Creator of Top iOS Ad Blocker Pulls App After Two Days

An anonymous reader writes: One of the most important aspects of the iOS 9 launch was that ad blocking software is now allowed on the App Store. Ad blocking apps rocketed to the top of the store's rankings, led by Marco Arment's Peace. A day afterward, Arment talked about the cognitive dissonance he felt from having his software blocking the (admittedly well-behaving) ads on his own website. Now, Arment has pulled Peace from the App Store, saying its success "just doesn't feel good." He continues, "Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: while they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit. Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren't black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn't serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we're going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app." Arment also posted a link with detailed instructions on how to get a refund, if you already bought the app.

Comments

Moral outrage!

[Austerity Empowers]

...over something most of us really don't care about. Even in full view of the fact that certain websites exist exclusively on ad based revenue and may stop existing if we are successful in blocking ads. Let them die or be replaced by something else.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Penguinisto]

Agreed. I'm not seeing myself losing sleep over the presence of an ad blocker - doubly so on phones, where the stupid ad often blocks content outright.

(Slashdot, this means you, BTW. That stupid little 'popup' ad at the bottom of the screen actually blocks content.)

Re:Moral outrage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you pay money to use any of the "free" websites you currently use?

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

I have to leave the ads turned off or slashdot crashes safari on my ipad.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

Youtube. If it was ad free.

Re:Moral outrage!

[tripleevenfall]

To me, this is the same argument as the argument for a la carte cable TV.

The cable companies, not wanting us to stop paying, cry "But a la carte means there will be fewer channels, because some won't survive a subscription basis!" Well, do we need those channels then? Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?

If a website doesn't provide content valuable enough to generate revenue or to be supported by the crowd, perhaps it doesn't have a good argument for its own existence?

Re:Moral outrage!

[pixelpusher220]

or they could host their own ads rather than 3rd party stuff than can and is blocked with ease.

You want to make money using ads? put some actual effort into it...

Re:Moral outrage!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think very few people would. The fact is a lot of Slashdot's value comes from user commentary. Asking those users to pay money to contribute value to Slashdot doesn't sound like a very successful way to run a business.

If Slashdot were to die, there are other ways of doing what Slashdot does [summary of news articles of interest to techies and community discussion.] Usenet immediately comes to mind. It would be far, far less expensive than web hosting (one NNTP server can handle many newsgroups), require less bandwidth, and would not be a vector for media-rich advertisements.

It would also be centralized. Instead of having to join multiple communities to discuss a topic, there is only one "discussion board." Case in point, Slashdot sometimes references articles from Ars Technica. The discussion on Ars Technica and Slashdot might be interesting. It seems silly to have to join follow two different web sites for community commentary.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Anrego]

There's a handful that I entirely would.

For sites that provide a service, or sites which provide new (good) content on a regular basis, I wouldn't mind paying a subscription for them. The two main problems are getting the audience in the first place, and all the sites that are useful but you might only hit once or twice in your lifetime when you were looking for that thing.

But ultimately I don't have a problem with ads either in principle... if only they wern't so shitty. Back in the 90s when sites would hand pick ads, it made sense. The ads were often relevant because the webmaster (we're in the 90s remember!) knew their audience. The ads were also often locally hosted, which meant they didn't slow down the page load. Todays overloaded ad networks serve you at best ads that arn't relevant at all, and at worst scams/malware... and in either case, they'll certainly slow down the page load time and come with all kinds of privacy implications.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

No not unless It was part of a general news subscription service. say $5-$10/mo gets divided among the sites based on how much I use them. Maybe something like Flattr?

Re:Moral outrage!

[jandrese]

I love how every time the concept of Alacarte cable comes up, the industry tells us that it would mean higher bills for everyone and much less money going to content producers. The cable industry is telling us to our face that if we want to choose channels they'll rip us off as much as possible, and that's a lot because they are a monopoly. I believe them too. They've been a monopoly for so long they don't even know what customer satisfaction is anymore.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Darinbob]

So the app author was in a quandary. Make money from selling the app, or make money from serving up undesirable malware (aka, advertisements). Serving up ads takes much less work so that's the choice he made.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Darinbob]

Industry should take a look around and notice now many people cut the cord. The old rule that because customers have nowhere to go the companies can keep screwing them with impunity no longer applies. If we cut the cord on cable, we can cut the cord on all those pointless web sites too.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Obfuscant]

If a website doesn't provide content valuable enough to generate revenue or to be supported by the crowd, perhaps it doesn't have a good argument for its own existence?

You do realize that this argument is what led to the current wasteland that we call "broadcast TV", don't you? It is what leads to good programs being cancelled after five episodes or less, as network execs study the Nielsen's and other viewer numbers.

Cable et.al TV was supposed to be the way to get around tyranny of the majority when it comes to television. The web certainly shouldn't be the next victim.

Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?

Because the people who watch OWN are, in turn, subsidizing the fixed costs of the channels YOU want to watch. No program source that charges only the incremental costs for their programs can survive; someone has to pay the fixed costs. The incremental cost is relatively constant per sub, but the fixed costs would make buying a channel prohibitive unless it was spread out over a large number of people. I.e., if the crowd doesn't participate, then the channel won't survive no matter how good you think the programming is.

Re:Moral outrage!

[kav2k]

Content creators I care about. Webcomics, YouTube channels.

Fortunately, Patreon emerged as a solution to this.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

Have you seen sling tv? They claim it is a la carte but you still can not pick only the channels you want. They are going to hang on to packaged plans until it kills them.

What surprises me the most is that afaik no one has ever even made an attempt to sell true a la carte service.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Pascoea]

Yes. Happily. There are small number of websites I visit numerous times in a day. I would most certainly pay them a couple bucks a month to have no ads, but it has to be reasonable.

Re:Moral outrage!

[MBGMorden]

Sure. Certain ones definitely. Not much mind you, but I'd wager it'd be a lot more than they get from my ad impressions.

There are probably 5 or 6 forums I regularly visit. I'd be willing to do $1 per month for those.

I already subscribe to Netflix, and am a backer/sponsor of several smaller websites and podcasts (as well as a few Twitch streamers).

I don't mind paying for content - as long as its ad-free and interesting.

Re: Moral outrage!

[Karlt1]

Marco Arment had no such issue with worrying about losing ad revenue.

1. The Deck ads that he uses are very tasteful, not intrusive and what good ads should be.

2. He is already rich - he was the first employee at Tumblr and made out pretty well from his equity when it was sold to Yahoo.

3. He also made some money from selling Instaper to another company after it was one of the early successful apps for IOS.

4. He created one of the most popular podcast apps for iOS - Overcast - and he posted his first year's income.

5. He has one of the most successful Apple related podcast (80,000 unique listeners) - Accidental Tech Podcast - it's only three people involved and going rates for a podcast with that number of listeners is at least $2500 per spot with four spots per episodes.

If he said he didn't feel morally right about it. I believe him.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Spudboy2003]

He knows most people won't seek a refund. Scam artist. May a million fleas infest your armpit.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Darinbob]

BBC news service I would subscribe to. They don't have such an option though as it's funded from fees in the UK and I'm in America. American news is in a shambles, but I never visit them anyway. If someone comes along and says I have to pay or not visit any of the fluffy web sites out there then I'll move on. The important sites don't have third party ads anyway.

Re:Moral outrage!

[grumling]

I pay a monthly or yearly subscription to several sites that ask for it. I like the fact that I'm directly supporting the content, and it gives me more of a connection to the sites and community around it.

Re:Moral outrage!

[SvnLyrBrto]

Or they could just stop being assholes with obnoxious-as-hell ads that degrade my experience, slow my computer, eat an inordinate amount of bandwidth, require plug-ins, or inject malware. When web ads were just a static gif banner, or even an image in the sidebar; I never used to block them. Google AdWords are also fine. And I have a fairly large whitelist on my desktop ad-blocker of sites I do want to support and, critically, are not scumbags about their advertising. But the first time I see any of:

- pop-ups
- pop-unders
- overlays
- interstitials
- automatically-playing audio or video
- any sort of graphic that follows, or is triggered by, the movement of my mouse pointer
- Some of the other rage-inducing stupid javascript or HTML5 tricks
- Flash or Java for any reason

I have no hesitation whatsoever to pull the site from my whitelist and let its ads goto the devil.

I get that many sites rely on ad revenue to pay the bills. And philosophically, I don't object to being advertised at. I don't even mind targeted ads, so long as they're well-targeted and not insulting. (i.e. Don't show me ads for Microsoft or any of its products.) But it's all about respect. If the site respects me, by refraining from the behaviors I enumerated above, then I respect it by not blocking its ads. If the site disrespects me; well, screw 'em.

Re:Moral outrage!

[tlhIngan]

The cable companies, not wanting us to stop paying, cry "But a la carte means there will be fewer channels, because some won't survive a subscription basis!" Well, do we need those channels then? Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?

If a website doesn't provide content valuable enough to generate revenue or to be supported by the crowd, perhaps it doesn't have a good argument for its own existence?

Thing is, there's a lot of good speciality channels that are hurt by this. Because now instead of subscribers, they have to compete for eyeballs. Which means instead of producing good programming, they have to produce popular programming. Which means what shows were previously just about certain subjects now have to add in "drama" and "conflict" because that stuff gets the eyeballs. (Think lowest common denominator).

So what was a factual recount of say, 9/11, turns into one where you see wives all worried and crying and other "reality TV" things because those sell eyeballs.

Oh, and cable networks are adapting. The leading shows are being spread out through the various channels, so subscribers that only watched one channel now have to catch their favorites on 4 or 5. This is on top of the "dramatization" of documentaries and such.

Hell, just think what the previous CEO of Discovery Networks did - he went and made all the shows less science, more showy. Guess what? A la carte guarantees that because showy gets eyeballs.

I love how every time the concept of Alacarte cable comes up, the industry tells us that it would mean higher bills for everyone and much less money going to content producers. The cable industry is telling us to our face that if we want to choose channels they'll rip us off as much as possible, and that's a lot because they are a monopoly. I believe them too. They've been a monopoly for so long they don't even know what customer satisfaction is anymore.

