It only supports ‘Chrome Manifest v3’-style ‘simple’ blocking lists, not ‘true’ adblockers. These mostly work fine but are clearly less powerful.

They also don’t work with non-Safari browsers (e.g. Firefox).

This hasn’t been true for two years Safari on iOS has supported web extensions for that long.

iOS Safari supports Web Extensions for a year, but does it useful for adblocker? It lacks WebRequest API (from the beginning of Mac Safari).

I keep seeing these handwavy responses about the “limitations” of ad blocking on iOS. But I don’t see any ads with 1Blocker installed.

Yeah it's generally fine by just using a Content Blocker app, but your argument about web extensions and adblocker is wrong. "I don’t see any ads" is handwavy response.

If the purpose of an ad blocker is to not see any ads and unless you can show me a web page that shows ads when I’m running 1Blocker that doesn’t with a supposedly superior solution then how is 1Blocker on iOS inferior?

I'm also fine with a Content Blocker app (I use local made one) like you. It rarely miss some ads (I don't know is it due to missed rules or API) but ignorable. So I'm not against for Apple/Google to introduce rule based API for efficiency. I just say Web Extensions on Safari seems to irrelevant for this topic. You can say "Content blocker is fine" instead. Technically it's less capable than what webRequests API can do, but it's almost fine for most users except like HNers.

How is it “irrelevant” when 1Blocker in fact has added a web extension for increase functionality?

Ah Ok I found 1Blocker now uses not only Content Blocker but also Extension's content script to do more blocking work. Thanks for correction. https://backstage.1blocker.com/how-to-block-youtube-ads-in-s...

What? iOS only supports content blockers as safari extensions since iOS 15, which is the latest iOS…

Please do source your claim that this has been possible for 7yrs, as that’s not my experience.

(https://developer.apple.com/safari/extensions/)

See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695552 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230704.