[michaelmrose]

On IOS you actually in effect can't use any browser except Safari or Safari with a firefox or chrome skin because you aren't allowed to distribute anything else and you aren't allowed to manually install anything outside the store.

There is no particular reason to believe this wont eventually be the case on Mac

[mr_custard]

Why are you even bothering to type such things? I'm not talking about iOS in this sub-thread. The discussion here is about Safari on macos in the present day, not the effed up macos of the future. Can we just have a discussion about the present day please?

Seriously, you guys are relentless and exhausting! It might be time for me to bow out of Hacker News for good, if this sort of nonsense keeps up in the comments. Getting to be as bad for discourse as Reddit.

All I'm saying is that the browser-external Content Blocking approach Apple has chosen doesn't work very well and is disappointing in practice, even if it's a better proposition in terms of browser security. This currently has nothing to do with walled gardens on macos, whilst one can choose to use other browsers and add in-browser extensions that filter ads more effectively (as well as being able to remove DOM elements).

If you've got a helpful suggestion about Safari and the advertising situation, then please comment about that. As it happens, I'm not using Safari, but I remain interested in trying it again under macos, if Apple or someone else can offer proper ad blocking / ad removal.

Chrome is going that way too (it is proposed to remove permissions for integrated blocker extensions), but that _does_ have more to do with Google's nefarious ambitions with respect to advertising income, just as much as it is to do with security, I suspect.