It's not THAT bad. In Canada, a la carte is the rule, but that doesn't mean cable companies can't offer packages. So what happens is people end up with packages that have a few of the channels they want, then if they only want one channel out of another package, they can get that.

Re:Moral outrage!

[BitZtream]

You sir are an idiot.

You can simply not click on the ads, and you get a website for free. Whats going to replace it is a website that doesn't exist. You won't pay for it, so it won't have any money to operate, so it won't exist.

Do you pay for a slashdot account or use an ad-blocker?

Yea ... I thought so.

You'll cut off your own nose to spite your face, jackass.

Re:Moral outrage!

[farble1670]

Even in full view of the fact that almost all websites exist exclusively on ad based revenue and may stop existing if we are successful in blocking ads. Let them die or be replaced by something else.

there, fixed that for you.

i know, if you don't like their ads, why don't you stop consuming their content? oh, but no one gets hurt right? it's just bits right? websites do need to be hosted, and use resources that cost the owner money.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Kavonte]

Would you pay money to use any of the "free" websites you currently use?

No, and even so, the web sites I really care about would continue to exist. Indeed, they'd be easier to find as well.

Without ads, the only content that exists is created by people who care enough about a subject to create and host that content for free. With ads, these people are drowned out in a sea of other people who create content not because they care about a subject, but because they want ad revenue. Their content is no better than it needs to be in order to trick search engines into believing it is valuable. They also go out of their way to ensure that they have the highest search engine ranking, which results in the good content created by people who care about a subject is very difficult to find.

The only time ads ever worked was when we had Geocities, and they worked specifically because the content creators didn't get any of the revenue, and so they continued to either create good content or create no content at all. Contrast this with YouTube where, because of revenue-sharing with content creators, YouTube is now 50% videos that tell you nothing that couldn't have been stated in a single sentence in the video description, and 50% videos that make up a bullshit story but present it as if it is true in order to go "viral."

So if people don't want other people blocking their ads, here's my suggestion: Ask Google et. al. to allow people to filter search results according to whether a web site has ads. Then those content creators won't have to deal with my ad-blocking, and I won't have to deal with their worthless content, and so we'll both get what we want.

...and just in case anyone thinks I fail to see the content-creator's side of the issue, I'll point out that I have my own web site where I publish some photos and instructions for electronics projects I've built, and some source code for software I've written, and a lot of other random content, and the whole thing costs me only $20/year. Rather than insist that the internet should pay me that $20, I just consider it charity. It makes me happy that people are able to enjoy that content, and so I'm willing to pay $20/year in order to enable them to do so.

Re:Moral outrage!

[farble1670]

I would most certainly pay them a couple bucks a month to have no ads, but it has to be reasonable.

and that's the problem. it wouldn't be reasonable, and the reason is that the revenue they can make from ads vastly outweighs the revenue they can get from trying to get a small number of people to subscribe to their content.

i don't need to prove that. the proof is empirical. how many websites support themselves through subscriptions? why not? is it because no one has thought of it before? is it because it's hard to accept digital payments these days? or maybe it's because people don't like money ... or better yet, because everyone LOVES the idea of ads. so which is it?

Re:Moral outrage!

[OakDragon]

Why should they force me to subsidize Oprah's channel when I've no interest in watching it?

Because the people who watch OWN are, in turn, subsidizing the fixed costs of the channels YOU want to watch.

That's right. It's just a hunch, but I bet that people who want ala carte the most have narrower interests, and thus *that* programming needs subsidies more than OWN ( for example).

Started this comment intending to make an "in Soviet Russia" joke (OWN subsidizes you) but now I can't go through with it.

Re:Moral outrage!

[SvnLyrBrto]

Thing is, there's a lot of good speciality channels that are hurt by this. Because now instead of subscribers, they have to compete for eyeballs. Which means instead of producing good programming, they have to produce popular programming. Which means what shows were previously just about certain subjects now have to add in "drama" and "conflict" because that stuff gets the eyeballs. (Think lowest common denominator).

Those specialty channels are still part of packages so far. But they've degenerated into a wasteland of reality garbage. Have you looked at the lineup of The Learning Channel lately? I dare you to justify those shows as educational or informational in any way. Pretty much all the the Discovery channel shows are junk not; as are those on the other channels owned by discovery. The Science Fiction channel is now Syfy and produces Sharknado and ECW wrestling instead of Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG1. And you can't even make the joke that the History Channel should really be called the Hitler Channel anymore... not unless the Ice Road Truckers are really searching for a secret outpost of the Third Reich up in northern Canada.

Basically, the bleak future you describe is already here. So why not go ahead and decouple the packages and put those channels out of our misery?

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

Well frig If I was paying for the discovery channel as an individual channel and saw cash cab was going to be on every day the only hours I was home to watch tv I would probably drop that channel.

I wouldn't have the scifi channel either WWE, ghost hunters and some kind of makeup show? Where did all the good scifi shows go?

It seems quite apparent that apparently only idiots still have cable else they would have to have something watchable on.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

Not sure who you were replying to but if it was me.

Slashdot thinks I am excellent! No adblocker needed.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Austerity Empowers]

Slashdot says I don't need ads, though I never took them up on the offer.

I don't want the ads on my page, they don't interact well, they sometimes play video or make noise, they sometimes display content that is inappropriate for the location I am at, they are sometimes hosted on machines that apparently are located on mars and hang up rendering of the page, they often try to pop up, over, under, around, sideways and generally interfere with the webpage, there are literally hundreds of reasons why Internet ads are obnoxious and should be killed dead.

If you want to make money being "website" find another way. If you want to paywall, great I will decide if you're worth it or not. If you want to show me 7 neat tricks, your business model is over, invest in fry cook school now.

Re:Moral outrage!

[fyngyrz]

You just want a free car. C'mon, admit it.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

Well for the most part I think it's that when individual sites try to go to a subscription model they want much more than their content would be worth as part of a set.

For example newegg wants $50/year for their 2 day shipping for newegg only.

Or I can get a shoprunner subscription for $79/year and get 2 day shipping at hundreds of stores.

Another example would be netflix vs cbs all access or hbo

If I go with netflix I have a rather large collection of shows to watch from a variety of networks for $7.99/mo

Cbs I would have a collection of shows I could watch But only cbs shows no others for $5.99/mo

Hbo want's $15/mo for access to only hbo's shows.
I have never seen any of Hbo's shows since I don't have cable at home and the cable at work doesn't include that channel.

A subscription model like flattr could be made to work I think.

Worth noting http://news.slashdot.org/story...

I would be thrilled to be able to pay only $230 to remove ads everywhere I go online it would easily make up in time saved! However I wouldn't pay much for an ad blocker because where would that money go?

Re:Moral outrage!

[TsuruchiBrian]

It has nothing to do with the fact that some channels can't survive on their own. This implies that the cable companies are taking a loss but keep them anyway to benefit the customer (which is obviously bullshit).

The actual reason for selling cable channels in bundles is that it is more efficient in a broadcast model. Cables companies could generate one (or a few) datastream(s) and simply send them to everyone (similar to OTA broadcast). If a customer doesn't want the Oprah channel, it's not as if any resources can be saved by not sending them this channel (it's broadcast), it's actually extra work to develop a system to disable specific channels.

Even as we switch to an on demand model, you can only watch one program at a time on your television. So it doesn't really save the cable companies any money if you restrict the number of channels you watch. If anything it makes more sense for the cable companies to charge for the amount of time spent watching TV (or the amount of data transferred) rather than the number of channels you subscribe to.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

I am very glad that slashdot gives me the option as I would not be able to read /. on my ipad without it.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

No but at this point I miss seeing those flashing but quiet and not malicious (ok misleading) "YOU'VE WON A NEW CAR"
They really weren't that bad also:
XKCD new car https://xkcd.com/570/

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

But then they would then have exact numbers of who watched what and I bet they would find the vast majority don't want to watch crap like survivor or ghost hunters.

Re: Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

I really wish they wouldn't spend quite so much on in house content.

I have noticed I am just not sure what to do about it yet.

I still have plenty of things to watch on netflix.

But I know the production of orange is the new black probably cost me several other shows. (no I don't watch that show but its heavily advertised)

I do not and have never had hbo

Re:Moral outrage!

[timrod]

There's a reason no one has ever tried to sell true a la carte service, and it's because the content providers force "bundling" with their channels. Disney, for instance, is well known for forcing providers to bundle a bunch of crap in with ESPN - their deal with the cable companies is bundle or don't get it at all. Almost every content provider does this in order to sell their less popular channels.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Anonymous Coward]

MTV Law. Any cable channel named for a specific kind of programming will cease (or majorly diminish) that programming within a few years. The only exception I can think of at the moment is Cartoon Network.

Re:Moral outrage!

[sims 2]

One of the things I have wanted to know for years is why none of the local cable companies carry nasa tv. Not that I can't watch it for free on their website. But afaik its free for them to carry and they could use it to fluff their channel count so why don't they?

Re:Moral outrage!

[epyT-R]

If I had cable, my monthly subscription fee would subsidize all the barely-qualifies-as-content crap I don't care to watch while they cancel the few things I do...and they have ads. wtf? Pay for ads? How is this justified again? Fuck it. I'm not paying $100+ a month for ad ridden services. Put ads in it and it's worth, at most, $0 to me. Maybe less as I'd like to bill them for my time spent watching/sifting through ads.

Re:Moral outrage!

[ShaunC]

You haven't been able to buy a Slashdot subscription in forever, maybe for as long as Dice has been our steward. I still occasionally see someone with an asterisk and wonder what's going on there, did they buy a million pageviews way back when?

Re: Moral outrage!

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, the new people running the Syfy channel have been trying to turn it around this year. They've got quite a lot of new sci-fi shows, some of which do show real promise.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

What about for people who don't have "$20/year" needs?

I once had a website that was very popular in its niche, a community for a gaming service. It started out as a small hobby, which I figured only a couple of people would ever use. It eventually turned out to be one of the cornerstones of that particular community, arguably helping to define it. Part of the draw was generated images you could use in signatures, be it forums, blogs, or MySpace (we are talking 10 years ago), which also happened to be the means of advertising for the accompanying website, which displayed relevant stats for the gaming service, as well as comparisons to the other community members.

