I suspect if they made it a terms of service violation to block adds they could fairly effectively police smartphone apps. If nothing else it would be interesting to see them try.
I am also of the opinion that a vary cheap add blocking option say 1$/month would prevent most people from jumping though many hoops for add-block software.
I agree with what you're saying, but you really don't have to "jump through hoops" to get ad-block software. It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension.
I think the better argument is that most people don't know/care for ad-blocking software. I think AdBlock and its alternatives are prevalent in the tech community, but we're just a small part of total users.
>It takes about 30 seconds to install an ad-blocking extension.
I'd be willing wager that those 30 seconds of barrier would deter like 70-80% of the computer using population. Very few people as a whole know or are comfortable with browser extensions.
If it was only a dollar or two per month and not a -complete- pain in the ass to sign up for, I'd probably pay anyway.
I wonder if you could encourage the people who hate ads but would happily take a legitimate option by detecting ad blockers and instead of haranguing them for it, put up a polite advert for how to legitimise their ad free usage? (thinking in general, not just for twitter)
That's a good idea. Just the other day I turned off Ad-Block on the Let's Play Archive (http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/) because they had a little banner message that asked me nicely if I would consider it.
Is it wrong that I blame IE for a lot of this? I feel like IE was a major factor in ramming the "DON'T INSTALL TOOLBARS / ACTIVEX ADD-ONS NOT NO WAY NOT NO HOW" knowledge down consumers' throats (and that still remains good advice).
Most people aren't even aware that they could be experiencing the web ad-free. It just never even occurs to them that should a thing could be possible.
On the other hand, that is the status quo of the web (cf. AdBlock) and it mostly works.