Browser extensions are executable JS. That is a huge vector for security and privacy issues (you should be extremely selective about which browser extensions you install). This new method is basically a list of regexs that Safari itself runs against the contents of the page. No 3rd party code is executed, so it's not possible for an extension to, for instance, report back on your browsing habits or steal your login credentials.

Poor justification when just about any other extension API is still a gigantic gaping hole.

What "other extension API" is Apple still allowing, making this a poor justification? You might be thinking of Google, which is allowing other gigantic gaping hole APIs while nerfing their content blocking, but Apple is being pretty consistent and doesn't also derive most of their income from advertising.

You are correct, however until Apple relaxes the rule that “[a]pps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript”, they should be held to a higher standard.

Hang on a second, since when are we this paranoid about installing software? I'm capable of deciding whether I trust a browser extension with the privileges I'm giving it, just the same as I'm capable of trusting any of the daemons running as root which could just as easily steal my personal data.

Sure, if all else were equal I guess I would trust Apple slightly more than an open-source extension developer, but all else is not equal - Apple is taking away the flexibility of arbitrary code and dictating that if you want to block ads in the browser then you have to use their regex-based declarative adblock API. I'm surprised to see such a warm reception on HN to a classic Apple "we're taking this away for your own good" kind of move that has historically not been very popular with enthusiasts.

This is a really long-standing battle between user accessibility and user freedom. Any time a software system or platform or OS allows for people to do whatever they want without restriction, you end up with thousands of compromised systems out there. The alternative, in the past, has been to lock everything down unless users go into some kind of "Advanced" mode or "Developer" mode but then users just get tricked into turning that mode on anyways or more advanced users hand wave those restrictions away for less savvy users without explaining any of the implications.

This is the same pattern that happened with IE where users would install all kinds of toolbars accidentally and then get tons of data stolen or when the first iPhone was jailbroken and everyone wanted all the cool jailbreak features. People would jailbreak the phones of their parents, siblings, relatives, friends, etc. without really every explaining what was happening and what the potential pitfalls of that are.

Now, unfortunately, we're at the same impasse with browser extensions. They're super convenient for most people and are widely used but there's another vector of attack for people that aren't as savvy and don't understand the consequences. Especially when it comes to browsing history, payment data, and passwords, it's so easy to compromise a system now when you can hide it in something like a browser extensions.

The real answer is to do a better job educating people about what everything is but no one wants to do that. More skilled users just want to bitch about what gets taken away from them personally without acknowledging the giant elephant that is ignorance. There is so much advanced technology out there now that people don't even understand the consequences of the most mundane actions.

In my opinion, Apple's trying to do something about that even if it comes at the expense of a few power users losing some conveniences. If their past history is any indicator, they will bring back or improve up on this functionality so that power users get it back somehow but, in the meantime, the bigger and more pressing issue is what takes precedence.

There might be technical reasons why browser extensions are particularly problematic and it might make sense to phase them out in their current form, so, to be clear, that's not what I'm getting hung up on. But there seems to be a broader acceptance of Apple's vision for a nice walled garden where users are safe from everything, especially themselves, and criticisms of this are just "bitching" from people who need to see the bigger picture. I'm sorry but I don't accept that.

Mobile is the primary user environment for a whole generation of kids and millions of people coming online in developing countries around the world. What we're bequeathing them is worse than anything in early-2000s Slashdot's worst paranoid nightmares. Billions of iPhones only load OS images signed by Apple and jailbreaks are aggressively patched as urgent security issues, guaranteeing vendor lock-in. Third-party code is too dangerous so users have to get it from a vendor-controlled app store and sideloading is forbidden for security reasons. You can't have browser extensions because they can see too much, so now you have to hope that Apple implements an API for whatever you were trying to do. There's a weird double standard where the tech literati are fine with things on mobile that they would never accept on their desktop. I guess it's because we have the luxury of putting our phones away and retreating to our "real computers" to scratch our tinkering itch. Not everyone has that privilege, or inclination. If the freedom to tinker means anything to you then mobile shouldn't be an exception.

I don't think the walled garden is even necessarily good for the ill-informed or careless users we're trying to protect. Checking out the "Advanced" mode is how users learn. While it may be dangerous for a casual user to be able to run a command or make a tweak they found recommended on some website, it also can be incredibly helpful - software doesn't always work correctly or the way that you want it to, and there's not always a nice button that does exactly what you need. And there's a real danger of the browser and the other public API surfaces calcifying to only permit what Apple thinks about ahead of time, smothering innovation that could have genuinely benefited users. Imagine if computers followed this philosophy from the beginning. I doubt users would enjoy an app store where user input (text only, of course) is sent securely into the app's stdin and output is text fed securely from the app's stdout to the screen, with no interference permitted by potentially insecure code attempting to provide things like scrollback because it could see all of the user's activity.

So yes, protecting users from the worst malware can be a thing but it's not as obvious as you make it sound that this should necessarily entail removing agency from the user. By aiming for the lowest common denominator user, Apple is depriving everyone else of real advantages. And, I would argue, producing a sterile and stilted experience that's best for no-one.

