Slashdot Mirror
One Day After iOS 9's Launch, Ad Blockers Top Apple's App Store
HughPickens.com writes: Sarah Perez reports at TechCrunch that only one day after the release of Apple's newly released version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 9, ad blockers are topping the charts in the App Store and it seems that new iOS 9 users are thrilled to have access to this added functionality. The Top Paid iOS app is the new ad-blocker Peace, a $2.99 download from Instapaper founder Marco Arment. Peace currently supports a number of exclusive features that aren't found in other blockers yet. Most notably, it uses Ghostery's more robust blocklist, which Arment licensed from the larger company by offering them a percentage of the app's revenue. "I can't believe how many trackers are on popular sites," says Arment. "I can't believe how fast the web is without them." Other ad blockers are also topping the paid app chart as of today, including the Purify Blocker (#3), Crystal (#6), Blockr (#12). (Ranks as of the time of writing.) With the arrival of these apps, publishers and advertisers are fretting about the immediate impact to their bottom lines and business, which means they'll likely soon try to find ways to sneak around the blockers. In that case, it should be interesting to see which of the apps will be able to maintain their high degree of ad blocking over time.
It's no surprise that advertisers and publishers who make their money from advertising aren't exactly fans of blockers. What is surprising is that no one seemed to disagree with the argument that online ads have gotten out of control. "I think if we don't acknowledge that, we'd be fools," says Scott Cunningham, "So does that mean ad blockers are good or right? Absolutely not. Do we have an accountability and responsibility to address these things? Absolutely — and there's a lot that we're doing now." Harry Kargman agrees that in many cases, online ads have created "a bad consumer experience — from an annoyance perspective, a privacy perspective, a usability perspective." At the same time, Kargman says that as the industry works to solve these problems, it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
It's no surprise that advertisers and publishers who make their money from advertising aren't exactly fans of blockers. What is surprising is that no one seemed to disagree with the argument that online ads have gotten out of control. "I think if we don't acknowledge that, we'd be fools," says Scott Cunningham, "So does that mean ad blockers are good or right? Absolutely not. Do we have an accountability and responsibility to address these things? Absolutely — and there's a lot that we're doing now." Harry Kargman agrees that in many cases, online ads have created "a bad consumer experience — from an annoyance perspective, a privacy perspective, a usability perspective." At the same time, Kargman says that as the industry works to solve these problems, it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
They're stealing my time, and electricity
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If they want to claim that as stealing then they should pay us for the bandwidth THEY are stealing.
The last three sentences. Good grief.
Crystal offered their product for free for literally less than a day but I snapped it up in time.
Holy shit. It's like the first time you discovered adblock+ on your desktop. Suddenly surfing is fast and, well, useful.
Fucking advertisers are especially aggressive on mobile because they know their audience is captive and less skilled. If, as a species, we spent half as much time as it took to research how to make predictive ad slide right the fuck under your thumb before you tap the screen in to medical research we'd have cured fucking cancer by now. (I'm looking right the fuck at you slashdot on mobile. In-line adds for fermium shitware skinnerbox games and hovering banners? Fuck this place has fallen since the 90s)
This is a real coup for apple. Think you'll ever see operating system supported ad blockers on the play store? Fat fucking chance!
I'm NOT buying your product because you advertised it. I'm buying it because a friend told me it was good.
By blocking your ads, I'm freeing myself from the annoyance of advertisements that I'm going to completely ignore anyway, and I'm recovering both bandwidth and electricity that YOU are stealing from me, because the application developer whose app I am using decided their app wasn't good enough to be a pay app, and decided instead to steal from me to get money from you (the advertiser).
You have to realize that you are spending your advertising dollars on very ineffective advertising. Worse, you are directly harming your brand by advertising in such a negative, intrusive, and annoying way.
It's stealing the same way that using the restroom when a TV show has a commercial break is stealing. Can they really blame people for defending themselves when they are constantly barraged with out-of-control ads that track users, install malware, block the actual content, and play difficult-to-stop audio that's not related to the actual content? I see them as no different than if the ads played before movies started showing up on the side walls of the theater while the movie is playing, and sometimes in the middle of the screen while the movie is still playing. And they send people into the theater to try and pick your pocket and leave ads in place of your wallet. Sure, the theater would make a good living taking money from those people for being allowed in - but they will still be driven out of business if all the customers stop showing up because of it.
Huh? I count zero. Oh, maybe it's because of the ad blocker.....
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
"What is surprising is that no one seemed to disagree with the argument that online ads have gotten out of control" slashdot disagrees.
If ad blocking is considered "stealing" then most of these "ads" should be considered "hacking" and ad companies and executives, especially the ones that end up serving exploits, should be prosecuted just as aggressively as Aaron Swartz and others.
