[HN Gopher] uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome S...
___________________________________________________________________
uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
Author : non-
Score : 1296 points
Date : 2025-03-10 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chromewebstore.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (chromewebstore.google.com)
| Jalad wrote:
| The last Chrome update also disabled it for me because it's a
| manifest v2 extension. I use firefox on my personal computers,
| but might need to switch on my work PCs as well
| whitepoplar wrote:
| uBlock Origin Lite is still available, thankfully.
| ssgao wrote:
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
| armada651 wrote:
| But for how long? I'm sure Google is hard at work on Manifest
| V4.
| colordrops wrote:
| What is lost by going to this version?
| p_ing wrote:
| The wiki outlines the differences.
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-
| as...
| desdenova wrote:
| dignity
| chrisweekly wrote:
| custom filters / block lists
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| also you'd think that the pushers of this agenda would get
| real-time updates to things like block lists metadata. God
| knows they do it themselves several times a day...
| iszomer wrote:
| Realistically, how often is this functionality used en'
| mass? I remember using it once or twice throughout my
| lifetime of using this extension.
| jisnsm wrote:
| An ad blocker is useless to me if I can't block whatever
| I want with it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's _useless_ if it blocks 99.9% of what you need, but
| not the custom 0.1% you want on top?
| jisnsm wrote:
| As long as I have an alternative I would never choose the
| ad blocker that doesn't let me block the elements I want.
|
| For most websites I don't care but there are many
| websites that I visit very often and removing annoying or
| useless elements and padding is practically mandatory at
| this point - I wouldn't want to go back to not being able
| to do it.
|
| So, answering your question, yes, "useless" was
| hyperbole.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I use different extensions for blocking individual
| elements on pages, like sticky headers or other custom
| divs. They're still working fine, e.g.:
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-
| ele...
| whstl wrote:
| If it's anything like Safari's declarative blocklists:
|
| Ad blocking on Youtube.
|
| Youtube-blocking Safari extensions "solve" Youtube blocking
| by using non-declarative APIs that need full access to
| Youtube. Apple seems ok with that so far, but the APIs are
| not as goods, so their success rate is limited.
|
| Whether Google will allow _new_ extensions that block Youtube
| remains to be seen.
| betaby wrote:
| Could you please tell me what "Youtube-blocking Safari
| extensions" are you referring? Are they MacOS only or can
| be installed on IPad? Thanks!
| whstl wrote:
| Sure! AdBlock Pro blocks video ads for me, but it shows
| non-video ads that you gotta skip.
|
| On iPad I just use Brave and haven't seen an ad yet.
| keybits wrote:
| I can recommend Wipr 2 - excellent blocker from a great
| developer. I've now switched to Safari for all my YouTube
| watching. Universal purchase works on macOS, ipadOS and
| iOS.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Ad blocking on Youtube._
|
| uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
| blibble wrote:
| Google push out updates at regular intervals that detect
| the adblocker
|
| why didn't you notice before? ublock origin has a special
| quick fixes list which updates very frequently, without
| Google's involvement
|
| but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have
| to approve all "definition" updates
|
| which they will only do once they've got a new detection
| method ready
|
| and this is the entire point of manifest v3
| crazygringo wrote:
| Just saying, I've been using Lite for months. It's been
| fine.
| blibble wrote:
| they'd have to be really, really stupid to start doing it
| before their main countermeasure has been removed
| charcircuit wrote:
| >but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have
| to approve all "definition" updates
|
| No, they don't. MV3 extensions are allowed to fetch
| remote data which definition updates would be.
| the_af wrote:
| > uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
|
| Someone else is saying uBlock Origin Lite leaves a
| "skippable blank" where the ad used to be, while I know
| for a fact uBlock Origin completely and transparently
| skipped over the ad.
|
| Could you confirm?
| crazygringo wrote:
| It completely blocks it.
|
| But you have to change the toggle from basic filtering
| mode to complete filtering mode.
|
| I think some people just haven't realized that.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse
| its market position to their own benefit...
|
| I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving
| privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it
| improves performance", which they could easily do by marking
| extensions as low performance.
|
| If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search
| engine where they could re-rank sites based on privacy and
| performance.
|
| It was never about improving peoples web experience.
| colordrops wrote:
| People have come to accept dishonesty and sociopathy from
| corporations as normal and even acceptable unfortunately.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| I view it as a symptom of the broader effort to villify the
| fourth estate and condition people to act(vote) on their
| emotions rather than a rational look at verifiable facts.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Nearly 20 years of attacks, from both the left and the
| right, across the anglosphere.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It goes back waaaaaaay further than 20 years.
|
| The most recent case before this was nearly 40 years ago
| under Reagan, and he certainly wasn't the first president
| guilty of it.
| ta1243 wrote:
| This isn't a Trump thing.
|
| The "Main Stream Media" rhetoric really started with the
| teaparty stuff, powered by the internet, and championed
| both the right (tea party in america, faragists in the
| UK) and left (corbynistas in the uk, AOC types I assume
| in the states)
| keybored wrote:
| Villifying normal people is more nefarious.
|
| But who told you that there is a Fourth Estate? Was it the
| very "Fourth Estate"?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| They had the market position and option to do that for years
| now. "Told you so" whenever a patterns matches, and ignoring
| the times when it does not instead of providing a good model
| that encompasses both, is a fairly lame way to reason about the
| world.
| smt88 wrote:
| "They didn't immediately abuse their market power!"
|
| Great. Very few companies do. What difference does it make?
|
| We don't give bankrobbers credit for all the days they
| could've robbed a bank but didn't.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| The position is always, Google's position is so strong they
| can do whatever they want even if it isn't beneficial to
| users, this confirms that. I'm not sure the "they could have
| abused this sooner" defense is a good one.
| glenstein wrote:
| Not only not a good defense, but practically
| indecipherable. What scale of abuse couldn't be excused by
| this? I'm not sure I even understand what the notion of
| abuse means to a person who thinks it could be excused by
| such a logic.
|
| It seems to completely lose track of the face value
| significance of any individual instance of abuse because it
| gets lost in the comparative equation to hypothetical worst
| harms.
|
| It also confusingly treats restraint as though X amount of
| restraint can then be cashed in for a certain amount of
| harm, rather than something that's supposed to happen by
| default under good stewardship.
|
| And it shifts the whole question to whether or not that
| position is being abused when I think the criticisms are
| more fundamental about the fact that they shouldn't be in
| the position to have or not have that leverage in the first
| place.
|
| So that, long and short, would be my detox from the
| assumptions at play here.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| The point is, that always looking for abuse is maybe not
| the right model to explain what is really going on.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I've never killed anyone, should I get your gratitude for it?
| glenstein wrote:
| It's funny that this line of defense is sincerely attempted
| here, as it's so absurd that it's actually the punchline of
| an SMBC comic. And honestly, one of my favorite ones that I
| find genuinely very funny.
|
| >Lawyer: Okay, let's say my client killed his wife. What
| about the people he didn't kill?! That's six billion
| people! Don't they matter? Don't they matter?!
|
| >Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a
| thank you parade every year.
|
| https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=299
| TZubiri wrote:
| "Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would
| abuse its market position to their own benefit..."
|
| That's some fatalistic wording. How about:
|
| Company that publishes a free product and business model relies
| on ads, stops distributing app that piggybacks on their free
| product while circumventing ads.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Also true. But it's a charitable way of putting a
| fundamentally broken contract on the open web since it was
| invented: you are in control of your browser. If you want
| reading mode, large text, anti-fingerprinting, disable
| autoplaying video, heck even banning popups, the browser is
| your tool and does what you tell it to. If Google or any
| other company comes between you and your browser then one
| part of the open web is discarded. I think extensions are
| gonna get nerfed even more in the future, for whatever reason
| large commercial interests have.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right. I think people were alert to these possibilities
| long before the actual stuff happened with Manifest V3.
|
| And it shouldn't take waiting until specific examples
| happen to understand the incentives and the possibilities
| that could ripen at some future date.
|
| And just to throw in my little side hobby horse on this
| conversation, it's what I find personally frustrating about
| conversations with people who think that Brave counts as an
| alternative.
|
| Being attached at the hip to the Chromium project is a
| ground level commitment to a long-term vulnerability, and
| it means that similar circumstances could "ripen" at some
| future date as the family of Chromium browsers become
| dependent on an increasingly vast foundation of code and
| web standards. To me, the combination of that capability
| and the incentive should be enough to be treated as a
| complete argument which disqualifies Chromium derived
| browsers from counting as alternatives.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Sure. You are free to modify your browser.
|
| But chrome is free to choose not to distribute that plugin.
| If you want you can download it elsewhere.
| oa834j5o wrote:
| It was never free. The revenue streams are just hidden. It
| has always collected and sold huge amounts of data about
| every user.
|
| And regardless, using their ownership of the browser to shut
| down competitors is the very definition of "anti-competitive"
| "monopolistic" behavior.
| akaij wrote:
| To me it's just another decision rooted in greed, to take
| away more Agency from the User Agent.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be
| illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an
| extremely unfair business practice.
|
| That people claim it's impossible for a browser to survive
| without Google's funding demonstrates how broken the market
| is by ad money: of course people would pay for something like
| a web browser if it were illegal to make money by selling
| your users. The web is obviously valuable to people.
| TZubiri wrote:
| >Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should
| be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets.
| It's an extremely unfair business practice.
|
| Call your senator and propose a bill, otherwise we'll keep
| doing what's legal.
| whalesalad wrote:
| 100% agree with you. Unfortunately Chrome is damn near a
| requirement if you are interacting with the Google Cloud
| console. Try to use BigQuery studio in any other browser and
| you are in for a world of hurt.
|
| Have we seen this movie before?
| dewey wrote:
| Exactly the reason why I use https://choosy.app to always
| redirect everything Google Cloud to Chrome, but everything
| else to Firefox.
|
| That way if I click on some random GCP link in Slack it opens
| the link in Chrome, but everything else stays in Firefox. I
| don't need ad blocking for GCP so that works fine.
|
| Sucks, but better than using Chrome full time.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| That's a useful app for people who use different browsers
| for different tasks -thanks!
| layer8 wrote:
| Other Chromium-based browsers don't work?
|
| That would at least save you from stuff like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942252.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I haven't tried anything but Chrome/Chromium (nightly dev).
| Brave is my dedicated porn browser I won't use it for
| anything else.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| Wtf
| layer8 wrote:
| Like most browsers, Brave can be used with multiple user
| profiles in parallel.
| califool wrote:
| BAHAHAAHAHAHAH. Do you get bitcoins for watching the porn
| ads?
| homebrewer wrote:
| Your loss. Chromium is the shittiest Chromium-based
| browser, basically anything else is better than the
| original.
| muizelaar wrote:
| I use BigQuery studio often in Firefox and haven't noticed
| anything being worse than Chrome. What problems do you see?
| whalesalad wrote:
| I use it all the time on multiple platforms and it is a DOG
| on anything but Chrome/Chromium. We have 30+ datasets each
| with many tables/views/functions etc tho so that could be
| part of the issue.
|
| Same thing will happen in the billing portal or really any
| experience but I notice it the most in BQ.
| Zak wrote:
| I recently had cause to sign in to the Google Cloud console
| (not BigQuery specifically) and found it unusable on
| Firefox. It pegged a core at 100% and consumed memory at a
| prodigious rate. Basic UI actions were painfully slow.
|
| I killed the tab and tried it in Chromium where the UI
| was... not snappy, but in range for my expectations of a
| heavyweight frontend.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Yeah, I use Chromium for anything Google made, and FF for
| everything else. Google makes sure that their pages work
| sloooowly on Firefox (e.g. Google Earth). No such
| problems elsewhere.
| kazinator wrote:
| Yes; the movie where running genuine Microsoft Windows is
| damn near a requirement if you want to interact with Windows
| applications.
|
| Using Firefox and whatever for the Google cloud is kinda like
| running Windos applications in Wine or ReactOS.
| jraph wrote:
| > kinda like running Windos applications in Wine
|
| Sometimes works better than on the original Windows? I
| assume that's not what you meant though :-)
| kazinator wrote:
| I could have meant that. Doesn't Firefox sometimes work
| better than Chrome?
| sneak wrote:
| The issue I have is not that they did it; it's that they lied
| about why.
|
| Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever
| they want with it. People can use a different browser if they
| wish (I do).
|
| This whole "better for users" bullshit is why I don't respect
| Google as a company. Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| Their engineers genuinely believe that shit too, which is
| just absurd bullshit.
| skotobaza wrote:
| Do they really? Or are you assuming?
| hansvm wrote:
| I've seen a lot of their engineers here on HN defending
| Google's position, and very few of the anti-Google crowd
| here claim to be (x)googlers.
|
| That said, I know a number of xooglers (myself included)
| who don't believe for a moment that this would have
| gotten off the ground if someone important hadn't opined
| on the usefulness WRT ad-serving.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| I have seen engineers defend that position here and on
| Github, so unless you assume they're lying, I would take
| them at their word.
|
| Of course not all of them do, Google is a big company.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| More like the willfully blind engineers, disingenuously
| claim to believe that absurd bullshit. There's not a lot
| genuine left in that company.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Perfect time to read again The Gervais Principle!
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| photonthug wrote:
| Ah yes, "determinedly deluded loyalty to the company that
| will never be loyal to him".
| mort96 wrote:
| Actually I have a problem is both. Chrome/Chromium is
| Google's product and it's theirs to do with what they please,
| but if they do user-hostile things with it, that's enough to
| criticise them for me, even if they're honest about it.
|
| Of course lying about why makes it worse, but I don't think
| it would've been that much more okay if Google was honest and
| said "users' ability to install highly effective ad blockers
| hurts our bottom line so we're removing them".
| pca006132 wrote:
| And I don't understand what is the benefit of lying as well -
| everyone on the internet knows what this is about, at least
| if they used ad blockers. A lot of people don't, but they
| will not be affected anyway.
| nabaraz wrote:
| Only users who are tech-savy know they are lying.
|
| My mom, who has Ublock Origin installed on her Chrome by
| me, will never know these details.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Where I live, Google rented out a huge Billboard to advertise
| Chrome, and it cites Chrome as "the world's most trusted
| browser"
|
| I LOL every time I see it. Imagine the lengths they have to
| go to, to try to make people trust a product they have.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Trusted is known to not be the same as trustworthy.
| kazinator wrote:
| The Bible is a widely trusted source on topics such as
| the origin of the world, and life.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Repeat the lie often enough and loud enough, it becomes
| accepted as truth. A billboard is pretty loud in this
| context.
| keybored wrote:
| Like Chomsky said: (corporate) propaganda is incredibly
| widespread but about an ankle deep.
| marricks wrote:
| > Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever
| they want with it.
|
| Google has a long history of "accidentally" breaking gmail on
| firefox and funneling users to Chrome back in the day. It's
| beyond stupid to argue they should be able to do whatever
| they want with their vertically integrated monopoly.
|
| Like, if you want to dig holes in your own driveway sure
| whatever, but if you own all the roads in Detroit and you
| want to dig holes in them, then make a killing selling new
| tires and suspension repair a fair society wouldn't move out
| of Detroit, they'd fucking run you out of town.
| sneak wrote:
| If people don't like this, they can stop using gmail.
| Neither Chrome, nor Gmail is a monopoly.
|
| The more things Google does to make gmail less useful, the
| better.
|
| It's no secret that Google is an ad company. Anyone still
| using gmail deserves what they get.
| marricks wrote:
| Why be bitter at the people dealing with the shit, why
| not be angry at the people making the world shit? My
| company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
| sneak wrote:
| Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so because they
| chose to.
|
| Let's not pretend this was done unto them. Anyone can
| stop using gmail at any time.
| kazinator wrote:
| No, not for all types of "dealing with".
|
| If you're dealing with spam originating from Gmail,
| without any helpful action from Google, that's not really
| your choice.
|
| If you're dealing with difficulties sending mail to Gmail
| users, without help from Google, that's also not really
| your choice.
|
| If _vast numbers of other people_ stopped using Gmail,
| those problems would mostly go away.
| klardotsh wrote:
| Except for anyone whose employer requires them to use
| Google services, since Google Apps (or whatever they call
| it these days) is a hugely popular offering for central
| company email/contacts/calendar/office suite. And
| frankly, it's better than dealing with Outlook and its
| unrelenting AI slop machine advertising.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| GP Post: > My company uses gmail so I'm forced to use it.
