> 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:
So this omission should absolutely be addressed, but they probably cannot because of the Google Search contract...
qingcharles 11 hours ago [-]
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.
cryptonym 3 hours ago [-]
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.
inigyou 48 minutes ago [-]
They can only be held responsible if a scam victim sues them.
qwerpy 16 hours ago [-]
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.
thesuitonym 15 hours ago [-]
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.
Brian_K_White 12 minutes ago [-]
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.
cpeterso 16 hours ago [-]
Firefox on iOS is blocking third-party ads, not first-party ads.
OptionOfT 14 hours ago [-]
Through network blocking? Or removing elements?
TingPing 5 hours ago [-]
Standard webkit content blocking, so it will filter requests and hide elements.
dest 16 hours ago [-]
If only we could pay for Firefox so they could get rid of that Google funding…
tgv 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, if everyone gave $10, that would get them at least $50.
janlaureys 45 minutes ago [-]
There's dozens of us ! So 120$ should be pretty realistic.
illiac786 4 hours ago [-]
LOL
(and I love ff)
tgv 3 minutes ago [-]
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.
metalliqaz 16 hours ago [-]
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
dest 14 hours ago [-]
Not in my knowledge. It would be hard to have the same amount of funding as they have now from Google.
lexicality 3 hours ago [-]
especially when you pay your executives 7 figure salaries
yubblegum 11 hours ago [-]
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?
makeitdouble 11 hours ago [-]
> 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.
teekert 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
al_borland 13 hours ago [-]
Orion (by Kagi) is still new, but seems to be trying.
shakow 30 minutes ago [-]
Orion is webkit-based though, not a whole independent browser like FFox.
johanyc 14 hours ago [-]
People just expect browsers to be free. And there's no way that can be more than Google money.
schubidubiduba 11 hours ago [-]
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.
pibaker 8 hours ago [-]
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.
shric 10 hours ago [-]
Bridges are not free
Lio 1 hours ago [-]
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
ferngodfather 11 hours ago [-]
I mean, bridge tolls are absolutely a thing.
edoceo 6 hours ago [-]
My area has roads w/o bridges that have a toll.
rightnutwingjob 2 hours ago [-]
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.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11 hours ago [-]
If only we could open source it and load it onto the phone with Sideloadly.
nottorp 12 hours ago [-]
... if only their donation links would let you specify your donation goes to Firefox development and no other mozilla service ...
thewhitetulip 3 hours ago [-]
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.
WD-42 19 hours ago [-]
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.
embedding-shape 19 hours ago [-]
> 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.
Wowfunhappy 14 hours ago [-]
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.
alentred 1 hours ago [-]
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.
temp0826 19 hours ago [-]
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.
dogmatism 9 hours ago [-]
You are correct. I’ve been using firefox focus as Safari content blocker to block ads on ios Firefox for years. Works well
doublepg23 19 hours ago [-]
Safari + the Content Blocker Wipr works well for me.
Melatonic 18 hours ago [-]
Is it that buggy ? Orion works pretty well for me. Where you have you ran into bugs ?
nxc18 18 hours ago [-]
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.
WD-42 18 hours ago [-]
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.
brynjolf 8 hours ago [-]
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.
KORraN 14 hours ago [-]
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...
urbnspacecowboy 14 hours ago [-]
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.
bookofjoe 11 hours ago [-]
"...the internet is unusable without an ad blocker." — for some but not most.
c0_0p_ 6 hours ago [-]
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.
Anoian 1 hours ago [-]
I feel like they only exist so that google can claim that competition exists.
alentred 59 minutes ago [-]
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.
martheen 49 minutes ago [-]
Firefox with uBO on Android can handle that easily, no idea if iOS limit that
socalgal2 2 hours ago [-]
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.
therealmarv 52 minutes ago [-]
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.
DavideNL 4 hours ago [-]
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."
ssl232 3 hours ago [-]
Tell me about it. It stopped me ditching ever more privacy invading Android for iOS. How has it taken this long?
inigyou 44 minutes ago [-]
Why ditch privacy invading android for super privacy invading, 30% extra taxed and you-own-nothing-and-be-happy iOS?
NikxDa 19 hours ago [-]
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.
mossTechnician 18 hours ago [-]
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.
