Ask HN: Why hasn’t Apple created an ad-blocker in the system level for iOS?
I think if Apple created an ad-blocker like the legendary u-blockOrigin for iOS, their brand will be strengthen, and subscription service more in demand. Imagine you use your iPhone and will not ever see any ad regardless of the app you use? Sure, most apps will go away because without ads, no one would pay for them, but are these apps really important for you anyway? I think the $99 they make from app developers will be less compared to thousands of apps that are high quality and subscription-based that will giving Apple a cut every month.
So, why hasn’t Apple created a system level adblocker that is baked in to the boot loader for the iOS, and make it virtually impossible for any advertising company like Google or FB to circumvent it? Google has Android, but Facebook literally can’t survive without selling ads, so if Apple created a system-level ad-blocker where in every video and every text, the OS itself filters out and blocks ads, Facebook would be in big trouble since they don’t have their own hardware (hardware that people care about and use, that is).
62 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadWait, did you seriously buy into their marketing BS about how they care about your privacy? Apple cares about making money, and that's it. They hamstrung Google and Meta on iOS simply so they would have a monopoly on advertising trackers on the platform.
Oh wait that’s because they created that rule for others
Go Settings -> Privacy -> Ads
>>You may still be served ads based on the criteria listed below. Your personal data is not provided to third parties.
Contextual Information On the App Store, relevant ads may be selected using your search query, information about the page you're viewing, or the app you're downloading. On Apple News and Stocks, the type of story you read may be used to select relevant ads. In addition, information about your device’s keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, mobile carrier, and connection type may be used to serve ads to you. If Location Services is enabled and you’ve granted permission to App Store, Apple News, or the Apple TV app to access your location, your location may be used to serve you geographically relevant ads in each respective app.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
- the person rushing to comment about Apple because there's no way Apple would ever do that
- the person complaining about clearly rushed and motivated comments denying something obvious about Apple
Read up here: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
in no way does my comment deny that there's other ads sold by apple (there are, obviously, e.g. app store search ads), but that's a completely separate issue from the specific iAd program the parent comment was talking about.
Apple said they cared about your privacy [from others, not from them]. To be clear, I'm trying to be objective. They're not selling individual personal data or recklessly leaking your data. They have promised to keep your data secure, and I think they've often lived up to that promise, especially compared to others (full disclosure: I own a multitude of Apple devices, but I'm not a fanatic).
However, the bottom line here is that using Apple products means you're putting a kind of centralized trust in Apple, and Apple never said they wouldn't take advantage of that trust where possible.
This may surprise you, but Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Amazon, and nearly every other major tech company use similar tactics to try to get you to use their other products.
Except you can’t get more than 2tb which is a joke these days, esp when you share with 5 family members.
> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211784
Exactly, now you get it. It's especially true for FANG, which literally exists only for the purpose of squeezing as much money as possible out of us.
I'll give you an excellent data point on Google as an example. They don't care about click-fraud, at all, because it makes them money. In fact, it makes them so much money, I don't think realistically they could exist without it. When I was a teenager I ran a network of websites, one of which three of my web developer friends actually ran ads on frequently for their websites. We got attacked by a massive click-fraud botting attack (shady competitor wanted to get us kicked off of AdSense). Anyway, $843 of my earnings that month got flagged as click-fraud. $55 of that was actually ads that were run by my friends. While Google happily ripped that money away from me, my three friends never got anything refunded nor any indication that their ad buys were subject to click fraud.
FANG is a bunch of criminals.
Google gives Apple cut of Chrome iOS search revenue https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/17/google_apple_chrome_i...
There’d be an exodus of apps. Followed by an exodus of users who couldn’t live without IG/FB/TikTok/Snapchat/Twitter/Reddit/etc.
They've been promoting privacy but that's different.
And they run an entire ad platform in iOS. Why would they kill that entire line of business?
And for Apple, it's good to have lots of apps that can monetize themselves through advertising when they can't do it through purchases. Blocking ads would drive away a huge number of useful apps.
From what I can tell, that’s $4B in Ad revenue and $394B total revenue. Definitely not anywhere near the ratio that other major tech companies have.
Microsoft could do this too but I guess the data is worth more than the customer gratitude.
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/
Spoiler: it's not because privacy or moral that they sell on their marketing. it's because of the lack of those.
I don't think this is technically feasible with current technology unless they limited phones to only displaying curated content.