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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

And just like that, Crystal was uninstalled.

Didn't take long for the conflicts of interest to show up!

"According to Mr. Murphy, he isn’t adding the option for financial gain, but rather to make sure publishers aren’t overburdened by all-out blocking of ads on their sites."

My response to which is: "Who do you think you're fooling? You are taking money to allow people to defeat the core purpose of your application."

Secret Media plans to only work with “premium” publishers who don’t bombard users with large amounts of low-quality advertising.

Is there any other kind?

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> > large amounts of low-quality advertising.

> Is there any other kind?

I'd say The Deck manages to be high-quality, low-volume advertising. One of their rules is "our ad is the only ad on the page".

http://decknetwork.net/

Artisanal ad networks targeted to web workers don't exactly _scale_ to the rest of the ad industry, but non-irritating advertising exists.

This is where the people making the blocklists get stuck. Marcus Aurelius, ad block developer, decides that the deck ads aren't that annoying, don't break the page they're on, are low bandwidth, don't track you, etc. And so MA leaves them out of the list. But everyday he gets 100 bug reports "I still see ads!!!" from users who never want to see a single advertisement on any site ever. What's MA going to do? Probably give up.

Probably mediate in his tent on the virtues of stoic persistence in the face of overwhelming user stupidity.

Just ask the user on first execution if small ads that don't use a lot of bandwidth and that don't track the user should be allowed and leave that as an option in settings. The app could also provide a link to an example site for the user to see what the ad would look like. With iOS 9, it's also easier for the user to get back to the application after viewing the example site/page.

I do commend Deck ads for having no cookies, no JavaScript, no counting clicks, etc. It's not a model for the entire web since many marketers want insights and statistics on users, but it definitely works quite well and is used on several popular sites.

Or maybe build a "Block this" feature on touching.

The architecture of iOS content blockers seems not to allow that. No information is allowed to flow from safari to the ad block app (to allay concerns that the app itself is spying on you).

Put the user in control?

Those aren't video ads. The specific example the GP is referencing says specifically they develop video ads that aren't detectable.

     to help them deliver video ads in a way that 
     cannot be detected by ad-blocking tools.

Literally one of the worst types.

I am told that Project Wonderful (https://www.projectwonderful.com/) is pretty good. Haven't looked into it deeply myself, though.

The real shit ones are mobile websites that do both the following at the same time 1. Giant in your face have-to-close ad. 2. Massive bar at bottom with tiny close button

There are a few others who also operate with the same model, but they are generally considered small businesses (or "lifestyle businesses"). Unfortunately these inherently have ceilings to them and market dynamics dictate you will always have someone more greedy who will try to build AdSense-like dominance.

> Artisanal ad networks

Now I really have heard everything...

They allow gif ads if i recall and haven't got a way to give feedback (ie your ad is for a bad product).

> taking money to allow people to defeat the core purpose of your application.

Seriously. This is so bad for users

Perhaps for you, but this does not subvert the core purpose of Crystal for me.

I will continue using Crystal, with the default option, since I don't mind seeing minimal, non-intrusive ads that don't completely disrupt my user experience. And I don't have a problem with responsible websites with responsible ads getting paid.

In fact, this option to have vetted ads is pretty much ideal for me!

Edit: I'm curious, why do people dislike my preference here? I'm not saying anybody else has to like Crystal, just that it's matches my desires.

Vetted or acceptable ads is a fake narrative - a smokescreen - it's just a way for these adblock apps to extort ad networks for a payout. In the article it mentions that hundreds of companies including all the big search and display networks, and all of the big native ad networks, are included on the whitelist. Who is left?

While it could be a smokescreen, it certainly doesn't have to be a smokescreen. If it turns out that Crystal is letting intrusive ads through, then they're doing a bad job and I'll stop using it.

We already know who will be let through - the ABP whitelist is public. It's the majority of the ad tech world including the most intrusive native networks.

I don't have much experience with ABP, but I'm also having difficulty finding complaints about intrusive ads getting through ABP.