My site wasn't 'blog content', it was a way for people to "track" (not in the ad sense, but in the "over time" sense) their progress, their friends' progress, and get some neat info about the community as a whole. For some, it appealed to their competitive nature; for others, it was just a way to make sure they were getting the most out of the games they were playing.

As I mentioned, I never set out to create what it became. I started it on my home internet connection. In less than 60 days I had signed up with a colocation facility to get real bandwidth and real computing power. By the end of the next year, I had half a dozen servers. I had a fantastic relationship with the colo company, who wasn't charging me bandwidth (and trust me, I was pushing out something like 9 Gb/day with those remote images), but I still had to pay 'real estate'. I had gotten a lot of 'dev cred' with my creation and was easily able to get jobs (and subsequently get fired from for working on the site instead of my job), but ~$1k/month in hosting (at its peak) isn't exactly pocket change.

Now, I was in sort of a unique situation, because as I mentioned, this was for a gaming service, and I had an agreement with that service who was providing me with some exclusive APIs to easily consume the information I needed. Because it was supposed to be a "community site", one of those agreements was that I couldn't charge a subscription fee. My only true means for monetization was advertising, and for 4 of the 6 years, it was great. I got the resources I needed to continue reinvesting into the site - namely hardware, software licenses (forums), and consulting services when things got tough (scaling issues; and a contractor to do some Flash work (again, 10 years ago :P)). After that, ad-blockers started getting popular, and while my monthly advertising revs took a noticeable hit, I was still able to at least cover my costs. Then, the recession finally hit the advertising space, and I literally went to two-figures overnight. It's hard to pay a $700 bill with $90 in advertising revenue. I paid out of pocket for about a year, until I finally shuttered the site -- for multiple reasons, to be fair, but this being the largest reason.

This isn't meant to be a sob story, but a genuine look at how not all sites are 'content farms', that advertising does help websites, and how ad-blocking does demonstrably hurt. You may not care - if you look at my post history, I post on this topic a lot, to many people who are apathetic. I'm not necessarily interested in changing your mind. Your post was just interesting to me because you mentioned how it should be a 'public service' to pay for things out of pocket, and I'm curious how you would go about things if your "$20/year" suddenly needed to become much more.

Re:Moral outrage!

[tgv]

> Whats going to replace it is a website that doesn't exist.

A paid website. You don't have the right to existence of these websites. If people consider ad blocking more important than whatever website you're talking about, *you* should pay for it. If no-one wishes to pay for it, not even the owner, it doesn't deserve to exist.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Kavonte]

Your post was just interesting to me because you mentioned how it should be a 'public service' to pay for things out of pocket,

That certainly isn't what I meant. Like any charity, it's a "do it if you're able to" sort of thing.

I had an agreement with that service who was providing me with some exclusive APIs [...] one of those agreements was that I couldn't charge a subscription fee.

I'd say that this is the true "evil" that did you in, not ad-blocking software. Without a doubt you were doing something to aid the popularity of this game and yet the developer was insisting that you be unable to earn any money to cover the cost of doing so. I imagine you wouldn't have had too much difficulty convincing some of your users into donating $10 per month towards keeping the service alive for everyone else, e.g. how Wikipedia is user-supported and yet still free to anyone who isn't able to pay for the service due to the charity of those who do pay for it. At $700/month you must have had thousands or tens of thousands of users, so you'd only need to talk between 7% and 0.7% of them into sending you money.

You may not care - if you look at my post history, I post on this topic a lot, to many people who are apathetic.

...and I'm another one of those people. The way I see it, ads are one of the worst ways to fund anything. Whereas with donations, content actually has to be valuable in order to get anyone to pay for it, advertising extracts cash from visitors regardless of their experience, and so attention to quality is often replaced with attention to page view counts. Now I realize that in your case you were obviously doing what your users want, but because of that, if the game's developer hadn't been strangling your ability to fund what you were doing, you wouldn't have had a problem funding it on donations.

Also, to any extent that your web service couldn't have been funded through donations, I think it simply shouldn't have existed. The simple fact is that your users would pay for it one way or another, either through direct payments or donations to you, or through the cost of malware infections and purchases of scam-like products from other people. (Ad money comes from advertisers who extract that money one way or another from your users.) So if what your users are willing to choose to pay for your service doesn't cover the cost of that service, then that just means that they'd rather spend their limited resources on something else. By relying upon ads, you take the choice of what they do with their resources out of their hands. Now, if you're doing something which the free market would otherwise reject due to it being too costly for too little benefit (like serving textual information in graphical form to millions of people who then mostly ignore that information) then that may well be the only way you can make that happen, but that doesn't mean that you're entitled to be able to force your web site's visitors to pay for something they don't feel is worth paying for by extracting your revenue from them via all of the shady things that advertisers do.

The one thing worth noting in all of this is that it is possible to do advertising well. I've seen some popular blogs offer ads by using their blog to advertise that they're offering ads, then reviewing the ads that are submitted to them and, after approval, hosting those ads on the blog itself. The result is that there's no malware ads and no scam product ads, instead it's all reasonable stuff like someone who has a little web store somewhere selling some interesting little products who decided to sponsor that web site for $100 in exchange for having their ad shown with one of the blog's stories, but sometimes the ads were just links to someone's little web site which had no means of generating revenue at all, which means that they likely just considered the $100 to be a donation and the link to their web site a cool "thank you" for the donation. ...and ad-blocking software doesn't target these kinds of ads, because it can't know which images are ads and which images are genuine content, and so they aren't harmed by its use at all.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

I imagine you wouldn't have had too much difficulty convincing some of your users into donating $10 per month towards keeping the service alive for everyone else

Actually, I did have donation drives, there wasn't any rule against those. While I did have some nice folks (and some generous folks), overall they weren't effective. The pre-paywall mentality is 'why buy when I can get it for free'? That's what advertising does. It gives a reasonable idea that you're accessing something for "free" - in other words, not being an out of pocket cost.

if the game's developer hadn't been strangling your ability to fund what you were doing

To be fair it was an entire service, not just a developer.. but anyway, I don't know if 'strangling' is the right word. After all, they were directly providing me the data to make the site a 'thing' in the first place. The idea was that I was supposed to be a "community" site, not a commercial effort. Enabling subscriptions or some sort of for-pay element changes the nature of the domain. Is it a pedantic difference? Possibly. But I wanted to keep a good relationship, and worked within the terms I agreed to.

I think it simply shouldn't have existed.

Well.... thanks, I guess.

....through the cost of malware infections

That's some unfair prejudice. Only once in its 6-year history was there ever an instance of an ad doing something it shouldn't have been (twice if you count the old Yahoo Ads giving adult-oriented text ads, which sucked). It was taken care of within 30 minutes. Does that justify it? Of course not. But it's not like the ad networks I used were continually serving up junk. Once the site got established, most ads (within the US) were directly or ancillarily relevant to the site, just like people argue it should always be.

You're also talking about gamers. Graphical ads are important to this subset of users, who are naturally attracted to flashy (not necessarily Flash-y) things. Since I had very little "reading" content (again, it wasn't a blog), it's not like it was pulling them away from a sentence. And if they ignored it, that was fine, because CPM worked well. When you boil it down, advertising is only about getting your message out. Sure, there's extra monetary incentive if people do something about it, but as a site owner, I only needed the message to be displayed.

hosting those ads on the blog itself

I tried using packages to manage ads (OpenAds, which I think renamed to openX, or something to that effect). That required me to be the advertising agent, in addition to wearing the hats of programming, infrastructure, sysadmin, and Community stuff. Also, since some advertisers want to handle the insertions of the ads, it was "yet another" interface to do that, whereas aligning with an ad network lets them do it once.

As a site owner, the entire reason to have ad networks is to essentially hire someone to handle these things for you. AND, since I was able to get into some niche ad platforms (e.g. ones specific to gaming websites), the network was able to leverage all of their sites as a collective property, giving access to higher quality ads. Not everything is 'punch the monkey'.

The second issue with hosting ads yourself is that advertisers want to certify the total number of impressions, the number of uniques, and where the views came from. There's no impartial source for that information without an ad network. What's to say I didn't "suddenly" have 5 million uniques the week a high-paying advertiser decides to buy ad space? That's what the javascript portions of ads were supposed to do; simply certify visitors were real. I understand that a good portion of networks abused that trust. But it wasn't always like that.

ad blocking software doesn't target these kinds of ads

Uh, [Citation Needed]. Maybe they

Re:Moral outrage!

[gnupun]

The fact is a lot of Slashdot's value comes from user commentary.

And a nightclub's value is from meeting other customers. If a nightclub can charge an entry fee, why can't slashdot? That's because customers don't think it's not important enough to pay for, so ads are the best for getting income.

Re:Moral outrage!

[petervandervos]

My problem is, I will never buy anything on those ads. I will never click on any ad and don't use them to get information.

If never buy something from somebody on my front door. If somebody ask me: "Can I ask you a question" I say I am not interested. People don't call me on the phone because I am listed that I don't want advertisements (you can do that in the Netherlands). I have a sticker on my front door saying I don't want un-addressed advertisement flyers.

What should I do? Stop using internet?

Re:Moral outrage!

[FunkSoulBrother]

What's to say I didn't "suddenly" have 5 million uniques the week a high-paying advertiser decides to buy ad space? That's what the javascript portions of ads were supposed to do; simply certify visitors were real. I understand that a good portion of networks abused that trust. But it wasn't always like that.

I really appreciate your interesting and detailed take on this topic. I think the answer here is that the advertiser needs to do the research themselves, because they are frankly not entitled to this information by tracking my computer.

The example I like to give is a print newspaper or magazine. The New York Times is able to sell its ad space based on circulation -- and some weeks things might be slow and there might be tens of thousands of copies left unsold on newsstands, and other weeks there might be a terrorist attack where every copy of the paper sells out.

I think websites should do the same, sell local ad space based on average traffic over a window of time. If your site blows up into some megasite -- renegotiate your ad rates the next time they come up.

Re:Moral outrage!

