User control of the browsing experience needs to be the default. When I tell my browser to go to a page, it should not be “normal” to load content, assets, and scripts from dozens of other sites. The practice is a dishonest hijacking of the user’s experience, and hogs a lot of bandwidth for functions which the average person does not want. Those who vocally want trackers, beacons, pop-ups, are a vast, vast minority.
Sure, one can install a browser plugin such as noscript and manually set what is run for every site. But I think it is better practice for site administrators and content creators to not send our browsers anywhere else without explicitly getting our permission.
Yeah, it is a big deal. It also reminds me of The White House lighting up like a rainbow in recent weeks. Not just celebrating a major victory for human rights, but also an opportunity to highlight the difference between them and the competition.
You have to give Apple credit for putting something behind the idea that the user is their client, not the advertisers. (and yes, I see that you are giving Apple credit.)
I was unaware that Mobile Safari was now shipping with content-blocking built in. I was under the impression that it is only now possible for it to work with content-blocking plugins.
I am not clear myself. Reading the source article they link to this
And that person says this is the “code”, but it is only JSON data, which implies Mobile Safari contains the blocking code, it just needs to be fed a list of data – domains and URLs to block…
I am not really keeping up with this, but I thought this was a feature coming with iOS 9 which is available in beta now, but will not be in general release until Fall.
Looks like they’re providing black-list functionality using json data. Actions can specify whether resources are fully blocked from loading (“block”), or just hidden on the page (“css-display-none”). The above sample reads that if you’re on the imore.com domain block any third party scripts and hide the elements div.recent-posts and div.netshelter-ad-inner.
Oh I know. It seems so weird to me that I have to recommend that my parents and grandparents need to install ad blockers as a security measure. It’s like all the nightmare “the TV is actually watching you” scenarios are finally real, just not in the way we imagined.
