Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective The developer behind the wildly popular Peace ad blocker for Apple's iOS has pulled it from the App Store after claiming it was too effective. Indie dev Marco Arment said in a blog post that his creation had been blocking more ads than he had anticipated, to the point where he worried he was harming publishers. "Achieving …
I agree that the user should be allowed to choose what to block: the problem is that this particular ad-blocker gives the user no choice other than using it or not using it. By contrast, all the ad-blockers I've used allow the user to choose which advert-sources they want to block, which is a much more nuanced approach.
I started adblocking for two reasons: (1) I hate animated ads and (2) many advertisers are cheapskates whose slow servers make page loading a right royal pain.
What I'd really like to see would be the additional ability to block any ads which are not static or contain links, i.e. plain HTML text, simple .JPG and .PNG images are OK, but GIF, flash, embedded Javascript or anything containing a link or using CSS gets blocked regardless of where it comes from.
the problem is that this particular ad-blocker gives the user no choice other than using it or not using it.
Don't see that as a problem, it demonstrates the core product actually works. From reading the article it seems that the developer either couldn't be bothered to develop his product into a more nuanced tool or lacked the financial resources/backing to do so.
What I'd really like to see would be the additional ability to block any ads which are not static or contain links
I would agree with this sentiment, I find it irritating and inexplicable that the excellent unwanted content/ad blocker that was shipped with Outpost Firewall years back hasn't really been developed and hence I find it more useful to now run an adblocker.
It strikes me that the reason for pulling the app is because a total block would incur the wrath of and then litigation by the advertisers. This has recently happened on more than one occasion to Ad-block and they succeeded because their app can be configured to allow the passage of non-intrusive ads.
>He probably took a bribe. Get over it.
Having observed the morals* of admen over the years I can't help but to further suspect that this is a part of a prearranged meta-marketing campaign extolling the evils of ad-blocking ?
*the total absence thereof, actually
Be that as it may, it's also up to him whether or not to publish. And a guy can choose not to publish for any and all kooky and zany reasons, and nobody can argue against that person.
For instance, my reason for not publishing is that I'm too lazy about it. Sorry..
I'm sure someone else will fill this need and reap the rewards.
Alternative explanation: he's looking for publicity, so by claiming his app is "too effective" and pulling it, then bringing it back a few days later "by popular demand" everyone will want it.
I was all excited to try out an adblocker since intrusive ads have become a real problem on my iPhone recently, but on second thought I decided to wait a month or so before I make the move so I can get more information on which one(s) are the most popular and get the best ratings.
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I'm reading this page on firefox on the FrankenslackTM laptop. Noscript on and cookies requesting permission. The Register is showing me a couple of ads, the banner and a static side ad, along with the jobs listing.
The page is 'quiet'. Nothing is jumping, no garish backgrounds, no flashing animations or modal windows. No continuous bandwidth use. I have no problem with ads of that nature. Its the attention sapping nausea inducing blinkorama I can't cope with.
So Armet may have a point in that 'all or nothing' is not as useful as 'detect horribleness but allow respectful' with the ability to define your particular horrible.
The tramp: I have no money and I don't buy things except food and clothes. OK the odd book and a few CDs as well now and again. And, yes, we are working our way through a rather nice Rioja... but certainly no serious budget.
"The Register is showing me a couple of ads, the banner and a static side ad, along with the jobs listing.
The page is 'quiet'."
Lucky you.
I normally read el Reg on the laptop with sound off & blocker on. Occasionally I read it on the MythTV box with no blocker & sound on. Earlier today I dropped one page and hastily abandoned it when instantly a loud voice started lecturing me about something or other. On the laptop I will continue to make no exceptions. The ad industry simply can't get itself in order to stop pissing off those on whom it seeks to impose its brain farts. It doesn't deserve to exist.
Does the El Reg team have any comment about that loud voice lecturing Doctor Syntax?
I would suspect their answer would be something to the tune of "we don't have any control over the ads" as they more act as a conduit, but that also illustrates the exact problem with advertising - they don't know what ads will appear where which has already led to some embarrassing juxtapositions that would not have been possible with manual placement.
It used to be that you choose the location for your ads, and then negotiated a fee. That fee depended on circulation, and the size of your ad, and it would be there in print, one, permanent ad for everyone to see (and, as a user, occasionally preserved the mag for as it served as a mini-catalogue of suppliers).
