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An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

murphyapps.co

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Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#21

Post by onion2k »

hahainternet wrote: post #11

While I usually am fine with Ad blockers, Apple's position here is completely incoherent. They decided not to pay artists for a trial period, they've decided websites don't deserve to advertise. Why it's almost like the only way to deal with Apple users is to sell to them through Apple, and therefore give up at least 30%.

they've decided websites don't deserve to advertise

To be fair to Apple (or to be generous, depending on your point of view) the Safari Content Blocker isn't an ad blocker. It'll block anything you define in a JSON file. If that happens to be ads then so be it, but it could just as easily be malware, or images, or Javascript, or anything served by the government, and so on. If Content Blocker is Apple deciding that websites don't deserve to advertise then so are the developers of NoScript, ImageBlock, FlashBlock, GifBlock, CookieBlock, etc - but most people see those as privacy tools rather than anti-advertising tools.

Obviously people will use Content Blocker it to block adverts, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's Apple attacking the ad industry and Google. Remember that Apple own an ad network of their own, and this feature will hurt that too.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#22

Post by Sephiroth87 »

neor wrote: post #8
bsaul wrote: post #3

9 seconds of page load for ads is unacceptable. Mobile browsing has become a pita because of all those poor ads network, and i think once again (after the flash controversy) apple is going to save the web by making radical decisions like this one. It may very well be that mobile web content browsing becomes even more pleasant than using native apps thanks to that, since they too seem to fall for the trend of putting…

Apple isn't doing this to save the web, they are doing this so developers will be forced to create a native app to show ads and make some money. Easiest way to show ads in a native app on iOS... oh wouldn't that be iAd service in which Apple gets a cut of the profit?

And I'm fine with that, at least iAD doesn't make an app load a page 9 seconds slower...

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#23

Post by soneil »

0x0 wrote: post #16
loueed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at his script the blocking system lets you hide html elements with css, too hide the app store banner all you have to do is inspect element in chrome, find the element id/class and set it to display none.

App banners are outside the DOM.

I'd be curious to know if it's still possible to block them, however. The banner itself is outside the document, it's a UI element rendered by the client, similar to a toolbar on a desktop client.

However, it's invoked by a head/meta element within the document, so it may still be possible (eg, when the document is parsed, this element is invoked, and the filter is invoked - which comes first?)

Unfortunately there's enough random forums that offer me an app when I'm only visiting for a one-off google result, that I can see a genuine use-case for this.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#25

Post by kalleboo »

0x0 wrote: post #16
loueed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at his script the blocking system lets you hide html elements with css, too hide the app store banner all you have to do is inspect element in chrome, find the element id/class and set it to display none.

App banners are outside the DOM.

No they're not

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#26

Post by nothis »

drewcrawford wrote: post #13

I really think a kind of lightweight collective bargaining is the answer here. The way it works is simple. You install an ad blocker, let's call it QBlock. Then, QBlock goes to the websites and the ad networks to negotiate. If you want to reach our 1M users with your ads, you have to play ball with us. e.g. * Keep ads to 15% of screen space * Don't autoplay audio * Don't exceed 15% of network traffic * etc. If you co…

>Of course this assumes there are users who would prefer an ad blocker that lets responsible advertisers through as opposed to one that doesn't, but I believe that enough people do that it could work.

I have doubts, unless you get payed for it as a user.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#27

Post by jccalhoun »

drewcrawford wrote: post #13

I really think a kind of lightweight collective bargaining is the answer here. The way it works is simple. You install an ad blocker, let's call it QBlock. Then, QBlock goes to the websites and the ad networks to negotiate. If you want to reach our 1M users with your ads, you have to play ball with us. e.g. * Keep ads to 15% of screen space * Don't autoplay audio * Don't exceed 15% of network traffic * etc. If you co…

The problem with things like that is people will try to game it. People would just put a bunch of gibberish at the bottom of a page to raise the total percentage of screen space. It reminds me of back in the pre-google days when sites would put tons of keywords in white text on a white background at the bottom of a page to try to rank higher.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#28

Post by sleepychu »

"Now, this was fun little project to mess around with, but it does give me a moral dilemma. Do I care more about my privacy, time, device battery life & data usage or do I care more about the content creators of sites I visit to be able to monetise effectively and ultimately keep creating content?"

Once we show content creators that we're willing to block their unsupervised invasions en masse, they'll come back to us with a better deal. The illusion that blocking is binary - either you allow egregious privacy invasion or you fail to support the content creators is one that the content creators have created!

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#29

Post by josho »

neor wrote: post #8
bsaul wrote: post #3

9 seconds of page load for ads is unacceptable. Mobile browsing has become a pita because of all those poor ads network, and i think once again (after the flash controversy) apple is going to save the web by making radical decisions like this one. It may very well be that mobile web content browsing becomes even more pleasant than using native apps thanks to that, since they too seem to fall for the trend of putting…

Apple isn't doing this to save the web, they are doing this so developers will be forced to create a native app to show ads and make some money. Easiest way to show ads in a native app on iOS... oh wouldn't that be iAd service in which Apple gets a cut of the profit?

I think Apple is doing this more as a shot at Google than for revenue. Specifically, Steve Jobs was enraged that Google entered the smartphone market, ever since Apple has been positioning products to erode Google's position. E.g. Apple Maps, removal of the youtube app, iAds, now the ability to block ads.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#30

Post by pjc50 »

emsy wrote: post #17
e1ven wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is very similar to what Adblock plus did. Many of the users were very unhappy, leading to forks of the project. This policy, for good or ill, annoyed many of the users: https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads Ultimately, it lead to the popular fork: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

There was a huge controversy behind the acceptable ads feature. I think an application like "QBlock" would still stand a chance, but it would have to be transparent and enabled for all web users.

"Collective bargaining" and "all web users" are never, ever going to go together. That kind of consensus is just impossible.
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