iOS 9 Safari supports content blocking!

[Mopetar]

Might be, but that does illustrate one of the problems with ad blocking: those who use it often forget that they're hurting real people, including those who had nothing to do with the ad campaigns. The best thing you can do to get rid of obnoxious ads? Complain -- these kinds of ads sometimes show up unexpectedly in the rotation, and sites can frequently ask to have offending campaigns pulled.

If a website wanted to make difficult to block ads that were tolerable to most users, they'd just serve some static image files from their own servers and get rid of all the flash and other crap that makes sites an utter pain to load.

There are plenty of alternatives to the current status quo and I hope now that these blockers are becoming more widespread that we'll see the industry change. Napster made the old music business obsolete and no amount of dragging their feet helped. Eventually they changed and everyone survived.

 

[Red Storm]

I happily ad-block without a care. If the ad companies want, they can pay me for the extra data, performance costs, and ugliness and I will consider re-enabling them, but even then not likely. The web simply looks (and loads) so much better without ads.

 

[Artdeco]

Was listening to The Verge's podcast, they sound unhappy with the concept, but they're serving up some terrible ads too.

 

[shabby]

Was listening to The Verge's podcast, they sound unhappy with the concept, but they're serving up some terrible ads too.

They can suck my balls for this shit they're serving up!
If i set my font bigger this would be a full page add.

Anandtech's is getting up there too, when the top section gets a larger ad you can only see the main review and half of the second one.

There's a reason for adblocking, and these are perfect examples.

 

[sweenish]

Yeah, if we just get back to static image banners that aren't 1/4 of the page, I'd gladly turn off ad-blocking.

But as long as Taboola and auto-playing videos and resource sucking flash and abysmally slow ad servers that must load before the page are still a thing, they can sit and spin.

rockpapershotgun uses the abp approved ads, and I have no problem with them.

 

[Artdeco]

They can suck my balls for this shit they're serving up!
If i set my font bigger this would be a full page add.

Anandtech's is getting up there too, when the top section gets a larger ad you can only see the main review and half of the second one.

There's a reason for adblocking, and these are perfect examples.

People complain in their forums, and are told to just suck it up. Between that, and their political correctness BS, I spend much less time there.

 

[sweenish]

Anything from vox and gawker should just be avoided anyway. People still give vox the time of day because they have pretty sites.

 

[shabby]

People complain in their forums, and are told to just suck it up.

Unfortunately all the power is in our hands, not theirs. They can tell us to suck it up, but we can just install an adblocker and give them the middle finger. They need to find a middle ground, and that almost full page ad is not it.

 

[SAWYER]

Lol@those ads on verge and anandtech

 

[ultimatebob]

Well, Peace blocker was pulled by its own author. Supposedly, he felt guilty about profiting while lots of web sites lost their only source of revenue (ads). I feel no guilt at all about using a tool like this because these ad network scripts were crashing my devices constantly and making them unusable...including this very site. Anyway, I found some cases of it blocking things it shouldn't; which almost never happened with Adblock Plus on PCs.

It sounds like Purify Blocker is a better alternative.

Whether you get Purify, Crystal, or any other content blocker, you must go to Settings > Safari > Content Blocking to enable it.

I haven't experienced the mysterious crashes even once since I installed a content blocker. DO IT.

From what I heard, the guy who create the Peace blocker also owned a mobile friendly website. When he realized that his ad blocker blocked the ads from his own site along with his friend's websites, he had second thoughts about what he created.

 

[Mopetar]

From what I heard, the guy who create the Peace blocker also owned a mobile friendly website. When he realized that his ad blocker blocked the ads from his own site along with his friend's websites, he had second thoughts about what he created.

He had a post about it sometime before he released it. He was using Ghostery database for the rules in his app and realized it blocked his own ad network but said he was cool with it because it would be rather hypocritical of him to take that one out and leave everything else in.

I think all the people he's chums with were what did it. Not like it really matters as by next month they will probably be some dozen choices to pick from.

 

[Eug]

I just asked for a refund for Peace. We'll see how the iTunes Stores responds.

