The iOS 9 Content Blocker thread

[avatar-adg]

Thanks for the explanation. I'd still like to understand what the exact criteria are and who makes the decision what is "useful".

It always starts from a user complaint. If there're lots of complaints and it's clear for us why the ad can be considered useful - it goes to that filter. Maybe that's why the filter is so short, last time it was updated 2 months ago.

More than this. Due to user requests we've implemented an "Inverted Whitelist" feature in Adguard's browser extension:
https://blog.adguard.com/en/news/new-extension-version-adguard-2-0-9.html

If you enable "inverted whitelist" mode, ads are unblocked everywhere and user enables ad blocking per-site manually.

Personally, I don't find contextual ads in search engines useful at all.

That's ok, people are different.

If I want shopping results, I search the "shopping" category in Google or the like.

And what if you want not just shopping, but find a web hosting (just an example)? There is no "hosting" category.
Or if you do not have Google shopping in your country

 

[gaanee]

Axel Springer goes after iOS 9 ad blockers in new legal battle
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/23/axel-springer-goes-after-ios-9-ad-blockers-in-new-legal-battle/

Well.. if publishers want to push ads and use my data for doing that then they should also pay for the ad data used - similar to T-mobile music and video freedom plans where ad data will not be counted towards your monthly data. Comparison tests have shown many popular websites use ~5-10MB data per page for ads, which gets charged on your monthly data.
Reasonable compromise for supporting websites would be to make ads less intrusive and make publishers pay for ad data.

 

[avatar-adg]

I don't think they are planning to win that particular lawsuit. What are they doing is attracting more attention to the problem.

Ad blockers are a serious threat to their business and, looking at what has happened for the last year, major publishers try different ways of handling that issue.

Personally I like what IAB's president suggests:
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470/

Key points:

1. The rapid race for consumer data must stop slowing the internet down. [removed:.....]
Data calls must be limited, ideally through a consensus-based standard-setting process or best practices. The industry needs to become better at using data -- and at using less of it.

2. Ads should only load when they're about to be viewable, not before. Pre-loading ads not in view slows sites down, prioritizing advertising over people's desire to get to the content quickly.

3. Advertisers and their agencies should voluntarily abandon the most upsetting forms of digital disruption. (e.g. autoplay video ads and such).

4. Finally, publishers must take control of their site experiences, and turn down advertising that doesn't meet their standards for user engagement. That might sound controversial, but it's not. TV networks, newspapers and magazines have had advertising acceptability departments for decades. And if we've learned anything from the rise of native advertising, it's that the "Vogue effect" -- in which great advertising enhances the value of the publisher's offering -- is applicable in digital media, too. Indeed, a study by the IAB and the Edelman Berland communications firm found that in-feed sponsored content on entertainment, business and general news sites that is site-relevant and provided by a brand that is authoritative and trustworthy can boost a site's favorability with consumers by more than 50%. The same research found that trustworthy and authoritative brands with relevant messages can boost their favorability by over 50% using in-feed sponsored content. Done right, advertising can be a win-win for publishers and brands that consistently keep the consumer first.

 

[Hippocrates]

I think Adguard has lot of potential, given that the developer is committed in that line of business. However, it's breaking too many websites now and there's no easy way of reporting them (I only see whitelist in its extension).

I am changing my opinion here. I've been in contact with the team lead of Adguard, avatar-adg and all my reported websites had been fixed swiftly (or on the way to be fixed). The progress of the fix, as well as their final solutions are transparent on Github. It's pretty clear that they already have a protocol for handling reports and are committed to stay in the ad-blocking business for long term. Adguard is the only one content blocker I've used that has its filters updated frequently and consistently.

Do give it a try... I'm coming back to Adguard now.

 

[solly]

Any one getting this error?! With certain websites (BGR.com) and using LTE I got this error alot really.

Tried different adblocking ( admop, magic, purify, adguard) and all give me the same msg...

As soon as i disable adblock or turn to WiFi (with adblock enabled) it works good!!

 

[avatar-adg]

@solly looks more like Safari own issue, content blockers don't mess with the network.
If for some reason content blocker blocks the document load you won't see a network error, just an "about:blank" page.

Anyway, could you please post here the whole URL you have in the address bar?

 

[solly]

@solly looks more like Safari own issue, content blockers don't mess with the network.
If for some reason content blocker blocks the document load you won't see a network error, just an "about:blank" page.

Anyway, could you please post here the whole URL you have in the address bar?

Thanks for the swift response and support adg.

Here the link for the one of the site that caused this: http://bgr.com/2015/11/26/google-play-cyber-weekend-2015-sale/

But what you mean by safari own issue?! How could this be solvable then?! Or maybe it just my mobile operator server not playing well with content blockers?!

