> Does ad blocking affect search engine ads?
> No. Ads shown on search engine results pages are not blocked.
A lot of the search results on top of Google are there to scam you, providing phone numbers for pass through services that charge $ for it, like flight cancellation:
A neighbor came to ask for help today. He got locked out of his Facebook account and was getting impatient with their AI, so he Googled "facebook support number" clicked on the first link (almost certainly an ad) and called the number. The person on the other end apparently told him they needed access to his bank accounts to verify his identity and you know the rest of the story.
How is Alphabet not responsible this? They push ads for scams at the top and earn money from it. That should be 100% on them to reimburse, then go after the scammers.
Also they say they will continue to show Firefox’s sponsored links and ads. So, they’ll continue to show first party ads and google’s ads? And likely they won’t be able to keep up with meta’s anti ad blocking. That’s most ads on the internet. No thanks, I’ll stick to ublock origin lite on safari.
There's no reason to hope there is a way to tell a particular source of ads to turn itself off when you can just use a non-gimped ad block on a non-gimped platform and block all ads without caring if any of them are cooperative or adversarial.
Me too, but we are few. Google paid $585M in 2024. I don't think Mozilla can get 58 million users to pay $10 each. That might even exceed the FF user base. Even if they could, they would use it as extra money, not to get rid of Google.
Good executives that have achieved an ever shrinking market share while continuing to piss of enthusiast users? At this point they could pay someone with zero experience minimum wage and would probably do no worse. Have you considered that a "good executive" (i.e. someone good at maximizing shareholder values and his own compensation) is the last person Firefox needs?
That's because browsers should be free. They are infrastructure, just like bridges. And nobody wants a bridge troll sitting on the single bridge crossing the internet river, demanding money from everyone.
You pay for bridges with tax. Tax funded browser sounds good in theory, but I don't trust the people managing my tax money to run a tech project like Firefox. Most likely it gets handed to the lowest private sector bidder, with the stipulation that any privacy preserving — sorry, I meant criminal hiding — features be removed.
What exactly is the problem? I understand a browser is a complex program but is the claim it is impossible to build a browser without continual dependence on advertising toxic dollars?
A browser in the class of Firefox or Chrome is for all intents and purposes a full OS constantly exposed to the world.
I understand open source OS development to be sustainable thanks to the the effort put into the server farms. That doesn't work for client side software, with the additional hurdle of needing to be better than the ad funded browser.
Maybe companies should see browsers more as a the Linux kernel, a precompetitive commodity layer on top of which we deliver/extract value to/from users.
And Firefox is not riddled with ads. The websites it loads are. If you run a program that shows ads on your Linux distro, the Linux kernel won't block them, will it?
Does your hypothetical kernel make it easy or difficult for you to install add-ons that block ads? Does the organization that build it have a conflict of interest regarding advertisting/surveillance interests such as Google/Meta/...?
Not sure what your point is. My comparison was not made to be stretched infinitely. Next question may be "does your kernel render web pages?", but I don't see where it is going.
But to give an answer: if you wanted to bake an ad-blocker in the Linux kernel that would prevent programs from showing ads in a transparent way (the ads just don't show and the programs still work and look fine), I think it would not be trivial at all.
But I don't see the point of going down that discussion.
Look, Windows (apparently) displays ads to some users. So even for OSes, if they can get away with it, they will shove ads in our face.
Linux is a highly complex piece of software. It is OSS. And it does not shove ads in face of its users. So my point is if there is a will there is a way.
The question is then why aren't we all getting behind a solid OSS browser? Specially now with AI coding assist, this should be even more feasable.
We're this conversation so Firefox is not up to task. And Chromium is connected in some way with the poster child for ad tech and surveillance capitalism.
So the point stands: OSS community has shown itself capable of tackling some of the hairiest technical challenges (Linux) and we should not let the notion that 'browsers can only be developed by corporations' stop us from creating OSS alternatives to the current offerings.
> OSS community has shown itself capable of tackling some of the hairiest technical challenges (Linux)
Has it though, say in the last decade? My first intuition would be that Linux was in a very different situation when it started. And it's not like there are 10 similar open source kernels that were created in the last decades and that got usable enough to be replacements for Linux...
Perhaps not riddled but Mozilla has added ads to Firefox itself and considering their acquisitions and behavior in general you can expect them to add more.
I'm not criticizing Orion for that; I actually enjoy it quite a lot (and will do even more when they will have ironed out all the UI bugs).
Also I'm eager to see how it will behave on Linux when they will have finished their port; I hope we will finally have a really low-energy consumption browser then.
Mozilla has had a lot of funding over the years. They wasted most of it on useless side-projects. If, instead, they had saved up into a foundation, they could have been financially independent like a decade ago. Do not try to pay for Firefox; they'll just waste that too.
It's been days (weeks?) and I'm still waiting for the option to appear for me. These "experiments" are super annoying when you are on what I'm assuming is the long tail of a rollout but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched.
If there's someone at Mozilla reading this: turn it on already! I want to get off Orion, it's so buggy, but the internet is unusable without an ad blocker.
> but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched.
Yeah, seemingly tons of companies do this in a very weird way. Either make the switch 100% once you publish the press release, or wait until you reach 100% then publish. Starting the experiment with gradual rollout and then making the press release immediately seems like asking for potential problems and confusion among users.
But consider what the alternative looks like: People randomly see unexpected options in their apps, go to look for information about them, and don't find anything, or find some random Reddit discussion where no one is sure what's going on.
If the new feature looks random and unexpected and causes users to go to Reddit -the developer is doing terribly bad UX, and equally bad marketing and customer support.
A proper announcement done the day of the release, or an embedded notification like what Firefox already does (a "What's new" tab) that can be easily dismissed without any "Reminder me later" cr*p solves the issue.
Yeah release notes, in-app help, intuitive UIs, and version documentation hosted on your own website are definitely not possible. Gotta instead cater to the LCD of people who won't be using Firefox in the first place, it's reddit spam or nothing.
