Marco Arment drops top-selling iOS content blocker, Peace

Marco Arment drops top-selling iOS content blocker, Peace

Just two days after releasing perhaps the best iOS content blocker, Peace, Marco Arment has pulled it from the App Store:

Achieving this much success with Peace just doesn’t feel good, which I didn’t anticipate, but probably should have. 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.

Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn’t serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we’re going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app.

The arguments over the positives and negatives of iOS content blockers are a hot mess. See this piece by Nilay Patel, but I think John Gruber is right when it comes to the affect content blockers will have on smaller outlets.

Back to Marco: Peace was built on a very strong platform built by Ghostery, but it wasn’t editable like Ghostery’s desktop counterpart. You could go in a whitelist individual sites to allow ads from those you trust. That’s something you should definitely consider doing in other iOS content blockers.

Marco ultimately decided it’s best to just get out of the storm before it gets worse, and it most certainly will. He deserves a great deal of respect for that.