uBlock Origin will soon stop functioning in Chrome as Google transitions to new browser extension rules.
Enshittification goes brrrr.
Looks like I’m going to use my work laptop browser a lot less.
Yet another reason to use Brave, which has better native ad block than any of the other browsers.
Only vivaldi caught this issue. Brave had this api enabled, most likely on accident.
But the problem is, that chromium is just such big and complex software, when combined with development being driven by Google, it’s just impossible for any significant changes or auditing to be done by third parties. Google is capable of exteriting control over Brave, simply by hiding changes like above, or by making massive changes like manifest v3, which are expensive for third parties to maintain.
Brave can maintain 1 big change to chromium, but for how long? What about 2, 3, etc.
My other big problem with brave is that I see them somewhat mimicking Google’s beginnings. Google started out with 3 things: an ad network, a browser, and a search engine.
Right now, Brave has those same three things. It feels very ominous to me, and I would rather not repeat the cycle of enshittification that drove me away from chrome and goolgle.
No thanks Brendan Eich the CEO of Brave is a piece of shit.
Meh, Brave is still Chroium. Even if they continue to support manifest v2, even today the are selling „good“ ads to the users. That and the Crypto bullshit they tried a while ago makes them untrustworthy in my eyes.
Firefox is the only real alternative.
Brave is still Chroium
And yet, it does a better job blocking YouTube ads than Firefox, without any add-ons.
Crypto, Ads
Those features are opt-in.
You mean by building the add-on directly into the browser? No thanks. I like my browser dev to work on my browser and my ad-block dev to work on my ad-block. They are both good at what they do on their own, I don’t need them to mix.
Those features are opt-in.
They are now. They were opt-out to begin with. This is one of those “fool me twice” situations. That, and the founder of Brave is also an outspoken homophobe. He financially backed Prop 8 in California to overturn same-sex marriage, and left Firefox because it was too woke. I seriously would rather Chrome at that point. They’re just regular levels of corporate evil, not “every person who uses my browser is proving my identity politics” level of evil.
They are now.
That’s what I don’t get with the Anti-Brave crowd. Brave learns their users don’t like a feature and then they do better. This would, to me, be indicative of the way things should proceed.
Meanwhile Firefox is moving backwards.
By all means, use a browser that doesn’t work as well, but maybe don’t run a circle jerk of trolls whenever someone offers a better-working alternative.
Personally, I think I should be able to expect a company to understand their target demographic well enough to know that those “features” wouldn’t be well received. But I also personally don’t consider ads and crypto garbage to be features. I guess if you do, then it’s the perfect browser for you. However, I don’t really want to contribute to Google’s monopolisation of browser engine development anymore. Nor do I want to use a browser developed by a homophobe. So even if Brave may be slightly “better-working” I would not consider it better at all.
As well, even though I’m a Blahaj member, I’m going to take the time to point out the “Bee Nice” rule of the instance we’re currently on. It feels like you’re skirting dangerously close to violating that, considering you implied I’m a troll for calling out the prejudicial politics of the founder of a piece of software, which you didn’t at all address in your comment. I’m going to attach some resources about it here, if you care to read them at all:
- https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/04/04/javascript-inventor-gave-1000-to-support-californias-gay-marriage-ban/
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gay-firefox-developers-boycott-mozilla-to-protest-ceo-hire/
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/
- https://tim.dreamwidth.org/1844711.html
- https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/killing-the-messenger-at-mozilla
- https://tim.dreamwidth.org/1852118.html
- https://community.brave.com/t/brave-needs-to-address-brendan-eich/281044
(Some of these are older, about the push for him to step down as Mozilla CEO, some are newer and urging him to leave Brave, or for people to boycott it.)
The garbage is taking itself out
Google was declared a monopoly. Next step: Let the monopoly keep doing the monopoly stuff.
The judge has yet to rule on how this should be addressed. Even after he makes a decision on that, there will be appeals. So long as the orange shitbag isn’t reelected, things look better for the industry than they have in a long time: at least something is finally happening.
Declared a monopoly only in the search engine space AFAIK. Browsers don’t have anything to do with that other than maybe setting Google as the default search engine.
Who cares… Inbuilt adblockers are not affected by thus MV3.
i use firefox (and you should too) but they’re blocking ubo, which as not updated to mv2 - ubo lite still works.
