Adblock Fast Returns To Google Play a Week After Being Pulled

An anonymous reader writes: A week ago, Google suddenly removed Adblock Fast from its Android app store. Today, the ad blocker has been reinstated, enabling Samsung users to download it once again from Google Play. Late last month, the browser preinstalled on Samsung's Android phones gained support for content-blocking plugins, and the first plugin to support the functionality was a free and open-source solution called Adblock Fast. Rocketship Apps, the maker of Adblock Fast, uploaded the Android plugin on January 29, but Google rejected an app update on February 1. The app hit Google Play's top spot for free, new productivity apps on February 2, and was pulled by Google on the same day.

Comments

How to measure ad traffic?

[jc42]

It's widely believed that ads have taken over (from porn ;-) as the main traffic on the Web. This is rather significant if even close to true, it's likely one of the main reasons that our handy little portable gadgets (that many of us hardly ever actually use as phones) run so slowly and eat up so much bandwidth.

But a problem with even discussing this is that, as far as I've found, there's no reliable app available to actually measure our bandwidth use, classify it, and tell us what's eating it up. I do know that my android gadget is often running warm, eating batter and bandwidth, when it's just sitting "idle" in my pocket.

Yeah, I know; part of that is the tracking software. ;-) But whatever; I can't really say with any authority what's causing its activity. The one thing I can actually see is apps that stay running in the background, and the gadget's power usage app does report that "innocent" apps like mail/message readers and web browsers are using battery when "nothing is happening". Investigating does often show that some of their windows contain video ads that are running. The power-usage app does let me kill apps, but that's not very useful in measuring the source of the power/bandwidth usage.

So is there a good way to actually measure the traffic, classify it, etc., so we can actually determine what's really eating up the battery and bandwidth? Are there good google keywords to learn about it? There are a few good unix/linux tools for examining network traffic, but I haven't found them for android, ios, etc. Anyone know what they might be, and how we might verify that they're not just trojans?

(And yes, I'm also aware that the marketers are going to read this and be major sources of replies that try to reassure us without answering anything. Maybe we can moderate them down? ;-)

End of the Personal Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

We are witnessing the transition into a new era, made possible by the saturated of "walled garden" platforms and corporate curated software markets.

If nothing is done, in 5 years time the vast majority of users will be unable to even install ab-blockers, let alone use them. In 10 years time, ad blockers may be de-facto banned across the vast majority of the web anyway, with sites refusing access to browsers detected to have ad blocking software installed. This is already happening across some sites even now.

Ad block was always a thorn in the side of advertisers and major websites alike. But in the era of the true PC, the desktop and laptop personal computer, there was little companies could do to stop users from ridding themselves of irritating, offensive, and malicious advertisements and pop-ups. But now, in the era of the locked-down "tablet", the all but carrier owned "smartphone" and above all the domination of private App stores over software distribution on such platforms, users have neither the ability or authority to install the software they want on their own devices.

This is the true legacy of mass tablet and smartphone adoption. The end of the "Personal Computer" as a mass consumer experience. We now sit at the dawn of the "Licenced Computing" era, where digital devices become less like personally programmable machines, and more like fixed function electronics devices. In such an age, corporate and in reality, cartel control over user devices is not only enabled, it is to be expected. We can expect to see a permanent end to ad-blocking devices on iOs and android systems within I think 3 years. Windows 10 will be curating browser add ons not long after that. And when the majority of the web cannot even install ad-blockers, the minority still using them will find themselves evicted from what is left of the World Wide Web.

Gentle-nerds. It has been a privilege.