8 ms·

Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy co

by cjensen 11y ago

Lots of people here trying to infer motives. Why not just believe what he says? He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. He's hacker enough to want to muck about with how to make a blocker, but it's not his joy. Basically, he's what many of us aspire to be.

inversionOf 11y ago
and doesn't enjoy controversy So he went all in on something that was already hugely controversial (for weeks regarding iOS, and for years on other platforms). That adblockers would be controversial was blatantly obvious to any of this Earth, and should not be a surprise to anyone. The world didn't need Marco to get in the ad blocking business. Yet he did in a big way, with a big partnership, and put a big amount of his namespace and reputation behind it. People infer motives because the notion that this all came as some big surprise rings hollow.
chucknelson 11y ago
Agreed - I think the key point is where he says he's fortunate enough to be able to do this (sacrifice the possible income of this app). Why bother with all of the political mess (much of it from "the internet" I'm sure) when you could just apply your effort elsewhere and avoid a ton of physical and emotional stress? Focusing on Overcast sounds just fine.
w4 11y ago
Seriously. This move makes sense without any conspiracy theories. Just look at his other recent blog post about Peace: http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads It looks like he just felt uncomfortable making money off of his friends' and colleagues' loss. Makes sense, really, even if some posters can't seem to fathom giving up money to sleep soundly at night.
- inversionOf 11y ago
  Makes sense, really, even if some posters can't seem to fathom giving up money to sleep soundly at night. This is like kicking kittens and then announcing to the world that you're going to stop kicking kittens. Then why kick kittens in the first place? No one made Marco create an ad blocking app. No one demanded his coordination with Ghostery. No one demanded that he announce it with great fanfare on his site. Moralizing about him stopping it ignores that it was just a few short days ago that he started it. And now he deserves accolades for stopping it? This is an incredible discussion. Countless other people with the ability and the means, who actually had convictions about this topic, didn't create ad blockers (much less for personal reward). Others still, who have convictions that favor ad blockers, did and stand by their moral compass. Either groups are in a far better position than Arment's "have it both ways" perspective.
  - w4 11y ago
    > This is like kicking kittens and then announcing to the world that you're going to stop kicking kittens. Then why kick kittens in the first place? Sure. That having been said, people do things all the time without realizing how it's going to make them feel. Marco made an ad blocker, turns out it made him feel bad, so he's going to stop doing it. Fair enough. I'm not trying to suggest Marco is some Saint here. Like you said, he created this problem for himself in the first place. I just can't believe how unwilling HN's readership is to believe that there isn't some ulterior motivation behind him pulling the app.
    - sovande 11y ago
      > Fair enough Not really, because now all those who bought "Peace" in good faith feel bad. We trusted this guy to deliver a good product and then it disappears under us. Grrrrr..
      - w4 11y ago
        You can get a refund for your purchase at the link he provided. No harm, no foul.
- Retra 11y ago
  >It looks like he just felt uncomfortable making money off of his friends' and colleagues' loss. Anytime you sell a product in a competitive market, you do this. Those ad companies are happy to steal costumers' attention from other companies.
  - slg 11y ago
    I think people are fine losing money to competition but this isn't losing to competition. An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. These sites aren't losing money to other sites making more money, the money just isn't made at all. You could potentially argue that the intended viewer of those ads is now capturing that value, however real world examples of paywalls and various other business models suggest that general web users don't value not being shown ads as much as advertisers value showing them ads.
    - Retra 11y ago
      It doesn't destroy that value, it just funnels it into somewhere people don't know how follow it. It makes easy money harder to acquire. If you have the ability to work around it, all that value is there for you, and few people are competing for it.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      I think people are fine losing money to competition but this isn't losing to competition. An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. These sites aren't losing money to other sites making more money, the money just isn't made at all. Ad-blockers don't set their users' money on fire. Of course someone will make that money.
    - braythwayt 11y ago
      > An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. Or maybe it creates value by allowing me to spend my money on things I care about, rather than bandwidth for video ads? Or maybe it creates value by speeding up the web for me, giving me the one precious and non-reneable resource: Time? Or maybe it create value for me by giving me privacy? I value that. Ad blockers are simply moving value around. If people didn’t think it created value, they wouldn’t have paid for it.
DanBlake 11y ago
I assume you are responding to me primarily. This is the issue- Him having 'fuck you' money makes no difference to me. Plenty of rich people do things with a hidden agenda. Personally I feel like the reason he gave seems far fetched and much less likely then another causation point. So, with Occam's razor in mind I default to my viewpoint that this was likely a issue induced by Ghostery. For what its worth, I also feel like the Flappy Bird guy had a alternative reason to pull his app as well. I wont get into that here though.
- jops 11y ago
  Flappy Bird
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- furyofantares 11y ago
