Safari has blocked third-party cookies (used to track your behavior across multiple websites) since 2010, but the ad-tech industry has fired back with a bunch of covert tracking tools that watch you even if you’ve adopted privacy countermeasures; the latest version of Safari goes one better, deploying machine-learning to selectively block even more tracking technologies, while still preserving useful third-party cookies that help you stay logged in and do useful work across different sites.
In response, the ad-tech industry has staged a(nother) tantrum, claiming that Apple is “destroying the Internet’s economic model.”
Adblocking is the largest consumer revolt in history, driven by ad-tech’s creepy surveillant overreach. Since its earliest years, the web has experienced an ebb-and-flow of intrusive ads, driven by users and tech companies who gave them tools to block ads. When browsers like Opera and Mozilla started blocking pop-up ads by default, users adopted them in droves, and then advertisers stopped insisting on placing pop-ups on publishers’ sites, because these ads just never showed up on users’ computers.
Browsers like Brave go even farther than Safari, while still offering a middle path: replacing surveillant ads with non-tracking ads, offering publishers a share of the take, so publishers still get paid when their readers choose to block tracking.