|
| Your post: > Everyone dealing with gmail is doing so
| because they chose to.
|
| No, it's clear that not everyone dealing with Gmail is
| doing so because they chose to. Repeating your incorrect
| statement does not make it correct.
|
| Further, everyone has to deal with its impacts on the
| email ecosystem as it's practically impossible for
| somebody who works a 9-5 to run their own mail server
| that Gmail will deign to not only accept mail from but
| also successfully deliver it to its intended recipient.
|
| So even if I never use Gmail I still have to deal with
| replies going to / coming from it.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Anyone can stop using gmail at any time._
|
| Just going to copy/paste this part of the comment you
| replied to, because it seems like you may have missed it?
|
| > _My company uses gmail so I 'm forced to use it._
| eszed wrote:
| Indeed. I'd like to. Except Google also make it nigh
| impossible for anyone hosting their own email (the
| original-internet ideal) to get email _into_ gmail
| reliably enough to be useful. I have my own address on my
| own domain, but can 't rely on it (yes, DKIM and DMARC
| and SPF are properly set up) not to be marked "spam" for
| opaque reasons, so gmail remains my "main" address. It's
| a network-effect problem: once enough people are
| "captured", then everyone else is forced to join - or
| else be unable to participate.
|
| It's a collective action problem: you'll have to persuade
| millions and millions of "normies", who have no idea
| what's going on, or what internet privacy is, or what's
| broken about the system, and who don't care to learn, and
| won't listen to us - or you'll have to impose regulation.
| Those are the choices. The second seems more possible
| than the first. Us nerds saying "walk away" is
| idealistic; we will, and always will, get squished,
| because the corps have the power and most folks won't
| (ever) care.
| throwaway7679 wrote:
| > Anyone can stop using gmail at any time
|
| True, and applies to many other things as well. Anyone
| claiming otherwise is shirking responsibility for their
| own actions. Every single sibling comment here suffers
| from this.
|
| Arguments in the form of "other people do it, so I must
| also" are unpersuasive and pathetic.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Not me - it's work mandated.
|
| Not my wife - her school board mandates it.
| kazinator wrote:
| Ah, but who is really making the world shit? Google and
| their ilk? Or the millions of sheep who use their stuff?
|
| Would Google be making the world shit if all its cloud
| services had only a few dozen thousand users?
|
| What's forcing you to interact with Google isn't Google,
| but Google users.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| How is your company forcing you to use gmail any worse
| than your company forcing you to use outlook? Is it your
| company that is making the world shit, or google.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The only thing that can stop a monopoly is a bigger
| monopoly, the government.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You're behind with the times, words have new meanings
|
| Organizations I don't like = Monopoly!
|
| Organizations I like = ...
| jordanb wrote:
| Not even "back in the day". Youtube and Gsuite constantly
| break on firefox.
| kazinator wrote:
| You don't own the roads in Detroit; the government owns
| most of them.
|
| Gmail is not a government service. Google is free to make
| that work with only one browser, if they want.
|
| You can't assert that Google must make Gmail work with any
| browser whatsoever, because that means supporting someone
| using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5.
| marricks wrote:
| I'm not going to waste my time explaining to you what a
| metaphor is, but I will say this Firefox was the dominant
| player in the 00's 2010's when they did this, not the 2%
| market share it is now.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't work for Google and genuinely think it's better for
| users. It's always bugged me that ad blockers request
| arbitrary read write permissions for all websites I visit,
| and it didn't seem like that was ever going to change until
| Chrome forced the issue.
| chihuahua wrote:
| It's not ideal, but if that's what it takes to block ads as
| well as uBlock Origin does, then that's a price I'm willing
| to pay.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My content blocker on Safari blocks all the same ads as
| ublock origin in Chrome, with no supposedly no risk of
| outbound data.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| At the platform level, you have to have a security model,
| and sometimes it will conflict with functionality. I'm
| sure there's a lot of potentially interesting browser
| extensions you could build with the ability to read and
| write arbitrary files, but Chrome has decided (much less
| controversially) that the sandbox is key to their
| security model and extensions can't ask to escape it.
|
| If manifest V3 ad blockers were nonfunctional to the
| point of being broken, I'd be more concerned, but in my
| experience they're perfectly OK.
| creato wrote:
| uBO Lite exists and I can't see any visible difference in
| how well it works. So, it's not a price you _need_ to pay
| at all.
| kolanos wrote:
| In my testing, UBO Lite is not working as well on
| YouTube. It blocks the ad, but you still have to skip it.
| Original UBO didn't require this.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Yea but, I think its a bit misplaced to be angry at
| Google for this. Surely its the content creators that
| place the ads in their content to blame for this.
|
| I don't understand why they ads are not spliced into the
| stream. It would be undetectable by extensions at all.
| Yeul wrote:
| Because ads are auctioned in nanoseconds. This isn't the
| newspaper were everyone saw the same as which was vetted
| by the editors. You are seeing different ads than your
| neighbour. Everything is automated to cost as little
| money as possible.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Anyone with a mildly popular extension that has
| read/write * would be offered lots of money to sell it
| to, usually, scammers or hackers.
|
| Maybe you're willing to pay the price, but that doesn't
| mean it was what's best for the ecosystem.
| homebrewer wrote:
| It really isn't. They can spend some of their billions of
| revenue to review changes when popular extensions are
| updated, just like Mozilla does. Every uBO update is vetted
| by Mozilla and is only then pushed out to users. But doing
| this is not in Google's interest at all.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Mozilla's guidance on this
| (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tips-assessing-
| safety-e...) is that only some extensions are manually
| reviewed and you shouldn't trust this as a guarantee of
| safety if you don't trust the developer who owns the
| extension.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Read/write permissions are necessary to effectively block
| ads. There's a lot of sites that will throw up a screen
| saying "please turn off your adblocker" and refuse to let
| you view the page if they detect ads aren't being loaded.
| Read/write permissions allows uBlock Origin to inject
| scripts into the page to fool the anti-adblock scripts into
| thinking that ads are being served.
| harrall wrote:
| If I'm going to be the devil's advocate, it's probably
| better for performance.
|
| When I maintained a hook-based plugin system, I learned
| that many programmers do not know data structures or
| algorithms and would slow down the whole software by
| writing plugins that looked up rules using extremely slow
| ways extremely often. And if users wanted to complain about
| the software being slow, they would always blame me first.
|
| But when I replaced it with rule lists, now I was in
| control and could implement fast data structures.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's my computer. I will run code that I choose and
| disallow code that I choose. If I choose to run code that
| blocks your code, that's my prerogative. Whether that's a
| full blown right is another topic.
|
| You're just pissed because I've chosen to block _your_ code
| in software _you_ created. Next, you 'll tell me I have to
| watch _your_ programming on a TV I bought with _your_ code
| on it.
|
| The idea that we have to do anything that evilCorp wants us
| to do is just insane that people have come to the point of
| accepting that.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Chrome is their project, they should be free to do whatever
| they want with it.
|
| They shouldn't be free to use all the money in the world to
| corner a market, rope in the conpetition and then abuse that
| position.
|
| It only works because nobody can touch them, it's otherwise
| straight illegal in most markets.
| blockme69 wrote:
| Well hopefully Google will pay the price for their greed soon
| enough.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
| internetter wrote:
| They won't under the trump admin
| zdragnar wrote:
| The trump admin got this ball rolling way back in 2017.
| internetter wrote:
| Just like the TikTok ban they also got the ball rolling
| on?
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| The TikTok ban is still happening, some trump donator
| will end up owning majority of tiktok.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Funny you should mention that:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/10/trump-
| tik...
|
| Yes, Tik Tok still needs to divest ownership or be banned
| in the US
| knowitnone wrote:
| just pay $10 million to have a sit with him and all your
| troubles disappear
| anjel wrote:
| Be sure to wear your 100k Trump-Watch for the sitdown
| outside of the Pork Store.
| CharlesW wrote:
| It depends on whether Google bends the knee, as Amazon and
| Facebook have done.
| leeoniya wrote:
| Gulf of America would like a word...
| zzbzq wrote:
| Trump's DoJ just submitted basically the same remedy
| proposal last Friday, it's on
| gruez wrote:
| >article dated Mar 10, 2025
| winwang wrote:
| As much as I dislike their Chrome practices, I am rather
| against the idea of forcing them to sell Chrome.
|
| For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in
| the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being
| better outright for a large portion of users (presumably).
| Are we to punish making overly-good products?
|
| For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good
| steward?
|
| And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other
| browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.
|
| Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
|
| Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to
| learn more about why they might be ill-premised.
| arwhatever wrote:
| "Where there's a will, there's a way."
| ehecatl42 wrote:
| Emacs Web Wowser for the most part, for me, and it basically
| works... except when it fucking does not.
|
| The modern web, as we all know, is all kinds of shit. Anybody
| here compile Firefox recently?
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Gentoo user here: all the time. Worst part is that Firefox
| depends on NodeJS which takes a good day to compile on my
| 2c/4t 3250U.
| forty wrote:
| So actually even Firefox depends on V8...
| fp64 wrote:
| What's wrong with V8? Had only pleasant interactions with
| it so far (maybe compiling takes long, can't tell, whole
| webkit is a nightmare in that regard)
| forty wrote:
| Oh it's perfectly fine, but Firefox was kind of the only
| illusion that the web does not rely on a single
| implementation, so discovering that even that depends on
| V8 is kind of funny :)
| jcranmer wrote:
| The NodeJS dependency is purely for running some tests. You
| shouldn't need it to actually build Firefox.
| mid-kid wrote:
| If that was the case I'm sure someone would've turned it
| into a test-only dependency in gentoo.
| voytec wrote:
| Why would you? Firefox is a spyware nowadays.
| gruez wrote:
| >Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would
| abuse its market position to their own benefit...
|
| Doesn't Safari have the same restriction, also ostensibly for
| "security/privacy" reasons? The only difference is that Apple
| doesn't have a web advertising presence, so you can't make the
| accusation that they're "abuse its market position to their own
| benefit".
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| Firefox and its derivatives remain the only true alternative
| at this point.
| fyrabanks wrote:
| You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you
| don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or,
| rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little
| weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.
|
| Very much a lesser of all evils situation.
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| You can, but ultimately Brave is downstream of Chrome and
| their stated intention of supporting Manifest V2 "for as
| long as [they're] able" doesn't inspire as much
| confidence.
|
| Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at
| the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.
| ray023 wrote:
| Brave has its own Rust based Adblocker BUILD IN. That is
| at the very core of the Browser, uses the exact same
| filter lists uBlock Origin and all the other use. There
| is no point in using uBlock origin in Brave at all. I
| have been using Brave for years now and the adblocker
| pretty much like uBlock. Never looked back. I think it
| even inspired by uBlock but the fact they can even
| integrate it tighter with Chromium makes more then than
| an extension written in JS.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| uBlock Origin does a bit more than applying community
| maintained filter lists though. I regularly use its
| capability to add custom filters for instance. Is that
| also possible in Brave?
| jemmyw wrote:
| Yes
| WD-42 wrote:
| For now. We'll see how long it takes for them to
| integrate their Brave Bucks for either enabling the
| blocker or whitelisting ads.
| homebrewer wrote:
| > install uBlock Origin in Brave
|
| There's no need to do it, their built-in adblocker
| supports the same rule lists.
|
| https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
| tmtvl wrote:
| But does it support blocking JavaScript, large media
| elements, social widgets, and fonts?
| johnisgood wrote:
| I would like to know this, too. It does not seem to be on
| the list of features unless they are referring to it via
| "cosmetic filtering". I often block particular elements
| on websites.
| jemmyw wrote:
| You can block elements, there's an option on the right
| click context menu to do it visually.
| pnw wrote:
| Yes, you can block elements directly from the context
| menu. I use it all the time on Reddit.
|
| There's also built in blocking under
| brave://settings/shields for Javascript and social
| features.
|
| It doesn't have a specific feature to block fonts AFAIK
| but it does have fingerprint protection if that's your
| concern.
| antonok wrote:
| Brave's adblocker supports the standard `$font` resource
| type modifier on adblock rules as well.
| tmtvl wrote:
| What I specifically mean by 'large media elements' is
| that I currently have the uBlock option active to 'Block
| media elements larger than [50] KB'. (Where the 50 is a
| spinner so I can increase or decrease the size if I
| want.)
| kibae wrote:
| I switched to Brave last week after the whole Firefox
| fiasco. I installed uBlock Origin after there were some
| ads that got through.
|
| e.g. on DuckDuckGo.
| antonok wrote:
| There is an Aggressive setting for Brave Shields, which
| you can set either per-site in the Shields menu from the
| URL bar, or globally in brave://settings/shields - that
| should take care of SERP ads and other first-party
| placements.
| ClikeX wrote:
| Luckily, Firefox has several forks that strip that
| telemetry.
| novemp wrote:
| Another day, another subtle insinuation that Brave is the
| only Chrome fork anyone uses. Are you people being paid
| to do this?
| rockskon wrote:
| Or maybe it's just popular? Recommend something else if
| you don't like it rather than just insinuating crap about
| people who do.
| antonok wrote:
| As I see it, Brave is the only Chromium-based browser
| with a competitive Mv2-deprecation-resistant adblocker.
| If adblocking is important to you - and it is, to many
| people - then Brave literally is the only one worth
| considering. Not to mention it is open source, unlike
| most of the others.
|
| (I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work
| for Brave are very open about their affiliation when
| commenting about it online)
| jhickok wrote:
| Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been
| using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad
| blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin
| on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales
| but it's usable for me at this point.
| RamRodification wrote:
| macOS only
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's easy to block ads on an entire system DNS level,
| instead of using browser plugins.
| h4x0rr wrote:
| This way you're missing out on specific js patches for
| sites with hard to block ads (like YouTube)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's a special case, which can be solved by buying
| YouTube premium. For general ad-blocking, the DNS filters
| work great.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What incentives does this enforce in the market?
| Strangling smaller players and reinforcing the dominant
| ones.
| Yeul wrote:
| How does that work on a smartphone?
| bluescrn wrote:
| How long will Mozilla be around for, though?
| squarefoot wrote:
| As long as Google pays them to remain alive to reinforce
| the narrative that Chrome isn't a monopoly.
| mrandish wrote:
| If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up,
| Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser
| itself will continue on because it's open source. As an
| exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if
| Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact
| Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact,
| the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the
| Blender or MAME projects.
|
| In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly
| introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less
| good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I
| understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've
| been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's
| still possible to modify, fix and restore all these
| recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a
| constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it.
| Fortunately, there's an active community effort around
| restoring the Firefox interface and usability,
| exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project
| https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
|
| My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from
| the outside, is that it used to be a browser that
| celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However,
| Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and
| employees (millions in the case of more than one recent
| CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google,
| Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly
| incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to
| increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus,
| the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with
| advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on
| support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of
| the shining key feature advanced users value most.
| Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user
| features have been pushed by the substantial payroll
| needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome
| and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a
| tool for power users who value advanced features,
| customization and extension. And it was all for naught
| because Firefox has continued to lose market share while
| ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche
| community of fanatically devoted power users.
| Miraste wrote:
| Do you think the open source community is capable of
| maintaining Firefox without Mozilla? I find that
| doubtful. Even if they did, without Mozilla, Cloudflare
| and friends would start trying to kill Firefox like they
| do to other independent browsers.
| judge2020 wrote:
| And ublock origin lite works just fine for me
| kolanos wrote:
| Not working as well on YouTube. The ad is blocked, but you
| still need to skip it. You didn't need to do this with UBO.
| gorhill wrote:
| It's working fine on Youtube in Optimal mode. If you
| still have issues, you will have to go through self-
| diagnosing steps[1] to rule out all the myriad other ways
| you could suffer such issues -- most commonly another
| extension is interfering negatively.
|
| [1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/27415
| smallerfish wrote:
| Click on the extension icon and move the slider to the
| right.
| nikcub wrote:
| uBO being so good at blocking YouTube ads to the point
| where you didn't need to signup for Premium may have been
| the tipping point for Google that ended manifest V2.
| gerash wrote:
| Is all this "privacy" and "monopoly" outrage about a loud
| group of people wanting to watch YouTube videos without
| watching ads or paying a dime?
|
| Do they also get outraged when Costco "abuses its
| monopoly" as soon as they stop providing free samples or
| cheap hotdogs?
