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Just doesn’t feel good

marco.org

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Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#231

Post by billyhoffman »

antirez wrote: post #214
billyhoffman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 days is a short period of time, but the context over those days is massively different. On Sept 16th, a few dozen beta testers may have been using Peace and giving Marco feedback. On Sept 18, Peace is the top ranked app in the app store, displacing MineCraft. MineCraft! Estimates are in the 12000-15000 downloads on the first day[1]. You look in your iTunes connect account and realize you on the path to make $100K o…

I don't believe he wrote an app hoping to have a small user base, so I don't believe that the success of the app was the problem. Without to mention that there are a number of ways to fix that, including finding a price point that makes it less interesting in order to reduces the installation base. But if the app was created in the first place, it was because the idea was to make everybody install it. It's a blackbox…

Thinking you understand what a situation is going to be like ahead of time and seeing what that situation actually is like when it happens are 2 very different things.

The world is full of stories of people who attempt something and then get upset or disheartened or unhappy when it comes to pass. Why does everyone have to assume something nefarious here?

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#232

Post by steve-howard »

te_chris wrote: post #90
msoad wrote: post #74

* I don't want ads * I don't want native advertising or sponsored content * I don't want to pay for content * I don't want my tax goes to government sponsored content * I want free independent content That's me nowadays... I don't even know what's the answer!

There isn't one, because your position is idealistic and naive.

I saw a list of statements describing what he wants and does not want. In a world of compromises, it helps to describe what you actually want before you start identifying which of those things you'll have to give up.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#233

Post by guessbest »

ixtli wrote: post #55

I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than everything else? Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of integrating ads in…

When I write software I try to think with the mentality of a user as much as possible. And my conclusion is that most users don't even see app functionality, they just see the goal in their mind. People use Excel to get calculations, not to put things in cells. People play game to have fun, hence the rise of casual gaming. I've never put advertising in my apps because that seems to me that when the user clicks the advertisement it will take them out of the app and away from their goal.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#234

Post by Spivak »

te_chris wrote: post #90
msoad wrote: post #74

* I don't want ads * I don't want native advertising or sponsored content * I don't want to pay for content * I don't want my tax goes to government sponsored content * I want free independent content That's me nowadays... I don't even know what's the answer!

There isn't one, because your position is idealistic and naive.

There is one, and I can name an easy example. The Welcome To Night Vale Podcast.

All of their content is completely free and isn't supported by ads at all. They make money through live shows, merchandising, and donations, and I guess now book sales.

It's exactly the model he's describing, free content that's not sponsored, has no strings attached, and is still hugely successful.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#235

Post by gvr »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #127
cjensen wrote: post #20

Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. He's hacker enough to want to muck about with how to make a blocker, but it's not his joy. Basically, he's what many of us aspire to be.

I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the moral grey area" I can understand that as well. What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days a…

My takeaway was that he doesn't want to be in the crossfire in the ads war. I can imagine that being very stressful and unpleasant with lots of hate mail etc. Especially if you compare it to an app like Overcast that brings joy to everyone using it.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#236

Post by Retra »

slg wrote: post #112
Retra wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It looks like he just felt uncomfortable making money off of his friends' and colleagues' loss. Anytime you sell a product in a competitive market, you do this. Those ad companies are happy to steal costumers' attention from other companies.

I think people are fine losing money to competition but this isn't losing to competition. An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. These sites aren't losing money to other sites making more money, the money just isn't made at all. You could potentially argue that the intended viewer of those ads is now capturing that value, however real world examples of…

It doesn't destroy that value, it just funnels it into somewhere people don't know how follow it. It makes easy money harder to acquire. If you have the ability to work around it, all that value is there for you, and few people are competing for it.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#237

Post by x0x0 »

billyhoffman wrote: post #184
bcrescimanno wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the moral grey area" I can understand that as well. What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days a…

2 days is a short period of time, but the context over those days is massively different. On Sept 16th, a few dozen beta testers may have been using Peace and giving Marco feedback. On Sept 18, Peace is the top ranked app in the app store, displacing MineCraft. MineCraft! Estimates are in the 12000-15000 downloads on the first day[1]. You look in your iTunes connect account and realize you on the path to make $100K o…

Dunno, marco just seems like an entitled jerk who's constructed a maze of rationalization around ad blocking. If you don't like the ads a website shows, well, you should have found that out of the first visit. Great. Then don't visit again. Here's his rationalization:

   Publishers won’t solve this problem: they cannot consistently enforce 
   standards of decency and security on the ad networks that they embed in 
   their sites. Just as browsers added pop-up blockers to protect us from that 
   abusive annoyance, new browser-level countermeasures are needed to protect 
   us from today’s web abuses.
   