 

[ultimatebob]

Unfortunately all the power is in our hands, not theirs. They can tell us to suck it up, but we can just install an adblocker and give them the middle finger. They need to find a middle ground, and that almost full page ad is not it.

Yeah... the ads on Anandtech used to be much less obnoxious before they sold out to Purch.

 

[Cakefish]

I think this is Apple's way of taking a cheeky stab at Google.

I personally hate using the internet without ad blockers. The amount of system resources that ads gobble up is shocking. The abominations such as auto-playing videos with sound and pop-up fullscreen ads and those god awful banners that stalk you as you scroll the page - all must die. The general unoptimised banner ads that load from super slow servers must also be destroyed.

 

[ultimatebob]

I think this is Apple's way of taking a cheeky stab at Google.

I personally hate using the internet without ad blockers. The amount of system resources that ads gobble up is shocking. The abominations such as auto-playing videos with sound and pop-up fullscreen ads and those god awful banners that stalk you as you scroll the page - all must die. The general unoptimised banner ads that load from super slow servers must also be destroyed.

I've heard that Apple is hoping that this will motivate more mobile web developers to create iOS apps, where they can use Apple's iAd system to serve up ads. Apple gets a nice cut of that ad revenue.

Personally, I HATE "apps" that are nothing more than a shortcut to the mobile version of a web site.

 

[Eug]

I just asked for a refund for Peace. We'll see how the iTunes Stores responds.

Refund approved.

 

[dawheat]

I am getting a bit tickled over the different mea culpas from ad infested websites who are now proclaiming they were wrong and promise to change...just please turn off ad blocking.

Whether you see Apple's action as cynical or not (i.e. why not also allow ad blocking in apps), it's a consumer experience improvement. I have no problems with consumers being able to pick whether they want to block ads or not.

 

[ultimatebob]

I tried using the 1blocker ad blocker, and it's pretty much useless. It doesn't seem to block much of anything.

 

[Ichinisan]

I tried using the 1blocker ad blocker, and it's pretty much useless. It doesn't seem to block much of anything.

Purify is still working great for me.

 

[Ichinisan]

I didn't even request a refund.

Apple is proactively saving the administrative hassle by issuing refunds to everyone.

[edit]

My purchases were "$5.98" because I had also purchased it for my nephew as a gift.

 

[Shlong]

If a website wanted to make difficult to block ads that were tolerable to most users, they'd just serve some static image files from their own servers and get rid of all the flash and other crap that makes sites an utter pain to load.

There are plenty of alternatives to the current status quo and I hope now that these blockers are becoming more widespread that we'll see the industry change. Napster made the old music business obsolete and no amount of dragging their feet helped. Eventually they changed and everyone survived.

Any website worth its salt wouldn't last with ads of static image files from their own servers, they would barely make anything. There are new ad networks popping up that are using new technology that tries to circumvent adblock by using protocols other than TCP.

 

[dawheat]

Purify is still working great for me.

Purify the best one so far?

 

[Ichinisan]

Purify the best one so far?

I haven't tried Crystal or Ad Guard, but Purify is clearly better than Peace (during my brief experiences).

 

[Ichinisan]

Any website worth its salt wouldn't last with ads of static image files from their own servers, they would barely make anything. There are new ad networks popping up that are using new technology that tries to circumvent adblock by using protocols other than TCP.

Ad-blockers work on DOM level, as far as I can tell. Transmission protocol doesn't matter as long the page is HTML. Since the mobile revolution, Flash-based sites are dead. They aren't coming back.

 

[lxskllr]

Any website worth its salt wouldn't last with ads of static image files from their own servers, they would barely make anything. There are new ad networks popping up that are using new technology that tries to circumvent adblock by using protocols other than TCP.

Worked for newspapers for centuries. Static ads certainly make less than targeted ads, but they make infinitely more money than ads that aren't viewed.

"New technology"? LoL! bring it on. I'll be blocking those like I do from every other malware serving, privacy stealing network. My computer, my rules. I decide what I run, not some arbitrary website.