Cosmetic filtering and script injection both work fine, they’re just off by default. Everybody works around rule count limits by making the one app register itself as like six different “Safari extensions”, it’s just clutter not a limitation. It requires no permissions up front and later permissions only granularly and rarely, for me only on YouTube, while the Firefox version does require unrestricted access to all domains. I have never seen a “dynamic filtering capability” it lacks or an ad it can’t block, do you have any examples?
Brave has certainly said a lot of good things while doing quite [0] a lot [1] of bad [2] things [3] that make me think it's mostly just marketing to lower-knowledge users that's carrying it forward. I see so many 'privacy' influencers that recommend it and Chromium, and then Firefox with no mention of FOSS options like LibreWolf, Tor Browser, IronFox, etc
Yep, I don't trust Brave. A web browser holds so much power over your digital life that it cannot be entrusted to a company that consistently and egregiously compromises its ethics for profit. Most of these examples border on scam behaviour... par for the course for the cryptocurrency space!
For all their faults, Mozilla has never done anything that holds a candle to the kinds of stunts Brave keeps pulling.
Brave also has native rust based psudo reimplementation of ublock, so it also doesnt necessarily need the functionality to accomplish what most people end up needing it for.
Regarding the cosmetic filtering and scriptlet injection, are these even relevant? Most uBO users already give full access to the extension, so they'll probably do the same to uBOL to (most permissions + complete filtering mode). So basically they will have these features anyway.
What I like about uBO Lite in Safari is that I can use it without allowing it access to any of my data (it works in a purely declarative mode if you want). Even if it’s unlikely that uBO would be sold to a sketchy company, at least this provides protection against any supply chain attacks.
Yes, that was Google’s justification for killing MV2. It isn’t wrong, of course, but I insist on defining my own security posture and I prioritize adblocking.
FYI uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is inferior to AdGuard and (I think) Wipr as it's just a WebExtension, so it'll only block ads within Safari itself.
AdGuard and Wipr use both the Web Extension and Content Blocker APIs, so they'll block ads in all web views system wide on top of within Safari itself.
However as far as trustworthiness goes, uBlock is (imo) #1.
wBlock by an MIT student is open source and seems (just!) about as trustworthy as uBlock, though of course without the track record. Light & fast, especially to update.
“wBlock runs entirely within Safari's content blocking API. There's no data collection, no tracking, and no system-level extensions that can monitor your browsing.“
Nice, last time I heard about wblock felt like years ago and I'm not sure why I didn't consider it.
These days I don't run on-device adblock, I just do DNS filtering for the most part but I'll check it out, not sure I wanna keep tunneling all my DNS queries to ControlD perpetually lol
It's funny to me that some find that narrative appealing.
Here's another narrative: Many of those MIT students go on to be SV founders and employees who build, operate, and make millions or billions from the mass surveillance and ad industry. And I'm sure some participated in FOSS in college - what better way to build your resume for the surveillance/ad industry?
(I'm not commenting on the wBlock developer; I think all such narratives are deceiving and should be ignored.)
The "narrative" above is that they're both made by seemingly well-intentioned solo developers, that's it. Use your own judgement for something that wants to inject JS into every website you visit.
No offense to the author, but I don't trust a college kid the same way I trust the team behind uBlock. The latter have a well-established track record with substantial external eyes (including Firefox directly.)
I think Wipr is also very trustworthy. It’s developed by an indie dev who’s responsive over email, and gives you a lot for free. And it has a $5/yr subscription (or one time payment) that unlocks system-wide ad blocking, not just in web views.
I’ve found it to work exceptionally well after trying other free adblockers.
Yeah my comment wasn't me trying to say they weren't trustworthy, I've actually purchased both AdGuard and Wipr but I stick with AdGuard since I felt like it was better. And the dev of Wipr seems to be transparent for sure.
However of the three I trust AdGuard the least, for no objective reasons.
uBOL doesn't work in apps, it works only in Safari, it's a pure browser extension, the "app" part of uBOL is an Apple requirement just for the sake of installing the extension.
Copied from #408:
uBOL will stay a webextensions-based browser extension, I do not plan to go further than this, I do not have the time and motivation to take on more work than I already do.
What people may ask though is that Apple maybe supports webextensions in WebApp, if that is possible at all.
I hope this changes, it’s what keeps me on AdGuard :-/
I have been happy with my workaround for this issue which is using uBOL along side the AdGuard content blocker extensions (main AdGuard web extension disabled).
Also, if you use Orion Browser, they did implement the full Manifest v2 extension spec on top of WebKit, which lets you use full uBlock origin directly.
This is why I started using the Orion browser. It's not perfect, I've had a few freezes and occasional weird behavior but well within the "tolerable" range for me, and not noticably worse than the glitches that any ad blocker causes on some sites.
This is not a true uBlock Origin. It's a best effort attempt at converting UBO rules to Apple's declarative blocking framework, but is nowhere near as capable as actual UBO.
Yes, in practice I have noticed no difference between uBO and uBOL. The only thing I've seen it not block are Twtich ads which the normal uBO doesn't block anyway.
There are probably additional things behind the scenes just due to the limitations of uBOL but you again in practice don't see it.
Technically, Firefox Focus (a separate browser for iOS) includes an adblocker feature that can be applied system wide via iOS's content blockers subsystem. This was released in the late 2010s.
Firefox including it is likely just reducing the steps required.
What Orion's doing is horribly hacky and prone to cause issues with a multitude of addons, and of course Mozilla shouldn't bow to Apple's incredibly anti-competitive behavior.
You pay apple for a phone that can act more-or-less as a general purpose computer with apps. Apple should let you install the apps you want, and that they don't do so is insulting.
The fact that the EU and Japan ruled it illegal, and Apple responded by only changing it in those two countries instead of all countries is doubly insulting.
Not only that, but the "entitlement" (Apple lingo for code-signature flag that grants capabilities) needed to publish a browser effectively requires to be an established company, ensuring hobbyists can't really get there with an open-source project even though the sources of Firefox are available and could technically be ported.
It goes well beyond requiring an established company. It's so onerous that no company has yet successfully navigated all the gates required - even Google. Apple is maliciously complying with the EU's Digital Rights Act, and many years later, the EU has not concluded its investigations. I am incredibly disappointed.
I don’t care why they do it. It’s just nice that their interests and my interests are aligned on this.
I care about the open web and see setting Google up for a monopoly on web browsers to be just about the worst thing that could happen. A duopoly isn’t much better, but it is better.
We need laws that make Apple's business model illegal. No more walled gardens, including game consoles. If you sell a Universal Machine (or product containing a Universal Machine), then the owner/purchaser/leasee must have full control of the Universal Machine.
Just like the laws against bad cars are called "Lemon Laws," call these new laws against bad Universal Machines "Apple Laws." Forever memorialize AAPL in this negative light to warn its future successors what happens when you act in anti-customer ways even when technically not illegal to do so.
By the same logic, we could also use "Anthropic Laws" to curb the nanny-moralism of model guardrails too!
Are they? I've built a few Firefox extension and I cannot recall any part of the API that is Gecko-specific. While parts of the API aren't entirely browser-agnostic, they definitely seem to be engine-agnostic.
True, but I don't see how that answers the original question of "why does Firefox not support extensions on iOS?". Clearly extensions can run on WebKit. I assume it has much more to do with Apple restrictions rather than with the fact addons are built for Gecko.
The law that requires allowing alternative browsers, the DMA, applies to the entire EU.
But I believe there are still zero third party browsers, to publish their browser in the EU Mozilla need an EU development team because developers outside the EU are unable to install it, and Mozilla cannot publish it as their existing app. Enforcement is taking years.