   And we shouldn’t feel guilty about this. The “implied contract” theory that 
   we’ve agreed to view ads in exchange for free content is void because we 
   can’t review the terms first — as soon as we follow a link, our browsers 
   load, execute, transfer, and track everything embedded by the publisher. Our 
   data, battery life, time, and privacy are taken by a blank check with no 
   recourse. It’s like ordering from a restaurant menu with no prices, then 
   being forced to pay whatever the restaurant demands at the end of the meal. [1]
To use his dumb analogy, it's going to the same restaurant over and over and whining about the prices. If you don't like the prices, stop going.

Continuing to visit while blocking ads is no different than downloading movies or apps for free because you can. It's fine when a handful of people do it; just like music sharing wasn't a huge problem until Napster. When every ios user starts totally blocking ads, it's not longer ignorable. There's no human right to read the nytimes.

[1] http://www.marco.org/2015/09/16/peace-content-blocker

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#238

Post by daxfohl »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #127
cjensen wrote: post #20

Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. He's hacker enough to want to muck about with how to make a blocker, but it's not his joy. Basically, he's what many of us aspire to be.

I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the moral grey area" I can understand that as well. What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days a…

Robin Hood the thing. Give exactly 100% of the money to starving children. Literally. Personally, not through some charity. Literally go to a 3rd-world nation (on your own money, don't dare touch money collected through the app), find parents of starving children, and give them each a $100 bill.

Start a trend. Start that trend. Be that person. Not just the person who had a hit iOS app. Be the person who eliminates hunger by setting a simple, obvious, example. Does that feel good? Also keep our app.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#239

Post by vitd »

untog wrote: post #157
ixtli wrote: post #55

I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. Am I the only one thinks that the user's experience should be more important than everything else? Annoying advertisements are, in practice, the result of people failing to be creative in monetization. Ars Technica, for instance, has done a great job of integrating ads in…

I hate this supposition that everyone should bend over backwards to allow people who make money in a certain way continue making money in that way. You could just stop visiting the site that offends you. That would be the actual principled way to treat this - the content is not worth the price of admission. Instead, ad blockers let you take the content and sidestep the price of admission. I absolutely agree that medi…

"strikes me as a very entitled stance"

Not at all. This is exactly the same as broadcasters putting ads in their shows, and you muting them, fast-forwarding through them, going to the bathroom when they're on, etc.

The attitude that "if I put this out there and show ads, all viewers will need to view the ads before or while reading it so I can make money from this" is the entitled stance.

If you put it out there, I'll choose whether to download the content, the ads, both, or neither. If you don't like that, it's on you to find another way to monetize it or stop me from having access. I'm not going to pirate or try to break-in. But if it's just sitting there and I can legally download it, I will. It doesn't stop anyone else from doing it differently.

Re: Just doesn’t feel good

#240

Post by msandford »

Killswitch wrote: post #204
gtCameron wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my experience as well. I would love to run an adblocker in blacklist mode and only punish the sites that annoy me, but I haven't found one that works that way. If anyone knows of one let me know.

uBlock origin actually does and it's what I am running right now, ofcourse in blacklist mode. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-tu...

Thanks for the link. I think there are about a dozen sites that I really loathe the advertising on. I haven't been running ad-blocking software (as I mention elsewhere in the thread) and I "punish" these websites by simply closing the tab as soon as it gets a little jerky while scrolling.

A blacklist is an interesting idea. I'd like it even better if the blacklist was only active for a limited time so that I have to manually keep re-blocking it. Then if a site cleans up their ad-act and starts running ads good enough that they don't eff up the UX I'll simply forget to re-block them.

Something along those lines might be a product, especially if you sell access to a chart of how many people are blocking your site at any time. It might be a tool that publishers can use to evaluate advertisers and not accept the business of advertisers that cause their blocking numbers to spike.

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