Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBlake | Hacker News Reader

Although I have no direct knowledge, it feels like there is something going on behind the scenes forcing this reaction. If I had to guess, I would point the finger at Ghostery causing this. Lifehacker wrote¹ that Ghostery sells some data to marketers, so perhaps the approach taken with the app interferes with Ghostery's model and they were not willing to continue allowing access to their rule list. Alternatively Ghostery saw the success of the app and now wants to launch their own and shut off access to the data.

*edit- He just said he is handing the app over to Ghostery on twitter. Very interesting.

¹ http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall...

View on HN

Alternatively: I am seeing a lot of angry articles by journalists who see adblockers as an existential threat to them, and Marco also developed Instapaper. He's almost certainly already getting hate mail from content sites who don't like the way that Instapaper renders their content readable without allowing annoying intrusions. Releasing Peace on top of Instapaper set him up as a high-profile target -- even higher with that #1 app store ranking -- and that's no fun at all to live with unless you've got a very thick skin.

To those who think the pro-ad folks are right: I'd urge you to meditate on just what the #1 ranking of an ad-blocker in the app store implies about the public's appetite for advertising.

Why exactly do you think that's a dispositive argument? Poll the public about their appetite for paywalls and you'll get an even more vigorous response --- paywalls are reviled by normal people. And yet logically, if you think ad-supported content isn't a good model, you should support paywalls. They're transparent and up-front and don't require cross-site tracking.

Really, this is pretty simple: people just want it both ways. They feel like it's their device and they're entitled to control what's displayed on it and what consumes their bandwidth --- and, fair enough, that --- but they also feel entitled to read or watch anything posted on the Internet on their terms.

>paywalls are reviled by normal people

Really? Everyone pays for services that they value.

I certainly don't hear people complaining about the 'paywall' for eating a banana.

In my view, the advertising model exists because most things posted on the internet are not worth paying for.

What I hear more often is people paying for access and then complaining that a high level of advertising is served anyway. Paywalls are not the answer to ads.

What I also hear is people paying for access and then complaining that the quality is not worth it or reduces over time. Paywalls are not transparent.

It's especially easy to rationalize not paying when technology makes it so easy to free-ride.

We're all getting the Buzzfeed we deserve.

Availability of quality journalism is higher than it has ever been. You're not obliged to visit Buzzfeed.

Paywalls are inconvenient, and in some cases arguably inappropriate. It's annoying to follow a link to a paywall. Complaining about that != "reviled."

But none of that is as intrusive as modern ad tech. Ads dug their own grave, slowly, gradually, and are now shocked to find people are shoveling dirt in on top of them.

Moreover, ad blockers are a proportionate response to Web bugs, trackers, and ad tech in general. E-mail marketing figured out how to be tolerable. Ads have not. They keep pushing the boundaries. I've seen some startup ideas around "good" ads, but eventually the people behind these ideas just can't resist the Dark Side.

I actually agree with you about adtech. I simply disagree about what the ethical response to the problem is. To me, the answer to "overly intrusive adtech" is "stop patronizing sites that deploy it".

My main point was that paywalls, and subscription services in general, are not really reviled. They are just annoying in some contexts, like linking.

But I also think it's futile to ask a mass audience that rightfully feels abused by ad tech to be ethical about what they do about ads. But even if they do consider ethics, ad blockers are a proportionate response to intrusive ad tech. A fancy way to say "trackers, Web bugs, and other icky tricks are getting what they deserve."

Lastly, it isn't up to the audience to fix this. It is entirely up to ad-funded publishers. Some will go to paywalls. I'm not that optimistic that ad tech developers can let go of their dark patterns. That's a business that might crash before it reforms, or at least retreats into balkanized walled gardens. Too many paychecks depend on not understanding that.

That's why (for now and in this case) apps win. You get to make money from ads, and some people pay you a dollar to remove those ads.

No, that approach hasn't worked well either. See for instance the failure of Newsstand, which had the benefit of being a marquee iOS feature featured in a keynote.

People want free and no-strings-attached.

I don't think that's true, at least not for "people" as a whole group. For me, paywalls are a pain because I don't want to jump through the hoops to get past them, and you're often stuck ordering a full subscription or the like (as well as other posters rightly pointing out that paywalls can often come prior to any ability to decide that you WANT what's paywalled).

If there was a truly low friction way to get a single piece of vetted/high quality content for a marginal one time rate (the sort of thing I used to hear from a lot of the bitcoin crowd as a potential use case, but only saw materialize in partial forms via things like dogecoin) I'd be much more likely to do so. (or if you're feeling generous as a content author, a low friction way of donating post-factum; the "paypal button" (and similar) is not a great solution as is due to aformentioned high friction)

tl;dr, it's still neither common nor easy to be able to transfer small sums for specific content. This is a model I'd support over both ads and current-form paywalls.

This post had too many qualifiers, which I think indicates it's clearly not cut and dry, but I worry that to paint a broad brush of "nobody wants to pay" distracts from finding a model that will work better.

> If there was a truly low friction way to get a single piece of vetted/high quality content for a marginal one time rate

There is: ads, but people don't like them.