Is this something that you've experienced personally, or is it just from the companies reputations that are on the whitelist?

I experienced it personally and switched from ABP to uBlock as a result.

This caught my attention, as I am allowing "acceptable" ads.

1. What was the ad like? 2. Didn't disabling "acceptable" ads on ABP work?

1. Standard native click bait.

2. I didn't test disabling but assume that it would work as advertised - I didn't want to support a company that would enable whitelisting/acceptable ads as default in order to build up enough users as a means of extorting everyone else in the ecosystem.

Thanks, that's good to know, I'll keep an eye out for this!

Seems almost like extortion.. the advertisers already paid for advertising but now Crystal demands additional payments from the advertisers or else it blocks the ads. The websites don't seem to get any additional payment from Crystal for this "vetting".

It could seem like extortion, or it could seem like certification. Websites have proven that they're terrible at vetting ads for security and intrusiveness, they do not care about that. By paying a different company to perform the certification, then there's less of a conflict of interest.

Of course, this depends on trusting someone. Trust can be misplaced, but I already know I can't trust websites, so Im looking for someone else.

The adblocker companies cant be trusted either since they only stand to gain from this behaviour. ABP makes tens of millions from this.

The only way trust works is if there's a neutral 3rd party that represents all sides and has respect.

Certification in your sense is conforming to a certain standard. This is extortion.

Basically "conforming" is paying. That's extortion. Pay are demands or no soup for you.

According to the article it sounds like an optional feature which can be turned off.

It allows people who want to support ad-based publishers with quality ads, while still blocking the heavy junk.

Not an unacceptable thing to me, especially if it makes the developer some extra money without forcing me to let the ads through.

Quality ads like Taboola and Outbrain? It's an extortion scheme to shake down ad networks for money and nothing else. I'm surprised the developer of Crystal was so short sighted, as this increases the chances that someone will make a no-whitelist app that will become more popular and displace him (as uBlock and Adblock are slowly displacing ABP). Not to mention the fact that users are PAYING him to block ads and then he turns around and defeats part of the app's only feature.

Yeah, I was reading this and thinking "This seems reasonable", until I saw Taboola mentioned. Taboola and "One weird trick" ads are the primary reason I want to run an ad blocker in the first place.

It's always an "optional feature" - but the app is closed source.

Also, given that the blockers don't have the sophistication level that you'd expect from say, µBlock, where you can just click on something annoying and banish it, is that ad being displayed because the ad company is giving backhanders to the developer, or was it just missed in the filter? Who knows?

Ad blocking software having "acceptable ads" is identical to antivirus software having "acceptable viruses".

Ooh, I just reread the article. The company trying to convince blocking software to do this is the outfit behind the original Adblock Plus, the original people who started this practice.

I don't think ads are the same as viruses. There are different kinds of ads for example, and not all of them use tracking or even pay by the pageview.

They are malicious memes. Analogy could be about their effect on brains.

If Crystal gave an option to "allow high-quality ads" and then that list of high-quality ads was curated carefully in the users' interests, it could make sense.

But as soon as people start paying to be included on that list, it's not a list of high-quality ads, it's a list of people that have paid you money that you have decided meet some minimum bar (that you have incentives to keep low).

Yeah, shame - as the leading ad blocker, he could've instead set a de facto standard for respectful ads. Maybe the Deck itself should make this.

Make it opt-in, and it's like the micropayments future we were promised.

One reason I didn't jump into buying an ad blocker was because I knew there could be some free ones coming in. Another reason was because I knew there could be some compromises that the makers of the ad blockers would make "in good faith" on behalf of their users (which could also be a sellout or seen as a sellout).

I'm glad I didn't buy Crystal. I would've been frustrated enough to request a refund from Apple if I did.

> Is there any other kind?

Yes there is. Sometimes I see ads for stuff that I didn't know about and am genuinely interested in. Yes, it's rare, but it does happen.

This is exactly what the most popular desktop browser ad blockers do.

You mean what Adblock Plus alone does.

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