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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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?

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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.

[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.

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?

[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.

"just doesn't feel good."

[Nutria]

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

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.