I don't buy advertising now but it now appears to be broker based, middlemen who take a cut off the revenue and promise both parties that it's so much better now with statistics. When (yes, not if) I have to place advertising, I will be looking for a non-Google way. That is not because I think targeting is not important, but because I disagree with targeting that is based on violation of basic user rights (and neither do they have any business knowing what our feedback rate is), so the search would be for either direct placement (of which I already have a few), or a broker who doesn't engage in those practices (which I suspect to be a very difficult job to locate).
I'm OK with basic demographics, thank you. I know that makes me old fashioned, but it seems to be a better way, leading away from ad blockers instead of towards it. Not that I think anyone will care or notice but some principles are IMHO too important to give up, just to serve Mammon.
Agree the ad model is broken - how many times have you noticed an ad clicked away and then found a need to go back and look? With print it is simple as you tend to remember the publication and article you were reading when you saw the ad; online there is no going back. You now have to rely on google, but then if the ad was for an offer (to take an ad on the page I'm currently viewing: IPExpo Europe - Register Free), google (or any search engine) is not really helpful.
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If you are really worried, why are you not concerned that the "user" ie the person who pays for internet connection,directly should not be able to block this intrusive nonesense. Perhaps you should go back to your original idea and work out if said user is on her/his paid for connection(not easy I know) or if they are in free wifi and deserve all they get
"Actually, BOTH sides pay for the Internet connection, and the other end is practically-always metered unlike most home users which are flat-rate."
Actually a lot are still on metered connections - ever read the small print on the supercheap headline price the tiny print with the asterisk on BT or Sky for example?
In your keen defence of the advertards, you also neglect to reflect on the effect on those on really slow connections who are forced to sit there while a huge file of crud drips its way out of some choked serve delaying the page load as well as eating up paid for data.
You need a reality realignment.
AC - sauce for the goose.....
"You need a reality realignment."
No, mine's aligned just fine. It's their stuff; their rules, no exception.
If you have to jump hoops to get to stuff, then you either jump or walk away. If this is the standard model of the Internet, then you can either suffer quietly or unplug. And if that means denying yourself access to the exclusive content found no other way...then your funeral.
I find that most of the "exclusive content" that providers describe as "exclusive content" tends to be shit. Either the content itself is inane or it's delivered in the most obnoxious means necessary (i.e. a fifty-slide clickthrough with ads occupying 75% of the page, or a video recorded by shrill, vapid people).
Regarding mobile browsing, the experience has become much worse over the last year or two with ad services that redirect to App Store or Google Play, ads that cover the whole page with a four pixel close button, delayed-launch ads, and the sheer amount of noise (ads and related traffic) compared to signal (the stuff I actually wanted to see). It's enough to make me unplug. Especially as nearly everyone on mobile pays for data in terms of X currency for Y data quantity, adblocking is a great way to reclaim a useful mobile web. And get one's money's worth.
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Actually, BOTH sides pay for the Internet connection, and the other end is practically-always metered unlike most home users which are flat-rate.
No currently all sides pay for their own connection to the Internet and only their connection. With each connection sized according to individual needs, finances and service availability.
In the current ad-supported web model there is a presumption that a website can consume as much end user bandwidth as it wants, with little or no real regard for the actual service the user is experiencing - hence why so many 4G connections get treated as a regular 'high-speed' fixed line connection, even if it is only giving the user sub-56kbps (yes that is the typical speed of 4G at my house, go a few miles down the road to MCDonald's and I can most of the time happily watch HD music videos). I suspect if websites/content originators were charged in a manner similar to telephone calls,namely charged for connection establishment, data uploaded and duration of call, much of the problem would rapidly disappear, as it would not be in originators interest to overflow a consumers connection.
What we are seeing here is a major limitation of the existing web/internet protocols. IP (v4 and v6) has no real concept of network quality and so is unable to feedback to a source that it is trying to feed a 1mbps data stream into a 56kbps pipe. TCP, whilst it does have some rate control mechanisms, it uses these to ensure stuff isn't lost. UDP, doesn't care it just allow stuff to be dropped, but doesn't feedback as to why stuff might be being dropped. HTTP et al, likewise have no real QoS, leaving a content originator to effectively rely on the browser id string (User Agent String). Proprietary protocols such as RDP do have some concept of end user experience and do attempt to reduce the datastream in an attempt to maintain a 'usable' service. However, all these protocols are predicated on there being a single connection; with ad's we see that a single page may contain dozens of individual connections, with little real indication as to which connections really are important and which can simply be dropped, other than to compare the URL's and IP addresses with the user entered URL/IP address.
