Gruber responding to a Nilay Patel tweet:
Perhaps I am being smug. But I see the fact that Daring Fireball’s revenue streams should remain unaffected by Safari content-blocking as affirmation that my choices over the last decade have been correct: that I should put my readers’ interests first, and only publish the sort of ads and sponsorships that I myself would want to be served, even if that means leaving (significant) amounts of money on the table along the way.
Fucking right.
I used to love iMore. I used to chat during their live podcast recordings. But man, their site has become jam-packed with all kinds of spammy ads and trackers. It’s almost impossible to even log in any more without turning off Safari anti-spam extensions. Fucked solid.
I use AdBlock, Ghostery, Javascript Blacklist, and ClickToFlash on OS X Safari. Looking forward to blocking ads, trackers, and other spam on iOS Safari.
Nilay is a smug and annoying hipster and the verge is a good example of why we need ad blockers. Which he knows and why he is whining about them.
Does Gruber’s model scale beyond a staff that you can count with thumbs?
Your point?
It’s fine and dandy to propose a model for single proprietorships, but that doesn’t do much good for larger businesses if it doesn’t scale.
Of course. But it doesn’t mean you have to bombard people with ads that almost debilitate browsers. I think the point here is there should be a compromise and these types of junctures can cause that to happen. I often go to sites and have to dismiss several ads. I rarely revisit those sites. At first I thought that alone would be enough. It seems not. So more drastic measures need to be taken.
It’s akin to walking into a store and being accosted by people with advertising flyers. No store in their right mind would do that.
Why is it somehow okay online?
Bottom line? This is, unfortunately, necessary.
Nilay Patel is the picture in the dictionary entry for “smug”
On the other hand this will be the handing the power to the big media houses and Facebook. For a while at least. They have the means to be unaffected. And of course one-three man blogging with previously created following.
It will be interesting to see how this will affect sites. It might prove to be mistake if sites start to block iOS users. And why not if iOS users are not part of income but big part of spending money then it right to show them the door. The argument why it does not matter that iOS is smaller is that their customers matter. But if safari is not implementing standards, is slower in standard use (without content blocker) and customers are not part of revenue. It might be blow that cuts iOS grows as iOS safari becomes second class citizen on the web. Of course apple has planned moving the traffic from browser to apps but the end game may not be on their liking. Nokia had the whole mobile market on it’s had and with couple bad moves whole card house collapsed. Same can happen to apple. Nothing lasts forever.
I am certain that this move is made for big media houses. Apple has shown in last couple years that who is the customer or partner is no longer simple. Of course all can be reasoned to customer experience. Like microsoft did in 1990 with all horrible partnerships. But apple music was made from record industries needs and given to customers. That is why it is such a mess from users point of view. Clock seems to became partner property. Now web.
Yes the hardware buying customer is still the customer but design of software and Ui is no longer coming only from customers needs. It has becoming the nightmare microsoft was in 1990.
Interestingly, Gruber thinks blocking the ad platform that supports his site is wrong.
https://twitter.com/gruber/status/644409410048106496
That’s because Gruber isn’t against blocking all ads, just poorly created, too much in your face ads, and the like. The Deck has been pretty good so far. It’s not The Deck that needs targeting. If all ads were delivered like The Deck we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
The Deck still tracks and doesn’t tell you what they do with their data. It may be better When I fast forward through ads on my DVR, I don’t stop for ones that might be funny.
The dissemination of data and tracking are separate, albeit also important issues, but not relevant to this particular issue which is one of bogging down the users internet experience in a myriad of ways.
That’s not interesting, that’s being un-self-aware.
No Gruber is against letting the users decide what ads to block. Which he argued for just a week or so ago. Where I come from, I call that hugely hypocritical.
is it really even slightly surprising that Gruber is all in on ad blocking up to the point that it causes him problems, then it’s totally immoral?
No. it is not. Nor is it even slightly surprising that after Gruber got his drawers in a multidimensional knot, Marco Arment yanked Peace.
Can’t mess with the cool kids’ ads.
You are losing sight of the point here and going off on tangents.
The whole point of all of this is not to stop all ads, it’s to stop ads which adversely effect the users experience while surfing.
When I am on Daring Fireball or The Loop for instance, by browser works quickly, as it should.