[farble1670]

My problem is, I will never buy anything on those ads. I will never click on any ad and don't use them to get information.

ads are about a lot more than immediate clickthroughs to a purchase. e.g., brand name recognition. everyone like to think they are above any sort of subliminal manipulation by ads. we're all too smart for that huh? think about it. why do companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars and such things? trust me, nobody spends that sort of money without knowing without a doubt that it works.

What should I do? Stop using internet?

you should stop visiting sites where the advertising is offensive to you. why is that so complicated? if there are sites that you really enjoy that contain ads, deal with the ads. it's part of the bargain. it how the website owner gets paid. it's what allows them to give you the content. without SOMEONE consuming those ads, the content wouldn't exist.

a pretty good way to understand if something is moral is to ask what would happen if everyone did it / acted that way. if everyone blocked ads, there'd be no ad revenue, website would fold because of lack of income, and vast amounts of content (the content you are now enjoying with your ad blocker turned on) wouldn't exist. if you block ads, you're essentially mooching off the rest of the world that doesn't block ads. someone's paying for that content, it just isn't you.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Kavonte]

That's some unfair prejudice. Only once in its 6-year history was there ever an instance of an ad doing something it shouldn't have been

My claim wasn't that the ads themselves themselves are the malware, my claim was that the ads are for malware and scams. In other words, you're OK if you just view the ad, but if you actually click it then you're heading down a dangerous path. The ad networks do a fair job of not serving malware directly, because web site operators don't want to infect all of their viewers with malware for cash. However, they're quite OK with leading a small percentage of their viewers to malware in exchange for some cash, and so they don't care so much what the ad links to.

How would you deal with the situation if your site suddenly became popular, and you needed additional resources to serve your new fanbase. You'd simply shut it down? You'd put up donations and just hope for the best?

I think the reason you're not understanding my point of view is because what you were doing was too expensive for the value it gave to users.

The average page on my web site is 500 kB, and my web host charges me $0.20 per GiB, and so each page view costs $0.000093, which isn't a lot of charity on my behalf to provide that information to people for free. However, if I did end up with the popularity necessary to turn that small cost into something I couldn't handle, I'd have some options:

Convince 1 out of every 1000 visitors to donate 9.3 cents.
Convince 1 out of every 10,000 visitors to donate 93 cents.
Convince 1 out of every 100,000 visitors to donate $9.30.
Convince 1 out of every 1,000,000 visitors to donate $93.

Now you might be thinking that the sort of person who is going to donate $93 to a web site is a one-in-a-million kind of person, but when only one out of a million people who see the text asking for a donation have to donate that much, then the rarity of that type of individual isn't a problem. Similarly, if only 0.001% of web site visitors will donate $10, because that still covers the cost of the web site, and while 0.001% sounds like a crazy small number someone just made up to explain how they think it'll never happen, that's the actual number that is required.

Now, I'm sure that if I were to turn all of the text on my web site into images so that people can then be encouraged to hot-link my content into every forum and blog on the internet, then I'm sure I could turn that $93 per million visitors into $93 per thousand visitors. ...and in that case I can imagine that I'd never be able to obtain donations in that amount. So in that case, yes, I'd just shut the thing down, because clearly I'd be doing something that is so wasteful of money that no one is willing to pay for it, even if it is only 9.3 cents per user, though in lieu of shutting it down I'd probably just look into doing something more sustainable, e.g. let people create their own page on my web site which pulls up the stats of all of their friends in text form and, in doing so, doesn't waste bandwidth by providing that information in inefficient form to people who aren't even going to look at it.

I wanted to keep a good relationship, and worked within the terms I agreed to.

Then agree to new terms. Explain what the service is costing you to operate, talk about how those many images on every web site are helping to promote the game (who wouldn't want their game mentioned in many threads on many forums all over the internet), and explain that if they don't remove that restriction from your agreement then you'll be forced to shut down the free advertising network you've created for their game.

Your relationship with that game developer reminds me too much of Minecraft and its mods community. People slave away to create mods with no help from the developer other than the obfuscated source code to the game, and their thanks is that they're unable to make any money doin

Re:Moral outrage!

[Kavonte]

I just want to say I agree. (I'm the guy the person you've responded to was talking to.)

It seems crazy to me that ads on the internet are sold by the number of clicks. It would be like paying for newspaper ads by the number of people who show up in your store after you place an ad. The newspaper would never agree to that because it isn't their problem if you're advertising nothing of value to the wrong audience, but that's how it works on the internet. A consequence of that is that ad networks are focused on obtaining clicks, unlike a newspaper which is focused on maintaining readership. They don't care where the clicks come from, and so they often come from the worst of places, because the quality of what the ads appear alongside of is irrelevant. All that matters is that someone clicks on the ads.

A friend of mine decided to buy ads for a free game that the two of us created, just to try to get some more people to play it, under the theory that once it reached a "critical mass" that people would be sufficiently entertained by the other players to make up for the fact that, by itself, the game just isn't very fun. So he signed up for Google AdWords, or AdSense, I can never remember which is which. We assumed that if we just chose words that Google presently shows no ads for, we'd get those ad spaces for a low price. However, that isn't how it works.

How it works is that if you're not willing to pay at least 20 cents per click, your ads will never be shown anywhere. At 20 cents per click, you get your ads shown in two places: In paid search results on third-party search engines, where users mistakenly assume your link is a relevant search result, and quickly hit the back button upon realizing it is not, and web sites hosing flash games which were literally cobbled together from stolen assets in about ten minutes, which surely are being played only by five year olds who just blindly click on things. (Seriously, if you saw those games, you'd agree they're the most worthless games on the internet by a wide margin.) At 50 cents per click, Google will begin displaying your ads on some search results, but only if there are no other ads to show for those search terms, and only if Google deems your web site "relevant," meaning that it likely would have included it in the first few pages of search results anyway. You have to go all the way up to $1 per click before you begin to get anything of any value whatsoever.

Anyway, my friend spent about $100 on this, partially by accident since Google will happily spend more than you've deposited and simply expect you to send them cash for the rest later. After examining the web site logs, I found that no one who came to the web sites because of the ads downloaded the game, or even looked at more than the landing page for the ad. So for $100 we got nothing.

Of course, no experiment is worthwhile without a control, so it's worth mentioning that my friend also found a web site that has an index of indie games, and so he created an account there and posted an entry about our game. That didn't result in as many clicks as the ad network, but they were very high quality clicks. Those people actually downloaded the game, and indeed many of them spoke to us about it after meeting us within the game. While our game ultimately still failed to become popular, that free effort at advertising did infinitely more to promote it than that $100 given to Google did, at least to the extent that one considers division by zero to result in infinity.

As far as I'm concerned, Google's advertising is just a huge scam, from providing many success stories to encourage you to make such a huge investment ("give us money and you'll get money" is a central theme of many scams), to having that poorly defined "landing page quality" metric which determines how much you have to pay for your ads. The help for that metric tells you that if you improve your page quality then you'll be able to get your ads to display, but it never defines exactly what the page qualit

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

my claim was that the ads are for malware and scams

While I'm not denying that stuff happens, that hasn't been my experience. Again, I was mostly with reputable ad networks, including niche ones that didn't do 'punch the monkey' stuff, and the furthest they got away from gaming (and ancillary stuff like snack foods and the like) were other household items. Since my site actually did have a decent percentage of women and parents, it really wasn't that far off. The only time it was completely off-base was Yahoo, who served up a few very weird adult ads (well, maybe that's *not* that far off from the gaming demographic, but still not something you'd want :P)

was too expensive for the value it gave to users.

Now you're just teetering on being offensive. Yes, it required a decent amount of resources to operate (serving 14-million requests for images; half cached and half needing to be generated on-the-fly), but I don't think you have any authority to comment on the value it gave. Not that I'm saying it was the best site ever, but to imply that it wasn't providing 'enough' value is not for you to decide, no matter what the eventual outcome was. Ad blocking is generally a set-and-forget thing. The entire point of my post was to show that it has a material effect.

The removal of that ad-based income forced you to stop thanklessly slaving away for a game developer

I guess you didn't fully read my last post. It wasn't for one game developer specifically, it was for an entire service. I wasn't 'slaving away for them'; they didn't ask me for anything. In fact, as I also said, they provided things specifically for me. Running that site was my own interest.

I apologize if I'm being unnecessarily harsh, it's tough to get someone to see things from my point of view if they've never been there. Since you said you had a site, you could relate, but it doesn't seem so.. I'm simply saying that I believe your opinion would change, just like Arment's opinion did, if it was your creation in question. You did answer my question by saying you'd shut it down. That's a sad thought, and I hope you never have to make that decision. Thank you for the response.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

Thank you.

How would you propose the advertiser do that research? There are only so many ways traffic can be objectively quantified. Alexa used to be the standard, then Quantcast for a while (in which I was in the top 1K sites for a time), but those require tracking, much like GA. One could use GA, but now people are blocking that, too.

In your example, you said 'sell[ing] local ad space based on average traffic over a window of time', but I'm still trying to figure out how you provide that data to a buyer in a way that they can trust - like I said, I could inflate the numbers I give in traffic reports. Is it a "trust it, or don't"? I'm not familiar how print advertising does things; I am not sure if you have any insight into that, or were just making an analogy. I think people probably inherently trust the NYT more than they would a random website, though.

I'm just talking out loud. Again, I don't think advertising is inherently bad, but I do recognize it's been egregiously abused. Some balance between being able to quantify numbers to an advertiser without the "risk of malware" that people claim as their reason for blocking ads and/or the quantification metrics.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

In 6 years, I never had any advertising work solely on CPC or CPA. There were monetary values for them, of course, but CPM (Cost Per thousand (Roman numeral M) impressions) was the primary source. Eyeballs have importance, because as I said, advertising at its core is about being able to broadcast your message for a price. I still find it very misleading for you to assert that advertising is solely about malware infections and scams. Yes, of course it happens, but I greatly feel you're overstating it (or I've just been out of the game for too long)... there are reputable ad networks out there.

You spent several paragraphs discussing Google Ads, but while I'm familiar enough with them, I never used them on my site, so I couldn't directly comment. But overall I'm not surprised at your findings.

What FunkSoulBrother quoted from me is my assertion to you that using "local ads" allows a website owner to fudge the number of impressions, and makes it hard to ask an advertiser who has never worked with you before to take them as fact.

