iOS Ad Blocker "Crystal" Will Let Companies Pay To Show You Ads 229
pdclarry writes: Apple's iOS 9 now supports ad blockers. The most popular of these, Peace, was withdrawn after only a couple of days because the developer thought "it just doesn't feel good." Crystal then quickly rose to the top of the heap. But the developer of Crystal has announced that it will allow "acceptable ads" — for a fee from the advertiser. Crystal is a paid app; so you can now pay for the privilege of seeing ads.
That's just... dishonest (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear consumer,
Pay me money for my ad-blocking app!
Dead advertiser,
Hey, I got all these saps... er customers to pay me for ad blocking! Now pay me money for the privilege to advertise to them!!
Sincerely,
Jackass developer.
Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:2)
If I had purchased this blocker, I would be demanding my money back. I bought Purify and have been happy with it. Hopefully they remain true to blocking all ads and trackers. Yes it cost more but I see that as an investment in a better browsing experience on mobile.
Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:5, Insightful)
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THe reason is that it costs money to develop for iOS. Developing for windows, Linux, and even Mac is free. iOS costs 100 a year. Even Android is just 25 one time (and that's only to put your apps on the play store, not to make a sideloadable app). Because of this, devs wanted to make their money back. That stopped the early creation of free (cost) and open source software.
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$25 or $100 is negligible even if you value your time well below minimum wage.
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It's a huge amount if you just want to try it out.
Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:4, Informative)
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$25 or $100 is negligible even if you value your time well below minimum wage.
If I wanted to develop an IOS app, I'd have to buy another computer and another phone. This is a $2000 minimum outlay as well as the $99 per year needed to remain a developer. Given that most apps dont even make $99 per year chances are I'd never make back the original outlay.
I can develop a Windows, Linux and Android app with all of my existing resources.
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1. You can buy a new Mac plus iPhone for half that. Replace the iPhone with an iPod Touch or iPad to save a few hundred more. Used devices also work fine.
2. With minor tweaking you can get OS X running in a VM, use XCode's iOS simulator to do most of your development testing, and invite friend(s) with iOS devices to do on-device beta testing.
3. Then again, if you have no interest in owning or using an Apple product, it's probably best you don't develop for the platform.
4. http://www.penny-arcade.com/co... [penny-arcade.com]
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You're missing the point: As a hobbyist or tinkerer why would you even if the cost could be halved? The point stands that if you already own an iPhone then the cost and effort of being able to develop anything for it isn't negligible. That discourages many people from even trying, and those that do not unreasonably often want to charge so they can try and
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1. You can buy a new Mac plus iPhone for half that. Replace the iPhone with an iPod Touch or iPad to save a few hundred more. Used devices also work fine.
2. With minor tweaking you can get OS X running in a VM, use XCode's iOS simulator to do most of your development testing, and invite friend(s) with iOS devices to do on-device beta testing.
3. Then again, if you have no interest in owning or using an Apple product, it's probably best you don't develop for the platform.
4. http://www.penny-arcade.com/co... [penny-arcade.com]
All nice in theory, but you're working on the assumption that the only motivator to write an app is for commercial gains. If that is indeed your only motivator then you may as well shell out a little and it might pay off.
However a not-insignificant portion of the world's most popular software was created to scratch an itch. On iOS you have to pay if you want to scratch an itch. So, all the other platforms get the scratched-itch software (i.e. found to be genuinely useful and can't-live-without for at least
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$25 or $100 is negligible even if you value your time well below minimum wage.
And yet it's significant to anyone who would give away their work for free (which is what we're talking about).
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This is why apps are so popular. Sorry, I mean this is why writing apps is so popular.
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The sad part is that for whatever reason, stuff that you would never dream of paying for on a desktop costs money on iOS. Everything from adblockers to solitaire games either seem to cost money or be ad-riddled.
That's what you get when there's a cost to publish. It's one thing to give a hobby project up for free to anyone when I'm investing time to do something I like. It's quite another to have to pay to give something for free.
This is one of the reasons I like F-droid, an open source app store for Android.
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It actually is the other way around. Things that add value are free for some reason. They should cost money. Not a lot (scale economy) but a little. If something of value is for free, your critical mind should ask itself what the catch is.
Sometimes there isn't a catch. People do things out of love for the thing sometimes. I have a couple computer games online that you can play for free, or you can give me some money if you want, but unlike most "free" games these days it won't get you in-game advantages. Th
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The cost of man/hours to do any software it way higher comparativelly.
Sure, if you are paying for those man hours or doing the software development when you would otherwise have been doing paid work.
If you are doing it as a hobby (instead of watching TV, posting on /. or whatever) then those man hours cost nothing. On the other hand being expected to pay for the privilage of posting free apps is deeply offputting.
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On the other hand being expected to pay for the privilage of posting free apps is deeply offputting.