I was under the impression that firefox could already use the Safari "content blockers" (as it uses webkit) like Firefox Focus and uBO Lite, but I'm not seeing that option actually. Been using Orion for a while now so not sure if that changed or I'm just misremembering it.
Randomly the new tab page stops working. And when the new tab page stops working, all browsing activity stops working until I restart the app. I think the pages load, but I can’t actually see them because it is hidden by the new tab page.
Also sometimes tabs disappear from the tab picker, which makes tab management confusing.
Even worse, two weeks back when the first news appeared (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633), I had access to the ad blocker for about a week (and turned it on), but after a few days the option disappeared...
Obvious follow-ups: How does the A/B test choose between A and B, and how can it be manipulated into choosing A instead of B (or vice versa)? It's software, it has to be deterministic at some level.
This is frustrating, I think this a great development as someone who has been a Firefox user from the beginning but just switched to iOS. I see this new feature advertised and then it’s just not there, I update, still gone. The FAQ should at least be updated to say, this feature is only available at random due to a progressive experimental roll out and they should mention what version it requires etc. At least be up front when promoting something. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and then check periodically for it to show up.
As someone who successfully uses the internet day in and day out with zero ad blockers, this stance always amuses me. It's not hard to just ignore ads.
As others have mentioned it doesn't stop YouTube ads or search ads. Most likely because Mozilla is still quite dependent on Google for it's income.
Which is why I think we need to be less critical everytime Mozilla tries to make money some other way. They need to become more self sufficient in order to improve Firefox.
That's correct. Soon there will be Ladybird, hopefully in a few years a very good competitor to Chrome/Firefox.
The thing I'm worried about with Ladybird is it's core logic is being coded by AI. I don't mind AI in other regions of code but I think core logic should be carefully written. They're also not very organized. Deciding to rewrite the whole codebase from CPP to Swift, then the decision changes to Rust shows uncareful decision making.
We need to be more critical every time Mozilla treats FF as a product to monetize. They should seek funding in the same way that every other charity does.
I was going to give credit to the direction Mozilla was taking here after their... questionable decisions in the past few year(s).
Only to see that this is neither generally available, nor can you use it without enabling telemetry. I don't know who makes these decisions inside Mozilla, but I just don't get it.
I think you can use it without enabling telemetry, due to a recent change:
> Previously, access to these changes required you to share technical and interraction data (telemetry) with Mozilla. However, as of Firefox version 148, you can opt into receiving remote improvements, even if you have opted out of sharing your telemetry or participating in our experimental studies.
I hate. Absolutely hate that you can't say anything directly anymore without sugarcoating stuff in HN. Downvotes follow. I mean, the hell is HN for then?
Even the most obvious stuff needs to be said like... I don't know... but it looks like Google might be slightly bad here.
---
The CEO literally paid her hell a lot of money while she sold MDN to competition. While Rust to competition. While market shared shrinked from 9% (or 7%, forgot the exact number) to where it's now. Citing - NO MONEY!!!
We still have her controlling Mozilla right even though she is not CEO? And apparently we are not supposed to criticise em.
Virtue signaling the hell out of all posts and stuff saying we are for the people and doing everything against their interests gets super tiring as well.
The thread is about a marketing piece where Mozilla plays their usual "look we're the good guys" spiel. Pointing at their dirty laundry (which they still try to hide instead of learning from their mistakes) is very much appropriate.
Narrowing it from "every post about Firefox" to "every post about Firefox doing something good" still leaves it tiring. That extension wasn't even a bad core idea, it was a bungle of implementation choices. Oh no they hid the ticket. The real criticism is bad management and while it's valid it really doesn't need to come up on every article.
> If you’re a Firefox user, you may have noticed a weird new extension that suddenly showed up in your browser this week.
> The extension is called “Looking Glass 1.0.3” and this is its description: MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT FROM YOURS. Now that sounds ominous. It’s really not, though. It’s a promotional campaign between Firefox and the TV series Mr. Robot that brings an alternate reality game to your browser. This must have sounded like a great idea when somebody pitched it to Mozilla, but the backlash has been fierce.
Well you see Mozilla did one Bad Thing a decade ago and that's a good reason to continue using the Ad Industry's chosen web browser instead; The one that gained most of it's marketshare by taking a page out of the malware industry's books and paying Oracle to include Chrome in the Java installer, among many many others.
You could always tell they didn't mean to install chrome, because these people would also have a malware "Chrome" browser that installed through the exact same pathway.
The bug is still hidden to this day. And they have done many other bad things since then, including adding more ads to FF. And if you need to compare them against Chrome to make FF look good then you are only proving the point that they have lost the plot.
The extension did not do anything unless you put in a secret setting. It wasn't promoting anything.
If this had been a hardcoded easter egg there would have been no real complaints. But showing up as a mystery extension spooked some people, and then misreporting made it spread a lot further than if all the reporting was accurate.
Adds an effect to certain words on websites (like puppet, control, economy, robot), sends an extra header to red-wheelbarrow.com that changes what you see.
Dude, the existence of the extension was the promotion. And Mozilla was paid for it. And the bug report is still hidden showing they have not learned their lesson. Why are you defending bad behavior?
People weren't supposed to be finding it like that. I really don't think "oh what is this new firefox experiment?" was an intended promotional path. It was an extension because that was easier to do and isolate. That's why I'm defending the intent.
And I don't think the visibility of a bug report tells us whether they learned their lesson.
Aren't they like 10+ years late with this? So after all this time, Mozilla comes with a minimal ad-blocker that hardly blocks anything (easylist only, and worse [1] ), compared to all other ad-blockers that have been available on iOS for many years.
I don't understand, maybe i'm missing something...
[1] "Ad Blocker won’t block every ad. Ads served directly by the site you’re visiting and ads shown in search results will still appear."
I tested and adblockers work on Safari for youtube ads again? Hmm, should I just give in and start using Safari again. Maybe this time it won’t dissappiunt me… Maybe it’s different this time…
Firefox with uBlock Origin has blocked YouTube ads just fine on Android for years, and Google kept paying. uBlock Origin doesn't actually get installed by default on Firefox Mobile, but I'd wager that it effectively does.