Re:Moral outrage!

[Kavonte]

I guess you didn't fully read my last post. It wasn't for one game developer specifically, it was for an entire service.

I did read it, but yes, I'm clearly not understanding exactly what your site was. Hopefully that doesn't matter too much to the discussion.

I don't think you have any authority to comment on the value it gave.

I think it's important to note that I'm not really trying to. Yes, I do think that what your site did was kind of wasteful (assuming I understand what it did), but it isn't my opinion that matters, it's the opinion of your site's users that matters. So what I'm really trying to say is that, in terms of their willingness to donate to keep the site alive, apparently they did not believe it to be worth the expense.

For example, I might decide to build an outdoor ice skating rink in the desert, and allow people to use it for free. Then after some time, I become unable to afford the upkeep myself, and so I ask for people to help out, at a cost of $80 per visitor per day, since it is in the desert and keeping that ice frozen in that location is insanely expensive. In that situation, I'd expect most people to decide that, while they love the ice skating rink, and using it brings them a lot of happiness, it just isn't a cost-effective means of entertainment. Meanwhile, if I did the same thing in a colder location with a higher humidity level, it might cost only $8 per visitor per day, and in that case many of the visitors would happy just pay the $8, since it does bring people $8 worth of happiness, it just doesn't bring people $80 of happiness. So perhaps, in the desert, I need to find some way to either increase the value of the experience, or decrease the expense of it. For example, if I built a dome over the rink, trapping all of the humidity inside, that would likely reduce the evaporation rate, and reduce the cost. If that wasn't enough, I might also open the rink only at night, keeping it covered with insulation during the day, which is certainly non-ideal, but it does enable people in the hot desert climate to continue to enjoy an ice-skating rink from time to time for an affordable price.

What I'm saying is that I think your web site was in that sort of situation. I'm not saying that it was worthless, I'm just saying that I don't think its worth was in proportion to its cost, and that's why you weren't able to raise sufficient donations. So I think it would have made sense to look into ways to provide a similar value at a lower cost, e.g. asking users to not hot-link the images from literally everywhere but instead just from key locations like their MySpace page or personal web site where the probability that anyone seeing the images is interested in the information they contain is highest, so that you can continue to provide most of the value you provided before but at much less than most of the cost.

Obviously I don't know your situation and so I can only speculate as to what might have helped, but my point is that your situation seems unusual to me. I think most of the discussion for this story isn't about such unique circumstances, but rather it's about much more typical web sites like my own, the type which I think I can quite easily argue aren't harmed in any way that anyone should care about by the use of ad blocking software.

Take a look at this web page. When the Anonymous Coward asked "would you pay money to use any of the 'free' websites you currently use?" it was this particular web page that I had in mind when I replied "no, and even so, the web sites I really care about would continue to exist."

About a year ago I needed to find that information again, having successfully used it the first time I found it, and having a bottle of the enchant saved from that time but no memory of how to properly test its acidity and adjust it. So I went looking, and only encountered search results

Re:Moral outrage!

[Morgon]

The internet didn't used to be like this. It used to be all (well, maybe not "all") high-quality stuff that people put together and hosted for free.

It used to be all university-hosted webspace. Literally every site I visited 'back in the day' were ~ home directories. It was interesting, and the signal-to-noise was lower, but it was far from high-quality. It sounds like your real gripe is that it's no longer a niche, exclusive community, which I personally think is a fair argument. There are many aspects/types of sites that are a lot worse now that we have the general public online (the biggest example for me would be personals sites. Yahoo had an awesome personals site where most everyone was real, and you had a high chance of meeting them. Contrast to today where most sites have bots, and people are jaded because of the million braindead messages that everyone gets assaulted with)

However, as much as I hold those days dear, I don't want to go back to that. I ENJOY the commercial internet. For all its faults, there are plenty of benefits. I feel people who have opinions like yours fail to truly realize the impact advertising has had to help shape the internet... for just as much good as it has bad. I don't want it all to be corporate presence and student home directories. It would have never gone anywhere; nobody would have cared enough to bring all of those things we now do online without thinking.

Directly, the rise of advertising helped people care about making (more) stuff online, and has indirectly helped us get everyday things we take for granted, like paying bills online. I can even order a pizza for delivery. I can buy tickets to things I would have never known existed from friends of friends, who can more easily share it. I say indirectly because obviously these aren't benefits of advertising, but of the internet population it helped form. It's not that I don't get what you're saying. It WAS much quieter back then, no question. But the joy was that of discovery; clicking around some student page who linked to a student page at another university that talked about something else. That WAS cool. But it was hard to find, and it was very limited. People did make stuff 'for free' (MUDs, and their chat equivalent, talkers), but is that really the limit of entertainment you want to go back to?

I also don't want to 'micropay' to the million different websites I visit, and I think that holds true for many people. Even as a tip jar (rather than having an actual account to manage), who handles those payments? Paypal (who takes a piece for themselves)? Because I don't think you're getting money transfer on your utopia internet; that requires resources (especially in terms of regulation and protection) that companies will want to be paid for, but it seems that would be wrong.

You are correct that it doesn't seem I'm going to change your mind or understand that it's a necessary 'evil'. I understand your idea of the perfect internet, because I've gone through the same thought exercise, but we came to vastly different conclusions. What we simply need is advertising reform. An eradication of the TRULY evil side of online advertising, and back to its roots of simply "paying to get a message out". Once that happens, I think (most rational) people will be more understanding of the relationships between reader, 'content' provider (whatever that content may be), the infrastructure needed to handle it. I assure you that ads are not your enemy. Exploitative and careless ad networks are. Let's fight against those.

Re:Moral outrage!

[petervandervos]

My problem is, I will never buy anything on those ads. I will never click on any ad and don't use them to get information.

why do companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars and such things? trust me, nobody spends that sort of money without knowing without a doubt that it works.

Ah, but you don't know me. I am 50+. They are not making tv programs for my kind any more on commercial station because we don't buy enough.

What should I do? Stop using internet?

you should stop visiting sites where the advertising is offensive to you. why is that so complicated? if there are sites that you really enjoy that contain ads, deal with the ads.

I indeed do that. There are news sites I don't visit because of the ads. I found other sources without ads and even without cookies. For weather forecasts I do the same.

Or I block ads. On forums I can still comment and don't waste the owners/advertisers bandwidth.

Do you want to be on technical forums that block blockers? (Didn't Slashdot do that for a short time?) And block people that don't click on ads? Because if nobody clicks the ads I don't think they would get any money.

I don't think ads are the way to get the internet working. There should be something else.

Do you know how to change a system? Like some companies say: "disrupt them!".
I love patent troll, they will change the patent laws.
I love downloaders, they will change the copyright laws.
Block ads. Let's see what happens.

Re:Moral outrage!

[tehcyder]

The fact is a lot of Slashdot's value comes from user commentary.

That, and the thoughtful analysis of slashdot's favourite regular contributor, Bennet Haselton.

Am i the only one...

[hyperar]

That doesn't believe in his explanation?

Re:Am i the only one...

[Penguinisto]

Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but did Doubleclick recently write any big checks recently?

Re:Am i the only one...

[NotDrWho]

I would respect him more if he just said "Money. It was money."

Re:Am i the only one...

[hyperar]

Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but did Doubleclick recently write any big checks recently?

Hahaha, it seems pretty ridiculous that somebody that is writting an ad blocker app doesn't know who it works, isn't it?, it's like, oh noes, my app is blocking all ads... well yeah, you wrote it dummy.

Re:Am i the only one...

[zlives]

no but google probably did

Re:Am i the only one...

[Your.Master]

He had the number 1 paid app in the app store until he pulled it. Money would be a reason to keep it on the app store.

Re:Am i the only one...

[flopsquad]

You are not the only one. If he called it quits earlier in the process, maybe. But you have to put a nontrivial amount of energy into developing a final product (that's worth a damn). Thats an awful lot of time to spend, creating something from the ground up, to suddenly develop moral qualms about it a few days after releasing the finished product.

So... after the time coding and testing, getting to a releasable product, he's just now realizing that a program he wrote to block ads indiscriminately... blocks ads indiscriminately? Like he didn't realize his own site was part of $everywhere_ads_are_served? And he's just now getting the "moral" implications of the code that he specifically wrote to do what it does?

Unfortunately giving him credit for being smarter than that means acknowledging the reasons he states may not be entirely truthful.

Re:Am i the only one...

[hyperar]

He had the number 1 paid app in the app store until he pulled it. Money would be a reason to keep it on the app store.

I think it would have take him years to get the same amout of money Google could offer him in only one check.

Re:Am i the only one...

[rogoshen1]

Your post made me think of Oppenheimer for some reason....

Re:Am i the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that the mostly likely reason that he is getting more attention than he desires, the attention that he is getting takes too much time and too many brain-cycles away from what he wants to do with his life at this time.

Re:Am i the only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I do believe him when he says that it "Just doesn’t feel good". He's a under social pressure from the people in his circle, and he's a leftist so he's very sensitive to that.

Re:Am i the only one...

[TheRaven64]

You know that Doubleclick is owned by Google, right?

Re:Am i the only one...

[NatasRevol]

Especially since the database he was using was from Ghostery. So testing on the desktop would reveal obvious & easy issues, like blocking a revenue source, early on in the development.

Of course, none of the content people want to talk about the cost to users (security/tracking, bandwidth fees, viruses, autoplay ads). They only want to talk about the negative to THEIR pocketbooks. Very hypocritical of them. I've had several of them block me for pointing it out because they just can't see through their own point of views.

Re:Am i the only one...

[NatasRevol]

($2.99) x (70%) x (~10k downloads) is something easily matchable by most advertising agencies.

Re:Am i the only one...

[ashpool7]

Marco is *probably* a millionaire from the shares in Tumblr he had when Yahoo bought them. Pretty sure that is not the reason.

Re:Am i the only one...

