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uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

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Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#191

In all these years I haven’t found a better solution than DNS blocking with NextDNS on iOS. The only place I get ads is YT (but for that I have an Albanian VPN)

If you're in Europe, there's the newly launched DNS4EU project which is free for personal use, and also includes adblocking at the DNS level like NextDNS. I use it in conjunction with Adguard and secure DNS, but they also publish configuration profiles for iOS. https://www.joindns4.eu/ https://www.joindns4.eu/dns-guidelines

You don’t need to be in Europe.

It works everywhere.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#192
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, I personally HATE apps that opens links in an in-app web view (apps like Instagram, Facebook, etc). I really wish Apple could have a system wide preference where it could force in-app web views to open in the browser.

My favourite part is when it opens a form or something to fill out but if you navigate away from this in-app web view to another app and back (say to get a password) you lose the session. It’s incredibly frustrating

Yeah Gmail does this on Android. Super annoying. You basically have to remember to always click "open in chrome". It's not like it even does anything different because it's already open in chrome, just in a tab that it will throw away at the drop of a hat.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#193
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, I personally HATE apps that opens links in an in-app web view (apps like Instagram, Facebook, etc). I really wish Apple could have a system wide preference where it could force in-app web views to open in the browser.

Same thing in Android... I'd just prefer to launch the default browser (Brave in my case).

Not the same thing.

Every link I click on my Android phone opens up and uses my preferred browser; Firefox.

What are you seeing different?

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#194
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without having any experience with the APIs to back up my claim, I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules. AdGuard seems to include both options simultaneously, where you have "advanced protection" (WebExtensions API) that only works in Safari and separate blocking lists (old API) that work in both Safari and WebView. This is precisely what keeps me…

> I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules. This is not really accurate. The Safari content blocking API and the WebExtensions DeclarativeNetRequest API are comparable. The difference is that WebExtensions are JavaScript and can run in the context of the web page. With WebExtensions, you get DNR plus arbitrary JS, whereas the Safari content blocker…

> You could also have a Safari content blocker with an optional WebExtension for additional functionality with no usage of DeclarativeNetRequest.

That’s exactly what AdGuard and some other content blockers do. The result is that content blocking works everywhere, but it’s most effective in Safari. As a user, I prefer that over the approach of uBlock Origin Lite, which is a pure WebExtension and doesn’t do anything outside of Safari. Too bad, because I prefer using uBlock Origin on other platforms.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish there was a setting in Safari that disabled websites from opening apps. This has been one of my biggest iOS peeves for a long time—I really wish that installing an app wasn’t a commitment to letting it handle all of the links it wants to. It’s particularly annoying because a lot of apps are terrible at actually handling the link: the app will show a login screen or some kind of interstitial and then just for…

> letting it handle all of the links it wants to It doesn’t. App developers have to verify that they own the corresponding domain names that they want to handle with their apps: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/supporting-a...

I understand that, what I was getting at is more that I, as a user, have little insight or control around when or where my phone will decide to open an app when I click a link, vs continue to work like a normal browser. The app developers declare their associations and url patterns and that's it.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#196

In all these years I haven’t found a better solution than DNS blocking with NextDNS on iOS. The only place I get ads is YT (but for that I have an Albanian VPN)

Why not pay for YouTube premium instead of paying for an Albanian VPN? Then your money goes to the video makers you watch.

>Then your money goes to the video makers you watch.

It does not actually, a large chunk of the money goes to Youtube.

And actually, I would happily pay for either the creator or myself to fund the content hosting. I pay for Nebula for example.

What I refuse to pay for is a company who has routinely fucked over innocent creators doing nothing wrong, and a company who has threatened to burn those people's livelihoods to the ground for triggering false positives in terribly made automated systems that Google leans on to have a higher profit margin.