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| it's a good base level, but misses dynamic updates, custom
| rules and interactive element picker/blocker.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| That's a BIG difference though, and makes the claim about
| security more believable, especially since it isn't a sole
| restriction. There are also a number of ad blockers available
| for Safari, although personally I'll stick with Firefox
| either way.
|
| Google is an ad company restriction use of the primary ad-
| blocker on its browser, it's blatant.
| zamalek wrote:
| This is coming from an Apple antagonist, but don't the Apple
| OSs have adblocking at a system level (implying Safari)? This
| does vindicate Apple (but doesn't help in the other
| legitimate scenarios that this API is needed, which I have
| been told do exist).
| gruez wrote:
| > but don't the Apple OSs have adblocking at a system level
| (implying Safari)?
|
| No, content blockers are specific to Safari. Third party
| apps can show ads just fine.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's easy to install system level ad-blocking in MacOS
| and iOS.
| echelon wrote:
| It's time for a Google breakup from the DOJ / FTC.
|
| They've gone well beyond what Microsoft did in the 2000s.
|
| Google owns so many panes of glass and funnels them all
| through its search and advertising funnel. They've distorted
| how the web (and mobile) work to accomplish this massive
| market distortion.
|
| Search, Ads, and Android should be broken up into separate
| units. Chrome shouldn't be placed with any of those units.
|
| While we're cutting, YouTube should be its own entity and
| stand on its own legs too.
|
| Apple, Amazon, and Meta need the same scrutiny. Grocery
| stores and primary care doctors should not be movie studios
| and core internet infrastructure. Especially when those units
| are wholly subsidized by other unrelated business units, and
| their under pricing the market is used to strangle out the
| incumbents and buy them up on the cheap.
| klardotsh wrote:
| Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go the
| exact opposite direction of having a government capable of,
| let alone willing to, pursuing litigation like this, so I
| hope we enjoy this digital feudalism only expanding, never
| receding, in the coming years.
| gruez wrote:
| >Well, this country (the US) decided in November to go
| the exact opposite direction of having a government
| capable of, let alone willing to, pursuing litigation
| like this
|
| No? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886
| klardotsh wrote:
| Okay, I'll retract my remarks when the new formation of
| the FTC actually goes after a tech giant. And frankly, I
| have doubt any DOJ filings of this type won't get
| repealed by force from above in short order. This is a
| case that was mostly handled by the prior DOJ, which is
| gone now, replaced by new management.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > replaced by new management.
|
| New management is aligned with breaking up big tech.
|
| Founders Fund (Thiel), A16Z (Andressen [0], Horowitz),
| and YC (Gary Tan) have all been lobbying for some form of
| big tech breakup because it sucks up capital+oxygen
| needed for startups they funded to exit at respectable
| valuations.
|
| Also, Andressen's Netscape was screwed over by Microsoft,
| so he has a grudge against large players.
|
| [0] - https://www.businessinsider.com/andreessen-more-
| tech-compani...
| echelon wrote:
| Breaking up big tech would oxygenate the entire tech
| sector.
|
| Startups would be able to grow larger. There would be
| less threat from big tech coming in to eat your market,
| and M&A wouldn't be the preferred exit strategy.
|
| Tech talent would be able to get paid more without big
| tech setting wages and orchestrating coordinated layoffs.
| More successful startups = more money for venture and
| labor capital. Right now that money just goes to
| institutional shareholders which are not the innovation
| drivers of the economy.
|
| Startups will actually get to compete for markets rather
| than having them won and subsidized by unrelated business
| units at the big tech titans. The solutions delivered
| will fit the market needs much better.
|
| Even big tech itself might fetch a higher valuation and
| be greater than the sum of its parts. So much of big tech
| is inefficient, untethered from market realities (eg.
| Alexa), and a waste of talent and human capital on dead
| end projects. Having Jeff Bezos "pay whatever it takes"
| to acquire the rights to "007" is a sign of how bloated
| these market distorting companies have become.
|
| This needs to happen and is long overdue.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| People scratch their heads about how "just a default setting"
| can be worth an annual $20 billion payment from Google. It
| makes more sense if it's actually for a raft of wildly
| illegal under-the-table measures this.
|
| Imagine what it would cost Google's bottom line if Apple was
| truly user-focused and enabled ad-blocking on desktop, mobile
| and embedded safari views by default. Someone do the napkin
| math please!
| gruez wrote:
| This conspiracy theory doesn't make sense because safari's
| content blockers (ie. the nerfed version of adblock) block
| most ads just fine, especially from google ads. The only
| ads that get through are first party ads (eg. youtube), but
| as of a few years ago adblockers could block those as well,
| so it's a moot point.
| jorvi wrote:
| Yup.
|
| I understand that nerfing adblocking is definitely a big
| draw for Google, but Apple went the ManifestV3 route many
| years before, specifically to increase extension
| performance and privacy.
|
| Back then there was a big uproar too, but mostly because
| Safari extension developers charged for a new version
| because they had to rewrite the entire thing.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Safari content blockers are not enabled in embedded Web
| Views.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Neither is uBlock Origin.
| connicpu wrote:
| I get uBlock origin whenever apps open a browser view
| that uses my default android browser (Firefox) e.g. when
| I click links in the reddit app.
| basisword wrote:
| Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and
| I'm a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get
| through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you
| until you completely disable the extension. Content
| blockers often block cookie banners too which can often
| result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you're
| trying to buy tickets to something and have to "reload
| without blockers" for the website to work.
| gruez wrote:
| >Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird
| issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely
| disable the extension
|
| Works fine on my machine. You might need to update your
| filter lists or try another content blocker app.
|
| >Content blockers often block cookie banners too which
| can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare
| when you're trying to buy tickets to something and have
| to "reload without blockers" for the website to work.
|
| So don't enable the filter lists that try to block cookie
| banners?
| epiecs wrote:
| Can you recommend a blocker? I have one (adblock pro),
| but I cant seem to find where to update the lists and
| sometimes YT does weird things :)
| gruez wrote:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adguard-adblock-
| privacy/id1047...
|
| There's also a new extension that was posted on hn a few
| weeks that's free and claims to have scriptlets to block
| youtube ads as well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43204406#43208085
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Bypass the YT website entirely.
|
| You can perform video search through DuckDuckGo,
| Invidious, or Piped.
|
| The latter two are often blocked themselves, copy the
| video URL and feed to mpv to play through your preferred
| video player on the command-line:
|
| <https://mpv.io/>
| derkster wrote:
| YouTube has been playing a cat and mouse game, disabling
| some accounts until disabled, randomly re-enabling them.
| I personally think it's so when people talk about issues
| like this - people say "Well, it's been ok on my end".
| But it's definitely some kind of A/B testing.
| philistine wrote:
| Oh absolutely. YouTube will 100% try new ad blocking
| technology for only a specific strata.
| igilism wrote:
| What blocker do you use? I don't have these problems with
| AdGuard in Safari
| dbtc wrote:
| Me too, but shhh.
| basisword wrote:
| I've used Wipr for a long time. And Wipr 2. Will checkout
| AdGuard.
| philistine wrote:
| 1Blocker also gives me a good YouTube experience.
| jnathsf wrote:
| Suggest using a service like NextDNS or Pi-hole for DYI
| ad blocking at the DNS/network level. I started with pi-
| hole but the hassle of updates and most importantly not
| having it available outside of my home network pushed me
| to a service like NextDNS which works on any network (5G,
| work, etc)
| gruez wrote:
| If you think manifest v3's adblocking is bad, DNS-based
| adblockers (eg. NextDNS or Pi-hole) is even worse. It
| can't do any filtering based on urls or elements, so any
| first party ads will be able to get through.
| nikcub wrote:
| to get any actual work done with DNS based blocking (ie.
| visiting Google ads, or their other dashboards) you
| quickly have to start whitelisting a ton of sites, which
| applies everywhere.
| nine_k wrote:
| If I go to buy something, I switch off ad blocking on
| that page, at the very least, on the checkout page. Ads
| can even be actually relevant there.
|
| If the page is too ad-ridden to tolerate, I may consider
| to just close that page, and go search for other options.
|
| I use Firefox + uBlock Origin, because going to the wide
| commercial internet without some form of ad blocking is
| like going out without an umbrella when it's raining
| heavily.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| If I go buy something and it requires me to disable my
| adblocker or my VPN I just look for another place to buy.
| agiacalone wrote:
| Ad networks are a high traffic way to spread malware. I
| would never recommend disabling a blocker, especially on
| commerce sites.
| portpecos wrote:
| >I use Firefox + uBlock Origin
|
| Wasn't Mozilla accused of selling data they collected
| from Firefox users?
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong.
| derkades wrote:
| Even with all the drama Firefox is still an excellent
| browser, definitely better for privacy and uBlock than
| Chrome.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| They removed wording in their FAQ saying that they
| wouldn't sell data. It's a subtle distinction, and may or
| may not make a difference depending on your perspective.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| For me the element blockers are the most important of
| all. It's not just about blocking ads. It's about making
| websites more usable. Ads are only one of those
| detrimental points. Many websites bombard you with big
| photos of their articles. I block all that with custom
| blocklists so the end result is a lot more like here at
| hacker news.
| gruez wrote:
| If you're talking about element blocking, that's still
| doable in manifest v3 with injected css elements. That's
| how it was done in manifest v2.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Is it? I didn't realise. I always use Firefox anyway. So
| which part isn't possible now? JavaScript injection?
|
| Ps changed the term to avoid confusion, thanks!
| gruez wrote:
| >So which part isn't possible now?
|
| The webRequestBlocking api, which allows the extension to
| inspect all request/responses in real time and act on
| them. With manifest v3 the extension can only supply a
| list of expressions to block, and the expressions that
| can be used is very limited.
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's a revenue share deal where Google pays Apple 36% of
| the search revenue they get from Safari users [1].
|
| In other words, Google pays Apple ~$20B per year to be
| default search engine because they make ~$53B in revenue
| from those searches. This is profitable for both Apple and
| Google -- no "wildly illegal under-the-table measures"
| required.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-
| of-goog...
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| ah the advertising ecosystem.
|
| even when an outsider tries to think of the nastiest
| scam, an insider shows up to explain the boring day to
| day is already worse.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Alright? Split iOS off from Apple, then split Apple Music off
| too?
|
| I hate these arguments where people point to some other
| shitty thing a company is doing as some sort of gotcha.
| gruez wrote:
| >Alright? Split iOS off from Apple, then split Apple Music
| off too?
|
| Windows is split off from Lenovo/Dell. How's that working
| out for the Windows OS, or the Edge browser?
| bearjaws wrote:
| Largest OS share in the market? Seems to be working out
| pretty good?
|
| Edge is a perfectly good browser now? Probably should be
| its own company too if we are splitting Chrome off from
| Google.
|
| I will tell you that we should split these companies into
| 100 parts if thats what you are asking.
|
| Imagine if Apple licensed its chips out in competition
| with Qualcomm...
| fmajid wrote:
| Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed the
| part about their stalling phone, tablet and laptop revenues,
| that they hope to compensate with "services" revenue, i.e.
| App Store 30% racketeering and App Store search ads?
| gruez wrote:
| >Apple is totally an advertising company. Have you missed
| the part about [...]
|
| Have you missed the part of my comment of my comment where
| I specifically mentioned "web advertising presence"? That's
| relevant, because ublock would only work on web ads. It
| can't block ads in the app store, or any other app (eg.
| spotify).
| fmajid wrote:
| Apple also serves ads and trackers on the web, not just
| in-app or on the App Store. Here are the relevant built-
| in uBlock Origin filter rules:
|
| https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AuBlockOrigin%2FuAssets
| +ap...
|
| Thus they also clearly have an incentive to sabotage uBO.
| It may be a much smaller piece of their revenue than at
| Google, but it is a huge proportion of their revenue
| growth. Don't believe Apple's marketing about their
| caring for privacy, belied by their actions.
| gruez wrote:
| >Here are the relevant built-in uBlock Origin filter
| rules:
|
| Can you link to a specific rule that shows Apple has web
| ads? The search results you linked either removeparam
| filters (which I guess is "tracking", but probably the
| most benign kind), malware sites that contain
| "apple.com", or analytics domains that seemingly belong
| to apple. Moreover there's no evidence that Safari's
| content blocker restrictions make a difference here. The
| domains are trivially blocked so it's unclear how apple
| is materially gaining from their nerfed adblock.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Ads that apple serves (outside of marketing pages on
| apple.com) are ads that displayed on ad supported ads.
| uBO won't help you there. Luckily, every Apple device
| comes with an AdBlock for those ads - airplane mode.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Whataboutism is so lazy.
| gruez wrote:
| It's not whataboutism. If the claim is that google's
| actions with manifest v3 is "abusing its market position to
| their own benefit", but Apple did the same thing when it
| didn't stand to benefit from it, then it severely
| undermines that claim.
|
| Sure, it doesn't rule out google was secretly intending on
| doing it, only internal memos or whatever can prove that
| definitively. But at the same time, to immediately conclude
| that google was "abusing its market position", you would
| have to be maximally uncharitable to google. That's a sad
| way to see the world. Take for instance, the flak that
| google got for banning third party cookies. If this is done
| by anyone else (eg. Firefox), this would be seen as a good
| thing. However, cynics have opposed this on the basis that
| such change would disadvantage third party ad networks more
| than google, thus google was "abusing its market position
| to their own benefit" and therefore the change was bad.
| derkster wrote:
| You talk about Google as if it's a person. You should
| take a step back and think to yourself why the changes
| were made to Manifest V3 that broke backwards
| compatibility, weakening ability to ad-blocking. Rule set
| based modification is one of the first features I'd think
| of when developing a systems of extensibility in browser,
| and they removed it.
|
| The reasoning is obvious, and "plausible deniability" is
| not enough to give Google charity. The more difficult you
| make it to block ads, the more impressions, and the more
| money made. Yet you believe people should be "charitable"
| to the same company that can't hire the manpower to
| defend their own users against bad faith DCMA takedown
| notices. Because they ran the analysis, and it wasn't
| worth the cost.
|
| Best case scenario, Chromium loses market share,
| implements the parts removed from V2, Google likely kicks
| the can down the road to Manifest V4.
|
| There's no reason to believe companies deserve
| charitability. Companies are systems designed to extract
| maximum value, and when the world around that system
| changes, the system adjusts itself. It's not the systems
| fault for trying to get more value, it's our fault for
| letting them.
| 0x457 wrote:
| I don't think those two can be compared at all. Safari
| didn't have proper plugin support at all, doesn't matter
| ad-blocking or not. Rich plugin ecosystem was one of the
| Chrome's selling point.
| voytec wrote:
| > It was never about improving peoples web experience.
|
| I kinda appreciate that you still apply some benefit of the
| doubt.
| yard2010 wrote:
| It's funny how this behavior resembles the Chinese Party.
| labster wrote:
| The CCP is much better organized with its "Do nothing. Win."
| strategy. If Trump did nothing as well as they do, America
| would still be a superpower.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I'm surprised anyone expected anything different. Why would an
| ad company support something that assaults its main source of
| profit?
| johnsillings wrote:
| > I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about
| improving privacy
|
| What are you using instead?
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| It is the gaslighting that is so annoying and insulting. An
| entity of such power and reach resorting to manipulation is
| disconcerting.
|
| Everyone will call them on it. Why not be straight with their
| intentions?
|
| An advertising company optimizing their technology to better
| support their business while improving security.
| justmarc wrote:
| Improving the security of their income stream :)
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Please don't forget the part developers played in this by
| enabling Chrome/Google to become so very dominant.
| spankalee wrote:
| There was a time in Chrome when it didn't support extensions at
| all. If Google had release an extension API like manifest v3
| then, would that have been abuse of market position?
|
| The reason why Chrome waited for so long to add extensions was
| the danger they posed to users. I was at Google when Sergey
| often worried about what extensions would do to non technical
| and older users who get tricked into installing them, then I
| saw first hand that danger with my own grandparents. They had
| extensions intercepting every network request, redirecting
| certain sites to fake sites, and injecting code into pages. It
| was horrifying, and they were lucky that they didn't have
| significant money or identity theft.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It wouldn't have been a bait and switch then.
| spankalee wrote:
| So it's impossible for a company to make a mistake and
| rectify it? If they settle on the same approach as their
| major competitor, it's bait and switch?
