He's a human being, not a machine. That which you characterize as a defect may be part of the reason he's so successful. I can think of a fruit company that has long suffered from similarly misguided criticism.
Not really the same issues...at all. In fact, Apple is the company that brought ad-blocking capabilities to Safari! Giant logic gap there.
Apple delivered on opening up iOS to give devs greater functionality, then Marco crumbles after capitalizing on those capabilities which were developed specifically for ad blocking. Amazing. All of that capability as a developer wasted with his second guessing and inability to think about the repercussions of his own decision making. What a tool bag.
Yet the optional subscription service isn't without ads: they still get displayed. This is due to the fact that when reading the comments to the articles we get a webpage from Huddler in the app which does display ads even when one has a subscription. Not exactly something I would be proud of, especially when it now reads you are misleading your audience.
I haven't a clue where to post this... but since you mentioned "Huddler" I think it's as good as any.
TL;DR for those with ADS: I've "just" discovered that Huddler is not the problem here after a little research.
Long version but I'll keep it short. Everyone that's moaning about the performance of AI and especially these Forums, needs to check out a few of the links that I've posted below that also use Huddler as their website/forum software provider.
I went to all of the links that I'm posting below, and guess what? SUPER fast, no lags jumping threw forums... everything snappy, responsive... and looky there... ADS! Even with Blockr activated on iPad. Good ads in my opinion, because they are fed to the forum topic that talks about, reviews, or troubleshoots that product.
Really an "eye" (or *I* as in Insider) opening experience. I think everyone should give these links a try or two to see what these forums "could be".
Note: and before someone says a few of those sites are far smaller than AI... at the time of this writing, thecatsite is serving up pages to 571 online users while this one is only pulling 387.
Question to any AI Admins: anybody want to jump in and explain why only we here are experiencing speed-bumps, janky-scrolling, and a really poor feature set?
The ads in the mobile app are most certainly coming through for paid subscribers. This is due to what I wrote: the app may get rid of the ads, when you enter the comments these come from Huddler, and that still displays ads even though you pay for an ad-free experience. This is the fault of AppleInsider. (which is why I didn't extend my subscription)
As for Huddler 'being slow' - you'e absolutely right, that is not Huddler's fault; it's (partially) due to the large screendumps and photos being published in the articles. Many are over 2MB, discussed at leng in this post: *&%^%^$^%^ can't find that article, but it turned out to a good discussion with some authors on this site, promising things would be fixed 'within a couple of days', but alas.
OT Good to see you still post here. I fully agree with this post on the 2nd page in this thread:
He's a human being, not a machine. That which you characterize as a defect may be part of the reason he's so successful. I can think of a fruit company that has long suffered from similarly misguided criticism.
His success is self-limited. Is he really capable of following through on his own projects? The answer is fuzzy. He develops, then fails to follow through and make companies out of those apps. He should've sold off Peace and left the real work to another company.
As a high profile developer, Arment constantly whines and complains about Apple. He's not immune to criticism.
Please tell us more since you seem to know what goes on in the Armont household.
You have no idea.
Maybe she supported his decision 100%. Maybe it was the main thing the two of them talked about for 2 days before coming to the decision of pulling the app.
Do you have any evidence that they didn't talk about it together and she didn't support his decision?
Without any evidence what you are saying is complete rubbish.
He sold what people wanted and got scared. He said this himself. You read his post.
If there's buyer's remorse why is it so hard to believe that there's seller's remorse?
If there's buyer's remorse why is it so hard to believe that there's seller's remorse?
Catholic guilt for developers?
By the way, at the end of the latest Accidental Tech Podcast (show #135) Arment delights in criticizing other ad blocker software, while extolling the virtues of Ghostery and talking up his licensing deal with them. The guy is a talented developer, but he's out to lunch. Let's see how long it takes him to realize what a boneheaded mistake it was to pull Peace from the App Store.
Your website is the problem! You reflect 100% of the problem!
When it comes to performance hindering bloat loaded with crap ads AI is the king! You are the absolute worst site I visit regularly in terms of bloat and slowness to load. Now that I have installed Crystal, solely because of YOUR site, instead of the absolutely horrible performance you have been providing, your site now loads MUCH MUCH MUCH faster and is no longer a huge annoyance. You are a victim of your own stupidity for building a dog of a site from a performance and advertising bloat standpoint. So get off your soapbox and fix it! Figure out how to build a proper infrastructure stripped of all the bullshit that annoys to no end, then come back to us begging for forgiveness and only then ask us politely to whitelist you.
