[HN Gopher] Chrome's next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slow...
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Chrome's next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension
updates
Author : my12parsecs
Score : 349 points
Date : 2023-12-02 03:17 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| dotcoma wrote:
| If this won't lead to people ditching Chrome, I am afraid nothing
| ever will...
| goku12 wrote:
| It won't. But not because this is desirable. All these anti-
| user measures are small and gradual steps that regular folks
| won't immediately recognize. Something about a frog and boiling
| water.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Beyond that, how many ordinary non-techie people are ever
| checking the actual changes of their app? I'd bet basically
| never unless a changelog page opens immediately after the
| update. And that's not exactly going to be worded in an
| understandable way like "we're doing this to screw over your
| ability to do what you want on the web".
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The frog boiling analogy doesn't work long-term though,
| because humans don't live forever, and new ones keep
| replacing the old ones. A new crop of college kids is going
| to look at Chrome and say "nope"
| saurik wrote:
| Or they look at Chrome and not realize it could ever have
| been better, as they never experienced such.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Hard to imagine someone would switch from Edge/Safari to
| Chrome without investigating other alternatives like
| Brave/Firefox.
| cpeterso wrote:
| Or the college kids are acclimated to the Google ecosystem
| because they been using Google Classroom on the Google
| Chromebooks in their K-12 classes for years.
| trealira wrote:
| I don't understand why Google counteracts indirectly. Why can't
| they just ban adblockers from the Chrome Web Store? If that's not
| possible, why not just remove specific adblockers one by one?
| Removing the big ones would probably stop most people from using
| them.
| yakattak wrote:
| My assumption is that banning them outright will make it super
| obvious you can't run adblock on chrome. With Manifest V3
| limiting their capabilities but not getting rid of them, the
| layman user will still feel like they have adblock and aren't
| likely to know it's not as powerful as it was before.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Google might be trying to have their cake and eat it too -
| hamstring adblocking enough that their sites and ad networks
| can work around it but other sites and ad networks will
| remain blocked.
| orangepurple wrote:
| This implies we are so stupid we won't realize we are seeing
| ads where we never saw them before.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> we won't realize we are seeing ads where we never saw
| them before.
|
| Ads are the new content.
|
| The killer app for LLMs is generating new and innovative
| ads that are entertaining and feel like content.
|
| Imagine fun games like "Avoid the Noid"
| (https://www.mobygames.com/game/1095/avoid-the-noid/),
| "Cool Spot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Spot), and
| "McKids" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.C._Kids), but
| with modern graphics and sound and promoting the most
| annoying brands and products.
|
| Help people save money on their insurance by playing as the
| Geico lizard! Find out the dirt on used cars as the CarFax
| fox! Yesterday's annoying mascots are today's folk heroes.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Ads will never be the 'new content'. If I want to read a
| news story, or find some key information, do you really
| suppose I will appreciate being confronted with "Avoid
| the Noid" or other fatuous games?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| News stories are often straight ads too, just quickly
| paraphrased retelling of a propaganda piece from the
| companies public relations department.
| kadoban wrote:
| That would get them a lot of bad press and many people would
| leave. It might even get AGs attention. If they just do
| ambiguous annoying things, that's safer for them.
| jlawrence6809 wrote:
| They've done so in the past when they blocked the AdNauseam
| extension several years ago.
| e2le wrote:
| If only there was a headless version of AdNauseam, I would
| finally have a use for the many Raspberry Pi's sitting in my
| drawer.
| Arnavion wrote:
| They benefit from people blocking ads, just not their ads. And
| they can't just build something into their browser to block
| everyone else's ads by default because that'll be
| uncompetitive.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Is it? I've seen ad blockers try that "privileged ads" model.
| It's hilariously unpopular and unprofitable due to product
| market mismatch.
|
| Maybe I am cynical about the law, but I assume the only
| reason they don't block other networks is because it would be
| their same advertisers, and they would be furious enough to
| take action.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Chrome already ships with ad blockers built in for ads which
| are disruptive or use too much resources.
|
| https://blog.chromium.org/2018/02/how-chromes-ad-
| filtering-w...
|
| https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:com.
| ..
|
| https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:com.
| ..
|
| https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:com.
| ..
| denton-scratch wrote:
| All ads are disruptive.
| Drakim wrote:
| Note however that they get to decide this criteria, I as a
| user does not have any input as to which ads are
| "disruptive". And hey, it just so happens that their
| criteria allows for their own ads.
| indymike wrote:
| It's not an add blocker. It is a competitive as blocker.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Yes, which is not "block everyone else's ads". Your own
| first link says that websites eventually fixed their ads to
| comply with their "Better Ads Standards" and thus became
| able to show them again.
| croes wrote:
| Ad blocker are legal, banning them could be illegal.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Porn is legal but you can't out a porn app in the Chrome or
| Google Play store. No rule says they have to allow everything
| legal.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Not sure about the second part. Considering they have a
| dominant market position/gatekeeper/whatever, they probably
| have to actually make an argument for "why not" in the case
| of tracking blockers (age restricted content is another
| discussion entirely).
|
| Otherwise, abusing dominance in the phone app store market
| to benefit their (also dominant) ad surveillance business
| sounds very, very much like something the DMA could and
| should punish.
| kelnos wrote:
| If Google had their own porn app in the Chrome or Play
| stores, but banned all other porn apps, I guarantee they'd
| lose quite a few anti-trust related lawsuits, and quickly.
| croes wrote:
| Porn isn't legal for minors and Chrome extensions store
| doesn't have an age check.
| surajrmal wrote:
| There is a baseline assumption that this is motivated by ads. I
| really don't think Google is coordinated enough for ads to
| exert pressure between orgs in that way. People in chrome
| really are just optimizing for security and safety.
| zwaps wrote:
| Hard disagree, this is a play from the top
| heliodor wrote:
| What do you base this _belief_ on?
| Mars294 wrote:
| How is their anti-Adblock fight on YouTube not a clear
| sign?
| theduder99 wrote:
| because google is an ads company
| daveswilson wrote:
| And if you've ever worked for 'em, even in a department
| related to neither Chrome nor Ads, you'll soon know the
| influence of the Ads team. Prestige, high-pressure jobs,
| top people, and influence everywhere.
| ath3nd wrote:
| I am not sure if this is not a sarcastic take, but I will
| bite.
|
| Google are generally not coordinated well on anything, but
| this current war on adblockers is a notable exception.
| Consider the following 3 things all happening in the same
| time frame:
|
| 1. Youtube's rollout of detecting adblockers and updating
| their code a couple times a day to prevent you from running
| an adblocker
|
| 2. The manifest v3 standard
|
| 3. The Privacy Sandbox trash
|
| They are using the dominant position of Youtube as video
| content platform (point 1), chrome/chromium (point 2) as a
| browser engine and their current dominant position in the ads
| market (point 3) to achieve a couple of goals. With the
| privacy sandbox, they force ads to go through their
| ecosystem, with the manifest v3 they deliver a big kick to
| the adblockers, and with Toutube, they are using one of their
| most successful platforms to further push their ads agenda.
|
| To me, unskippable ads are going to:
|
| - make me hate the brand that's wasting my time by
| advertising crap I don't need and making me watch it
|
| - make me hate the platform on which this ad is played,
| especially knowing the platform jumped through specific hoops
| to make the ads unskippable for even the power users
| realusername wrote:
| > Why can't they just ban adblockers from the Chrome Web Store?
|
| The answer is legal antitrust lawsuits. Chrome has a near
| monopoly and Google is the largest advertising actor, banning
| ad blocking altogether risks giving ammunition to the
| inevitable antitrust lawsuits.
|
| What they prefer to do instead is degrade their effectiveness
| step by step, it's way less risky for them.
| mrjin wrote:
| That would also prevent lots of if not most people from using
| Chrome too. They have to pretend to care privacy & security so
| that they can put more into their pocket.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| _I wish_ they 'd just ban ad blockers from their store. It
| would instantly turn uBlock Origin into _the_ Firefox killer
| app.
| teeray wrote:
| Perhaps that's exactly why they don't. They know there would
| be an exodus because they know what the install-base of ad
| blockers are in Chrome. Their market dominance is worth more
| than the marginal lost revenue from some ads being blocked.
| blibble wrote:
| and after manifest v3 is shipped, the updates for
| "selected" extensions get slower and slower which makes
| them less and less effective
|
| and they will just look slow instead of actively targeting
| ad-blockers
| anticorporate wrote:
| Google has of course considered doing this. We can't know their
| exact calculus, but whatever it was, they came to the
| conclusion that playing cat-and-mouse is financially
| advantageous to them. Maybe it's a legal concern, maybe it's a
| market share concern, maybe adblockers don't actually erode
| their overall ad profitability to the degree we think it does.
| But whatever the reason, Google decided they will profit more
| this way.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Banning them will invite antitrust regulation, because there's
| a conflict of interest between giving away the browser and
| crippling it to benefit their advertising business. I suspect
| that for the legal department, it's too close to the historical
| example of Microsoft leveraging its operating system dominance
| to benefit Internet Explorer and hurt competitors like
| Netscape. If they bury the anti-adblock strategy under layers
| of technicalities, they can plausibly deny that they're
| targeting particular vendors.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Because they don't want to ban adblockers, obviously. They even
| implemented a whole new subsystem in the browser tailored for
| efficient adblocking.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Just use Edge? It is better at this point anyway
| kibwen wrote:
| Edge uses the Chrome web store. It's just Chrome playing dress-
| up.
