The App Store's Leading Ad Blocker Just Took Down His App Out of Guilt
Marco Arment, the creator of Peace, wrote on his blog Friday that he can no longer take away revenue from writers and publishers who rely on ads to support their creative work.
"Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn't feel good, which I didn't anticipate, but probably should have," he writes. "Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: While they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don't deserve the hit."
The ad blocker made Arment one of the greatest arms dealers in the online war against advertising. While he still acknowledges that ad blockers are worthwhile and that the war is worth waging, he says he couldn't stomach being on the front lines of that battle and seeing the damage he was doing.
"Ad blocking is a kind of war — a first-world, low-stakes, both-sides-are-fortunate-to-have-this-kind-of-problem war, but a war nonetheless, with damage hitting both sides," Arment writes. "I see war in the Tao Te Ching sense: It should be avoided when possible; when that isn't possible, war should be entered solemnly, not celebrated."
Advertising still powers the Web. Apps like Peace and new favorite contender Ghostery are part of the destruction of Web-based content, driving creators away from having their own websites and into the iron grip of platforms like Facebook or Apple, which are building their own places to keep news and articles.
isn't that special ... someone else will take up the torch