Indeed, only Safari will have the right to report back on your browsing habits under the name of telemetry or steal login credentials or whatever fear you can imagine.

I don't really care, I don't use Apple products and I still have Firefox, which will happily let me shoot myself in the foot on this (for now). You know what else is a "huge vector for security and privacy issues"? Every program I install through my package manager, or other source. The solution isn't to cripple the OS so that only my distribution vendor can run certain kinds of software and no one else.

Browser extensions are becoming a notable security vulnerability, with many high profile extensions falling into the hands of (or being sold to!) bad actors. The arbitrary code execution method of ad blocking (e.g. uBlock) is very flexible but it means that without ongoing comprehensive code review using one puts you at risk if the extension ever changes hands or has a backdoor added.

Apple's method avoids this issue by never letting the extension see the page contents, it only provides match lists of what to block that the browser then enforces. Even if the extension became malicious it has no access to private data on the webpages it is ad blocking on.

What I think they're saying is that with Adblockers, they can phone home which ads they block, URLs they see, etc.

Content blockers impose rules at the outset and the rule generator won't see what the URLs/content actually is.

The way I would think of it would be like "let me see what you're seeing and I'll let you know what to let through" vs "here are a list of things you shouldn't let through but I don't need to know about what the hit rate actually is".

Although I could be misunderstanding the implementation.

While true with some, I believe uBO is a list implemented client-side, right? Other ad-blockers can and do phone home and let through ads that have paid, but uBO just has the EasyList filter installed locally and blocks those URLs. That was my impression at least, I never personally went through the source code.

I trust uBO and roughly zero others. In fact, uBO has to remind people at every opportunity to avoid certain others. It is all the others, now and in the future, that are prompting Apple to do this, and the one well-behaved extension is unfortunately suffering as a result.

I mourn the loss of uBO, but I'll take that tradeoff knowing that I can relax knowing that my family and friends aren't going to end up using some intrusive nightmare of an "ad-blocker" with Safari.

This is exactly it. Even if a malicious extension gets through, they have access to nothing on the user side. It's not a fair trade off but, in my opinion, it is a worthwhile one.

> That was my impression at least, I never personally went through the source code.

That's the rub though. There's nothing but trust preventing them from including some spyware in the next automatic update. Actually not even trust, whoever has account access to publish for uBlock could have their account hacked and someone malicious could inject spyware into a version of the extension.

Trust is everywhere in computer security. You trust Google to not deliver a backdoored version of Chrome to your machine when you download a binary instead of building from source. You trust them to not break the law and leak your personal data to third parties or discriminate against you based on the content of your emails.

I trust Raymond Hill more than I trust Google.

This isn't as much about what existing extensions do today but all about what potential extension could be doing tomorrow.

If an extension doesn't get full access to all the pages you are reading, it can't do bad things with that access when the extension's owner inevitably changes (see the fight between uBlock and uBlock Origin for example) and spyware features are added.

Even if it is, it doesn’t matter. The problem Apple faces is how to prevent the other bad actors from abusing their API. The answer they’ve settled on is remove those capabilities from the API. Another answer would be to leave the capabilities but somehow only grant access to them to “trusted” parties.

I’m sure that would have gone over really well, too. /s

In the later scenarios, what assurance does the Ablocker have that their requests are respected? I could easily see a scenario where an Adblocker says "Hey Chrome block all requests to ads.google.com" and Chrome saying "Sure thing buddy" then completely ignoring that request.

The same assurance you have that the browser wouldn’t simply inject its own ads into all pages.

There's really nothing at all preventing Chrome from doing that today if they wished... they can manipulate the page before and after the Adblocker sees it.

SHHH!!! That's for Chrome 100 ;P

I agree it's totally possible they would do that, but one could figure it out pretty easily with a touch of detective work.

And then what? Google will say that it's protecting critical functions from breaking and to piss off. Suddenly Google is a monopoly in the ad space because they have the predominant browser and let through only their ads.

they arguably are effectively a monopoly now. Them doing things like this isn't remotely new. They just got caught tracking everyone's smart TV usage. Nothing will happen to them until:

1) the Government decides to intervene.

2) Users give up and start using different services.

I'm pushing for #2, but then I switched off like a decade ago, when I saw the writing on the wall.

Were they tracking smart tv usage or were smart tv manufacturers using google apis to store their tracking data?

Both it seems:

"The most prevalent tracker, Google's doubleclick.net, showed up in 975 of the top 1,000 Roku channels, with Google analytics trackers showing up in 360, the researchers found." - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/studies-google-n...

Adblocker apps/extensions don't require that assurance. The user requires this assurance, and if the browser ignores the user's wishes, the browser is the application that should be held accountable by users.

How is the user to know if it's the AdBlocker or the Browser though? It's a he-said-she-said kind of situation with the AdBlocker and the Browser potentially pointing the finger at each other.

This setup gives the Browser/Maker plausible deniability when they act badly.

Browsers and extensions aren't black boxes; it's easy to inspect them for this kind of behavior.