| nitinreddy88 wrote:
| Not exactly. Edge is fork of Chrome and diverged a lot from
| actual Chrome. You can load Manifest v2 extensions in Edge
| while it's not feasible in Chrome
| tech234a wrote:
| I just tested loading a manifest v2 extension on Chrome
| (stable) and it works fine.
| gnicholas wrote:
| There is also an Edge extension store, which could
| conceivably keep MV2 extensions alive, and allow for a
| smoother update experience.
|
| However, as someone who manages a couple extension, I rarely
| update the Edge version for one and didn't bother ever
| uploading the other.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Not only does Google take a long time to review extension
| updates, but Chrome pulls extension updates infrequently. So even
| if you manage to get an update pushed to the store in 24 hours,
| it may take another day or more before your users actually get
| the update.
|
| All of this put together means you really shouldn't trust Chrome
| extensions for anything important. If there's a security
| vulnerability in something like your password manager, the update
| is going to take days to reach your system.
| duringmath wrote:
| > Manifest V3 will stop this by limiting what Google describes
| "remotely hosted code." All updates, even to benign things like a
| filtering list, will need to happen through full extension
| updates through the Chrome Web Store. They will all be subject to
| Chrome Web Store reviews process, and that comes with a
| significant time delay.
|
| So the author can't think of any other reason for this change
| other than to "slow down ad blocker updates"
|
| Well how about stuff like this:
| https://github.com/extesy/hoverzoom/discussions/670
|
| Where an extension dev details offers to "monetize" his extension
| and basically perform a bait and switch and make it malicious.
|
| Pretending that V3 is all about ad blockers is more than a little
| disingenuous.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| MV3 does not stop those monetization offers. I don't understand
| why you think they would stop.
|
| Source: I have two open-source extensions with almost 1,000,000
| active daily users combined, and the MV3 versions still elicit
| offers for me to sell them
| duringmath wrote:
| It might not stop the offers coming but it might stop you
| from taking up one or more of them.
| NBPEL wrote:
| How ?
|
| If you are offered 2 meals, it's YOUR choice to take 1 or
| 2, it's all about yourself.
|
| MV3 won't even prevent this one bit.
| duringmath wrote:
| Malicious extensions are less likely to make it passed
| the review process.
|
| That in turn should deter bad actors from monkeying with
| their extensions but more importantly it makes it less
| likely that malicious extensions make their way to users
| browsers.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The review process is the same for MV2 and MV3
| extensions.
| sourcefrog wrote:
| Yes, there seem to be really valid security concerns about the
| current extension interface. Perhaps Google is making the wrong
| tradeoffs here. I don't know, it's very complicated, but the
| article is not really engaging with those tradeoffs.
| kelnos wrote:
| Except that it doesn't seem MV3 actually solves any of those
| security problems.
| croes wrote:
| Time to hold Google liable for any damage by malware, phishing,
| scams etc. served by ads.
| antifa wrote:
| I've gotten malware twice from ads on reputable websites. I've
| never gotten malware via piracy or while using adblock.
| bastard_op wrote:
| I long ago stopped using chrome under linux, it's like malware
| inviting themselves to my home.
|
| Chrome is the new IE6.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I quit using Chrome and recently quit using Google as the
| default search. It is so hard to get away from them but I am
| making progress.
| virtualpain wrote:
| what search engine you use as default now?
| orphea wrote:
| Check out Kagi. It's paid but has subjectively higher
| quality search results and lacks BS that Google is full of
| these days.
| plagiarist wrote:
| DDG for the time being but honestly I am tempted by Kagi as
| well. Ad tech is cancer on the internet. I decided to quit
| Google after the trusted devices bullshit, but if I could
| remove junk listicles from my results that would be a big
| improvement.
| delroth wrote:
| What about MV3 requires going through the Chrome Web Store to
| update block lists? A quick look at the declarativeNetRequest
| docs
| (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla...)
| shows that there are indeed static rulesets which need to be
| declared in the extension's manifest, but also dynamic rulesets
| which can be updated via JavaScript (and so presumably can be
| fetched and updated dynamically). I can't seem to find any
| specific limitation of dynamic rulesets vs. static rulesets.
| fgoesbrrr wrote:
| They can claim dynamic fetch is "phoning home" and a user
| privacy danger.
| delroth wrote:
| You're just making stuff up at this point with no evidence or
| source. If the intention was to forbid dynamic fetching of
| declarativeNetRequest filter lists, Google could also just...
| not have dynamic filter lists.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Google's playing the long EEE game. They do small things
| like this so people like you go around telling us it's not
| a big deal.
|
| Will you say the same things 5 years from now? Google needs
| to be kicked out of consideration for web standards. They
| keep treating it like they own it.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Now there's something Google Chrome would never do, phoning
| home.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Not even Brave would do that. Wait..
| dwaite wrote:
| This was unclear to me as well.
|
| I think the article is talking specifically about downloading
| and running scripts for working around a particular site
| dynamically, such as Youtube ad blockers.
|
| That said, I don't know if this really is a technical block
| from e.g. adding a script tag to a YouTube page to pull in a
| third party resource. My impression was that it was blocking
| arbitrary scripts specifically within the extension context,
| and not in the browser context.
| delroth wrote:
| > I think the article is talking specifically about
| downloading and running scripts for working around a
| particular site dynamically
|
| The article specifically mentions "filter lists" being
| subject to review time.
|
| > All updates, even to benign things like a filtering list,
| will need to happen through full extension updates through
| the Chrome Web Store.
|
| > Is a filtering list update, which is essentially just a
| list of websites, really something that needs to be limited
| by the "no remotely hosted code" policy?
|
| > So since all filter list updates now need to go through the
| Chrome Web Store, how long does a review take?
| charcircuit wrote:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/impr
| o...
|
| Chrome explicitly recommends downloading remote
| configuration.
| mlyle wrote:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/impro.
| ..
|
| To me, this seems pretty clear: don't inject anything
| "executable" into a webpage except CSS.
|
| It does look like you could maybe use a sandboxed iframe and
| ask it about page features and whether they should be
| blocked, and that this might be permitted.
| buildbot wrote:
| CSS3 is turing complete:
| https://accodeing.com/blog/2015/css3-proven-to-be-turing-
| com...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Arithmetic + iteration is enough to be Turing complete.
|
| CSS has arithmetic. It does not have iteration.
|
| And even if it had full compute capabilities, the output
| is still just choosing CSS rules to apply.
| buildbot wrote:
| Can you explain how the blog post/other results people
| have on CSS being turing complete are wrong?
|
| Edit - would it be considered cheating to use: <meta
| http-equiv="refresh" content="10">
| postalrat wrote:
| A far as I know you can still execute your code in any
| context, but the code can't be fetched, modified or built
| during runtime.
| doctor_radium wrote:
| Is there anything in MV3 that enforces signed code? Could a
| separate client that fetches block lists itself and then side
| loads them be the answer?
| jupp0r wrote:
| Filter lists are data, not code.
| bilkow wrote:
| uBOL's FAQ entry: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/wiki/Frequently-as...
|
| Edit: Chrome docs on the matter explaining the limitations
| (from sibling mlyle)
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/impro...
| bitvoid wrote:
| That doesn't really state if that's a self-imposed limitation
| or limitation of Mv3.
| bilkow wrote:
| I've edited my comment to also include a link to the Chrome
| docs, but that FAQ entry also has the link to an issue in
| the webextensions repository indicating it's a limitation
| of MV3: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/112
| jsnell wrote:
| But that issue has nothing to do with the question of
| whether the "filter lists" could be updated dynamically
| without store review. It's asking for a way of
| programatically triggering the update to the latest
| version of the extension in the store.
|
| That feature request being fixed would do nothing to
| enable updates without store review. And likewise the
| feature for doing updates of the ruleset without a store
| review already exists but is not used by UBOL.
|
| So the link doesn't actually support your claim of it
| being a limitation of MV3. The link is just irrelevant.
|
| The FAQ hints at why UBOL doens't make use of that
| feature, but doesn't actually state it outright.
| gorhill wrote:
| For an extension to be entirely declarative, it must
| package all the scripts to inject anywhere, the
| scripting.registerContentScript API doesn't allow injecting
| code as string[1], the content scripts must be part of the
| package.[2]
|
| There is userScripts API which allows injecting code as
| string, but it's impractical as in Chromium-based browsers
| this requires extra steps by the user to enable the API.[3]
| In Firefox, the documentation for this API has the
| following note[4]:
|
| > When using Manifest V3 or higher, use
| scripting.registerContentScripts() to register scripts
|
| * * *
|
| [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-
| ons/Web...
|
| [2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/tree/main/chromium...
|
| [3] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/
| userS... ("Availability Pending")
|
| [4] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-
| ons/Web...
| simbolit wrote:
| Firefox rennaissance anyone?
| tpowell wrote:
| I use Brave, Safari, Arc and Firefox, basically in that order.
| I never even installed Chrome once Apple introduced their own
| chips. Brave has always felt just like Chrome once you turn off
| their rewards stuff. Arc is doing some really thoughtful
| integration of Chat-GPT, including cleaning up tab titles, that
| is worth paying attention to. I actually look forward to their
| ~weekly YouTube updates.