Their approach yielded arguably the least exploitable general purpose computing devices that people ever actually wanted, without making people feel they were crippled, in a market where there are thousands of alternatives.
It's been wildly successful and, like nearly everyone, I'm fine it.
:( where’s the hacker ethos here? I suppose you have a nice Linux machine or something you customize as you see fit, and you can make calls and listen to podcasts on your phone and that’s good enough for on the go…?
I want grandma to have a locked-down iPhone but I want to be able to go through a process to be able to own my own iPhone. Doesn’t feel fine to have something crippled unless maybe it’s rented or something. Or my phone’s in an HOA.
It’s a combination of Stockholm syndrome, having an expensive phone as a status symbol, and corporate worshiping.
It also makes me “:(“ when I think of an alternate reality of where phones were as customizable and open as a plain old desktop. Open boot loader, manu supported open drivers (no blobs).
Makes me seriously consider Ubuntu touch / graphene or something else and a $200 low end / 2nd hand locked-down phone for everything else.
>It’s a combination of Stockholm syndrome, having an expensive phone as a status symbol, and corporate worshiping.
Can any amount of pain cure stupid? I am still so baffled that AAPL is as market successful as they are, that I am forced to hate-long their stock while never buying their products (and telling others to not buy them either, which is going about as you would expect).
The warden is making the prison just nice enough to not cause riots, to put it vividly.
Most people won’t care or understand about this openness. Their needs are satisfied with the limitations. Similar to other freedoms we have (at least in the US), like speech, assembly.
I think it will take very brazen acts on Apple’s part (or other gatekeepers) to get the everyday Joe/Jane to care about things enough to learn more or look for alternatives.
Things like blocking certain websites, removing super popular apps for not following monopolistic rules
Both Ubuntu and GrapheneOS don't allow you to fully control you phone like Linux desktop does. However Librem 5/Pinephone can run PureOS/postmarketOS that do.
Sure, but even when (or if) it these issues get fixed, it will all be academic unless the devices can run the apps that normies want (or "need"). Up to and including the OS-level wallet app that unbricks the NFC chip, and all the banking and similar "high-security" apps that increasingly require some kind of device attestation to run at all. The trend is all in one direction.
It's easy to say, "Just don't use that stuff". But if everyone wants ("needs") it and we don't have it, then we're left with a <1% user base of activists and eccentrics. And at that point we've lost all influence on the ongoing slide towards surveillance dystopia. It's dispiriting. I'm just hoping that somehow I've got something wrong in this pessimistic analysis.
If and when I want a device I can tinker endlessly with, that’s very available to me already.
I have some of them.
What I don’t have is a desire to actively deny consumers a “just works” option that is extremely safe and reliable. No caveats. That would be of minor benefit to me and a detriment to many millions of people in general.
The market spoke, and a huge number of people want those. That’s fine and should remain their choice to make.
The real tragedy of outlawing Apples approach is that the only reason people want this ability is because Apple created this whole package that everyone wants.
tldr; It’s an extraordinarily selfish thing to insist on at everyone else’s expense. I’m ok doing without the one thing.
>If and when I want a device I can tinker endlessly with, that’s very available to me already.
>What I don’t have is a desire to actively deny consumers a “just works” option that is extremely safe and reliable. No caveats.
False dichotomy. Nothing about the latter means the former can't also be possible. Apple products disrespect customers in the name of the latter, telling them the former is dangerous and must be limited. I am concluding that only iron fisted pro-customer sovereignty "Apple Laws" can stop Apple and similar, as their customers themselves can't muster a wallet revolt against this business model.
Those two things are mutually exclusive here. You can't have that ecosystem and all the things people buy it for and have unrestricted control of it all. Those can't exist together.
And iPhone buyers aren't an oppressed people. They bought what they wanted in a market with alternatives.
The only anti-consumer position here is that those people should not be allowed to have that, anymore.
I view Apple platform as crippling, and Google jealously trying to [slowly] pursue the same cripple model. Just because most customers are not educated enough to see the crippling aspects, doesn't mean it's not there. Sleek shiny-ness tends to hide that for normies.
Disclosure: proud GrapheneOS and Qubes OS user and never-subscriber.
Until recently Apple only allowed Webkit on iOS. In the EU and Japan now they allow proprietary engines. But this means Mozilla needs to put in all the extra effort to maintain yet another branch for iOS with all the features, for an even more limited user base in those regions alone.
My current excuse? Android (the only current realistic alternative; I don't have the time nor care to fiddle with technical details on a device that I need to be a reliable tool. I'm not afraid of going deep on something less standard, Linux has been my daily driven OS for literally decades) is trash and untrustworthy in my experience. Browser extensions alone are not nearly enough to tip the scale for me to go back to it. As mentioned I use something that provides extension support already (from a browser that has far fewer developers working on it!), which is why I find it stupid that Mozilla won't figure out a way to do it themselves.
Where do I buy this device that does let me run any software I want?
Most Android phones don't even let users unlock the bootloader anymore. And if you do unlock the bootloader, now Google Pay doesn't work, among other things. I don't really feel like being in control of what software I use when the software I actually want refuses to run. F-Droid homepage is also concerning.
The one I'm typing this on right now reliably handles all the functions I need and lets me run any software I want. While not everyone's needs will be met by it, let's not paint a picture that hasn't been generally true for many years now already.
Fair enough and good for you. My point was that currently your only options are either giving up a freedom to run the software you want, or losing utility. In neither case I feel like being in control. The war is over and the users lost.
I don't personally agree with Apple's decisions, but you "vote with wallet" people need to have at least some modicum of empathy before you start demanding that people have a lot for you and join your cause.
No. Just because I gave you an answer that doesn't satisfy you, doesn't give you the right.
People don't care about the same things you do, so they want to keep the current phone, they just want added functionality. You're gonna have to do better than to just being an asshole about it and calling it "excuses".
> Ads shown on search engine results pages, including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search providers
There are many subpar adblockers available both built into browsers on iOS and as extensions. uBlock Origin Lite for Safari remains the best mobile adblocker on iOS, I suppose.
Search result ads are some of the most harmful ads, and Google's ads in particular are probably the number one cause of fraud, scams, and malware on the entire planet. It's a shame that Firefox whitelisted these, but I'm sure they did it both because Google pays for their existence but also Apple themselves probably wagged their finger for some reason.
Wipr is the best adblocker on iOS that I’ve tested. Indie dev, gives you a lot for free, has a way to block outside of web views too. Big fan, I never had consistent ad blocking experience on iOS until I used it
I have AdGuard DNS set up (mainly use HaGeZi lists) for system wide blocking + AdGuard content blockers to catch some web ads and annoyances that cannot be caught via DNS.
Works very well, it’s been a good long while since any ad cheapened my web experience.
Also a big Wipr fan, and generally a fan of the indie dev behind it too because it works so well. They’ve been responsive over email so you might be able to request a feature
For those reading this, it does not work with Firefox (or anything not safari it seems). Wish I had looked that up before excitedly purchasing it lol but so it goes, seems like a good project so I’m considering it a $5 donation
Edit: looks like starting with ios26 they have “filtr” mode which extends more broadly to other apps but “stick to safari for best results”
So they still don't support the Content Blocker API? Wouldn't that have been easier? Then I could use whichever lists or providers (Adguard, uBlock, etc.) that I want.
But advertising is the source of funding that many content creators rely on to make a living... Of course I don’t want Meta and Google profiting from mind-manipulating ads, but where is better business model? Crypto micropayments?
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
I agree that they’re evil and there are legitimate reasons to use ad blockers. But ("But" is such an unwelcomed word here) we need a better business model than ads to support free content creators, if we want to push back against The Advertisers.
