> I'm going to keep repeating this because everyone seems to frame the debate in the wrong terms.
As it turns out, you're guilty of the same thing everyone else is, because you've absolutely missed the point of enabling ad blockers on iPhone
For Apple, it serves two purposes, both of which are hugely anti-competitive. They'll most likely get away with it, due to the fact that they have a minority share of the global smartphone market, but the effect on the marketplace will be drastic.
1) This is an attack on the open web. No matter what anyone says about minority report advertising, ad-supported content is a boon to the public good in that it encourages more sharing and more open sharing of information. Yes, you can go too far, but ad-blockers drastically change the market dynamic. Even the conscientious advertiser is punished by the extremes, which means that the market can not respond to user preferences for ads. In the app store, no such technology will exist, and as such it drives content creators into the walled garden of eden of monetization. There, the market will adapt, and you will be stuck with ads no matter what your preference is, and will have to support ads to the same level as the average user.
2) This is an attack on Google, in many ways. On the one hand it gives Apple an above-average position in the case of their ad network when on their platform (lock-in), on the other hand by starving the open web, they are ultimately starving the future of Google's search technology, helping to erase that advantage.
If we want to go down this route, everyone should be demanding that Apple enable content blockers in apps themselves.
Neither desktop Chrome nor desktop Firefox are pushing their own, competing method of distributing content that can't be adblocked and that they take a 30% cut on. Also, Firefox at least didn't intentionally add support for adblocking, they just had a powerful add-on system and didn't deliberately stop it.
Apple is deliberately adding support for it on the web whilst pushing people to distribution channels they control that they don't allow adblocking on, and that they get a cut of the revenue from.
As it turns out, you're guilty of the same thing everyone else is, because you've absolutely missed the point of enabling ad blockers on iPhone
For Apple, it serves two purposes, both of which are hugely anti-competitive. They'll most likely get away with it, due to the fact that they have a minority share of the global smartphone market, but the effect on the marketplace will be drastic.
1) This is an attack on the open web. No matter what anyone says about minority report advertising, ad-supported content is a boon to the public good in that it encourages more sharing and more open sharing of information. Yes, you can go too far, but ad-blockers drastically change the market dynamic. Even the conscientious advertiser is punished by the extremes, which means that the market can not respond to user preferences for ads. In the app store, no such technology will exist, and as such it drives content creators into the walled garden of eden of monetization. There, the market will adapt, and you will be stuck with ads no matter what your preference is, and will have to support ads to the same level as the average user.
2) This is an attack on Google, in many ways. On the one hand it gives Apple an above-average position in the case of their ad network when on their platform (lock-in), on the other hand by starving the open web, they are ultimately starving the future of Google's search technology, helping to erase that advantage.
If we want to go down this route, everyone should be demanding that Apple enable content blockers in apps themselves.