I do no think there's anything that matches how frictionless ads are in exchanging value, but I'm sure someone else smarter than me might work it out; hopefully before the sites I like implode.

Just because you're okay with the exploitation of information by making access artificially scarce doesn't mean that those who aren't are "entitled".

Since the arrival of the internet, that business model stopped working in the interest of society in general.

We're no longer funding the wider dissemination of information, we're either funding artificially limiting access or being asked to surrender our privacy instead of just money.

This may make perfect business sense, but in my view, societies interests go before business interests.

And yes, I also fear that without an alternative model we're going to have a hard time encouraging the production of that information within the framework of the free market.

But I rather face that challenge than to accept a society where information disappears behind paywalls and our privacy is being demolished by commercial surveillance.

Just because what the public wants is selfish and generally short sighted doesn't mean they're wrong to want it.

Marco Arment sold Instapaper more than two years ago and as far as I know, is not directly involved with it in any way today. Still, as evident by your comment, his name is of course very much associated with it.

http://www.marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation

It's really disappointing that all those the-sky-is-falling articles from tech journalists have apparently caused this.

Nothing has changed, no new issues were raised. Marco has talked about and basically supported ad blocking in the past. I guess he just doesn't feel like being the focus of their ire right now.

That's not true. Normal people as a general rule don't install much software on their computers, and they install even fewer browser extensions (now that it's harder to trick them into doing that).

But people do install apps; they're crazy about apps.

There are popular, good publications on the Internet that get 80+% of their revenue from ads, and those publications have a huge iOS readership, and those iOS users tend to be on later iOS versions. Publishers aren't making it up: they're going to take a pay cut because of the content blocker features on iOS.

What's not true? Marco has explicitly written about iOS content blockers in the past few months. Nothing has changed since then.

It's a $3 app that requires configuration. It's not Angry Birds.

Also, I'm seeing a lot of claims with zero stats to back them up. The iOS top charts are extremely volatile. A few thousand nerds installing ad blockers will impact tech publications to some extent, but I'm extremely skeptical that it's the end of the world even for them. It should mean almost nothing for other sites with broader audiences.

I thought ad blockers on iOS only block ads on Safari web pages, not ads within apps?

Yes, that's true. A lot of people have been interpreting iOS content blocking as Apple's way of pushing people to make more apps. Content blockers also can't block Apple's official "hey, we have an app for this web site" banner that you can have Safari show for your site.

How deliciously overt. Increase apps ecosystem & destroy competitors revenue in one blow. Which is good news for privacy because the one thing that can't track you is an app on your mobile device.

Instapaper is owned by Instapaper Holdings (Betaworks), not Marco. (In addition to starting Instapaper, Marco also started a publication called The Magazine, which he sold and is now shuttered.)

He sold a majority stake to Betaworks, but he is still an owner.

And let's not gloss over the fact that he made at least a few million from his equity stake in Tumblr when it was sold to Yahoo. He was the first employee of the company.

From everything I've heard on his podcast, it is strongly hinted that he really never needs to work another day in his life.

I certainly can't speak for The Public At Large <tm>. In my case, though, I agree with the fundamental argument for advertising -- writers gotta be paid somehow, and if you're going to read stuff on the web for free, it's either ads or PBS-style pledge drives -- but I've slowly come around to the ad-blocking camp anyway. The problem to my mind isn't web advertising as a concept, it's web advertising as it's frequently implemented. Reading a web page is conceptually more like a magazine than a television, yet web ads increasingly make even the most intrusive television ads seem pleasant by comparison.

I suspect that a fundamental part of the problem with web ads stems, paradoxically, from web pages having zero marginal cost. There's effectively an infinite amount of advertising space to sell, which has quickly driven the value of ads toward zero. I don't think advertising as it exists now is going to be a sustainable business model for the web; Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News may do better, because they impose a scarcity on ad space -- which will both make the UX better and make the ads more valuable. But I doubt that's a long-term solution, either.

I'd urge you to medidate on what the constant complaints about paywalls imply about the public's appetite for non-advertising revenue streams.

Journalists have to eat.

BTDT (I wrote a monthly magazine column for more than half a decade; I write for a living). There are other ways to earn a crust with the pen than through advertising.

The real headache with paywalls is that buying access is a pain in the arse, with price structures that make no sense from the casual browser's point of view. What we really need is a robust microbilling architecture ... but back when the web began to take its shape in 1994-96 the transaction cost was prohibitive for micro-billing (V.34bis modems rather than broadband put a floor under minimum TCP/IP connection costs that exceeded the sort of transaction size expected for micro-billing).

One of the journalists I follow in Canada has a Patreon and doesn't inundate his work with ads or paywall. I voluntarily pay him more money per month than any news site because he actually produces work that matters to me (politics, journalism) and doesn't reduce the user experience.

It's a good setup, but I doubt it can scale.

If Apple allowed BitTorrent clients in iOS 10 I assure you BitTorrent clients would be #1 on iOS 10 launch too. Does that mean illegally downloading is ok?

That means that there is a lot of room for content producers to improve the customer experience. So far they've just been suing their biggest customers. Hopefully the newspapers will not take that approach.