Well you must not go to very many sites! Check out Ghostery for a Blocker! Works great, but best of all, You can block everything or some things on a individual bases. It'll show what it's blocking. Right now from AI, it's blocking 9 things. Not all of those are Ad's. Some are just tracking how many people are visiting the site. It's really not that bad here. Some places I go to can have 20+ things being blocked. When you go to one of these places, that's 20+ other sites that's being accessed and fed to you. When you're on a Cell, you're paying for all this crap you don't want, wasting your Data.
When you block all this crap, places load up so much faster. These places brought it upon themselves!!! Some places were so infested with Ad's, I just stopped going to them. The few places that won't let me view content with a Ad blocker on, I just don't visit. no great loss. A dime a dozen.
Just a foot note on the BBC site... It's paid for by the UK Public. There is something called a TV Licence where every home and business in the UK pays £145 per year ($225 US) per building who has a TV. Looking at the numbers I could find for 2009 - 2010 the income for this was £3.56 billion ($5.56 billion US). With a round 6% of that being used to fund the BBC websites, around £213 million ($331 million UK) per year is paid for the BBC Website.
$225 is CRAZY! So you have no commercials? If that's all it takes, then maybe it's worth it, but there better be zero commerials if you're forking out $225 a year, otherwise it's really just a TAX!!!!
I just installed Crystal. I did this because I was sick to death of adverts for Uber. The moment you scroll across them they redirect you to the App Store without even clicking on them. It was ridiculous on some sites with 2 huge uber adverts on each page of content.
Now, web browsing is fast and ad free. If crystal ever supports a white list then I would re-enable adds on some sites (like this one) but for sites which take the piss then no chance.
Well there is "Purify", costs $3.99, but does have white list support.
I bought Peace, despite it not quite having the features of it's competition (eg. Whitelisting from Safari) expecting it would be a well-maintained app and would get updates. Anyone who bought this should ask for a refund. The consumers who bought into Marco Arment just suffered monetarily because of his base entrepreneurial nature and his apparent emotional weakness to have a panicked ethical shit fit under scrutiny from others. He has let his users down and I for one will never buy anything from him again.
You can get Purify for $3.99 which does allow Whitelisting from Safari!!! I havn't had a chance to use it much. On my Desktop I use Ghostery which I really like as it shows me what trackers, ad services, etc are being used on me. I can block it all, or just block some of it on a site per site bases. It's also free.
I've never heard of this Marco guy that lots of people are hyperventilating about. (Frankly his tactics around the app -- making it available and then pulling it in a couple of days -- sound shady).
Given that iOS 9 is all of a couple of days old, I'd say give it a few weeks. I am betting that there'll be many more ad blockers available that allow whitelisting. I think I'll wait for Ghostery for the iOS.
Ghostery is already on iOS, but it's a whole Web browser, and not just a Safari Plug-On. So I hope this changes. I use Ghostery on my Desktops. It's great as it shows me exactly what's going on and I can block or allow any or all things on a per site bases.
$225 is CRAZY! So you have no commercials? If that's all it takes, then maybe it's worth it, but there better be zero commerials if you're forking out $225 a year, otherwise it's really just a TAX!!!!
It's not just one channel, there are loads of BBC channels, including 24hour news, parliament coverage, children's programming, local and regional stuff (including programming in Welsh and Scottish), radio programmes, a web site, iPlayer, and no, not one commercial ever on any of them. To say its refreshing is a complete understatement.
Besides there being no advertising on any of them, which is itself awesome, I think one of the best aspects of the BBC is its normalising effect on other broadcasters (even print journalism), most notably the news. The news, while mostly supporting establishment (whoever happens to be in power currently), does not have its editorial influenced, swayed or directed by outside commercial interests. If other outlets or broadcasters wish to compete in this market, they can't allow themselves to be affected too much or they will be obviously so radically different from non-commercial influenced (BBC) news as to be odd, even ineffectual or comical. When popular channels people watch don't accept advertising, the whole system is different, and with aspects like news, that's a very, very good thing in a society. The BBC is really quite excellent, and is loved by almost all and considered a national treasure.
Actually, TV ads can tell a lot about what type of shows you watch but the thing I'm surprised about is how upset people are over tracking? Why are the not upset over things like what the banks and credit card companies know? Loyalty cards are the worst. If you don't believe me, check out this article from 2012. Target. You can only imagine how much more sophisticated things have become in over 3 years.