Depends... to put it into perspective from a hobbyist point-of-view? Let's play golf. No matter how you slice it** , you're going to lay out more than $100/year if you want to play this game. Funny thing, though - you don't hear too many people bitching about that...
** bah-dump-tssssh!
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such as?
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Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:5, Informative)
I actually did pay for it, and just demanded a refund. This is total bait-and-switch to the consumer, and extortion of the advertiser. Dean Murphy is scum.
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Works in every other industry, so why not? Resident pays for caller ID, advertiser pays to keep number private.
Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:5, Informative)
See http://www.imore.com/how-to-ge... [imore.com]
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Thank you. I'd already purchased this and just got the refund for it. Total dishonest bait and switch maneuver.
The sad part is that I'd really throw down 10, 20, maybe 50 bucks for a well developed ad blocker that really was on my side in this fight and went out of its way to ad new features / combat the ad companies. It doesn't have to be 99 cents, iOS developers -- if you need more money, raise the price, a lot of us will still pay if you deliver a high quality solution.
Re: That's just... dishonest (Score:2)
I am currently using Blockr which works. I don't mind simple, unobtrusive ads, but filling my screen with bandwidth-sucking animations and more is just offensive.
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This is a cool idea if the ad software gave the user a kickback on this. Hey, pay me to look at your ads, and I'll look at them! Nice.
Purify is slow, use valgrind (Score:2)
I too was once reasonably happy with Purify [unicomsi.com], but what does it have to do with ad-blocking escapes me... Maybe, things have changed since I switched to valgrind [valgrind.org]...
That sounds like fraud to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Changing the terms of the agreement for purchased products is not in the same league as changing the terms of a free product. When people pay for something, they expect it to do what they paid for.
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What are you, left handed or something?
Dear Crystal author..... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Crystal author,
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
-JustAnotherOldGuy
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What if websites add this code?
if httpRequest.userAgent.contains("ios9"):
showPage("404 no stuff for freeloaders")
endif
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Lol, that would be funny as hell.
BRB, there's some lawyers at the door who say they're from Apple. Should I use a shotgun or a chainsaw?
Re:Dear Crystal author..... (Score:5, Funny)
BRB, there's some lawyers at the door who say they're from Apple. Should I use a shotgun or a chainsaw?
Yes.
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Cool. Say, do you know how to get blood out of a carpet?
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why would apple lawyers come to your door in this scenario?
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why would apple lawyers come to your door in this scenario?
They obviously smelled that stack of $100 bills that I keep by the door.
Plus if you say something bad about IOS, the ghost of Steve Jobs rises from his grave and walks the Earth looking for retribution. Everybody knows that.
Re:Dear Crystal author..... (Score:5, Insightful)
close page
search for another page serving same content
5 seconds of googling later...
You don't want to give me what I want? Ok. No problem.
NEXT!
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And after ten clicks, I find what I used to be able to find before the advertisers turned the web into a shit festival of slideshows with "I'm Feeling Lucky".
What we need is a search engine that lets you filter out "sites with ads", "sites that block people who use adblockers", etc. Then I can search for a recipe for stew and find a recipe for stew, instead of finding hundreds of pages of content delivery mechanism, some of which claim to have stew recipes (and some subset of that which actually does).
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The best is when you search for a stew recipe, go to a page claiming to have one, and what you get is something saying "Be the first to put your stew recipe here!" Yeah, as if.
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Until a viable alternative way of raising revenue comes around (some form of micro-payments that works maybe) sites will be reliant on advertising for revenue. If you block advertising then losing your custom is a net gain
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Great! I sincerely hope that the websites add code that blocks anything with userAgent ios9.
First: It would infuriate people to the terrible behaviors advertisers do.
Second: It would make most Apple users grab any of the browers that CAN fix the userAgent string already, such as Atomic, Mercury, etc. This is nice because more users would have alternate browsers. Minor benefit.
Third and most importantly: Safari would finally support this sort of spoofing by default. That's clutch, because it's a very
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I guess we will have to write apps that modify the userAgent string. I assume there is a way to do that in ios...I don't develop for ios since I am a cheap bastard who doesn't want to pay for their developer license and tools.
You can't modify the userAgent string in the built-in Safari. But there are several browser apps in the App Store that give you control over it. The only issue is that Safari is always the default browser if you click on a link in an app, email or text.
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How old are you? :P
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How old are you? :P
When I was born Alaska hadn't yet been admitted as the 49th US state.
Old adage (Score:5, Insightful)
"Supports"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's iOS 9 now supports ad blockers.
I think you mean "deigns to allow you to install".
Didn't they just add a bunch of networking stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Refund? (Score:2)
How do I get a refund?
