iOS 9 content blocking extensions explained

Earlier today, we posted Jean-Louis Gassee’s take on ad blocking and the bleak future for content publishers. Rene Ritchie put together this primer on iOS 9 content blocking that fills in a lot of the blanks on the whole mechanism.

Safari content blocking extensions don’t automagically identify ads and prevent them from loading. Instead, they identify elements and resources on a web page and can, optionally, hide those elements and prevent those resources from loading. The goal is to show how fast the modern web—read: Safari—really is when you remove all the extraneous code that’s been dumped on top of it. And they’re coming as part of iOS 9.

The vast majority of the time the elements and resources blocked will be those used to serve ads. Other times they’ll be things like social networking buttons, performance and audience analytics, article comments, navigation headers, “hamburger and basement” sidebars, and more.

Terrific writeup, Rene.