The war on privacy was lost a long time ago. There is no halfway in between - we either fight for it or don't. From what I can see and how people behave, they are not interested in it anymore.
I'm not a fan of tracking either but I fought that fight too long and too hard back in the mid 2000's and was told to put my tinfoil hat away so I did. We've reaped what we've sewn.
A TV can't normally track where you go from one channel to the next and DVR's have been around for what, 15 or so years allowing people to skip commercials. I know I got my first TIVO in late 1999. Now maybe TIVO is tracking what channels you're watching. You're not being fed custom Ad's. You're not going to normally start seeing CW ad's on ABC just because you were watching the CW earlier.
As for Loyalty Cards. of course they track everything you do for that store!!! in the case above target. But for that you get Discounts and other things. Hell yo don't even need one of them cards. They track you by using your Credit Card, which is why these big company's like Target and home Depot that store people's credit cards then get hacked!!!! Something a small Mom & Pop place can't do. It's also why Apple pay was shut down at a few places and many haven't allowed it yet. Because there's no way to track you using Apple Pay!!! There's a exception to this. using a Loyalty Credit Card. Like Amazon's which works with Apple Pay. You can show with it and Amazon can track you even if you use Apple Pay.
As for the teen Girl, if that's the place she goes to buy Tampon's and then stops, that's a clue. If she went and brought as Home Pregnancy Test, that's a much larger clue. If she's using a credit card or a loyalty card and not CASH, then she's going to be tracked. In general though Target tracking Data is used only for Target, and Home Depot only for Home Depot, etc. This is where CurrectC would come in and better track you from Place to place. Basically just like on the Internet!!! One of the big benefits for merchants besides the lower fee's.
When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
Micropayments are an excellent idea, but Bitcoin might not be the best way to do it because its price is so volatile (down 15% in one day, recently). Maybe Apple could provide a micropayments scheme based on iTunes accounts, or someone could write an adblocker that turns a monthly subscription fee into monthly payments to sites based on usage.
I remember Microsoft talking about having Micropayments for content. You could buy things for your Avatar for example, but the prices for things were anything but Micro!!! 99 cents is not Micro. 1 cent is!!! Otherwise it's just a payment. it's not MICRO!!!
Cab drivers are up in arms that Uber is not regulated the same way that their own service is, despite the fact that Uber is obviously a direct competitor and provides an identical form of service. In other words, the gripe is not about having to compete on quality, but rather that the same rules should apply to everyone within the industry.
Really, exactly the same? Since when can a UBER driver just pick anyone up on the side of the road? Taxi drivers can do that!!!
A TV can't normally track where you go from one channel to the next and DVR's have been around for what, 15 or so years allowing people to skip commercials. I know I got my first TIVO in late 1999. Now maybe TIVO is tracking what channels you're watching. You're not being fed custom Ad's. You're not going to normally start seeing CW ad's on ABC just because you were watching the CW earlier.
As for Loyalty Cards. of course they track everything you do for that store!!! in the case above target. But for that you get Discounts and other things. Hell yo don't even need one of them cards. They track you by using your Credit Card, which is why these big company's like Target and home Depot that store people's credit cards then get hacked!!!! Something a small Mom & Pop place can't do. It's also why Apple pay was shut down at a few places and many haven't allowed it yet. Because there's no way to track you using Apple Pay!!! There's a exception to this. using a Loyalty Credit Card. Like Amazon's which works with Apple Pay. You can show with it and Amazon can track you even if you use Apple Pay.
As for the teen Girl, if that's the place she goes to buy Tampon's and then stops, that's a clue. If she went and brought as Home Pregnancy Test, that's a much larger clue. If she's using a credit card or a loyalty card and not CASH, then she's going to be tracked. In general though Target tracking Data is used only for Target, and Home Depot only for Home Depot, etc. This is where CurrectC would come in and better track you from Place to place. Basically just like on the Internet!!! One of the big benefits for merchants besides the lower fee's.
When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
As for the custom ads on TV, those are coming in Canada next year but they will be opt-in on Bell's network (home phones included <shudder>). The company got slammed for tracking your internet usage and then showing you ads based on how your surfed. They are currently in a big lawsuit case at the moment. All I'm saying is that we are sliding down the hill and to me, we are nearing the bottom. Tracking tags at work, insurance companies developing eyeglasses that act as fitness trackers, etc... these are all articles that can be found online today are indicative of the fact that people are willing to accept this style of tracking. That message was heard loud and clear many years ago.