It doesn’t cost cost google money to show that content. (It does cost someone else who google would be giving a cut of the ad revenue)
YouTube videos actually have some real world disk space, bandwidth, etc costs just to show so if google doesn’t get to show an ad they lose money instead of an opportunity to make money.
I'm regularly surprised that people are willing to block YouTube ads. I know that Google gets that advertising money too, but you're also blocking revenue that the channel owner would otherwise get. I suppose it might depend what you're watching, but most YouTubers aren't big business, they're just individuals.
YouTube Premium is one of the few subscriptions I am completely happy to pay.
It doesn't have to go through Google. Lots of us support the people they follow through patreon et al, I don't need to make the gigacorp even richer than it is. They have enough.
Why do these creators use YouTube then? Why cant they host it on s3 and the have you directly compensate? Surely the creator is getting some value from YouTube and YT expects to be compensated for that?
> Surely the creator is getting some value from YouTube and YT expects to be compensated for that?
I'd imagine Google would start charging for videos that don't make enough money or heavily deprioritize them from discovery. That seems like a problem they could solve if they wanted to.
Isnt that part of the deal of uploading to YouTube? YouTube promises distribution and in return they show ads to make up for lost {storage,bandwidth} etc.
I'm surprised that YouTube doesnt ask $100 per year and then also show ads. Like App Store (which requires "developer fee" for doing far less)
I inherently disagree with the ad model of business. Intentionally worsening a product with ads to convince people to pay to remove them is just rewarding them for enshitification.
So on that front I'd prefer YouTube go out of business so that something like Nebula can take its place. Or the only videos left at\re the ones doing it as a hobby and not as a job.
I am using DNS filtering on mobile, and noticed a new trend on some websites that detect an ad blocker: they force a browser native alert message which effectively blocks the page, followed by a page reload when the alert is dismissed. Wonder if there is a solution for that.
It doesn't block the inline ads between story and comments on reddit.. my benchmark for browser ad blocking and ublock-origin is one of the few (only?) that does it. This is why I use the Orion browser on iOS.
Would someone smarter than me mind explaining why FF on iOS can't use extensions? I know every browser has to use WebKit but I've heard Orion is able to use FF and Chrome extensions.
You can send a tab to/from your Firefox desktop instance. Also synced passwords. Those aren't the only reasons -- Firefox on iOS has a lot of code in that wrapper -- but sync is the main one for me.
(There are also reasons why it's significantly worse than Safari, which has special privileges, so your question is valid.)
No, uBOL blocks more ads and isn’t affected by Firefox’s insistence to not block Google Ads or their own.
> Sponsored shortcuts and other sponsored content shown by Firefox when you open a new tab are separate from ads on the web pages you visit, so Ad Blocker doesn’t affect them.
Just mentioned in another comment, but I'm not sure Firefox on iOS can actually use webkit content blockers? (I thought it could but have been using Orion exclusively for a while now)
This is different because Firefox Focus, a separate app, only blocks ads while using Firefox Focus. Firefox Focus can also be set as a Safari Content Blocker which allows Safari to benefit from Firefox Focus's ad blocking. (It's not the best ad blocker, I've found wBlock - https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock - is more effective, anecdotally and via adblock.turtlecute.org)
Regular Firefox (non-Focus, the app from the article) can not benefit from Safari Content Blockers, and therefore does not benefit from Firefox Focus's ad blocking.
I once met a person that claimed they worked on iOS Chrome (the Safari wrap version) and when I asked them why the ad blockers didn't work they claimed they were unaware that the Safari iOS ad blockers didn't work in WebViews. I found that really hard to believe they didn't know.
It's a shame that the adblocker is limited, though. I've been using Orion as a replacement for Firefox on iOS, which has support for extensions (including uBlock Origin) and better UI/UX in my opinion, but it is not open source.
For that, there's ProTube[1]. On the surface it behaves like YouTube Premium, under the hood it's just the mobile version of YouTube bundled into an iOS app. I have no idea why ads aren't served, I analyzed the network requests with Fiddler Everywhere and saw nothing nefarious.
It's web scraping, and occasionally falls behind yt changes (2 years ago it was unusable for about a month). It could be described as an arms race, but Google appears to suffer it to live.
I suppose they understand that zero is not the optimal corruption target. (Because, as you asymptotically approach total control, the user cost also rises asymptotically.)
It's not a perfect solution - I have occasionally noticed it leading to some buggy behaviour in the YouTube/YouTube Music sites using Safari, but nothing anywhere near as bad as using those websites without it!
The only odd behaviour I can call to mind was one time that it continued playing audio when I answered a phone call. It was easy to stop the music playing, and the other person on the call couldn't hear the music. I was actually disappointed that the other person couldn't hear the music, and I've been disappointed every time I've taken a phone call since and the music hasn't continued playing. I wish that was a feature :)
I think Vinegar was well worth the small one-time price, and I like supporting the developer. I've heard that Brave allows playing with the screen off, but I like my setup enough that I don't want to install Brave just for that.
There‘s a checkbox called “Enhanced Protection” (name might vary, I have the app in another language) that specifically says it’s for stuff like YouTube
I will check what particular settings I have for AdGuard when I get back home this evening. I don't recall anything particularly hairy but it has been a few years.
Safari with the uBlock Origin Lite extension works well for me - even with "Web page Contents and Browsing History" permission set to 'Deny' for all websites.
> This feature is experimental and is being introduced to the Firefox user base through a progressive rollout. It may not yet be available to all users. Additionally, remote improvements must be enabled.
Apparently, you can only block ads if you allow Mozilla telemetry. Thanks, dicks.
