Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

murphyapps.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#51

Post by stephenr »

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 this fits in very well with Apple's recent push on its pro-privacy stance.

The WWDC session for this feature specifically highlights a major privacy issue this can help solve: blocking privacy-invading tracking scripts.

It's completely possible to show ads without tracking every move the user makes across the web.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#53

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#54

Post by ised »

I have basicaly been running this "experiment" for the last 20 years. It began with (e.g., text-only) browsers that do not source content from other domains automatically, then I started blocking ads via DNS in response to today's "locked-down" computers like smartphones. I just do not see ads. I often need not even visit a webpage. I just download the content I want, directly, using a custom filter.

Do long load times, visual distractions and page clutter matter?

I posit only when you are accustomed to _not_ experiencing these things.

For me, it is difficult to voluntarily choose 38 connections (how many DNS lookups is that?) and 11 second load times after experiencing 2 second load time and connection to one IP only.

I still find it shocking how many connections today's "average" webpages make to third party domains. It was not always this way. I doubt it would have been feasible with yesterday's bandwidth and memory. Somehow things ramped up to the point of absurdity and it's as if no one noticed.

If there is a "moral dilemma" it should amongst with the ad/tracking folks.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#55

Post by andrethegiant »

kalleboo wrote: post #25
0x0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App banners are outside the DOM.

No they're not

The banner itself is rendered outside of the dom. The meta tag tells Safari to render the banner, which it does natively. If the banner was inside the dom we'd see divs and links and the like.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#58

Post by pmontra »

sleepychu wrote: post #28

"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…

The answer to that question is "it depends". If the author is the kind of person that sometimes clicks on ads, then blocking content will make a difference to those sites. I never clicked ads before discovering AdBlock, so the fact that I've been using it for years now didn't deprive them from any money.

Before anybody asks if I gave a chance to ads-filled web sites recently: my tablet doesn't have AdBlock (I run Opera on it because it so much faster than Firefox) so I see all ads and I still don't click them. Luckily I have AdAway on my rooted phone and it blocks all ads, in browser and in app (it uses the hosts file.)

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#59

Post by SG- »

danmaz74 wrote: post #56

I wonder what will happen if ad-based content websites will start blocking Safari iOS 9.

Remember what happened to Flash? Turns out there's not only a lot of iOS users out there, but iOS users end up using the web more on their devices in general too.

Ideally they should come up with better ads that don't try and take over your entire or system resources (this is even after some extreme JS and display optimizations happening over the years in JS and browsers).

Also unless I'm mistaken, this is about putting more control in the users's hands, he can choose to enable ad-blocking just like on a desktop browser.

Re: An Hour with Safari Content Blocker in iOS 9

#60

Post by pmontra »

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?

Let's pretend the problem of linking to content inside another app will be solved without using a webview (so: native app to native app). You still can't beat the ease of tapping a link and getting to a new site you never heard about. Having to go through the store first to install a native app you don't have yet will be such a bad experience that could kill mobile content. I can't believe Apple is really willing to head into that direction until they keep selling devices to access mobile content. Furthermore do we really have space for an app for every site out there? Probably Apple really prefers to please its customers with faster load times. Some of them are content producers but they are so many more content consumers.
Post reply on HN