As for Target tracking the girl, the signs of being pregnant are not necessarily so obvious. The article indicates that they can approximate exactly at what trimester they are in and even have a reasonable success rate on the delivery date to allow for even more targeted advertising all based on the fact on when the hand sanitizer is bought alongside wipes. Statistics are pretty powerful and they tell a story that many of us repeat day after day. I thought it was pretty ingenious but also creepy at the same time. Target picked up on that and planted the red herrings ads to throw off any kind of suspicions that people may have had. Again, smart but creepy.
As for Apple, I'm still on the fence on what they are doing. While they say that they won't do anything with your data, they are a corporation and they act very similarly to a lot of the other companies in a lot of areas despite the fact they have a top notch marketing team that says otherwise. Giving a monopoly to any company in any industry is a bad idea for the consumer. No matter how wonderful the message you hear on TV or from the CEO on stage. That is both for Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Guess we will see how this shakes out over the next year or two.
Anyone who has stolen music has no right to criticise ad blockers. And I think it's safe to say the vast majority of the publishers whining about this have done, and currently do just that. Hypocrites.
Of course my evidence is non existent, but statistically this must be true.
I'm a composer and I rely on people paying for music to survive.
It angers me that publishers are up in arms about ad blocking, yet think it fine to steal other online content.
Not to mention those sites that just republish other writers' work almost word for word.
And those that steal photos, and artwork without any compensation to the photographers and artists.
Interesting take.
I thought I heard Neil say something about running a BitTorrent client In the last podcast.
That is a deeper existential question: why should a content aggregator website have the "right" to make money regurgitating content from other web sites? Most of the news and rumors come from other sites and/or analysts' press releases.
When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
Everybody suggests finding an alternative revenue stream but never offer any feasible suggestions. Advertising is a way of earning money without asking the content consumer for any money and it scales with content popularity, what else offers that? People will only pay money in return for something.
We've had DVR's now for 15+ years. I got my first TIVO back in late 1999. DVR's are all over. Everyone skips TV commercials these days. They've found other ways to make money. mainly product placements. See those GM cars being used in the program? Product placement!!! Coke Cups in front of the American Idle Judges, Product Placement!!! Really, a lot of what you're watching in a program is product placement. Just not normally shoved in your face. If someone grabs MILK and it just doesn't way MILK, but a brand name that's product placement. You see Apple Mac's on a Show, Apple didn't pay, but they got them free to use in the show which saves money! All them Microsoft Surface tablets being used in a number of shows, Product Placements. MS is paying for that!!! I was watching NCIS: LA and the computer geek goes to the crime scene, whips out his Surface tablet, then whips out his MS Surface Keyboard, snaps them together and places it on a table to use. Now I found it funny, that even then, They're making some huge Snap together deal out of it. It's a Keyboard COVER, COVER being the Key word. Really all he had to do was sit it on the desk and open it. But Nooooo, a whole ordeal of snapping it together. It was laughable anyone would do such a thing like that, but it's product placement. I sure don't feel guilty skipping past 3 minutes or so of commercials!!! A hour long program these days is really 40 minutes!!! That means you get 20 minutes of commercials. You can see this by watching on Netflix for example and see how long a program really is commercial free!!! In fact in general, I hit my 30 second skip button 6 times and on my TIVO, it'll go 30, 60, 1:30, and then finally show 3:00 and you can watch it zoom on past and generally it's almost spot on. Sometimes it's longer, but in general 3 minutes.
I'm being advertised to almost constantly in one way or another during a program these days. I don't feel guilty at all skipping all the old fashion ad's!!! Something like this will have to happen on the internet. A shift to more of a product placement style. Not in your face ad's!!! Or Micro Transactions. Not Microsoft's so called Micro Transactions I've NEVER seen, but real ones. if it's more then 10 cents, it's sure not a MICRO. If you read something and it costs a Penny, great. Penny's add up. make it cheap and easy for people to read, great. Can't price yourself out of the market. There's generally many other places you can be replaced by.
This article is just another fundamental misunderstanding of the issue. Ads are not the issue. Tracking is the issue. These should be called Tracking Blockers. Certain types of ads are just the payload used for tracking.