[Anubis IV]

Marco Arment is (almost certainly) already set for life after Yahoo bought out Tumblr awhile back, since he was the #2 employee/lead developer at Tumblr for a number of years and had been granted a LOT of stock in it, which likely became worth millions following the sale. He's had decent success since then as well with Instapaper (a very successful iOS app which didn't feel like developing any more and sold off), The Magazine (which was at the time a slightly profitable Newstand app for iOS which looked to be on the decline so he sold off), and now Overcast (a very successful iOS podcast client which he hasn't sold off (yet)). All of which is to say, it's doubtful it's about a check getting written.

He's been doing a lot of public hand-wringing over this topic in podcasts and on his blog prior to the release of iOS 9, since most of his income right now is from his podcasts and his blog, both of which are supported by ads. Even so, he definitely doesn't stand beside the tracking and other practices that advertisers are engaging in these days, which is why the ads he serves don't use them. Likewise, most of the folks in his corner of the blogosphere use ads from the same ad network (The Deck), which doesn't use tracking scripts, so he's been taking flak from his friends (e.g. John Gruber of Daring Fireball) for developing a tool that hurts all of them.

Re: Am i the only one...

[Redbehrend]

I read it all and I don't believe him I think the pressure and apple got to him. He's just ditching on a good note instead of a bad note.

Re: Am i the only one...

[Karlt1]

As I've already posted. Marco is not exactly a poor developer struggling to support his family. He made a few million at least when Tumblr was sold to Yahoo from his equity stake being the first developer for Tumblr.

Re:Am i the only one...

[Spudboy2003]

He's a douche bag! I fear this will be the new trend on the App Store. Money grab then get religion and pull your app.

Re:Am i the only one...

[ic3m4n1]

Also licensing deals with ghostery seems to suggest it was well thought out plan not just overnight act of hack to come up with app like that.

Re:Am i the only one...

[mrbester]

The quote makes it sound like Ghostery is in some way responsible for him not putting white listing capability in his "simple" app, something that anybody who has ever used any variety of content blocker would know about and expect to have.

Even if there wasn't a user controlled one, at the very least he could have white listed his own site. Did he even write the app or just get some intern armed with a "iOS Apps for Dummies" book to do it for him?

Re:Am i the only one...

[BitZtream]

I think it does.

Its not that he didn't know his website's ads would be blocked, its that he didn't realize how dramatic the effect would be for his revenue stream.

Once he realized that it would crush his revenue stream completely, he then realized that 'hey ... blocking all ads may not be the best idea, it might actually be bad for some people and legitimate products because ... I'M ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IT HURT'

He just had a realization when he felt the effects himself. When he realized he was shafting himself out of cash when he wasn't being an 'evil advertiser' or anything, he realized that he was nuking it from space instead of maybe a pistol or two.

Sometimes we don't immediately fully realize the effect we have on others until we see it directly for ourselves. Thats all this was.

Re:Am i the only one...

[NatasRevol]

I think he said that was coming in v2.

But he did say this while first thinking about it:

"I was therefore faced with a decision about The Deck. I had to either:

- Omit The Deck from Ghostery’s database, carving out an exception for the advertiser used by me and many of my friends.
- Enforce Ghostery’s database consistently, potentially angering my own site’s advertiser and my friends who use it.

And once I looked at it like that, it wasn’t a difficult decision. It’s uncomfortable, but I’d rather be consistent and fair."

Basically, money & friends changed his mind. As I said before, hypocritical.

Re:Am i the only one...

[flopsquad]

Now I am become AdBlock, the destroyer of ad revenue.

Re:Am i the only one...

[DRJlaw]

I think it would have take him years to get the same amout of money Google could offer him in only one check.

You assume that Google would only have to offer one check. It doesn't take a genius to adapt GPLed ad blocking software for iOS in xcode. If you offer a first check, then you'll need to offer 10 checks, then 100, then 1000...

And only one pain in the ass has to refuse the check...

Re:Am i the only one...

[SuperKendall]

I don't see why it was difficult at all. Why not create an exception for a good ad network? As you find more, exclude them also. Make a stand for ad networks that respect users. Why is that a difficult choice at all?

Re:Am i the only one...

[Anubis IV]

Both of those came before the Yahoo buyout of Tumbler, and both of them make perfect sense. Sitting on a perfectly good app that you're no longer interested in developing but that has an established user base and a long list of fresh features that could easily be added is just wasteful. Would you suggest he should just give it away? And what alternative would he have had for The Magazine, other than killing it outright. Kudos to him for selling it to someone interested in trying to keep it alive and going, but who likewise wasn't able to do so in the end.

Re:Am i the only one...

[johanw]

Or maybe hu just got an offer he couldn't refuse... (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-offer-he-cant-refuse.html).

Re:Am i the only one...

[NatasRevol]

From what little I know of him, Marco doesn't like to sustain things like that. He's a builder, not a service. Hence the reason he's sold off Tumblr, Instapaper & The Magazine.

I can't blame him for that.

Re:Am i the only one...

[SuperKendall]

It would be one thing if he sold it off.

But instead he got a ton of paying customers, and dropped them like a hot stone.

Sure he outlined how to get a refund on his blog. But how many people read that blog? Or can figure out how to get refunds?

A paid app implies a certain level of support, certainly longer than two days (which he even admitted). It's terribly unfair to his customers to get cold feet so soon after launch, when the effects were so easily foreseen...

Re:Am i the only one...

[Anubis IV]

Just off the top of my head, these posts of his provide counterexamples to your assertion:
- http://daringfireball.net/2015...
- http://daringfireball.net/link...
- http://daringfireball.net/link...
- http://daringfireball.net/link...
- http://daringfireball.net/link...

I don't follow him on Twitter (which I presume you're talking about, since you mention blocking and ignoring), so I have no idea what's going on over there, but at least on his own site, he seems to have an opinion with which I disagree, but which is rational and which I can respect. Besides my other issues with trackers and ads, I also believe that ads are unethical, so I don't support them in any form at all, but Gruber seems to be okay with ad-blocking, particularly if you're blocking ads from misbehaving sites (e.g. iMore, which he called out in the first link above), provided the ad-blocking can be done at a granular enough level to not block ads from well-behaved sites. Again, I don't think there is such a thing as a well-behaved ad, so I don't subscribe to his opinion on this matter, but I get where he's coming from.

Wonder who paid them off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but that's what this looks like to me.

Bad apples.

[sims 2]

Like how the saying goes a few bad apples can ruin the whole batch.

I don't mind unobtrusive ads but popunders,interstitials,click redirects and malware are too much.

I use an adblocker because of sites like those, however most blockers operate on a whitelist policy unless you go out of your way to not block the ads on a website they are blocked by default.

Sites that have polite advertising aren't being singled out they just happen to be collateral damage from a few bad apples.

Re:Bad apples.

[camg188]

"a few bad apples"...
closer to 50% bad apples.

Re:Bad apples.

[mrchaotica]

Even ads that are "polite" are still hosted by third-party ad networks, which means they're still tracking, collecting, and monetizing your behavior. Since that is entirely unacceptable, all ads have to be blocked regardless of how unobtrusive they are.

Re:Bad apples.

[jandrese]

Well, we've left those bad ads in the bunch for a long time. If someone developed an ad blocker that selectively blocked the ads that actually break the mobile version of websites (I'll grey out the screen and put a popup offscreen that you can't even see to dismiss) and it got popular I bet you would see a lot fewer of those obnoxious ads.

Re:Bad apples.

[wbr1]

Yes.. the message should be, improve your industry or the whole house of cards WILL collapse and take the good guys with it.

I use adblock everywhere. I am the member of some forums that ask, politely to not block. One of which, the one I use most (homebrewtalk for the curious), I am a paid supporting member. So no, I will not unblock the ads, even though theirs are vetted and simple. it is principle. The industry is built on deception and annoyance.

Change that industry wide and you can live. Otherwise I will promote ad-blockers everywhere I go.

I work in a small IT and repair shop. One of our number one services is malware removal. The top two ways malware gets on a system.. ads and email (often spammy ad ridden email). I will give adblock to every single one of my customers and tell them why. The shit has to stop.

Why pull instead of improve?

[SuperKendall]

If he found the blocker was blocking ad-networks he considered to be well-behaved, why not update the app to simply not allow blocking of ad-cblockers he felt were good citizens?

Instead by pulling the app, all that means is people will move to ad-blockers that are less concerned with the effects of blocking, and simply block everything outright.

His app, popular as it was, could have been a real voice for moderation in blocking, a reasonable compromise between advertising that is respectful and that which is not. What good did it do anyone by pulling it?

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[Anonymous Coward]

You give the user the choice of hand picking what not to block. Ghostery allows this, Adblock Origin (and relatives) allows you whitelist specific div elements, baby jesus.

Hell, add a non-instrusive whitelist filter (Adblock Plus), and the users will choose to allow it, block all of these, or simply hand pick which to allow.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[CrashNBrn]

That would require writing an app, instead of hooking ghostery to the iOS API.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[SuperKendall]

The odd thing is, his app was based on the Ghostery database (which he licensed), and he was talking about a 1.1 update to do exactly what you suggest - hand picking what not to block.

But like I said, if he thought there were some things that shouldn't be blocked, don't let them be blocked and allow people the choice of blocking/not blocking everything else. That would be something.

It's not like there are not a LOT of other content blocker choices (soon to be far more after everyone saw what a financial hit it was). But will there be any that have the balls to say, this ad network is OK because it respects users, and I will not block it on principal? I doubt it.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[0123456]

Maybe an ad-blocker should default to showing the ad and then just let you manually "hide ads like this" by clicking on them.

Too late. By then, the malware has already pwned your machine.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[BitZtream]

He can still improve it without it being sold you know?

Sometimes an App gets on the store and its just broken. Not in the way that testing noticed, but it really isn't doing what its supposed to do and instead of continuing to do bad things to new people, you stop selling it. Fix it. Return it to the store.

If you read what he said, thats pretty much a given that he's doing just that.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[SuperKendall]

But if you issue a quick fix it can stop doing bad things to EXISTING users too.

The thing is, the app is not "broken" from a user standpoint, it blocks things just fine. It's only "broken" in the sense he wasn't happy with some of the things it was blocking, which was easily resolved using a permanent white-list the app would always allow.

As it is there are a lot of people who bought Ghostery who will keep using it to do things he's not happy with, which could have been altered in an update.