  > Personally I feel like the reason he gave seems far fetched and much less likely then another causation point. Perhaps an understandable (though not very charitable) reaction if you cannot see yourself having the same viewpoint. But I think the existence of other people who believe they would have the same viewpoint means you should view it as less far fetched, or not far fetched at all. You might discount some of this as people incorrectly believing they'd take a view that they presently view as "more moral" without actually understanding how they'd behave. I've had the opportunity to work on some tech that was similar to adblocking, and, without moralizing, I found it highly stressful and quickly chose to work on something else. I encourage you to read my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240713
  - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
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furyofantares 11y ago
Agreed. I personally want ads to go away entirely and have zero qualms about blocking all ads I can. But his explanation makes sense to me. I would not want to work on an adblocker, even for loads of money. I don't want to spend my days working out how to undo somebody else's work, knowing they will then try to undo mine, no matter how much I dislike their work. It would be stressful and I would be miserable. Maybe someday it would pay off by helping us get toward a world I'd prefer, but if not, or until then, it would just feel like I was wasting my own energy and someone else is wasting theirs, when we could both be building cool new things instead of fighting each other.
makeitsuckless 11y ago
Because he doesn't say anything. There's nothing in the entire post to believe or not to believe, it's all extremely evasive. It pretty much screams "something happened I don't want to or can't talk about".
code_sterling 11y ago
Considering the cost and time to develop an app, I don't really buy it. Quick web app that you throw up, sure, but with an App Store app, it's a lot more time and money.
- eric_h 11y ago
  Content blockers for iOS 9 are stupid easy to put together. I was at a code.genius.com meetup where one of the speakers live coded one in about 5 minutes on stage. Marco got the blocking data from someone else, so I imagine he did not spend much time on building it (in fact, I bet it spent more time in review than he did coding it).
ixtli 11y ago
I think it's extremely simple that someone he had a business relationship with put pressure on him in private and he caved. This is a far more common occurrence than people acting against their own financial best interest in the name of a vague morality. Especially when that morality is almost directly opposed to something they _just did publicly_ several days ago.
- addicted 11y ago
  He isn't even making a morality argument. He's just saying the app, and decisions he makes with the app, will affect far too many livelihoods and since he is fortunate to be in a position to say no to the revenues produced by the app he is choosing not to make those far reaching decisions.
bcrescimanno 11y ago
I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the moral grey area" I can understand that as well. What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days after launching the product. I don't think people here are questioning whether developers are willing to forego their own financial gain for their moral ease (the very existence of the FSF makes it clear that there is a willingness). It's simply a very sudden turn for someone who previously demonstrated no such compunction.
- Mz 11y ago
  Some people "don't know what they think until they run it through their mouths." Some test reality by trying a thing, seeing how it feels, deciding what to do once they know how it feels. For people who have done things the rest of the world said could not be done, this is the only feedback mechanism that makes sense. (Shrug)
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    I don't get this. "the rest of the world said could not be done" - adblocking? I'm not sure what you're implying - the only way he had to know was to try because no-one thought it could be done?
    - Mz 11y ago
      Anyone who has built a big business or has otherwise accomplished anything significant will have run into a great many naysayers who said it could not be done. If you get anywhere in life, you eventually learn to stop listening to the naysayers and find ways to test reality for yourself. This is likely why people like Steve Jobs have such negative reputations: They learned what their limits were by hitting a metaphorical wall, because it was the only realistic way to learn their actual limits. If you are very intelligent or competent, it will be your routine experience that you can do a great many things that people around you claim "cannot be done." After a while, you just stop listening to the counsel of the great masses of people who try to tell you to not try, who try to tell you that you will regret it. It is a general observation about the behavior of very accomplished people. Presumably, someone who has fuck you money that he earned himself (as others here on HN are saying he has) falls in that category.
tdicola 11y ago
Why does he continue to recommend people use Ghostery and block ads on the desktop though? Blocking ads on mobile is bad, but blocking them on desktop is ok--huh?
- niccaluim 11y ago
  He's pulling the app because he doesn't want to be the arbiter of what's acceptable advertising and what's not, not because he thinks ad blocking is bad in and of itself.
  - Rygu 11y ago
    And now Arment has killed the messenger but still spreads the message.
coldtea 11y ago
>He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. Doesn't he? He always seemed like a guy wanting to go into controversy to me. Not of John McAffee levels of course, but still far more vocal and controversial than most tech bloggers, especially when they're not professional bloggers in the first place (this site is just his outlet, not his core business like for Gruber or others).
DavideNL 11y ago
> Why not just believe what he says? for example because Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10240483&goto=item%3Fid%3D10240295 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10240483&goto=item%3Fi... that's at least suspicious...