| antifa wrote:
| > Arc
|
| You have to enter an email address to get a download link???
| Also the homepage was laggy on firefox nightly for Android.
| kelnos wrote:
| I wish. Likely most people just won't notice this happening,
| and won't realize their experience could be better with a
| different browser. Only people like us will. And if you read a
| lot of the comments here, seems like a lot of people who should
| know better still use Chrome.
| timbit42 wrote:
| People who start seeing ads will know the difference. People
| don't like ads and will ask their local geek why ads are back
| and how to avoid them.
| vehemenz wrote:
| The numbers are pretty grim though. Apple is taking market
| share in desktop and mobile, so I'd put my money on Safari.
| timbit42 wrote:
| How are you expecting them to gain market share on Windows,
| Linux and Android?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This might be a stupid question but will this affect Edge as
| well?
|
| Right now it's unclear to me how much Edge extensions are tied to
| the Chrome Store policies.
| nitinreddy88 wrote:
| Edge still supports Manifest v2 extensions and they are trying
| to keep it open.
| tech234a wrote:
| For now. The docs [1] indicate they might follow along with
| what Chrome does, though they haven't been updated since
| January.
|
| [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
| edge/extensions-...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38494451
| zgs wrote:
| Looks like Chrome is digging a hole they'll not get out of.
|
| I run Chrome as little as possible. Sadly, there are a few places
| where it is the best still.
| myspy wrote:
| I went through the process installing googleless Chromium and
| that's fine to work with.
|
| Since the Keystone saga I'm not using Chrome anymore. Google
| Chrome can go the way of the dodo.
| squidbeak wrote:
| As we see from this topic, even googleless Chrome is
| constrained by Google's business needs.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I only use Chrome on Google websites. It keeps my Google
| account separated from all my other web browsing.
| zacte wrote:
| Are there any decent alternatives for the Chrome Web store? Are
| there unified extension hubs for chromium/firefox with version
| history similar to how android has apk websites
| YoshiRulz wrote:
| Mozilla's first-party marketplace has version history. Click
| "See all versions" in the left sidebar.
|
| As for third-party marketplaces, I couldn't say, but I'm aware
| of some work in that direction for Nixpkgs.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| Now, right now, this is the moment for Mozilla to pull their
| heads out of their asses and really push to improve Firefox.
| Google is cranking up the user hostility, but if there's no
| viable alterative, people are gonna be stuck being spied on and
| tracked everywhere by chrome.
|
| If we had an alternative, this would be the time for an organized
| push to get people on it. But Mozilla has either become
| complacent or been quietly bought out behind the scenes and
| Firefox isn't really competitive anymore.
|
| Sure, you can still use Firefox. I do, begrudgingly. But it's not
| good enough to convince people to switch. It hasn't been for a
| very long time which is why we're in this mess in the first
| place.
|
| I expect nothing will change and everyone will suffer for it.
|
| Maybe people will get offline more. The internet as a whole is
| becoming exponentially shittier as time goes on. How much longer
| before it's completely intolerable?
| roca wrote:
| What exactly do you think is substandard about Firefox?
| asmor wrote:
| https://github.com/webcompat/web-
| bugs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%...
|
| Microsoft Teams (which I don't think many people use
| voluntarily) in particular breaks in stupid ways - and then
| in others if you spoof your user agent.
| phs318u wrote:
| I use Microsoft Edge - have added their apt repository so
| updates are automagical. Edge, though based on Chrome's
| engine, still supports manifest V2 so adblockers such as UO
| still work fine. Even better, Edge let's you "appify" sites
| like Teams and Outlook - perfect for work. I use Edge for
| all my WFH needs, turning off UO for most MS sites (to
| avoid any subtle issues), and Firefox for all personal
| needs. Works for me. Oh, and Teams on Linux using Edge
| works a treat.
| asmor wrote:
| Absolutely not. I've gone great lengths about my attempt
| at using Edge here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38430102
|
| In short: It has zero respect for the user, so little
| that it regularly gaslit me into thinking I had agreed to
| things I did not.
|
| They also signaled intent to simply merge the ripping out
| of MV2, so as soon as Chrome drops it, Edge will too.
| eyegor wrote:
| There are several web apis that Mozilla refuses to support,
| for example webhid or webusb, which all chromium browsers
| have had for years at this point. Same for little css
| features and some bits in the webaudio and webrtc
| implementations.
|
| Mozilla refusing to support webhid in any way:
| https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webhid
|
| Chrome adding it to stable in 2021:
| https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-in-chrome-89/
| nolist_policy wrote:
| This, they refuse to implement it claiming privacy reasons.
|
| The sad thing is, if FirefoxOS would still be a thing they
| wouldn't bat an eye.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Can you defend the proposition that Firefox isn't a
| viable browser for lack of these APIs by listing popular
| websites that won't work without them?
|
| Serious question, because I can't think of any.
| charcircuit wrote:
| https://suite.trezor.io/web/
|
| https://pixelrepair.withgoogle.com/
|
| Are 2 that pop in to my head
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Trezor is... a crypto hardware wallet? I can't imagine
| this sort of thing is popular enough to block firefox
| from mainstream adoption.
|
| The pixel repair site is an interesting example, but
| AFAIK, Pixel phones have about 2% of the US market share
| and this website is only useful to a small number of
| those users (those who encounter a serious error) and
| isn't something even those users would be using often. If
| I had to use this website and couldn't get my phone fixed
| another way, I could install and use Chrome (or I presume
| another Chromium browser) and use it for this single
| purpose. It would take me only a few minutes/hours(?) and
| then I'd be done with it. Why would a site like this keep
| me using Chrome permanently? I just can't imagine that.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I think this is pretty typical of these niche web
| features. Like most users have no need for web midi and
| most likely don't even own a midi device that it would
| work with. But niche websites can find great value in the
| api being available and offer sites to users which bring
| them value without having them install a native app. Also
| I'm not sure if it's a good idea to give people a reason
| to install and use a competitors browser.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I don't think either of these are examples of websites
| that might plausibly be holding Firefox back from
| mainstream adoption. I was expecting something like
| "[popular feature] of facebook or youtube doesn't work"
| nerdbert wrote:
| Never heard of those and I doubt 99% of the population
| have either.
|
| Not being compatible with those sites is definitely not
| the barrier to widespread adoption of Firefox.
| kelnos wrote:
| I doubt your average user cares about whether WebHID or
| WebUSB are implemented. What popular sites (popular enough
| to cause significant browser market share disruption) use
| those APIs? (For the record, though, I fully agree with
| Mozilla's rationale behind not implementing them.)
|
| Not sure what little CSS features you mean, but I haven't
| found any mainstream websites that don't render properly in
| Firefox. It's possible that the website maintainers have to
| do extra work to get them working in Firefox, but regular
| users don't care about that.
|
| I do recall some things missing from WebAudio and WebRTC,
| but in practice I'm not sure I've run into any issues with
| Firefox's implementations. And, again, if website
| maintainers are doing extra work to make things behave
| properly with Firefox, regular users aren't going to notice
| or care.
| egberts1 wrote:
| You really do not want to enable WebHIB, WebUSB, WebGL,
| WebRTC, canvas, `blob:` nor any of Google's 8 APIs for
| privacy and security reasons.
|
| This is Google's attempt at our privacy thru Embrace,
| Engulf, and Extinguish strategy.
|
| https://www.creativebloq.com/features/google-apis
| zlg_codes wrote:
| The second E is usually Extend. Where'd you see one about
| Engulf?
| ladzoppelin wrote:
| Nothing is substandard in Firefox. Manifest 3 in Chrome is
| actually giving Google the ability to make Chrome substandard.
| I know it annoying to hear but I really think its better if
| people switch to Firefox.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Sorry but lots of things are substandard in Firefox. On the
| rare occasion that I do use it the first thing I'm always
| promted with is "there's an update available - click here to
| restart" like it's 2003 again. Numerous pages have rendering
| problems with Firefox. Performance is not good enough. Dev
| tools have fallen behind. It aggressively pushes shitty
| "value-adds" like that lame bookmarking service (Pocket Mark
| or something). And the never ending UI refreshes are
| exhausting.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Show me these pages that Firefox doesn't render well.
|
| Show me pages that tank Firefox performance.
|
| How many of them will have -webkit-* and other engine-
| exclusive markup/CSS?
|
| Firefox updates every 6 weeks, just like Chrome.
|
| What do you want in the devtools that Chrome has and
| Firefox doesn't?
|
| I've been using Firefox for nearly two decades and aside
| from the WebExtensions and some UI changes, it's been
| solid.
|
| I find most criticisms of Firefox on websites are lacking
| links and profiling data.
| mcv wrote:
| Firefox is perfectly usable, and in fact already superior to
| Chrome. It is a very viable alternative. Best browser I've ever
| had.
|
| The fact that they choose not to implement some apis because
| they're harmful to privacy doesn't seem to hurt me in any way.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Is there any possibility of forking Visual Code and adding
| extension and profile support?
| YoshiRulz wrote:
| VS Code, the IDE? It may use Electron but that doesn't make
| it a browser.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| A majority of Firefox's funding comes from Google. I doubt
| they're willing to aggressively market their browser as "the
| one to use to get around Google's ads". I'm not sure of the
| exact figures but as I recall, losing Google's funding would be
| a company-ending event.