Must we? Such vulgar swipes only weaken your position, making you seem like the bigger jerk. Please observe the guidelines, not because you owe Mozilla anything but because you owe this community and indeed yourself better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Appending "Thanks, dicks" weakens the comment because it demonstrates they have nothing to say other than vulgarity, which means they have nothing substantive to say at all. We never object to profanity by itself on HN. We do object to abusive swipes and name-calling, because it pulls discussion away from HN's primary purpose, which is curious conversation, and drags it towards the gutter.
While I have you: could you please have a re-read of the guidelines and have a think about if you really intend to participate here earnestly? We've asked you several times to lift your game, and we're not seeing any effort to reform. This place only continues to exist because we have guidelines and uphold them daily, and enough other people make the effort to contribute positively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Deeply frustrating - I felt like Mozilla was gaslighting me -- I spent 3 minutes double-checking that even after updating Firefox minutes ago the option is still not visible to me.
Making an announcement when fewer than 40% of your customers will see the feature fees like (unintentional) gaslighting.
I HATE it when a company does a staged rollout of something after making a big announcement. If you're going to announce something, then don't stage the rollout. Its off by default after all..
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios#w...
> Does ad blocking affect search engine ads? > No. Ads shown on search engine results pages are not blocked.
A lot of the search results on top of Google are there to scam you, providing phone numbers for pass through services that charge $ for it, like flight cancellation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1p6h81i/beware_fake_...
So this omission should absolutely be addressed, but they probably cannot because of the Google Search contract...
A neighbor came to ask for help today. He got locked out of his Facebook account and was getting impatient with their AI, so he Googled "facebook support number" clicked on the first link (almost certainly an ad) and called the number. The person on the other end apparently told him they needed access to his bank accounts to verify his identity and you know the rest of the story.
How is Alphabet not responsible this? They push ads for scams at the top and earn money from it. That should be 100% on them to reimburse, then go after the scammers.
It’s basically the official business model of the US now, have you spent the last two years on a yacht without contact to the world?
They can only be held responsible if a scam victim sues them.
"They can only be held responsible if a scam victim sues them."
so basically less than 1 percent chance
More like zero. No one wakes up and decides to fight one of the richest companies in the world.
But what about the receiving account of the money? Somewhere in the chain they will need to access the money?
Also they say they will continue to show Firefox’s sponsored links and ads. So, they’ll continue to show first party ads and google’s ads? And likely they won’t be able to keep up with meta’s anti ad blocking. That’s most ads on the internet. No thanks, I’ll stick to ublock origin lite on safari.
There's no reason to block Firefox's sponsored links because you can just turn those off if you don't want to see them.
There's no reason to hope there is a way to tell a particular source of ads to turn itself off when you can just use a non-gimped ad block on a non-gimped platform and block all ads without caring if any of them are cooperative or adversarial.
You don't see the hypocrisy in blocking other people's ads while showing your own as well those of partners that fund you?
If only we could pay for Firefox so they could get rid of that Google funding…
Yeah, if everyone gave $10, that would get them at least $50.
There's dozens of us ! So 120$ should be pretty realistic.
LOL
(and I love ff)
Me too, but we are few. Google paid $585M in 2024. I don't think Mozilla can get 58 million users to pay $10 each. That might even exceed the FF user base. Even if they could, they would use it as extra money, not to get rid of Google.
has any browser ever made that work? Opera has to be the most popular by a mile and even they couldn't keep that business model going
Not in my knowledge. It would be hard to have the same amount of funding as they have now from Google.
especially when you pay your executives 7 figure salaries
That’s what a good executive costs these days. You could try to hire a CEO for $100,000/yr with the expected quality of applicants.
Good executives that have achieved an ever shrinking market share while continuing to piss of enthusiast users? At this point they could pay someone with zero experience minimum wage and would probably do no worse. Have you considered that a "good executive" (i.e. someone good at maximizing shareholder values and his own compensation) is the last person Firefox needs?
> That’s what a good executive costs these days.
maybe they should go get some then
People just expect browsers to be free. And there's no way that can be more than Google money.
That's because browsers should be free. They are infrastructure, just like bridges. And nobody wants a bridge troll sitting on the single bridge crossing the internet river, demanding money from everyone.
You pay for bridges with tax. Tax funded browser sounds good in theory, but I don't trust the people managing my tax money to run a tech project like Firefox. Most likely it gets handed to the lowest private sector bidder, with the stipulation that any privacy preserving — sorry, I meant criminal hiding — features be removed.
Bridges are not free
No but they are available at very reasonable prices in prime locations.
If anyone's interested I have a very pretty one listed in Brooklyn. See my Google search ad for details. :P
They are also not funded with blood money.
I mean, bridge tolls are absolutely a thing.
My area has roads w/o bridges that have a toll.
If things keep going as they are, my area will soon have a bridge, several bridges, and no roads.
But it will still have tolls.
What exactly is the problem? I understand a browser is a complex program but is the claim it is impossible to build a browser without continual dependence on advertising toxic dollars?
> a browser is a complex program
A browser in the class of Firefox or Chrome is for all intents and purposes a full OS constantly exposed to the world.
I understand open source OS development to be sustainable thanks to the the effort put into the server farms. That doesn't work for client side software, with the additional hurdle of needing to be better than the ad funded browser.
My Linux kernel is not riddled with ads?
Maybe companies should see browsers more as a the Linux kernel, a precompetitive commodity layer on top of which we deliver/extract value to/from users.
> My Linux kernel is not riddled with ads?
And Firefox is not riddled with ads. The websites it loads are. If you run a program that shows ads on your Linux distro, the Linux kernel won't block them, will it?
Does your hypothetical kernel make it easy or difficult for you to install add-ons that block ads? Does the organization that build it have a conflict of interest regarding advertisting/surveillance interests such as Google/Meta/...?
Not sure what your point is. My comparison was not made to be stretched infinitely. Next question may be "does your kernel render web pages?", but I don't see where it is going.
But to give an answer: if you wanted to bake an ad-blocker in the Linux kernel that would prevent programs from showing ads in a transparent way (the ads just don't show and the programs still work and look fine), I think it would not be trivial at all.
But I don't see the point of going down that discussion.
