Mozilla adds ad blocking to Firefox for iOS

Firefox for iOS now includes an optional ad blocker, or it will soon. According to Mozilla, the experimental feature "is being introduced to the Firefox user base through a progressive rollout." As such, it might not have turned up for every user just yet. Off by default, the block uses a filter list based on EasyList to block …

[Anonymous Coward]

AI: Adverts Imposed

[MaChatma CoatGPT 2.0]

AI: Ads Ignored.

[williamyf]

Since Firefox on iOS is, for the time being, a re-skin of Safari, this is a VERY WELCOME development.

Having said that, Firefox on Android can run µBlock origin just fine. And I suspect that, if push comes to shove, and they can not keep sustaining Manifest V2 support, and have to go to Manifest V3, µBlock Origin Lite* will run just fine.

Since I have to run Spanish Ad filters (and have to court Frech filters too from time to time) on top of the English ones (so, a bi or tri lingual config), this is of limited use to me (as the article does not clarify if you can choose multiple filters beyond easylist). But I can see how this may be of use to other users, so congrats.

* My main browser is Firefox, the backup being chrome, and Safari is the Browser of last resort with no plugins. From my unscientific comparisosns, µBlock origin Lite on Chrome Manifest V3 is pretty close to OG µBlock Origin on Manifest V2, so one could live with the lite version.

[Sandtitz]

"Since Firefox on iOS is, for the time being, a re-skin of Safari, this is a VERY WELCOME development."

I have been using Firefox Focus on IOS for several years. Not only stops trackers and ads, but registers as an adblocker on IOS so Safari also benefits.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brave browser anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I’d be ok to pay Google $5 a month to disable adverts, and have an ad blocker that stopped everything else.

At pennies per thousands, that’s probably 10x what Google ads actually make them…

[Anna Nymous]

a different angle to your statement

> I’d be ok to pay Google $5 a month to disable adverts

While I understand the sentiment, I would like to offer a different take on what you're saying here to go against the normalization.

What you're effectively saying is analogous to "I'd be OK to pay google $5 a month so that they don't repeatedly whack me on the head every 3 seconds"

Again, I understand the sentiment, however the right question to ask is "why is google whacking me on the head in the first place, because that's not OK to start with".

So please refrain from normalizing the behavior by that, and other like-minded companies and don't give them any incentive to whack you on the head in the first place. They have no business doing that violation of your person in the first place.

[williamyf]

Re: a different angle to your statement

When Ted Nelson introduced the Hyperlink concept in project Xanadu, the project included infrastructure for micropayments.

When Tim Berens Lee implemented hyperlinks in HTML, the micropayment infrastructure was not there.

Servers, Software (at that time), bandwidth and ongoing maintenance cost money.

People was not trusting this "web" thing enough to subscribe and pay for everythig from the get-go.

Publicity funded free content (like there was on TV and Radio at the time) was the way the early web found to jump start itself.

Then, companies left, right and center poisoned the well (so to speak), and here we are....

[Sproggit]

Re: a different angle to your statement

Xanadu's concept for hyperlinks - well documented in Nelson's writings of the time - was quite a bit more ambitious than the model adopted by the World Wide Web, which is quite likely a major part of the reason it failed. Elements like transclusion - reuse of content whilst retaining content to the original source - as well as bidirectional links, permanent addressing for content elements, were interesting concepts that struggled to get off the ground due to complexity.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee... took a fundamentally different approach. Just as TCP/IP started with the absolute basics as a foundation but allowed more sophistication to be built on top in layers, Berners-Lee concentrated on the global addressing scheme as being the fundamental element that absolutely had to be done right.

"People was not trusting this "web" thing enough to subscribe and pay for everything from the get-go."

I think this is quite inaccurate. Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web while working at CERN. Pretty much all of the early funding for what became the "Internet" came via DARPA - the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - and as the ARPAnet/DARPAnet expanded beyond it's original four main nodes (UCLA, SRI [Stanford Research Institute], UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah) and included international connections, almost all of the connections and users were part of the government, military, or academic establishment.

At the time, public access to digital services came via dial-up modems to bulletin boards, usenet groups and commercial, pre-Internet providers such as AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, GEnie and Delphi.

ALL of those services were commercial, with subscription-model paid access.

In the earliest days, for example, AOL wrote and maintained their own end-user client software; the concept of a "Browser" was only added once the Internet began to take hold and the public started to demand access to it as part of their (AOL/Compuserve/etc.) experience.

My sense is that Xanadu tried to bite off more than it could chew; it failed to attract enough interest to gain critical mass and as a result it withered and died. The WWW, on the other hand, took a leaf from the TCP/IP playbook - it started small with a "Minimum Viable Product", but was based on an extensible architecture that has remained incredibly resilient over the intervening 40-odd years.

[Tron]

Re: a different angle to your statement

Advertising funded services are the only way much of the world can afford to have them. Wanting them banned is just another example of arrogant, first world selfishness.

The stuff folk on here boast about seeing and using for free whilst blocking adverts has to be paid for. Advertising, although mildly annoying, is not going to kill you.

You might be amazed how many people dislike freeloaders.

[stiine]

Re: a different angle to your statement

You should stop by tomorrow. We can sit and watch a 3 minute youtube video, which will follow one 30 second ad and one 52 minute ad. If you look away, you can sign back in when you get home, and contradict yourself up and down.

