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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.

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.

Firefox on iOS is blocking third-party ads, not first-party ads.

If only we could pay for Firefox so they could get rid of that Google funding…

> 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.

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.

Safari + the Content Blocker Wipr works well for me.

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...

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.

"...the internet is unusable without an ad blocker." — for some but not most.

Is it that buggy ? Orion works pretty well for me. Where you have you ran into bugs ?

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.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements

[flagged]

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…

Or search engine ads, natch. My eyes rolled out of my head.

Why would you ever use this over ublock

Google will stop paying them if they tried that.

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.

commercial

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.

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)

Is there an android equivalent?

Thanks to your comment, I just installed it and set it up. Thanks!

Does it do cosmetic block of just DNS block?

Cross platform sync?

This is my question as well.

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.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/protube-block-ads-on-video/id6...

Nope. Only Browser that can on iOS is Brave.

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633 - Aug 2026 (279 comments)

> 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

Apparently, remote improvements became separated from telemetry in Firefox version 148: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/remote-improvements#w_w...

> Thanks, dicks.

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.

If Mozilla put even half as much time into working on Firefox as they do tarnishing its reputation, they'd dominate the market.

There are some options under the debug menu which look relevant, but I wasn't able to get it to enroll.

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.

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..