Yes but that’s not the same. Because of Chrome limitation it can’t update it’s blocklist directly. You have to update the whole extension to update the blocklist and that goes through Google validation in the Chrome store. It adds delay and Google could even refuse some updates. The blocklist is also shorter because not all filter rules are supported.
Sounds like ubo lite could end up blocking everything else than Google, unless of course the ad companies pay Google to force ubo lite to remove them from the list.
Google isn’t blocking one of the biggest adblockers. It’s killing chrome!
Those who aren’t using an adblock won’t notice any difference but everyone else will just migrate to a non chromium browser
This will incentivize businesses to only support chrome
I’m fine with not supporting them then.
Use DNS filtering. I use NextDNS which has a free tier that meets my needs. You can add popular filter lists and your browser will never even see those ads, trackers etc. Or you can use Vivaldi and Firefox of course. But DNS cuts it off before it even gets to your machine.
DNS filtering only gets you so far. An adblocker is still a very good addition
a free tier
Alternatively, you can just host this stuff yourself and never pay. A Pihole is just DNS-filtering. There’s a million guides to do this on the internet already. You can also do it more directly with some routers, I run DNS filtering on an ASUS router with the merlin third-party firmware. It’s possibly the simplest thing you can host yourself. Like others have pointed out though, it isn’t a replacement for uBO. They both complement each other and I would recommend both to people who are able. The one major advantage it has is being able to block some ads in mobile apps. But it cannot block as many in a browser.
dns blocking methods do not, and literally cannot, block them all.
Well, they’re only doing what they announced already like 1-2 years ago. So we knew it was coming. This is also accompanied by Google making YouTube more restrictive when viewed with adblockers. Google is (somewhat late, to be honest) showing its teeth against users who block ads. I always expected it to happen but it took them quite some time. Probably they wanted to play the good guys for long enough until most users are dependent on their services, and now their proprietary trap is very effective.
On the desktop, you should switch to a good Firefox fork right now. Firefox can also be used but needs configuring before it’s good. The forks LibreWolf or Mullvad Browser are already very good out of the box. There’s the potential issue of the forks not being updated fast enough, but so far these two have been fast. Mullvad shares a lot of configuration with the Tor Browser, so using it may break some sites. LibreWolf might be “better” for the average user because of that, but otherwise I think Mullvad is the best Firefox fork overall.
On mobile, Firefox-based browsers aren’t recommended, because on Android, the sandboxing mechanism of Firefox is inferior to that of the Chromium-based browsers. And on iOS, all browsers (have to) run on Apple’s proprietary Webkit engine anyway, but well this is Apple we’re talking about so of course it’s all locked-down and restricted. It’s one of the reasons I don’t even like talking about Apple that much, just be aware that as an iOS user, your choice doesn’t mean as much when it comes to browsers, and your browser might not behave like you think it does on other platforms.
So on mobile, I’d suggest things like Brave, Cromite or Mull. Or Vanadium (GrapheneOS). If the browser doesn’t have built-in adblocking capability which sidesteps the MV3 restrictions, make sure to use an ad-blocking DNS server, so your browser doesn’t have to do it. But you still need it. Adblocking not only helps you retain your sanity when browsing the web in 2024, but it also proactively secures you against known and unknown security threats coming from ads. So adblocking is a security plus, a privacy plus, and a sanity plus. It’s absolutely mandatory. As long as the ad industry is as terrible as it is, you should continue using adblocks. All the time. On every device and on every browser.
The ad industry is itself to blame for this. There could in theory be such a thing like acceptable ads, but that would require ads to be static images/text, not fed by personal data, and not dynamically generated by random scripts which could compromise your security, and not overly annoying. Since that is probably never going to happen, you should never give up using adblockers. Since they basically fight you by reducing your security and privacy, you have a right to defend yourself via technical means.
There are no issues with the main Firefox branches for desktop and mobile, for the average user, not sure why you’re so against them.
Reasons are the data transmissions happening by default and Mozilla’s questionable inclusion of add-on things like Pocket. See for example:
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mozilla-firefox-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil20/
vs.
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/mullvad-browser-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil22/ https://www.kuketz-blog.de/librewolf-datensendeverhalten-desktop-version-browser-check-teil8/
You might need to translate the site to English. If you compare that, you can see why it’s easy to recommend the forks over the original. That said, you CAN configure Firefox to also behave well, but that takes an extra effort. It is far from there by default.
