Re:Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0
by danShumway on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @03:46PM
(#24064778)
Safari's content blocker API isn't really comparable to something like Ublock Origin.
It'll definitely help with the web if your goal is just to speed things up and make things look better, but if you're worried about privacy, iOS's browser is going to be less thorough than other platforms. It doesn't even support page-source rewrites, let alone protecting against more advanced anti-adblock techniques like CNAME cloaking.
Funnily enough, this has come up a few times in the context of Chrome's manifest V3 changes, where people have asked why it matters since Safari already works pretty similarly to what Google is proposing. Ironically, the answer is that the similarity is exactly why we know it's a bad idea for Chrome to go in the same direction. Safari has less effective adblocking compared to where the rest of the industry is at.
It's always going to be easier to bypass what is effectively a declarative DNS blocklist than it is to bypass a system that can run blocking logic per-request.
It'll definitely help with the web if your goal is just to speed things up and make things look better, but if you're worried about privacy, iOS's browser is going to be less thorough than other platforms. It doesn't even support page-source rewrites, let alone protecting against more advanced anti-adblock techniques like CNAME cloaking.
Funnily enough, this has come up a few times in the context of Chrome's manifest V3 changes, where people have asked why it matters since Safari already works pretty similarly to what Google is proposing. Ironically, the answer is that the similarity is exactly why we know it's a bad idea for Chrome to go in the same direction. Safari has less effective adblocking compared to where the rest of the industry is at.
It's always going to be easier to bypass what is effectively a declarative DNS blocklist than it is to bypass a system that can run blocking logic per-request.