It's called paying for shit. Like we used to before everything went ad driven. You'd go and buy a magazine or a book or a newspaper. (Ironically, you often still got ads though, ugh).
The advertising business model destroyed any possible alternative, like Google Maps destroyed virtually all commercial maps, by providing products "for free" with costs well hidden from the public. Yet those costs exist and burden the society even more by removing the competition and enabling monopolies.
Who knows which products and business models would exist without it? The (actually free, non-monopolized) market would show us. I wish it could and am curious, too.
Yeah this is a pain. Good people who do good work and aren't responsible for figuring out some micropayments ecosystem for the rest of us are reliant on advertising.
Maybe "content creation" shouldn't be a day job? Maybe "content creators" should get real productive day jobs while the space is open for the creators who do it out of passion and love... for free and without ads? What if some of the high cost of goods we're seeing right now is due to too many non-productive consumers (middle managers, service workers, "content creators," etc.) at the expense of not enough producers (people taking things out of the ground and converting them to useful goods)?
Maybe strong anti-advertising laws are in order? No accepting pay to parrot a message, or at least heavily taxing such arrangements if allowed? IMO the only place I should ever see an ad is when I go to some YellowPages directory, like plumber ads when I look up plumbers. There should be a Nutrition Facts like description of costs, service or product description, etc, in lieu of pretty art and slogans for us thinkers. Never should I see an ad on random web pages, billboards, newspapers, entertainment media, etc. Imagine the ills banning advertising would reduce... like the data surveillance & brokering industry!
>not enough producers (people taking things out of the ground and converting them to useful goods)
This is an oddly outdated vision of progress IMO. Indeed a dematerialized economy of "content creation" among other things, where less of the dollars involve "taking things out of the ground" (and dumping them back there), is somewhat utopian from an environmental point of view.
With AI I am reconsidering my stance on micropayments.
I recently loaded up a few dollars on Deepseek to try it out, and the value I got out of it far surpassed my balance lost (tens of cents). If this is a sustainable business model for Deepseek (I'm not sure yet), then this shifts the economics: in this scenario I feel totally fine paying pocket change for something valuable.
We already know google's searches cost orders of magnitude less than serving an AI model, so there is no reason to believe micropayments couldn't work there too. Of course, advertisements make Google a lot more money than micropayments, so they never tried it, but I suspect that while they might not work in all scenarios they are underexplored as a monetizing strategy.
I feel like website owners could band together and along with search engines figure out tiers for people viewing their content (free, minimal fee, larger fee, etc).
And some publishers would choose that, others would form different coalitions and say: get a subscription and you get access to xyz content, just like with streaming etc. It would need cooperation, so maybe the idea is already dead in the water, but the web being the realm of advertising is not set in stone.
I like the idea of micro payments, but I don't think they'll take off versus existing ad/subscription models. The problem is economics: the vast majority of people are simply unwilling to pay even a cent. Part of this is people don't know the brand to feel comfortable spending money on random sites (I recall a comic where a user was deliberating heavily on a $0.99 app after easily buying a $7 coffee). Part of this is also the shape of the economy where most people just don't have spare income.
The fraction of people who are willing to pay a cent are likely to be willing to pay considerably more. It is much, much more lucrative to get those people into subscriptions, where they will keep buying -- potentially for years.
So for most businesses, they'd likely earn less revenue via micro payments, which means it's unlikely they'll get widespread adoption.
This is the kind of “better internet” I want. Compared with ads, I’d much rather have a 0.05 dollar paywall.
But for this to work, the technology has to be built on crypto micropayments. The total cost and friction of traditional payment systems, including online payment services like PayPal, would make this impossible. I think this is also one of the design goals behind Web3 and Project Xanadu.
If you live in a developing country and frequently make or receive cross-border payments in currencies other than USD, you’ll understand that's not the case. The fees and compliance burden of traditional financial system still represent a huge cost in cross-border trade. These costs kill micropayments.
I’m bullish on oracles and cryptography-secured monetary systems.
It is psychological security too. Most ads are manipulative inducements to expend money that could otherwise be more cerebrally spent elsewhere (or saved even). Our goal as individuals is expense reduction, which is an economic strategy that is diametrically opposed by any individual or business reliant on you spending money. Ads are the vector where psychological games can be played to erode our default economic strategy. Ads are an evil most don't recognize, and need more controls than firearms even!
I swear Firefox for iOS already blocked the vast majority of ads for me until a few weeks ago. But then suddenly, a lot of pages where I didn't see a single ad before became unusably swarmed with them. Am I the only one?
Blocking ads wholesale is a terrible idea and unnecessary. What needs to be blocked is ads that execute client-side javascript (consuming your memory and cpu), ads that consume too much network bandwidth and so on. Ads are necessary so that content producers can generate income, without it they won't produce quality content. When you block abusive ads (as opposed to all ads), advertisers are encouraged to make their ads less abusive. Content producers get paid and you get to enjoy the content for free. Everyone wins.
> When you block abusive ads (as opposed to all ads), advertisers are encouraged to make their ads less abusive.
Ads were made abusive, malicious, and dangerous WELL before ad blockers existed. Ad blockers are a response to abusive, malicious, and dangerous advertising. Sadly there are very few reliable ways to whitelist trustworthy advertising. Google and Facebook et al. have all served harmful advertising at some point.
It's too late to turn this around. All trust is lost with advertisers, and to be honest, I'm not sure a system based on trust was ever going to work anyway. Content creators must now create new ways to derive value from their work. Perhaps we go back to an internet where people wrote blogs and posted pictures not for money, but as a hobby. I think that was a better internet.
Youtube paid works. People pay, get no ads. Kagi so far seems to be doing well for search too. One model may not work for all content types but to say that there is no alternative is straight up not true.
No. All ads, and I mean all ads, must be blocked. Our children must be raised to hate the product and brand that is shoved in their faces by an advertisement. I already keep mental notes of what ads I see alot and never, ever expend money on those brands or products. The fastest way to get me to never ever buy your brand, product, or service is to show me ads for it, and I want to spread my thought process to others so you have to actually make something decent that can spread word-of-mouth... rather than something to advertise.
I care about having a general purpose web content blocker. I use it for blocking all kinds of things that aren't ads, like YouTube comment sections, random noisy useless cruft I don't care about, etc.
There are multiple standarss for better advertisements[1][2] and AdBlock Plus introduced "acceptable ads" whitelisting if your ad meets one of the criteria.[3] Consumers do not want this and this "acceptable ads" policy is what caused the shift from AdBlock Plus to uBlock Origin.
I'd rather the government sponsor a roundtable between advertisers/browser manufacturers to discuss coming up with a legally protected "acceptable ads" programme to be enforced by default without causing antitrust problems.
If the content would be really high quality and exceptional, people would pay for it. But if it close to something people publish even without ads, then they don’t pay for it.
I’d be happy for a content producer wide subscription that would disable ads on all participating sites. As long as that doesn’t exist, I’m happy with my adblocker.
Next to that, my device, my choice what I get to see and what I don’t get to see.
No. I will not discriminate between which ads I block when neither the site operators nor the ad networks discriminate on what they host. The moment i turn off my ad block I’m up to my eyeballs in lies and scams and garbage. No. Thanks.
This ad funded internet needs to die. It is rotten to the core and advertising is the source of almost all the evils of the modern web. As long as enough of the general public continues to not Adblock I’ll enjoy my free ride.
If I allocated proportionally pieces of $5 to my favorite content producers a month they would get orders of magnitude more than what they get from me watching ads.
I hate ads, I hate the experience of having something in between me and what I want to do, having random images sent through my eyeballs, etc. So no, not everyone wins with advertising.