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| it seems overly charitable to give Google, THE
| advertising company, the benefit of the doubt here when
| the biggest impact is it will now show way more
| advertising.
| rurp wrote:
| If it's really that big of a problem this can be addressed by
| locking extensions by default and hiding the on switch where
| casual users won't look. But come on, this is obviously a
| pretext. You expect people to believe that the most prolific
| adertising and surveilance company in history is crippling
| the ability to block ads and trackers for altruistic
| reasons?!
| spankalee wrote:
| It's not "obviously" a pretext. I don't think that the
| change in ad revenue _to Google_ is going to be significant
| between v2 and v3 ad blockers. It might be to ad networks
| and sites that employ significant ad blocker counter
| measures though.
|
| And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and
| webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so
| they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to
| Safari or another browser without that extension API,
| because the browser is faster or didn't exfiltrate their
| banking credentials.
| Yeul wrote:
| Yeah right blocking ads and trackers helps performance.
| yanis_t wrote:
| A company optimises for profit. Real shocker.
| mihaaly wrote:
| People's web experience is in degradation for long time.
|
| No point using 99% of the web due to the hostile, fraudolent,
| abusive approaches on top of the hollow (yeh, very very gentle
| world for the thing what it is) content. No point searching for
| advice, products, job, as crap is poured at you while your
| actions are registered, your profile is sold, just to pour
| dedicated crap on you by the highest bidder.
|
| I have mail and 5 (7 with weather) pages I check regularly, and
| that's it. That's my online life. More like a hermit goes into
| town for tools and cans kind of digital solitary. Clicking on
| links only after reconsidering five times, if I am really
| interested in the possible content. Mostly here. So, so far
| away from the extremely curious me 20 or so years ago spending
| hours to the limit of my thirst and bladder, navigating all
| that is out there.
|
| It is very sad what humanity made out of the Internet. It does
| not even hurt anymore. It is numb blob where the feeling about
| the rich common knowledge source this was and could have been
| should be.
| bambax wrote:
| I don't think killing actual, effective ad-blocking was the
| sole motivation of moving to Manifest V3, but it was certainly
| a nice side effect that was hard to resist.
| spearman wrote:
| Pretty sure they do rank sites based on performance:
| https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-ex...
| blankx32 wrote:
| Goodbye Chrome, good night
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| Chrome is no longer available on my machine. It hasn't been for
| some years now but still.
| perihelions wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43262531 ( _" uBlock Origin
| forcefully disabled by Chrome"_, 5 days ago, 204 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43099417 ( _" uBlock Origin
| Has Been Disabled"_, 19 days ago, 40 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299886 ( _" The DOJ still
| wants Google to sell off Chrome"_, 2 days ago, 663 comments)
| fpg69 wrote:
| I am simply shocked-SHOCKED, I tell you-that the advertising
| company's web browser does not let you block advertisements.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| It was the pre-roll youtube ad that made me realise ublock was
| dead :-(
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| seeing your first YT ad in a decade is quite the shock!
| seattle_spring wrote:
| It is absolutely bonkers how many ads are in YouTube now.
| Nearly unusable without an ad blocker.
| nickelpro wrote:
| You are still allowed and able to block advertisements with
| extensions.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| Does this mean it won't be able to get updates to extension
| code(not block lists) anymore?
|
| I am getting high CPU usage with uBO since yesterday but I do
| have a lot of tabs so I was wondering if thats a bug that will
| get fixed.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Switch to UBL, the manifest v3 successor to UBO, to continue to
| get updates, the performance is better too.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| just another reason to break up the monopoly
| desdenova wrote:
| Chrome will now be sold to TotallyNotGoogle, we're saved.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| that's how it works, there are legal ramifications otherwise
| freedomben wrote:
| I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a huge
| opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get
| awesome extensions, unlike the locked-down and hobbled Chromium
| ecosystem. I suspect they do realize this because they've been
| really leaning into extensions recently, but over the years I've
| worried that Mozilla's committment to Firefox isn't as serious as
| I would like.
|
| Regardless, I'd love to see this give FF a big bounce in the
| stats. Something to reinforce that there are people out here that
| really want manifest v2, badly enough to switch!
| ToDougie wrote:
| Firefox has some weird slowness with DNS that I have
| troubleshot to death. I still use it for almost everything, but
| sometimes I'll have an entire day of 30s page loading times.
| recursive wrote:
| Apologies if this is elementary, but have you tried turning
| off DoH?
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dns-over-https#w_off
| edoceo wrote:
| I put this setting in ages ago on my FF profile and haven't
| seen DNS lag.
|
| My biggest DNS lag was before I used PiHole and was relying
| on my router, which upstream to 8.8.8.8. I've just assumed
| that little thing was overloaded or that Comcast was just
| having a "hiccup".
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| I see glacial DNS resolution regularly when hitting the AWS
| authorization page with DoH disabled on my company's VPN.
| Resolves instantly in Chrome.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| This is almost certainly a fragmentation issue caused by
| lower MTU and broken path MTU on the VPN. Drop the system
| to 1280 to troubleshoot, if things work immediately
| there's the culprit, raise it up til it doesn't or don't,
| I keep my VPN's at 1280.
|
| EDIT: I do not know why its an issue with firefox and not
| chrome, it's likely QUIC fucking up since it cant
| fragment and needs to fall back to TCP, chrome is
| probably error handling this better... dropping the MTU
| that low will make the fallback explicit:
| https://blog.apnic.net/2019/03/04/a-quick-look-at-quic/
|
| EDIT2: Could also try disabling QUIC, instructions here:
| https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-
| one/policies/ga...
| Yeul wrote:
| I wonder how much time not experiencing advertising on the
| internet saves?
|
| Whenever someone says how fast Chrome is I think about this.
| guappa wrote:
| Disable DNS over HTTPS I guess.
| Underphil wrote:
| Same here. Tends to be pretty inconsistent. DNS-over-HTTP(s)
| definitely disabled. 30s is a lot more than I've experienced,
| but there are times where it clearly struggles to look things
| up.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Part of what the DOJ is seeking against Google would severely
| impact Mozilla financially however, as they want to ban them
| from paying to be the default search engine.
| bad_user wrote:
| Which is why Mozilla are getting desperate to diversify their
| revenue.
| Mailtemi wrote:
| Mozilla diversifies by increasing the CEO's salary for
| nothing.
|
| Wiki: In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO,
| Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her
| salary rose again to more than $5 million, and again to
| nearly $7 million in 2022.
|
| The new CEO brings computing for AI money bleed that almost
| no one wants.
| bad_user wrote:
| I don't agree with Mozilla paying that huge CEO salary,
| but...
|
| Do you know Firefox's handy new offline translation
| feature? That's AI a well. And Firefox is the only
| browser that doesn't leak your web page when translating
| it.
|
| There are plenty of other uses for AI, such as describing
| images without alt-text for the blind, or summarization.
| I, for one, want AI in my browser, you can't really say
| that "nobody wants it", when many people clearly do.
| Mailtemi wrote:
| Really? Fire the Rust Servo team and double the CEO's
| salary in the same year? Almost the same money.
| bad_user wrote:
| I said I don't agree with them wasting that much money on
| the CEO, maybe I wasn't clear (perhaps it's due to
| English not being my first language).
| ziddoap wrote:
| You were clear. Mailtemi is just talking past the point
| of your comment, rather than engage with it.
| glenstein wrote:
| What's the news on them getting into AI?
| nottorp wrote:
| If only their goal would be to provide an excellent privacy
| browser, instead of getting revenue :)
|
| All they need is to accept donations that go strictly to
| the browser and not to the latest blockchain/AI hysteria.
| bad_user wrote:
| Name a project whose development costs as much as Firefox
| and that survives from donations.
|
| Many people want AI in their browser. And what does
| Firefox have to do with crypto?
| jordanb wrote:
| > Name a project whose development costs as much as
| Firefox and that survives from donations.
|
| Wikipedia.
| bad_user wrote:
| Wikimedia does not raise $200 million per year.
| jordanb wrote:
| You're right. They only raise $180 million a year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_stati
| sti...
|
| Still feels like it aught to be enough to make a browser.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Similar to Mozilla & Firefox, there isn't an exact
| breakdown for Wikimedia expenditures to know the costs
| associated with Wikipedia. For Firefox, it's often stated
| its costs are ~200m but those are all expenses Mozilla
| categorizes under software development. For Wikimedia,
| within their operation expenses, ~3m were in hosting and
| ~84m in salaries (related to programs). The salaries are
| stated to be for multiple initiatives, among which
| platform development is mentioned*.
|
| *Although arguably the most important part of Wikipedia,
| and their other collaborative projects, are the
| _volunteers_ maintaining and contributing to it, rather
| the developers.
| glenstein wrote:
| I think it absolutely would be great if a Wikipedia-like
| model were viable, but Wikipedia is like the extreme high
| watermark for that, and they get five billion visits a
| month, which I think is an order of magnitude higher than
| what Firefox has access to. Ramping up to Wikipedia scale
| levels of donations would be a serious project and a
| significant gamble.
|
| Wikipedia has also been around as long as the internet
| itself and its current fundraising drives are the
| culmination of decades of momentum and cultivating a
| perception of the compact that exists between them and
| their users.
|
| Also, I believe that even in the best of times Wikipedia
| is raising about half as much as it costs to run Firefox.
|
| There's probably important caveats that relate to
| comparing software development projects with resources
| and content, because I think the most successful
| donation-driven examples are Wikipedia, NPR, and The
| Guardian. And what they seem to have in common is
| generating content to be consumed.
|
| In terms of software development projects, to me the most
| natural analogy is something like VLC, which does indeed
| rely on donations and is orders of magnitudes smaller. Or
| maybe the Tor project which does rely on donations, but I
| think they're at the order of like 10 million or so,
| which is certainly promising, but not a like for like
| substitution for the revenue they get from Google.
| nottorp wrote:
| > And what does Firefox have to do with crypto?
|
| Firefox is all AI this year, but they've been all
| blockchain when that was in fashion.
| bad_user wrote:
| > _they 've been all blockchain when that was in fashion_
|
| They've never been "all blockchain", what are you talking
| about?
| glenstein wrote:
| Is the AI coming at a prohibitive cost? I'm not sure I
| understand what is going to come of those bets, and I'm
| not a fan of AI everything so I hope it's only used in
| measured ways that are beneficial, but I certainly would
| rather them continue innovating.
|
| I don't think they did a whole lot with blockchain beyond
| some very preliminary dabbling in decentralized web stuff
| which if it could have gained traction I absolutely would
| have supported but it certainly doesn't seem like it was
| a significant drag on developer resources or finances so
| far as I could tell.
|
| And wouldn't that have to be the argument for any of this
| to matter?
| nottorp wrote:
| It depends if having the organization chasing the latest
| fad as it changes yearly inspires you trust or the
| opposite...
| glenstein wrote:
| So you made this claim about the blockchain and I did a
| little bit of Googling to learn more. And so far as I can
| tell they barely did anything beyond some like papers and
| very preliminary demo implementations of stuff like IPFS
| and dabbling with Web3.
|
| Those were very preliminary ventures and not anything
| that commanded substantial developer resources, so I
| don't know what you're talking about. And look. I
| obviously disagree with people who claim that side bets
| compromised Mozilla, but the arguments sort into
| different tiers with some being understandable (issues
| with adtech, CEO pay), some in the middle (the non profit
| Mozilla Foundation is bloated!), some that are one step
| up from utter nonsense because they're at least expressed
| in coherent sentences but have little to no supporting
| evidence or theory of cause and effect (e.g. "Mozilla
| lost all its market share due to their side bets being
| prohibitively expensive").
|
| But we're at a point where apparently these arguments
| have been seen and repeated so many times that there's a
| new class of commenters who have been making the lowest
| effort versions of these arguments that I've yet seen,
| and are the least interested in anything like evidence or
| logic or responsiveness to questions or anything that I
| would associate with coherent thought. Which is where I
| would put the blockchain argument.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Linux?
| TylerE wrote:
| Linux is massively funded by companies like IBM and Red
| Hat.
|
| The Linux Foundation receives over $15m in corporate
| funding.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Note that $15 million is nowhere near enough to pay the
| number of employees who work on Firefox. As a for-profit
| (unlike the foundation), Mozilla the corporation has to
| pay folks market rates, and if you're paying an employee
| in the US, you're paying that same amount on top as
| taxes, insurance, benefits, etc. etc. so $15 million gets
| you a few dozen people at most. Mozilla employs a few
| hundred. So you'll have to add a zero to that number
| before it's in the same ballpark (e.g. wikipedia would be
| a good example).
| TylerE wrote:
| The Linux Foundation basically exists to pay Linus. Now
| add the billions companies like Red Hat pay their
| employees to work on Linux dev.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Thunderbird is doing pretty good. They actually have a
| surplus in donations they have to get rid of. Yet Mozilla
| abandoned it and refuses still to accept donation for
| Firefox.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| That would be a good thing. If Firefox is funded by
| donations, rather than by Google, it ensures there is no
| enshittification in the future. And yes, donations can fund a
| big project, as evidenced by Thunderbird and Ladybird.
| tombert wrote:
| I mostly agree, but I am slightly worried that it would
| lead to slower progress in Firefox. As it stands, Google's
| funding of Firefox is enough to hire a bunch of engineers
| to make Firefox a pretty competitive browser.
| bad_user wrote:
| Nobody uses Ladybird, at this point it's vaporware. And
| Thunderbird is still based on Firefox.
|
| The development of Firefox costs around $200 million per
| year. That's more than what Wikimedia can get from
| donations, and Wikipedia is a website that everyone uses.
| And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-block
| YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
|
| And let's say that it manages to bring those costs down to
| $100 million per year or less and manages to get it from
| donations (when pigs will fly) ... it still has to compete
| with a Chrome whose estimated cost goes over $1 billion per
| year.
| nottorp wrote:
| > And you want to rely on donations from people that ad-
| block YouTube instead of paying for Premium.
|
| Does Google guarantee it won't spy on me if i pay for
| Premium?
|
| ... no, didn't think so.
|
| Besides not everyone uses youtube to the point where
| paying for it is worth it.
|
| > The development of Firefox costs around $200 million
| per year.
|
| Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes
| on harebrained initiatives overall?
|
| > it still has to compete with a Chrome whose estimated
| cost goes over $1 billion per year.
|
| But that's to add features that benefit Google not the
| Chrome users.
|
| Plus Google has money from their ad quasi monopoly so
| they can afford to be wasteful.
| bad_user wrote:
| YouTube is a 1st party service for Google, so you can't
| ad-block their tracking. And you aren't ad-blocking
| YouTube due to the spying, so don't be disingenuous.
|
| Yes, it really costs that much.
|
| Given Chrome's vast market share, I'm pretty sure its
| users like it. And you know what? Most users won't mind
| switching to uBlock Origin Lite, and the elephant in the
| room is that "manifest v3" also increases security, with
| Chrome being indeed the most secure browser.
| nottorp wrote:
| > And you aren't ad-blocking YouTube due to the spying,
| so don't be disingenuous.
|
| I don't watch YouTube. If all those influencers want to
| reach me, they should give me a written summary, I don't
| have time to listen to talking heads for hours.
|
| However, if I ever follow an youtube link, it will be ad
| blocked because i run firefox with uBlock Origin, for as
| long as uBlock Origin blocks youtube ads by default.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes
| on harebrained initiatives overall?
|
| Mozilla Foundation spent 260 million on software
| development in 2023.