While tracking is a issue, so are the Ad's, big time!!! Some places it's just crazy, it's 3/4 or more of ad's and 1/4 or less of content. That's really how bad it's gotten. You're surrounded by ad's, then more Ad's in the content as you're trying to read. It's beyond ridiculous. Some sites are just so bad, I just no longer even go to.
Comments
Not really the same issues...at all. In fact, Apple is the company that brought ad-blocking capabilities to Safari! Giant logic gap there.
Also, remember this?: http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground
Apple delivered on opening up iOS to give devs greater functionality, then Marco crumbles after capitalizing on those capabilities which were developed specifically for ad blocking. Amazing. All of that capability as a developer wasted with his second guessing and inability to think about the repercussions of his own decision making. What a tool bag.
Yet the optional subscription service isn't without ads: they still get displayed. This is due to the fact that when reading the comments to the articles we get a webpage from Huddler in the app which does display ads even when one has a subscription. Not exactly something I would be proud of, especially when it now reads you are misleading your audience.
I haven't a clue where to post this... but since you mentioned "Huddler" I think it's as good as any.
TL;DR for those with ADS: I've "just" discovered that Huddler is not the problem here after a little research.
Long version but I'll keep it short. Everyone that's moaning about the performance of AI and especially these Forums, needs to check out a few of the links that I've posted below that also use Huddler as their website/forum software provider.
I went to all of the links that I'm posting below, and guess what? SUPER fast, no lags jumping threw forums... everything snappy, responsive... and looky there... ADS! Even with Blockr activated on iPad. Good ads in my opinion, because they are fed to the forum topic that talks about, reviews, or troubleshoots that product.
Really an "eye" (or *I* as in Insider) opening experience. I think everyone should give these links a try or two to see what these forums "could be".
The Community page on Huddler with additional info: http://huddlerhub.wikia.com/wiki/Communities
Sites I've tried:
http://www.head-fi.org/ <---- might be of interest to some audiophiles here if they don't already know about it.
http://www.thecatsite.com/
http://www.overclock.net/
http://www.epicski.com/
http://www.denimblog.com/c/
http://www.cheftalk.com/
Note: and before someone says a few of those sites are far smaller than AI... at the time of this writing, thecatsite is serving up pages to 571 online users while this one is only pulling 387.
Question to any AI Admins: anybody want to jump in and explain why only we here are experiencing speed-bumps, janky-scrolling, and a really poor feature set?
The ads in the mobile app are most certainly coming through for paid subscribers. This is due to what I wrote: the app may get rid of the ads, when you enter the comments these come from Huddler, and that still displays ads even though you pay for an ad-free experience. This is the fault of AppleInsider. (which is why I didn't extend my subscription)
As for Huddler 'being slow' - you'e absolutely right, that is not Huddler's fault; it's (partially) due to the large screendumps and photos being published in the articles. Many are over 2MB, discussed at leng in this post: *&%^%^$^%^ can't find that article, but it turned out to a good discussion with some authors on this site, promising things would be fixed 'within a couple of days', but alas.
OT Good to see you still post here. I fully agree with this post on the 2nd page in this thread:
post #54
His success is self-limited. Is he really capable of following through on his own projects? The answer is fuzzy. He develops, then fails to follow through and make companies out of those apps. He should've sold off Peace and left the real work to another company.
As a high profile developer, Arment constantly whines and complains about Apple. He's not immune to criticism.
If there's buyer's remorse why is it so hard to believe that there's seller's remorse?
Catholic guilt for developers?
By the way, at the end of the latest Accidental Tech Podcast (show #135) Arment delights in criticizing other ad blocker software, while extolling the virtues of Ghostery and talking up his licensing deal with them. The guy is a talented developer, but he's out to lunch. Let's see how long it takes him to realize what a boneheaded mistake it was to pull Peace from the App Store.
Your website is the problem! You reflect 100% of the problem!
When it comes to performance hindering bloat loaded with crap ads AI is the king! You are the absolute worst site I visit regularly in terms of bloat and slowness to load. Now that I have installed Crystal, solely because of YOUR site, instead of the absolutely horrible performance you have been providing, your site now loads MUCH MUCH MUCH faster and is no longer a huge annoyance. You are a victim of your own stupidity for building a dog of a site from a performance and advertising bloat standpoint. So get off your soapbox and fix it! Figure out how to build a proper infrastructure stripped of all the bullshit that annoys to no end, then come back to us begging for forgiveness and only then ask us politely to whitelist you.