Google et al make more money (or at least think they do) through advertising and eschew micropayments for this reason, but that doesn't make micropayments unprofitable. And I don't want things for free if it means watching ads.
Firefox was a mainstream browser. After it stopped being one, it did what all the other browsers did: bake adblock within. Even now they do so with trepidation.
Same, if anyone figures out what the about:config toggle for this is (does that exist on Firefox iOS or is that a missing feature like how Firefox iOS is missing every other feature?), please share it so I can consider finally moving back from Orion and its myriad bugs and quirks.
> Sponsored content on the Firefox Home or New Tab page
Not ideal, but (at least on desktop) you can set the Home page to a blank page, and there is an extension called 'Blank New Tab' that I've been using for quite a while.
Google's only reason for keeping Mozilla on life support is to avoid the argument of being a total and complete browser monopoly.
Firefox's global traffic market share is less than double digits [0] and is less than 5%. Google technically doesn't need traffic from Firefox and Google is roughly paying half a billion ($585M) a year for it. [1]
This doesn't make sense as Edge is a bigger browser than Firefox and competes with Google in the browser space. What Google pays for the traffic is less than what the traffic is worth (Google profits a lot too).
Well, not bad. But it's not uBlock, and Safari's blocker is already working fine for me. Brave's also been doing this for years. But at least it's something.
Firefox on iOS has a terrible problem with its autocomplete (I think they replaced the algo with a janky Llm-style autocomplete). When I type “news” into the url bar, it will suggest one of it’s marketing partners (or whatever) but incorrectly such as: newsyorker.com
I dont ever visit The New Yorker but even after clearing caches and site data the problem still persists. I can delete the app and the problem goes away for a short while.
I left a review on the App Store about this and the person (bot?) they hire to respond to reviews asks me to open a ticket. No! How about you port my review over as a ticket and fix your damn software.
That may give firefox a bit of percentage back, since some folks can not stand ads anymore. Google garnered a lot of opposition to its evil rule by destroying ublock origin (on chrome).
good time to remember firefox mobile (specially ios) does not have reproducible builds!
on android, f-doid fennec and all other forks do! it's not even hard, so in my view this "is a feature" for mozilla.
then, further remember one person from the board was involved in AdBlock extension who charged firms 1mi to "whitelist good ads". my emoloyer at the time paid under a nda.
still better than nothing (and who am i kidding? 99% here chose to use chrome on their main machine)
I have been, on desktop and back when I used Android. When I kicked deGoogled Android out of my life and went to iOS where most things Just Work ™ and I could stop thinking about my phone and its bugs, I had to start using Orion because Firefox iOS sucks so much.
This news from TFA is the biggest step in the right direction; I might be able to use Firefox mobile again finally.
I didn't downvote you, but your post has no useful information and looks like pure Firefox bashing for no reason. You don't tell why you switched, to what, what you gained. Not even mentioning that wherever you switched, your protection against ads and tracking must have become worse, as only Firefox supports Ublock Origin.
In case anyone here missed it, there's a native Ublock Origin for Safari. It works great → https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
Mostly so, it's got all the limitations of Manifest V3 which prevents it from doing a good bit of blocking, https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section
In particular:
* Cannot use all filter lists simultaneously (rule limits apply)
* No cosmetic filtering in the default mode
* No scriptlet injection by default
* Limited dynamic filtering capabilities
* Requires broader host permissions upfront
But it's definitely still better than no adblockers
Cosmetic filtering and script injection both work fine, they’re just off by default. Everybody works around rule count limits by making the one app register itself as like six different “Safari extensions”, it’s just clutter not a limitation. It requires no permissions up front and later permissions only granularly and rarely, for me only on YouTube, while the Firefox version does require unrestricted access to all domains. I have never seen a “dynamic filtering capability” it lacks or an ad it can’t block, do you have any examples?
> it's got all the limitations of Manifest V3 which prevents it from doing a good bit of blocking
The only mainstream browser left that can still run the full version of uBlock Origin is Firefox.
All the others have the same limitations imposed by Manifest V3.
iOS Firefox the same though.
Thanks Apple for inflicting the Safari monopoly to all iOS users.
Brave said they will be keeping its functionality.
Brave has certainly said a lot of good things while doing quite [0] a lot [1] of bad [2] things [3] that make me think it's mostly just marketing to lower-knowledge users that's carrying it forward. I see so many 'privacy' influencers that recommend it and Chromium, and then Firefox with no mention of FOSS options like LibreWolf, Tor Browser, IronFox, etc
[0] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/15790
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-f...
[2] https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-browser-installs-vpn-wi...
[3] https://www.atlas.science/news/the-shady-world-of-brave-sell...
All valid.
I'm a Firefox user.
Depending on money from Google is worse than the aggregate of Brave behavior, for me.
Yep, I don't trust Brave. A web browser holds so much power over your digital life that it cannot be entrusted to a company that consistently and egregiously compromises its ethics for profit. Most of these examples border on scam behaviour... par for the course for the cryptocurrency space!
For all their faults, Mozilla has never done anything that holds a candle to the kinds of stunts Brave keeps pulling.
Which is even more noteworthy because Brave is led by an ex-CEO and influential top exec of Mozilla's.
I wonder if he'd have done the same at Mozilla.
Brave also has native rust based psudo reimplementation of ublock, so it also doesnt necessarily need the functionality to accomplish what most people end up needing it for.
Brave and Vivaldi built their own blockers, they aren’t addons.
Regarding the cosmetic filtering and scriptlet injection, are these even relevant? Most uBO users already give full access to the extension, so they'll probably do the same to uBOL to (most permissions + complete filtering mode). So basically they will have these features anyway.
What I like about uBO Lite in Safari is that I can use it without allowing it access to any of my data (it works in a purely declarative mode if you want). Even if it’s unlikely that uBO would be sold to a sketchy company, at least this provides protection against any supply chain attacks.
Yes, that was Google’s justification for killing MV2. It isn’t wrong, of course, but I insist on defining my own security posture and I prioritize adblocking.
FYI uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is inferior to AdGuard and (I think) Wipr as it's just a WebExtension, so it'll only block ads within Safari itself.
AdGuard and Wipr use both the Web Extension and Content Blocker APIs, so they'll block ads in all web views system wide on top of within Safari itself.
However as far as trustworthiness goes, uBlock is (imo) #1.
wBlock by an MIT student is open source and seems (just!) about as trustworthy as uBlock, though of course without the track record. Light & fast, especially to update.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wblock/id6746388723 / GH: https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlockOn AdGuard: can act as your PiHole and allow you to see network requests when run in non-native mode.
Nice, last time I heard about wblock felt like years ago and I'm not sure why I didn't consider it.
These days I don't run on-device adblock, I just do DNS filtering for the most part but I'll check it out, not sure I wanna keep tunneling all my DNS queries to ControlD perpetually lol
Just a comment on the narrative:
> wBlock by an MIT student is open source
It's funny to me that some find that narrative appealing.
Here's another narrative: Many of those MIT students go on to be SV founders and employees who build, operate, and make millions or billions from the mass surveillance and ad industry. And I'm sure some participated in FOSS in college - what better way to build your resume for the surveillance/ad industry?
(I'm not commenting on the wBlock developer; I think all such narratives are deceiving and should be ignored.)
The "narrative" above is that they're both made by seemingly well-intentioned solo developers, that's it. Use your own judgement for something that wants to inject JS into every website you visit.
No offense to the author, but I don't trust a college kid the same way I trust the team behind uBlock. The latter have a well-established track record with substantial external eyes (including Firefox directly.)
