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st3fan

We just pushed the button on stage at the Mozilla All-hands. It should by live in most countries now.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1055677337

Ask us anything you want to know about this product.

Also, keep an eye on the Github repo.

https://github.com/mozilla/focus

We are still watching the Keynote but will flip the switch soon.

View on HN

What's the two-word summary of why I'd want to use this app over one of the other content blockers?

"It's free!"

That's certainly an item in the "pro" column, but there are lots of other free ones out there.

If someone were to gain some traction in this space I would prefer it to be a credible organisation.

I long thought that this should be driven by a foundation , rather than a private enterprise, but I wanted the additional benefit of delegating the profits to a particular donation.

The hooks are implemented by Apple and the data is crowd sourced. I don't see any reason why anyone should profit in this space.

"I don't see any reason why anyone should profit in this space."

Because there's still work in putting it together and maintaining it? And because profiting from doing this means they're less likely to take money from an ad company?

If it were anything other than Mozilla, wouldn't that be a Con? Because then it'd be more likely that the maintainer would take money to let ads by.

Well... One of the best selling paid versions, Crystal, is going to allow companies to pay for "acceptable ads."

Personally, I think the people who paid for blockers were ripped off, there's nothing special or difficult in building a content blocker:

1. The majority of the value, the blocking list, it readily available and actively maintained.

2. Performance and integration into iOS is provided by Apple, you simply produce a format that Apple approves.

So what are you paying for? Marketing, packaging, and giving a 3rd party control?

So why should anyone make a content blocker, unless they're someone with a mission to do so, like Mozilla or the EFF?

I get the feeling that you have some deep seated capitalistic ideals. Do you do anything that you can't make money from?

I can think of a few reasons to make a content blocker:

1. Improve privacy for users on the Internet.

2. Decrease cost and speed for people who pay for data, or have bad connections.

3. Challenge revenue streams of large corporations.

4. Fame.

5. Improve strangers lives.

Those are good reasons. But I don't see anything about why one shouldn't be paid for it.

can't do a two word, but you don't have to worry about maintainer accepting $$ to allow certain ads through, as has happened with at least one other iOS content blocker

Again, can't sum up in two words, but can sum it up in two points. This would be better because:

* It's by Mozilla, and it's more likely (probability wise) to be maintained and kept up-to-date than those that happen to be a single person's hobby project.

* I believe that big players in the web like Mozilla and EFF (eff.org) really fight for us, the common people. :) The more these things become popular, especially from bigger names, the better the chances of the whole ad-tracker-privacy ecosystem to improve for our good.

The "two word" thing is a joke, but your two points are pretty good. The combination of "maintained by decently large organization" and "non-evil" is probably unique in this space.

what about besides "known household name"? any technical merit? anything you know you do better than the alternative, for a fact?

and in the process of fairness, any other blocker doing anything better that you plan to add to yours?

Technical merit? I don't really know. This is based on the open source tracker list from Disconnect (disconnect.me).

FWIW, I was never into paying for an ad-blocker on iOS since that comes with its pitfalls. I have tried a couple of other free ones, and I did like Adblock Fast [1], the one I was using until Focus by Firefox and the one I still have. It's open source and is available for Chrome (not iOS), Opera (not iOS) and Safari (iOS 9). I'd suggest reading through the GitHub page to see some stats as well as the philosophy (of not making money or compromising it with acceptable ads). [2]

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adblock-fast/id1032930802

[2]: https://github.com/rocketshipapps/adblockfast

I always used someonewhocares.org host list on my wireless modems to protect my IOS devices (which never leave the house anyway, since they exist only to test apps/sites for people like you that do not value device ownership :)

the list that site provides blocks practically every single ad, malware, etc. But it is not very practical to keep up to date.

Reminds me of the arguments against the CA ecosystem in favor of browser cert pinning. It's much easier to trust Mozilla (or Google, or whomever else) than to trust the fifty-odd root CAs installed on my computer, and all their granted intermediates.

> more likely (probability wise) to be maintained

Mozilla is starting to develop a bad track record on this recently.

authority, ambition

How about: "Reliable curation"

"credible nonprofit"

Upvote for rising to my absurd challenge and making a decent argument too.

Any reason you're not supporting the iPhone 5 or 5C? Is there something you need which they don't support?

The 5 and 5C do not have 64 bit processors, which is a requirement for Content Blockers.

Apparently blocking ads is harder than landing on the Moon. :|

the moon isn't actively altering its surface and orbital pattern to prevent you from landing there

Maybe it is and that's why they faked it! /s

Saturn V rocket is not yet required for content blockers.

