> Why ? Because it is asymmetric battle. Content Platforms ( not only digital) already insert native advertising or do product placement, these are harder or impossible to block technically, and quite hard cognitively to differentiate as well.

Also Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer and controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads, it is much harder to block ads on mobile platforms where most users are, only Firefox supports an ad blocker at all and Mozilla generates 95% of its revenue from Google .

We need better regulations not better ad-blocking to protect vulnerable users . More common ad-blocking becomes more aggressive the counter measures will be, given Google's control of Android and Chrome (that also gives them influence of Edge(based on Chrome) and to some extent Safari - Webkit heritage ) they can easily effect changes that makes it impossible or extremely difficult to block ads.

Adblocking also works pretty well on Safari, even better since iOS 15 added extensions.

It’s pretty easy to install apps like 1Blocker and NextDNS on an iPhone and eliminate nearly all ads. More importantly, the platform automatically prevents tracking [0] “across other companies apps and websites” without explicit opt-in since April, and Safari has already been blocking trackers for a couple of years (the above link to Seattle Times blocked googletagmanager.com, google.com, chartbeat.com, amazon-adsystem.com, with default settings, and no additional purchases).

On top of this the many iOS users who already pay for iCloud+ to get access to enough storage now have an onion router service available in beta that hides IP addresses from websites. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks and had no issues. [1]

I agree that it’s an arms race, and as Facebook and Google see ad revenue drop from users who have ad blocking enabled, they’ll grind the remaining ones even harder.

[0] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/facebook-no...

[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/prepare-your-network-for...

Good to know to that Apple is investing in this recently, They also have the market share to counter to Google control of web market with Chrome and its derivatives to keep web developers in check.

Sadly while Apple is reasonable choice in the U.S. market, it is not affordable choice in most of the world. This effectively means only the rich get protection from ads.

> native advertising or do product placement

I'm sure people will figure out a solution. Maybe some machine learning thing that identifies brands and just deletes them.

We already have extensions such as sponsor block.

> Google is removing web APIs and actively making its browser poorer

Yeah, that sucks. I've already switched to Firefox and I also keep Brave around. Google made it easy for me when it killed sync for custom Chromium builds.

> controlling the web standards that is making it increasingly technically difficult to block ads

What, really? Do you have examples of this? What web standards have they proposed that would make blocking ads harder?

> only Firefox supports an ad blocker at all and Mozilla generates 95% of its revenue from Google

I agree, that's a massive conflict of interest. I think Mozilla should work to solve that.

> We need better regulations

Agreed, but I still believe that technology is a potent and subversive weapon. The mere existence of ad blockers has forced these tech giants to change the way they operate. If we keep up the pressure, either we'll win and drive them out of the internet or they'll become ever more tyrannical in their attempts to maintain control, drawing more attention to themselves and hopefully inviting public condemnation and regulation.

Standards control has been never always direct since JScript days, the dominant players do what they please, and by the nature of dominance web app developers have to comply follow their tools, and standards get established de-facto.

Specifically, moves like changes in manifest V3 and removal of chrome.webRequest is aimed squarely at adblocking, Forcing DRM in HTML5 is a step in this direction as well and can become dangerous in conjunction with AV1 enhancements .

For example it may become feasible to dynamically mux content and ad streams without a separate network request if encoding is not as expensive as H264 today with AV1 . Coupled with DRM on HTMl5 it would be impossible for any plugin as streams will never be exposed available for "Piracy reasons". Even HDMI has support for DRM , the only analog/open/accessible format left will be the light stream to your eyes.

This would make ad blockers straight up illegal under the DMCA since they cannot circumvent these protections. I already oppose copyright and DRM for many reasons, I never expected advertising to become one of them.

God I hate these "industries".