| lakpan wrote:
| Absolutely clickbait. Nothing in the article suggests that review
| times are increasing, they've always been "from a few minutes to
| a few days".
|
| Also filters do not depend on extension updates at all, they are
| plain text files that can be updated at any time. Not to mention
| that they can contain "scriptlets", which make them quite
| literally "remotely hosted code" and still allowed by MV3
| (because they're not raw JavaScript)
| nneonneo wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > We've covered this already. But we haven't talked about the
| other side of the equation: Ad block rules can't be updated
| quickly anymore. Today, ad blockers and privacy apps can ship
| filter list updates themselves, often using giant open-source
| community lists. Manifest V3 will stop this by limiting what
| Google describes "remotely hosted code." All updates, even to
| benign things like a filtering list, will need to happen
| through full extension updates through the Chrome Web Store.
| They will all be subject to Chrome Web Store reviews process,
| and that comes with a significant time delay.
|
| If this is factually incorrect, it would absolutely warrant a
| correction to the article.
| mlyle wrote:
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/impro.
| ..
|
| Looks factually correct-- though exactly how Google
| interprets rules will affect how limiting this is.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| > If this is factually incorrect, it would absolutely warrant
| a correction to the article.
|
| It is incorrect. MV3 definition updates go through an
| automated fast-track process for safe rules. See the
| presentation[1] and Q&A[2] at the recent Ad Blocking Summit.
|
| I wouldn't hold my breath on a correction. Ron never corrects
| his articles, like when he confused the Privacy Sandbox with
| the Topics API a couple months ago[3].
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/Vw1eIaRuy7w?t=24745
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/Vw1eIaRuy7w?t=26552
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227
| justinclift wrote:
| > MV3 definition updates go through an automated fast-track
| process for safe rules.
|
| For now. Sounds like it would be to Google's advantage to
| play funny buggers with that though.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Then it would make sense to write such articles if and
| when that happens. Until that point, the claims being
| made in this article are simply incorrect.
| lakpan wrote:
| The only real part is that MV3 does not allow actual remote
| JS to be run on web pages. However you could still run it in
| a sandboxed iframe (not super helpful to adblockers though)
|
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/impro.
| ..
| zwaps wrote:
| Using a browser made by an ad company. Just don't. Other browsers
| are fine and in fact Chrome is becoming increasingly user hostile
| anyway.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| What "other browsers"? I know there's Firefox (it's my main
| browser, in fact), but where is the rest? Edge is Chrome,
| Safari is only available for iThings, so it's not like there's
| a big selection...
| unnouinceput wrote:
| I suggest watch this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5r6jFE8gic
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Looks interesting, but it's almost 40 minutes of video. Can
| I _read_ that somewhere?
| raybb wrote:
| Here's a kagi summary
|
| The video ranks different web browsers on a tier list
| from spyware tier to base tier based on privacy,
| usability, and other factors. Brave is placed in
| excellent tier for its good default privacy settings and
| built-in ad blocking, though some dislike its use of
| cryptocurrency. Firefox is only decent tier due to its
| many annoying default features, but can be excellent with
| the right privacy-focused user.js file. Icecat is decent
| tier for free software purists due to its use of LibreJS
| blocking non-free scripts, though this breaks many sites.
| Librewolf is excellent tier as an easy to use private
| version of Firefox without much configuration needed.
| Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi can be good but have
| limitations from not being fully open source. Closed
| source browsers like Chrome, Edge and Opera are
| automatically placed in spyware tier due to privacy
| concerns. Qutebrowser is decent tier for power users due
| to its keyboard-focused design but has issues with
| advanced ad blocking. Waterfox is excellent tier as a
| lightweight Firefox fork, though its ownership by an ad
| company concerns some. Overall, Brave, Librewolf and
| hardened Firefox are recommended as having the best
| balance of privacy, usability and customizability.
| i5-2520M wrote:
| Is the standpoint "everything is spyware until proven
| otherwise"? I really dislike how commonly spyware is
| used, it really dilutes the word's meaning.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > but where is the rest?
|
| There won't be any anytime soon. As per HN folk, whenever
| this discussion comes up there's always an massive angst
| outcry of "its impossible to create a new browser".
| narag wrote:
| The Serenity OS guy is making one:
|
| https://ladybird.dev/
| mbork_pl wrote:
| And he's been applauded a few times on HN, too.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| But if anyone else tries to mentions some of the sort it
| becomes a slag off fest.
|
| Example here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38394995
| narag wrote:
| So more wood: https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/
| ultrarunner wrote:
| Brave is chromium and seems okay. There's some Web3 nonsense,
| but it's unobtrusive.
| creesch wrote:
| Brave is an ad company with weird crypto stuff sprinkled
| in. Not to mention that their past actions have shown that
| privacy to them is a marketing thing, not something that is
| at the core of how they operate. There have been a few too
| many new things they introduced that run counter to a user
| centric privacy minded approach where they only did
| backpedal after enough negative publicity.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| I generally agree. It's not a great situation. As a
| browser to use when something's broken in Safari, it
| works, and to my knowledge doesn't send history directly
| to Google.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Firefox is basically funded by the same ad company.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Yes but "takes money from" is fundamentally different from
| "shares the ideology of". Do you think Google agrees with
| everything their advertising customers promote there and on
| YouTube?
| nneonneo wrote:
| Weirdly, earlier today I had a bunch of problems loading Google
| web properties on Firefox - GMail hung completely (wouldn't even
| load all the way! no more basic HTML option!) and Sheets was
| showing half-rendered documents (even after several refresh
| attempts). All the other sites were fine.
|
| It's probably just a coincidence...
| eyegor wrote:
| This happens periodically, where google services act funny with
| a Firefox user agent. Just use edge or chromes user agent
| string, and Google sites will work again.
| capableweb wrote:
| This is such an annoying approach for Google to force people
| to using Chrome... I get that they're not testing stuff on
| Firefox, so much is obvious. But there are so many times
| things don't work properly in Firefox (YouTube loading
| slower, lag in Gmail, Drive having weird UI<>backend
| synchronization bugs) at a first glance, but as soon as you
| set the user-agent to Chrome, things just magically work
| perfectly fine, and all issues disappear.
|
| Someone should really be doing a deep dive into this issue,
| because it's been going on for a long time, and is clearly
| anti-competitive. My guess is that they're really good at
| hiding this/making it look accidental rather than on purpose.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Maybe Firefox should just start using the Chrome useragent.
| Making those metrics unusable.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I use Chrome for Google websites and Firefox for everything
| else. I like keeping everything else separated from my Google
| account.
| wharvle wrote:
| Gmail's always very nearly unusable on mobile safari, mostly
| due to their user-hating decision to use custom scrolling.
| Constant accidental touch events when trying to scroll, and it
| breaks in weird ways that require reloads to fix. And that's
| aside from the scrolling itself working poorly to begin with,
| but short of outright breakage.
|
| IDK if it's better in iOS Chrome, but it'd be pretty damning if
| it is, since they necessarily use the same engine on that
| platform.
| butz wrote:
| Google might as well skip all this dancing around and build their
| ads straight into Chrome. Good luck doing some work while you
| have to watch a video ad every hour or so, and every page has ads
| literally in browsers "chrome".
| workfromspace wrote:
| To me it seems like Google would rather break all other
| extensions than give up war against ad blockers.
| ddxv wrote:
| Been using Firefox again. Was a great breath of fresh air for me.
| maxglute wrote:
| Is there a way to backup current Chrome version + settings +
| extensions, preferrably in a portable app/container. I'm pretty
| content with my setup and wouldn't mind running it for as long as
| possible. Hopefully in a few years we can have AI convert
| currently chrome exclusive extentions onto another browser. But
| right now it's still hard to swtich.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Imo it's dangerous for security reasons. Better start switching
| to ff from now
| maxglute wrote:
| I actually tried to do the switch this week, still too many
| essential plugins/addons missing. I have some basic technical
| skills to rewrite some functions into userscripts. But it's
| still a fairly subpar experience.
| kelnos wrote:
| I just kinda don't get this. I don't really think there are
| "essential" addons, aside from ad-blocking/privacy-related
| things (and Firefox is at least as good, and possibly
| better, than Chrome on those).
|
| Like... sure, web browser UX isn't always the best, but by
| rejecting Firefox on the merits of optional addons, you're
| just saying that the convenience of how you prefer to
| interact with a browser is more important than your privacy
| and ability to block ads. Which is fair, I suppose, but
| let's call it what it is.
|
| Meanwhile, we're back in the IE days: alternative browsers
| don't have enough market share to do much but accept
| whatever Google wants to do with the web.
|
| Frankly I'm just tired of people making excuses for using a
| browser made by a company that is actively making the web
| worse and eroding our privacy, bit by bit.
| maxglute wrote:
| Without getting into details there's a few niche
| extentions for my daily productivity that saves me a few
| hours every week. It's not critical, but it automates a
| bunch of things that would make switching cost for those
| tasks too high. Most of the missing things I can probably
| do without an adapt. I actually firefox UI more.
|
| >we're back in the IE days
|
| Reminds me of when Asian banks still required IE activex
| well into 2010s and one had to keep IE around, which was
| easy since it comes with Windows. I can probably use get
| used to firefox for most of my use case, but have to keep
| chrome around for some sites.
| me-vs-cat wrote:
| > there's a few niche extensions for my daily
| productivity that saves me a few hours every week
|
| I'm curious. Would you share which niche extensions?
| maxglute wrote:
| One example of one is Auto Copy, where chrome has version
| with indispensable features.