Age of author shouldn’t be of relevance. Experience and/or team size should.
A kid reading up on security from age 6 through college could have a decade of experience, for example.
Thanks for the link, I like it so far
Never heard of this but looks good to me. Nice to have another tool for the arsenal.
FWIW AdGuard dev team is in Russia. Letting them proxy all your traffic is probably not the wisest move.
If you use the Safari adblocker, it will use rule lists, not proxy all traffic.
That said, IMO on Safari Wipr all the way (though I use Brave Origin with its built-in blocker now, which is stellar).
I think Wipr is also very trustworthy. It’s developed by an indie dev who’s responsive over email, and gives you a lot for free. And it has a $5/yr subscription (or one time payment) that unlocks system-wide ad blocking, not just in web views.
I’ve found it to work exceptionally well after trying other free adblockers.
Yeah my comment wasn't me trying to say they weren't trustworthy, I've actually purchased both AdGuard and Wipr but I stick with AdGuard since I felt like it was better. And the dev of Wipr seems to be transparent for sure.
However of the three I trust AdGuard the least, for no objective reasons.
uBOL bug report: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/438 , from discussion https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/discussions/408#di...
I hope this changes, it’s what keeps me on AdGuard :-/I have been happy with my workaround for this issue which is using uBOL along side the AdGuard content blocker extensions (main AdGuard web extension disabled).
Also, if you use Orion Browser, they did implement the full Manifest v2 extension spec on top of WebKit, which lets you use full uBlock origin directly.
I try Orion periodically but always find it to be buggy
This is why I started using the Orion browser. It's not perfect, I've had a few freezes and occasional weird behavior but well within the "tolerable" range for me, and not noticably worse than the glitches that any ad blocker causes on some sites.
Does that really matter if virtually no one is going to develop extensions according to the Manifest v2 spec?
Developing for that spec means your extension is incompatible with idk, 98% of the browser market?
Well, uBlock will maintain support, and Orion also supports Manifest v3
This is not a true uBlock Origin. It's a best effort attempt at converting UBO rules to Apple's declarative blocking framework, but is nowhere near as capable as actual UBO.
Works well enough for me
Does it work on YouTube?
Yes, in practice I have noticed no difference between uBO and uBOL. The only thing I've seen it not block are Twtich ads which the normal uBO doesn't block anyway.
There are probably additional things behind the scenes just due to the limitations of uBOL but you again in practice don't see it.
> It's a best effort attempt at converting UBO rules to Apple's declarative blocking framework
uBlock Origin Lite uses the cross-platform DeclarativeNetRequest extension API: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtens...
Google invented this API for Chrome, and the other web browsers are adopting it. uBlock Origin Lite does not use Apple's content blocker API.
Technically, Firefox Focus (a separate browser for iOS) includes an adblocker feature that can be applied system wide via iOS's content blockers subsystem. This was released in the late 2010s.
Firefox including it is likely just reducing the steps required.
Love Firefox. But I always thought it was terribly misguided product direction of them to ever release this as a separate iOS app.
Total speculation, but I wonder if Apple wouldn't approve a single app with all of those features.
If you search the App Store and don’t find it, it’s called Firefox Klar in some markets
Firefox Focus is called Klar (“clear” in German) in Germany because the Focus trademark is owned by a German news magazine.
Wait, it can be used system wide? I copy paste link into Firefox Focus when ads makes a page too unreadable.
Yes and not only that, one can enable that as a safari extension and get an ad-free experience on safari too.
How do you do this? Straight up don’t know what the “content blocker subsystem” is ha
> Firefox does not block:
> Ads shown on search engine results pages, including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search providers
> Sponsored content on the Firefox Home or New Tab page
I guess I'm not surprised, but it's still annoying.
I hope, i will be see gecko engine at IOS
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/19063#i...
Already done by someone else: https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser
What's the current excuse for not supporting extensions on iOS? Orion on iOS does and it's the reason I dropped FF ages ago.
Apple themselves do not allow using anything other than WebKit unless you move to the EU or Japan: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
Firefox addons target gecko, not webkit.
What Orion's doing is horribly hacky and prone to cause issues with a multitude of addons, and of course Mozilla shouldn't bow to Apple's incredibly anti-competitive behavior.
You pay apple for a phone that can act more-or-less as a general purpose computer with apps. Apple should let you install the apps you want, and that they don't do so is insulting.
The fact that the EU and Japan ruled it illegal, and Apple responded by only changing it in those two countries instead of all countries is doubly insulting.
> unless you move to the EU or Japan
Not only that, but the "entitlement" (Apple lingo for code-signature flag that grants capabilities) needed to publish a browser effectively requires to be an established company, ensuring hobbyists can't really get there with an open-source project even though the sources of Firefox are available and could technically be ported.
It goes well beyond requiring an established company. It's so onerous that no company has yet successfully navigated all the gates required - even Google. Apple is maliciously complying with the EU's Digital Rights Act, and many years later, the EU has not concluded its investigations. I am incredibly disappointed.
Apple is the only thing holding back Chromium / Blink from becoming the only browser technology that matters. I hope they keep fighting that fight.
They don't fight it for that reason though. They don't care about an open web either.
I don’t care why they do it. It’s just nice that their interests and my interests are aligned on this.
I care about the open web and see setting Google up for a monopoly on web browsers to be just about the worst thing that could happen. A duopoly isn’t much better, but it is better.
Is this a new rule? I had my own browser published on the App Store about a year ago (as a solo dev).
We need laws that make Apple's business model illegal. No more walled gardens, including game consoles. If you sell a Universal Machine (or product containing a Universal Machine), then the owner/purchaser/leasee must have full control of the Universal Machine.
Just like the laws against bad cars are called "Lemon Laws," call these new laws against bad Universal Machines "Apple Laws." Forever memorialize AAPL in this negative light to warn its future successors what happens when you act in anti-customer ways even when technically not illegal to do so.
By the same logic, we could also use "Anthropic Laws" to curb the nanny-moralism of model guardrails too!
> Firefox addons target gecko, not webkit.
Are they? I've built a few Firefox extension and I cannot recall any part of the API that is Gecko-specific. While parts of the API aren't entirely browser-agnostic, they definitely seem to be engine-agnostic.
It’s not the part you see, its what they see to implement the features you see.
True, but I don't see how that answers the original question of "why does Firefox not support extensions on iOS?". Clearly extensions can run on WebKit. I assume it has much more to do with Apple restrictions rather than with the fact addons are built for Gecko.
Can you please expand on why what Orion does is hacky and may cause issues with other add ons?
*EU is not one country
The law that requires allowing alternative browsers, the DMA, applies to the entire EU.
But I believe there are still zero third party browsers, to publish their browser in the EU Mozilla need an EU development team because developers outside the EU are unable to install it, and Mozilla cannot publish it as their existing app. Enforcement is taking years.
I'm pretty sure the OP knows about the law being EU-wide, but they were referring to "the EU and Japan ... those two countries".
Not all markets or manufacturers will have the same degree of vertical integration and that's ok.
It’s okay if you’re in a healthy market with many competitive choices.
It’s not okay if you’re a duopoly where over 95% of people buy your product as a prerequisite to functioning in modern society.
Their approach yielded arguably the least exploitable general purpose computing devices that people ever actually wanted, without making people feel they were crippled, in a market where there are thousands of alternatives.
It's been wildly successful and, like nearly everyone, I'm fine it.
:( where’s the hacker ethos here? I suppose you have a nice Linux machine or something you customize as you see fit, and you can make calls and listen to podcasts on your phone and that’s good enough for on the go…?