It sure did not sound like he was bringing it back, if he were why would he point out repeatedly how to get a refund? Why would he say "Itâ(TM)ll keep working for a long time if you already have it, but with no updates." That implies literally it would be, at best, a long time before he released it again - but why? Why would he point out other apps to buy instead of his if he planned to come back? There is nothing I can see at all from his post that says he's fixing it at all.

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[perryizgr8]

Letting the user customize anything is against iOS design principles. The most they can be allowed to control is an on/off button. Any more than that, and you might as well shoot yourself in the foot.

/s

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[johanw]

Thereare no good ad networks, maybe some are less evil than others but that's it.

The only good ad is a blocked ad!

Re:Why pull instead of improve?

[johanw]

This "solution" would mean people would switch using other adblockers that do what they are supposed to do.

Ca'ts out of the bag

[BobSwi]

Cut off one, two more shall take it's place

"just doesn't feel good."

[Nutria]

Remind me to never, ever buy anything with an Apple logo on it.

Re:"just doesn't feel good."

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me to never, ever buy anything with an Apple logo on it.

I would have reminded you anyway.

I believe the term is "compromise"

[r-diddly]

A nuanced, complex solution instead of a clear choice one way or the other, is known as a compromise. As in "learning to compromise" and as in "our ideals have become compromised."

The trouble with ads

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

For those of you around at the beginning, ads were static images, with a hyperlink to the place it was going. Ok, not bad, but I could deal.
The came pop-ups, and that was frowned upon. It became so wide-spread, every browser in existence at the time had a built-in pop up blocker, and those that didn't, had to deal with external programs like Ad Muncher and the like.

But still, vexing, irritating, but not a serious problem.... ...until flash based ads.
Then it went from bad, to nuclear.

On the desktop, ad blockers, whether plug-ins, or built-ins, proliferated and because, not just a good idea, but mandatory, if you wanted to browse the web sanely. It's been a chicken and the egg issue since day one. Did ad blockers force advertisers to escalate how they placed ads on websites, or did ad blockers come into existence because plain text ads weren't "good" enough?

Regardless or the origination, the end result is what we have now. While desktops are safe, mobile browsing is still problematic, I know on my Samsung Android phone I get ads on websites, enough to crowd out the information I'm looking for. So sooner or later, ad blockers will be like desktop browsers, mandatory.

There is a larger issue here, how websites are supposed to make money/survive/pay bills/etc. without ad-revenue stream, but I have yet to see a viable discussion on a working alternative.

What I do see is like it or not, ad blockers are here to stay, and will evolve with every new ad-pushing "tehcnology". I'm sorry the software creator in question here is uncomfortable with this concept, but I'm sure he put *some* thought into this problem before creating his software.

Note: the lack of (until this point in time) ad blockers was the primary reason I jumped ship from Apple.

Re:The trouble with ads

[mrchaotica]

While desktops are safe, mobile browsing is still problematic, I know on my Samsung Android phone I get ads on websites, enough to crowd out the information I'm looking for. So sooner or later, ad blockers will be like desktop browsers, mandatory.

I use mobile Firefox on my Android phone with the same ad-blocking extensions I have on my desktops.

Re:The trouble with ads

[0123456]

What I expect to see is more DRM extensions for browsers, similar to Microsoft's Trusted Audio Path, to ensure nothing can block content between the site and user's screen. It already is happening as sites go completely all Flash.

Then no-one will go to their sites. Like no iPad user goes to those 'all Flash' sites.

Re:The trouble with ads

[sims 2]

As An ipad user I can say I do miss those flash site's. most websites work without flash now. But much remains broken to this day. I used to like albinoblacksheep but it's pretty worthless on the ipad. Some of the videos have been put on youtube but none of the games work.

Re:The trouble with ads

[sims 2]

As someone with a non jailbroken ipad I can vouch this is mostly true.

However there will only be more and better ad blockers. That piracy argument will never fly as long as webmasters continue to allow malicious intrusive intrusive ads.

Re:The trouble with ads

[Cederic]

For those of you around at the beginning, ads were static images, with a hyperlink to the place it was going.

For those of us around at the beginning, there were no ads.

It was good.

Re:The Internet Has Ads???

[0123456]

I haven't seen any in years...

Then you haven't tried web-browsing on an iPad... Having done so, I honestly can't imagine trying to use the web on a regular basis without an ad blocker.

Bad Ads vs Good Ads

[gurps_npc]

Part of the problem is bad actors, which unfortunately are the majority. In my experience, ALL sound and video advertisements that start without you pushing play (as in I start a youtube video and it has an ad first), are by definition BAD ACTORS. - Don't they know some of us are bored at work and don't want to get caught by the boss?? :D

One of the new things I am seeing is ads that prevent you from scrolling away from them. Cracked has this kind of crap and it really pisses me off when I attempt to scroll past an ad and the ad prevents me from doing it until I close the ad by clicking on a small, hidden x.

Any attempt to prevent you from not seeing the advertisement is pretty much my definition of a bad actor. If a person is scrolling past your ad, they are not going to suddenly change their mind and watch because you stop them.

Re:Bad Ads vs Good Ads

[phantomfive]

Worse, there's no way to separate out the bad actors. All the major ad networks have served malware.
You are being irresponsible if you don't block ads.

It used to be you could tolerate ads to give your favorite websites extra revenue, but now it is too dangerous.

Re:Bad Ads vs Good Ads

[PvtVoid]

All ads are bad ads.

Nobody has the right to tell me what content I am required to receive. End of story.

Re:Bad Ads vs Good Ads

[BitZtream]

- Don't they know some of us are bored at work and don't want to get caught by the boss?? :D

While you're half joking, you are pointing out exact why so many non-techies would use ad blockers as well. Its about respect.

Those ads are rude and thats why you don't like them, even if its only subconsciously that you realize it. They don't give a shit what you're preferences are, or even that they aren't the only ad on the page. They are going to broadcast and spam you with their wares weather you like it or not because god damn it you will like it if you hear their ad.

FUCK THOSE ADVERTISERS AND THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR THEM.

It is nothing more than total and complete disrespect.

If you have no respect for me, why the fuck do I want to buy your product?

Solution: I will never buy from anyone/thing/company that does any of the things you've mentioned as well as several others where its clear that they have no respect for me at all.

I concur with you 100% Respect me in your advertising or go fuck yourself.

Note: I PREFER targeted ads, done right. Its nice to be introduced to a competitors product thats just as good but cheaper or easier to obtain, or maybe (for things like food and music) just different. I do not prefer to see the same ad on every website I visit for the product I JUST BOUGHT AND WON'T NEED AGAIN FOR 10 YEARS (refrigerator in the most recent round)

Re:Right thing

[AuMatar]

No, it has the exact effect people want. It blocks everything. I don't want to see any ads, ever. If one comes through, that's a bug to be fixed. That's what most people want.

Re:It won't matter.....

[0123456]

Yes. As far as I'm concerned, the two most important features of iOS9 are:

1. The keyboard shows you which case you're typing.
2. Ad blocker support.

Don't much care about being able to swipe Twitter in from the side of the screen at any moment, or whatever else they added.

Was not "bought off"

[SuperKendall]

It don't make any sense that money was at the root of his choice, at least not his being bought off.

For one thing, he was already making a lot of money outright, and could probably have raised prices.

For another, what good would it do to buy him off? There are a flood of content blockers now, you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle.

If you read his blog I think you'll find that he really does ave concerns that are not monetarily based. Those concerns making sense or not is another matter, but I'm pretty sure the choice to pull the app had nothing do with with him being paid to do so..

Re:Was not "bought off"

[mobby_6kl]

Maybe he was bought off by not having his legs broken with baseball bats.

Re:Was not "bought off"

[farble1670]

There are a flood of content blockers now, you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle.

that's exactly why a payoff does make sense. he was first out of the gate, and attracted the attention of ad providers. being not dumb, he realizes there will be hundreds of ad blockers better than his in a matter of weeks. take the easy money.

Re:No biggy...

[kromozone]

If you are looking for open source options you can try BlockParty - https://github.com/krishkumar/... and Adios - https://github.com/ArmandGrill.... You no longer need a developer's license to deploy software to your own iOS devices. I've been using Adios on a device that doesn't officially support content blocking (as per Apple's rules) and it works fine.

That does not bother everyone

[SuperKendall]

which means they're still tracking, collecting, and monetizing your behavior.

Heres the thing; none of that matters to me.

For a site I like, I am happy that they can make money through ads.

I also LIKE ads being more targeted to my interests, that really does make ads more interesting and useful to me (yes, ads can be useful as I like knowing something I'll enjoy exists).

What happened though, is that over time the ads starting getting more and more pushy. Full-screen blocking ads that make you wait 10 seconds before you can look at the site. Perhaps 10-20 seconds extra time to load trackers before you can view the site. Clicking on text and finding whole pages opened I never asked for, taking me away from what I was reading (does anyone else randomly click on text as they read? No? Huh).

So I just recently started using Ghostery, and was using Peace (the content blocker in question from the article) but hoping there would be an update to let me do what I do in Peace - slowly turn things back on for websites I like, so reasonable ads are shown but ad networks that let through bad behaviors are blocked.

That's what I'd really like to see in a content blocker, is someone who has gone to the trouble of allowing ads and trackers that do not overly degrade browsing, because I do not WANT to block all ads.

Re:Right thing

[camg188]

It's not just the ads, it's the scripts.
I use noscript on my desktop. It will give you the total number of javascript scripts running for a webpage. Go to any news website, for instance washingtonpost.com and you'll see they run 40 to 50 separate scripts per page. Too much for my tablet to handle.

This is a whole heap of bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Serial low-IQ blowhard John Gruber challenged him:

I think if your Safari Content Blocker blocks The Deck [the ad publisher the author uses on his own site] by default, it’s wrong. I dare you to defend it.

The answer to this is simple: there is a difference between having ads on your site and thinking there is a problem with people blocking ads. I once administrated a pregnancy&parenting web site, and we sold both condoms (contraception) and ovulation monitors (conception aid). One can assist in defeating the other, yet they both made me money... so what? I was neither pro- nor anti-pregnancy, but believed in individual choice.