Well you must not go to very many sites! Check out Ghostery for a Blocker! Works great, but best of all, You can block everything or some things on a individual bases. It'll show what it's blocking. Right now from AI, it's blocking 9 things. Not all of those are Ad's. Some are just tracking how many people are visiting the site. It's really not that bad here. Some places I go to can have 20+ things being blocked. When you go to one of these places, that's 20+ other sites that's being accessed and fed to you. When you're on a Cell, you're paying for all this crap you don't want, wasting your Data.
When you block all this crap, places load up so much faster. These places brought it upon themselves!!! Some places were so infested with Ad's, I just stopped going to them. The few places that won't let me view content with a Ad blocker on, I just don't visit. no great loss. A dime a dozen.
Just a foot note on the BBC site... It's paid for by the UK Public. There is something called a TV Licence where every home and business in the UK pays £145 per year ($225 US) per building who has a TV. Looking at the numbers I could find for 2009 - 2010 the income for this was £3.56 billion ($5.56 billion US). With a round 6% of that being used to fund the BBC websites, around £213 million ($331 million UK) per year is paid for the BBC Website.
$225 is CRAZY! So you have no commercials? If that's all it takes, then maybe it's worth it, but there better be zero commerials if you're forking out $225 a year, otherwise it's really just a TAX!!!!
I just installed Crystal. I did this because I was sick to death of adverts for Uber. The moment you scroll across them they redirect you to the App Store without even clicking on them. It was ridiculous on some sites with 2 huge uber adverts on each page of content.
Now, web browsing is fast and ad free. If crystal ever supports a white list then I would re-enable adds on some sites (like this one) but for sites which take the piss then no chance.
Well there is "Purify", costs $3.99, but does have white list support.
I bought Peace, despite it not quite having the features of it's competition (eg. Whitelisting from Safari) expecting it would be a well-maintained app and would get updates. Anyone who bought this should ask for a refund. The consumers who bought into Marco Arment just suffered monetarily because of his base entrepreneurial nature and his apparent emotional weakness to have a panicked ethical shit fit under scrutiny from others. He has let his users down and I for one will never buy anything from him again.
You can get Purify for $3.99 which does allow Whitelisting from Safari!!! I havn't had a chance to use it much. On my Desktop I use Ghostery which I really like as it shows me what trackers, ad services, etc are being used on me. I can block it all, or just block some of it on a site per site bases. It's also free.
I've never heard of this Marco guy that lots of people are hyperventilating about. (Frankly his tactics around the app -- making it available and then pulling it in a couple of days -- sound shady).
Given that iOS 9 is all of a couple of days old, I'd say give it a few weeks. I am betting that there'll be many more ad blockers available that allow whitelisting. I think I'll wait for Ghostery for the iOS.
Ghostery is already on iOS, but it's a whole Web browser, and not just a Safari Plug-On. So I hope this changes. I use Ghostery on my Desktops. It's great as it shows me exactly what's going on and I can block or allow any or all things on a per site bases.
$225 is CRAZY! So you have no commercials? If that's all it takes, then maybe it's worth it, but there better be zero commerials if you're forking out $225 a year, otherwise it's really just a TAX!!!!
It's not just one channel, there are loads of BBC channels, including 24hour news, parliament coverage, children's programming, local and regional stuff (including programming in Welsh and Scottish), radio programmes, a web site, iPlayer, and no, not one commercial ever on any of them. To say its refreshing is a complete understatement.
Besides there being no advertising on any of them, which is itself awesome, I think one of the best aspects of the BBC is its normalising effect on other broadcasters (even print journalism), most notably the news. The news, while mostly supporting establishment (whoever happens to be in power currently), does not have its editorial influenced, swayed or directed by outside commercial interests. If other outlets or broadcasters wish to compete in this market, they can't allow themselves to be affected too much or they will be obviously so radically different from non-commercial influenced (BBC) news as to be odd, even ineffectual or comical. When popular channels people watch don't accept advertising, the whole system is different, and with aspects like news, that's a very, very good thing in a society. The BBC is really quite excellent, and is loved by almost all and considered a national treasure.
Actually, TV ads can tell a lot about what type of shows you watch but the thing I'm surprised about is how upset people are over tracking? Why are the not upset over things like what the banks and credit card companies know? Loyalty cards are the worst. If you don't believe me, check out this article from 2012. Target. You can only imagine how much more sophisticated things have become in over 3 years.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
The war on privacy was lost a long time ago. There is no halfway in between - we either fight for it or don't. From what I can see and how people behave, they are not interested in it anymore.
