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Comment by yjftsjthsd-h | Hacker News Reader

... What are browsers rated?

Firefox, Firefox Focus, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Duck Duck Go, Brave (all reskins of Safari, essentially) are all rated 17+, which is nuts, but consistent with this policy at least.

But the pre-installed Safari is okay? All browsers on iOS are just Safari skins, so why isn't iOS as a whole rated 17+? All those web filters for adult content don't work. You might not be able to access pornhub but there are millions of other websites with pornography.

> But the pre-installed Safari is okay? All browsers on iOS are just Safari skins, so why isn't iOS as a whole rated 17+?

Wow. That's an excellent and very telling point.

What is the point of IOS's endless restrictions and censorship of free speech?

Is the point really to protect users from exercising their own intelligence or guarding their own kids, or is it to protect users from alternatives to Apple's own products?

It's kinda like Gatekeeper on Mac OS; you cannot (easily) install apps that aren't from the App Store. Was this only to protect you from malware? Really?

It's like all of these restrictions have a dual purpose on Mac OS: the stated reason, and an unstated reason: to increase Apple's control over you.

I'm actually surprised that Apple even allows web browsers at all, or third party mail apps, or anything that lets people access things outside their walled garden.

Safari can block adult websites.

By design, only Safari can block adult websites on IOS.

Not so, if you download chrome and enable parental controls with the adult content lock, it will block the adult sites.

Please don't pretend to be surprised about that when the last decade has been all about the iPhone and its pervasive and elegant access to literally millions of sources of content that is "outside Apple's walled garden".

It's not credible.

> Please don't pretend ... It's not credible.

That's rather impolite. And I'm absolute surprised that Apple hasn't already eliminated the real web -- just like AOL and Microsoft (tried to subvert with MSN and IE), because full and unrestricted access to the web is full of negatives for Apple's business model.

> the last decade has been all about the iPhone and its pervasive and elegant access to literally millions of sources of content that is "outside Apple's walled garden".

No idea what this means. Are you talking about how the iPhone provides "pervasive and elegant access" to.. the web?

Well, just to answer the question very directly, iOS as a whole isn't rated 17+ because it can't be. Obviously. It's not an app, it's not present in the App Store, and it has no age rating. So that takes care of that.

17+, which is quite ridiculous of course—Safari is pre-installed and allows you to see the same websites as Chrome or Firefox

Non-Safari browsers (apparently) don’t and can’t respect iOS parental controls so of course they would be 17+.

I know you said "can't" but just to confirm, is there no iOS API to get parental control info to block stuff like this? If not, I wonder why Apple doesn't provide that option.

o/w, "Safari supports parental controls" argument is BS.

Probably the same reason why other browsers can't use adblock addons while Safari can or why other browsers had crippled JavaScript performance until recently. Apple is afraid of losing Safari market share, so they're making preferential treatment to it whenever possible.

You can put parental controls in place to block adult sites with safari.

Yes, but parents can turn on content filtering within iOS onto Safari, as well as allow or block websites individually. Other browsers do not implement this filtering.

I’m pretty sure they do because they’re using the system webview.

Any app with "Unrestricted Web Access" gets a 17+ rating.

Firefox is 17+ on App store

Last I knew there was only one browser for iOS (Safari) which can neither be removed nor replaced, just reskinned. If that's still the case, it would be pointless to even give it a rating.

EDIT: Getting downvoted. Is this incorrect?

I haven't personally downvoted you, but I would assume it's for one of two reasons:

1) The distinction if browsers ship their own engine or just embed system provided WebKit is ultimately irrelevant to the question at hand. I can go on the App Store and download "Chrome" or "Firefox" and use those applications to access websites.

2) Browsers do have age ratings on the App Store. It's 17+.

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