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Should Go the Other Way (Score:4, Insightful)
If people are paying for an ad-blocker, that means they are willing to PAY for sites without ads. The smart thing to do would be to sell ad-free access to sites through the "ad-blocker" - the site gets paid, the user is happy.
Just figure out a way to do it that doesn't involve tracking the user in the process because modern ad-blocking is at least as much about tracker-blocking as it is about ad-blocking.
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No, if you use an ad-blocker, paid or not, that means that you are trying to view sites without getting shit on by ads. Maybe you want to support sites without ads, or maybe you just want sites with ads to wither and die. You don't know.
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I understand they don't want ads! And more so if they download an ad blocker.
Also I seem to understand how to log in, so I got that going for me...
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Optional (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as the developer of Crystal puts a tickbox in the preferences to allow you to block "acceptable advertising" then I don't see the issue. I understand that Crystal doesn't have a preferences screen right now, but it shouldn't be that hard to add one.
People who are happy to see adverts as long as they meet some sort of "acceptable" criteria can have it turned off - and people who just never want to see an advert again can turn it on.
Please don't let it be a repeat of Adblock Plus where all the nerdrage drowned out the few voices of reason that merely pointed out that all the anger could be resolved with the unchecking of a single tickbox in the preferences.
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People who are happy to see adverts
total population: zero
Bait and switch (Score:5, Interesting)
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More than principle, it stands to reason he gets a benefit from having all those users. I mean, if you made an ad blocker that had 25 users tops, I doubt you'd be getting the sweet sweet cash to use an "acceptable ads" default whitelist.
Wait for it... (Score:2)
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do you at least get lots of orange crush?
hosts file IP blocking? (Score:2)
The only kind of ad blocking I trust is localhost redirects via /etc/hosts. This is what I do for my desktop and Android phone. I believe there's a similar mechanism for Windows. Since iOS is running a BSD base, wouldn't it be the same for iPhones? Create a host file with something like:
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
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> I don't trust ad blockers as they funnel web and/or other traffic through the developer's hollowed-out volcano.
LIES!
Well, for Apple this is lies. For many other places too. The content blockers in ios don't actually get access like you are thinking of.
https://developer.apple.com/li... [apple.com]
"Safari converts the JSON to bytecode, which it applies efficiently to all resource loads without leaking information about the user’s browsing back to the app extension"
So no, unlike an adblocker running as an exe
I just don't know what to say.... (Score:2)
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I don't remember ever seeing "You are the customer AND you are the product."
Hey man, get with the new paradigm. (The new paradigm is $49.95 a month, plus taxes and other applicable fees, shipping, handling, etc. Thank you for your continued patronage.)
Isn't that what we asked for? (Score:3)
I thought we said we wanted adblock because there were too many ads using (pick any/all):
[ ] Tracking cookies
[ ] Pop-ups
[ ] Pop-unders
[ ] Click-throughs
[ ] Flash or other auto-play media
[ ] Obtrusive (mid-article) placement
[ ] Annoying (blinking!) styling
[ ] Malware (usually flash based)
Of course companies do that because they have an incentive to do so. Now a company is saying -- hey, we'll give you an incentive to use unobtrusive ads -- they'll actually reach more people (including the much sought-after millennials who use adblockers the most). And we're upset that the incentive will align towards them?
I mean, if you point was to fuck the advertisers -- sure. But say that upfront, don't gripe about the method and then get all upset when someone tries to devise a scheme for reasonable ads.
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Some people complain about that. That's a side issue. The problem with advertisements is the advertisements. Fuck the advertisements, fuck the advertisers. Fuck them so hard for hurting anyone who views advertisements, fuck them for making it difficult to not ever have to view their bullshit, and MOST OF ALL fuck them for working so hard to destroy any non-advertisement based method of content delivery, so that shills can parrot "brawk, but how will the content creators get paid, brawwwk?"
Not my problem
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Even with text-only "acceptable" ads it's difficult to know if they are respecting Do Not Track. Even if they don't send cookies, they can track by IP address. It's not as good, but it's still tracking.
I'm not against accepting some advertising, but only if my IP address is masked (shared VPN) and the company vetting the advertisers checks for compliance regularly.
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There are plenty of people who would be upset about that, but that isn't what is happening here. It's one thing for an adblocker to set a threshold for acceptable advertising, it's entirely another for them both dupe paying customers and allow advertisers to buy there way around the filter.
Adblock plus does the same thing (Score:2)
Adblock Plus demands cash from websites to whitelist ads | http://www.digitaltrends.com/w... [digitaltrends.com]
Is that extortion? the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A German court says it isn't. http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/... [pagefair.com]
Still stinks, but. People use adblockers to block ads. Not to only see ads where the advertiser greases the palm of so
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Afaik ABP is still free to users so they are only being paid by one party Crystal is now being paid by 2 parties.
I don't like that.