 

[avatar-adg]

But what you mean by safari own issue?! How could this be solvable then?!

What I thought at first is that bgr.com detects that you have an ad blocker and sends you to some page which is not available. But you've posted a simple article link so I think that that's not what is happening.

Further analysis requires collecting Safari console logs.

It is rather complicated, here is an article about safari web inspector (read "real device method"):
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/artic...pector-to-debug-mobile-safari--webdesign-8787

So, if you're ready to spend some time on research, set up the web inspector and PM me.

Or maybe it just my mobile operator server not playing well with content blockers?!

Very unlikely, mobile operator can't detect such things.

 

[macaximx]

Thanks for the swift response and support adg.

Here the link for the one of the site that caused this: http://bgr.com/2015/11/26/google-play-cyber-weekend-2015-sale/

But what you mean by safari own issue?! How could this be solvable then?! Or maybe it just my mobile operator server not playing well with content blockers?!

Worked on my iPad with Magic.

 

[stevemiller]

I'm getting a lot of pages that fail to load until I reload without content blockers. Most notably Facebook. I'm using crystal and have reported it, but there have been no updates for a week.

It seems like the amount of management these blockers are requiring is somewhat defeating their value.

 

[C DM]

I'm getting a lot of pages that fail to load until I reload without content blockers. Most notably Facebook. I'm using crystal and have reported it, but there have been no updates for a week.

It seems like the amount of management these blockers are requiring is somewhat defeating their value.

Have you tried another blocker or two to see if you might not encounter those types of issues?

 

[Act3]

I'm getting a lot of pages that fail to load until I reload without content blockers. Most notably Facebook. I'm using crystal and have reported it, but there have been no updates for a week.

It seems like the amount of management these blockers are requiring is somewhat defeating their value.

I was having issues with facebook loading with crystal, until I clicked the check for update link in the crystal app. I was on blocklist 17, it updated it to blocklist 19 and now Facebook seems to be loading fine.

 

[stevemiller]

I was having issues with facebook loading with crystal, until I clicked the check for update link in the crystal app. I was on blocklist 17, it updated it to blocklist 19 and now Facebook seems to be loading fine.

Just checked and I just got the update as well. It must have happened in the past couple hours as if been checking regularly for a few days and posted out of frustration.

My original concern stands though, that i seem to be encountering a lot of these false positives, and that it requires reporting and waiting for developer updates for days even for sites as high profile as Facebook. Seems like not the most effective system.

I'd happily just deal with ads if they didn't make sites perform so terribly. I swear we have somehow gone backwards in web and software development. So much added complexity that feels like it provides minimal benefit at a pretty high performance cost.

 

[gaanee]

Most likely the content blockers block ad elements and if the site is coded to load rest of the content after the ad then the page will not load properly. One of the devs can explain if there is way to get around this.

Just checked and I just got the update as well. It must have happened in the past couple hours as if been checking regularly for a few days and posted out of frustration.

My original concern stands though, that i seem to be encountering a lot of these false positives, and that it requires reporting and waiting for developer updates for days even for sites as high profile as Facebook. Seems like not the most effective system.

I'd happily just deal with ads if they didn't make sites perform so terribly. I swear we have somehow gone backwards in web and software development. So much added complexity that feels like it provides minimal benefit at a pretty high performance cost.

 

[Sleaka J]

I was having issues with facebook loading with crystal, until I clicked the check for update link in the crystal app. I was on blocklist 17, it updated it to blocklist 19 and now Facebook seems to be loading fine.

That's strange, I was using Crystals blocklist 17 as well and I didn't have issues with Facebook.

That said, I've repeatedly reported a couple of issues on a couple of different websites for a little over a month now and nothing has been done about it.

 

[Max(IT)]

I gave Purify another try one moment ago and no, all my reported sites have not been fixed. Can you believe that even disney.de is not loading with purify turned on? So at least 1Blocker is keeping me happy for now.

tried www.disney.de and it's working just fine with Purify

That's great, I hope that your Adblock will turn out to be one of the best! There are several sites that prove to be quite tricky for adblockers, perhaps you want to test them?

info.singtel.com
www.ifeng.com
www.nfl.com
www.disney.de
www.mobile01.com

tried all with Purify: no problem whatsoever, even if I can't understand some of those websites, the pages are displayed correctly.

 

[Hippocrates]

tried www.disney.de and it's working just fine with Purify



tried all with Purify: no problem whatsoever, even if I can't understand some of those websites, the pages are displayed correctly.

