Just doesn’t feel good

In the past, being famous usually required a lot of effort and (usually) money. Many people that could have been famous but didn't spend the time/money to make it happen were often discovered by the larger public only after their death. The end game of this property are things like the modern manufactured artist, where fame is achieved because that was the business plan.

An important consequence of this "traditional" type of fame is that someone who wants to leave and get their old life back can generally stop participating. Without the time/money investment the public moves on. "Traditional" fame is a job you can walk away from.

This changed with the internet, where people can become famous by accident. A tweet or blog post can suddenly get millions of views, or something you made can suddenly become the thing that everybody is trying to get a copy of. It's obvious that this is a well-known concept because we have entire industries working to try to make their product "go viral".

This "unexpected" type of fame has a serious problem: it's permanent. It is hard or impossible to simply "walk away' from something when that would mean walking away from your normal life.

When the tsunami of unexpected fame suddenly happens to someone, it is perfectly rational for someone to try to escape the situation before it becomes permanent. The only problem is it may be too late. Also, we're not helping: the fact that this thread on HN even exists is only making this product (and the drama surrounding it) even more famous.

For a better discussion of this problem, I highly recommend watching "This is Phil Fish" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w ).

edit: I should add a very mild language warning with that video. (a few quoted f-bombs that are understandable in context)

From your linked article, it appears that Gruber's already not supportive of content blockers that block the Deck by default:

"I think if your Safari Content Blocker blocks The Deck by default, it’s wrong. I dare you to defend it." https://twitter.com/gruber/status/644409410048106496

I get that there are bad ads and good ads, but in the grand scheme of things, they're all still ads. Do people who skip through commercials on a PVR'ed TV show care if one or two of the ads are worth watching? I'd argue that in most cases, the answer is "no". So this all reminds me of the famous line from Animal Farm - "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

If advertisements are always a chore that people don't want to see but have to put up with, then you're always going to have an arms race between advertisers and users. But if you can make advertisements something people actually want to see, then you won't have to worry about people blocking them.

This sounds pretty hard, and maybe it's totally impractical. On the other hand, there are forms of advertisement (like movie trailers) which are almost universally appreciated.

   I still believe that ad blockers are necessary today, and I still think 
   Ghostery is the best one, but I’ve learned over the last few crazy days that 
   I don’t feel good making one and being the arbiter of what’s blocked. [1]

Note ad blocking also disabled ads on marco.org and daringfireball.net, though; I'm sure that was unrelated to his decision.

ps -- he hasn't refunded his users. He's indicated how they can get a refund which isn't the same thing at all. Sincere regret might be easier to believe if he got rid of the tens of thousands of dollars he earned from this.

[1] http://www.marco.org/2015/09/18/just-doesnt-feel-good