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/auto-
| copy/bijpdibkl...
|
| My use case, primarily for research/keeping up to date in
| my domain is auto copying 100s of articles curated
| through feedly/other sources that gets automatically
| appended to daily text document by clipboard watch from
| balabolka (text to speech program), with meta data
| comment of url/title and visible confirmation dialogue
| confirming successful text copy (no firefox addon does
| this after search), which balabolka also automatically
| read to me at 3x speed. Basically, everything I'm
| interesting in reading gets converted into a reasonably
| labelled/chaptered podcast and digest with searchable
| transcript. Chrome with combined with tab groups and
| extensions that sort/order/dedupes tabs by domain also
| streamlines the process. Combination of tab groups
| sorting behavior and ability auto label auto copied text
| cuts daily chore from to a fraction of the time it use
| to, which saves hours each week.
|
| Google lens also very useful for OCRing text, or
| translating images of foreign language. I can also do
| that with powertoys, but it's more finicky and add extra
| steps, require hot keys to do efficiently vs on Chrome I
| can do most of it with just a mouse.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| FUD
| NBPEL wrote:
| And it's sad that hackers are still using MV3 to write malware
| extensions, then what is the point of improving non-existence
| security ?
|
| https://adguard.com/en/blog/chrome-manifest-v3-where-we-stan...
|
| > Is it true that Manifest V3 will increase privacy and security
| of the browser?
|
| > Honestly, I wouldn't say so. I see the advantages of MV3 in
| terms of unification, cross-platform compatibility, and
| performance, but *I don't see any advantages in terms of
| increasing user security, unfortunately*. *The amount of scam
| extensions in the Chrome Web Store remains high despite the fact
| that it has been a long time since the store stopped accepting
| non-MV3 extensions.*
|
| And what, people are more likely to get virus from Google Ads or
| Ads overall than those improved security:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/10fi01q/nft_gods_...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17p68i7/set_networ...
| mrjin wrote:
| I think you just do get it that it has nothing to do with
| security.
| meepmorp wrote:
| It's about the security of Google's revenue stream.
| saos wrote:
| Use FF. best decision I made years ago.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| Continued enshitification of Chrome will result in exodus of tech
| savvy users.
| kelnos wrote:
| Well, it hasn't happened yet. Judging by many comments here, a
| lot of HNers still use Chrome. If people here still use Chrome,
| I see little hope of regular users ditching it for these sorts
| of reasons.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| That's because Google so far has only been dancing around and
| preparing to make ad blocking difficult. Until they actually
| do it, Chrome is fine.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| "Yeah there's a lot of smoke, but I'm not going to evacuate
| until I see flames"
|
| The writing is on the wall, why are you so keen to wait til
| the last minute?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Because many tech people who are sticks in the mud like
| this don't actually care about the browser, or the
| implications of what's happening in real time.
|
| They'll eventually leave and wonder why nobody told them
| sooner.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's convenient for me to use Chromium (in the guise of
| Brave), because that's the most important browser for web
| dev.
|
| However, the day that MV2 is removed in Brave I will switch
| to Firefox.
|
| Not sure why anyone would use Chrome over Brave though.
| kelnos wrote:
| I still don't get why people who care about privacy (and ad-
| blocking) use Chrome. Firefox works really well these days, even
| if Mozilla's track record isn't the greatest of late. I haven't
| had a need to open a website in Chrome in... years? I can't even
| remember the last time.
| linuxandrew wrote:
| MS Teams doesn't support Firefox:
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/unsupported...
|
| Or the VMware console:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1769175
|
| There's probably a bunch of other web apps that exclusively
| support Chromium-based browsers, unfortunately.
| mikkelam wrote:
| I mean, it's not that bad to jump into chromium once in a
| while
| mrtksn wrote:
| Chrome really has become the new IE. That's sad.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| It's even worse than IE was in it's day. At least IE back
| then was just a monopoly and not also a giant spy machine
| for an ad empire.
| Longhanks wrote:
| No, it's objectively not worse, you can compile Chromium
| yourself and remove any features you don't want,
| something you were never able to do with IE.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't think not having enough versions of IE was ever a
| problem. The problem starts when everyone builds their
| app to a platform that is very dominant and controlled by
| people who's interest are not always aligned with the
| user's interests.
|
| You don't have to compile Chromium to have a browser
| incompatible with the websites that people build for
| Chrome, you can just use Firefox or Safari or write your
| own browser if you want to have a web browser that won't
| be able to run Microsoft Teams.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Chrome != Chromium. The vast majority of the planet is
| using Chrome, not Chromium. Most average joes have no
| idea about Chromium.
|
| Either way, whether you're using Chromium or Chrome,
| you're still entrenching Google's monopoly over the web.
|
| Like the sibling said, the problem was IE's monopoly
| itself not the lack of more IE-based variants which
| wouldn't have helped at all, the same way how Chromium
| isn't helping counter Google's monopoly.
| Dah00n wrote:
| IE held back the development of the WWW. That would be the
| spot Safari has today. What Chrome is doing is much worse,
| since it is strangling the web, not just holding back new
| features.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Not true at all, IE what is the most innovative browser
| until it wasn't. For example They invented Ajax, One of
| the core technologies that made the web what it is today.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| They invented ActiveX object and the accompanying
| XmlHttpRequest that AJAX would later morph into, and then
| change the X part (XML) to JSON.
|
| While it was innovative, I would argue it's made the Web
| worse, given the impact of Javascript and surveillance on
| the Web.
| nimbius wrote:
| i mean just because they arent supported doesnt mean they
| dont work just fine. the vmware bug is 2 years old.
|
| honestly slowing down updates for adblockers sounds like a
| dangerous idea. sooner or later, someone will send you to
| court for an appstore monopoly, and sooner or later youll
| lose that case. in the meantime people lose interest in your
| ecosystem because of the increasingly predatory chicanery
| that makes their browsing experience suck. sending more eyes
| to firefox makes firefox _better._ eventually, better than
| even you.
|
| This all smacks of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of
| ideas." Manifest V3 is dead on arrival if youre going to bury
| the average google user in an avalanche of unskippable ads
| and full screen GPU testers. nobody wants this modern hell,
| and you've everything in your power to reform or amend it to
| dial back the surveillance capitalism and hyper consumption.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, I only use Chrome once in a blue moon and have had a
| few dozen interviews through teams on web. Haven't had a
| problem yet (or, no more problems than Google meet/Zoom).
| My last role used teams on the day to day and Chrome wasn't
| even installed on my work machine.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Unsupported browsers in 2023? Shame on them.
| astura wrote:
| They only did this in the last 6 months or so. I used to
| use Firefox with Teams meetings until recently.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Why would anyone want to use ms teams? I understand employers
| stuck in the fax age might demand it but it's their problem
| if they want their data leaked. For personal and outside work
| no one should use ms teams.
| mwexler wrote:
| The Teams doc from Feb 2023 is a bit out of date, or is just
| legal cya.
|
| Still limitations, but I joined a Teams meeting the day
| before this comment with my microphone and external cam, and
| participated fully, using Firefox on MacOS.
|
| Yes, some client functionality is still missing (I didn't
| share a screen, for example), but both sides (MS and FF)
| appear to be making improvements.
| aquova wrote:
| I use Teams fairly regularly in Firefox on Linux.
| Everything seems to work completely fine, with the
| exception of 1-on-1 calls. You can't send them, you can't
| receive them, and you can't even see when someone is
| calling you until the missed notification pops up. I have
| no idea why group calls work fine but those don't, but
| that's how it is.
| bjackman wrote:
| I used Teams in Firefox for a couple of years. It was shit,
| but I'm pretty sure it would have been just as shit in
| Chrome.
| heftig wrote:
| Slack calls and "huddles" still do not work in Firefox,
| either.
|
| Way back before huddles were implemented it used to work.
| Then they broke it and now it's Chromelike-only.
| g105b wrote:
| I can use Teams perfectly on Firefox by switching my User
| Agent to Chrome. It's a weird decision MS have made.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You can still use Chrom* for those crappy sites and Firefox
| for everything else.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| not supporting a particular browser just means that if a bug
| report comes up about your product with that browser then
| nothing gets done, but since everyone develops towards
| standards bugs in FF will probably be minimal, especially if
| they do support Safari (because unlikely something does not
| work in both Safari and Chrome)
|
| also the Teams link describes ways to work around limitations
| with teams on a particular browser that does not support the
| teams web app, which is what the article says FF etc. does
| not support.
| dustypotato wrote:
| Firefox autofill is really bad, while chrome's works most of
| the time, be it passwords/credit card info/ addresses.
| me-vs-cat wrote:
| Have you tried the Bitwarden extension for Firefox?
| https://bitwarden.com/
| jamesholden wrote:
| Mock me, or teach me.. but.. I use it still because it's very
| easy, quick, and good.. to use the translate page
| functionality.
|
| Yes, I am also aware that Firefox has some technology (in the
| works?) that will do offline translation even. Cool.. except I
| still have yet to find a good, easy, fast, accurate translation
| feature for Firefox. There are some extensions, but none are as
| good.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Same. The built in translation feature is super valuable once
| you move country.