Look, Windows (apparently) displays ads to some users. So even for OSes, if they can get away with it, they will shove ads in our face.
Linux is a highly complex piece of software. It is OSS. And it does not shove ads in face of its users. So my point is if there is a will there is a way.
The question is then why aren't we all getting behind a solid OSS browser? Specially now with AI coding assist, this should be even more feasable.
> The question is then why aren't we all getting behind a solid OSS browser?
Like Firefox or Chromium? Seems like we aren't, for some reason.
We're this conversation so Firefox is not up to task. And Chromium is connected in some way with the poster child for ad tech and surveillance capitalism.
So the point stands: OSS community has shown itself capable of tackling some of the hairiest technical challenges (Linux) and we should not let the notion that 'browsers can only be developed by corporations' stop us from creating OSS alternatives to the current offerings.
> OSS community has shown itself capable of tackling some of the hairiest technical challenges (Linux)
Has it though, say in the last decade? My first intuition would be that Linux was in a very different situation when it started. And it's not like there are 10 similar open source kernels that were created in the last decades and that got usable enough to be replacements for Linux...
Perhaps not riddled but Mozilla has added ads to Firefox itself and considering their acquisitions and behavior in general you can expect them to add more.
Orion (by Kagi) is still new, but seems to be trying.
Orion is webkit-based though, not a whole independent browser like FFox.
To be fair, Firefox on iOS is also WebKit based thanks to Apples’s rules. Much of a muchness in this aspect.
I'm not criticizing Orion for that; I actually enjoy it quite a lot (and will do even more when they will have ironed out all the UI bugs).
Also I'm eager to see how it will behave on Linux when they will have finished their port; I hope we will finally have a really low-energy consumption browser then.
Mozilla has had a lot of funding over the years. They wasted most of it on useless side-projects. If, instead, they had saved up into a foundation, they could have been financially independent like a decade ago. Do not try to pay for Firefox; they'll just waste that too.
Just.. use different search engine? Startpage if you still want the Google's search results but with vastly superior privacy
If only we could open source it and load it onto the phone with Sideloadly.
... if only their donation links would let you specify your donation goes to Firefox development and no other mozilla service ...
Firefox on iOS is blocking third-party ads, not first-party ads.
Through network blocking? Or removing elements?
Standard webkit content blocking, so it will filter requests and hide elements.
I started getting tai chi walking ads on youtube a few weeks ago and then I saw a video about how it's a massive scam.
It's been days (weeks?) and I'm still waiting for the option to appear for me. These "experiments" are super annoying when you are on what I'm assuming is the long tail of a rollout but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched.
If there's someone at Mozilla reading this: turn it on already! I want to get off Orion, it's so buggy, but the internet is unusable without an ad blocker.
> but the marketing/blog posts speak of the feature like it's already launched.
Yeah, seemingly tons of companies do this in a very weird way. Either make the switch 100% once you publish the press release, or wait until you reach 100% then publish. Starting the experiment with gradual rollout and then making the press release immediately seems like asking for potential problems and confusion among users.
But consider what the alternative looks like: People randomly see unexpected options in their apps, go to look for information about them, and don't find anything, or find some random Reddit discussion where no one is sure what's going on.
If the new feature looks random and unexpected and causes users to go to Reddit -the developer is doing terribly bad UX, and equally bad marketing and customer support.
A proper announcement done the day of the release, or an embedded notification like what Firefox already does (a "What's new" tab) that can be easily dismissed without any "Reminder me later" cr*p solves the issue.
Yeah release notes, in-app help, intuitive UIs, and version documentation hosted on your own website are definitely not possible. Gotta instead cater to the LCD of people who won't be using Firefox in the first place, it's reddit spam or nothing.
My point is that you need to put out that documentation before the start of the rollout, or people won't find it when they look for it.
I guess you could quietly update documentation at the start of the rollout, then make the blog post at the end.
I was under the impression that firefox could already use the Safari "content blockers" (as it uses webkit) like Firefox Focus and uBO Lite, but I'm not seeing that option actually. Been using Orion for a while now so not sure if that changed or I'm just misremembering it.
You are correct. I’ve been using firefox focus as Safari content blocker to block ads on ios Firefox for years. Works well
I think gp means the other way: Firefox can not use Safari's content blockers to benefit from them.
Safari + the Content Blocker Wipr works well for me.
Is it that buggy ? Orion works pretty well for me. Where you have you ran into bugs ?
The address bar likes to randomly move off the side of the screen and I have to force restart the app to get it back.
Randomly the new tab page stops working. And when the new tab page stops working, all browsing activity stops working until I restart the app. I think the pages load, but I can’t actually see them because it is hidden by the new tab page.
Also sometimes tabs disappear from the tab picker, which makes tab management confusing.
It doesn’t even remember what tabs are open so you can’t reopen them if you close them by accident. Orion is a disaster of an app.
Even worse, two weeks back when the first news appeared (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633), I had access to the ad blocker for about a week (and turned it on), but after a few days the option disappeared...
Obvious follow-ups: How does the A/B test choose between A and B, and how can it be manipulated into choosing A instead of B (or vice versa)? It's software, it has to be deterministic at some level.
This is frustrating, I think this a great development as someone who has been a Firefox user from the beginning but just switched to iOS. I see this new feature advertised and then it’s just not there, I update, still gone. The FAQ should at least be updated to say, this feature is only available at random due to a progressive experimental roll out and they should mention what version it requires etc. At least be up front when promoting something. I suppose I’ll just have to wait and then check periodically for it to show up.
Why not use a DNS based solution like nextdns? or an extension like wipr?
Same here. Why do they do it do it this way?
"...the internet is unusable without an ad blocker." — for some but not most.
> the internet is unusable without an ad blocker
As someone who successfully uses the internet day in and day out with zero ad blockers, this stance always amuses me. It's not hard to just ignore ads.
As others have mentioned it doesn't stop YouTube ads or search ads. Most likely because Mozilla is still quite dependent on Google for it's income.
