blockers will evolve, and people will build filters that hide the
content of these native ads in smart ways. And they might build a filter that
hides posts on Daring Fireball that contain the words "my thanks" or
"sponsoring this week". Will Gruber still be so supportive of content blockers
then? And where's the line? Who decides what the right types of ads are?

It's not that I have any smart answers about this, but I think it's
disingenuous to pretend this "culling" of the shitty ads will lead into a
brave new world with fair ad networks where everyone decides to turn off ad
blocking on The Verge, because gosh, they've really improved, or into some
kind of fairytale where people pay for The Verge's content through
subscriptions. But they will keep visiting The Verge en masse, and expecting
fresh content served in miliseconds. Who will pay for it and who will write
it, I sincerely don't know.

~~~
mikeash
The thing with Gruber's approach is that it's not just native advertising,
it's _good_ advertising. They're actually things I want to see. An extension
that blocked his ads would make things worse for me, not on some fluffy moral
grounds, but on the concrete grounds that I want to see them.

If advertisements are always a chore that people don't want to see but have to
put up with, then you're always going to have an arms race between advertisers
and users. But if you can make advertisements something people actually _want_
to see, then you won't have to worry about people blocking them.

This sounds pretty hard, and maybe it's totally impractical. On the other
hand, there are forms of advertisement (like movie trailers) which are almost
universally appreciated.

------
TarpitCarnivore
Is it me or does it seem like he'll back pedal the moment the backlash gets
too big? It's the 'Apple software is buggy' back pedal all over again.

------
smackfu
An ad blocker on iOS 9 is basically just an app wrapper around a JSON file.
I'm not surprised a decent iOS developer would figure they could whip one out
in a day or two of coding just as a proof of concept, and then release it to
see if they make a few bucks. Not a lot of deep introspection involved.

If you suddenly sell 20k copies at $3 each, and make enough in a day to buy a
BMW, then maybe you think a bit more.

------
facepalm
If we accept ad blocking as an act of war, doesn't that imply we think humans
can't help being manipulated by ads? Otherwise, where would be the difference
between somebody using an ad blocker and somebody being indifferent to the
ads?

I must admit if that is the fundamental belief, how one can prefer to side
with the people who manipulate other people.

I am not against ads myself, I just don't understand the rationale.

------
nsnick
When I visit a site, I want to see content from that site. I did not consent
to view ads from a third party. I would be happy to view ads that a site
decides to host and display. The problem is that most sites have absolutely no
idea what ads they are displaying. They just want money. It is probably not
even feasible to block ads that a site hosts themselves.

------
chmaynard
This is really sad. Arment has made an impulsive, flakey decision that
tarnishes his reputation as one of the leading independent iOS developers.
Instead of removing Peace from the App Store, Arment could choose to improve
and refine the app, satisfying his own objections and encouraging his
customers to follow his lead.

------
untangle
I have no idea what he intended, but what he created by this reversal was
_news_.

That the move adds a martyrdom flavor to an already-rich personal brand is a
bankable asset beyond the $100K (or whatever) that would be made in the App
Store. This is a 60 Minutes or GMA-level story now.

------
codezero
A little off topic, but I'd love to chat with anyone who has a significant
percentage (leaning towards a majority) of their revenue generated from ads
served on the mobile web – shoot me an email.

------
amyjess
Should probably get a better title. Sure, it's the name of the blog post, but
that's a really ambiguous name.

I suggest "Making an ad blocker myself just doesn't feel good".

------
wildpeaks
Even with the app [temporary] pulled, it now showed there is money to be made
from ad blockers, so it's only a matter of time before clones appear in the
appstore.

------
EGreg
I don't get it. What was this Peace app? How did it get to the top of the
charts right away upon release? How is an App Store app able to block ads in
other apps?

These are all questions I wish marco would have answered for the developers
reading his piece.

~~~
ljk
[http://www.marco.org/2015/09/16/peace-content-
blocker](http://www.marco.org/2015/09/16/peace-content-blocker)

It's an ad blocking app. ad blocking is a new feature for iOS 9

------
neoschiller
Ad Blocking should be illegal, this is like stealing money from people who
work on creating content, I believe that people will leave content providers
who serve too many ads in an intrusive way anyway. so there is a balance in
place already.

~~~
kardos
Why does it have to be so black and white? What we need is an optional
micropayment system such that I can pay 1-2 cents per article in lieu of
seeing ads. Choice one, see the article in an ad-infested page, or choice two,
pay a couple cents to "buy out" the ad experience.

Ad rates are on the order of $5 per 1000 views, ie, 0.5 cents, so a 2 cent
buyout is entirely feasible.

------
davidhariri
This feels very authentic. I'm impressed, that's a tough decision to make,
especially given there were others involved in the dev.

Reminds me of what happened with Flappy Bird

------
lips
Oh, tots scam/plot/hijinx. Because everyone knows it's easy to game the system
and become #1 in the broken thing that we call the app store :/

------
rdancer
Marco Arment thinks very differently from how I, and perhaps most other
hackers, think. It is valuable to have people to disagree with.

------
monochromatic
Good for him. I wish more people could walk away from a successful business
that doesn't feel good. I wish I could.

------
sergiotapia
So what can I download now that does the same thing? I don't care about
advertising companies revenue at all.

------
trocodine
what an idiot

------
dageshi
Mediocre.

------
mahouse
Knowing him, this could be a stunt.

~~~
kgermino
What makes you say that? He's never struck me as that type of person but maybe
I've missed something. Do you have any examples?

------
makeitsuckless
I would have been a lot more understanding if he bothered to explain how
protecting people's privacy against malicious exploitation hurts people that
"don't deserve to be hit".

Without any reason other than vague hints, this sounds like someone got to
him.

I'm not buying any of this. He suggest he feels bad about his product, but at
no point explains why.

