Ad Blocking Comes to iOS 9

Great news, content consumers! Also, in a related note: Terrible news, content aggregation sites!

iOS 9 is apparently set to bring “content blockers” to Safari. This Content Blocker mechanic prevents certain user-specified content from loading in Safari, and will be customizable.

This is a potentially huge deal for privacy advocates. It should now be possible to prevent Safari from ever loading the tracking cookies used by most ad networks, thus preventing them from building profiles of your personal information and browser history.

For sites that rely on revenue from selling visitors’ information to advertisers… well, that ship has sailed. We’re way passed the point where ads were fair. Ads today are an all-out assault on the user experience of browsing the internet. Apple’s move to employ ad blocking in iOS should be yet another sign that it’s time to find a new business model.