For more than two decades, Mozilla has advocated for an internet where people, not powerful platforms, determine how technology works for them. Meaningful consumer choice requires more than the ability to select a browser. People should also be able to choose what their browser can do, from the privacy protections it provides to the ways they can customize their experience.
A recent Firefox product initiative brings that longstanding policy concern into focus.
Firefox is bringing a built-in Ad Blocker to Firefox for iOS, giving people an optional way to reduce intrusive ads and ad-related trackers while browsing. The feature uses an EasyList-based filter list and Apple’s WebKit Content Blocker framework. It is off by default and can be enabled or disabled at any time.
The feature responds to years of requests from Firefox users on iPhone. It also illustrates a wider policy problem: dominant mobile platforms can determine which privacy and customization tools competing browsers are able to offer.
On Firefox for desktop and Android, people can install add-ons that change how they experience the web.
Almost 40% of all Firefox users take advantage of this functionality. They include content blockers, accessibility tools, password managers and other extensions that allow people to shape their browser around their own priorities.
Firefox cannot offer that same add-on ecosystem on iOS. Apple’s App Review Guidelines generally require apps to remain self-contained and restrict them from downloading or executing code that introduces or changes an app’s functionality.
Apple also controls the conditions under which browsers may use alternative browser engines, with entitlement pathways available only in certain jurisdictions and subject to detailed requirements that no browser developer has been able to meet. In practice, the combined effect of Apple’s app distribution and browser policies prevents Mozilla from bringing the full Firefox add-on experience available on other platforms to iPhone users.
This is not simply a technical inconvenience but a competition and consumer-choice problem.
A mobile platform owner controls the operating system, the primary app-distribution channel and its own browser.
When that company can also determine which technologies, add-on models and operating-system capabilities competing browsers may use, it sets the boundaries within which browser competition takes place.
Operating system restrictions can prevent independent browsers from differentiating themselves.
Even when users want browsers to differentiate on privacy, operating system restrictions can prevent independent browsers from doing so. They can also force browser developers to recreate individual tools as platform-specific, built-in features rather than allowing people to choose from a broader add-on ecosystem. That increases development costs, slows or restricts innovation and produces uneven experiences across devices.
The new Firefox Ad Blocker is a practical response to those constraints. It gives iPhone users more control today using the technical options currently available to us. But building one feature directly into a browser is not a replacement for a healthy, independent add-on ecosystem. It addresses a specific capability gap for Firefox users on iOS at this time.
A competitive browser ecosystem should focus on the entire user experience.
The EU’s Digital Markets Act has shown that policy interventions can improve user choice, with Mozilla and other browsers reporting significant growth following the introduction of browser choice screens. However, meaningful browser competition must extend to the full user experience. This includes whether people can easily choose and change their default browser. It also includes whether people can benefit from the full set of innovations developed by rival browsers by ensuring adequate interoperability with the operating system. With this deeper focus on the full user experience, people can benefit from differentiated privacy and security features.
People’s privacy choices should not depend on whether a dominant platform permits their browser to offer them.