by cjensen 11y ago

inversionOf 11y ago

and doesn't enjoy controversy So he went all in on something that was already hugely controversial (for weeks regarding iOS, and for years on other platforms). That adblockers would be controversial was blatantly obvious to any of this Earth, and should not be a surprise to anyone. The world didn't need Marco to get in the ad blocking business. Yet he did in a big way, with a big partnership, and put a big amount of his namespace and reputation behind it. People infer motives because the notion that this all came as some big surprise rings hollow.

chucknelson 11y ago

Agreed - I think the key point is where he says he's fortunate enough to be able to do this (sacrifice the possible income of this app). Why bother with all of the political mess (much of it from "the internet" I'm sure) when you could just apply your effort elsewhere and avoid a ton of physical and emotional stress? Focusing on Overcast sounds just fine.

w4 11y ago

Seriously. This move makes sense without any conspiracy theories. Just look at his other recent blog post about Peace: http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads It looks like he just felt uncomfortable making money off of his friends' and colleagues' loss. Makes sense, really, even if some posters can't seem to fathom giving up money to sleep soundly at night.

inversionOf 11y ago
Makes sense, really, even if some posters can't seem to fathom giving up money to sleep soundly at night. This is like kicking kittens and then announcing to the world that you're going to stop kicking kittens. Then why kick kittens in the first place? No one made Marco create an ad blocking app. No one demanded his coordination with Ghostery. No one demanded that he announce it with great fanfare on his site. Moralizing about him stopping it ignores that it was just a few short days ago that he started it. And now he deserves accolades for stopping it? This is an incredible discussion. Countless other people with the ability and the means, who actually had convictions about this topic, didn't create ad blockers (much less for personal reward). Others still, who have convictions that favor ad blockers, did and stand by their moral compass. Either groups are in a far better position than Arment's "have it both ways" perspective.
- w4 11y ago
  > This is like kicking kittens and then announcing to the world that you're going to stop kicking kittens. Then why kick kittens in the first place? Sure. That having been said, people do things all the time without realizing how it's going to make them feel. Marco made an ad blocker, turns out it made him feel bad, so he's going to stop doing it. Fair enough. I'm not trying to suggest Marco is some Saint here. Like you said, he created this problem for himself in the first place. I just can't believe how unwilling HN's readership is to believe that there isn't some ulterior motivation behind him pulling the app.
  - sovande 11y ago
    > Fair enough Not really, because now all those who bought "Peace" in good faith feel bad. We trusted this guy to deliver a good product and then it disappears under us. Grrrrr..
    - w4 11y ago
      You can get a refund for your purchase at the link he provided. No harm, no foul.
Retra 11y ago
>It looks like he just felt uncomfortable making money off of his friends' and colleagues' loss. Anytime you sell a product in a competitive market, you do this. Those ad companies are happy to steal costumers' attention from other companies.
- slg 11y ago
  I think people are fine losing money to competition but this isn't losing to competition. An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. These sites aren't losing money to other sites making more money, the money just isn't made at all. You could potentially argue that the intended viewer of those ads is now capturing that value, however real world examples of paywalls and various other business models suggest that general web users don't value not being shown ads as much as advertisers value showing them ads.
  - Retra 11y ago
    It doesn't destroy that value, it just funnels it into somewhere people don't know how follow it. It makes easy money harder to acquire. If you have the ability to work around it, all that value is there for you, and few people are competing for it.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I think people are fine losing money to competition but this isn't losing to competition. An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. These sites aren't losing money to other sites making more money, the money just isn't made at all. Ad-blockers don't set their users' money on fire. Of course someone will make that money.
  - braythwayt 11y ago
    > An ad blocker actually destroys potential value because sites that used to generate money no longer do. Or maybe it creates value by allowing me to spend my money on things I care about, rather than bandwidth for video ads? Or maybe it creates value by speeding up the web for me, giving me the one precious and non-reneable resource: Time? Or maybe it create value for me by giving me privacy? I value that. Ad blockers are simply moving value around. If people didn’t think it created value, they wouldn’t have paid for it.

DanBlake 11y ago

I assume you are responding to me primarily. This is the issue- Him having 'fuck you' money makes no difference to me. Plenty of rich people do things with a hidden agenda. Personally I feel like the reason he gave seems far fetched and much less likely then another causation point. So, with Occam's razor in mind I default to my viewpoint that this was likely a issue induced by Ghostery. For what its worth, I also feel like the Flappy Bird guy had a alternative reason to pull his app as well. I wont get into that here though.