I'm still not sure how they convinced sharing music where no one loses is stealing, but some people think it is stealing even though the distribution costs are basically 0. Anyway, if they can pull another fast one and convince people that not watching ads is stealing, they'll want to go the extra mile,"If you watch your content without buying stuff our sponsors promote, you're basically stealing free content.". Don't buy into their mind poison.
God spoke to me
"That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
How the heck is decreasing your bandwith by selectively not downloading ads the same as transcoding a music CD you own or copyright infringing a movie from https://kat.cr/ ?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If companies complain about ad-blocking, they should move to a pay wall. Let's see how that works out for them.
I recently had to use the mobile version of /. for whatever reason...
By the FSM's Noodly Appendage, the site was unusable!!! And apparently the mobile site also ignores the "block advertising" check box.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The problem is that publishers don't see the cost of delivery of their advertising. Like email spam there is little to no cost to throw in a few more lines of JavaScript to pull another ad from another ad delivery service.
But the consumers do see the cost. Download costs (especially for mobile) for the extra data. Longer time to load. Harder to read with ad's cluttering the page. Etc etc.
At the very least if this pushes publishers to convert 2nd and 3rd party ads to first party by (minimally proxying or caching) the delivery through their own site it will provide them with a better idea of the cost.
Moving more content to first party delivery allows protocols like SPDY to shine and optimize delivery. Faster and less bits (through compression.)
The message to publishers is take control of the data you want people to look at. Deliver it yourself.
The message to advertisers is to develop alternate mechanisms to ensure your ads are being delivered through first party sites. Ad blocking of crappy delivery mechanisms means that your choice is no ads or delivery as a first party ad.
1) They advertise to me. ....with the intention that after they've forced me to see something I definitely said that I didn't want to see - that somehow I'll want to buy their product?
2) I dislike their adverts sufficiently that I'm prepared to spend actual money to stop seeing them.
3) So they try very hard to force me to see their adverts anyway.
4)
Did I get that right?
They send me crap that I've very explicitly opted out of by installing an ad blocker...and they think that'll make me want to buy their stuff?
OK - I don't get it. I really don't.
-- Steve
www.sjbaker.org
Turn off javascript, and ads go away.
The iPhone doesn't just work...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well said. Next they'll say I'm stealing the newspaper that I read, simply because I skip the sections marked "Paid Advertisement" and don't read the Classified Ads thoroughly each day.
Firefox + Adblock -- I see no ads
Ad blockers are pretty much a necessity on mobile networks.
Don't feel guilty about using them either. Ads cost real money on mobile networks because they eat into your quota. They also degrade your device's performance and track your behaviour. Don't dismiss that last point as the cost of free services. While the network is public, your device is private. You should have the right to control which network requests your device does and does not make, as well as control which code executes on it. All of this talk about ads funding websites and behaviour tracking being used to improve the relevance of ads is pure nonsense. If it was about funding websites with relevant ads, they would simply display ads based upon the content of the website.
Yup and unsolicited transmissions over mediums which incur a transmission cost for the recipient are illegal in the US, thanks to fax spammers. The loophole used by internet advertisers is that your browser, acting on your behalf, did solicit the content. The loophole used by we end users is that we can stop our browsers from doing so; and not requesting content will never be illegal.
Did they seriously compare not making a "legitimate" copy of their ad to making an illicit copy of a movie, as though they were the same thing?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Hey advertisers! Yeah we're "taking" website content for free, without paying for it, because that is precisely the nature of our contract and covenant with said website. Meanwhile your covenant with them is to pay them money and in return they'll place your ads. We have no covenant with you. We are not obligated to look at your ads.
But what if every ad-supported site fails? If web content were not totally optional and inessential in every way you might have a point there. But since it's plentiful, mostly stupid, and hardly costs anything to deliver(*) we're actually paying close to market value for it. And a web made up of enthusiasts and community-supported sites might actually be a hell of a lot better than the corporate-dominated one we have now that's so full of bloodsuckers who want something for nothing.
(*) Sure, starting from no web server or site, and going all the way to reaching user #1, takes a lot of effort. But users #2 through (thousands) take zero effort beyond that. (You webmasters are STEALING! SHRIEK!!! SHRIEK!!!)
I wonder as they keep mentioning "browser blocking" if it is as effective as the way a rooted android phone blocks ads. I dont have said phone, but as I understand it, the android adblocking will block ads in applications as well (some sort of host file block?) which by the sound of it, this does not do.
Anyone got any info? Has android lost the superiority wars in terms of adblocking?