Which is why I think we need to be less critical everytime Mozilla tries to make money some other way. They need to become more self sufficient in order to improve Firefox.
I feel like they only exist so that google can claim that competition exists.
That's correct. Soon there will be Ladybird, hopefully in a few years a very good competitor to Chrome/Firefox.
The thing I'm worried about with Ladybird is it's core logic is being coded by AI. I don't mind AI in other regions of code but I think core logic should be carefully written. They're also not very organized. Deciding to rewrite the whole codebase from CPP to Swift, then the decision changes to Rust shows uncareful decision making.
We need to be more critical every time Mozilla treats FF as a product to monetize. They should seek funding in the same way that every other charity does.
It's weird because it does on Android. I use Firefox on Android to watch YouTube videos without ads.
I was going to give credit to the direction Mozilla was taking here after their... questionable decisions in the past few year(s).
Only to see that this is neither generally available, nor can you use it without enabling telemetry. I don't know who makes these decisions inside Mozilla, but I just don't get it.
I think you can use it without enabling telemetry, due to a recent change:
> Previously, access to these changes required you to share technical and interraction data (telemetry) with Mozilla. However, as of Firefox version 148, you can opt into receiving remote improvements, even if you have opted out of sharing your telemetry or participating in our experimental studies.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements
> access to these changes required you to share technical and interraction data (telemetry) with Mozilla
How did that even happen? I sure hope that was a bug and not a product decision, because that sounds very backwards.
I think for their labs / beta features they just require it to get testing data
In February 2025 Mozilla granted themselves the right to sell your personal data for profit
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I hate. Absolutely hate that you can't say anything directly anymore without sugarcoating stuff in HN. Downvotes follow. I mean, the hell is HN for then?
Even the most obvious stuff needs to be said like... I don't know... but it looks like Google might be slightly bad here.
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The CEO literally paid her hell a lot of money while she sold MDN to competition. While Rust to competition. While market shared shrinked from 9% (or 7%, forgot the exact number) to where it's now. Citing - NO MONEY!!!
We still have her controlling Mozilla right even though she is not CEO? And apparently we are not supposed to criticise em.
Coming into a thread just because it mentions Firefox to make a generic post about Mozilla being bad gets tiring.
Virtue signaling the hell out of all posts and stuff saying we are for the people and doing everything against their interests gets super tiring as well.
The thread is about a marketing piece where Mozilla plays their usual "look we're the good guys" spiel. Pointing at their dirty laundry (which they still try to hide instead of learning from their mistakes) is very much appropriate.
Narrowing it from "every post about Firefox" to "every post about Firefox doing something good" still leaves it tiring. That extension wasn't even a bad core idea, it was a bungle of implementation choices. Oh no they hid the ticket. The real criticism is bad management and while it's valid it really doesn't need to come up on every article.
Mr Robot? What?
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-ba...
> If you’re a Firefox user, you may have noticed a weird new extension that suddenly showed up in your browser this week. > The extension is called “Looking Glass 1.0.3” and this is its description: MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT FROM YOURS. Now that sounds ominous. It’s really not, though. It’s a promotional campaign between Firefox and the TV series Mr. Robot that brings an alternate reality game to your browser. This must have sounded like a great idea when somebody pitched it to Mozilla, but the backlash has been fierce.
Besides the other sources, here's the HN discussion at the time:
"Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser" - 757 points - Dec 15, 2017 - 515 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730
Well you see Mozilla did one Bad Thing a decade ago and that's a good reason to continue using the Ad Industry's chosen web browser instead; The one that gained most of it's marketshare by taking a page out of the malware industry's books and paying Oracle to include Chrome in the Java installer, among many many others.
You could always tell they didn't mean to install chrome, because these people would also have a malware "Chrome" browser that installed through the exact same pathway.
The bug is still hidden to this day. And they have done many other bad things since then, including adding more ads to FF. And if you need to compare them against Chrome to make FF look good then you are only proving the point that they have lost the plot.
In 2017 Mozilla silently installed an extension promoting the TV show in everyone's Firefox.
The extension did not do anything unless you put in a secret setting. It wasn't promoting anything.
If this had been a hardcoded easter egg there would have been no real complaints. But showing up as a mystery extension spooked some people, and then misreporting made it spread a lot further than if all the reporting was accurate.
I just rewatched Mr Robot and that actually sounds cool. What was the secret setting ?
Once you get the extension installed, you open up about:config and add a boolean preference "extensions.pug.lookingglass" set to true.
There might have been another way to do it later but we'll never know.
Interesting. What did that accomplish ?
Adds an effect to certain words on websites (like puppet, control, economy, robot), sends an extra header to red-wheelbarrow.com that changes what you see.
https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr/blob/master/addon/backgr...
Dude, the existence of the extension was the promotion. And Mozilla was paid for it. And the bug report is still hidden showing they have not learned their lesson. Why are you defending bad behavior?
People weren't supposed to be finding it like that. I really don't think "oh what is this new firefox experiment?" was an intended promotional path. It was an extension because that was easier to do and isolate. That's why I'm defending the intent.
And I don't think the visibility of a bug report tells us whether they learned their lesson.
Aren't they like 10+ years late with this? So after all this time, Mozilla comes with a minimal ad-blocker that hardly blocks anything (easylist only, and worse [1] ), compared to all other ad-blockers that have been available on iOS for many years.
I don't understand, maybe i'm missing something...
[1] "Ad Blocker won’t block every ad. Ads served directly by the site you’re visiting and ads shown in search results will still appear."
Tell me about it. It stopped me ditching ever more privacy invading Android for iOS. How has it taken this long?
Why ditch privacy invading android for super privacy invading, 30% extra taxed and you-own-nothing-and-be-happy iOS?
Better title suggestions?
Finally. I turned it on immediatedly. Doesn’t seem to block youtube-ads, so unfortunately I can’t uninstall Brave just yet.
I tested and adblockers work on Safari for youtube ads again? Hmm, should I just give in and start using Safari again. Maybe this time it won’t dissappiunt me… Maybe it’s different this time…
Or search engine ads, natch. My eyes rolled out of my head.