So we can see that what adblockers and other web content filters are effectively doing is providing a simplistic tool to enable a user to have some control over their experience to enable them to access websites. What we need are a second generation of content blockers that interact with websites so that I get the content presentation appropriate to my connection. With the potential deployment of IPv6 and it's additional packet overheads, such an end-to-end dynamic service quality negotiation protocol is becoming more urgent.
"What we are seeing here is a major limitation of the existing web/internet protocols. IP (v4 and v6) has no real concept of network quality and so is unable to feedback to a source that it is trying to feed a 1mbps data stream into a 56kbps pipe."
What you are seeing is a major limitation of a network where there's no overlord. Plain and simple, if someone insists on being sent, they'll impersonate a high-priority packet or just wrap the whole business in encryption so you can't tell what's what (and since at least some encrypted connections are high-priority like time-sensitive financial information, you can't de-priorititize encrypted traffic in bulk). About the only way you could defuse this is to create a completely-stateful internet where everything can be identified (but then that defeats the anonymity factor that makes the Internet so appealing at times).
It's hard to feel any sympathy for him: he produced a tool to block ads, now he's upset that it's being used to block ads!? What did he expect, only 3 people would use it so nobody would ever notice?
Yes, it's an arms race, and so far on mobile the advertisers have had it virtually all their own way. I've seen ads which actually disable the page they're infecting on mobile devices - fake windows, with a close button which either fails to respond, or loads too far off the edge of the screen to be used. Probably the result of lazy design which assumes it will only ever be used on desktops, but irritating whatever the origins. Time to start blocking that junk!
I block ads absolutely everywhere these days, I'm shamed to admit, but I even do it here on my favourite site.
When a page has 3 or 4 targeted and quiet ads on it, thats fine, when a page has 10-20 that takes the piss, then when I read a multi-page articles, which has 10-15 ads on each page, then also have the audacity to have a huge ad between pages, my browser could have downloaded 50-60 different ads. By the time you tie in all the pictures, cookies, JavaScript, tracking pixels, ajax callbacks.. actually ads now constitute 60-70% of the payload and page loading time.
Its just to much.
Rather than trying to squeeze revenue from your visitors, reduce the number of ads and hike your advertising fee.
"I know a few sites I frequent have an annual donation drive to stay ad free. I'm always happy to chip in $20 on paypal a year to keep it that way."
Trouble is, the demographics tend to be worth more by themselves than most people are willing to pay to make them go away. IOW, you lack the selling power of your data.
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to abandon his software because it was doing much better than expected. It. Just. Doesn't. Happen. So he was, most probably, bought. Yes, it's easy to throw shit at him, but really, how many of us would turn down a check (and it must have been more than a couple of grand) for _not_ working?
But it kind of proves how desperate the ad flingers are these days. Ground moving from under their feet? Even the beeb caught the wind and came up with a piece on the "pros and cons of ad-blocking". And nobody's trying to come up with more clever, more... sustainable way of making the internet work, than on the back of selling shitload of shit.
I'm not any ad person's target audience. I don't buy stuff from ads. If I click one, I get annoyed because I was aiming for something else and the ad got in my way. I don't want to see them, I rarely even look at the content of them, they have to be pretty obnoxious to even get my real attention, and at that point I add the company that the ad was created for to my spam lists and forget they exist, and if I can find a way to report them for unpleasant behaviour, I do that too. I'm pretty sure the reason I don't get my ebills from vodafone anymore is because one of their web ads got a little too in-my-face.
I approve of a nuclear option for dealing with ads. Then maybe more companies would actually still be able to get in touch with me.
"I'm not any ad person's target audience. I don't buy stuff from ads."
I'm exactly the same. Never once in 20 years of using the internet have I ever bought something by clicking on an embedded advert.
I've bought loads of stuff online, but when I do I go looking for what I want. I get onto Google and I type in something like "buy Nikon P900 australia", and start clicking search results and comparing prices.
Marketing droids MUST drop this idea of brainwashing people into buying shit they don't want or need. The harder they try, the more people oppose them, because these delusional fucks can't understand that people don't like being pushed and manipulated.
Instead, they need to figure out how to capture the search market - people like myself, who when we are actually in the market to buy something of our own volition are willing to look at deals being offered. But when I am not in the market, no amount of shoving ads in my face is going to make me buy your product. All it's going to do is piss me off to the point where I will NOT buy your product even if it's the best one at the best price.