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
"That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
True. It's my computer and those are my shiny discs full of bits. Using a blocker to customize the way I interact with web pages is no more wrong than moving my music from a CD to a more-convenient file. Since blu-rays I own refuse to play on my secondary TV (an old CRT), pirating those movies gives me no moral hesitation whatsoever. Nor does turning off flash, blocking ads, or doing any of the dozens of things I do with my browsers and my other software on my computers.
If somebody wants to call what I do "stealing", well, fine. I never put my monitor up for rent as a billboard, so I could say anyone who tries to use it as such is trespassing and vandalizing my property. :^) The fact that ads are so far out of control that people will use non-free (and non-Free) blockers to avoid them is pretty telling.
I'm not blocking ads. Blocking ads is impossible, because it is equivalent to the Halting Problem. If ad blocking == stealing, I'm not, because I'm prevented from doing so by the law of mathematics.
But on a case-by-case basis, I'm doing what the fuck I like to do with the data on the receiving end. Among them: choosing not to receive something because I don't see a point of doing so, or because I find them antagonizing to my faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or because I'm a robot and I find your act of catering to humans very racist and offensive. Interpreting this as "ad blocking", hence denouncing this as stealing, reflects your inability to handle the cognitive dissonance, which is your problem, not mine.
Now, not looking at your copyrighted material is piracy? Someone is very deluded. Let's go back to capitalism: You offer a product at a price I like. When I asked for your product (web-page) I didn't agree to the price of 80% of my time (and bandwidth) being consumed by adverts, so what can I do? I can download the level of advertising that I can tolerate and do so because you demonstrated that agreement is not required before consuming your product (web-page).
Just like television, I didn't agree to watch the adverts: It doesn't matter if I walk out of the room or fast-forward through the broadcast. You don't choose how I consume your product.
So when will Apple let us block in app ads?
Oh I see. This isn't about blocking ads for user's. It's about Apple trying to get more devs to make apps and use iAds which are not blocked so Apple can make more $$$
... without looking at or or mute an ad on television or alt-tab away from a youtube ad to ignore it, or perhaps just close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears and shout "lalalalalalala" does that mean I am a pirate or thief or ripper?
... it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
So you're saying that you cannot show any actual loss from the use of ad-blockers?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You know how some horror games have a Lovecraftian "sanity" meter?
Well when I get a full page popover, or I click on the screen randomly and am suddenly whisked to a page I did not expect - each of those events reduces my real life sanity meter. Out of control ad techniques are literally stealing my sanity.
A side effect is the support I once had for ads on websites has eroded to my not caring at all what the loss of ad revenue does to websites, to not caring at all if the web as a whole dies or is reduced to some pre-historic form.
My thought now is, if whatever ad you wanted to present was not in the initial HTML load it's fair game to be choosy about loading. I will whitelist sites I like a lot to help them out, but only if the ads there behave.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I assume it won't block iAd
Vermins have billions of rolls in the evolution game, while we only have a few pharma researchers. For ads the odds are in our favour, us billions of freeloaders against the few ad companies.
Just like the grossly exaggerated claims that were made a few years ago by Edward Withacre (then CEO of SBC). Or so many other "industry heads" like the music execs who want to endlessly resell you different copies of music you've already purchased, whatever stands in their way of "maximizing shareholder dividends" is anathema, and should be destroyed at all cost. Consumers being nothing more than opportunities to fleece money from.
It's a pattern, a chronic need to do this; but a phenomenon which in no small part probably is also due to their need to posture for the home crowd in order to retain their cushy jobs. These people can't be that utterly dumb Rather, and whether we'd like to admit it or not, we'd do and say the same if we were in their position. Because to get to that position would have meant being capable of stepping over so many carcasses of dead rivals, and having burned so many bridges to get ahead that saying stuff like this is only a logical extension of this alpha-dog mindset.
TL;DR: meh nothing to see, business as usual, move along. No need to get worked up about another garden-variety troll comment.
What part of "mobile site" (I was on my iPhone) did you not understand?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I use the Mercury browser on iOS. One of its features is adblocking, I haven't seen an ad in ages.
Mercury homepage
Trolling is a art,
The part where you left out that you were using an iPhone.
What part of "mobile site" (I was on my iPhone) did you not understand?
Well, how was GP supposed to know that it was a FApple? Firefox and Ad-Blocker on Android work just fine...mind you, the Slashdot mobile site design is somewhat clunky, but you can't fix that with a browser, unfortunately.
It's not even refusing delivery. It's not requesting content in which one is not interested. One fetches an HTML document and then selectively fetches referenced documents. One just happens to not select documents which are high-bandwidth low-value, such as ads.