Arment appears to be one of those creepy sorts who likes to sell (as in: make cash from) an ethical vision. If he is telling the truth, he wasn't selling a tool, but making money from his belief that web ads are wrong.

Or he's full of shit.

Re:No biggy...

[jandrese]

Amazingly, this is apparently possible in iOS now. Apple dropped the requirement for the $100 developer account to load an app on your own device, so if you get the source you can sideload from Xcode.

That said, I don't think this guy is going to be releasing the source anytime soon.

Open ecosystem = ya snooze, ya lose

[allquixotic]

Since access to the Internet is more-or-less something which can be done via a wide variety of devices and operating systems and browsers, a significant subset of which are free and open source software and are extremely, explicitly customizable, you *cannot* be the odd man out by being a platform that is deliberately less flexible and less usable than the others.

If you do, the thing that happens is exactly what Apple has seen happen: you end up losing sales (of your OS, hardware, etc.) to competitors whose platform is more open.

On the free Internet, we route around the damage and barely notice that we were stuck at a roadblock in the first place.

I think Apple has wizened up to this fact, which is why they now allow adblockers. The only possible effect this could have is to increase their market share or keep it fixed. It can't hurt them. Apple doesn't make their money on ads.

Hopefully, if an alternative non-free Internet becomes a thing at some point, nobody will adopt it, and it will die. Hopefully, the free Internet will continue to be supported by the big companies that operate the major hubs. As long as we're connected by a system that's open at its core, where the client software is under the user's control for at least *some* clients, we have a way to avoid the insanity of things like ads being forced upon you, and so on.

The clients that choose to deliberately be restrictive will simply not be used as much, even if they have extremely compelling upsides like performance or ease of use. There will always be a real and measurable drain on their market share and profits that comes from the growing percentage of people who want to be in control of their Internet experience. It's this drain at the bottom of the pool that has forced Apple's hand to do something pro-consumer for once.

Re:Right thing

[sims 2]

I haven't been able to find any 3rd party browsers for the ipad that let you turn off javascript.

However you can turn javascript off for safari on the ipad in system settings.

For users it's black and white that ads = malware

[Sarusa]

All ad networks serve up malware at multiple times. All of them. They can't help it. The Russians are more devious than they are, and more motivated - text-only ads are less dangerous, but even those have been compromised with scripting holes.

So as a user, you have to block ads or get pwned - removing Flash and Java helps a lot, but it's not sufficient.

Move to a Patreon or other microsubscription model - Dave Kellett (Sheldon) just did so after a bit of user request. He already had a Patreon, but wasn't highlighting it and was still running ads. So he did a 'replace the ads' drive and now I believe he's up to enough supporters to get rid of ads entirely. I subscribe to sites like Ars Technica for the same reason - I want to support them but am not willing to view their ads.

Then there's the entirely separate issue of bloat, like The Verge's terrible pages which are 10000 : 1 crap to content. But that's secondary to the malware.

A Better Solution

[Striikerr]

Web sites can offer two tiers of service.
1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means you are free of ads AND tracking. (most people are creeped out by tracking).
2) Selective Ad supported access. Select from a list of ad categories (more granularity, the better) and be allowed access to the site. The site serves up only those ads which you are interested. Once again though, tracking needs to be addressed here in some manner. Ad companies need to know the number of impressions but there should be a policy of not tracking users across other sites. Also, the amount off ads is limited so that access to the site is speedy.

If this kind of approach were implemented, I think more people would be less hung up over ads. I personally never watch ads or intentionally click ads so it's wasted money from advertisers but it helps pay the bills.

Re:A Better Solution

[FranTaylor]

Web sites can offer two tiers of service.
1) Paid access. Pay a nominal fee to support the website operator. This means

they can't afford proper security on their shoestring budget and your credit card information is stolen

Translation:

[spmkk]

"I've been threatened with too many lawsuits / C&Ds and I'm a pretty small fish, so I'm gonna proactively pull the plug before the $#*!storm hits."

all the alternatives suck

[FranTaylor]

If you sign up for the service and pay them money, then they will get hacked, and then you will get hacked too.

if you don't use an ad blocker then you will get hacked

so all the ways that they have of making money are unacceptable.

Ads purposely deceptive, even on 'respectful' site

[tommeke100]

I gave it some thought and although I agree up to some level (it's true that it's the sole source of income for many so at least non obtrusive ads could be allowed), even respectful news sites pushed the button too far. Ads disguised as real articles, video ads that just start playing and are hard to turn off or even locate (hey, I didn't ask to download 50 mb of HD video while visiting a page), pop-ups that block everything. These ads are served through broker services as well so most sites have little control on what is actually been served to the user.

"Fair to call it advertising"?

[jtara]

But Peace uses the Ghostery database, and Ghostery includes The Deck. It’s classified as “Advertising”, and even though it’s far nicer than most other entries in the category, it’s fair to call it advertising.

"Fair to call it advertising"?

That would be because it IS advertising.

I don't think Marco was paid-off. I think Ghostery was. And, or, he's received threats, because this certainly does tick-off plenty of people with minimal morals.

For most of us that use ad blockers, it is NOT about ads being "poorly behaved". We just don't want to see ads. Get it?

I guess not. Smart people can be idiots, too...

Responsible advertising

[fyngyrz]

The problem is not advertising. The problem is the mechanisms that are in use. Responsible advertising can be done easily -- just source the image or text from your own website. Don't send the user's browser haring all over the intertubes, track them, or otherwise do anything except talk about, and link to, the product being sold.

There are a lot of invested people out there right now that are trying to tell you that ads as they are constituted now, are a good thing, because "that's how content is paid for." This is either disingenuous or bewildered. Content can be paid for without abusing the site visitors. Ads can be served without bringing in other network excursions. No one has to be tracked.

Evil practices we can do entirely without today, without "breaking the internet", include (but are not limited to:

o roll-overs: If I didn't click on it, I DIDN'T WANT IT. Ads, menus, "keywords" -- anything
o tracking -- not unless I say you can
o network traffic outside of the content provider -- just don't
o unnecessarily splitting content over many ad-bearing pages -- I hate you
o pop-up "continue to web site in x seconds" -- will not watch, let finish, or click. EVER.

The solution is right in front of all of us. All you have to do as a web site owner is grasp it. You'll instantly have happier visitors, visitors that stay longer, visitors that are MORE likely to click on your ads.

You'd also be VERY smart to ask users to select between text and graphic advertising. Best thing Google ever did was host text ads. Worst thing they ever did was lose focus on them. Learn from that. Let users select text ads if they prefer them. I would be *much* more likely to click on a polite text ad than the sanctimonious garbage the ad companies are inflicting on us these days.

Re:Responsible advertising

[Lotharus]

For the love of Pete... If you can spell advertisers correctly with one D, why the frack are you putting two Ds in the abbreviation?!

Slashdot has considerable value, or can have

[fyngyrz]

Would you pay for Slashdot?

I would if they fixed the moderation. No problem. Slashdot at its best is easily the best site on the Internet as far as I'm concerned. It's just rarely able to get there, and specifically because the moderation is for shit. Great anon comments are buried from word one and very rarely brought to light; great logged-in comments get buried by "I disagree" morons; meta-moderation does *zero* to recover these lost comments because the entire effect of meta moderation is on future actions; moderators can't participate except anonymously, which is insane; moderation itself is anonymous so all these bad actors can never be held accountable by the membership.

I've paid for Slashdot in the past, via subscription, but have come to the conclusion that the content I love is hurt so badly by the moderation problems that it just isn't worth it any longer.

Compared to the horrific moderation problems, Slashdot's advertising doesn't even come close as a "gee, how annoying." Although some of the stories they pick... that's clearly advertising, and that is annoying.

Google selling rankings

[fyngyrz]

Google sells rankings right now. You can buy your way to the top of any particular search you want.

Maybe he got one of those "letters" from the

[Cafe Alpha]

government saying that he has to put a back door to stop blocking of tracking cookies and sites, and that he'll go to jail if he complains.

Really, these letters are a serious threat to freedom. We need a first amendment challenge.

It's simple

[guruevi]

I block all 3rd party content on any website and I don't use 3rd party content on my own websites. If you require libraries, ads etc. you should host them yourself, a client should not have to trust a 3rd party to provide 'clean and safe' content because they simply cannot be trusted and it reflects badly on your own site.

If CNN provides malware through their ad system, it reflects on CNN, not on the 3rd party ad provider and thus those provider have no incentive nor intention to provide safer content.

Re:It's simple

[BitZtream]

If CNN provides malware through their ad system, it reflects on CNN, not on the 3rd party ad provider and thus those provider have no incentive nor intention to provide safer content.

Thats completely untrue.

CNN provides ads on its site through some provider, then CNN serves a bunch of malware and gets a bad rep ...

CNN isn't going to use that ad provider for long if it continues.

Ad provider goes out of business because websites stop using them since they have a bad ratio of good to bad ads.

This is simple every day business at work, ad companies most certainly care what gets served on their network.

Re:Agreed, 110%... apk

[perryizgr8]

After years of reading your comments harping on about messing with the hosts file, and not doing anything about it because it is too much work, I am gonna download your program and try it out. Hope it works as well as you think it does.

Wow...

[Fieryphoenix]

bought out much?

No surprise

[Mr_Silver]

Marco loves drama. He'll say or do something "controversial", a ton of tech sites will run with it, he gets all the attention and then two days late he expresses regret for saying or doing whatever he said or did. A recent example is here, with backpeddle here.

Peace is no different. Drama for two days followed by backpeddle.

The stupid thing is that the whole "issue" he had could have easily been solved with a pre-loaded whitelist of advertisers. He could have even called it "Acceptance Ads".

But then that wouldn't have generated quite as much drama and attention would it?

If you can't overcome it, bribe the author

[sethstorm]

He got bribed and the only crisis of conscience was whether he should accept the bribe openly or lie about it.

Real Story

[RespekMyAthorati]

Now, Arment has pulled Peace from the App Store, saying its success "just doesn't feel good."

Translation: some big advertiser bribed/threatened him to drop it.

Because there's nothing black and white

[ToddInSF]

about you forcing me to download shit on my device that I do not want.