Hacker News Reader

Comment by armadyl | Hacker News Reader

FYI uBlock Origin Lite on iOS is inferior to AdGuard and (I think) Wipr as it's just a WebExtension, so it'll only block ads within Safari itself.

AdGuard and Wipr use both the Web Extension and Content Blocker APIs, so they'll block ads in all web views system wide on top of within Safari itself.

However as far as trustworthiness goes, uBlock is (imo) #1.

View on HN

wBlock by an MIT student is open source and seems (just!) about as trustworthy as uBlock, though of course without the track record. Light & fast, especially to update.

  “wBlock runs entirely within Safari's content blocking API. There's no data collection, no tracking, and no system-level extensions that can monitor your browsing.“

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wblock/id6746388723 / GH: https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock

On AdGuard: can act as your PiHole and allow you to see network requests when run in non-native mode.

Thanks for the link, I like it so far

Nice, last time I heard about wblock felt like years ago and I'm not sure why I didn't consider it.

These days I don't run on-device adblock, I just do DNS filtering for the most part but I'll check it out, not sure I wanna keep tunneling all my DNS queries to ControlD perpetually lol

Just a comment on the narrative:

> wBlock by an MIT student is open source

It's funny to me that some find that narrative appealing.

Here's another narrative: Many of those MIT students go on to be SV founders and employees who build, operate, and make millions or billions from the mass surveillance and ad industry. And I'm sure some participated in FOSS in college - what better way to build your resume for the surveillance/ad industry?

(I'm not commenting on the wBlock developer; I think all such narratives are deceiving and should be ignored.)

The "narrative" above is that they're both made by seemingly well-intentioned solo developers, that's it. Use your own judgement for something that wants to inject JS into every website you visit.

> The "narrative" above is that they're both made by seemingly well-intentioned solo developers

Our comments don't disagree (though I was only responding to the comment parent to mine). My point is to question how 'MIT student' is a signal for 'well-intentioned'.

No offense to the author, but I don't trust a college kid the same way I trust the team behind uBlock. The latter have a well-established track record with substantial external eyes (including Firefox directly.)

Age of author shouldn’t be of relevance. Experience and/or team size should.

A kid reading up on security from age 6 through college could have a decade of experience, for example.

I'm not sure whether this comment is serious or not. Poe's law strikes again.

Never heard of this but looks good to me. Nice to have another tool for the arsenal.

I think Wipr is also very trustworthy. It’s developed by an indie dev who’s responsive over email, and gives you a lot for free. And it has a $5/yr subscription (or one time payment) that unlocks system-wide ad blocking, not just in web views.

I’ve found it to work exceptionally well after trying other free adblockers.

Yeah my comment wasn't me trying to say they weren't trustworthy, I've actually purchased both AdGuard and Wipr but I stick with AdGuard since I felt like it was better. And the dev of Wipr seems to be transparent for sure.

However of the three I trust AdGuard the least, for no objective reasons.

uBOL bug report: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/438 , from discussion https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/discussions/408#di...

    uBOL doesn't work in apps, it works only in Safari, it's a pure browser extension, the "app" part of uBOL is an Apple requirement just for the sake of installing the extension.

    Copied from #408:

    uBOL will stay a webextensions-based browser extension, I do not plan to go further than this, I do not have the time and motivation to take on more work than I already do.
    What people may ask though is that Apple maybe supports webextensions in WebApp, if that is possible at all.

I hope this changes, it’s what keeps me on AdGuard :-/

I have been happy with my workaround for this issue which is using uBOL along side the AdGuard content blocker extensions (main AdGuard web extension disabled).

FWIW AdGuard dev team is in Russia. Letting them proxy all your traffic is probably not the wisest move.

If you use the Safari adblocker, it will use rule lists, not proxy all traffic.

That said, IMO on Safari Wipr all the way (though I use Brave Origin with its built-in blocker now, which is stellar).

I think they relocated but yes that’s partially why I don’t use it anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com