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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

The Android 'equivalent' is just using the uBlock Origin add-on in Firefox as usual, not some new Apple-invented category of app and hamstrung browsers that are all basically Safari.

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not some new Apple-invented category of app

This is bad why exactly?

and hamstrung browsers that are all basically Safari

Content blockers work in original Safari. Which part don’t you like? Content blockers as an app, safari itself, or inability to load third party js into every page you visit?

I wish PC browsers had something like that, because while I trust uBlock Origin (and others, e.g. Bitwarden), there’s always a chance someone hacks into their repo. Modular integration - separate Bitwarden and Adguard apps - is objectively better for these use cases than just pouring some javascripts into every website.

> This is bad why exactly?

I just mean that 'content blockers' are a solution to a problem of Apple's own creation -

> Content blockers work in original Safari.

I know, what I mean there is that all the browsers on iOS are only superficially not Safari; which is the only reason 'content blockers' work in anything 'not' Safari.

Good luck with using that “equivalent” in an embedded web view.

Besides, if I care about my privacy, why would I want to use an ad blocker that has access to my web browsing history?

iOS content blockers tell Safari what to block and don’t have access to where you go.

It's open source. You can verify whether or not they're doing anything nefarious with your browsing history. You can then package it yourself and run it!

Or, instead of digging through every line of source code and packaging it myself, I can use an operating system where the vendor designed a content blocking framework that is privacy focused by default and that works with third party apps that use web views.

That's a great starting point / default but can't block complicated things as effectively and shouldn't be the only option on a platform.

Care to post some real world example websites?

The data processing consent popups on Google properties aren't blockable by this because they are JS-based and integrate with the rest of the page's JS code, so the only way to "defuse" them is to run active JS code provided by the blocker. The declarative framework can't do this by design.

1Blocker iOS

> Block Annoyances: blocks cookie notices

And if you really want to, you can run 1Blocker scripts within Safari that can do the same type of thing. You have to go into Settings and you get a huge privacy warning.

And this also works with embedded web views - unlike with Android

Yeah, because you're just taking Apple's word that they aren't being nefarious. You can quite literally see for yourself whether or not ublock origin is. It's like arguing that being able to film the police shouldnt be allowed because they promise to be good.

You can also see for yourself how ad blockers register what can be blocked to Safari by looking at the open source WebKit code…

Sorta! You can't install it so you can't prove it's the same thing! That's the problem with a locked OS.

So you suggest that everyone look through every line of source code to ensure that it is legitimate?

Did you also verify that Firefox installed from the App Store was the same as the open source version?

Are you using only open sourced code on your phone or are you using Google provided binaries? Are your drivers open source for your chipset?

If not, you are also using “locked down code”

Towards open source freedom is my goal, not towards Tim Cook's bonus. nvidia just moved more towards open sourcing their drivers. You think that's out of kindness? No, it's because AMD and Intel have open drivers and nvidia is scared to lose market share to them.

Vote with your wallet and we can have a better future. I don't care if it's iOS, Android, or Linux! Just that it's actually open.

Nvidia no more moved toward open source than Google with the play store. It still depends on binary closed source blobs.

I assure you that Nvidia is not going to lose market share to Intel in the GPU race. Even Apple is creating chipsets Thad trounce Intel in graphics performance.

Android uses the default browser for webview. If you have Firefox + uBlock Origin as your default browser you get ad blocking in your webview.

By “embedded web view”, I don’t mean when you click on a link it switches to another app. I mean something like an RSS reader where you view a web page inside the hosted app.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/GeckoView

> Mozilla uses GeckoView to power Firefox for Android, Firefox Reality, Firefox Focus, and other Android apps. GeckoView serves a similar purpose to Android's built-in WebView, but it has its own APIs and is not a drop in replacement.

You can replace the default web view, although I believe it requires root access. I've been using https://www.bromite.org/system_web_view for a while and it works pretty well.

But you can’t replace it with Firefox’s GeckoView since they don’t support the equivalent APIs according to their own documentation.

So the only way you can actually use your ad blocked system wide is through a series of hacks

https://github.com/bromite/bromite/blob/master/FAQ.md

That’s definitely a lot easier than just…going to the App Store.

Of course when your phone is using an OS that is created by an ad tech company, they aren’t going to make it easy to block ads system wide.

And android is actually getting worse, too, not better. And Firefox is slowly knee capping the freedom (presumably because they're all Apple users haha)

Its why it's important for folks like yourself who are pro-Apple to push for Apple to open up. That way we can have the best of both worlds (if you believe the marketing, like it would appear you do). I'll use the most open device at the end of the day.

You can now run arbitrary web extensions in Safari. 1Blocker has the standard Content Blocking framework that’s been supported 7 years where it just gives Safari a list of rules and it supports embedded Safari extensions where it does have access to your browsing history.

You don’t just get a pop up that allows you to enable it. You have to go into settings and get a scary warning.

> Good luck with using that “equivalent” in an embedded web view.

It works, so thanks. Maybe you're referring to the impossibility to access the plugin's settings from the embedded web view. But if it's a site you've visited before and configured to your preference, then it takes effect in the same way there as in full FF.

> iOS content blockers tell Safari what to block and don’t have access to where you go.

If I tell it 'block scripts from example.org on news.ycombinator.com' then it's a pretty good bet that I visit news.ycombinator.com.

Right, I realise iOS content blockers aren't that powerful, so it's hypothetical. ;)

So how does “it work” when Mozilla themselves says that GeckoView can’t be used as a drop in embedded WebView?

I don't know, I'm just reporting my experience as a user. I don't develop for Android or know anything about what Mozilla says about it.

Feel free to reproduce it yourself: block third party by default (for example), open some broken page, observe it as such; 'open in browser' from 3-dot menu; amend settings to allow whatever it needs; back out, observe it functional.

Open in the browser is not the same thing as an embedded web view. Take something like an RSS reader. You click on the link and it shows you the web page inside the app without taking you outside of the app.

At some point, you have to trust someone. I trust uBlock Origin to not be malicious and so do plenty of people. Ideally you'd want to pin versions and always stay a few versions behind so that an overnight "rug pull" where the extension becomes compromised doesn't affect you.

The problem with iOS' declarative blocking framework is that it's not powerful enough to deal with more advanced ads.

Like what?

I didn't mean an equivalent to iOS's content blockers specifically, but an ad block solution in general. I don't use Android, so I'm not familiar with what's available.

Yeah, but it’s still Android… Yuck.

I actually even go further and degoogle my android phones so it's just this quiet, open source minimalist utopia. It's magnificent.

Give me a third option. Both Android and iPhone are inferior products compared to even Windows 10 in terms of what control I have on my device

What a crazy thing to say. Do the konami dance on Android to set your device to developer mode, and it literally gives you a root shell on a Linux system with a completely open source OS that you can tweak, complile, and reflash yourself. That whole process is simple enough that any given 10 year old can figure it out in a weekend and have complete control over their device if they want it, no fancy exploits or anything required.

The fact that Windows 10 has zero protections WRT physical or app security is not something to be proud of.

You can't root or reflash all android phones. You can use the adb shell without root but it... isn't root.

You can't root or re-flash all Windows devices either.

It's an open platform, so of course there are a ton of bad actors in the space who are going to add their own garbage and try to prevent people from removing it, but if you buy a phone from a reputable source, it's going to let you put it into dev mode. Obviously don't buy the malware encrusted garbage sold directly from shady telecom companies etc.

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