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
|
| That may include some software development on non-firefox
| products though.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Does it? Or that's what the mozilla organization wastes
| on harebrained initiatives overall?
|
| Yes! They published their 990, and it's mostly software
| development, but also stuff like legal and compliance and
| marketing. I don't have the numbers off the top of my
| head, but last time I checked, if you really want to make
| this argument, I think it relates to the CEO pay and the
| Mozilla Foundation and its advocacy, which are something
| around the, you know, taken together something like 55
| million or so. You can make the argument that
| administration and operations as well as marketing and
| legal and compliance are bloated in some sense, but then
| you'd still have to make the case that there was a viable
| path to reinvesting that into development in a way that
| would change the tide when it comes to market share. But
| I think that is a confused vision of how market share
| works because the real drivers are Google's dominant
| position in search and on Android in the ability to push
| Chrome on Chromebooks.
|
| Back when these narratives about Mosio's mismanagement
| started, I just assumed that they were highly informed
| people who knew what they were talking about. And maybe
| they really were originally, but it seems to have
| socialized a new generation of commenters into just
| randomly speculating about things that completely fall
| apart upon closer examination.
| wussboy wrote:
| I don't block ads on YouTube because I can't afford
| Premium.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I do, but I would still block it if I could.
| bad_user wrote:
| You probably block ads on YouTube to get stuff for free.
| I never said that you can't afford it.
|
| (I'm using the royal you here, obviously, I don't know
| you)
|
| People rarely pay when there isn't scarcity. Wikimedia
| can pull it off because it has billions of unique
| visitors per month.
| keybored wrote:
| What's your point? I'm past the point of caring about
| freeloading on/off Google of all companies.
|
| I might care about the lesser cut that creators get. But
| not YouTube.
| drpossum wrote:
| I think it's unfair to call Ladybird vaporware this
| early. There's nothing suspicious about their development
| schedule for the scope of the thing they're trying to
| build.
|
| I agree I don't think it should be in the alternative
| browser discussion until they do produce something,
| however.
| glenstein wrote:
| And also, I think there's a positive to say about Lady
| Bird here, which is that in the event they succeed,
| that's as much a narrative about an extraordinarily
| talented and committed developer, And if they're able to
| put forward a credible browser, it will be a soaring
| achievement for them. Not necessarily something I would
| expect as a kind of default status quo expectation.
|
| I think if you get these alternative from the ground up
| browsers, you get extremely limited things like Net Surf,
| noble efforts that I respect, but not going against the
| billions of dollars Google can throw into modern browser
| development.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| If it costs $200 million a year to develop Firefox, then
| their management team is guilty of gross incompetence.
|
| I am betting this is really paying for the crappy side
| projects and HUGE pay for the Mozilla Foundation people
| (just like all the BS spending the Wikimedia foundation
| does) and has nothing to do with Firefox itself.
| glenstein wrote:
| Maintaining a fully compliant, secure, cross-platform web
| browser that competes with the biggest companies on earth
| absolutely is going to have costs like that.
|
| I think Mozilla Foundation receives something like 5 to
| 10%. I'm not against the argument that foundations can be
| bloated and inefficient, but at this point, this anti
| Mozilla narrative is completely out of control and almost
| purely speculation driven.
| photonthug wrote:
| More charitably, it's driven by frustration more than
| speculation. Browsers are old technology, and some people
| think that maybe hurling huge amounts of money at stuff
| like this is unreasonable because projects can/should be
| "finished" at some point. Forever-development is very
| often actively harmful, and if it's actually _necessary_
| then it might be hiding problems in the wider ecosystem.
|
| It's good that we have alternatives to chrome, but on the
| other hand the alternatives are not winning, and they
| prevent any chance of regulation (or having a reasonable
| discussion about whether chrome sucks, as we see here).
| There's a strong argument that mozilla IS google's
| antitrust shield.
|
| Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to
| imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving
| $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more
| money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as
| "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older
| than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project
| will be finished or moving in a great direction any time
| soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
|
| Signed, a grateful but nevertheless annoyed and skeptical
| firefox user
| jjmarr wrote:
| > Also can we just take a minute to seriously try to
| imagine the leader of the "Makefile foundation" receiving
| $2.4M in compensation, and generally burning a lot more
| money on dead-end "innovations" and then rebranding as
| "OpenSource.. And Advertising". Make is 20 years older
| than Mozilla, but does it look like the browser project
| will be finished or moving in a great direction any time
| soon while there's big opportunities for grift and graft?
|
| Make is pretty slow which is why `ninja`, funnily enough,
| was invented to speed up Google Chrome build times.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_(build_system)
| photonthug wrote:
| I'm the cto of the fork foundation where we provide
| important alternatives to spoons and work hard to serve
| our community with the kind of necessary innovations that
| putting modern food into that hole in your face requires.
|
| If you think about it spending a few billion a year on
| R+D is the least you could expect when modern food is
| changing at such a rapid pace! And aren't you glad the
| whole world isn't spoons? I decline to discuss personal
| compensation because I don't see how that's relevant to
| the issues here!
| mrec wrote:
| Mozilla thus far have been very reluctant to take donations
| to Firefox specifically. AFAIK you can still only donate to
| the Foundation, not the Corp, which means that most if not
| all of the cash will get spent on random non-Firefox-
| related things that you probably couldn't care less about.
| speckx wrote:
| I don't see how donations ensures that there is no
| enshittification.
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed. Kagi proves users are willing to pay for search (me
| included, recently).
| iteratethis wrote:
| This to me is the ultimate sign that Mozilla has zero values
| or principles.
|
| They've long advocated that Big Tech is a problem, but as
| soon as somebody tries to actually address it and this
| coincidentally impacting Mozilla, they abandon any and all
| principles.
| drdec wrote:
| My problem with extensions is it's another development team to
| trust and monitor. I need to know if the extension has been
| sold, taken over by a new lead, etc.
| ar_lan wrote:
| After the Great Suspender debacle, I feel the same. I try to
| limit plugins/extensions to as many minimal use cases as
| possible.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yeah that's definitely fair, I have the same concern.
| Currently I've reduced my extensions to just a few that I
| either trust (like gorhill's) or that I wrote myself. But I
| think it would be huge if Mozilla built out the tooling
| needed to keep a better monitor on them. It's an extremely
| hard problem to be sure though.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| They already did? The have a list pf extension that are
| monitored by them as well authoring a few ones
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is why I prefer Safari's content blockers. As far as I
| understand, there is no risk of content blockers sending out
| information.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Luckily there's an extension for that: [Under New Management
| | Chrome Web
| Store](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/under-new-
| managemen...)
| jesuslop wrote:
| Yep while this manifest v3 ugly thing is putting me on the
| brink of jumping ship (I compromise by having two browsers),
| as for your concern I found that Chrome is going to allow
| blacklisting extensions for sites, so now I can turn them off
| for the few sites that I really worry to grant extension read
| access.
|
| chrome://flags, "Extensions Menu Access Control" flag.
| https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-extensions-menu-
| testin...
| RamRodification wrote:
| If you are fine with two browsers, maybe you could instead
| look into separate Firefox profiles with different sets of
| extensions. I have added "-p" to my Firefox shortcut so it
| always starts with the profile picker thing.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Google will just slip in a few more "improvements" to Gmeet,
| Gmail and YouTube that happen to not work or perform very
| poorly on Firefox.
| bravoetch wrote:
| It would be enough if Apple realized the same thing. They're in
| a position to have the best browser, and coast along ignoring
| the opportunity.
| jordanb wrote:
| > I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a
| huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get
| awesome extensions,
|
| The problem is that Mozilla's customers are not Firefox's
| users. Mozilla's customer is Google. They pay Mozilla to exist
| and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox into
| the ground.
|
| I think it's pretty clear that the TOS change basically
| coincided with the removal of manifest v2 change in chrome.
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| My understanding is Mozilla contracted its footprint
| substantially to remain sustainable in a future without
| Google's monetary contribution.
| drpossum wrote:
| Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on
| trash like a VPN service or how to comply with Google's
| advertising decisions.
|
| Then they would let people contribute money to the browser
| (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling
| aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-
| million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and
| hiring more C-suite assistants.
|
| Mozilla is a bad organization in every sense, a bad steward
| of Firefox, and the best thing that could happen is they
| _do_ have their funding cut, they go out of business
| forever, and Firefox finds a good home chosen by the
| community.
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| I imagine their VPN service is financially viable if
| they've still stuck with it this long.
|
| Aside from that, they've just about cut all other
| initiatives aside from "Firefox and AI". The latter gives
| me pause, but hopefully they really are more focused
| moving forward.
|
| I think Mozilla has done alright, but I agree the folks
| is in charge of their business direction and especially
| PR are abysmal. Personally, I wish a company like Proton
| was at the helm.
| bilalq wrote:
| Isn't Mozilla's VPN just a thin UI over Mullvad's
| servers? I don't think it costs them much and probably
| brings in some decent revenue.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits
| on trash like a VPN service
|
| It's pants-on-head level of crazy talk to suggest that
| the VPN service is compromising Mozilla's finances.
|
| It's a re-wrapped Mullvad VPN that probably was not
| expensive to roll out (it being inexpensive to deploy is
| probably precisely the reason they moved forward with
| it). It's like people are just workshopping arguments
| where they randomly claim these things are expensive
| without any substantiation whatsoever.
|
| Mozilla is sitting on 1.2 billion in assets and
| investments. They're not underwater. They are indeed in a
| position where they need to diversify revenue, but the
| idea that the side bets have created running deficits is
| a narrative completely manufactured in comment sections.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The VPN service is probably the most sensible thing they
| could lean into. It's basically all margin and it works
| nicely with the privacy messaging.
| wussboy wrote:
| This kind of thinking appears to be prevalent. "Firefox
| does one specific thing which I construe as evil.
| Therefore I use the competitor which also does this
| thing, plus dozens of others which are anti-competitive
| and generally destructive to the ecosystem."
|
| "The coleslaw in the Jedi salad bar has raisins.
| Therefore I joined the Sith. Their coleslaw also has
| raisins."
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _Then they would let people contribute money to the
| browser_
|
| People keep saying things like this, but the truth is
| that direct contributions to any ad-supported system
| contribute more like 1%-10% (at best) of their income.
|
| You are not the majority you think you are.
| nine_k wrote:
| It does not have to be the majority. It would suffice to
| produce _enough_ funds to continue developing Firefox,
| with full-time engineers, infrastructure, etc.
|
| The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around
| $100-120M/y for last few years. Let's assume that half of
| it was dedicated to Firefox; e.g. $60M/y. It would take
| 500k users paying $120/y (aka $10/mo) to support their
| favorite browser. The current audience of Firefox is
| approx. 170M users; it would take about _0.3 percent_ of
| the audience to be paying users; 0.6% if you lower the
| rate to $5 /mo.
|
| This is how any freemium works.
|
| Even more funnily, someone with a good reputation could
| just start an organization to accept the payments and
| direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees
| and significant open-source contributors. Eventually the
| developers might stop needing the paycheck from Mozilla,
| and thus from Google.
| dropofwill wrote:
| Spotify makes over 80% of revenue off of paid
| subscribers, even though over 60% of users are on the
| free, ad-supported subscription.
|
| Now that's not some optional donation scheme, there are
| real tangible benefits to being a paid subscriber, so idk
| how that could fit into something like Firefox.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > they go out of business forever, and Firefox finds a
| good home chosen by the community.
|
| who is going to support, maintain and develop Firefox in
| your scenario ?
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _They pay Mozilla to exist_
|
| Do they? I thought Google significantly reduced their
| payments to Mozilla a few years back, which started Mozilla
| current random-walk.
|
| Edit: As of 2023, they were as high as ever at 85% of
| Mozilla's finances coming from Google [1] . However the DoJ
| antitrust case against Google targets Google's payments to
| various entities (Mozilla, Apple) to make themselves the
| default search engine, thus threatening Mozilla's income. I
| did not immediately find sources for Mozilla's 2024 finances,
| but I can imagine they see the existential threat.
|
| > _and they are paying Mozilla to intentionally drive Firefox
| into the ground._
|
| That's just conspiracy-thinking.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _I hope Mozilla realizes (and still cares) that they have a
| huge opportunity here to be the power-browser where you can get
| awesome extensions_
|
| Don't worry, they won't. They have more important endeavors
| like funding some new bullshit virtue signalling campaign and
| paying huge CEO bonuses.
| glenstein wrote:
| It's like a never-ending horde of zombies that comes in and
| makes this cheap shot over and over. My understanding is the
| CEO makes slightly more than 1% of their revenues. And it's
| actually low compared to the typical tech CEO.
|
| But what's the story of cause and effect here such that if
| they'd invested 1% of their revenue differently, they would
| jump from 3% market share back to 30% or wherever they were
| previously? Once you ask these questions out loud, it's clear
| that people aren't thinking through the steps of the
| argument.
| phatfish wrote:
| Mozilla really does get under the skin of wannabe tech bros.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Can you install your own personal extensions without getting
| permission from Mozilla yet? Or are they still banning that?
| Because that change drove me away from Firefox.
| downrightmike wrote:
| FF is supporting V2 and V3 on purpose, so they are doing what
| you want
| bigtimesink wrote:
| If this doesn't give FF a noticeable bounce, FF really is a
| lost cause.
| klysm wrote:
| The shareholders will be grateful! A great victory for google!
| freedomben wrote:
| I blacklisted Chrome in dnf (the Fedora system update manager)
| once we hit near the last version to allow manifest v2, but
| apparently it wasn't enough. They reached in to my system and
| deactivated/deleted my manifest v2 extensions anyway regardless,
| even though my version still "supports" them. I'm quite
| displeased to say the least. Ultimately it's probably for the
| best though as now my "slow fade" plan has to be accelerated.
| Time to rip the bandaid off.
| tomrod wrote:
| Proton and Kagi have most of the services I've personally
| needed to de-Google. GCP is nicer than AWS, so will probably
| keep that around as a paying customer. Only thing I haven't
| found a great replacement yet for Google Docs (MS office is
| abysmal, but also lack of testing of alternatives so far :) ).
| haarolean wrote:
| I love Kagi's Orion but it's still not good enough yet to
| switch off chrome completely. You realize this once you delve
| deeper, install extensions, and use it as your daily driver.
| tomrod wrote:
| Looking forward to their Linux port. I should have added
| FF/Vivaldi to the list.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Spyware doing malware things. I guess it is unexpected in this
| case, but in hindsight just confirming its malware character.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| I've been using Firefox for years now after being an avid chrome
| user and I do not miss it at all.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Hoping someone can point me to a Chrome browser extension that
| supports custom block rules. My strange situ involves an IT-
| managed laptop / browser that can't access certain websites
| because of their embedded resources (eg fonts) hosted on 3rd-
| party domains; firewall rules block the embedded content,
| breaking the (allowed) main site I'm trying to visit. uBlock
| Origin was perfect: I'd craft custom rules to disallow
| problematic embedded resources, problem solved.
| subarctic wrote:
| Isn't there a lite version of ublock origin that works with
| manifest v3?
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| only gets updated when published and doesn't support custom
| rules or element picking :(
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| I have a similar situation, though for more personal, first-
| world problems. I used custom rules for things like YT shorts,
| Jira's giant bar for emoji-responses in comments, etc. I'm not
| sure there's a good substitute on Chrome because Google's
| primary intent was to destroy the efficacy of this tooling.
| ge96 wrote:
| Is it actually gone? I thought they just put that warning.
|
| I just re-enabled the one already installed on my devices.
|
| Once it's legit gone gone though yeah I'm going to Firefox or use
| Edge for web dev stuff
|
| Edit: I will say I am a hypocrite though I am trying to build a
| following by posting on YouTube... I don't control the ads on
| there, maybe you do when you are monetizable but yeah sucks I
| feel bad for the viewers. At the same time... I'll spend
| weeks/months on a project and no one cares so idk.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| gone for some... many... most.
| garciasn wrote:
| I re-enabled it last week but they forced removed it again days
| later. I re-enabled it by force and it's still working, but it
| won't be for much longer, I'm certain.
|
| https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-turned-off-ublock-in-ch...
|
| This URL, shared elsewhere in this thread, seems to tell you
| how to get it back up and running if you cannot do it easily;
| that said, I'll be moving to FF if they continue their
| shenanigans.
| ge96 wrote:
| what does sock I've written a few of my own extensions and
| they're manifest v2 ugh... but thankfully I was able to turn
| them back on
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| what ll it take to convert 80% of the world wide web users from
| chrome to firefox. can we write a super duper complicated
| migrator of sorts that literally installs firefox on behalf of
| the user, migrates all their data, migrates all extensions from
| chrome to firefox, even suggests alternative extensions for the
| ones that are not available and market the hell out of this
| migrator across x, bluesky, reddit etc?, One click migration from
| chrome to firefox, 0 tinkering
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The largest web properties pushing Firefox to users, or perhaps
| social media campaigns. It's an outreach effort, the technical
| details are already solved. Make the Google/Chrome brand toxic.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/how-to-switch-f...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| This is how Internet Explorer (via Windows), Chrome (via
| Google Search and YouTube) and Safari (via iOS) gained
| significant market share. Through another platform or service
| that they owned, that they could use to promote their
| browser.
|
| But large Web properties do not gain anything by promoting
| Firefox. Many are ad-supported, so getting rid of uBlock
| Origin is a good thing for them. Only having to test on
| Google Chrome (and maybe Safari) is cheaper for them. There
| has to be something in it for them to promote Firefox or an
| alternative browser.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Opening FF with my existing 3 windows and 100 open tabs would
| be all it took :-)
| maxglute wrote:
| I'm just hoping for AI coding to get competent enough in next
| few years to throw in deprecated chrome extensions code and get
| it converted to firefox.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The vast majority of Chrome extensions work on Firefox. Up
| until Manifest V2 being deprecated, the reverse was true,
| too.
| rendang wrote:
| What's keeping me from moving away from Chrome is the password
| storage & autofilling. Is Firefox's password manager just as
| good?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-your-logins-
| fire...
