Apple isn't blocking ads per se. They're reducing effectiveness of ads that don't respect user's privacy. The other kind of ads (e.g. sponsored videos, privacy friendly ads, etc) could still work.
I don't think ads that don't respect user's privacy are a necessary evil.
Out of curiosity, can you give examples of privacy friendly ads that indie devs can use?
If you write a game that the streamer/producer really enjoys, they might even continue to play your game after the sponsorship ends. This is the dream scenario because it’s free advertising that can sustain your game long term. These content creators can also provide a lot of valuable feedback because they tend to become experts at your game over a long period of time.
https://www.wired.com/story/can-killing-cookies-save-journal...
I mean Google (the ad company) spent a lot of R&D money into making browsers and the internet faster. For me it means the internet is faster, for them they get more ad impressions and goodwill. Win-win, although they ballsed up the goodwill part.
Overall the Web is in much worse place, with decentralized hyperdocuments replaced with centralized application server model. FB and Google turned internet into AOL.
You think advertising is 'evil'?
How far do you take that? For example does a listing in a local newspaper advertising a law cutting service count as evil? Is any form of telling people that you off a product or service really an act of evil?
Maybe they do, but using the idiom “necessary evil” doesn’t make it certain that they do. Probably nearly nothing colloquially described as a “necessary evil” is actually “evil”. It can be only a pain or an annoyance, but required.
>[…] the use of the term "evil" in the phrase does not necessarily indicate that the thing being characterized as a "necessary evil" is something that is generally considered an "evil" in the sense of being immoral or the enemy of the good.
I'm not saying that all advertising is bad either, it's the specific case of B2C online advertising that compromises privacy and massively reduces the signal:noise ratio of the platform you're using. Sales and marketing aren't inherently bad in themselves, obviously.
There isn't really an alternative here. People won't pay for apps.
Also - ads not 'evil' - or rather, it's what people generally chose over paying 50 cents a month, and it's absolutely a choice on our (ie consumer) part.
The problem ironically has to do with relevance. People don't mind relevant ads, but in order to have relevant ads, networks need a lot of personal information. Ugly paradox.
And yes, spammy web pages/apps full of terrible, spammy ads - this is really of no benefit to anyone.
It would be nice if they worked towards fixing that.
If we undo the damage caused by FB and Google we can go back to a healthy market where people pay for things with money instead of their privacy.
Hotmail started the war on people paying for email clients long before gmail
Really? I see far more paywalls now than I did 5-10y ago
I'd say that I'm cautiously optimistic about this, especially if it's self-interested. They're less likely to change their mind later if they actually benefit from it vs. empty posturing.
See Google's "Do No Evil" for a counter-example.