[HN Gopher] PSA: How to keep using adblockers on Chrome and Chro...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       PSA: How to keep using adblockers on Chrome and Chromium
        
       Author : coolelectronics
       Score  : 92 points
       Date   : 2024-06-06 22:04 UTC (57 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
        
       | justahuman74 wrote:
       | This seems like it's too hard to tell friends/family.
       | 
       | Is the go-to now just 'install firefox'?
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | If Google leaves a boolean switch in Chromium to keep V2
         | enabled then I assume most if not all of the third party
         | Chromium-derived browsers will just flip it to true by default.
         | That's easy for them to do, the hard part is if Google strips
         | out V2 altogether and leaves the downstream browsers to patch
         | it back in.
        
           | davesmylie wrote:
           | There will be a switch available ... but only for a period of
           | time before the functionality is completely removed
        
             | metadat wrote:
             | And apparently, as per this post, only available to folks
             | who are savvy with the command-line.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | Even when it's stripped out entirely, it will be easy to add
           | back in. The changes (that adblockers care about) are just a
           | few if statements changing the conditions under which
           | synchronous inspection of web requests are allowed. Manifest
           | V3 still allows them. But only in limited circumstances which
           | are unsuitable for ad blocking.
        
         | causality0 wrote:
         | You can't just send them a .reg file and tell them to double
         | click on it and hit ok?
        
         | fifteen1506 wrote:
         | Just tell them to use Edge. It's the worse you can do to
         | Google.
        
           | paxys wrote:
           | It's also the worst you can do to your friends and family.
        
           | irrational wrote:
           | Why edge instead of Firefox?
        
             | rwaksmunski wrote:
             | Search defaults to Bing?
        
             | pcf wrote:
             | On macOS it actually uses less resources, and you can use
             | Chrome extensions.
        
         | coolelectronics wrote:
         | i would always tell them to install firefox. this is mostly for
         | developers and tech oriented people who need to keep chrome
         | around
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | If I need to keep Chrome around for development, I'm not
           | using extensions on it, and I'm only visiting the sites I'm
           | developing.
        
         | hgs3 wrote:
         | > This seems like it's too hard to tell friends/family.
         | 
         | It's an opportunity for someone to write an "adblock fixer" app
         | for the non-technical market.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I don't understand why people want to teach others how to
           | cope with an abusive relationship, instead of telling them to
           | leave.
        
         | VancouverMan wrote:
         | After the XUL removal debacle a number of years ago, I can't
         | trust Firefox to offer a suitably flexible and capable
         | extension system over the long run.
         | 
         | While some people will claim that those changes were necessary,
         | the impact was still very negative for the extension developers
         | and users who were affected at the time.
         | 
         | The numerous other user-hostile decisions made by Firefox's
         | developers certainly don't help repair the trust that was lost
         | then.
        
       | hehdhdjehehegwv wrote:
       | Just stop using Chrome FFS.
        
       | nazgulsenpai wrote:
       | First recommendation would be a pihole running anywhere you can
       | run it, but if you don't want to or can't do that, you can use
       | Steven Black's ad list to create a hosts file to DNS sink ad/bad
       | networks locally:
       | 
       | https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | Isn't DNS-level blocking strictly less capable than even the
         | nerfed Manifest V3 filtering API? V3 can still block at a more
         | granular level than nuking entire hostnames AFAIK, even if it's
         | not as granular as V2.
        
           | cj wrote:
           | Specifically, the ability to block specific URL patterns in
           | addition to just hostnames.
           | 
           | DNS blocking gets you 90% of the way there, though. (And the
           | only way to block your smart fridge from phoning home)
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | First recommendation would be Firefox.
        
       | cranberryturkey wrote:
       | firefox is still the best browser.
        
         | coolelectronics wrote:
         | i do wish! firefox has web features missing that i need on a
         | daily basis, and their developer team seems wholly uninterested
         | on working on them at all
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Like what?
        
           | martin293 wrote:
           | Which features do you mean?
        
           | ClassyJacket wrote:
           | What features?
        
       | martin293 wrote:
       | This solution will work for exactly a year. That's how long
       | google gives enterprises to migrate to manifest v3.
       | 
       | Source:
       | https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...
        
       | baxuz wrote:
       | Use Adguard
        
       | unpopularopp wrote:
       | How do you make sites that are only whitelist certain browsers to
       | work under Firefox? Is there an app, extensions etc anything?
       | 
       | For some handful of sites I have to keep a Chrome install around
        
         | page_fault wrote:
         | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
        
           | martin293 wrote:
           | Sometimes this might not work, in that case try a different
           | extension or different user agent strings. I had to go
           | through a few before I found one that worked.
        
         | actinium226 wrote:
         | I just keep a Chrome install around and when a website seems
         | like it's misbehaving I just fire it up in Chrome.
         | 
         | It's a bunch of baggage to have around, but it's useful for
         | other stuff. Like when you hit your monthly limit of free
         | articles you can just fire it up in Chrome and now you've
         | doubled your monthly free limit!
        
       | krackers wrote:
       | >key was added and will presumably stay forever
       | 
       | Nope, it will be removed after 1 year. There is a chance they
       | delay it depending on how much the enterprises complain, but so
       | long as all their big clients are migrated I doubt they care
       | about the long-tail.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | There's a good chance that whoever is driving this change
         | within Google gets promoted/retires in less than a year, and
         | then it gets left in limbo forever like so many other TODO():'s
         | in the code...
        
       | jiggawatts wrote:
       | "I like this pot, but it just keeps getting warmer and warmer.
       | Does anyone know where I can get some ice packs or something?"
       | 
       | "No, I don't want to jump out. Stop telling me that!"
        
       | actinium226 wrote:
       | Or just use Firefox.
        
       | gravescale wrote:
       | Finally some news that makes me think the Firefox has a glimmer
       | of hope left.
        
         | quickthrowman wrote:
         | Same here, I'll be switching to Firefox today after hearing
         | this news.
        
         | chx wrote:
         | Every app there are gets worse and worse -- aka Doctorow's
         | enshittification
         | 
         | So people will just take the sudden deluge of ads in stride and
         | move on. Chances of this moving people to Firefox is slim.
        
       | jay_kyburz wrote:
       | Question: Is it possible to run ad blocking at the OS level
       | rather than in the browser? Requests to ad servers just never
       | leave your PC? traffic from ad servers just never arrives at the
       | browser?
        
       | sigma5 wrote:
       | I switched to firefox one year ago. Works fine!
        
       | efangs wrote:
       | everyone should just have a pihole
        
         | skrause wrote:
         | Pi-hole and other DNS-based ad blockers are a lot worse than
         | even Manifest v3 ad blockers, so they aren't any alternative.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-06-06 23:02 UTC)