Modern designer and UI experts demand better--really worse--UI than the moon lander had[0]. This can make almost any project harder than landing on the moon.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj2IETkScWA

The moon doesn't generate as much money as ads.

Content blockers seem to work on 32-bit devices if you compile for them:

"Yes, but I'd guess it's an arbitrary limitation—at least it seems to be for A6 devices. BlockParty works perfectly on my iPhone 5C and apparently on @wadetregaskis' iPhone 5, both of which are 32 bit A6 (and not officially supported). I get all the relevant menus, and it does block ads (even the huge easylist conversion works, albeit poorly)." [1]

1: https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty/issues/9#issuecomme...

Apple chose not support 32 bit devices in their blocking API, which isn't too unreasonable. I imagine it kept the code quite a bit cleaner (or avoided having to run parallel implementations to get good speed).

As the parent says, the API works fine as is, today, on 32-bit devices - you're just not allowed to submit code to the App Store that takes advantage of this. There is no JIT or anything else inherently architecture specific in the WebKit content blocker implementation. Thus the restriction comes either from a semi-arbitrary determination of the speed of Apple's first 64-bit processor, and/or the amount of RAM that came with it, as the boundary below which content blockers might cause unacceptable performance regression (despite their /improving/ performance on many sites)... or from some odd marketing plan to sell newer devices. Hard to say which.

Personally, I doubt it's a marketing thing. Apple do sometimes restrict software features to specific devices (Siri when it launched originally), but this is rather oddly processor-dependant. So I assume it's a performance thing.

iOS content blockers don't support 32bit CPUs, apparently for performance reasons. This is an Apple decision, not a Mozilla decision (all other iOS content blockers face the same limitation)

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I actually had the same question, and found out by seeing the responses to your question that 64 bit is required.

Just a curiosity I have found: why does no ad blocker, Focus included, block ads on 4chan (4chan-ads.org, IMC)?

Because 4chan's ads aren't invasive and they don't track you. They're just small banner images displayed at the top and bottom of the page with no JS, no flash, etc.

Precisely the type of ads we should be celebrating since they subsidize the content we consume. A lot of people either are oblivious to their actual importance, or just don't care. The internet simply wouldn't be what it is today without them. True, there has been plenty of bad (trackers, malware, etc), but the good that has come from that subsidization has lead us to where we are today. A vast majority of the innovation on the internet has been directly or indirectly related to that subsidization.

I can determine what ads I do and do not want to block. How many other ads does Focus by Firefox not block?

Edit: Y'all downvote weird shit sometimes. Marco quit the ad blocking game because he didn't want to be the arbiter of what did and did not get blocked. It's perfectly reasonable to question what a given blocker will and will not block. And perfectly valid to wish to have that control.

Also, on a more technical level 4chan's ads aren't served from a well known ad host like Google, so they wouldn't be blocked by a typical blacklist without filtering URLs containing ad -- which some adblockers do, causing [all kinds of problems] [0].

[0]: https://medium.com/medium-eng/the-unluckiest-paragraphs-751d...

> On most webpages, if you click a link, the browser automatically handles loading a new page. On Medium, we speed this up a bit with JavaScript.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH

You really don't need to reimplement the <a> tag in javascript. You really don't. You really don't. Ever. Stop. Argh. Fuck. Fucking web developers.

So much Swift!

All iOS developers I know are hopeful about Swift, but say that they wouldn't use it for a serious, large-scale project yet. (I'm a Unity developer that only occasionally touches native iOS or Android code). What was your experience with it?

That's interesting, I've had almost the opposite experience. The team I work on is slowing migrating over (new classes and classes that need refactoring are done in Swift), and most of my friends who are iOS developers have told me they're doing the same.

FWIW, I work at a medium sized company (~300 employees) who is owned by a larger company (15k employees).

I'm a small development team (there are only 5-6 engineers, and I'm the only iOS one right now). I've gotten the go ahead to move to Swift as well. It's been fairly easy with only one strange crash so far.

Swift is ready. For a much bigger project in Swift, look at

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox

It was a rough road while we went from Swift pre-1.0 to 2.1 but it was totally worth it.

I guess you meant to link this one: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios

In any case, Swift has been an eye opener for me, and I'm always keen to read someone else's code to learn more. Thanks for your contributions :)

Does st3fan refer to Sublime Text 3, perchance?

