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You are here: MacNN Forums > News > Mac News > Developer Marco Arment pulls iOS 9 ad blocking 'Peace' from App Store

Developer Marco Arment pulls iOS 9 ad blocking 'Peace' from App Store
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NewsPoster
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Sep 18, 2015, 04:00 PM
 
Developer Marco Arment has, after just two days of availability, pulled his iOS 9 ad-blocking browser Peace from the App Store, and will offer refunds for those who purchased it. The app will continue to work for those who obtained it during its brief period of availability, but will not be updated. The program relied upon a database used by OS X ad tracker, Ghostery, and blocked all ads without exceptions -- which ultimately led to Arment's decision to pull it.

In a blog post entitled "Just doesn't feel good," Arment explained that while "Peace has been the number one paid app in the U.S. App Store for about 36 hours" and that such an achievement "should be the highlight of my professional career," he didn't feel good about the program's uniform blocking of all ads -- intrusive or non-intrusive, for good causes or scams, from site owners that rely on the revenue or from greedy corporations.



"Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn't feel good, which I didn't anticipate, but probably should have," Arment wrote. "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."

Many specialty sites, including MacNN, have been hit hard by the increasing use of ad blockers. The drop in revenue generated by ads directly led to the closing of fellow Apple news site The Unofficial Apple Weblog and formerly-independent gaming site Joystiq -- both of which were profitable but faced declining revenues -- and forced the shuttering of our 10-year-old sister site Electronista and the layoff of some staff here at MacNN.



Like Arment himself, many sites are not opposed to ad blockers entirely, but ask readers to support the sites they like most by "whitelisting" sites they wish to support, or paying an annual fee to turn off ads and gain other benefits. Arment said that the factor that led him to pull his Peace app from the App Store was that the app "required that all ads be treated the same" and that "this approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn't serve our goals or beliefs well enough."

In his post, Arment outlined the procedure for users to obtain refunds, and recommended some alternative iOS ad blockers. "I know pulling Peace from the store after just two days is going to be an immensely unpopular move, and subject me to a torrent of unpleasantness," he wrote, but added that ad blocking "is a kind of war -- a first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides. I see war in the Tao Te Ching sense: it should be avoided when possible; when that isn't possible, war should be entered solemnly, not celebrated."
( Last edited by NewsPoster; Sep 18, 2015 at 04:10 PM. )
     
Spudboy2004
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Sep 18, 2015, 05:10 PM
 
He knows most people won't ask for a refund. What a scam artist.
     
panjandrum
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Sep 18, 2015, 05:22 PM
 
That's really too bad, but there will be other apps. Personally, I lived with ads for years; as long as they were mostly unobtrusive and didn't get in the way. Unfortunately, advertisers as a whole had the choice to stick with the kinds of advertisements that the majority of people would have been OK living with, and began introducing more and more intrusive ads all the time; which only entices more and more people to install ad-blockers. For the past several years I've run ad-blockers on all browsers and my iThings (a reputable blocker is available for jailbroken devices). I set them up for all my clients, even in schools. I feel the advertisers had plenty of time to prove they could respectfully and tastefully advertise, and failed to do so. So too bad for them and for their revenue.
     
s219
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Sep 18, 2015, 06:58 PM
 
Another drama queen Marco experience. I am ready for this guy to fall back into obscurity. He just seems to turn everything into a freaking soap opera. Get over yourself man.
     
Flying Meat
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Sep 18, 2015, 07:17 PM
 
I am currently not blocking ads, as I know the generated revenue is largely, or solely their source of income.
I generally stop visiting sites that pop up ads, play audio in the background, hijack my or present ads as faux editorial content.
That is how I ad block.