FYI: Doesn't block YouTube ads.
Google will stop paying them if they tried that.
Firefox with uBlock Origin has blocked YouTube ads just fine on Android for years, and Google kept paying. uBlock Origin doesn't actually get installed by default on Firefox Mobile, but I'd wager that it effectively does.
That's even more reason for them to add it. The google payment has been a giant conflict of interest.
A weird line to draw since Google still owns the general ad web space.
It doesn’t cost cost google money to show that content. (It does cost someone else who google would be giving a cut of the ad revenue)
YouTube videos actually have some real world disk space, bandwidth, etc costs just to show so if google doesn’t get to show an ad they lose money instead of an opportunity to make money.
AI inference for people's queries is not free.
I'm regularly surprised that people are willing to block YouTube ads. I know that Google gets that advertising money too, but you're also blocking revenue that the channel owner would otherwise get. I suppose it might depend what you're watching, but most YouTubers aren't big business, they're just individuals.
YouTube Premium is one of the few subscriptions I am completely happy to pay.
It doesn't have to go through Google. Lots of us support the people they follow through patreon et al, I don't need to make the gigacorp even richer than it is. They have enough.
Why do these creators use YouTube then? Why cant they host it on s3 and the have you directly compensate? Surely the creator is getting some value from YouTube and YT expects to be compensated for that?
> Surely the creator is getting some value from YouTube and YT expects to be compensated for that?
I'd imagine Google would start charging for videos that don't make enough money or heavily deprioritize them from discovery. That seems like a problem they could solve if they wanted to.
They don’t do this for the same reason GitHub isn’t getting rid of free repositories- it would create an opening for someone else
Many people are not aware that for smaller creators, Google forces ads on their videos (without consent) and takes all the revenue
Isnt that part of the deal of uploading to YouTube? YouTube promises distribution and in return they show ads to make up for lost {storage,bandwidth} etc.
I'm surprised that YouTube doesnt ask $100 per year and then also show ads. Like App Store (which requires "developer fee" for doing far less)
You mean they pay for the video storage, video streaming bandwidth, transcode CPU and serving the videos with ads on their content.
Without ad blocking YouTube is simply unwatchable / unbearable.
I guess they just chose the wrong business model if it doesn't work out for them.
Profit oriented YouTube videos are just as garbage as profit-oriented SEO spam listicles. I'm happy to deprive them of whatever revenue I can.
I inherently disagree with the ad model of business. Intentionally worsening a product with ads to convince people to pay to remove them is just rewarding them for enshitification.
So on that front I'd prefer YouTube go out of business so that something like Nebula can take its place. Or the only videos left at\re the ones doing it as a hobby and not as a job.
Youtube decides the thresholds, the payouts, the promotional algorithms.
when they stop placing ads arbitrarily in the middle of a sentence or scene Ill stop blocking them
I am using DNS filtering on mobile, and noticed a new trend on some websites that detect an ad blocker: they force a browser native alert message which effectively blocks the page, followed by a page reload when the alert is dismissed. Wonder if there is a solution for that.
Firefox with uBO on Android can handle that easily, no idea if iOS limit that
UBlock Origin Lite on Safari iOS is still king I guess
Thanks to your comment, I just installed it and set it up. Thanks!
Is there an android equivalent?
uBlock Origin has been fully supported on Firefox for Android for a long time.
Also supported on edge
uBlock origin on Fennec F-Droid
Does it do cosmetic block of just DNS block?
The same as on macOS. Comzmeti. And dns block
> "ads shown in search results will still appear"
Is that for a technical reason or a commercial one?
commercial
It doesn't block the inline ads between story and comments on reddit.. my benchmark for browser ad blocking and ublock-origin is one of the few (only?) that does it. This is why I use the Orion browser on iOS.
Would someone smarter than me mind explaining why FF on iOS can't use extensions? I know every browser has to use WebKit but I've heard Orion is able to use FF and Chrome extensions.
Apple doesn’t allow other apps to use Safari extensions (edit: on iOS or iPadOS) Orion offers custom support for WebExtensions but it’s basically requiring them to manually check and port WebExtensions to work well with WebKit, one by one. Check out: https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/macos-extensi... https://help.kagi.com/orion/browser-extensions/ios-ipados-ex...
Why would you use Firefox on iOS when it’s just a wrapper around WebKit? I don’t really get it?
Sync, mainly.
You can send a tab to/from your Firefox desktop instance. Also synced passwords. Those aren't the only reasons -- Firefox on iOS has a lot of code in that wrapper -- but sync is the main one for me.
(There are also reasons why it's significantly worse than Safari, which has special privileges, so your question is valid.)
Cross platform sync?
Any reason to use this over uBlock Origin Lite?
No, uBOL blocks more ads and isn’t affected by Firefox’s insistence to not block Google Ads or their own.
> Sponsored shortcuts and other sponsored content shown by Firefox when you open a new tab are separate from ads on the web pages you visit, so Ad Blocker doesn’t affect them.
Just mentioned in another comment, but I'm not sure Firefox on iOS can actually use webkit content blockers? (I thought it could but have been using Orion exclusively for a while now)
Any reason to use uBO Lite over uBO?
Nope- the only reason uBlock Origin Lite exists is because iOS's browser limitations make full uBlock inoperable there.
How is this different than Firefox Focus content blocker on iOS, which came out many years ago?
This is my question as well.
This is different because Firefox Focus, a separate app, only blocks ads while using Firefox Focus. Firefox Focus can also be set as a Safari Content Blocker which allows Safari to benefit from Firefox Focus's ad blocking. (It's not the best ad blocker, I've found wBlock - https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock - is more effective, anecdotally and via adblock.turtlecute.org)
Regular Firefox (non-Focus, the app from the article) can not benefit from Safari Content Blockers, and therefore does not benefit from Firefox Focus's ad blocking.
