Magic Lasso Adblock Now Blocks Ads in Third-Party Apps ⇥ magiclasso.co

Frequent sponsor of the site Magic Lasso Adblock has just released an update bringing its capabilities outside Safari to apps across your system. (This is not a sponsored post.) I have been using this version for about a week now and, while it does not yet eliminate all ads in third-party apps, it has solved a specific iOS frustration.

After iOS began registering taps immediately, I found scrolling apps with interstitial ads — particularly news apps like those from CBC News and the New York Times — to be particularly hostile. I would scroll and then, while intending to stop the scroll, often tap on an ad which would send me to Safari. Irritating. Not all ads are blocked in these apps, but enough are that it has improved my news reading.

More broadly, ad blocking is an ethical dilemma. I find arguments in favour of advertising generally compelling, but I reject how often they are conflated with behaviourally targeted advertising. I think it is fair to use advertising as a financial support — heck, I have ads on this website and I accept sponsorships, including from this very ad blocker. However, I do not think we should relinquish our right to privacy to provide this financial backing. We know ads in third-party apps are among the most capable and precise means of sweeping up vast amounts of our data. It is unfair how little control we have over how much we feed this surveillance machine. We can effectively minimize it only by using wide-ranging tools like ad blockers.

This is a pretty blunt instrument. The VPN-based nature of this in-app ad blocking strategy has no fine-grained controls at the moment — no allow or deny lists, for example. But it is one of the better strategies for improving your privacy.