Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

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

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.

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 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.

Already done by someone else: https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser

Love Firefox. But I always thought it was terribly misguided product direction of them to ever release this as a separate iOS app.

If you search the App Store and don’t find it, it’s called Firefox Klar in some markets

Yes and not only that, one can enable that as a safari extension and get an ad-free experience on safari too.

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.

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.

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?

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?

"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

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 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.

Challenger appears, one positive feedback so far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321078

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

> 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.

> 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.