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The adblocking revolution is months away

theoverspill.wordpress.com

341–350 of 355 posts

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple, and this is not ok. What do you mean?

For example things like Content-Range are not respected by iOS, or it completely ignores Cache directives. That breaks HTTP, big time.

Do you have more information? I can't find anything, and articles like this don't mention any specific issues https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ios-network-caching-ht...

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#342
post #320
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we can agree to disagree on our interpretations of the facts. :)

Except your facts are incomplete[1] and you've mixed them in with straw men.[2] [1] Your original claim ("as soon as Apple realized how much money could be generated by adding DRM") that Apple is the one that wanted DRM on music ignores the facts of (a) every other music store that opened at the time also had DRM and (b) the fairly common knowledge that Apple's money business was selling devices and that, in the time…

[1] You don't believe that there's a direct correlation between (I buy an iPod) -> (I buy even a fraction of my music that only plays on iPods) -> (I'm more likely to buy another iPod in the future)? I figured that business strategy was pretty self-evident when I said "first mover advantage," so didn't explicitly spell it out.

[2] "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods." This is where we disagree. I believe that they would have sold fewer iPods, as the incentives for purchasing another iPod over the an alternative player in [1] would no longer be present.

Per that belief, I consider the statements "Apple didn't want DRM for altruistic reasons" and "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods" to be equivalent. If you don't accept the premise that Fairplay was vendor lock-in (as both Realplayer and a few lawsuits alleged), then obviously that wouldn't be altruism.

"Apple fought tooth and nail to remove DRM" is a question of motive and effort. The fact is they eventually did away with DRM because the market dictated it. The question is whether they did away with it (a) as soon as possible, (b) purely as a market response, or (c) as late as possible.

The statement that "Apple didn't want DRM, the labels insisted on it" is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether they made financial gain from employing DRM, and, if so, whether that impacted their timeline and dedication to removing it.

"Why would Steve Jobs write a letter about DRM at all if Apple secretly wanted to keep DRM?" That's where I thought the timeline was interesting. To me, it wasn't that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM, it's that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM after the growth portion of music sales was finished.

*Again, if you don't feel Apple benefited financially from the vendor lock-in provided by Fairplay, all of this is a moot point as we're going to arrive at radically different conclusions anyway.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#343
post #244

A thought experiment for the "there's nothing wrong with AdBlock" set: Imagine a blog with quality original content that is relevant to your interests. Imagine that, the first time you go to that site, you see the following text: "This site and it's content are supported by advertisement. If you would like to read our content the only thing we ask is that you do not use an ad blocker on our pages. If this arrangement…

If they're using a quality ad network (does such a thing exist?) where they honor the site's policy of no flash, no videos, and no auto-play advertisements then sure I'd turn the adblocker off. But that's the kicker for me since I've never seen an ad network that doesn't try to shove flash or scummy adverts in my face. I think the sites that depend on adverts for revenue are not a problem it's the ad networks which refuse to improve the quality of the ads. I swear that the quality of ads have not changed since the late 90s. If anything, I think they're gotten worse with time. When I buy a comic or a newspaper the adverts are fairly decent and they don't disrupt my content consumption. Whereas a website advert can often crash my browser or be part of some exploit/attack without the site or ad network owners knowing about it. So, I run with the adblocker on by default then I white list sites that I know are reputable. I just wish someone comes up with a better ad network to compete with the scummy tactics that are used right now by ad networks which would eliminate my need to use an adblocker altogether.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#344
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many people it will depend on the nature and quantity of ads and trackers they have. Reddit has a similar thing where they thank you for not using ad blockers or perhaps gently encourage you not to -- and since they only have a few unobtrusive ads, many people do turn off their blockers.

That seems to me a red herring. The site requires you to agree to view their ads, or not access it. The nature of the ads is irrelevant-- if they are obtrusive enough to make the viewing experience unacceptable to you, your recourse is to stop viewing the site.

A site which is public cannot restrict access to its content as such. I think you don't understand the nature of public/private space in civil law. I can go to any grocery store during operating hours, zip through the aisles, then leave without buying a blessed thing. Mind you, if I did that in a manner that was obstructing actual customers from buying groceries or I was being a jerk in general they could ban me from the store. But prior to any interaction with the grocery store, its staff, and its customers, there is no legal obligation for me to not go into the store. You can't make a store that's open to the public magically private at the same time. Either it's open for business or it's closed to the public.

