[zwaps]

did you ever notice how the only people who ever say anything positive about Safari's adblock ecosystem are those who literally sell adblocker software? It is like clockwork.

Despite the fact that most of your posts on HN are ads for magiclasso, the fact remains that even most basic features (like whitelisting or blocking cookie banners) require payment.

Furthermore, you do not even come close to uBlock origin. Of course, we both know this, because it simply is not possible. Apple does not allow it. And yet, you continue to state the opposite even though it simply is not true.

On other platforms, using *entirely free* addons like uBlock, you can zap away annoying elements/bars/overlays... or enable some requests while blocking others selectively. You can block videos on some news websites, but allow javascript galleries, and do the opposite on a video site. You can block that overlay disabling right clicks or hijacking the scroll bar. Once you know that it is possible, you do this every day.

None of that is possible with your product, magiclasso.co, no matter how much money I pay you or how many ads you write on hackernews.

There's a fine line when shilling your own product here. One should be humble.

If you write: Yes, compared to other platforms, the adblock ecosystem in Safari is absolutely dismal. However, we have this product where we are doing our best... Okay...

What you write there? ugh sorry, but no.

[happybuy]

Does uBlock Origin have a lot more customisable power user features? Yes. Are they relevant to the majority of users who want to be able to enable an ad blocker and get great results without a lot of fuss? Probably not.

Does uBlock Origin also use a slow, memory and performance inefficient means of blocking ads? Yes.

Does uBlock Origin also use ad blocking ruleset that have thousands of obsolete rules that are rarely pruned, leading to the complaints that Safari only supported 50,000 rules in a single extension? Yes.

There's a lot of Pros and Cons with different products. uBlock Origin has a lot of Pros for certain types of users and it's a fantastic tool – but it's approach to ad blocking is becoming legacy at this stage. They should be planning to re-architect their approach to suit a more modern, privacy focused API that is supported by the two biggest browser makers.

[zwaps]

I am really not breaking new ground when I say that the "modern API" is entirely neutered. It has been discussed here at length. It is so neutered, that literally no one uses it except where it is mandatory. And here is the real banger: YOU DON'T EVEN USE IT when you try to block ads on youtube.

Let's recap: You are worse at blocking ads, because you can not block dynamically and the user can not add rules to sites or elements. For example, whenever my favorite news site fixes its ad block blocker, I'd have to wait for you to update the block list instead of just killing the new script. This happens on the reg, and you can't do anything about it. Or consider websites who hijack right-clicking or scroll bars. Consider people who have to use usability tools to make those sites work for them, like text2speech. Your product doesn't do a single thing there.

Let's recap more: You have "best in class" ad blocking on youtube? uBlock blocks all ads, period, with 100% success, on any video site. For years now. Your product? "More or less" perhaps a good description? And best of all, you have to follow 1Block and inject your own browser addon, literally breaking your privacy promise to the user for EVERY WEBSITE THAT HAS VIDEOS. This is not even close to being a good option, but you come here and say your ad blocker is more privacy conscious when it just isn't (if it is supposed to block ads). What?

Let's move on: You can't block trackers because you cannot block fingerprinting. You only have a block list when we now know that's not enough. You can't do things PrivacyBadger does, since the EFF has already determined it doesn't work due to the new and "improved" API. You are selling snake-oil here.

So. Even without any expert features, your product is simply inferior. You can not even hold the promise of privacy, because you literally need to break it to have any chance of blocking anything on youtube. Well guess what, there are more sites than youtube out there.

None of this is news. We have been through this many times. In every measurable way the "legacy adblockers" are superior.

What IS necessary to discuss is you having the gall to come to this website and market your product with obvious falsities - things like the new API being anything but ineffective, and then going ahead and posting the refutation of exactly that point on your own website [1].

Are you even serious? I hope not.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/youtube-adblocking/

[Nicksil]

>Does uBlock Origin also use a slow, memory and performance inefficient means of blocking ads? Yes.

Is this true? It's been a little while but last time I looked over things it seemed like gorhill implemented a rather efficient machine. I'd appreciate if you could expand on this.

[lovich]

I mean, it’s anecdotal, but all those features are ones I never knew existed and I’ve used ublock origin for years.

I was always fine with _some_ ads but eventually got ublock when the internet hit this critical mass of being all ads all the time. If safari adblockers can keep the browser experience _mostly_ ad free out of the box then they are equivalent to me as an unsophisticated user at least