I'm not a fan of tracking either but I fought that fight too long and too hard back in the mid 2000's and was told to put my tinfoil hat away so I did. We've reaped what we've sewn.
A TV can't normally track where you go from one channel to the next and DVR's have been around for what, 15 or so years allowing people to skip commercials. I know I got my first TIVO in late 1999. Now maybe TIVO is tracking what channels you're watching. You're not being fed custom Ad's. You're not going to normally start seeing CW ad's on ABC just because you were watching the CW earlier.
As for Loyalty Cards. of course they track everything you do for that store!!! in the case above target. But for that you get Discounts and other things. Hell yo don't even need one of them cards. They track you by using your Credit Card, which is why these big company's like Target and home Depot that store people's credit cards then get hacked!!!! Something a small Mom & Pop place can't do. It's also why Apple pay was shut down at a few places and many haven't allowed it yet. Because there's no way to track you using Apple Pay!!! There's a exception to this. using a Loyalty Credit Card. Like Amazon's which works with Apple Pay. You can show with it and Amazon can track you even if you use Apple Pay.
As for the teen Girl, if that's the place she goes to buy Tampon's and then stops, that's a clue. If she went and brought as Home Pregnancy Test, that's a much larger clue. If she's using a credit card or a loyalty card and not CASH, then she's going to be tracked. In general though Target tracking Data is used only for Target, and Home Depot only for Home Depot, etc. This is where CurrectC would come in and better track you from Place to place. Basically just like on the Internet!!! One of the big benefits for merchants besides the lower fee's.
When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
Micropayments are an excellent idea, but Bitcoin might not be the best way to do it because its price is so volatile (down 15% in one day, recently). Maybe Apple could provide a micropayments scheme based on iTunes accounts, or someone could write an adblocker that turns a monthly subscription fee into monthly payments to sites based on usage.
I remember Microsoft talking about having Micropayments for content. You could buy things for your Avatar for example, but the prices for things were anything but Micro!!! 99 cents is not Micro. 1 cent is!!! Otherwise it's just a payment. it's not MICRO!!!
Cab drivers are up in arms that Uber is not regulated the same way that their own service is, despite the fact that Uber is obviously a direct competitor and provides an identical form of service. In other words, the gripe is not about having to compete on quality, but rather that the same rules should apply to everyone within the industry.
Really, exactly the same? Since when can a UBER driver just pick anyone up on the side of the road? Taxi drivers can do that!!!
A TV can't normally track where you go from one channel to the next and DVR's have been around for what, 15 or so years allowing people to skip commercials. I know I got my first TIVO in late 1999. Now maybe TIVO is tracking what channels you're watching. You're not being fed custom Ad's. You're not going to normally start seeing CW ad's on ABC just because you were watching the CW earlier.
As for Loyalty Cards. of course they track everything you do for that store!!! in the case above target. But for that you get Discounts and other things. Hell yo don't even need one of them cards. They track you by using your Credit Card, which is why these big company's like Target and home Depot that store people's credit cards then get hacked!!!! Something a small Mom & Pop place can't do. It's also why Apple pay was shut down at a few places and many haven't allowed it yet. Because there's no way to track you using Apple Pay!!! There's a exception to this. using a Loyalty Credit Card. Like Amazon's which works with Apple Pay. You can show with it and Amazon can track you even if you use Apple Pay.
As for the teen Girl, if that's the place she goes to buy Tampon's and then stops, that's a clue. If she went and brought as Home Pregnancy Test, that's a much larger clue. If she's using a credit card or a loyalty card and not CASH, then she's going to be tracked. In general though Target tracking Data is used only for Target, and Home Depot only for Home Depot, etc. This is where CurrectC would come in and better track you from Place to place. Basically just like on the Internet!!! One of the big benefits for merchants besides the lower fee's.
When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
As for the custom ads on TV, those are coming in Canada next year but they will be opt-in on Bell's network (home phones included <shudder>). The company got slammed for tracking your internet usage and then showing you ads based on how your surfed. They are currently in a big lawsuit case at the moment. All I'm saying is that we are sliding down the hill and to me, we are nearing the bottom. Tracking tags at work, insurance companies developing eyeglasses that act as fitness trackers, etc... these are all articles that can be found online today are indicative of the fact that people are willing to accept this style of tracking. That message was heard loud and clear many years ago.