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... I've just used AdBlock Plus's other functionality to block the totally unnecessary and annoying jumping "ad-alike" image they stuck on the article's page for not other reason, seemingly, than that they could.
Here's news for you, El Reg, we *KNOW* what they look like, we don't need reminding!
Reading all this on an android tablet using Chrome. So no adblocking thanks to Google.
However I can resize the screen very easily. So I just resize so I can read the article but the ads (or nearly all of them) are off screen.
I assume El Reg gets some payment for this, even though I don't click through apart from an occasional finger miss cue (which also accounts for some random up/down votes).
Just wondering if you could do this in software - move the adverts out of the viewing pane but still accept them. Then you wouldn't be Ad Blocking as such - just Ad Ignoring.
Reading your comment on an android phone running Firefox and ublock origin and ghostery. Actually hadn't realised that blocking ads was a new thing™ but there you go. When even world renowned security experts end up being xssd by their ad networks it is arguably more than just annoying and slow but also a security attack surface.
Using an Android tablet? Don't use Chrome.
You can now use Ghostery, get it from the G Play, no need to root. Blocks ads nicely. I have happier Android devices now. : )
I think Ghostery uses WebView which I think Chrome uses as well so the rendering engine is top-notch. I'm open to correction. Not sure if mobile Firefox uses its own rendering engine or Android WebView.
It's up to the developer to pull it or not, but I wouldn't use an ad blocker that blocks everything.
When I used adblock plus, I didn't use the default list. I only blocked ad brokers that put up ads that made noise (without interacting with the ad), or forced a popup past the popup blocker. When I briefly had adblock quit working (updated firefox and there was not a adblock update yet), I found either the few brokers I'd blocked had cleaned up their acts, or sites weren't using those brokers any more. Normal sites ads do seem to follow some code of conduct so I just don't end up with much I'd need to block. I expect endless junk on couchtuner-like sites, I suppose I could try to block it but I don't.
... and needs to pause for thought.
If you made that much in 3 days, out of the blue, with it apparently still coming in you might find it a bit scary, or question whether you were doing something 'wrong' too. You'd feel like you'd just built a money-printing machine. It's too much like easy money.
Take your $100k then disappear from the radar, before the ad-guys start hounding you.
On the other hand, when others read this story and see the money to be made from ad-blockers - I think the ad industry is in for some very turbulent times very soon!
The deciding factor for me buying this app was the name Marco Arment. I've used Instapaper for years so his name lent this app more credibility. Given it's the kind of app that will need updating I will be requesting a refund. Also, his name will now serve as a red flag to be wary of in future app purchases. He might have sold out but at the cost of damaging his standing as an app creator.
This is another wheel invented by Apple I guess. Probably nothing notable in the ios9 upgrade so they decided to advertise their truly ground-breaking ad-blocking features.
Been using happily Firefox and Adblock plus, then Adblock Edge, now uBlock Origin for several years. Very few adds make it through. Same on Android.
I switched from ABP to ABE a little while ago, when someone told me something about ABP selling fully out so that it would actually refuse to block certain ads, not even offering the option to blacklist them manually.
I switched to ABE, because when it comes to adverts, I prefer the nuclear option. I don't want to see a single fragging one. I do not buy anything which is just randomly shoved in my face. Sorry, Google, just because I searched "Horse Breeds" does not mean I need tackle and a saddle. Nor am I in the market for any of Anne Summers' products based on my search history.
When I need to buy something, which is almost never as I have no income whatsoever and basically live on the largess of beneficent family, I go and search it out manually. Adverts, therefore, only serve to annoy me and detract, in any form they are delivered, from my internet use experience, in substantial and meaningful ways, both in terms of bandwidth and in terms of the inevitable charlie foxtrotting they give my browsing.
Sod them all. People who make a living forcing adverts down other people's throats unwanted should all be forced onto the bread lines.
If it is now easier to install ad-blockers in Safari, does that extend to Chrome as well? All naivety about ad-blocking and Chrome being put the same sentence aside, Chrome is built on top of IOS's Webkit, because those are the rules on IOS.
So does that mean I can use ad blockers on Chrome as well?
I remain deeply allergic to Safari on all platforms, sorry. Firefox is my preference, Chrome next and IE/Spartan would probably come next, before Safari.
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