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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 severa

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.
DanBlake 11y ago
Just to add to this- He recently said on Twitter he is handing the app over to ghostery, so its not like the app is gone. Its going to be back.
billyhoffman 11y ago
2 days is a short period of time, but the context over those days is massively different. On Sept 16th, a few dozen beta testers may have been using Peace and giving Marco feedback. On Sept 18, Peace is the top ranked app in the app store, displacing MineCraft. MineCraft! Estimates are in the 12000-15000 downloads on the first day[1]. You look in your iTunes connect account and realize you on the path to make $100K on an app that, rightly or wrongly, could impact other people's livelihoods. I can understand how that makes you consider the morality in ways you hadn't before. Marco isn't against ads. He's said as much, and he runs ads himself. He's against oppressive, annoying, UX destroying ads. He wants to encourage tasteful ads. But within a day he himself had to write a story about how his own app would block ads from The Deck[2], which he has said is the type of advertising he finds tasteful and acceptable. Peace wouldn't effect change if it also impacted 'good' ads, and Marco said in that post he didn't want to be the arbitrator of what is a good and bad ad. At that point it was only a question of when he would pull it. I take him at his word. [1] http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-from-apples-app-store-2015-9 http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-fro... [2] http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads
- randx838 11y ago
  > realize you on the path to make $100K on an app that, rightly or wrongly, could impact other people's livelihoods Because someone giving me 100k for an app which wrote, to use it for the exact purpose I made it for is certainly /the/ reason I would change my mind about making it... > and subject me to a torrent of unpleasantness. But that’ll end soon enough, and that’s better than how I’d feel if I kept going. What he doesn't say is that he is obviously already getting what amounts to a "torrent of unpleasantness", from people which are more like colleagues than customers. Of course, no one wants to admit to kowtowing, so there is no mention of it, but as we can see, he cares about this sort of thing, so it was obviously a significant factor.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    So you're saying your idea of what's moral is different. The "what he doesn't say" and "cares about this sort of thing" is completely unfounded and callous. Not exactly useful.
daxfohl 11y ago
"Dr. Frankenstein cries aloud: 'My God, what have I done?'" It happens.
gvr 11y ago
My takeaway was that he doesn't want to be in the crossfire in the ads war. I can imagine that being very stressful and unpleasant with lots of hate mail etc. Especially if you compare it to an app like Overcast that brings joy to everyone using it.
- georgechen 11y ago
  Or worse, became in pawn in the Ad Wars between Google, Apple, and Facebook. Let's face it, AdBlock on the Web only benefit closed network like Facebook, which also has plenty of PII. If the Web dies as as an Ad platform (because of AdBlockers), guess where the advertisers can go?
daxfohl 11y ago
Robin Hood the thing. Give exactly 100% of the money to starving children. Literally. Personally, not through some charity. Literally go to a 3rd-world nation (on your own money, don't dare touch money collected through the app), find parents of starving children, and give them each a $100 bill. Start a trend. Start that trend. Be that person. Not just the person who had a hit iOS app. Be the person who eliminates hunger by setting a simple, obvious, example. Does that feel good? Also keep our app.
- Rygu 11y ago
  It would be a really philanthropic thing to do. I like your way of thinking.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Yeah, I can see nothing bad coming from walking around in a poor foreign country giving $100 bills to random people.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
pdkl95 11y ago
The internet has changed the concept of "fame". In the past, being famous usually required a lot of effort and (usually) money. Many people that could have been famous but didn't spend the time/money to make it happen were often discovered by the larger public only after their death. The end game of this property are things like the modern manufactured artist, where fame is achieved because that was the business plan. An important consequence of this "traditional" type of fame is that someone who wants to leave and get their old life back can generally stop participating. Without the time/money investment the public moves on. "Traditional" fame is a job you can walk away from. This changed with the internet, where people can become famous by accident. A tweet or blog post can suddenly get millions of views, or something you made can suddenly become the thing that everybody is trying to get a copy of. It's obvious that this is a well-known concept because we have entire industries working to try to make their product "go viral". This "unexpected" type of fame has a serious problem: it's permanent. It is hard or impossible to simply "walk away' from something when that would mean walking away from your normal life. When the tsunami of unexpected fame suddenly happens to someone, it is perfectly rational for someone to try to escape the situation before it becomes permanent. The only problem is it may be too late. Also, we're not helping: the fact that this thread on HN even exists is only making this product (and the drama surrounding it) even more famous. For a better discussion of this problem, I highly recommend watching "This is Phil Fish" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w ). edit: I should add a very mild language warning with that video. (a few quoted f-bombs that are understandable in context)
rsynnott 11y ago
He might have had the quite reasonable expectation that this would end up like desktop adblockers; that is, something which the average person doesn't even know exists. It ending up on the front of the App Store, though, is showing it to a lot of people who'd never previously have considered an ad blocker. That's more pressure. Of course, someone else will be there instead, but I can see the desire not to be the person who causes an abrupt shift in how content monetisation happens on mobile. To be honest, I was surprised when he released it; from his podcast my impression was that was in the "pro Adblock, but cautious" camp. He was possibly a bit naive about how big it'd get.
deveac 11y ago
>What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days after launching the product. Again, I think the best answer is simply the one he gave: >"Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn’t feel good, which I didn’t anticipate" He didn't anticipate it. In other words, he learned something about himself. Hopefully that happens all the time to all of us, and hopefully we have the courage to do what we consider the most conscionable thing, even if we know it will may unpopular.

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.