I once met a person that claimed they worked on iOS Chrome (the Safari wrap version) and when I asked them why the ad blockers didn't work they claimed they were unaware that the Safari iOS ad blockers didn't work in WebViews. I found that really hard to believe they didn't know.
This should be standard on ALL Firefox on all systems. Why is not that? Ads are a kind of security threat for a long time.
Brave is doing it, Firefox can do it too. And maybe I can recommend that kind of browser to the average Joe again.
It's a shame that the adblocker is limited, though. I've been using Orion as a replacement for Firefox on iOS, which has support for extensions (including uBlock Origin) and better UI/UX in my opinion, but it is not open source.
I was using ublock origin lite but now I've converted to wblock.
Absolutely amazing, works inside webviews (e.g. netnewswire).
v3 just released.
https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock
Can it block YouTube ads? Would be a killer feature.
For that, there's ProTube[1]. On the surface it behaves like YouTube Premium, under the hood it's just the mobile version of YouTube bundled into an iOS app. I have no idea why ads aren't served, I analyzed the network requests with Fiddler Everywhere and saw nothing nefarious.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/protube-block-ads-on-video/id6...
For android users: NewPipe (others exist too)
It's web scraping, and occasionally falls behind yt changes (2 years ago it was unusable for about a month). It could be described as an arms race, but Google appears to suffer it to live.
I suppose they understand that zero is not the optimal corruption target. (Because, as you asymptotically approach total control, the user cost also rises asymptotically.)
Why not use YouTube in Safari then? Haven't seen ads in years. Plenty of options to block them already.
Does YouTube in Safari play in background/with the screen off?
I like "Vinegar - Tube Cleaner" for this.
It's not a perfect solution - I have occasionally noticed it leading to some buggy behaviour in the YouTube/YouTube Music sites using Safari, but nothing anywhere near as bad as using those websites without it!
The only odd behaviour I can call to mind was one time that it continued playing audio when I answered a phone call. It was easy to stop the music playing, and the other person on the call couldn't hear the music. I was actually disappointed that the other person couldn't hear the music, and I've been disappointed every time I've taken a phone call since and the music hasn't continued playing. I wish that was a feature :)
I think Vinegar was well worth the small one-time price, and I like supporting the developer. I've heard that Brave allows playing with the screen off, but I like my setup enough that I don't want to install Brave just for that.
I’m doing it right now. It does pause when you switch away from safari but you swipe down to get the control center and then resume play.
I use yPlayer for that, plus SponsorBlock
Holy crap I didn't know such a thing could exist, thank you. It's so responsive too.
Please delete this before anyone sees it :)
Nope. Only Browser that can on iOS is Brave.
I don’t have YouTube ads with Safari and AdGuard
I just tried AdGuard with safari and got YouTube ads. Do you have to configure something special?
There‘s a checkbox called “Enhanced Protection” (name might vary, I have the app in another language) that specifically says it’s for stuff like YouTube
I will check what particular settings I have for AdGuard when I get back home this evening. I don't recall anything particularly hairy but it has been a few years.
do you use the AdGuard app or just the DNS?
Safari with the uBlock Origin Lite extension works well for me - even with "Web page Contents and Browsing History" permission set to 'Deny' for all websites.
With Safari and the very first free-to-use extension I picked years ago (AdGuard, IIRC), I don't see any YouTube ads on iOS.
DuckDuckGo Browser can as well
It’s not clear from the post, are they supporting the Content Blocker API? In other words, can I use Adguard with Firefox now on iOS?
Didn't see it even after updating, then read https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios:
> This feature is experimental and is being introduced to the Firefox user base through a progressive rollout. It may not yet be available to all users. Additionally, remote improvements must be enabled.
Apparently, you can only block ads if you allow Mozilla telemetry. Thanks, dicks.
> Thanks, dicks.
Must we? Such vulgar swipes only weaken your position, making you seem like the bigger jerk. Please observe the guidelines, not because you owe Mozilla anything but because you owe this community and indeed yourself better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It doesn't weaken his position at all. Just because it hurts your delicate sensibilities.
Appending "Thanks, dicks" weakens the comment because it demonstrates they have nothing to say other than vulgarity, which means they have nothing substantive to say at all. We never object to profanity by itself on HN. We do object to abusive swipes and name-calling, because it pulls discussion away from HN's primary purpose, which is curious conversation, and drags it towards the gutter.
While I have you: could you please have a re-read of the guidelines and have a think about if you really intend to participate here earnestly? We've asked you several times to lift your game, and we're not seeing any effort to reform. This place only continues to exist because we have guidelines and uphold them daily, and enough other people make the effort to contribute positively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Apparently, remote improvements became separated from telemetry in Firefox version 148: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements#w_w...
> Thanks, dicks.
As opposed to all the browsers that don't have this feature?
It's not done yet. When it's done it will just be a normal feature with no requirements.
If Mozilla put even half as much time into working on Firefox as they do tarnishing its reputation, they'd dominate the market.
There are some options under the debug menu which look relevant, but I wasn't able to get it to enroll.
Deeply frustrating - I felt like Mozilla was gaslighting me -- I spent 3 minutes double-checking that even after updating Firefox minutes ago the option is still not visible to me.
Making an announcement when fewer than 40% of your customers will see the feature fees like (unintentional) gaslighting.
I HATE it when a company does a staged rollout of something after making a big announcement. If you're going to announce something, then don't stage the rollout. Its off by default after all..
This is the sort of user focused feature you add when you take the phrase "user agent" seriously.
Is it already available in android? Without plugin?
On android, you can use Firefox with ublock origin plugin. Works great, blocks youtube ads too.
Why would you ever use this over ublock
Because ublock is a scam. But why would you use it over ublock origin, which isn't a scam?
Why they don't use their rendering engine on ios at least in eu?
Is there an ad blocker for Chrome on iOS?
I know this isn’t feature request yet maybe somewhere knows more about this than I.
Can we get tab management on iOS too please?
Wipr2 ftw
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633
Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633 - Aug 2026 (279 comments)
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this is not genuine
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