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Yup. Sync across all devices, auto fill works a exactly as
| expected, and it's a couple click process to port over all
| your saved info from Chrome.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Why not use an agnostic one like LastPass or one of the
| others?
| rendang wrote:
| Having the passwords available automatically when logging
| in to gmail on a new device feels simpler and easier since
| I'd be doing that anyway, as opposed to needing to DL a new
| app
| freefaler wrote:
| To migrate, the average user will need to see the problem
| first. Most people wouldn't care enough about it even if they
| magically could press a button and migrate.
|
| In the attention economy the browser and the mobile OS (and
| soon your LLM/Perplexity agent) are the most important points
| to control the aggregate user data. So it's a lost battle.
|
| For a sub 0.01% of the nerds there would be alternatives for
| the non-DRM content, but this wouldn't change the big picture.
|
| It's like the junk food business. Yes it's bad for people, but
| it's so addictive...
| stevetron wrote:
| The source code is available for Chrome. Suppose one downloads
| the source code, and then re-enables the Manifest v2? A bit of
| work, particularly when you have to do other things that probably
| allow it to co-exist with Manifest v3, and Manifest v4 when it
| comes. And prevent updates from taking it all out again. While
| working on it, flip the compiler's command-line switch that
| allows the executable to run on Windows 7.
|
| How long after the announced Windows 10 end of life will it be
| before all the software companies say 'Windows 11 is the minimum'
| like was seen with Windows 7?
| fpg69 wrote:
| The source code is available for Chromium, not Chrome. You can
| always maintain a fork, but it's a lot of work, and it's not a
| great solution to the problem of "world's largest surveillance
| company makes world's most popular browser".
| p_ing wrote:
| Keeping MV2 going is a massive and unrealistic effort for a
| small dev group while continuing to incorporate upstream
| changes. You cannot leave a browser without those upstream
| changes as they include security patches.
| dgacmu wrote:
| I've been running firefox on my laptop for the last year, with
| Chrome on my desktop, as a way to head-to-head them. For folks
| contemplating the switch, it hasn't been bad at all. Some better,
| some worse, but overall I rarely notice major differences except
| for a very small handful of sites that won't work with FF.
|
| And I still have all of my uBlock origin happiness. :)
| theteapot wrote:
| What sites don't work with FF?
| kingnothing wrote:
| I've been daily driving Firefox for several years. Everything
| I use on a daily basis works fine on FF, but every now and
| then you come across some random site that doesn't load or
| loads poorly.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Certainly no major site.
| CivBase wrote:
| I subscribed to SlingTV a little over a year ago and it did
| not support Firefox, even with all the DRM enabled.
| Although that's a problem I blame on SlingTV, not Firefox.
| It was a known issue which they refused to address. I've
| since ended my subscription with them.
|
| IIRC, there was also a time when Netflix did not support
| its highest streaming quality on Firefox. I'm not sure if
| that's still the case since I also ended my Netflix
| subscription.
|
| Otherwise I cannot think of any major site which is not
| supported on Firefox. Outside my employer's fragile
| intranet, I can't think of _any_ sites which do not support
| Firefox.
| mrec wrote:
| Amazon properties (the storefront, Prime) have been quite
| flaky for a long time now, but that may just be me.
| dgacmu wrote:
| I can't login to the work-paid-for version of Microsoft
| Copilot with Firefox, for some reason. I've had one or two
| others - I think they were internal CMU website tools. And
| even more niche: My kids took a ski lesson last year at
| Snowbird and the website with their report card rejected
| anything that didn't identify as Chrome. It _worked_ with
| mobile FF, but it popped up a "YOU SHOULD USE CHROME" banner
| and wouldn't let me past.
|
| So, small stuff. Maybe Copilot isn't working because of
| ublock, though.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| You can also disable ublock on specific 'trusted' domains.
| weberer wrote:
| The Teams web app doesn't work (I refuse to install the OS
| level app)
| fragmede wrote:
| seems like you're cutting off your nose to spite your face
| weberer wrote:
| Why? I can just temporarily launch Chrome if I need to
| join a meeting. There's no need to have MSware running in
| the background 24/7 doing god knows what.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| Expedia doesn't render properly in Firefox - some of the
| sections are missing, but it's not immediately obvious what
| is missing. It took me a while to figure out why my wife kept
| having problems with that site, and I had to move her to
| Chrome to allow her to use it.
|
| I continue to use Firefox because I know when to suspect a
| website problem might be the browser, but she doesn't have
| the ability to analyze a situation like this. I have this
| conundrum with other family members that I support. I want
| them to use Firefox, but I hate to have them run into an
| issue because of the browser I recommended.
| moritonal wrote:
| Do you have Enhanced Tracking Protection on? It often
| blocks this kind of third party content
| clintfred wrote:
| I can't get ticketmaster to work reliably on Firefox. I guess
| it thinks I'm a bot. I can use Chrome on the same computer
| and book tickets just fine.
|
| One crap product forcing me to use another crap product! ;)
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Bizzarely, Microsoft Word on web seems to be the only thing
| I've encountered which has FireFox problems, specifically
| it'll periodically "save" the document I'm typing and then
| delete the last sentence or two that I changed while it was
| saving. I think it's some kind of broken state management on
| the MS side (leave it to MS). That's the only site I've used
| though, and I've been a daily driver of FF for 10 years.
| knight_47 wrote:
| My biggest complaints with my switch is 1) no Chromecast
| functionality on Youtube and many other supported video
| platforms, 2) Very minimal page/text translation services
| (Arabic is missing), and 3) no search or translate from image
| (google lens) which I have gotten pretty used to. Oh and also,
| seeking videos is weird on FF, the mouse goes way past the
| scrubber when fast-forwarding or rewinding, just seems weird..
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| Add-on replacements: - Linguist for translations. - Search by
| Image for reverse image search (there are others that just
| use Google Lens directly, but I use this one).
|
| Cast is a bit more cumbersome. There is fx_cast on GitHub,
| but it requires a companion app. Firefox seems to want to add
| cast based on a flag you used to be able to enable, but I'm
| guessing there are some restrictions from Google's end they
| ran into.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Be sure to use "Report broken site" in the main menu on that
| handful of sites. Often there are things folks can do to fix it
| for you, if many people are running into it - but only if it's
| known.
|
| More info:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1de7bu1/were_the_f...
| prophesi wrote:
| The adblock I use[0] (based on uBlock) hasn't been available on
| the Chrome store nearly since day 1.
|
| [0] https://adnauseam.io/
| phito wrote:
| I hear so many people IRL complaining about this. I tell them to
| switch to firefox, that the adblockers still work there, and they
| still won't switch to it because they are "used to chrome". I
| really feel like google won this battle. People will through a
| lot of abuse just to maintain their habits.
| inertiatic wrote:
| I use Firefox as my main browser and it's not a viable
| alternative to Chrome if you have the very common usage pattern
| of keeping tens of tabs open.
| theteapot wrote:
| What? Why? That's me, I use FF.
| ecuzzillo wrote:
| You can't see all 50-70 tabs on a normal 27" monitor;
| Chrome will squish them almost indefinitely, and Firefox
| forces a large minimum tab width that makes the tab bar
| scroll forever and then you forget half the tabs you have
| going and everything's bad. I tried to switch and stopped
| because of this. I'll hang on until ubo really stops
| working, I guess, and then try to figure something else
| out.
| lostmsu wrote:
| There's a alternative: the dropdown menu with all tabs.
| ecuzzillo wrote:
| This doesn't fix the "you can't see all your tabs by just
| moving your eyes" problem, does it?
| dewey wrote:
| I use Firefox as my main browser and having "tens of tabs
| open" is something I do and there's zero issues with that.
| Spivak wrote:
| I regularly have 200+ tabs open in FF, no idea what the
| parent is talking about.
|
| Right now I'm at 181 and it's still buttery smooth.
| kennysoona wrote:
| Goodness just install a tab session manager.
| nightpool wrote:
| How big is your monitor? I can only see about 10-15 tabs on
| my 4k monitor before Firefox starts scrolling them off the
| screen. I regularly have 2-3x that on Chrome before tabs
| stop showing up.
| weberer wrote:
| I have 54 tabs open right now. The Sideberry extension
| lets you view them in the left sidebar. They're nested so
| that collapsing a root tab will also collapse all child
| tabs. There are also super tabs (Sideberry calls them
| "Tabs panels") so you can switch between entire groups of
| tabs.
| lawn wrote:
| I constantly have way more than that open. On mobile it's
| also over 100 tabs.
| Ringz wrote:
| I have no problem with hundreds of tabs on Firefox.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There is a "tab count" extension. Install it only if you
| want to learn some awful truths about yourself.
| masfuerte wrote:
| You don't need an extension. Right-click on a tab and
| "Select All Tabs". Right-click again and it has the
| option "Close 1,122 Tabs". Your number may be smaller.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| That only works if you've got a single window open. For
| myself, I keep ~10+ windows open, with then ~8 tabs per
| window. Note this is only practical on a tiling window
| manager. Anyway, the tab count extension may still be the
| way to go.
| kingnothing wrote:
| Firefox works great with dozens of open tabs. The only thing
| Chrome has going for it is tab groups. Firefox has Tab Style
| Tree, which is a decent substitute.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Tab groups landed in Firefox Nightly 3 months ago,[1] I'd
| expect them pretty soon in the release version.
|
| [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1938187
| tombert wrote:
| I was using Firefox exclusively for years, but when I sold my
| Macbook and bought a Thinkpad and installed Linux on it, I
| grew pretty annoyed by Firefox.
|
| Specifically, I couldn't view my 360 videos or photos on
| Google Images or Immich at anywhere near acceptable
| performance. The videos, recorded at 30fps, would get maybe
| 5fps. This was weird, because I have a fairly beefy laptop,
| it should be able to handle these videos just fine
| (especially since my iPhone handled it just fine).
|
| After a bit of debugging, it appears that there's a bug in
| how it's writing for the shader cache, and as such there was
| no hardware acceleration. I found a bug filed about my issue
| [1], and I didn't really feel like trying to fix it, because
| I didn't want to mess with Mesa drivers. I just installed
| Chromium and that's what I'm using right now, and it worked
| with my 360 videos and photos absolutely fine.
|
| I want Firefox to succeed, but that really left a bad taste
| in my mouth; it's not like it's weird to want my browser to
| be hardware accelerated.
|
| [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1921742
| Looks like it might be fixed now, or at least they figured
| out it was an issue with Mesa
| Coffeewine wrote:
| Surely this is hyperbole? I usually have hundreds of tabs
| open on firefox.
| porker wrote:
| 751 tabs open right now and growing.
|
| Firefox copes fine. Me? Not so much (:
| kennysoona wrote:
| 751 tabs open is just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
|
| Use some kind of tab session manager addon, and start
| organizing things - no need to have them all open
| concurrently.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I use the Tab Groups Addon on Chrome.
| asadotzler wrote:
| 1,740 tabs open right now on my wife's Firefox and it seems
| to be operating just fine. Sounds like something's wrong with
| your Firefox. I recommend a refresh which can be found under
| about:support
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| what the hell is she doing with 1740 tabs ? :)
|
| 10, 20, even 30 i can understand. More is the equivalent of
| forgetting to empty the kitchen trash can and still filling
| it until the smell is horrible.
|
| someone got to tell her there is a cross on the right to
| close the tab.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| I keep 100s of tabs open for months in Firefox. Chromium
| regulaly crashes after about 10-20.
| noman-land wrote:
| It's learned helplessness, laziness, bordering on cowardice.
| paulddraper wrote:
| People didn't switch from IE to Chrome because it was better.
|
| They switched because it was MUCH, MUCH better.
|
| (And was part of the ecosystem, profiles, bookmarks, passwords,
| etc.)
|
| ---
|
| For better or worse, no such disparity exists currently.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Well said. It also wasn't _worse_ in any way. It was strictly
| better.
|
| Firefox is definitely better than Chrome in some ways, but it
| is also worse in others. Notably performance and integration
| with Google's password manager.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| They switched because Google bundled invisible Chrome
| installers in other software that would not only make its
| browser the default, but also invisibly steal IE clicks.
|
| A move that was widely celebrated at the time.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The adblockers still work on Chrome though.
|
| Pretty sure people are figuring out to switch to uBlock Origin
| Lite and ads -- including on YouTube -- are still being blocked
| just fine.
| TingPing wrote:
| For now. Advertisers now know ways to bypass all blockers for
| Chrome.
| unicornporn wrote:
| They "work", but not well.
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-
| works-b...
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Until those things don't work any longer. Slowly the frog is
| boiled here.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| What's in Chrome that they are so used to? I use Vivaldi,
| Chrome, Firefox on every day basis, and can barely see a
| difference.
| nkrebs13 wrote:
| Bookmarks, history, generally historical reliability, and
| (biggest reason for me) password manager.
|
| I rarely have to type/remember passwords anymore on Android
| or web and it "just works". I know there are password
| managers out there that ostensibly handle the password-saving
| thing and are browser-agnostic but when I tried it in the
| past I had issues on some sites and, when it did work, it
| felt clunkier.
| kypro wrote:
| People say similar things about Google Search, and a few times
| I've tried not use Google Search but every time I've tried it's
| become clear that the reason I use Google Search isn't just
| habit, but that it's the best search engine for most queries I
| perform.
|
| I've had a very different experience with browsers though... I
| switch browsers pretty often and with ease. I genuinely can't
| get my head around why someone would continue to use Google
| Chrome if they're unhappy with how they're treating their
| users. The UI between browsers is 99% identical. The most
| annoying thing about switching browser is just having to spend
| 10 minutes setting things up, but that isn't going to exceed
| the annoyance of having to see ads constantly for months or
| years.
|
| There's really no good reason not to switch browsers. Your
| habits are not going to change between browsers. Unless you're
| a Chrome power user and using some very niche features in
| Chrome there is very, very little difference between Firefox
| and Chrome for the vast majority of tasks.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Well, today mostly yes. But at the same time, I've been an
| Opera user (if not fanboy) for a good decade, until they
| ditched their own engine and basically started from scratch
| with chrome as a base. It lost 99% of its features overnight.
|
| I really struggled to switch to anything else. Firefox was
| definitely the most customizable, but finding extensions to
| replicate every feature of Opera, and properly at that, was a
| never-ending nightmare.
|
| Only at that point did I realize how vital a browser has
| become for everyday tasks, and as a power user, how much you
| get accustomed to it. Maybe not if you're just running stock
| Chrome or Firefox with two extensions, but Opera was so
| feature-rich that I didn't ever install a single extension
| but needed about a dozen on Firefox to try and mimic it. In
| the end I just stayed on Opera 12 until it wasn't even funny
| anymore. It must've been about two years. Eventually so many
| sites broke that I just switched to Firefox and only
| installed uBO and greasemonkey. It hurt but over time I just
| gradually forgot what using opera was like. Sometimes I think
| back and really miss it. Some of it is just nostalgia by now,
| but the struggle switching was real.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| i keep seeing some people pretend Vivaldi is the new opera,
| made from the same developer.
|
| did you give a try, is it even remotely comparable ?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I don't remember when I tried it for the first time, but
| I did like it much better than the new opera. At least
| they were adding new features much faster. It was still
| different enough and lacking (to me) important features
| from the old opera. I still have it installed today as
| the fallback for the exceedingly rare case that some site
| doesn't work in Firefox and I really need to access it.
| But I have to admit that I didn't really bother to
| evaluate it properly in a long time. An ex colleague
| doing webdev just recently told me it's his primary
| browser as it has some nice things to make his life
| easier that were just more cumbersome to set up in
| chrome. I just gave up and accepted that at least by
| using Firefox I'm fighting the engine-monopoly of
| chrome/blink. ;)
| vvpan wrote:
| Wanted to note that uBlock works on Firefox mobile browser too
| - it is excellent.