DanBlake 11y ago

Just to add to this- He recently said on Twitter he is handing the app over to ghostery, so its not like the app is gone. Its going to be back.

billyhoffman 11y ago

2 days is a short period of time, but the context over those days is massively different. On Sept 16th, a few dozen beta testers may have been using Peace and giving Marco feedback. On Sept 18, Peace is the top ranked app in the app store, displacing MineCraft. MineCraft! Estimates are in the 12000-15000 downloads on the first day[1]. You look in your iTunes connect account and realize you on the path to make $100K on an app that, rightly or wrongly, could impact other people's livelihoods. I can understand how that makes you consider the morality in ways you hadn't before. Marco isn't against ads. He's said as much, and he runs ads himself. He's against oppressive, annoying, UX destroying ads. He wants to encourage tasteful ads. But within a day he himself had to write a story about how his own app would block ads from The Deck[2], which he has said is the type of advertising he finds tasteful and acceptable. Peace wouldn't effect change if it also impacted 'good' ads, and Marco said in that post he didn't want to be the arbitrator of what is a good and bad ad. At that point it was only a question of when he would pull it. I take him at his word. [1] http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-from-apples-app-store-2015-9 http://www.techinsider.io/marco-arment-just-pulled-peace-fro... [2] http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads http://www.marco.org/2015/09/17/why-peace-blocks-deck-ads

randx838 11y ago
> realize you on the path to make $100K on an app that, rightly or wrongly, could impact other people's livelihoods Because someone giving me 100k for an app which wrote, to use it for the exact purpose I made it for is certainly /the/ reason I would change my mind about making it... > and subject me to a torrent of unpleasantness. But that’ll end soon enough, and that’s better than how I’d feel if I kept going. What he doesn't say is that he is obviously already getting what amounts to a "torrent of unpleasantness", from people which are more like colleagues than customers. Of course, no one wants to admit to kowtowing, so there is no mention of it, but as we can see, he cares about this sort of thing, so it was obviously a significant factor.
- r00fus 11y ago
  So you're saying your idea of what's moral is different. The "what he doesn't say" and "cares about this sort of thing" is completely unfounded and callous. Not exactly useful.

daxfohl 11y ago

"Dr. Frankenstein cries aloud: 'My God, what have I done?'" It happens.

gvr 11y ago

My takeaway was that he doesn't want to be in the crossfire in the ads war. I can imagine that being very stressful and unpleasant with lots of hate mail etc. Especially if you compare it to an app like Overcast that brings joy to everyone using it.

georgechen 11y ago
Or worse, became in pawn in the Ad Wars between Google, Apple, and Facebook. Let's face it, AdBlock on the Web only benefit closed network like Facebook, which also has plenty of PII. If the Web dies as as an Ad platform (because of AdBlockers), guess where the advertisers can go?

daxfohl 11y ago

Robin Hood the thing. Give exactly 100% of the money to starving children. Literally. Personally, not through some charity. Literally go to a 3rd-world nation (on your own money, don't dare touch money collected through the app), find parents of starving children, and give them each a $100 bill. Start a trend. Start that trend. Be that person. Not just the person who had a hit iOS app. Be the person who eliminates hunger by setting a simple, obvious, example. Does that feel good? Also keep our app.

Rygu 11y ago
It would be a really philanthropic thing to do. I like your way of thinking.
icebraining 11y ago
Yeah, I can see nothing bad coming from walking around in a poor foreign country giving $100 bills to random people.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

pdkl95 11y ago

The internet has changed the concept of "fame". In the past, being famous usually required a lot of effort and (usually) money. Many people that could have been famous but didn't spend the time/money to make it happen were often discovered by the larger public only after their death. The end game of this property are things like the modern manufactured artist, where fame is achieved because that was the business plan. An important consequence of this "traditional" type of fame is that someone who wants to leave and get their old life back can generally stop participating. Without the time/money investment the public moves on. "Traditional" fame is a job you can walk away from. This changed with the internet, where people can become famous by accident. A tweet or blog post can suddenly get millions of views, or something you made can suddenly become the thing that everybody is trying to get a copy of. It's obvious that this is a well-known concept because we have entire industries working to try to make their product "go viral". This "unexpected" type of fame has a serious problem: it's permanent. It is hard or impossible to simply "walk away' from something when that would mean walking away from your normal life. When the tsunami of unexpected fame suddenly happens to someone, it is perfectly rational for someone to try to escape the situation before it becomes permanent. The only problem is it may be too late. Also, we're not helping: the fact that this thread on HN even exists is only making this product (and the drama surrounding it) even more famous. For a better discussion of this problem, I highly recommend watching "This is Phil Fish" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w ). edit: I should add a very mild language warning with that video. (a few quoted f-bombs that are understandable in context)

rsynnott 11y ago

He might have had the quite reasonable expectation that this would end up like desktop adblockers; that is, something which the average person doesn't even know exists. It ending up on the front of the App Store, though, is showing it to a lot of people who'd never previously have considered an ad blocker. That's more pressure. Of course, someone else will be there instead, but I can see the desire not to be the person who causes an abrupt shift in how content monetisation happens on mobile. To be honest, I was surprised when he released it; from his podcast my impression was that was in the "pro Adblock, but cautious" camp. He was possibly a bit naive about how big it'd get.

deveac 11y ago

>What I can't understand is the quite sudden change of heart 2 days after launching the product. Again, I think the best answer is simply the one he gave: >"Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn’t feel good, which I didn’t anticipate" He didn't anticipate it. In other words, he learned something about himself. Hopefully that happens all the time to all of us, and hopefully we have the courage to do what we consider the most conscionable thing, even if we know it will may unpopular.