> journalists who see adblockers as an existential threat

You mean bloggers.

> If I had to guess, I would point the finger at Ghostery causing this. Lifehacker wrote that Ghostery sells some data to marketers, so perhaps the approach taken with the app interferes with Ghosterys model

Doubtful that's the case. If you read his post, he recommends Ghostery several times. It just sounds like he ultimately didn't feel comfortable about making money off something that takes money out of other people's pockets:

"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...I suggest you use Ghostery on the desktop"

Recommending them means nothing at all. That is practically the status quo when breaking up with another business, employee or whatever when it is done publicly. (and this obviously had to be public)

Right...but nothing about Marco's statement suggests anything besides, "It turns out I feel really weird about making an ad blocker, and there isn't any way I can make an ad blocker that works in a way that doesn't make me feel weird with the iOS framework, so I'm not going to make one anymore."

Why not take his statement at face value? He's personally reliant on ad income from his site, as are several of his friends, so it makes sense that profiting off an ad blocker makes him uncomfortable. No conspiracy needed.

(For background, see: http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads)

Just one clarification, and it will seem picky, but while Marco's site does have ads, Marco-the-person is in no sense "reliant" on ad income, as an early Tumblr employee who did well in the IPO and then didn't blow it on yachts and helicopters. In addition to IAP money from his podcast app, selling Instapaper, etc.

Fair enough - maybe personally reliant was a bit strong. :) I suspect his own income was less of a concern than his friends' incomes anyways, given he's taking down what is likely a six figure (or seven, over time) app.

Doubt it. He probably just thought the app wasn't going to be so popular. He's selling a lot of copies and he just doesn't feel comfortable with it. Hats off to Marco for putting his ethics first, not the money.

I said this yesterday and I'm going to repeat myself in this thread: adblocking is not going to "fix" the web as people are saying, for the simple reason ad blockers block all ads, not only annoying ones. The big publishers probably are not going to even notice it, because they have other ways of making money, but the small blogger will have a hard time when the ads on his blog get blocked, probably the only source of income for his site.

And we're forgetting people that can't afford anything besides some little AdSense ad to advertise their business. How are they going to reach people if all their ads get blocked?

What stops the small blogger from trying to understand why ad revenues are falling and also writing a post asking readers how things can be improved? Readers who like the content will respond, and hopefully, a better ad network could be used and/or other monetization avenues could be considered.

Marco has tweeted that he's giving the Peace app code to Ghostery. [1] That can't be considered ethical. That's like being a gunmaker, not feeling comfortable being one, pulling the product from the shelves, and still giving/selling the entire design, patents, manufacturing facilities, etc., to someone else to continue making it and selling it. In this case, even though Ghostery has had its block list and desktop browser extensions for quite sometime, it surely does not need Marco to give away the app's code to it, especially if he had a moral quandary about having made such an app.

[1]: https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/644939796624896000

Hats off to Marco for putting his ethics first, not the money.

I find this sentiment, and the moderation supporting it, incredible and almost a demonstration of the Stockholm Syndrome.

I admit the line "Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn't serve our goals or beliefs well enough" does make me wonder what Ghostery's input in this decision was. A previous post indicated a future release of Peace would have brought a similar granularity level for individual tracker/network blocking that the Ghostery desktop extension provides. If that's enough nuanced control for the desktop, why isn't it for mobile?

Having said that, though, I've followed Marco's writing/podcasting long enough to generally take him at his word. He's been pretty forthright about why he makes the choices he does and acknowledging things he considers mistakes. I noticed that several fairly big names in the Mac blogging/podcasting space came across the last couple of days as very hostile to the notion of ad blockers. Imagine having people you respect, work with at times and have considered friends for years attack the essential concept underpinning your new application as an immoral action that will destroy their livelihood. Given that, I don't find the "I stopped feeling good about this" explanation at all hard to swallow.

It did occur to me that he might have been threatened by a lawsuit (or more than one). I suspect he would have been direct about that, if in a position to, but a large corporation is in a position to put tremendous pressure on a small/indie business, even if they don't have the legal high ground.

IIRC, there was a lot of drama between tv networks and Tivo, once upon a time, over the ad-skipping issue, which netted out in a pretty lame detente (Tivo pulling the 30-second-skip button out of standard UI).

At the end of the day, the issues are similar (30-second-skip == going the bathroom during the commercial break, but someone productizing it was not). Over a longer period of time, we all started time-shifting tv content and commercials took a big hit anyway (due to Netflix and to Tivo clones and licensees).

If anyone thinks a developer like Marco is somehow complicit in the death of traditional, ad-supported media, I hope they're having similar introspection over using spotify instead of buying records.

The world doesn't owe a living to people who can steal content, write clickbait headlines, and convert paragraphs into multi-page galleries the most effectively. They will have to adapt.

And some will die.

And ad-blockers are forever a thing on mobile now.

I don't agree, there are plenty of other companies/sources out there that could have provided the list. I think the fact that Marco talks all this moralistic pov, while still endorsing ghostery is bs. Just shows he's for sale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com