| 6SixTy wrote:
| Only the Android version has uBlock just fyi. Also, I've
| never been able to watch movies on a plane with Firefox
| mobile.
| JoeOfTexas wrote:
| Debugging on Firefox has always been awkward with sourcemaps.
| The sourcemaps load late, so breakpointing is hard at load
| time.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| While JS debugging seems to be a bit slower, I find their
| HTML/CSS debugging tools far superior to Chrome's. Neither
| browser engine is great for the whole package, but overall I
| really prefer Firefox when it comes to dev tools.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| In the end sighing and going "stupid Google" is a lot easier
| than changing even the smallest of habits.
|
| People also seem to think switching over is some kind of
| involved process for some reason.
| megadata wrote:
| The Stockholm Syndrome.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
| chpatrick wrote:
| This made me go back to Firefox after 15 years of using Chrome
| personally.
| k0stas wrote:
| There is still a DOM hack to allow installation by re-enabling
| the "Add to Chrome" button on the linked page. See "Download and
| install uBlock Origin in Chrome" on this page:
| https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-turned-off-ublock-in-ch...
|
| After the install, Chrome will disable the extension on the next
| restart but it can be re-enabled .. for now.
| AJRF wrote:
| I am coming from a place of ignorance, but could uBlock have
| worked on Manifest v3?
|
| It seems like it would have worked, but the danger was over time
| Google report less and less information to the extension, but as
| it is today, the extension would have worked the same on v3 as
| v2?
|
| As I say - I am ignorant sorry, its hard to search for an answer
| to this specific question
|
| Edit: Sorry the answer is here:
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The ability to run code to decide if a request should be
| blocked was removed in v3.
|
| If it could work in v3 it would have been updated. There are
| some alternate v3 versions that don't work as well.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| if you are in tech do your friends and family a favor:
|
| Download and setup Brave browser on their device. I haven't seen
| an ad in years.
|
| https://brave.com/
| dewey wrote:
| Still the same engine as Chrome, so it doesn't do anything
| against the monoculture of Chromium. Firefox works just as
| well, admittedly they'd have to install an extension instead of
| ad blocking being there by default.
| agosta wrote:
| This post is about UBlock being blocked on CHROME. Naturally,
| the folks interested in this development are likely
| interested in a chromium based browser that does allow
| blocking ads. Brave is a solid solution here.
| agosta wrote:
| It's funny people try to avoid Brave because of the crypto
| stuff init - like you can totally ignore that (it's not even
| enabled by default). So in daily usage, it behaves as if uBlock
| was a browser (rather than a Browser extension). It's great.
| kemono_tigris wrote:
| Since Chrome discontinued support for Manifest V2 extensions,
| I've switched to Mullvad Browser for browsing ad-heavy websites.
| It comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed, is open source, and is
| developed by a reputable company.
| Stagnant wrote:
| For now you can still bring back manifest v2 support (which re-
| enables ublock origin if you haven't removed it) by making
| registry changes. Obviously only a temporary solution, might buy
| you a few months.
|
| Powershell commands to set them:
|
| 1. New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome" -Force
|
| 2. New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome"
| -Name "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" -Value 2 -PropertyType
| DWORD -Force
| charliea0 wrote:
| Is there any justification for this beyond increasing Google's ad
| revenue?
| djpr wrote:
| Funny thing is: It's to prepare for when Chrome is spun off
| from Google, due to increasing US government pressure.
|
| See: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/08/new-doj-proposal-still-
| cal...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Performance. For faster page loads.
|
| uBlock Origin Lite still blocks ads on Chrome, but it's faster
| than uBlock Origin.
|
| I don't expect Google's ad revenue has changed meaningfully at
| all, assuming people switch to uBlock Origin Lite.
| gkbrk wrote:
| It blocks less ads, it's not surprising that it's faster.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I thought the browser would be faster when blocking _more_
| ads, not fewer ads.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| The quiet part which none of us are saying out loud (bec. we
| love UBO) is that it's insane to allow extensions to have that
| much power.
|
| uBlock Origin is obv a great great extension and I'm
| considering switching to FF just for that one extension, but
| consider what some newfangled AI extension developed by a
| random dude can do to the webpage you're viewing - anything UBO
| can do! So I think they have a decent case but I wish there was
| a carveout for UBO
| Havoc wrote:
| The banner at the top is really selling it
|
| >Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
| jmuguy wrote:
| Related if anyone is switching over. I like to run Firefox
| Developer Edition[0] as my "work" browser, with work related
| bookmarks, etc. and then regular Firefox for nonwork. This makes
| it really easy to keep the two separate. I know there's a lot of
| ways to segment within the same browser but this works well for
| me.
|
| [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
| noman-land wrote:
| FYI developer edition has a ton of additional data collection
| that I don't believe can be disabled, if that matters to you.
| eNV25 wrote:
| Isn't Developer Edition just a rebranded Firefox Beta that
| uses a different profile by default?
| callahad wrote:
| Same branch as beta, but with different build flags. Add-
| ons don't need to be signed to be installed on DevEdition,
| there's a DevTools button in the toolbar by default, etc.
| bangaladore wrote:
| Chromium has a concept of "user data directories" which in
| theory keep all data isolated to a single folder. You can use a
| launch parameter to specify what the user data directory you
| want to use is (so a shortcut). I'm pretty sure Firefox must
| have an equivalent.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| It does, it's just called profiles. And they have a setting
| to always launch sthe profile selector on start.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yes, I used to always use a work profile and a home profile
| in Firefox. Over time I simply made more containers and
| stopped using profiles altogether. But the option is still
| there.
| regularjack wrote:
| Containers are firefox's killer feature, highly encourage you
| to try them. I wish Mozilla would invest more in developing
| that feature.
| dpz wrote:
| You can also just use Firefox containers. Or if you don't want
| to send all the data with dev use a fork of firefox
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Thanks. I didn't use uBlock but I will be switching due to
| Chrome removing support for non-subsituting keywords (search
| engines with no %s), which I used heavily as basically aliases
| for web addresses.
|
| https://issues.chromium.org/issues/397720842?pli=1
| RamRodification wrote:
| You can achieve the same (or similar) thing with Firefox
| profiles. Just launch with "-p" and it'll give you a profile
| picker. You can have a work profile with separate extensions,
| bookmarks, settings, etc.
| aeblyve wrote:
| If you do not interfere in politics, eventually politics will
| interfere with you.
| pton_xd wrote:
| Thanks for keeping me safe, Google! You know better than me what
| software I should be running on my computer.
| ta1243 wrote:
| What goes around...
|
| We had mainframes and dumb terminals where the work was done in
| a remote data centre you connected to
|
| Then we had the personal computer revolution where the work was
| done on the box you owned and controlled on your desk
|
| Then we moved to the cloud where work is done in a remote data
| centre you connect to
| portaouflop wrote:
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/releases
|
| uBlockOrigin "Lite" is a good(?) replacement afaict
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's faster and safer and blocks pretty much everything.
| submeta wrote:
| Abandoned Chrome years ago. Am using Firefox and never looked
| back. Same with other Google products: Replaced Gmail with
| Fastmail, Google Docs with Office365 (yeah, I know, Microsoft).
| fiatjaf wrote:
| The hardest thing to replace was always search to me, because
| the usually alternatives (DuckDuckGo, Ecosia etc) always suck.
|
| But Kagi made that part so easy it's unbelievable.
| submeta wrote:
| Ever looked into Perplexity? Will check out Kagi.
| alluro2 wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious about why you find DDG sucking compared
| to Google Search? I've switched ~2 years ago, when I found
| DDG better in terms of less clutter and not showing ads as
| results - also, if there are no good results, it didn't push
| nonsense. But maybe GS improved in the meantime on the
| quality of results and I'm missing out?
| sedatk wrote:
| For starters, they use a terrible custom font as
| default[1], and that tells me that they don't have their
| priorities straight in terms of product quality.
|
| [1] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3lhftw36rac2x
| submeta wrote:
| Wow, Kagi is just extremely good. Found old friends I
| couldn't reach, found product infos where Google would
| pollute me with ads and garbage. This is awesome. Thanks for
| mentioning.
| dartharva wrote:
| Curiously, it is still working in Chrome on my laptop (running
| Linux Mint) right now.
| harrytang wrote:
| It is a good ad blocker!
| crazygringo wrote:
| Fortunately, at least so far, uBlock Origin Lite works perfectly
| fine on Chrome.
|
| I know people have made a lot of arguments as to why it might not
| be as good in theory, or why things might change in the future.
| But so far, ever since I was forced to switch, I have seen
| exactly zero difference. Lists are updated often enough that I
| haven't seen anything get through. Adblocking works on YouTube.
| If anything, pages seem to load even a little faster. I've had no
| complaints.
| creato wrote:
| It's also great to not give basically unlimited permissions to
| an extension.
| pmdr wrote:
| I think people should be able to do whatever they want on
| their own machine. If the setting is there, then let me use
| it for whatever extension I see fit. Sure, make it harder to
| do so, but don't treat users like children. I can't even
| screenshot banking apps on my own damn Android phone now.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's not about _you_ being able to do whatever you want on
| your machine. It 's extension authors being able to.
| Malicious Chrome extensions are a huge problem.
| pmdr wrote:
| Don't they have a vetting process for extensions? Even if
| they don't, you, the (power)user should be able to
| manually turn on whatever you want, should you so desire.
| What's stunning is that we're moving away from this, for
| our "security." And by then "use Firefox/something else"
| won't be helpful when entire websites will refuse to work
| on anything else but Chrome.
| ikiris wrote:
| Not really, no.
|
| Putting security in scare quotes doesn't make the actual
| risk go away. This is a blatant anti ad block move, but
| you aren't making reasonable arguments either.
| pmdr wrote:
| I'm not sure how not being able to use websites without
| Chrome is unreasonable, though. If it hasn't come to that
| already, it will soon.
|
| One can find reasonable use cases for every security
| measure that takes away freedom. That doesn't mean that
| all such decisions are balanced, and I'm advocating that
| the user be the one deciding their level of security,
| knowingly. That's the most important part being taken
| away, actually. Until there's palpable resistance (or
| even doubt or endless debate), those taking things away
| have no reason to stop.
| ikiris wrote:
| At no point did anyone argue you should be required to
| use chrome to use some websites. That is a complete
| strawman you made up here. No one is requiring you to use
| chrome.
|
| As to your security argument: If you've never seen the
| past user's desktops filled with browser hijacking and ad
| / virus ware, then I'm happy for you, but ignoring
| serious security concerns isn't a valid approach to
| managing an end user product regardless of the nebulous
| slippery slope freedoms argument you're attempting to
| make.
|
| This is not an advocation to ban all adblockers, but you
| are advocating for basically a free for all, and we've
| seen how that works. It doesn't and this entire
| discussion is a waste of time.
| pmdr wrote:
| > the nebulous slippery slope freedoms argument you're
| attempting to make.
|
| But it is a slippery slope and we're already sliding
| down, even if we don't want to. It's hard to make users
| switch to something else. I know it, I assume you know
| it, probably everyone on HN knows it. But, and this is
| key, Google knows it. People are resistant to change,
| especially if it means altering their workflow. Where
| said workflow depends on a monopolistic product that's
| key to unlocking even more ad revenue, do not think that
| those with incentive won't hesitate to push for more
| restrictions while claiming they have our own best
| interest in mind.
|
| No one brought it up now, but there have been cases of
| websites being deliberately made slower on Firefox. I
| don't think it's unreasonable to think that this will
| continue happening. If you do, then let's agree to
| disagree.
|
| > but you are advocating for basically a free for all,
| and we've seen how that works.
|
| I'm not advocating for a "free for all." I'm advocating
| for a "free for the knowledgeable & responsible." I'm
| advocating for informed consent in computing. We've been
| moving away from that, more so because of greed than
| goodwill.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Don't they have a vetting process for extensions?
|
| No.
|
| > Even if they don't, you, the (power)user should be able
| to manually turn on whatever you want, should you so
| desire.
|
| It's not as simple as that. As long as it is _possible_
| for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your
| browser then they 'll make that a condition of use, and
| unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just
| say "eh ok".
|
| Browser extensions are a particularly dangerous case
| because they auto-update by default. It is very common
| for popular extensions to get sold to bad actors who then
| update them to inject ads into everything you view, or
| worse.
|
| If you make it _impossible_ for extensions to do that,
| then they can no longer make it a condition of
| installation.
| pmdr wrote:
| > It's not as simple as that. As long as it is possible
| for extensions to have no-holds-barred access to your
| browser then they'll make that a condition of use, and
| unsophisticated users (approximately everyone) will just
| say "eh ok".
|
| Then make it complicated enough so the user has to click
| through several screens, type in that they know what
| they're doing and be warned that if extension/website X
| asks them to do Y, they're getting f'd and should stop.
| Beyond that, it's their fault.
|
| Why can't we treat browsers like we used to treat PCs?
| Why do we have to have to make them so "safe" like we did
| with phones? Tons of scams happen on phones now, so it
| didn't quite work out, but we still gave up a lot.
|
| Personally, I'm rarely a Chrome user. I'm most afraid of
| stuff not working in non-Chromium browsers, though.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Then make it complicated enough so the user has to
| click through several screens, type in that they know
| what they're doing and be warned that if
| extension/website X asks them to do Y, they're getting
| f'd and should stop. Beyond that, it's their fault.
|
| Yeah I mean... that's just an arms race. You now have to
| type "allow pasting" into the dev console to paste
| Javascript there. Guess why.
|
| Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions
| will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
| pmdr wrote:
| > You now have to type "allow pasting" into the dev
| console to paste Javascript there. Guess why.
|
| Would you be content with Chrome (hypothetically) taking
| away the console instead? Your average user has no
| business using it anyway.
|
| > Browsers can't ever win that race. Malicious extensions
| will just say "go to settings and blah blah blah".
|
| You're absolutely right, they can't win the race. People
| have been plugging holes in software for decades and
| malware still hasn't been defeated. Taking features away
| just to plug more holes instead of restricting them
| doesn't seem right to me. One could argue (I haven't
| looked this up, though) that even more users fall victims
| to malware in spite of today's "locked" browsers (and
| phones) simply because there's an ever increasing number
| of people online. A lot of that malware is being spread
| through misleading ads and malicious code that uBO
| blocks.
|
| With uBO vanishing, a lot of users will be left without
| an adblocker. Those who aren't tech-savvy enough won't
| know what to install instead (eg uBL). They'll go on
| browsing unprotected. Google will see a spike in ad
| revenue and will be pleased. They have no real interest
| in blocking scammy ads.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| On the off chance that Google is truly benevolent and was
| just worried about users' security, then they could have
| easily hidden the required network-reading functionality
| behind a flag or "developer mode", or only allowed it for
| a small set of manually-audited extensions like uBlock
| Origin.
|
| The fact that they provided absolutely none of these
| alternatives isn't a coincidence. Google is a for-profit
| company with 300+ billion of annual revenue, a giant
| chunk of which comes from their advertisement services.
| It's a blatant conflict of interest and there's no good
| reason to believe that they're acting in good faith here.
| pmdr wrote:
| If they really were concerned about user security, they'd
| do a better job blocking scammy & misleading ads instead.
| uBO basically _saves_ users from installing dubious
| Chrome extensions and other malware only because they
| show up as ads or other annoyances.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Do you think Firefox should let me install an unsigned
| extension?
| pmdr wrote:
| Absolutely. I have no idea if their store requires
| signing, but in any case, I think you should be able to
| sideload your own extensions after being lectured on how
| it might be dangerous. I'm not saying it should be easy,
| though.
| redox99 wrote:
| It's just a matter of time. Now that anti adblocks are way more
| effective, they'll become common.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| LLM/AI had perfect timing
| pmdr wrote:
| Perfect timing to steal all content and then flood the web
| with slop making me want to spend less time online
| altogether.
| naet wrote:
| I saw significant difference using the Lite version, enough
| that I switched to Firefox with Origin instead. I expected it
| to be good enough and was surprised to see the difference.
| duffyjp wrote:
| Same. I use the element picker tool all the time to rid the
| web of crap I don't care about. Example:
| whatever_class:has-text(/YouTube Shorts/)
|
| On Android you can even do this on your phone in Firefox. The
| UI is a bit tricky on such a small device, but it's so worth
| it. I went so far as to uninstall Chrome (well, disable it)
| on my Android.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Does "Click to Remove Element" not work for you?