His Twitter handle is ''Crafty Deano''. Figures! (Score:2)
iTunes says nothing about letting certain ads through: "Crystal is a content blocker for iPhone & iPad designed to make the mobile web a great experience. It blocks Adverts, User Tracking and improves speed, data use and battery life of your device as a result." Dece
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Crystal == whores (Score:3)
No longer top ad blocking app. (Score:5, Interesting)
Me, I'm a bit miffed that I finally upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 9 so that I could install an ad-blocker, but then find that the 4S doesn't support ad blockers because it doesn't have a 64-bit chip. I have no idea why an ad blocker would require that. Some claim it needs high performance, but that doesn't make sense - surely blocking an ad reduces the performance required to display a page? Don't get it, seems like Apple just arbitrarily decided that ad blocking needs a modern device as an upgrade driver.
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...and Crystal plummets out of sight in 3...2...1... Me, I'm a bit miffed that I finally upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS 9 so that I could install an ad-blocker, but then find that the 4S doesn't support ad blockers because it doesn't have a 64-bit chip. I have no idea why an ad blocker would require that. Some claim it needs high performance, but that doesn't make sense - surely blocking an ad reduces the performance required to display a page? Don't get it, seems like Apple just arbitrarily decided that ad blocking needs a modern device as an upgrade driver.
Further proof that support for consumer electronics these days ages in dog years.
Just get a refund and find one that works (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I use Firefox/Adblock Edge so have never paid for an ad blocker.
iPad mini - left behind (Score:2)
Since my iPad mini was Left Behind (Apple says 32 bit devices do not support native ad-blocking), I bought Weblock, which works with my older device. Seems to be working well so far, and also works with Google Chrome, which is my preferred browser.
Pay-for-access idea (Score:2)
How about an ad blocker that charges advertisers per view to let their ads be seen, and pays users a portion of that (say split it 10% to the blocker's developer, half the remainder to the site and half to the user) if they allow the ads to be shown to them. If the advertiser wants more views, they can either a) make more interesting ads that people actually want to see or b) offer more money for people's attention.
Re:Pay-for-access idea (Score:4, Insightful)
How about an ad blocker that blocks ads.
Fund the websites (Score:3)
People are prepared to pay money to block ads, and advertisers are prepared to pay money to keep ads being displayed. How about using some of that money to pay for maintenance of the websites that have blocked ads?
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what's wrong (Score:3)
Here is what's wrong with all this bullshit in one sentence:
If your company wants to show me ads, you pay me for my time and attention.
Not some software developer, not some marketing company that promises to bypass all my filters, not some spammer who will flood my inbox, not anyone who basically made it a profession to show me crap that I don't want to see.
You are using my time, my resources, my attention, you want to get inside my brain, put a message into my memory. Why don't you nitwits not get the very simple conclusion that you should put money into my pocket to make that happen?
So here's an idea (Score:2)
What if advertisers paid ME, directly, to see their ads? If some kind of system like that were in place, I would consider turning off my ad blocker.
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Go straight to the hosts file... (Score:2)
And this is why ad-blocking should be done at the hosts file level... Oh, you can't do that with an iOS device? Well, well, well...
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isn't that like sucking from both ends of a pipe at the same time?
It's like sucking from both ends of something at the same time.
Something like a giant, pus-ridden cock connected directly to an anus.
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I'd rather think of them as the arms dealer who sells to both sides.
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I'd rather think of them as the arms dealer who sells to both sides.
Good analogy. Time to see or re-read George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara."
Except it's selling to all three sides. The consumer. The advertizer. The cellular carrier you pay for the bandwidth to download the ads. It's as bad as paying for incoming calls on a cell phone.
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We could kick it up a notch and offer an app blocker for unethical apps.
Just like cable. (Score:3)
Just like cable.
Privelege to be FREE of infestation #1/2... apk (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a SMALL partial only sample of OpenBid & other ad networks malware makers have taken advantage of to infect you with:
http://www.itworld.com/securit... [itworld.com]
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co... [sophos.com]
http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o... [zdnet.com]
http://search.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023... [cnet.com]
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co... [sophos.com]
http://www.securityweek.com/ea... [securityweek.com]
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m... [wired.com]
http://www.theregiste [theregister.co.uk]
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A lot of the content people want isn't the web site's original work, it's the contributions of the thousands of users of the web site. Like Slashdot -- I'm really not here for TFA, I'm here for the discussion that occurs about the TFA.
Why should I pay the web site owner for content they didn't generate? Nobody would visit the site if it wasn't for the unpaid contributors.
I get that sites cost money to run, but making the people who make your web site valuable through their contributions of content pay wit
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Why is this moderated as 'troll'? (Score:2)
Parent simply looks like a nuanced opinion -possibly one that's not too popular here- to me.
Nothing in there that even remotely looks like trolling.