Seriously, this is hysterically funny BECAUSE it is so spot on. And I just realized government is really just another species of butt leech except not quite so harmless! :-)
I think it is backwards to say "blocking ads is stealing". It is quite the other way around. When I want to watch a video online, or read an article, it is stealing from me to divert my attention to something I did not choose to see and which I have no interest in. That act of theft of my precious attention (I only have so much of it in my life, and it is MY attention that I have the right to direct as I choose) is an immoral act. We are so used to this immoral stealing of our attention that we have gotten numb to it. But that does not make it right. The immorality of advertising was a wake up call to me. I had never thought of it that way until I read a Slashdot article recently pointing this out: http://slashdot.org/story/15/0.... From that article: "Advertising is a natural resource extraction industry, like a fishery. Its business is the harvest and sale of human attention. We are the fish and we are not consulted." Touche, advertisers!!! You can pry my adblocker from my cold dead fingers!
I'm curious whether you pass the Sally-Anne Test
Mind giving it a shot?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I haven't seen a valid ad in quite some time on mobile. All I ever see are those fake battery apps and fake virus scanners. If only Google had the balls to do this for Android... Until then, I'm going to keep rooting my phone, or ditch smartphones all together.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
I won't pay someone for a app to block something that allows me to view a site for free. It won't end well down the road and these ad blocker people are simply short sighted in how they deal with ads. Be careful what you wish for because ad blockers might be the medicine but not the cure.
Yet the Internet was a much more useful place before ads.
Sites weren't loaded up with megabytes of crud, because people couldn't afford the bandwidth. You could actually go out and find the information you wanted, without having to fight through two hundred sites that just scrape content from other sites in order to appear high in the Google search results so they can collect ad revenue.
If every site that can't make a living without ads goes away, few people will be complaining.
it also needs to convince people that when you use an ad blocker, "That's stealing. It's no different than ripping music. It's no different than pirating movies."
Go die in a fire, you asshole. It's not stealing. This prick reminds me of Jamie Kellner (chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting) who equated going to the bathroom during commercial breaks with stealing:
When asked if he considers people who go to the bathroom during a commercial to be thieves, he responded: "I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom. But if you formalize it and you create a device that skips certain second increments, you've got that only for one reason, unless you go to the bathroom for 30 seconds. They've done that just to make it easy for someone to skip a commercial."
By this 'reasoning', not looking at ads or not listening to commercials is 'stealing'. No. No no no. That's not what stealing is.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Refusing to buy or be enticed is not "stealing." It is MY time you're wasting, MY bandwidth your consuming, and MY CPU that you're overloading.
Go fuck yourselves.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Are there no free ad blockers out there for iOS?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That's like saying, "I paid for my car so I don't have to pay for any goods at the store to carry them in my car." Your payment only went to an ISP. Who is going to pay the website owner? Fairies? The rationalizations here are beyond retarded.
Downloading and/or watching ads is payment in exchange for downloading content you want to read. Not paying for using a service is stealing, unless you are a naive 10-year old kid.
Sneaking into a movie theater is at least taking a scarce resource without payment, even if the resource would be otherwise unused. Making illegal copies of music doesn't involve a scarce resource.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Put it on plate, son, you'll enjoy it more."
"See that? Ordinary fucking people. I hate 'em."
I thought people didn't read classified ads because most people don't have a Secret or higher security clearance.
If you watch your content without buying stuff our sponsors promote, you're basically stealing free content.
Then let them sign up with cpalead or another cost-per-action ad network, and let them drop out of rankings on reputable web search engines.
The websites are not free... they have ads. Don't like ads? Well don't visit the sites. Broadcast TV is also not free... it has roughly 15-20 minutes of ads per hour and has been around for over half a century so no need to act innocent because both have the same model.
Not paying for using a service is stealing...
WTF are you smoking, man?
Using a service? What service? Did I force the creator of the said content to post it on the net? If you're not happy with people downloading the shit you've posted on the net for free then put it behind a paywall.
I think it's time we, internet users take notice of all the advertising that is forced down our browsing devices. Who benefits? We see dozens or even hundreds of ads daily. Who pays for them. We do! If all of the advertising was required to pay for the time and data usage that we are currently paying, a lot of the advertising would go away. It's time we take back the internet. If some company, agency, conglomerate wants to advertise on our devices THEY need to pay for the time and down load bits, bytes, KB, MB and GB they force us to watch or be annoyed by. No this is not the same as TV, because on commercial TV the show we want to watch is the staple, and yes someone must pony up the expenses for that show. The advertising on the internet uses the bandwidth we pay for to inundate us with their garbage, not the same as TV. The advertisers must take note and pay for and allocate the data usage to those advertising not the users who really don't want to see or be charged for their display.