The adblocking revolution is months away • Hacker News Board

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#121

Post by egze » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

gwu78 wrote: post #81

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

I block "in-app" ads the same way I block "web" ads. Most ads use the same third party DNS services which makes blocking even easier.

How do you block them?

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#122

Post by robmcm » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

roninb wrote: post #32

robmcm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be referring to the app landscape too.

So root it and get a device-wide ad blocker?

The security implications and trust you would have to give to such a tool is frighting. The adverts seem like the lesser of two evils.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#123

Post by happyscrappy » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

andresmanz wrote: post #103

happyscrappy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisers hate iAd because it doesn't let you harvest nearly as much users data as most platforms. Advertisers can go suck a lemon as far as I am concerned. It is hard for some people to see past their own Apple hate but success speaks for itself. It doesn't hurt that the competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

> success speaks for itself Our experience as developers should tell us that this isn't true. Success often implies popularity, and popularity is not a very good indicator for quality.

That is true but they consistently are at the top of user satisfaction surveys. I suppose you could argue they were all tricked with marketing, but that doesn't really hold water in the long run. No one even bothers debating who has the best hardware build quality.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#124

Post by coldpie » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

mizzack wrote: post #58

alecco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking is very expensive. The iOS approach is the best idea. Have you seen the cost in memory and CPU of browser ad blocker extensions? That's prohibitive in mobile.

Adaway just modifies your /etc/hosts file to redirect ad domains to localhost. That definitely doesn't seem expensive...

Parsing a huge /etc/hosts for every single hostname lookup certainly is expensive.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#125

Post by robmcm » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

biafra wrote: post #50

robmcm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be referring to the app landscape too.

Are you saying that iOS9 has hooks for ad blocking in Apps? I doubt that.

No but typically applications on iOS are more likely to off a non-ad supported version. So perhaps they just mean in general.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#126

Post by coldpie » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

Nexxxeh wrote: post #75

fvdessen wrote: post #2

I've been a happy Android user for a long time, but mobile ads are so bad that I'm seriously considering switching to iOS just for the adblocking.

If you're on Android, there are so many possible different solutions to the problem. You're not crippled to what Apple deem fit for you to have. Off the top of my head, I can think of four more, other the suggestions in that blogpost. - Firefox + uBlock. (Superb. Best mobile browsing experience.) - Xposed Framework and something like UnbelovedHosts. (Probably root required) - Ad-Free Time with MobiDNS. (Like $3 a mon…

Seconding Firefox with uBlock. Mozilla has made a big push, and Firefox for Android is a really great experience these days.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#127

Post by soylentcola » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

robmcm wrote: post #19

biafra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use Firefox and an Ad-Blocking plugin?

They could be referring to the app landscape too.

I'm a bit more torn on this one. I've used Adfree Android before in this way but for the most part, if an app is good, I'll buy the full version. If it's something I just use a few times for a single purpose (and it's still useful), I'd like the dev to at least see some payment for it. If it's utter shit and full of obtrusive and annoying ads, I'd rather just uninstall it and give it a bad rating.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#128

Post by forgotmypassw » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

I wouldn't call ad blocking feature "revolutionary", but whatever.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#129

Post by Mahn » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

The question that I always wonder is, is it really that devastating if people who don't want ads and wouldn't click on them hide them? I can't help but think that the kind of person that uses adblock-like software is also not likely to be the target group for most ads. It's only a tiny minority those who do click on ads after all.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#130

Post by hiou » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 1:52 PM UTC

Luc wrote: post #26

vilmosi wrote: post #5

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful. >>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it. The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple ge…

Honestly, aren't your comments as much an example of Apple bias as what you're commenting on, but with the sign reversed?

If you look at moves made by Apple in the iPhone era it becomes quite clear and does not require bias.

- Ban flash. Biggest competition to native apps.

- Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle.

- Release their own map to push Google out of their ecosystem. When that didn't work now they are trying this.

Apple's business model is pretty simple. Aquire a user through very aggressive marketing converted into a device purchase. Use that device purchase a an entry point to take over all points of monetary action of that user. That means nothing(web, flash, credit card) should go through anything but them. You don't need bias to see something as obvious as this now is.