| phatfish wrote:
| The Mozilla translation extension works fine for me when I've
| used it. It may even be enabled by default now.
| fy20 wrote:
| Firefox has translation built in now (Menu -> Translate
| Page), but it's really not up to the same standard as
| Chrome.
|
| - It's slow.
|
| - Automatic language detection rarely works.
|
| - It only supports a few languages.
|
| - For many sites it breaks the page.
| phatfish wrote:
| I assume Chrome just hooks into Google Translate. Firefox
| translation works locally apparently. Hopefully the can
| improve it.
| nerdbert wrote:
| Translation is the only reason I still break out Chrome now
| and then.
|
| Firefox finally sort of has it, but it's not that good.
| Often it won't believe you that the page is in another
| language, so you can't translate at all, even by trying to
| force it. The translations can be weird and miss parts of
| the page.
|
| I'm sure it'll get better, though, and once it does, I can
| delete Chrome entirely.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| Offline translation has landed for a while now. It's built in
| now.
| jamesholden wrote:
| It has about 10 non-beta languages, and even amongst beta
| and non, the language is not available. Unfortunately. I
| would use it if it were. Thank you for taking the time to
| reply though.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Convenience - that's how they get you to give up stuff.
| afefers wrote:
| Firefox doesn't have support for AppleScript and this is
| crucial to my browser habits/workflow. Both Safari and
| Chrome/Chromium-based browsers have it. Once/if Firefox adopts
| it, which I doubt but hope so, I'll consider using it.
|
| Here is the 22 years old ticket:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125419
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Add AppleScript support and capabilities to Mozilla on Mac
| OS 9 and X.
|
| That was 3 whole CPU architectures ago, damn.
| ssbash wrote:
| There are probably hundreds of macOS specific bugs that
| Mozilla will never fix.
|
| Firefox is probably the worst browser in the terms of feeling
| native to macOS.
|
| These aren't minor, cosmetic issues but glaring omissions in
| functionality.
|
| Here's one on the missing support for the macOS password
| autofill api.
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1650212
|
| Safari and Orion are much better options.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I don't bother because Mozilla is just controlled opposition at
| this point, I'll stick to Chromium based ones like Brave for
| now as I don't consider there to be a meaningful difference.
|
| Also Firefox mobile doesn't seem to have tab groups and is the
| only browser I've tried which doesn't have a proper Android
| tablet UI.
| is_true wrote:
| But FF mobile has ublock.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Brave mobile and Vivaldi mobile have it built in. Hell,
| Vivaldi even has its super useful two layer tab bar
| available on Android.
|
| Firefox mobile's plugin support doesn't make up for it
| missing other basic usability features.
|
| Similarly, Vivaldi mobile doesn't allow custom search
| engines, so Brave is the only one with the minimum feature
| set I need (tab grouping, vertical tab bar or two layer tab
| bar, ad block, custom search engine, android tablet UI),
| and since I want to be able to sync between all my devices,
| I use Brave on everything.
| is_true wrote:
| Never tried Brave. I rarely browse on mobile so with FF
| I'm fine.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Firefox does not support WebUSB. I need it.
| freediver wrote:
| Same question for Firefox. Because Firefox is both not privacy
| respecting (has telemetry by default) and not privacy
| protecting by default (does not block ads). Both are paid by
| the world's largest advertising company, not their users.
|
| A browser that cares about privacy would be both zero telemetry
| and ship with an ad/tracking blocker by default. Ideally you
| would also be able to pay for it to align incentives (vs a
| third party paying for your browser on your behalf).
| smallerfish wrote:
| There's some friction in moving my passwords, which are stored
| in my Chrome profile. Before you say "just use Bitwarden to
| sync passwords", I can't, because they block me from logging in
| based on "unusual network activity". I don't want to spend
| $3/mo for 1Password. I _could_ spend the first day after
| migrating resetting all of my passwords as I use different
| sites and probably will once ad blocking stops working for good
| on Chrome, but until then it's simple inertia.
| l8_to_catch_up wrote:
| Fuck Google. They do evil.
|
| You don't need Chrome. You have Firefox.
|
| Download Firefox now: https://www.mozilla.org
|
| Addons for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| In principle, if they need ads to keep the lights on, then it is
| reasonable that they would block ad blockers on, e.g., YouTube,
| no?
|
| (What upsets me more is purposefully degrading the experience of
| FF users.)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| That's cute. Seems like a classic case of "you can't make someone
| understand something when their job depends on not understanding
| it", but in case anyone at Google reads this, here's a hint:
| People won't use Chrome if adblock is ineffective. They will use
| Edge, or Safari, or (in case you think you can make backroom
| deals with Microsoft and Apple to implement this in their
| browsers too), they'll use Brave. It's not a winnable game, save
| your money and play something else.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > People won't use Chrome if adblock is ineffective
|
| Look how long the most of humanity stuck to Internet Explorer,
| even with Chrome literally stickied on the Google front page
| and IE's more dramatic drawbacks.
|
| Edge in particular is kind of a bloated mess now. I used to
| _prefer_ it over the Chromium fork of the week (Currently
| Thorium and Cromite), but now its just too spammy and slow. No
| one is switching to that.
|
| Also I have extremely mixed feelings about Brave. Maybe even
| net negative.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Look how long the most of humanity stuck to Internet
| Explorer
|
| Chrome surpassed IE usage within 4 years, so the answer is
| "not particularly long".
|
| > IE's more dramatic drawbacks
|
| Such as?
|
| > its just too spammy and slow
|
| Spammy yes, slow no.
|
| > I have extremely mixed feelings about Brave. Maybe even net
| negative
|
| Why?
| blibble wrote:
| > People won't use Chrome if adblock is ineffective.
|
| post remote attestation they will if they want to use google
| services
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > they want to use google services
|
| If they have to view ads to use them, that becomes
| significantly less of a sure thing
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Excellent. I hope they continue making Chrome worse on purpose.
| More reasons for users to switch to Firefox is always good.
| narag wrote:
| Firefox is not immune.
|
| Changes in the extensions must be reviewed so advertisers can
| break blockers for some days until the blockers are fixed and
| then some more days until Mozilla reviews the changes. Then
| they'll have another trick ready to break blockers again.
| Kubuxu wrote:
| Mozilla allows for direct update of blocker lists instead of
| requiring that they are included in the extension and updated
| with it.
| narag wrote:
| You're right. But the anti-blockers code needs to be
| addressed with more code, not just lists. That's not a
| hypothetical situation, it's happening right now with
| YouTube.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| You're missing other players watching what happens with
| YouTube and amend their plans accordingly. If there's no
| effective way to block ad blockers, others will let
| Google do the fighting and move on when the conclusion
| comes out.
|
| Google is punching WAY above its class. It does not own
| the Web, or the Internet, and there's a huge number of
| people willing to prove it.
| heftig wrote:
| This only applies to changes to extension code and not merely
| changes to blocklists.
|
| Chrome's manifest v3 requires extensions to ship static
| blocklists.
| SirMaster wrote:
| What do you mean requires?
|
| How can they enforce that? Are they also disabling manual
| install of extensions from outside the extension "store"?
|
| What about me just pasting in a new filter list myself?
| jchw wrote:
| There's no API to intercept web requests in a blocking
| fashion in MV3, so extensions can no longer offer the
| ability to do custom request blocking. The entire list is
| static.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Are they also disabling manual install of extensions
| from outside the extension "store"?
|
| This has already been the case for years unless you
| enable developer mode and load the extension as an
| unpacked extension (directory full of files rather than
| normal extension file) in which case chrome will complain
| every time you start it.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| Manifest v3 offers free performance and increased security &
| privacy. Gone are the days where any/every extension had access
| to every website you visited.
|
| It would be a damn shame to throw this baby out with all the
| water.
| nerdbert wrote:
| Cool. Then you can use Firefox which will support Mv3
| extensions without castrating ad blocking.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| uBlock in Firefox will not be updated to use Manifest v3, it
| will remain as is i.e MV2. Of course, there is an MV3 version
| of uBlock but that's castrated too going with your
| definition.
| arbol wrote:
| Countdown to brave extension store begins...
| jokoon wrote:
| I really want to keep http but replace html and js with something
| more strict, lighter, secure and safe by design, that would
| prevent the use of targeted ads like it's possible in HTML.
|
| I understand that companies might probably not use something else
| if it's harder to put ads because they could not make money, but
| there are still a lot of use cases where companies will prefer
| having a technology that's safe.
|
| The law is evolving which means targeted ads will not be viable
| anymore.
|
| Also, maybe a lot of internet media companies, including reddit,
| instagram, etc need to rethink their business model, why don't
| they try to sell news article through a platform like netflix?
|
| I still don't understand why media companies are able to make
| money over content they never make on internet infrastructure
| they did not build, this baffles logic.
|
| HTML is way too permissive.
| rollcat wrote:
| > [...] replace html and js with something more strict,
| lighter, secure and safe by design, that would prevent the use
| of targeted ads like it's possible in HTML.
|
| You can't do that and still have a useful system. You'd have to
| start by neutering basic functionality like inline images, and
| when that turns out to not be enough (because ads can also be
| just text), you'd have to go down the path of censorship.