I want grandma to have a locked-down iPhone but I want to be able to go through a process to be able to own my own iPhone. Doesn’t feel fine to have something crippled unless maybe it’s rented or something. Or my phone’s in an HOA.
It’s a combination of Stockholm syndrome, having an expensive phone as a status symbol, and corporate worshiping.
It also makes me “:(“ when I think of an alternate reality of where phones were as customizable and open as a plain old desktop. Open boot loader, manu supported open drivers (no blobs).
Makes me seriously consider Ubuntu touch / graphene or something else and a $200 low end / 2nd hand locked-down phone for everything else.
>It’s a combination of Stockholm syndrome, having an expensive phone as a status symbol, and corporate worshiping.
Can any amount of pain cure stupid? I am still so baffled that AAPL is as market successful as they are, that I am forced to hate-long their stock while never buying their products (and telling others to not buy them either, which is going about as you would expect).
The warden is making the prison just nice enough to not cause riots, to put it vividly.
Most people won’t care or understand about this openness. Their needs are satisfied with the limitations. Similar to other freedoms we have (at least in the US), like speech, assembly.
I think it will take very brazen acts on Apple’s part (or other gatekeepers) to get the everyday Joe/Jane to care about things enough to learn more or look for alternatives.
Things like blocking certain websites, removing super popular apps for not following monopolistic rules
Both Ubuntu and GrapheneOS don't allow you to fully control you phone like Linux desktop does. However Librem 5/Pinephone can run PureOS/postmarketOS that do.
Sure, but even when (or if) it these issues get fixed, it will all be academic unless the devices can run the apps that normies want (or "need"). Up to and including the OS-level wallet app that unbricks the NFC chip, and all the banking and similar "high-security" apps that increasingly require some kind of device attestation to run at all. The trend is all in one direction.
It's easy to say, "Just don't use that stuff". But if everyone wants ("needs") it and we don't have it, then we're left with a <1% user base of activists and eccentrics. And at that point we've lost all influence on the ongoing slide towards surveillance dystopia. It's dispiriting. I'm just hoping that somehow I've got something wrong in this pessimistic analysis.
>rented
Be careful here! Everything will turn to subscriptions and leases, which is why my proposed "Apple Laws" must also apply to leased hardware.
If and when I want a device I can tinker endlessly with, that’s very available to me already.
I have some of them.
What I don’t have is a desire to actively deny consumers a “just works” option that is extremely safe and reliable. No caveats. That would be of minor benefit to me and a detriment to many millions of people in general.
The market spoke, and a huge number of people want those. That’s fine and should remain their choice to make.
The real tragedy of outlawing Apples approach is that the only reason people want this ability is because Apple created this whole package that everyone wants.
tldr; It’s an extraordinarily selfish thing to insist on at everyone else’s expense. I’m ok doing without the one thing.
>If and when I want a device I can tinker endlessly with, that’s very available to me already.
>What I don’t have is a desire to actively deny consumers a “just works” option that is extremely safe and reliable. No caveats.
False dichotomy. Nothing about the latter means the former can't also be possible. Apple products disrespect customers in the name of the latter, telling them the former is dangerous and must be limited. I am concluding that only iron fisted pro-customer sovereignty "Apple Laws" can stop Apple and similar, as their customers themselves can't muster a wallet revolt against this business model.
Those two things are mutually exclusive here. You can't have that ecosystem and all the things people buy it for and have unrestricted control of it all. Those can't exist together.
And iPhone buyers aren't an oppressed people. They bought what they wanted in a market with alternatives.
The only anti-consumer position here is that those people should not be allowed to have that, anymore.
>without making people feel they were crippled
I view Apple platform as crippling, and Google jealously trying to [slowly] pursue the same cripple model. Just because most customers are not educated enough to see the crippling aspects, doesn't mean it's not there. Sleek shiny-ness tends to hide that for normies.
Disclosure: proud GrapheneOS and Qubes OS user and never-subscriber.
Read: not all markets and manufacturers will have the same respect for their customers.
Until recently Apple only allowed Webkit on iOS. In the EU and Japan now they allow proprietary engines. But this means Mozilla needs to put in all the extra effort to maintain yet another branch for iOS with all the features, for an even more limited user base in those regions alone.
While technically allowed, Apple's terms are extensive: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
As always, it's Apple neutering their own platform. They don't allow a lot of things on iOS. Non-WebKit browsers is one of them (Which is asinine).
The EU forced them to allow other browser engines in their regions, but it's not global, and therefore fragmented.
what's the current excuse for buying a device which doesn't allow you to control what software you use on it?
My current excuse? Android (the only current realistic alternative; I don't have the time nor care to fiddle with technical details on a device that I need to be a reliable tool. I'm not afraid of going deep on something less standard, Linux has been my daily driven OS for literally decades) is trash and untrustworthy in my experience. Browser extensions alone are not nearly enough to tip the scale for me to go back to it. As mentioned I use something that provides extension support already (from a browser that has far fewer developers working on it!), which is why I find it stupid that Mozilla won't figure out a way to do it themselves.
Where do I buy this device that does let me run any software I want?
Most Android phones don't even let users unlock the bootloader anymore. And if you do unlock the bootloader, now Google Pay doesn't work, among other things. I don't really feel like being in control of what software I use when the software I actually want refuses to run. F-Droid homepage is also concerning.
Linux phones barely handle the basic functions.
> Linux phones barely handle the basic functions.
The one I'm typing this on right now reliably handles all the functions I need and lets me run any software I want. While not everyone's needs will be met by it, let's not paint a picture that hasn't been generally true for many years now already.
Fair enough and good for you. My point was that currently your only options are either giving up a freedom to run the software you want, or losing utility. In neither case I feel like being in control. The war is over and the users lost.
Both losing and gaining utility. It's a different platform with different strengths. I'd lose utility if I switched to Android.
Which phone, which OS, and what functions?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49190176 and replies.
1. Not wanting to.
2. Caring about other aspects of the device.
I don't personally agree with Apple's decisions, but you "vote with wallet" people need to have at least some modicum of empathy before you start demanding that people have a lot for you and join your cause.
you are reading a lot into almost nothing
> 1. Not wanting to.
obviously you DO want to if you want to use extensions but cannot use them because you actually cannot control the software on your device
I am not talking about myself. That's where the empathy part comes.
> I am not talking about myself.
well then, you should stick to the context
No. Just because I gave you an answer that doesn't satisfy you, doesn't give you the right.
People don't care about the same things you do, so they want to keep the current phone, they just want added functionality. You're gonna have to do better than to just being an asshole about it and calling it "excuses".
> No.
well if you wanna derail, it's on you
As a mobile device? There are like 3 of them on the market right now and you'll run into huge headaches at every turn if you try and use them.
> Ads shown on search engine results pages, including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search providers
There are many subpar adblockers available both built into browsers on iOS and as extensions. uBlock Origin Lite for Safari remains the best mobile adblocker on iOS, I suppose.
Search result ads are some of the most harmful ads, and Google's ads in particular are probably the number one cause of fraud, scams, and malware on the entire planet. It's a shame that Firefox whitelisted these, but I'm sure they did it both because Google pays for their existence but also Apple themselves probably wagged their finger for some reason.
Wipr is the best adblocker on iOS that I’ve tested. Indie dev, gives you a lot for free, has a way to block outside of web views too. Big fan, I never had consistent ad blocking experience on iOS until I used it
UBlock lite extension on Safari blocks ads on YouTube? Is Brave not better?
Paying for Wipr 2 + Filtr is still the gold standard on apple platforms imo. But it’s not open source and there are no custom block lists.
Challenger appears, one positive feedback so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321078
I have AdGuard DNS set up (mainly use HaGeZi lists) for system wide blocking + AdGuard content blockers to catch some web ads and annoyances that cannot be caught via DNS.
