Why might it be controversial?
The new feature adds to Apple’s privacy-first browser, which is festooned with protective features such as Intelligent Tracking Prevention and private browsing that is actually private. Over time, however, many of the privacy-protecting tools Apple has put inside Safari have raised resistance, usually from across the less salubrious parts of the surveillance-based advertising industry. Because this new tool might reduce the effectiveness of some of the most annoying on-page elements out there, it seems inevitable Apple will face resistance once again.
Perhaps the most controversial part of this involves the economics of running websites. Many site publishers have seen income yields fall dramatically since tougher GDPR rules came into effect. The impact of these has been particularly tough on small web publishers who, in some cases, have seen incomes collapse.
Many of these had turned to subscriptions and mailing lists in an attempt to claw back some of this income, and Apple’s new feature could make the task of attracting those signups more difficult — even as AI developers continue to grab content from those same sites to make their technologies seem more genuine.
