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Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

I kind of went the other way, I have had androids since 2010ish, then tried an iphone at the beginning of corona since my old sony phone couldn't run teams properly. Had it for 2 years and hated it so much I went back to android.

I couldn't even install a separate browser like firefox that was not just a skin and the ad-block on safari drove me crazy. It only prevented items from being displayed but not the network requests etc.

Also, it was nagging me a lot, constantly asking for me to sign up to icloud and other things.

Back on a pixel phone now and couldn't be more happy really.

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Yeah, I don't see how Apple can claim to prioritize privacy when they won't even allow real ad blocking.

I think Apple's strong claim is security, not privacy.

they claim privacy very strongly. you can see billboards or commercials where privacy is their only selling point

Sorry, I don't really follow their advertising campaigns. I just mean that they can't make a valid claim for privacy, unless you agree to the idea of being private only when Apple likes...

???

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/03/14/privacy-thats-iph...

Sorry, I don't really follow their advertising campaigns. I just mean that they can't make a valid claim for privacy, unless you agree to the idea of being private only when Apple likes...

The 3 story "Privacy. That's iPhone." billboard down the street from me suggests otherwise.

Sorry, I don't really follow their advertising campaigns. I just mean that they can't make a valid claim for privacy, unless you agree to the idea of being private only when Apple likes...

Except they do? You can get a VPN app that blocks network requests, like 1Blocker. Also AFAIK android doesn't support adblockers?

Firefox on Android does allow you to run an adblocker.

Is that a sincere argument? Guy was talking about and blocking in the browser

It's been possible to install ad blockers for the browser on iPhones for years, without resorting to a VPN. I don't bother anymore because I'm usually at home and have a pihole anyway, but I used to use Firefox Focus—not as my browser, but to provide ad-blocking for Safari. Worked fine. Open it once to set it up (at least IIRC that was necessary—I don't remember, but there was some very-simple setup step I'm pretty sure) then never open it again. Ads blocked in Safari. Tons of other options, free and paid.

You do need a VPN (or otherwise something network-level) to block ads in apps, I think. That's a fair point.

Thanks for the FFF app, just downloaded and enabled safari integration, ads no more

These solutions don't block video ads and they require crippling your speed with a VPN.

iOS has ad blockers that are not VPNs. That's what I was writing about.

You may be right about the video ad part.

VPN apps are annoying. You constantly have to turn in on or off. I find battery leakage. There are speed issues etc.. .And, the purpose of VPN is different than ad blocking.

Ads blocking on Safari browser is complete since iOS 15 when Apple allowed custom extensions to be added to the browser.

Nowadays, ads blocker use a mix of Content blockers rules (1) and an Safari extension (2) to block ads.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...

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