Top iOS9 Ad Blocker Is Pulled From Apple App Store — by Its Regretful Creator
The battle between advertising and ad blocking has been oversimplified. It’s become a conflict over whether ads are good or not. And on Friday a major face of the ad-blocking side decided he wanted out of the fight.
Two days after Apple began letting people install apps to block ads within its Safari web browser, the man who created Peace, the most popular iOS9 ad blocker to date — early Tumblr developer and Instapaper creator Marco Arment — decided to pull the app that cost publishers their ad revenue and people $2.99 to download.
In a blog post published Friday announcing the decision, Mr. Arment explained that he didn’t feel good about Peace’s success because as much as it improves people’s web-browsing experiences, it also hurts people that make a living from the ads his app blocked. The main problem with Peace was that it blocked all ads as opposed to blocking the biggest offenders and giving less objectionable ads a pass.