Works very well, it’s been a good long while since any ad cheapened my web experience.
Also a big Wipr fan, and generally a fan of the indie dev behind it too because it works so well. They’ve been responsive over email so you might be able to request a feature
For those reading this, it does not work with Firefox (or anything not safari it seems). Wish I had looked that up before excitedly purchasing it lol but so it goes, seems like a good project so I’m considering it a $5 donation
Edit: looks like starting with ios26 they have “filtr” mode which extends more broadly to other apps but “stick to safari for best results”
So they still don't support the Content Blocker API? Wouldn't that have been easier? Then I could use whichever lists or providers (Adguard, uBlock, etc.) that I want.
WIPR 2 is working great on Safari on iOS and MacOS. Worth the money https://apps.apple.com/si/app/wipr-2/id1662217862
How is Firefox on iOS so fast compared to Safari or Orion? It is easily noticeable
How does it compare with Brave iOS's?
(I ask because I want to use one of these for my own app - I don't care which app is nicer to use.)
But advertising is the source of funding that many content creators rely on to make a living... Of course I don’t want Meta and Google profiting from mind-manipulating ads, but where is better business model? Crypto micropayments?
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
- Banksy
I agree that they’re evil and there are legitimate reasons to use ad blockers. But ("But" is such an unwelcomed word here) we need a better business model than ads to support free content creators, if we want to push back against The Advertisers.
It's called paying for shit. Like we used to before everything went ad driven. You'd go and buy a magazine or a book or a newspaper. (Ironically, you often still got ads though, ugh).
The advertising business model destroyed any possible alternative, like Google Maps destroyed virtually all commercial maps, by providing products "for free" with costs well hidden from the public. Yet those costs exist and burden the society even more by removing the competition and enabling monopolies.
Who knows which products and business models would exist without it? The (actually free, non-monopolized) market would show us. I wish it could and am curious, too.
The real solution is to ban advertising and let the free market do its job, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
Yeah this is a pain. Good people who do good work and aren't responsible for figuring out some micropayments ecosystem for the rest of us are reliant on advertising.
Maybe "content creation" shouldn't be a day job? Maybe "content creators" should get real productive day jobs while the space is open for the creators who do it out of passion and love... for free and without ads? What if some of the high cost of goods we're seeing right now is due to too many non-productive consumers (middle managers, service workers, "content creators," etc.) at the expense of not enough producers (people taking things out of the ground and converting them to useful goods)?
Maybe strong anti-advertising laws are in order? No accepting pay to parrot a message, or at least heavily taxing such arrangements if allowed? IMO the only place I should ever see an ad is when I go to some YellowPages directory, like plumber ads when I look up plumbers. There should be a Nutrition Facts like description of costs, service or product description, etc, in lieu of pretty art and slogans for us thinkers. Never should I see an ad on random web pages, billboards, newspapers, entertainment media, etc. Imagine the ills banning advertising would reduce... like the data surveillance & brokering industry!
>not enough producers (people taking things out of the ground and converting them to useful goods)
This is an oddly outdated vision of progress IMO. Indeed a dematerialized economy of "content creation" among other things, where less of the dollars involve "taking things out of the ground" (and dumping them back there), is somewhat utopian from an environmental point of view.
Completely agree about advertising.
With AI I am reconsidering my stance on micropayments.
I recently loaded up a few dollars on Deepseek to try it out, and the value I got out of it far surpassed my balance lost (tens of cents). If this is a sustainable business model for Deepseek (I'm not sure yet), then this shifts the economics: in this scenario I feel totally fine paying pocket change for something valuable.
We already know google's searches cost orders of magnitude less than serving an AI model, so there is no reason to believe micropayments couldn't work there too. Of course, advertisements make Google a lot more money than micropayments, so they never tried it, but I suspect that while they might not work in all scenarios they are underexplored as a monetizing strategy.
I feel like website owners could band together and along with search engines figure out tiers for people viewing their content (free, minimal fee, larger fee, etc).
And some publishers would choose that, others would form different coalitions and say: get a subscription and you get access to xyz content, just like with streaming etc. It would need cooperation, so maybe the idea is already dead in the water, but the web being the realm of advertising is not set in stone.
I like the idea of micro payments, but I don't think they'll take off versus existing ad/subscription models. The problem is economics: the vast majority of people are simply unwilling to pay even a cent. Part of this is people don't know the brand to feel comfortable spending money on random sites (I recall a comic where a user was deliberating heavily on a $0.99 app after easily buying a $7 coffee). Part of this is also the shape of the economy where most people just don't have spare income.
The fraction of people who are willing to pay a cent are likely to be willing to pay considerably more. It is much, much more lucrative to get those people into subscriptions, where they will keep buying -- potentially for years.
So for most businesses, they'd likely earn less revenue via micro payments, which means it's unlikely they'll get widespread adoption.
This is the kind of “better internet” I want. Compared with ads, I’d much rather have a 0.05 dollar paywall.
But for this to work, the technology has to be built on crypto micropayments. The total cost and friction of traditional payment systems, including online payment services like PayPal, would make this impossible. I think this is also one of the design goals behind Web3 and Project Xanadu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
https://cloudflare.pay/
crypto is a solution in search of a problem.
If you live in a developing country and frequently make or receive cross-border payments in currencies other than USD, you’ll understand that's not the case. The fees and compliance burden of traditional financial system still represent a huge cost in cross-border trade. These costs kill micropayments.
I’m bullish on oracles and cryptography-secured monetary systems.
Adblocking is basic security now. I gladly pay for quality services.
It is psychological security too. Most ads are manipulative inducements to expend money that could otherwise be more cerebrally spent elsewhere (or saved even). Our goal as individuals is expense reduction, which is an economic strategy that is diametrically opposed by any individual or business reliant on you spending money. Ads are the vector where psychological games can be played to erode our default economic strategy. Ads are an evil most don't recognize, and need more controls than firearms even!
I swear Firefox for iOS already blocked the vast majority of ads for me until a few weeks ago. But then suddenly, a lot of pages where I didn't see a single ad before became unusably swarmed with them. Am I the only one?
Not available to me yet. I'll re-download and switch from Brave when it is.
Blocking ads wholesale is a terrible idea and unnecessary. What needs to be blocked is ads that execute client-side javascript (consuming your memory and cpu), ads that consume too much network bandwidth and so on. Ads are necessary so that content producers can generate income, without it they won't produce quality content. When you block abusive ads (as opposed to all ads), advertisers are encouraged to make their ads less abusive. Content producers get paid and you get to enjoy the content for free. Everyone wins.
> When you block abusive ads (as opposed to all ads), advertisers are encouraged to make their ads less abusive.
Ads were made abusive, malicious, and dangerous WELL before ad blockers existed. Ad blockers are a response to abusive, malicious, and dangerous advertising. Sadly there are very few reliable ways to whitelist trustworthy advertising. Google and Facebook et al. have all served harmful advertising at some point.
It's too late to turn this around. All trust is lost with advertisers, and to be honest, I'm not sure a system based on trust was ever going to work anyway. Content creators must now create new ways to derive value from their work. Perhaps we go back to an internet where people wrote blogs and posted pictures not for money, but as a hobby. I think that was a better internet.
No. We need to think in other ways than the ad economy. I’d gladly pay for good content if there was a decent system set up for it.
I find the best content is free content, made from passion rather than monetary need.
But there’s not and the end result is the same.
Youtube paid works. People pay, get no ads. Kagi so far seems to be doing well for search too. One model may not work for all content types but to say that there is no alternative is straight up not true.