A website without the requirements of logging in to see its content is the same as an open to the public grocery store. All of its resources are legally free for access. It's up to the web site's administrators to decide to block access to abusive users and bots. But if a random user comes to the site with any sort of agreement text on the index page that agreement is not a contract as the user cannot be verified nor can consent be verified either (IP logs are generally not considered sufficient to identify a user in related case law). So, you as the website owner have to figure out how to display your content and how to make sure the adverts don't interfere in the operation of your public site. It's not a legal obligation of the user to see your adverts anymore than it is the legal obligation for you to make your site public. If you don't want adblocking users then make the site PRIVATE. Otherwise, you're open for business like the grocery store. And like the grocery store, you're on the hook for jerks like me who are looking but not buying.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#345
Seems to me that ad blocking, if it becomes widely adopted could push advertisers and publishers to work together to place ads in a more dedicated way with individual publishers, skipping the ad server networks altogether. This would put user data back, and the control over ads back into the hands of the publishers and advertisers. Maybe not efficient at first, but closer to the original model that the writer describes for print ads.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#346
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also not use these kinda apps lol. Whats the point of putting in all these features to stop people if it merely results in an uninstall?

The point is that you may have a really good app that users want/need, and which presents ads, but in some unobtrusive way that users don't mind. If you don't put in "anti-ad-circumvention" methods, then the ads will fall victim to some simple blanket blocking scheme that users set up before they even installed your app, not targetting your app specifically. Analogy: a website with great content and very unobtrusive…

Currently the people who block in-app ads are people who have taken the effort to root / jailbreak their device. I find it hard to believe that they would put up with the ads.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#347
post #279
post #181

"But wait, what about the moral dimension? The fact that if you block the ads, the sites lose their income?" What a ridiculous point. Sure the advertisers want to make this into a moral issue, but is it? No. It's not. Advertisers just feel entitled. They are not actually entitled to display their ads or make money. Even bringing up this point like it's a valid point for debate drags the quality of the article down. A…

Apparently just like you feel entitled to enjoy the content others have made for free.

I see all you can do is stoop to calling names, but I'll give you a proper reply regardless of the fact that you don't deserve one.

No, it's the artists who feel entitled to make money off their work, work that oftentimes is quite worthless or poor. Others are not required to offer content for free and I don't feel entitled to it. If it's there for free, maybe I'll consume it, maybe not. It's only the content creators who think their consumers feel entitled to free content because they're too stupid to come up with better business models to market their content. As a writer, musician, and artist, I offer a lot of my content for free with no ads and have no problem with that. I actually enjoy creating it and don't do it for the ad revenue. If other content creators want to charge for their content or wrap it up in ads, it's up to them to figure out a business model that works for their purpose. Their failing to do so does in no way reflect a failing in anyone's morality except possibly theirs.

tl;dr: If my ad-blocking is hurting these content creators so much, they should figure out a way to deliver ads that can't be blocked and stop calling the consumers names like "entitled" (because that's another reason the consumers don't want to pay for that mediocre two-paragraph piece surrounded by 10 megs of ads). Period.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#348
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you base this on? Every measurement (not many) I've seen suggest that screen (size/resolution) and network are the main culprits, outside of very intense CPU/GPU client (e.g. games). I don't think I've seen a really good analysis, though, so would be interested if you've got a reference.

number one killer of my battery with last 2 phones? Wifi enabled. Doesn't matter that much if actually used. Turn it off completely, phone lasts 2-3x more.

Without wifi it might make the phone kind of useless, especially if you are using it outside of your home country.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#349
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything that Apple releases is a "revolution" according to Apple fans. I had guessed it was going to be about Safari from the title.

"Everything that Apple releases is a 'revolution' according to Apple fans" according to Apple haters. See Artie MacStrawman[1]. The article isn't saying that Apple enabling ad blocking in Safari is a "revolutionary" new feature; it's saying that bringing ad blocking into the mainstream could cause a serious disruption in existing online advertising business models. [1] http://crazyapplerumors.com/2006/08/21/everybody…

because everyone who doesn't worship Apple is a "hater".

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#350
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take "your broken business model is not my problem" for 200 points. There are plenty of places that I can buy content that I'm interested in. I'd far rather pay for quality content than put up with ads all over the web. As a plus side, paid for content might fix the journalism crisis. The death of content farms is not going to be a huge loss to the web ecosystem. Anything useful enough that people are willing to…

No, that's a fucking cop out. Answer the question: why do you feel entitled to view the content that others have worked to create for free? Why should we not expect the same of you? Why should we not expect you to work for free?

Hang on, if this content is so precious to you, why are you forcing three "click the monkey"s and a cryptowall on me? If we're talking responsibility, that's where the greater harm lies.

Fix ads and the adblocker problem goes away.

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