> 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.
nemomarx 18 hours ago [-]
I think for their labs / beta features they just require it to get testing data
inigyou 44 minutes ago [-]
In February 2025 Mozilla granted themselves the right to sell your personal data for profit
KennyBlanken 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
unsungNovelty 8 hours ago [-]
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.
Dylan16807 7 hours ago [-]
Coming into a thread just because it mentions Firefox to make a generic post about Mozilla being bad gets tiring.
> 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.
embedding-shape 17 hours ago [-]
Besides the other sources, here's the HN discussion at the time:
In 2017 Mozilla silently installed an extension promoting the TV show in everyone's Firefox.
Dylan16807 11 hours ago [-]
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.
Melatonic 8 hours ago [-]
I just rewatched Mr Robot and that actually sounds cool. What was the secret setting ?
Dylan16807 8 hours ago [-]
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.
Melatonic 4 hours ago [-]
Interesting. What did that accomplish ?
Dylan16807 4 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
delis-thumbs-7e 15 hours ago [-]
Finally. I turned it on immediatedly. Doesn’t seem to block youtube-ads, so unfortunately I can’t uninstall Brave just yet.
delis-thumbs-7e 15 hours ago [-]
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…
14 hours ago [-]
gilrain 7 hours ago [-]
Or search engine ads, natch. My eyes rolled out of my head.
Barbing 18 hours ago [-]
Better title suggestions?
Introducing Ad Blocker for Firefox on iOS [Non-GA]
?
overflowy 19 hours ago [-]
FYI: Doesn't block YouTube ads.
quaintdev 19 hours ago [-]
Google will stop paying them if they tried that.
nkozyra 18 hours ago [-]
A weird line to draw since Google still owns the general ad web space.
doikor 18 hours ago [-]
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.
charcircuit 7 hours ago [-]
AI inference for people's queries is not free.
lern_too_spel 5 hours ago [-]
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.
LeoPanthera 18 hours ago [-]
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.
barbazoo 18 hours ago [-]
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.
bitpush 16 hours ago [-]
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?
barbazoo 16 hours ago [-]
> 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.
seanyeh 17 hours ago [-]
Many people are not aware that for smaller creators, Google forces ads on their videos (without consent) and takes all the revenue
bitpush 10 hours ago [-]
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)
izacus 3 hours ago [-]
You mean they pay for the video storage, video streaming bandwidth, transcode CPU and serving the videos with ads on their content.
hn_submit 18 hours ago [-]
Without ad blocking YouTube is simply unwatchable / unbearable.
prmoustache 6 hours ago [-]
I guess they just chose the wrong business model if it doesn't work out for them.
ncr100 18 hours ago [-]
Youtube decides the thresholds, the payouts, the promotional algorithms.
izzydata 18 hours ago [-]
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.
DarmokTanagra 18 hours ago [-]
when they stop placing ads arbitrarily in the middle of a sentence or scene Ill stop blocking them
peri-cl 19 hours ago [-]
> "ads shown in search results will still appear"
Is that for a technical reason or a commercial one?
yapyap 19 hours ago [-]
commercial
garrettjoecox 19 hours ago [-]
Any reason to use this over uBlock Origin Lite?
Shank 14 hours ago [-]
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.
inigyou 42 minutes ago [-]
Any reason to use uBO Lite over uBO?
temp0826 19 hours ago [-]
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)
basedpolymer 19 hours ago [-]
UBlock Origin Lite on Safari iOS is still king I guess
busymom0 18 hours ago [-]
Thanks to your comment, I just installed it and set it up. Thanks!
wredcoll 18 hours ago [-]
Is there an android equivalent?
grahamburger 10 hours ago [-]
uBlock Origin has been fully supported on Firefox for Android for a long time.
z0mghii 6 hours ago [-]
Also supported on edge
MYEUHD 18 hours ago [-]
uBlock origin on Fennec F-Droid
rrgok 18 hours ago [-]
Does it do cosmetic block of just DNS block?
basedpolymer 18 hours ago [-]
The same as on macOS. Comzmeti. And dns block
sapphicsnail 13 hours ago [-]
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.
nntwozz 11 hours ago [-]
I was using ublock origin lite but now I've converted to wblock.
Absolutely amazing, works inside webviews (e.g. netnewswire).
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.
eikenberry 14 hours ago [-]
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.
