The adblocking revolution is months away • Hacker News Board

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#181

Post by joesmo » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

"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.

Advertisers not making money off people using ad blockers is NOT a moral issue. It's a failing of their business model. Nothing more and nothing less. Are we now going to say that they are too "insert adjective of choice here" to fail? Insanity!

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#182

Post by yoklov » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

kuni-toko-tachi wrote: post #84

"People are getting p*ssed off with the huge data loads pages impose without their consent" This is an absurd statement. Users know that many sites are ad-supported. Whether they like it or not is independent of that, but consent is given by visiting them. Complaining that sites need ad revenue to support their operations is childish. The fair solution is not ad-blocking tools, but a general browser settings that say…

Nothing would prevent content providers from sending ads even if you selected that setting.

In fact, that is almost certainly what would always happen, since it would require exactly no change from the current state.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#183

Post by SG- » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

Adblocking is already a thing on desktops/laptops and iOS 9 isn't going to ship with an Adblocker turned on or included. People will have to go download one in the App Store just like how they'd currently do in their desktop browsers.

The only thing happening is that the functionality is going to be added letting people do this. I suppose the fact that the App Store is really simple to use will make it easier on top of likely having a good Adblocker featured on top.

I'm already running iOS 9 dev build and have built my own Adblocker using the new APIs and it's been great, personally it makes me actually want to browse more content on my iPhone than before. Previously I'd just give up on some sites and switch to the laptop or not even load the content to begin with because of long loads and too many ads.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#184

Post by mizzack » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #124

mizzack wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what the practical limits are on host file size, but I just checked my phone with up to date AdAway lists and it's sitting at 56429 lines (with about 10 or so of those being comments)

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#185

Post by doodpants » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #97

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…

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-tired-of-on...

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#186

Post by dhimes » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #132

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…

You are spot on. Apple's obvious point of view is this: random websites not affiliated with Apple are using our devices to advertize to the user. That must be stopped! We own the device, after all, and if the user is going to be advertized to, we give the permission for that and want a cut. Plus the wild and wooly ads are obnoxious. We can decide what is acceptable to our users and how it is presented, for a better (…

Imagine LG doing something like this with their TVs...

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#187

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

hiou wrote: post #130

Luc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Aquir…

> Ban flash. Biggest competition to native apps

That's not why that happened. Flash wasn't "banned," Apple chose not to allow support for it in Mobile Safari from the beginning. It was never removed or banned.

Flash was a dog. Power hungry, slow, inefficient. I recently had to touch the codebase for an Adobe Air iOS app and the runtime is pretty horrific. Adobe never got flash good enough for mobile, and Apple was right to call them out on it.

Flash was never any good on Android either. Otherwise it'd still be around.

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

Mobile Safari is a good browser. It's fast and is not crippled. It consistently beats browsers on other mobile platforms despite running on often slower hardware. A great mobile web browser is what made the iPhone a great product.

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

This is because Apple's contract with Google expired and they had to renew on terms that they could not agree to. My recollection of this is that Google wanted a bigger branding presence on the iOS home screen and refused to license mapping data for turn-by-turn navigation (I believe they wanted the Apple-developed Google Maps application to be branded "Google Maps" rather than just "Maps"). Apple saw no way out aside from investing in their own mapping data and infrastructure.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#188

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

luso_brazilian wrote: post #54

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'll bet Apple won't consider "Install from Apple Store" type messages as ads. Apple won't consider anything as ads. What they provided was the hooks for developers to implement "Content Blocking Safari Extensions" [1]. To quote the docs: "Your app extension is responsible for supplying a JSON file to Safari. The JSON consists of an array of rules (triggers and actions) for blocking specified content. Safari conver…

Apple provides hooks so that a web page can display an official, system supported "there is an app for this web site, tap here to download it" banner. I will bet $5 that Apple does not provide a way to block those.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#189

Post by Steko » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #167

Steko wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. This is baloney, Apple hosts free apps at a loss. The idea that Apple wants you to have an app for every website is absolutely ridiculous. Safari is one of the most used iOS apps today and will be so for at least the better part of the next decade. > Bullshit. They have their own advertising network they want to push. iAd…

iAds is a rounding error on Apple's business. It may be now, but I'll bet they don't think it will be in the future.

Optional, download-it-yourself ad blockers aren't likely to move the needle on iAd growth.

This is the problem with many of the comments here. 90% of iOS users won't use it.

Re: The adblocking revolution is months away

#190

Post by danielweber » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

thescrewdriver wrote: post #57

blinkingled wrote: post #36

How long will this revolution last if content providers decide to not show content to iOS users? I mean if they exist to make money and they can't on iOS would it matter that there were hundreds of millions of them? With ad blocking it would be as if they never existed in first place. Perhaps the idea is for Apple to get the content providers to make apps so they get their cut? Perhaps it is better for the content pr…

> How long will this revolution last if content providers decide to not show content to iOS users? Which begs the question: How long will content providers last if they decide to not show content to iOS users?

Someone has to pay the bills. It's conceivable that the iOS users are all loss-leaders telling their non-ad-blocking friends to read the article, but that's kind of stretching it.