I've no idea when that was fixed, but when I tested them several days ago, a few of those sites were still having problems.

tried www.disney.de and it's working just fine with Purify



tried all with Purify: no problem whatsoever, even if I can't understand some of those websites, the pages are displayed correctly.

I just tested them using Purify on iPhone 6s and iPad Air 2. Nope, these sites had not been fixed by its developer yet.

1) www.disney.de: did not show EU cookies notice but none of the picture link was clickable
2) info.singtel.com: blank page
3) www.ifeng.com: not showing any picture related to the content (this site is extremely picture intensive). in fact the only pictures shown were those from ad.
4) www.nfl.com: some proper content pictures were not shown.
5) www.mobile01.com: this site was OK for now (got to test it a second time because the ads tend to changed, and some were not blocked in the past).

Do you have screenshots? I guess you need to load the websites without Purify and see how the original webpage renders before deciding if the adblocker is doing a proper job. Blocking real content is not fine for me, neither is breaking the webpage, or disabling links.

I don't think the problem I'm seeing here is limited to my devices only. Just saying that I'm very disappointed with the developer of Purify. All the reported problems were not fixed, and he seems to be more interested in marketing his product to innocent users than to deliver a good product worthy of its price tag. He even stopped answering to queries in this forum after doubts were casted on the efficacy of ad-blocking with Purify.

 

[Max(IT)]

I've no idea when that was fixed, but when I tested them several days ago, a few of those sites were still having problems.



I just tested them using Purify on iPhone 6s and iPad Air 2. Nope, these sites had not been fixed by its developer yet.

1) www.disney.de: did not show EU cookies notice but none of the picture link was clickable
2) info.singtel.com: blank page
3) www.ifeng.com: not showing any picture related to the content (this site is extremely picture intensive). in fact the only pictures shown were those from ad.
4) www.nfl.com: some proper content pictures were not shown.
5) www.mobile01.com: this site was OK for now (got to test it a second time because the ads tend to changed, and some were not blocked in the past).

Do you have screenshots? I guess you need to load the websites without Purify and see how the original webpage renders before deciding if the adblocker is doing a proper job. Blocking real content is not fine for me, neither is breaking the webpage, or disabling links.

I don't think the problem I'm seeing here is limited to my devices only. Just saying that I'm very disappointed with the developer of Purify. All the reported problems were not fixed, and he seems to be more interested in marketing his product to innocent users than to deliver a good product worthy of its price tag. He even stopped answering to queries in this forum after doubts were casted on the efficacy of ad-blocking with Purify.

I didn't make a comparison with and without Purify enabled. I just loaded the websites and tried some internal links: they are working and no white pages are showed.
I can't see if proper contents are blocked since I can't understand most of those sites.

 

[avatar-adg]

Most likely the content blockers block ad elements and if the site is coded to load rest of the content after the ad then the page will not load properly. One of the devs can explain if there is way to get around this.

Incorrect content blocking is a common issue for ad blockers. 99% of these issues are caused by the site javascript relying on some ad or tracking code.

Development of ad filters is a "feedback" driving thing. We can look for some popular websites, but we can't monitor all, so it's impossible to create filter rules without users reporting missed ads or false positives.

 

[tosbsas]

To be honest I am a bit frustrated. Purify was really doing the job awesomely but since more than a month the DEV is MIA. Doesn’t any queries. Not here not on twitter And not by mail. Its hard to say but purify has lost a lot of cloud and fame

 

[rijc99]

Magic is failing on a bunch of websites today.

 

[Magic App]

Magic is failing on a bunch of websites today.

Please check if Magic is enabled. Works fine here! Also restart Safari and clean cache.

 

[avatar-adg]

For all those, who are freaked out with delays when ads on youtube are blocked.

I have just filed a bug report to Safari bugzilla:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151649

Fixing that bug will automatically resolve youtube issue (and a bunch of false positives also).

 

[rijc99]

Please check if Magic is enabled. Works fine here! Also restart Safari and clean cache.

I forced closed Safari, swapped blocker to an alternate and reopened Safari. The ads were gone. I then swapped back to Magic, the ads were back.

Also, Magic is on as is Block ads and Privacy protection settings.

Will delete and reinstall.

 

[gaanee]

So, does the content blocker tweaks the site loading by sending a feedback as if the ad was loaded so that rest of the page loads correctly?
From my earlier reading: some sites fail to load or load incorrectly because the way ads are coded - unless the ad/tracking script is loaded, it doesn't proceed further giving a blank page.

Incorrect content blocking is a common issue for ad blockers. 99% of these issues are caused by the site javascript relying on some ad or tracking code.

Development of ad filters is a "feedback" driving thing. We can look for some popular websites, but we can't monitor all, so it's impossible to create filter rules without users reporting missed ads or false positives.