Personally, as long as alphabet/google/youtube continue to pull this kind of shit, they deserve as much freeloading as can be applied to them. Also, to all of the other advertisers pushing ads on me. There's no point, the first and last time I bought anything after seeing an ad on the internet was in 2019 (I've been online since 1993) and I have no plans on repeating that.

[Anna Nymous]

Re: a different angle to your statement

Fair shot.

I am not /fundamentally/ against advertising. I am, however, strongly opposed to the rapacious behavior exhibited by these advertising companies. Wanna put a self-hosted banner on your site? Be my guest, I have no problem with that. Other non-privacy invading advertising? Again, no problem.

But what I do have a problem with is when you don't just want my attention (advert) but insist, against my will, to also steal my privacy.

Again: I have no fundamental problem with the advertising, but the privacy invasion goes too far, as does the assertion that the privacy invasion is "normal" or "fair", because it is not. That is the normalization I was arguing against.

I believe someone else here said it once: [quote]I'm sick and tired of the constant "... but we need the advertising revenue" whining. You're not making any advertising revenue. You're making tracking revenue. ... Who on this planet would accept someone ringing your door bell and going, "Excuse me, sir, we need to make sure the junk mail we fill your mailbox with is relevant, so I just need to have a quick look at your book shelves and the products in your fridge. If you could just step aside for a second...[/quote]

I disagree with your assessment that all these services that are made available only through advertising are worthwhile. I would love to even have the ability to pay for online services (such as this fine publication) if that were even possible. And when I say that, I mean pay the fine journalists, and editors, etc who produce El Reg. But I don't feel a need to pay a middleman such as (e.g.) Google who would add nothing of value here.

You have to also consider the following: if your only avenue for revenue is through online privacy invasion of your visitors, you sorts of already decided that "nah, people would not fork over hard cash and we have to steal it from them along with their privacy without their consent", then is what you are providing really that valuable as you think it is? You clearly - by admission that you have to steal because you cannot earn - don't seem to think so yourself...

And finally, the assertion that all online services that exist today are worthwhile, that their businessmodel should be supported, and that these services should keep exisiting is one that I find shortsighted. To me, that sounds eerily similar to a ringing endorsement of leaded gasoline and its continued use because "hey, at least my enging doesn't knock anymore"...

[retiredFool]

Re: a different angle to your statement

Advertising is not free. It adds to the cost of the product. I expect part of the reason stuff is more expensive in the US is the massive amount spent on advertising. Google et al is really just a tax on stuff.

[ChoHag]

Re: a different angle to your statement

> You might be amazed how many people dislike freeloaders.

Then how about Google start paying me for the information of mine that they profit off?

[retiredFool]

Kagi

I've not signed up for it, but Kagi claims to be exactly what you want. I've thought about it. google search has gotten worse. There was a reason everyone switched way back when to google. They *were* better. Now I am not so sure. I've done searches that return really bad results, regular search not the ai search which I disabled. So I've thought seriously about kagi. They do offer a short trial freebie period.

[DS999]

If Mozilla had ever cared what their users wanted

They would have done this over a decade ago, not for iOS only but on ALL platforms. It is ridiculous we need a plug in for something that should not only be included by default but ENABLED by default. Sadly the last time Mozilla cared what its users wanted was when they built in the pop up blocker. Instead we got stuff like Pocket.

Ublock Origin is great, I have used it for years. But it should not be necessary, this is exactly the kind of thing every user wants - or would want if they knew they could have it. Everyone knows why Google doesn't built in ad blocking, and even has made it harder for ad blockers to work on Chrome. Firefox could have differentiated itself and had far higher market share today if they'd done this a decade ago. But they long ago stopped caring what their users wanted, and decided that adding useless crap like Pocket and aping every Chrome UI redesign was a better strategy.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: If Mozilla had ever cared what their users wanted

If they cared about their users they wouldn't permit any ads. By accepting sponsored ads they're simply setting themselves up as an ad distributor, taking a cut of the ad revenue. That increases the cost to the advertiser and has no benefit to the users.

[MaChatma CoatGPT 2.0]

Re: If Mozilla had ever cared what their users wanted

They would have done this over a decade ago, not for iOS only but on ALL platforms

The original premise of Firefox was a lightweight browser that could be customised with extensions. This avoided bloat and gave most users the browser they wanted and/or needed. What we have now is a bloated browser that still needs extensions.

Historical note: Firefox’s grandparent, Netscape Navigator, had a crude form of ad-blocker. There was a check box in the prefs that would hide images from third party servers. This, along with disabling JavaScript, gave a far less annoying browsing experience.

[PRR]

Re: If Mozilla had ever cared what their users wanted

> Instead we got stuff like Pocket.

And now Firefox VPN. OK, it could be a valid alternative, except as you say FireFox has derailed. And has frequently made poor choices, whereas NORD et al have to listen to customers. (I know I can pay for FF VPN, but that does not make it better.)

[captain veg]

not blocking

Most ads are external embeds. Instructing your browser not to request the content is not blocking anything, any more than turning off images.

-A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahoy!

Adverts are flotsam and jetsam in a sea of sewage.

There’s only so much shite you can handle.

[ecofeco]

I already have three

Ublock. No Script. Adguard. Yeah it's messy and tedious sometimes. But it works great.

You're a little late to the party FF.

As for you heads of marketing that made this a necessity, go play in traffic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I already have three

Correct.

If you’re not actively blocking, you’re not doing the Internet right.

[Rich 2]

iOS

I have yet to see a decent ad blocking feature on iOS (and yes, I’m sure this is because of Apple). It’s really bloody annoying.