jops 11y ago
Flappy Bird
deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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[deleted]
furyofantares 11y ago
> Personally I feel like the reason he gave seems far fetched and much less likely then another causation point. Perhaps an understandable (though not very charitable) reaction if you cannot see yourself having the same viewpoint. But I think the existence of other people who believe they would have the same viewpoint means you should view it as less far fetched, or not far fetched at all. You might discount some of this as people incorrectly believing they'd take a view that they presently view as "more moral" without actually understanding how they'd behave. I've had the opportunity to work on some tech that was similar to adblocking, and, without moralizing, I found it highly stressful and quickly chose to work on something else. I encourage you to read my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240713
- 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

furyofantares 11y ago

Agreed. I personally want ads to go away entirely and have zero qualms about blocking all ads I can. But his explanation makes sense to me. I would not want to work on an adblocker, even for loads of money. I don't want to spend my days working out how to undo somebody else's work, knowing they will then try to undo mine, no matter how much I dislike their work. It would be stressful and I would be miserable. Maybe someday it would pay off by helping us get toward a world I'd prefer, but if not, or until then, it would just feel like I was wasting my own energy and someone else is wasting theirs, when we could both be building cool new things instead of fighting each other.

makeitsuckless 11y ago

Because he doesn't say anything. There's nothing in the entire post to believe or not to believe, it's all extremely evasive. It pretty much screams "something happened I don't want to or can't talk about".

code_sterling 11y ago

Considering the cost and time to develop an app, I don't really buy it. Quick web app that you throw up, sure, but with an App Store app, it's a lot more time and money.

eric_h 11y ago
Content blockers for iOS 9 are stupid easy to put together. I was at a code.genius.com meetup where one of the speakers live coded one in about 5 minutes on stage. Marco got the blocking data from someone else, so I imagine he did not spend much time on building it (in fact, I bet it spent more time in review than he did coding it).

ixtli 11y ago

I think it's extremely simple that someone he had a business relationship with put pressure on him in private and he caved. This is a far more common occurrence than people acting against their own financial best interest in the name of a vague morality. Especially when that morality is almost directly opposed to something they _just did publicly_ several days ago.

addicted 11y ago
He isn't even making a morality argument. He's just saying the app, and decisions he makes with the app, will affect far too many livelihoods and since he is fortunate to be in a position to say no to the revenues produced by the app he is choosing not to make those far reaching decisions.

bcrescimanno 11y ago

I don't want to infer motives because I don't know. I will say that I am among those who doesn't really believe this is simply a morality tale. There are several folks here, like yourself, who are basically saying, "yeah, I can understand the mentality of not wanting to do and ad-blocker because of the moral grey area" I can understand that as well. What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days after launching the product. I don't think people here are questioning whether developers are willing to forego their own financial gain for their moral ease (the very existence of the FSF makes it clear that there is a willingness). It's simply a very sudden turn for someone who previously demonstrated no such compunction.

Mz 11y ago
Some people "don't know what they think until they run it through their mouths." Some test reality by trying a thing, seeing how it feels, deciding what to do once they know how it feels. For people who have done things the rest of the world said could not be done, this is the only feedback mechanism that makes sense. (Shrug)
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  I don't get this. "the rest of the world said could not be done" - adblocking? I'm not sure what you're implying - the only way he had to know was to try because no-one thought it could be done?
  - Mz 11y ago
    Anyone who has built a big business or has otherwise accomplished anything significant will have run into a great many naysayers who said it could not be done. If you get anywhere in life, you eventually learn to stop listening to the naysayers and find ways to test reality for yourself. This is likely why people like Steve Jobs have such negative reputations: They learned what their limits were by hitting a metaphorical wall, because it was the only realistic way to learn their actual limits. If you are very intelligent or competent, it will be your routine experience that you can do a great many things that people around you claim "cannot be done." After a while, you just stop listening to the counsel of the great masses of people who try to tell you to not try, who try to tell you that you will regret it. It is a general observation about the behavior of very accomplished people. Presumably, someone who has fuck you money that he earned himself (as others here on HN are saying he has) falls in that category.

tdicola 11y ago

Why does he continue to recommend people use Ghostery and block ads on the desktop though? Blocking ads on mobile is bad, but blocking them on desktop is ok--huh?

niccaluim 11y ago
He's pulling the app because he doesn't want to be the arbiter of what's acceptable advertising and what's not, not because he thinks ad blocking is bad in and of itself.
- Rygu 11y ago
  And now Arment has killed the messenger but still spreads the message.

coldtea 11y ago

>He's a guy who has enough money, wants to do what he loves, and doesn't enjoy controversy. Doesn't he? He always seemed like a guy wanting to go into controversy to me. Not of John McAffee levels of course, but still far more vocal and controversial than most tech bloggers, especially when they're not professional bloggers in the first place (this site is just his outlet, not his core business like for Gruber or others).

DavideNL 11y ago

> Why not just believe what he says? for example because Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10240483&goto=item%3Fid%3D10240295 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10240483&goto=item%3Fi... that's at least suspicious...