“Arment then sat back down in his wheel chair and was rolled into a waiting accessible van. When asked about his injuries and the large casts on his legs, he mentioned it was from a recent gardening accident.”
That is really really cool. Good for him and I hope this continues to get a ton of press. Everyone acts like it’s okay to act unethically or immorally as long as it’s business (I am not making that judgment myself about adblocking, I don’t have an opinion as I don’t know the details, only that he acted because he himself felt icky).
there are a lot of articles about this. I felt inspired and wrote one last night. I think its main contribution to the discussion would be a comparison between anti-ad blocking arguments and anti-filesharing arguments.
ad blocking controversy aka foolishness
You work for months on a piece of software, then 36 hours after it goes on sale, you suddenly decide “ad blockers are immoral?” This is utter BS. Nobody is buying his story, and if you are buying his story, please call me. I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you. He made plenty of money on this, got exposure for his other apps, and he doesn’t have to support the countless (he won’t tell how many) users that paid $3 for an app that has no support whatsoever after just one day. This is rotten, through and through.
He’s offering full refunds, I understand.
I’d be okay with keeping the ads, but blocking all the skeevy trackers. But I guess untargeted ads aren’t worth anything like as much.
I understand that he is doing that. However, I’d imagine a large number of people (maybe a majority of them?) might not even know who the developer of the app is. They just saw an ad-blocker for $3 that was listed top paid app, and assumed it was a good purchase. They might not even realize it was delisted until it stops working and they can’t get any updates to it. It’s a jerk move to screw over your customers, even IF you supposedly offer a refund.
i don’t see how controlling the content that’s loaded onto my hardware is immoral. seems like that should be SOP.
You must not have friends and business partners that make money off of tracking users. Maybe you should talk to Marco. I’m sure he can 'splain it to ya.
I don’t like tracking either. However, websites or apps that use generic (i.e., national advertising) are fine. It’s the price you pay for free access. And the idea to keep content free is worthwhile, but writers (of articles and/or software) gotta be paid somehow. But I shouldn’t have to give up my privacy (what little I have) because some marketing person is lazy. Even though I opt out, I still get ads that I know reached me through tracking. I find resetting my advertising I.D. helps, but I can’t remember to do this everyday.
Apple is issuing refunds to everyone who purchased the app, not just those that request it.
Hey anybody want to buy the IP for the app stores no.1 app for, like, a lot less than it’s worth?
Just kidding, Ima throw it in the trash, here’s some links to my ex-competitors.
Um. What?
There’s nothing immoral about choosing what you will and won’t run on your computer. For instance, I consider any script from some domain that isn’t the site I’m currently looking at as a hostile act. I don’t run unvetted scripts from who the F knows where just because a website owner wants me to. And asking me to run scripts from somewhere else is arguably less moral than me blocking everything besides the site I’m actually looking at.
You wouldn’t stick a needle of indeterminate contents and origin in your arm just because a shop keeper handed you a fistful of them when you walk in the door. Why should you let completely arbitrary code from literally anyone execute on your machine without even asking for your consent?
Arment has a history of stunts like this, such as when he prevented users of his Instapaper service from saving articles from 9to5Mac because they were mean to him: http://9to5mac.com/2012/09/10/dont-call-it-instascraper-why-you-cant-read-9to5mac-on-instapaper/
He sounds like a ball of laughs. Got his email address? I’ll invite him to the BBS.
And the idea to keep content free is worthwhile, but writers (of articles and/or software) gotta be paid somehow. But I shouldn’t have to give up my privacy (what little I have) because some marketing person is lazy. Even though I opt out, I still get ads that I know reached me through tracking. I find resetting my advertising I.D. helps, but I can’t remember to do this everyday.
I think ads themselves are the problem…all this “as long as it doesn’t track me it’s ok” nonsense is just that.
Back in March 2014 I was browsing Boing! Boing! on my phone, which doesn’t have ad tracking, and the ad network that this site was using at the time presented me with a pro-Keystone XL pipeline ad.
Given Boing! Boing!'s general stance on Keystone XL this was probably just a major screwup by their ad network, but regardless, beyond the tracking I just don’t want to see ads. Most of them rely on appeals to emotion and other logical fallacies, and surely people have better things to do than have their brains repurposed as Skinner boxes by marketers.
If I want to know whether the Keystone XL pipeline is a good idea, I’ll seek out information from experts I trust rather than rely on images of photoshopped wildlife vs. staged images of pipeline workers accompanied by banal slogans.
The only good ad is a blocked ad.
Is land in Florida not something people sell anymore? Or has the state finally managed to divorce itself from reality and become a mythical place?
I thought the joke was that any land you buy in Florida is doomed to the sea. Sure, you can have 10,000 acres on the cheap. Just don’t expect them to be above water in the next 10 years.
Naw, the joke is that your neighbors are all ‘Florida Man.’