MacNN has had a fair record in the past, excluding of course the annoying link-rollover popups that obscured the content.
I'm glad to not see those any more.
     
panjandrum
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Sep 18, 2015, 07:23 PM
 
@Flying Meat. Those are exactly one of the types of advertisements that brought me to the decision that it was time to start blocking. They were one of the worst offenders I've ever seen, and MacNN was by no means alone in using them. Ads that actually get in the way of the content of a website? Really? There are a lot of other bad offenders out there, but that one was without a doubt one of the most annoying.
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Sep 18, 2015, 07:47 PM
 
Originally Posted by panjandrum View Post
@Flying Meat. Those are exactly one of the types of advertisements that brought me to the decision that it was time to start blocking. They were one of the worst offenders I've ever seen, and MacNN was by no means alone in using them. Ads that actually get in the way of the content of a website? Really? There are a lot of other bad offenders out there, but that one was without a doubt one of the most annoying.
Yup, and when I took the helm, began the campaign to rid them from here. They're still all over the place elsewhere on the web.

They're just not here anymore.
( Last edited by Mike Wuerthele; Sep 18, 2015 at 08:47 PM. )
     
OkieDoc
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Sep 18, 2015, 08:29 PM
 
macnn is whitelisted. Never found the MacNN ads to be intrusive.
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Sep 18, 2015, 08:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by OkieDoc View Post
macnn is whitelisted. Never found the MacNN ads to be intrusive.
We've had some problems in the past. I like to think that I'm more proactive than my predecessors.
     
Charles Martin
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Sep 18, 2015, 11:58 PM
 
And thank you to those of you who whitelist us. It is appreciated.
Charles Martin
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Le Flaneur
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Sep 19, 2015, 12:25 AM
 
What I don't understand is: if I don't look at the ads or click on them, how am I hurting revenue by blocking them?
     
James Katt
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Sep 19, 2015, 12:50 AM
 
Marco's stupid act is to simply not make Peace act like Ghostery. Ghostery allows you to decide exactly what ads show and what don't. It allows you whitelist specific ads such as those from Facebook, etc.
     
Inkling
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Sep 19, 2015, 06:52 AM
 
I'd be happy with an app that would block: 1 Autostart video/audio, 2. Moving Gifs, and 3. Auto-page refresh by a website. Ads that don't irritate are OK>
Author of Untangling Tolkien and Chesterton on War and Peace
     
Jeronimo2000
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Sep 19, 2015, 07:37 AM
 
What an assclown.

Here's what you should keep in mind when asking Apple (not Marco hinself, as it might seem from reading this and other articles) for a refund:

At least in Europe, Apple is getting tough on refunds. You may be fine if this is the first refund you ask for (using reportaproblem.apple.com, as directed by Mr Whinypants himself), BUT they do reserve the right to revoke any rights for future reimbursements, especially if you asked for refunds too often. And "too often" can sometimes mean "more than once":

http://www.macnn.com/articles/15/01/...ted.too.often/
( Last edited by Mike Wuerthele; Sep 19, 2015 at 01:23 PM. )
     
Mike Wuerthele
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Sep 19, 2015, 01:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by Le Flaneur View Post
What I don't understand is: if I don't look at the ads or click on them, how am I hurting revenue by blocking them?
There are two models with advertising - the first is pay per click, where site owners get paid because you've clicked through. After a certain size and traffic, you get offered pay per impression, meaning site owners get paid per ad display. Blockers prevent the load, and as such, prevent the payment to the site owners.
     
hayesk
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Sep 19, 2015, 03:03 PM
 
@Spudboy, if you think it's a scam, that makes no sense. If he just wanted to scam us for money, it'd still be for sale. Why would he pull it if it's still at the top of the charts?
     
hayesk
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Sep 19, 2015, 03:05 PM
 
@Spudboy, if you think it's a scam, that makes no sense. If he just wanted to scam us for money, it'd still be for sale. Why would he pull it if it's still at the top of the charts?
     
smacker
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Sep 21, 2015, 08:22 AM
 
I'm totally baffled by this. How could he not foresee this?! If you decide to develop an adblocker for iOS, you certainly look into this whole subject a great deal. How could not see this coming? OF COURSE adblockers gonna be wildly successful. And now that he pulled his app, countless others will step in. And why not just implement a whitelisting feature? I use adblock but a reasonable site who asks me nicely gets whitelisted no problem. But investing all this time and then just pull it?
     
   
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