Firefox isn't written in Swift (and Firefox isn't hosted on Github anyway), I'm guessing that you meant https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios .

I'm on a Swift project for an App in the neighbourhood of millions of DAUs. Swift is ready.

Why don't you charge for this? I would be more than willing to pay.

Make a donation to the Mozilla Foundation?

That's not as easy, though. :)

https://mozilla.org/donate ?

edit: ahh, you want a "donate $X" IAP.

How about https://donate.mozilla.org?

Disclosure: I'm a Mozilla Foundation employee, who helped build that

That Github URL isn't working. Cheers to the team! (I'm way off in the corner of the room) :)

Should be live now! And we are working on some better landing page.

What about desktop Firefox?

You Github repo is unaccessible at the moment :/

Wording makes it sound like you pushed a button and an app was on the app store globally in less than a week...

Are you a magician?

I was under the impression a developer had the final say in when an app goes live once it's passed Apple's review, thus allowing them to submit it in advance, have it reviewed, and then make it public at a time of their choosing?

You are correct. Google Play just added this feature as well.

Yep. I used this a few times back when I did App Store development. (Though it still takes a few hours to show up for everyone, at least as of a few years ago.)

Still does. Apple continues to completely fail at any sort of distributed system. It amazes me that Google is able to index the entire web so quickly that I can post a comment on a random web site and have it show up in search results two minutes later, while Apple takes hours and hours for something to show up in their store after you push a button on their own control panel.

Google has the same problem; submit changes to a Play Store listing (or a new version) and it takes a couple hours to be universally visible. So it's not an Apple vs Google issue.

Source: I've done far too many app deployments for work (200+)

You're just letting the facts get in the way of a good apple bashing.

/sarcasm

The fact that Google does it badly with their store too doesn't make it any better. Google search was just an example of how a much harder task is done far more quickly. I didn't even think of the Google/Apple rivalry in this space.

Have you considered that maybe it just isn't quite as simple a problem as you imagine?

Of course. And my conclusion is that, while the problem is hard, it can be solved. That it's not solved is either a lack of skill or a lack of will (or some combination thereof), not because it's an impossible task.

On Apple's side, they don't care in the least about the poor experience of third-party developers, as has been proven many times throughout the years. They're also struggling to keep a massive system going which has diverged substantially from its original scope and purpose as the iTunes Music Store. Combine a hard problem with zero motivation to improve it and you get what we have.

> And my conclusion is that, while the problem is hard, it can be solved

And yet two of the biggest software companies on the planet, both who have a huge vested interest in getting people to use their respective app stores, haven't just magically fixed it yet.

I'm also calling bullshit on your claim of not being unnecessarily anti-Apple, or giving Google a free pass or whatever. Every single negative comment you've made about this has been targeted specifically at Apple, making literally no mention of Google's App store which has exactly the same "problem".

By your own claim, the problem should be easier to solve than general web indexing, which Google clearly have a lot more experience in than Apple - so if it's "zero motivation" from Apple, what is it from Google, sheer contempt?

> Every single negative comment you've made about this has been targeted specifically at Apple, making literally no mention of Google's App store which has exactly the same "problem".

I've been an Apple user for almost 30 years. I've been involved with the App Store since before it was available to the public. The only smartphones I've ever owned personally have been iPhones.

I simply don't use Google Play. I've done some Android development, but other people always handled the distribution end of things.

I am commenting personally, based on my own personal experience. I have no idea why you think I would or should be fair and balanced in this, analyzing Google Play with the same force I do the App Store. I'm not in a position to comment on Google Play. I used Google search as a comparison because I use that many times a day.

Why is every single negative comment I've made about this targeted specifically at Apple? Because that's the freakin' topic of of the freakin' conversation here, and because it's what I know.

Go get someone with years of experience dealing with Google Play if you want that perspective. Don't hassle me for not providing it for you.

When you submit your app you can opt for Apple to release it immediately upon approval, or wait for you to manually release it.

Mozilla likely submitted the app a couple of weeks ago and just hit the release button today.

There was a joke made on stage about how it was submitted weeks ago, and they were sweating bullets, because it still hadn't quite gotten approval, and then finally, it came through yesterday.

Unfortunately the app review process is not very transparent. It is unclear why it took so long. It is best to not try to understand it's inner workings.

But for comparison, Firefox for iOS, a MUCH larger app, has had perfectly predictable review times for the past couple of releases: 7 days in the queue, few hours for review.

Focus was 7 days in the queue and then a couple of weeks In Review.

It happens. To all of us.

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