|
| You can't do that because the ability to fingerprint (and thus
| track) user-agents is not an oversight in the design of the web
| (although third-party cookies did help kickstart the current
| trends), but a fundamental property of the universe - every
| existing "thing" radiates information, and our means to collect
| and process it are developing faster than our understanding of
| what needs to be done to conceal it.
|
| > I understand that companies might probably not use something
| else if it's harder to put ads because they could not make
| money, but there are still a lot of use cases where companies
| will prefer having a technology that's safe.
|
| You can try measuring commercial support for Gemini[1] to get
| an indicator of how valuable your proposed technology would be
| for companies. The current network effect of well... the
| network, is way too strong.
|
| [1]: https://geminiprotocol.net/
|
| > Also, maybe a lot of internet media companies, including
| reddit, instagram, etc need to rethink their business model
| [...]
|
| They don't need to rethink anything at all while what they're
| doing right now is 1. profitable, 2. legal, and 3. even when
| not exactly legal, the fines continue to be smaller than the
| profits.
|
| > The law is evolving which means targeted ads will not be
| viable anymore.
|
| Pretty much this, you can't solve social/political problems
| with technology. We _could_ use a simpler /safer web, but the
| cost of switching outweighs the benefits. We _could_ build
| better privacy protections into the core of our technology, but
| we will keep finding ways to leak information and fingerprint
| behavior.
|
| The problem with Manifest v3 is not what Manifest v3 allows and
| what it doesn't, the problem is that Google are in a position
| to unilaterally force it, and antitrust no longer seems to be a
| thing.
|
| The only real change we can hope for is a social/political
| change.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| What's stopping some influential websites from blocking
| Google IPs or even Chrome browsers?
|
| Technology can be used to insulate just as well as it can to
| exert undue influence.
|
| Furthermore, individuals and communities are not beholden to
| shareholders or business law, because they aren't businesses.
|
| The thing about networking is, if you piss off the network,
| you can be isolated.
| succo wrote:
| There is much offer in the browser world, i don't understand
| what's the point of keep using google shit suite
| alargemoose wrote:
| As a Firefox user since its beta, there is? Last I checked
| there remain 3 browser engines left. Mozilla's Gecko, Google's
| Blink, and Apple's Webkit. Everything else is just variants
| using those engines, and the vast majority of those variants
| (Opera, Brave, Edge, etc) are Chromium-based/using Blink.
| That's not a lot of difference. If you really want to get away
| from chrome, your mainstream option is just Firefox. Unless
| you're on a Mac, or iPhone. Where you can choose between
| Firefox and safari.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Unless you're on a Mac, or iPhone. Where you can choose
| between Firefox and safari.
|
| AFAIK, you cannot, on iPhone you're forced to use Safari (all
| other browsers forced by Apple to be reskins of Safari).
| jefftk wrote:
| _> Unless you're on a Mac, or iPhone. Where you can choose
| between Firefox and Safari._
|
| On iPhone it's all WebKit. Apple doesn't (yet!) allow Firefox
| to use Gecko.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Calling Firefox "mainstream" is being _very_ generous at this
| point, I recall its marketshare is in the single digit
| percentage points.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| How many hundreds of millions of users would you say it
| needs to have until you can call it mainstream non-
| generously?
| BigElephant wrote:
| Maybe above single digit market share percentage?
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Doesn't Firefox use Quantum now? Gecko is what used XUL and
| it was buried when they switched to WebExtensions.
|
| Pale Moon uses a fork of Gecko called Goanna.
|
| SerenityOS has an independent browser in the works, and
| netsurf is still around.
|
| There are options, but people have put most of their eggs
| into two baskets and now we're stuck with things looking
| mostly the same but some have antifeatures.
|
| I want a browser with uBO's functionality simply built in.
| Fuck your extensions or other attempts to endrun, Google.
| Stop it at the source and build request filtering into
| browsers directly.
| antifa wrote:
| I like (in no specific order) Orion (MacOS), Kiwi (Android),
| Fennec (Android), Thorium (desktop, Android), and I'm going to
| give Iceraven (Android) a try soon. What's everyone's favorite
| non-mainstream browser?
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| Firefoxer here, HN folk are one of the most if not the most tech
| savvy communities in the whole planet. I don't understand why, in
| the name of an open internet for ours and the future, you don't
| refuse to use an actively hostile Chrome in your _personal_
| devices. Someone please explain this to me
| vehemenz wrote:
| 1. Google employees
|
| 2. People who "bought in" to the Google/Android ecosystem
|
| 3. Web developers who won't use inferior dev tools
|
| 4. Stockholm Syndrome
| mcpackieh wrote:
| 5. Too much ego to admit they've been wrong for years when
| they told Firefox advocates that there was nothing wrong with
| using Chrome, that the advertising corporation with monopoly
| power was actually benevolent and wouldn't abuse their market
| position.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Chromebooks are really nice and you get great touchpad gesture
| input in Chrome. And obviously Chrome has better performance
| and power efficiency, etc. there.
|
| I didn't use Chrome before I bought this Chromebook.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Being savvy in a field does not correlate to making good
| decisions in said field, especially if rewards and incentives
| are not aligned.
|
| Lots of tech people got their start on Google tech and don't
| mind ads. They're a strange breed of people who I guess just
| give into anything being pushed on them in tech.
| ameshkov wrote:
| I like that Ars tries to defend ad blocking, but please, prepare
| better, maybe talk to actual developers and avoid false
| accusations.
|
| It's completely okay to criticize Google for doing really
| controversial (to say the least) stuff like getting rid of
| blocking webRequest, but criticizing them for prohibiting
| inclusion of remote JS in the extension is simply bad work.
|
| They could do a minimal fact check, remote JS was never allowed
| in Mozilla Addons store. A bit more research and they'll learn
| that cosmetic filters updates do not require an extension update.
| A little bit more research and one can learn about the no-review-
| fast-track that Chrome WebStore plans to implement next year.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is the first time I've really looked into Manifest V3, and
| I'm confused as to how the "no remote JS" restriction is
| enforced.
|
| What prevents a developer from using non-remote JS (code built
| into the extension) to tell the current web page to fetch
| remote JS from a server, and execute that? Obviously, web pages
| _must_ be able to fetch remote JS, or the whole internet would
| break.
|
| Google could delist such an extension from the Chrome Web
| Store. But Chrome (unlike Firefox, grr!) allows extension
| sideloading, so if I was UBlock Origin I would just say screw
| the Web Store, download from our website.
|
| And then, once UBlock Origin can inject an unlimited amount of
| turing-complete Javascript onto the page, the sky is basically
| the limit... right?
| ameshkov wrote:
| If the server is yours it will probably be rejected.
| Definitely will be rejected by Mozilla.
|
| Userscripts is a notable exception of this rule as in this
| case the user instructs the extension what JS to execute.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Yes, but Chrome allows users to sideload extensions.
| ameshkov wrote:
| Firefox kinda also does. In both cases side loading is
| rather painful experience, thanks to all the malware that
| is exploiting the extensions feature.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Firefox extensions don't need to be listed in the web
| store, but they _must_ be signed by Mozilla, no
| exceptions.
|
| I have used both browsers, and I find sideloading in
| Chrome to be completely painless. I use many sideloaded
| extensions in Chrome (mostly because I wanted to make
| small edits to existing extensions).
|
| I guess I'm trying to figure out whether all this fuss is
| really a limitation of Manifest v3, or merely Chrome Web
| Store policy. If the latter, I don't see a problem as
| long as sideloading is possible, and I really hope UBlock
| Origin will just go that route.
|
| Sideloading is the real freedom which everyone should
| rally around and protect. (I am _extremely_ unhappy with
| Mozilla 's approach to this, if you can't tell.)
| ameshkov wrote:
| The most problematic part of MV3 (removing part of the
| webRequest API functionality) is a part of the platform.
|
| This remote JS stuff is a CWS policy.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| So what can the webRequest API do that couldn't just be
| accomplished via Javascript injection? From my
| perspective--admittedly not really understanding how
| UBlock Origin works--Javascript is basically all-powerful
| on a web page. Once you have that, I'm surprised that
| anything else could be a meaningful restriction.
|
| (I appreciate you answering my questions!)
| ameshkov wrote:
| JS is important, but it's only a part of what's required.
| webRequest allows the extension to manipulate web
| requests: blocking or redirecting them. MV3 tries to
| replace the old webRequest with a declarative alternative
| and it's almost impossible to provide a declarative rule
| for every possible use case.
| lxgr wrote:
| Javascript is very powerful, but simple injected
| Javascript can't e.g. undo requests (from other scripts
| or just normal resources like third-party images) that
| have already happened. An injected script is not
| guaranteed to run before the site's own scripts, I
| believe.
|
| Other than that, you can probably really do everything
| you could do with the webRequest API, but the complexity
| of doing it essentially reduces to the halting problem:
| You'd have to statically analyze all Javascript loaded by
| the page and figure out if it's going to do any requests
| you don't want to happen and then rewrite these parts.
| Maybe there's clever things you could do by shimming all
| web APIs that can issue HTTP or other requests, but that
| also doesn't sound fun.
|
| On the other hand, with an API that just gets to veto
| every outgoing request, you can trivially achieve the
| same goal.
|
| Another area where in-page Javascript is limited compared
| to an extension is the same origin policy. A very fancy
| ad-blocking extension could e.g. run an image
| classification AI on third-party image resources and hide
| the ones that look like visually distracting, flashing
| etc. ads by default - in-page Javascript can't.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Thank you! I guess the main problem is figuring out which
| elements are ads. Blocking certain requests is a handy
| way to do that, at least for as long as external ad
| servers are the norm.