GeekyBear 18 hours ago [-]
This is the sort of user focused feature you add when you take the phrase "user agent" seriously.
lotsofpulp 18 hours ago [-]
How is this different than Firefox Focus content blocker on iOS, which came out many years ago?
crsv 11 hours ago [-]
This is my question as well.
stan-ely 6 hours ago [-]
Is it already available in android? Without plugin?
z0mghii 6 hours ago [-]
Why would you ever use this over ublock
inigyou 41 minutes ago [-]
Because ublock is a scam. But why would you use it over ublock origin, which isn't a scam?
dbdr 5 hours ago [-]
On android, you can use Firefox with ublock origin plugin. Works great, blocks youtube ads too.
what 9 hours ago [-]
Why would you use Firefox on iOS when it’s just a wrapper around WebKit? I don’t really get it?
z0mghii 6 hours ago [-]
Cross platform sync?
HexDecOctBin 18 hours ago [-]
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?
cedws 19 hours ago [-]
Can it block YouTube ads? Would be a killer feature.
skarz 18 hours ago [-]
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.)
flyingshelf 18 hours ago [-]
Why not use YouTube in Safari then? Haven't seen ads in years. Plenty of options to block them already.
skarz 18 hours ago [-]
Does YouTube in Safari play in background/with the screen off?
red369 8 hours ago [-]
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.
qwerpy 16 hours ago [-]
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.
flyingshelf 10 hours ago [-]
I use yPlayer for that, plus SponsorBlock
cedws 17 hours ago [-]
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 :)
overflowy 19 hours ago [-]
Nope. Only Browser that can on iOS is Brave.
red369 8 hours ago [-]
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.
kioleanu 19 hours ago [-]
I don’t have YouTube ads with Safari and AdGuard
not-so-darkstar 2 hours ago [-]
do you use the AdGuard app or just the DNS?
__david__ 17 hours ago [-]
I just tried AdGuard with safari and got YouTube ads. Do you have to configure something special?
kioleanu 6 hours ago [-]
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
ssl-3 15 hours ago [-]
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.
ssl-3 19 hours ago [-]
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.
hmokiguess 19 hours ago [-]
DuckDuckGo Browser can as well
delduca 11 hours ago [-]
Wipr2 ftw
onesandofgrain 4 hours ago [-]
this is not genuine
55555 16 hours ago [-]
Is there an ad blocker for Chrome on iOS?
finchisko 17 hours ago [-]
Why they don't use their rendering engine on ios at least in eu?
mvdtnz 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bozhark 9 hours ago [-]
I know this isn’t feature request yet maybe somewhere knows more about this than I.
> 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.
tomhow 13 hours ago [-]
> 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
mvdtnz 3 hours ago [-]
It doesn't weaken his position at all. Just because it hurts your delicate sensibilities.
tomhow 2 hours ago [-]
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
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.
thesuitonym 14 hours ago [-]
If Mozilla put even half as much time into working on Firefox as they do tarnishing its reputation, they'd dominate the market.
empyrrhicist 19 hours ago [-]
There are some options under the debug menu which look relevant, but I wasn't able to get it to enroll.
yboris 14 hours ago [-]
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.
drewg123 19 hours ago [-]
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..
> 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...
(and I love ff)
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.
If anyone's interested I have a very pretty one listed in Brooklyn. See my Google search ad for details. :P
But it will still have tolls.
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.
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.
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.
Also sometimes tabs disappear from the tab picker, which makes tab management confusing.
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.
Brave is doing it, Firefox can do it too. And maybe I can recommend that kind of browser to the average Joe again.
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."
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.
> 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
How did that even happen? I sure hope that was a bug and not a product decision, because that sounds very backwards.
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.
> 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.
"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
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.
There might have been another way to do it later but we'll never know.
https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr/blob/master/addon/backgr...
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.
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.
YouTube Premium is one of the few subscriptions I am completely happy to pay.
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.
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)
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.
Is that for a technical reason or a commercial one?
> 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.
Absolutely amazing, works inside webviews (e.g. netnewswire).
v3 just released.
https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/protube-block-ads-on-video/id6...
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.
Please delete this before anyone sees it :)
Can we get tab management on iOS too please?
> 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
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
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.
Making an announcement when fewer than 40% of your customers will see the feature fees like (unintentional) gaslighting.