I'm not sure Youtube doing fine while local news sources go under and such a is a positive.
No. All ads, and I mean all ads, must be blocked. Our children must be raised to hate the product and brand that is shoved in their faces by an advertisement. I already keep mental notes of what ads I see alot and never, ever expend money on those brands or products. The fastest way to get me to never ever buy your brand, product, or service is to show me ads for it, and I want to spread my thought process to others so you have to actually make something decent that can spread word-of-mouth... rather than something to advertise.
I care about having a general purpose web content blocker. I use it for blocking all kinds of things that aren't ads, like YouTube comment sections, random noisy useless cruft I don't care about, etc.
There are multiple standarss for better advertisements[1][2] and AdBlock Plus introduced "acceptable ads" whitelisting if your ad meets one of the criteria.[3] Consumers do not want this and this "acceptable ads" policy is what caused the shift from AdBlock Plus to uBlock Origin.
I'd rather the government sponsor a roundtable between advertisers/browser manufacturers to discuss coming up with a legally protected "acceptable ads" programme to be enforced by default without causing antitrust problems.
[1] https://www.betterads.org/standards/
[2] https://www.acceptableadscommittee.org/the-standard/
[3] https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads
> without it they won't produce quality content.
If the content would be really high quality and exceptional, people would pay for it. But if it close to something people publish even without ads, then they don’t pay for it.
I’d be happy for a content producer wide subscription that would disable ads on all participating sites. As long as that doesn’t exist, I’m happy with my adblocker.
Next to that, my device, my choice what I get to see and what I don’t get to see.
No. I will not discriminate between which ads I block when neither the site operators nor the ad networks discriminate on what they host. The moment i turn off my ad block I’m up to my eyeballs in lies and scams and garbage. No. Thanks.
This ad funded internet needs to die. It is rotten to the core and advertising is the source of almost all the evils of the modern web. As long as enough of the general public continues to not Adblock I’ll enjoy my free ride.
If I allocated proportionally pieces of $5 to my favorite content producers a month they would get orders of magnitude more than what they get from me watching ads.
I hate ads, I hate the experience of having something in between me and what I want to do, having random images sent through my eyeballs, etc. So no, not everyone wins with advertising.
Google et al make more money (or at least think they do) through advertising and eschew micropayments for this reason, but that doesn't make micropayments unprofitable. And I don't want things for free if it means watching ads.
I wish that were true
Thanks!
Why did it take so long?
Firefox was a mainstream browser. After it stopped being one, it did what all the other browsers did: bake adblock within. Even now they do so with trepidation.
It this still only DNS blocking or does cosmetic blocking too?
"Firefox blocks many types of advertising at the network level. It uses a filter list based on EasyList to block many ads before they load."
I guess still all DNS it seems? For which NextDNS is much more useful.
> It may not yet be available to all users.
Not me, bummer.
Same, if anyone figures out what the about:config toggle for this is (does that exist on Firefox iOS or is that a missing feature like how Firefox iOS is missing every other feature?), please share it so I can consider finally moving back from Orion and its myriad bugs and quirks.
> Firefox does not block:
> Ads shown on search engine results pages, including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search providers
> Sponsored content on the Firefox Home or New Tab page
So block ads unless it impacts their revenue sources.
Ads are bad! Blocking ads on our own homepage? How do you expect us to keep the lights on?
The correct way to avoid ads is to not visit pages that use them.
That's the same way I avoid bad movies. I watch them first, before I watch them, just to make sure they're good.
Is this actually feasible? How do you tell when a page uses ads? How do you find pages without ads when you search for something?
> Sponsored content on the Firefox Home or New Tab page
Not ideal, but (at least on desktop) you can set the Home page to a blank page, and there is an extension called 'Blank New Tab' that I've been using for quite a while.
> You can manage the sponsored content on the Firefox Home and New Tab page in your Homepage settings.
Mozilla knows not to bite Google’s hand, who is the one that actually feeds them hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mozilla is the one who is funneling billions of dollars worth of traffic to Google.
So, is Mozilla promoting a search engine monoculture? Yeah, "Google bad, but..."
Or is Google the best at monetizing queries and Mozilla is using whoever is best at doing it.
Google's only reason for keeping Mozilla on life support is to avoid the argument of being a total and complete browser monopoly.
Firefox's global traffic market share is less than double digits [0] and is less than 5%. Google technically doesn't need traffic from Firefox and Google is roughly paying half a billion ($585M) a year for it. [1]
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...
This doesn't make sense as Edge is a bigger browser than Firefox and competes with Google in the browser space. What Google pays for the traffic is less than what the traffic is worth (Google profits a lot too).
This feels like a place where the "yet you also participate in society" comic fits.
It doesn't have those limitations on Windows or Android, so it must be an Apple requirement or limitation.
Easylist does not block those things on any platforms.
I'm not aware of any adblockers that can block the ads on the built-in New Tab page. (You can just disable them in settings anyway.)
"better than nothing"
Well, not bad. But it's not uBlock, and Safari's blocker is already working fine for me. Brave's also been doing this for years. But at least it's something.
What I need is a better PWA installer
Unrelated but:
Firefox on iOS has a terrible problem with its autocomplete (I think they replaced the algo with a janky Llm-style autocomplete). When I type “news” into the url bar, it will suggest one of it’s marketing partners (or whatever) but incorrectly such as: newsyorker.com
I dont ever visit The New Yorker but even after clearing caches and site data the problem still persists. I can delete the app and the problem goes away for a short while.
I left a review on the App Store about this and the person (bot?) they hire to respond to reviews asks me to open a ticket. No! How about you port my review over as a ticket and fix your damn software.
That may give firefox a bit of percentage back, since some folks can not stand ads anymore. Google garnered a lot of opposition to its evil rule by destroying ublock origin (on chrome).
good time to remember firefox mobile (specially ios) does not have reproducible builds!
on android, f-doid fennec and all other forks do! it's not even hard, so in my view this "is a feature" for mozilla.
then, further remember one person from the board was involved in AdBlock extension who charged firms 1mi to "whitelist good ads". my emoloyer at the time paid under a nda.
still better than nothing (and who am i kidding? 99% here chose to use chrome on their main machine)
If you haven't been using Firefox, what are you even doing with your life?
I have been, on desktop and back when I used Android. When I kicked deGoogled Android out of my life and went to iOS where most things Just Work ™ and I could stop thinking about my phone and its bugs, I had to start using Orion because Firefox iOS sucks so much.
This news from TFA is the biggest step in the right direction; I might be able to use Firefox mobile again finally.
A chrome version of Firefox is Brave.
A chrome version of Opera is Vivaldi.
A chrome version of MSIE is MS Edge.
After FF kept breaking extensions with their switch to XUL, I stopped using them.
Except now you can just install standard extensions in Firefox.
I don't want a chrome version of something. I want an independent browser that isn't effectively some version of adware.
I'll never understand why people don't get on board with migrating away from adware.
Using Brave on desktop and Vanadium on my phone. They are more secure and private which is why I like them.
In what ways is Brave more secure or private than Firefox?
Cross platform bookmark support is my favourite feature.
I also use Firefox on my mobile device. I have to admit: I'm not a huge fan of the interface. Super clunky.
I've been using it for 20 years and switched 4 yearso ago to something else. My life is fine, thanks.
EDIT: so, the downvotes are because what, exactly?
I didn't downvote you, but your post has no useful information and looks like pure Firefox bashing for no reason. You don't tell why you switched, to what, what you gained. Not even mentioning that wherever you switched, your protection against ads and tracking must have become worse, as only Firefox supports Ublock Origin.
The comment to which I replied wasn't that useful either.
I'm anxious to try it