I am writing to inquire about the recent reduction in ad-blocking capability of the browser. Despite using the ad-blocker in aggressive mode, I have noticed a significant decrease of approximately 30% in the number of blocked ads.
I am a long-time user of Brave Browser and have appreciated its exceptional ad-blocking features that have made my browsing experience more enjoyable and secure. However, this recent change has left me confused and concerned.
Could you please provide some insights into why the ad-blocking capability has been reduced, and if there are any plans to improve it? I would be grateful for any information that can help me better understand this situation.
Thank you for your attention and I look forward to your response.
I don’t work for Brave, but I would imagine that part of it is that advertisers and adblockers are in a constant state of open warfare. Someone comes up with a new technique to show ads. It will take the blockers a little while before they figure out how to guard against them.
I don’t know enough about what it’s testing. I do know a lot of things like that still look back at how people have done things for Manifest V2 and all and only check for certain types of blocking Brave has a different formula than others. I’m wanting to bet that things are blocked but in a different way than is being measured.
Overall though, would end up being @fanboynz or @anon57438784 who might be able to shed some light on it. Only thing I do know is usually these generic tests don’t tend to really be accurate. For example, I don’t actually have any of those ads. So if I have no ads but you’re saying that supposedly they aren’t being blocked, then what’s happening? Some form of the Twilight Zone? lol
Examples of things Brave does differently:
I kind of want to make the assumption it’s being blocked and kind of sandboxed as mentioned. This actually blocks them but not in the way that it’s expecting. Hence where numbers show lower even though it’s not. But we’ll see what the smarter and more experienced people say compared to random guessing/thoughts.
Not a trust worthy benchmark, It still checks for non-existant domains. Measuring Brave or any adblock list against non-existant domains doesn’t improve user privacy
It’s a constant cat and mouse game between advertisers and blockers. They haven’t reduced their ad blocking capabilities, the advertisers have found new ways to get around the lists. Once the lists are updated things will be fine. Wash rinse repeat.
And that test has always been weird, it will give different results one test to the next.
