Brave’s usage guide for Shields and this Brave article seem to suggest that the Aggressive blocking only introduces cosmetic filtering for first-party ads and I am left under the impression that Aggressive mode does not give any privacy benefit compared to default ads and tracker blocking.
Though it is never explicitly stated that Aggressive mode only introduces cosmetic filtering.
Moreover, in their Shields usage guide it is stated that “An ad that’s part of the site you’re visiting isn’t surveilling you online”, which seems to be in contradiction with Brave’s own description of first-party ads, where they say that first-party ads can still affect user privacy.
So my doubts are the following:
can first-party ads be a concern for privacy?
can cosmetic filtering have any positive impact on privacy?
does Brave’s Aggressive blocking do something else on top of cosmetic filtering?
In my understanding, sometimes, as first party ads simply means it is delivered from first party domain, doesn’t mean there is no 3rd party involved. One obvious example would be the ads in Yahoo. Delivered from Yahoo’s own ad network, but the content is from third party, just cached in Yahoo’s ad network.
Disclaimer: I haven’t use Yahoo for a few years so my understanding might be outdated.
can cosmetic filtering have any positive impact on privacy?
In my understanding, not really, it just help you to de-clutter the screen after the site is loaded and make it looks nicer.
does Brave’s Aggressive blocking do something else on top of cosmetic filtering?
Sorry I have no idea about the exact feature sets offered by each blocking level.
From your second link, to the brave article, it does say “We also offer an optional Aggressive blocking mode that blocks all ads, even first-party. We expect procedural filtering to be especially impactful in Aggressive mode.”.
So I don’t think it uses only cosmetic filtering.
I can be wrong but that’s what I understood from the article.
My understanding is that “procedural” filtering is still cosmetic filtering: it is procedural cosmetic filtering instead of declarative cosmetic filtering . The article says “Brave is significantly improving its adblocking capabilities by adding support for procedural cosmetic filtering of page elements” and “Procedural (as opposed to declarative) cosmetic filtering overcomes […]”. (And it is also called “procedural cosmetic filtering” in the GitHub issue where they tracked the feature: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/16935)
What i interpret from the various descriptions is that the default ad blocker only blocks third party ads and trackers. And Aggressive mode only introduces blocking of first-party ads via cosmetic filtering (declarative and procedural).
But they also never say so explicitly: it could be that Aggressive mode does cosmetic filtering and something else.
I don’t think aggressive mode they mean only blocks third party trackers. What I understood is that procedural filtering is like giving Brave’s ad blocker a “brain upgrade”, it can spot and hide things more “intelligently” and aggressive mode means Brave is willing to break some website features to protect you more aggressively from ads and tracking.
When I say intelligently, I mean it will block ads without breakage and so making the web surfing more smooth.
@Edit:
I do agree with you about procedural filtering though. Is basically just cosmetic filtering. What I don’t agree is the part that strict mode ONLY blocks third party trackers.
I think you mixed up the two things: what I was saying is that my interpretation of the documentation is that the default ads and tracker blocker blocks only third party ads, and the aggressive mode does everything the default does plus only cosmetic filtering.
So basically my question is whether or not the difference between default and aggressive is only cosmetic filtering.
“How can I avoid first-party ads?
The easiest option to avoid first-party ads is to use a browser, like Brave, with built-in ad-blocking (just set its Brave Shields feature to Aggressively block trackers & ads).”
So my understanding is that basic mode only blocks third party ads, trackers and cosmetic filter. And Aggressive mode does all that plus first party ads.
Other sources about the topic
“By default Brave will not block first Party ads which are actually part of the sites you visit — only those which are embedded from other sources on websites.”
“However, Shields does offer an Aggressive option for blocking Ads and trackers. Selecting the Aggressive option will block all site ads and trackers, including the first party ones.”
Yes I have come across that page.
The guide says that if I change the shields option from default to aggressive, one of the things I gain is blockage of first-party ads (that is: cosmetic filtering), but given the way it is worded, it is still unclear whether that’s the only thing I gain. (And whether I gain a privacy benefit.)
Actually first party ads is not the same as cosmetic filtering.
Cosmetic filtering hides or rearranges elements of a webpage without necessarily blocking the data request itself. It’s more like “cleaning up” what you see. Now first party ads blocker block the request/tracker from that ad.
Yes. It’s one of the minimum requirements: Any changes required to make the browser more privacy-respecting must not negatively impact user experience.
The reason why I asked is that in the other resource I linked it is stated that “An ad that’s part of the site you’re visiting isn’t surveilling you online”.
I’m not sure this answers the question about cosmetic filtering improving privacy. In fact I made my original post also to ask whether Privacy Guides should recommend Aggressive mode on Brave at all.
I think I didn’t write it correctly in my posts, but I understand that the Aggressive blocking mode already does everything that the default blocking mode does.
When I say “does Brave’s Aggressive blocking do something else on top of cosmetic filtering?” I mean “does Brave’s Aggressive blocking do something else on top of the default blocking mode and cosmetic filtering?”
But now I think I realised what my mistake was: blocking first-party ads is not done only through cosmetic filtering: some first-party ads can still be blocked at the level of network requests by blocking url patterns.
(For example I also now found this Brave filter list for first-party ad blocking which contains both network filters and cosmetic filters).