And why should the average user care? They use Alexa and have the Facebook app installed anyway, this is just a drop in the bucket for all the other crap that tracks every movement anyway
Yes, but my post is for the people who DO care about privacy issues. I also don’t like the defeatist’s attitude. You can always start making things better. My post is for those who want to make a better informed decision, that’s all.
Yes! Vivaldi!
Built on Chromium. No thanks.
More people should use Firefox. Anyone who does not want Google to control the web browser space with a single base. Firefox will continue support uBlock Origin in its full strength. Notice, Google does not “kill” uBlock Origin, but rather weaken it substantially with a new protocol.
But I get it. With such headlines more people will read it. At least it has a good effect of getting attention of people, who would otherwise ignore it.
They do kill uBlock Origin. The Lite version is a different extension.
Its still the same extension, same source code, same logic, just less capable; hence the addition of “Lite” to the name. Originally they wanted release the Lite version with same name, but changed it Lite, so people don’t get confused why its not longer blocking everything it blocked before.
Its still the same extension, same source code, same logic, just less capable
the same… but not the same… ??
I think the technologies are quite different.
uBOL is entirely declarative, meaning there is no need for a permanent uBOL process for the filtering to occur, and CSS/JS injection-based content filtering is performed reliably by the browser itself rather than by the extension. This means that uBOL itself does not consume CPU/memory resources while content blocking is ongoing – uBOL’s service worker process is required only when you interact with the popup panel or the option pages.
Are you claiming non-lite does the same, plus more?
You say it’s the same source code, but it’s a different source code repository. non-lite, lite.
same logic
That’s the point, it isn’t. The good old version was built on logic where the browser would send the downloaded webpage to the extension, and uBO could weed out ads and trackers, and give you the sanitized version. uBOL works completely differently, as it has to ask the browser to clean it out, but the browser will ultimately decide what to actually do, and there are already limitations that impact ad blocking, as the browser won’t accept enough changes to block all the different kinds of shit that comes through.
The other big difference in logic is distribution, uBO relies on outside blocklists to keep up with Google changing Youtube several times a day to keep sending you malware, in the new system, this is not allowed, so it’s on Google to approve a new blocklist as fast as they do their changes - they won’t.
It’s going to be less capable, it’s going to be exactly as capable as Google wants. It might as well be named the Google Ad Blocker if only that didn’t discount the insane work the uBO team does to keep up with Google’s shit.
@Kissaki@beehaw.org @baggins@lemmy.ca @ivn@jlai.lu Apologies. I think you guys are right about this, its actually killing the old plugin (in Chrome). Thanks all for explanation, now I understand why that is.
The developer specifically released the light version because they acknowledged that it is not the same and you need to make the explicit choice of what you want to keep using
Fuck chrome, FF ftw.
Block Chrome and use anything not Chrome based. In other words use Firefox.
But Firefox is about to loose it’s funding because google is a monopoly lol
Firefox is open source. It’s not going anywhere; even if Mozilla Co. goes broke and closes down the Mozilla Foundation.
Sure. But loosing the money to fund development surely won’t help, will it? My point is that there is a real danger here. There are other forces at play which is why you have the chrome dominance already. Long term firefox will fall behind if not maintained. There really needs to be a push to finance firefox or alternatives.
Or imagine if more and more websites “require” some new web protocol to prevent ad blocking, or use of DMCA against browsers or addons altering websites as “web apps”. This is another problem that cannot be solved through individual responsibility.
So Google is a monopoly and removing funding to Firefox will help them not to be a monopoly? That does not sound right. Rather the opposite.
Nothing has been decided or done yet. Most likely they will just be forced to not abuse their position, for example make ads for it on www.google.com, don’t bundle Chrome with Android and such things.
I believe there will always be an alternative to Chrome available as the Open Source community will find a way together.
Google has been telegraphing this for months. Either switch browsers now or enjoy your ads.
They’ve literally said ad blockers are a threat to their revenue https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419000004/goog10-kq42018.htm
It’s not exactly super helpful to just link to an 86 page SEC filing. Maybe you could provide a quote?
Ctrl F for “block”. There were only 5 usages of the word and that led me to the section.
That’s nice. A quote still would have been more approachable for most, while those that were more curious could have followed the link to the document.
I have some time now, I’ll grab it and edit it in
