Not only does Safari allow for 3rd-party adblock extensions that are pretty good, there are iOS browsers available, like iCab Mobile[0] for instance, that allow for extremely fine-grained, granular and tweakable ad-blocking, filtering, domain-blocking, and CSS and javascript rules - all of which can be user-edited and refined to fit exactly the user's own requirements.
There are always so many comments like the above in these threads: often characterized by people banging on iOS because it "can't be customized the way I want it after I paid so much for my iPhone". But these seem to be just standard consumer-mindset complaining from users that don't even have the intellectual curiosity to investigate whether there's actually anything already available that solves their imagined problem, or even try to fix it themselves - just as the article says.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/icab-mobile-web-browser/id3081...
Android also randomly breaks things now and then, but I can at least direct users to Firefox, which never seems to have any problems.
Please understand redirecting users to another browser is only ever a last resort. If I can fix the code I will, but sometimes something just stops working and I can't even reproduce it.
...and I have a teacher who is relying on my app for their classes this week and "try firefox" could save them...
Did you read my entire comment?
Can you see that there are entire browser apps that implement really granular and user-controllable ad-blocking.
In other words exactly the thing the poster I was responding to is complaining about.
(Am I misinformed?)
Quick appreciation regarding the intellectual humility required to add this to the end of your comment. In my humble opinion, this kind of attitude and approach represents some of the best of the HN community.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...
Plus it applies to Safari View Controller for in-app browsing.
https://www.imore.com/ios-9-content-blocking-extensions-expl...
There's a weird situation with mobile phones where for most people who aren't going to go out of their way to make their devices private, Apple's ecosystem is the right choice; it has better defaults and better sandboxing. But once you do decide to go out of your way to make your device private, Apple's ecosystem stops being the right choice.
On a rooted Android phone I have network-level adblocking on my device that directly works with the firewall. I also run Ublock Origin in my phone browser, which blows every single Safari adblocker out of the water. I can also cut off Internet access to specific apps and games, not just to domains. I also have access to a litany of Open Source apps that wouldn't be allowed on app stores like NewPipe that improve my privacy by replacing services. And LineageOS imposes additional sandboxing on top of Android's built-in features.
But if a friend buys a phone, they're not going to do any of that. They can't get NewPipe because they're not using F-Droid. They're probably going to stick with Chrome, which has next to no adblocking or extra privacy controls. An iPhone will be more private and more secure for them in almost every way.
So it's a weird situation where which device is more private depends a lot on who you are. For most average consumers, it's likely iOS. But it's not quite so simple to say that iOS has the best privacy overall.
The shortcoming of using Blockada is that I can't use another VPN. I don't really need it yet, but if I would that could be a big problem.
I don't know why Google doesn't allow chaining VPNs. Maybe the UX would be too difficult on a phone, maybe it's a real edge case not worth spending money on, maybe it would be used only to block ads.