What I refuse to pay for is a company who uses their absolute control of the platform to enforce a system of Clickbait thumbnails and titles, by insisting on an adversarial system of surfacing content. I am subscribed to a creator, but if I don't click on their next video one of the first times google shows it to me, google will stop showing me content from that creator that I am still subscribed to. If enough people do not click on it in the first couple impressions, google will not show that video to anyone.

Google will also punish users who make such awful and deplorable content as... War history (accurate or not), until recently swearing, videos about aircraft (somehow ended up labeled as a content mill), An end of year summary and highlights video that is exclusively crafted out of content that exists already live on your channel and is not demonitized but when you release that highlight reel it immediately gets demonitized so since you are a big ish channel you ask your account rep wtf and they tell you oh its a mistake it wont happen again. And then, next year, it happens exactly the same, with the added bonus of this time all the content on your channel that wasn't previously demonitized also gets demonitized to go with it, even though your rep once again says this is a mistake.

Remember how youtube used to have so much small time animation, and some of it was great? Notice how it's gone now? Youtube changed what they were prioritizing in the algorithm, and that killed the entire business of small time animation. An entire era of internet media that started before youtube and drove the power and influence of Newgrounds was just wiped out because it wasn't profitable enough. This was separate from the time that youtube also cut ad rates in half without warning.

I will pay for youtube when they demonstrate that they want good content on their platform. I will pay for youtube when, instead of platforming and supporting and paying big bucks for Mr Beast and his awful empty content, they support channels like Applied Science, and Breaking Taps, and NileRed, and Explosions&Fire, and Thought Emporium, and Stuff Made Here, and BPS.Space, and Jeff Geerling, and Dave from EEVBlog, and Brandon F, and Technology Connections, and Practical Engineering, and How to Cook That, and Ze Frank, and AvE, and the other Mountains of people who make great content that is high quality and well made and carefully done and not feeding into gross addiction systems.

But their hard work does not match Youtube's desire to be a constant churn 24/7 watching ad delivery platform, so google punishes them and rewards the people literally trying to scam children instead.

That is why not pay for Youtube Premium.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been normal for thousands of years to pay for services which you use.

Cool, no one argued against that. I will not contribute to an ad-ridden world (whether by paying or using), but you do you.

But, I was talking about contributing to a world with less ads… I feel like something is going wrong here.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#198
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari ads are not blocked when using NextDNS. Is it just me?

Safari does not respect the operating system’s DNS settings, it uses its own. I have seen several reports online that you can disable this behaviour by turning off iCloud Private Relay or disabling Advanced Tracking and Fingerprint Protection, but was never able to do so with various combinations.

> Safari does not respect the operating system’s DNS settings, it uses its own.

I have known this for a long time, and still find it shocking. I run Graphene on a Pixel now (with my own DNS server), so I don't really care, but I feel bad for the hundreds of millions of Apple users who think that Apple is a "privacy-respecting" company.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#199
post #60

Why not use a phone that allows you to use the full version ublock? Ios is everything that is wrong with software today in one package.

Care to elaborate what is so wrong with it?

No sideloading, forced safari, locked os apis to cripple 3rd party accessories and apps (like watches or cloud software), updates crippling performance, massive number of bugs, especially if you don't use iCloud (i lost data multiple times after the update), to mention a few.

Re: uBlock Origin Lite in Apple App Store

#200
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a $5 app on the App Store. ~$3.20 will go towards paying the indie dev, and most of the remaining ~$1.50 will go directly into Apple's coffers as a reward for doing such a good job locking down their operating system. Kinda feels like Apple is deliberately making it horrible so you view paying them as the only ethical solution. For example, I don't have to do this song-and-dance to block ads on non-monopol…

> Well, it's a $5 app on the App Store. ~$3.20 will go towards paying the indie dev, and most of the remaining ~$1.50 will go directly into Apple's coffers as a reward for doing such a good job locking down their operating system. This is not a defense but merely a correction: The small developer program is 85%/15% rather than 70%/30% for anyone making less than $1 million per year.

The small developer program is opt-in, AFAIK the developer will be charged the full 30% by-default unless they explicitly apply.
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