As for Target tracking the girl, the signs of being pregnant are not necessarily so obvious. The article indicates that they can approximate exactly at what trimester they are in and even have a reasonable success rate on the delivery date to allow for even more targeted advertising all based on the fact on when the hand sanitizer is bought alongside wipes. Statistics are pretty powerful and they tell a story that many of us repeat day after day. I thought it was pretty ingenious but also creepy at the same time. Target picked up on that and planted the red herrings ads to throw off any kind of suspicions that people may have had. Again, smart but creepy.
As for Apple, I'm still on the fence on what they are doing. While they say that they won't do anything with your data, they are a corporation and they act very similarly to a lot of the other companies in a lot of areas despite the fact they have a top notch marketing team that says otherwise. Giving a monopoly to any company in any industry is a bad idea for the consumer. No matter how wonderful the message you hear on TV or from the CEO on stage. That is both for Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Guess we will see how this shakes out over the next year or two.
Interesting take.
I thought I heard Neil say something about running a BitTorrent client In the last podcast.
That is a deeper existential question: why should a content aggregator website have the "right" to make money regurgitating content from other web sites? Most of the news and rumors come from other sites and/or analysts' press releases.
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When I check something out at Amazon, I should start seeing Amazon Ad's showing be that product at a bunch of other Web sites I'm going to. That's just creepy and wrong. If I wanted it, I would have already gotten it. Quite frankly, when that happens, I refuse to ever buy that product, let alone from Amazon!!!
Happens all the time here in AI
I consider the BBC a treasure and I live in the US.
Content hops across the pond both ways but I am very thankful for the BBC.
Everybody suggests finding an alternative revenue stream but never offer any feasible suggestions. Advertising is a way of earning money without asking the content consumer for any money and it scales with content popularity, what else offers that? People will only pay money in return for something.
We've had DVR's now for 15+ years. I got my first TIVO back in late 1999. DVR's are all over. Everyone skips TV commercials these days. They've found other ways to make money. mainly product placements. See those GM cars being used in the program? Product placement!!! Coke Cups in front of the American Idle Judges, Product Placement!!! Really, a lot of what you're watching in a program is product placement. Just not normally shoved in your face. If someone grabs MILK and it just doesn't way MILK, but a brand name that's product placement. You see Apple Mac's on a Show, Apple didn't pay, but they got them free to use in the show which saves money! All them Microsoft Surface tablets being used in a number of shows, Product Placements. MS is paying for that!!! I was watching NCIS: LA and the computer geek goes to the crime scene, whips out his Surface tablet, then whips out his MS Surface Keyboard, snaps them together and places it on a table to use. Now I found it funny, that even then, They're making some huge Snap together deal out of it. It's a Keyboard COVER, COVER being the Key word. Really all he had to do was sit it on the desk and open it. But Nooooo, a whole ordeal of snapping it together. It was laughable anyone would do such a thing like that, but it's product placement. I sure don't feel guilty skipping past 3 minutes or so of commercials!!! A hour long program these days is really 40 minutes!!! That means you get 20 minutes of commercials. You can see this by watching on Netflix for example and see how long a program really is commercial free!!! In fact in general, I hit my 30 second skip button 6 times and on my TIVO, it'll go 30, 60, 1:30, and then finally show 3:00 and you can watch it zoom on past and generally it's almost spot on. Sometimes it's longer, but in general 3 minutes.
I'm being advertised to almost constantly in one way or another during a program these days. I don't feel guilty at all skipping all the old fashion ad's!!! Something like this will have to happen on the internet. A shift to more of a product placement style. Not in your face ad's!!! Or Micro Transactions. Not Microsoft's so called Micro Transactions I've NEVER seen, but real ones. if it's more then 10 cents, it's sure not a MICRO. If you read something and it costs a Penny, great. Penny's add up. make it cheap and easy for people to read, great. Can't price yourself out of the market. There's generally many other places you can be replaced by.
This article is just another fundamental misunderstanding of the issue. Ads are not the issue. Tracking is the issue. These should be called Tracking Blockers. Certain types of ads are just the payload used for tracking.
While tracking is a issue, so are the Ad's, big time!!! Some places it's just crazy, it's 3/4 or more of ad's and 1/4 or less of content. That's really how bad it's gotten. You're surrounded by ad's, then more Ad's in the content as you're trying to read. It's beyond ridiculous. Some sites are just so bad, I just no longer even go to.