|
| > Simple injected Javascript can't e.g. undo requests
| (from other scripts or just normal resources like third-
| party images)
|
| But could you detect the request, see what element it
| loaded in, and then hide that element? Or is that much
| more complicated than I'm imagining?
| lxgr wrote:
| If you only care about visual annoyances I believe that
| should generally be possible (although I also don't know
| the details!), but many people also use content filters
| to stop third-party tracking.
| vetinari wrote:
| > Firefox extensions don't need to be listed in the web
| store, but they must be signed by Mozilla, no exceptions.
|
| There is. But you must be running firefox on Linux, on
| specific distribution (i.e. Debian or Fedora), built by
| that distribution and the extension has to be installed
| system-wide by root. Then the signature won't be
| enforced.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| So in a sense you're not running Firefox anymore, you're
| running a derivative from your distro which modified the
| source code. (I do appreciate that they do this,
| however.)
| fwn wrote:
| On Firefox for Android all extensions _must_ be present
| in the AMO store at the time of installation, no
| sideloading - even of signed addons.
|
| Mozilla banned non-store extensions in their last Firefox
| for Android overhaul a few years ago and afaik does not
| plan to allow them again.
|
| This is the reason why the anti-paywall extensions are
| all gone/DMCAed.
|
| It's a massive power shift away from the user. No idea
| why Mozilla did that.
| zarzavat wrote:
| How do you develop extensions then? Surely it must be
| possible somehow.
| lxgr wrote:
| Getting non-technical users used to regularly sideloading
| extensions sounds like a recipe for disaster in terms of
| security.
|
| I'm also not sure if sideloaded extensions can receive
| automatic updates, but the much bigger problem is getting
| people used to sideloading unsigned extensions with full
| web site access: Tech support scammers will have a field
| day with that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It wouldn't be good for security. But I fundamentally
| believe that user freedom--the ability to do what big
| tech would rather they did not, such as adblocking--
| fundamentally depends on sideloading. You simply can't
| have one without the other. You're trusting the vendor to
| decide which software is safe, but that vendor will
| inevitably also consider which software makes them money.
|
| On platforms where sideloading is either impossible (iOS)
| or usual (Android), adblockers are completely
| inaffective. The gatekeepers simply don't allow them to
| exist. This is true even though the maker of iOS
| ostensibly (!) isn't ad supported.
|
| > I'm also not sure if sideloaded extensions can receive
| automatic updates
|
| They can't (at least without some external software),
| which is why the ability to load remote Javascript would
| be important. For less frequent updates, they could
| prompt the user.
| no_wizard wrote:
| There's a legal avenue for this kind of thing too: pass
| laws that enforce clear and transparent rules around what
| the gatekeeper can do and give legal recourse to
| participants to hold said gatekeeper accountable if they
| break them.
| zarzavat wrote:
| As a developer not only can I be trusted to not install
| extensions from unknown sources, but there's a much
| easier vector via NPM :)
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _I 'm also not sure if sideloaded extensions can
| receive automatic updates_
|
| They can't update the entire extension automatically, but
| should be able to get updated blocklists no problem.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The article is claiming that lists won't be able to self-update
| at all. That goes far beyond a ban on remote JS.
|
| > cosmetic filters updates do not require an extension update
|
| Cosmetic meaning what exactly?
|
| > remote JS was never allowed in Mozilla Addons store
|
| I don't see any issues with ublock in firefox, so what's going
| on there?
|
| > A little bit more research and one can learn about the no-
| review-fast-track that Chrome WebStore plans to implement next
| year.
|
| That sounds like something that can and will randomly stop
| approving ad blocker updates more than once.
| ameshkov wrote:
| The article's claim is factually incorrect, self-update will
| also still be possible to implement even without the fast
| track. It will be more complicated than it is now as we'll
| need to do that via differential updates, but nevertheless.
| ameshkov wrote:
| > Cosmetic meaning what exactly?
|
| Filter lists are composed of two types of rules: "cosmetic"
| and "network". Network rules define what needs to be done
| with web requests (block or redirect). In MV3 these rules
| should now be implemented via new declarative API.
|
| Cosmetic rules is a very wide subset of ad blocking rules
| that define how a web page needs to be changed. These are
| implemented the old way.
|
| > I don't see any issues with ublock in firefox, so what's
| going on there?
|
| uBlock Origin does not use remote JS so yeah, what's going on
| with the article is a good question.
| gorhill wrote:
| > one can learn about the no-review-fast-track that Chrome
| WebStore plans to implement next year.
|
| My understanding is that no-review-fast-track is only for
| extensions which changes in DNR rulesets are only about
| block/allow/allowAllRequests rules.
|
| I don't see how comprehensive content blockers can push
| meaningful updates with only changes to
| block/allow/allowAllRequests rules and nothing else.
| ameshkov wrote:
| It isn't "nothing else", cosmetic rules can still be updated
| independently "over-the-air". One more approach (a bit
| "hacky") is to distribute cosmetic rules inside static
| rulesets (hide them in a separate "metadata" field).
|
| I personally like the fast track idea as we can use the CWS
| infra to distribute updates quickly, but this is not the only
| way.
|
| Differential updates are also possible and if they're
| implemented, you can keep a normal release cycle (6 weeks for
| instance).
| gorhill wrote:
| > It isn't "nothing else", cosmetic rules can still be
| updated independently "over-the-air".
|
| It's not just about cosmetic rules, it's also about DNR
| rules other than block/allow/allowAllRequest: redirect=,
| removeparam=, csp=, etc.
|
| If the idea is that these DNR rules require non-fast-
| trackable thorough reviews, but dynamically updating them
| will bypass those thorough reviews, than I am at a lost to
| understand the logic of treating them as requiring thorough
| review.
|
| If these DNR rules are considered potentially harmful thus
| requiring thorough reviews, why would they be allowed to be
| downloaded from a remote server and dynamically created in
| the first place?
|
| There is also the content scripts-based filters, which is
| something that change every day. This is where we diverge,
| I chose to go fully declarative because this way these
| content scripts are injected _reliably_ in a timely manner
| by the MV3 API.
|
| This is not the case when injecting in a event-driven
| manner since the extension's service worker may need to
| wake up, fully restore its current state, then by the time
| it's ready to inject the content scripts programmatically,
| it might be too late as the target webpage has already
| started to load.
| ameshkov wrote:
| The "safe rules" concept is a little strange indeed, not
| very consistent.
|
| I actually agree that for an MV3 ad blocker I'd better
| have a fully declarative default (emphasis on default),
| but I'd like to provide an option to grant more
| permissions and allow more rules. I'll wait until
| declarative cosmetic rules become a thing before going
| this way though.
|
| What I don't like about your way is that it's very
| difficult to use the MV3 version for filters development,
| filter list authors will have to re-build the extension
| every time they make any change to the underlying
| filters.
|
| Maybe this is not a big problem though, we'll only see it
| when MV3 becomes the only option and there will be more
| issue reports from its users.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Why are people so eager to look away from the clear agenda
| that's playing out?
|
| It's not the time to be sticking one's head in the sand. Google
| is dead to me once they push Manifest v3.
| ameshkov wrote:
| My point is that reporting must be accurate and factually
| correct.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Google's showing their hand. You're here nitpicking. If
| something CAN be done, it usually WILL be done, especially
| if the actor is a business and the reward is power,
| influence, or profit.
|
| Will you be one of the ones 'giving Google a chance' once
| they play their hand next year?
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| I feel like at this point, Google could just officially disallow
| extensions blocking ads (or just Google ads?).
|
| What's happening here is just stupid, IMO.
| FaridIO wrote:
| Chrome is going full Internet Explorer.
| SCAQTony wrote:
| Is Google shooting itself in the foot by taking an adversarial
| approach toward the user's desire to avoid invasive surveillance?
| I think so.
| ath3nd wrote:
| Dunno, but it seems ublock origin's version in Chrome Web Store
| is 1.53.0, was last updated on 8-th of November. As of yesterday,
| that version can't get around Youtube's adblocking detection.
|
| I built Ublock latest 1.54.2 from source, and so far (apart from
| being manifest v2), it can easily go around Youtube's adblock
| detection with no problem.
|
| I wonder if the delay in the 1.54.x release in Chrome Web Store
| has something to do with Google purposefully delaying updates.
| unrequited wrote:
| Not sure about the larger impacts of V3. But, we have gone with
| V3 since the beginning, and now there is a better turn around
| time for reviews, typically in an hour and sometimes 24hrs max.
| Its been a much smoother process rather than having to wait for
| couple of days or even weeks sometimes earlier. I've heard it
| being much worse on V2.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Hey Google, it's a User Agent, not a Corporate Agent.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Doesn't this just ignore the fact you can install the updates
| outwith of the Chrome store?
|
| I assume they are betting on most users not side loading them.
|
| All this seems like a complete waste of time, if you want to "war
| on ad blockers" the why not just ban them from the store?
|
| Why have a "war" at all?
| aftbit wrote:
| Perhaps they are worried about the antitrust implications of
| banning adblockers and would prefer to hide behind a technical
| change that nerfs adblockers but with ostensibly reasonable and
| unrelated logic.
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