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/click-to-remove-
| ele...
|
| For whatever reason, the UBOL creator chose not to include
| zapper/picker in order to make it as "lite" as possible. It
| wasn't a Manifest v3 thing, as they've explained.
|
| I have no problem with using a separate extension for
| zapping.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I was not aware of this extension, thanks for pointing it
| out.
| MattSayar wrote:
| My YouTube ad-blocking experience with uOL looks like a
| black/muted screen for 30s until the real video starts playing.
| No "Skip" button appears. I disabled the extension for YouTube
| so I can at least skip the video after 5s. Is it better for
| everyone else?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Are you using the "complete" filtering mode?
|
| For certain sites, you need to click the extension and change
| it from "basic" to "complete". This seems to be a performance
| thing, so it's not doing slower more complete adblocking on
| sites that don't need it. I've only had to do it on a couple
| of sites.
| MattSayar wrote:
| I am now, and that works great. Thanks!
| haswell wrote:
| After 10+ years as a primary browser, I've been 100% off of
| Chrome for about 1.5 years now as part of a broader effort to de-
| Google my life, and things have been going well.
|
| It's interesting to notice how much my internal feelings have
| shifted over the years. There have been a few rare occasions
| where I had to use a Chromium-based browser, and I felt the same
| "ick" I used to feel when forced to use Internet Explorer for
| some reason.
|
| Come to the Firefox (and variant) side. The water is warm.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| > _The water is warm._
|
| Mostly because they're peeing in the pool. Mozilla deleted
| their promise to never sell its users' personal data.
| haswell wrote:
| This is why I mentioned (and variants). While I'm unhappy
| with the Mozilla situation, Firefox is still a significantly
| better option than Chrome at this point, and the various
| forks address any concerns with their privacy policy.
|
| One can even self-host their own sync server if so inclined.
| alluro2 wrote:
| You've voiced my sentiment exactly. I really wish Firefox was
| more at the forefront of innovation and development, and
| there's a lot to criticise Mozilla for, but I wouldn't change
| it back for Chromium for anything.
|
| I have a completely custom minimal layout with address bar and
| tabs at the bottom, all the extensions I need, and I don't
| notice the performance or compatibility differences almost
| ever, with few rare exceptions. I feel it much more as "mine",
| and it's a joy to use.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| Brave, fork of Chrome. https://brave.com/
|
| Ignore the crypto; enjoy the integrated ad-blocking.
|
| Most seamless ad-blocking I've ever experienced.
| phytographer wrote:
| Amen
| haarolean wrote:
| Yeah, ignore the crypto and tons of other stuff about phoning
| home or doing malicious 'oopsies' things.
| mubou wrote:
| For the unaware: https://old.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1
| j1pq7b/list_of_b...
| system2 wrote:
| If I owned Mozilla I'd be blasting commercials full-force about
| this until all my marketing budget runs out.
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| Instead, they create a Terms of Use giving them rights to your
| data and remove the promise not to sell personal data. I love
| Firefox, but Mozilla either does not understand their users or
| just loves shooting themselves in the foot. Every time I think
| they have learned their lesson, they make another stupid
| decision.
| busymom0 wrote:
| It's funny how on Safari, the webstore link shows a message:
|
| > Switch to Chrome to install extensions and themes
| imroot wrote:
| I've eliminated Chrome from my personal systems when uBO stopped
| working. Blocking v2 manifests also broke a few extensions that
| were being developed for my day job: they've spent the last few
| weeks working on Firefox extensions and are almost at the point
| where they're getting ready to wipe Chrome from our corporate
| machines.
| caminante wrote:
| Try uBO Lite [0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-
| as...
| caseyy wrote:
| The new uBlock Origin Lite is compatible with Manifest v3 and has
| the featured flag on the Chrome Web Store:
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
| croes wrote:
| But is less capable than uBlock origin.
| caminante wrote:
| Not really.
|
| 90% of users won't notice a difference.
|
| Here's the feature diff. [0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/wiki/Frequently-as...
| dhrm1k wrote:
| i mean what's the breaking point? why is ublock no longer
| in the store whole the lite is?
| croes wrote:
| ublock is manifest v2, lite is v3.
|
| Manifest v3 removed access to certain APIs that where
| used to alter the websites to block ads
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I really really miss Zapper Mode
| ngomez wrote:
| I've been trying uBO Lite myself for a few months, and
| anyone who uses YouTube will absolutely notice that it's
| worse at blocking. Lite tends to delay playback at the
| start of a video for as long as the blocked ads would've
| been, making the site feel slower, and once in a while an
| ad will slip past the blocker anyway.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I am not so sure if that is the light version. In my
| (outdated) Ungoogled Chromium which still has classic
| uBlock, YouTube videos also have delays or do stop
| playing completely after a few seconds. So I have
| switched to the FreeTube software to watch YouTube
| videos. I can recommend that.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| I have used Youtube and uBlock Origin lite for the past
| couple of months and have not noticed that. Are you using
| the complete filtering mode?
| kennysoona wrote:
| Just use Freetube to browse Youtube. It's a better
| experience in every respect.
| orphea wrote:
| > Not really.
|
| Straight from the FAQ you linked: In
| general, uBOL will be less effective at dealing with
| websites using anti-content blocker or minimizing website
| breakage.
|
| Sooo... yes really?
| caseyy wrote:
| Yes pedantically, not really. :)
| pmdr wrote:
| It would be nice if uBO automatically got replaced with uBL
| instead of requiring users to manually install it. A lot of
| users who might've had uBO installed by someone else won't
| know how or won't care enough to do it.
| AstralSerenity wrote:
| Capable enough for most users, however I made the jump as it
| no longer fit my needs.
| noname120 wrote:
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-
| as...
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Wow, the big one to my eyes is the 'removeparam=' which
| allowed uBlock to strip out parameters (e.g. tracking
| parameters) from the request, allowing you to visit e.g.
| affiliate links without being tracked as coming from a
| specific affiliate (if the affiliate info was in the query
| params at least). Stuff like that is really amazing, I'm
| glad that here on FireFox we've still got the full uBlock
| Origin.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I would have said, use ClearURLs, but it is blocked too:
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clearurls/lckanj
| gmi...
|
| Socialfixer won't work anymore too.
| creato wrote:
| And also requires far less intrusive permissions.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Lite version works for me the same as the original. Blocks
| majority of ads.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Slippery slope corporate apologism.
|
| It's like a corporation shrinking the package size of your
| food by 10%, keeping the price the same and then claiming you
| still get the "majority" of the food.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Or just accurately describing reality?
|
| UBOL is still blocking all the ads for me. It hasn't gone
| from 100% to 90%. It's still at 100%.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Antisthenes I appreciate your "cynical" response but what I
| meant is I didn't yet notice any degradation of service
| compared to the original uBlock Origin.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I switched to firefox a few months ago because of this. However,
| I just switched back last week. Overall firefox is a better
| browser. The ability to screenshot in the browser is so useful
| and I used it 10x per day, not having it in chrome is a real
| pain.
|
| But.. nobody tests on it anymore I think. Lots of popular sites
| are very slow and laggy with it, including sites I need for work.
| I don't think this is because of inferior technology, I think I
| just think nobody spends the time to make sure things work well
| on firefox. I could split-brain and use chrome for github and
| some other stuff but that is such a pain when clicking links.
|
| The other issue is I think firefox support will only get worse.
| Their market share is back to where it was in IE6 days and
| dropping.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I'm being brigaded haha, why would this comment
| get downmodded?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| We really need a Slashdot-style meta-moderation system.
| Certain things always get brigaded, especially anything about
| the relative merits of browsers. It would be nice to flag
| people who only show up to downvote and reduce their impact.
| hintymad wrote:
| Will uBlock Origin Lite[1] a good alternative to uBlock Origin?
| It is one of the alternatives recommended by the uBlock Origin
| tea.
|
| [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-
| lite/...
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| "Don't be evil"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| [flagged]
| vlod wrote:
| Invitation to come join the Firefox side. We have cookies!
| wistlo wrote:
| When I click the link for this story, Edge (stop laughing.
| Please.) pops up "uBlock Origin works on Microsoft Edge." (It's
| already there, Edge, but thank you).
|
| Edge is based on Chromium, so would that mean this breakage will
| eventually apply to Edge as the Manifest changes, uhm, manifest
| to Chromium-based products? Or is this just a Google Chrome
| thing?
|
| FWIW I keep Firefox around but I have to admit I like Edge's
| smooth sync of bookmarks and settings across machines and even
| different platforms. I switched about two years ago when Edge was
| clearly faster and lighter. It's no longer as lightweight and
| there are slowly accumulating annoyances coming mostly from some
| Microsoft Clippy-esque attempts to make some tasks "easier"
| (mostly via Copilot) but I still prefer it to Firefox. My former
| employer/retiree benefits site, for example, won't open at all in
| Firefox. I've considered other Chromium based browsers like Brave
| but haven't (yet) been sufficiently motivated to switch. (Give
| Microsoft some time, I expect they'll eshit Edge eventually).
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| Many Chromium-based browsers will keep Manifest v2 support for
| a while. But eventually the upstream Chromium codebase will
| diverge enough that it becomes too much work to keep it and
| they will be forced to drop it as well.
| agosta wrote:
| The manifest situation simply doesn't apply to Brave in
| relation to adblockers specifically. That is, Brave will
| function like uBlock without having to install uBlock as an
| extension - that's kinda the whole point of Brave (blocking
| ads / making them opt in only). That said, it is true
| extensions one may use that are affected by the manifest
| version change may be affected in Brave.
| haarolean wrote:
| Hey there, nice shilling for brave. 1 thread, 4 comments!
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's still working on edge, but I wonder how long that will last.
| rednafi wrote:
| Firefox sucks and doesn't work for me. Maybe I will give Brave
| with ublock a try.
| agosta wrote:
| You don't need uBlock installed on Brave. Brave basically is
| uBlock (if uBlock where a browser).
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| It's been like this for quite a while already
| vemv wrote:
| What's the best next choice if I don't want to move away from a
| Chrome-like experience?
|
| (Old habits die hard)
|
| There's https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
| - is it a sound choice nowadays?
| egurns wrote:
| At the time of writing this comment, 53 minutes after OP, I am
| able to install- and use- uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web
| Store. What am I missing?
| gloosx wrote:
| I've been personally enjoying Ghostery extension for the past
| year, block all ads, youtube, any HTML5 player, banners, popups -
| really clean and tidy browsing experience.
|
| It didn't even catch any hype regarding this manifest support
| issue uBlock origin has, and it keeps silently working good
| without any interruptions, I wonder why is that?
| noname120 wrote:
| Because Ghostery belongs to an analytics company that sells
| your data so they are working round the clock to keep it
| running
| yard2010 wrote:
| Honest question - let's say you can't physically experience
| ads. Why do you care about your data being sold? This is a
| problem only if you can see ads, but remember, you can't.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The data can be used for more than ads - it can be used to
| adjust prices, etc.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Do no evil!
| byearthithatius wrote:
| This is why I run Firefox and will continue to do so. Google
| Chrome sucks I only have to to test stuff.
| jmyeet wrote:
| What's frustrating to me is how predictable all this is if you
| analyze the world with a materialist understanding.
|
| To boil it down, the most dominant philosophy, whether peole know
| it or not, is idealism. In idealism, people, nations,
| corporations, etc have some inherent quality beyond their
| physical make up. It's almost spiritual in that way. Even the
| concept of a soul is an idealist position. It's largely a
| circular argument that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
|
| So, the USA on the world stage is the good guy because we are the
| good guys, regardless of our actions or the consequences thereof.
| So an awful lot of effort is spent to label certain actors as
| "good" or "bad" to suit some objective. Superhero movies and a
| perfect example of idealism and it's no coincidence that they've
| had a renaissance since 9/11.
|
| Materialism is simply the view that the physical world is all
| there is. The consequence of this is that we affect the material
| world and it affects us. There are no inherent qualities like
| being "good" or "bad". Instead, those are simply labels you apply
| to the actions of an entity.
|
| My point here is that for years Google pushed this good guy
| narrative (ie "don't be evil") but any materialist understands
| that Google is a corporation so ultimately will act like any
| other corporation.
|
| Google makes money selling ads. Ad blockers affect Google's
| bottom line. The relentless pursuit of increasing profits means
| fighting ad blockers was always an inevitability. Nobody should
| be surprised by that.
|
| Now some will point to Google's control of Chrome as an antitrust
| issue and it probably is but that misses the point. A corporation
| that solely owns Chrome will ultimately act in a user-hostile way
| too because that's what corporations do.
|
| The only long-term successful model for something like Chrome is
| to be something like the Wikimedia Foundation. The profit motive
| will always ultimately destroy it otherwise. If you can even find
| a business model for a browser, which I have serious doubts
| about.
|
| A materialist knows all this because of how the workers relate to
| the means of production. A collective (which Wikimedia Foundation
| is, basically) is where the workers own the means of production.
| A corporation introduces capital owners whose interests are in
| direct opposition to that of the users.
| Animats wrote:
| Surprising to see that happen just as Google is entering an
| antitrust breakup.
| rmoriz wrote:
| Switched to Firefox a year ago, no regrets. Only flashing devices
| via webserial (Meshtastic etc) is missing for me.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| uBlock Origin still works in Firefox.
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
|
| And you can, I believe, still just modify your hosts table to
| block out ads in Chrome. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
|
| Or your router's DNS using something like NextDNS.
| https://nextdns.io/
|
| Ads suck. Support content where you can, but even when you pay
| they still serve ads / tracking scripts. So fuck 'em. Block all
| the ads.
| vezycash wrote:
| _Major DOJ Antitrust Cases_
|
| 1. United States v. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (1911)
| - Duration: 7 years (1904-1911) - Outcome: Standard
| Oil was ruled an illegal monopoly and broken up into 34
| companies.
|
| 2. United States v. Microsoft Corp. (1998) -
| Duration: 4 years (1998-2002) - Outcome: Initially
| ordered to split, but after appeals, Microsoft avoided a breakup
| and instead agreed to business restrictions.
|
| 3. United States v. AT&T (Bell System) (1982) -
| Duration: 8 years (1974-1982) - Outcome: AT&T
| agreed to a settlement, leading to the 1984 breakup into seven
| "Baby Bells" to increase competition.
| downrightmike wrote:
| And the DOJ is still holding that Google must break up
| odieldomanie wrote:
| On Firefox, I use a uBlock Origin script to block Twitch ads.
| (Normal filters don't work on Twitch.) Is it possible to block
| Twitch ads with uBO-Lite as well?
| intermerda wrote:
| Do you mind sharing which uBlock Origin script you use for
| blocking ads on Twitch? I tried one a while ago but didn't get
| it to work.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I moved to Adguard years ago when I found that uBlock Origin Lite
| doesn't support custom filter lists. If Adguard can support that
| on MV3 then uBlock Origin is artificially gimping uBOL on
| Edge/Chrome.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Stop using Chrome.
| lousken wrote:
| This was to be expected, however I am curious if Vivaldi, Brave
| and others will make their own webstore which will have plugins
| like ublock origin, and how long till Mozilla follows suit.
| indrora wrote:
| Google aggressively makes it hard for Chromium derivatives to
| not conform to Google's engineering choices.
|
| They could try and keep manifestv2 support for a while, but
| they will have an increasingly large and hard to support patch
| se to make manifestv2 work still.
| IvanAchlaqullah wrote:
| Indeed. When I tried to add LibRedirect (another extensions
| that are not possible under Manifest v3) to Vivaldi, DNS over
| HTTPS suddenly stopped working.
|
| After checking the settings page, the settings to turn it on
| are completely disabled. Turn out this is one of few trap in
| all Chromioum browser that are hardcoded by Google.
|
| Well after searching, you need to edit registry (yikes!) and
| add "DnsOverHttpsMode" and set it to "safe". Problem solved,
| right?
|
| NO!!! Do that and suddenly your browser wouldn't load any
| page at all! Turn out you also need to set
| "DnsOverHttpsTemplates" too.
|
| It just so happen, somehow, there is no documentation that
| mention this in "....Mode" help page.
|
| Surely Google is not being evil in here, right? Right?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Time to reply to https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/91160/vivaldi-
| s-own-extensio... or something.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Same with uMatrix:
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalg...
| catigula wrote:
| We have to put some of this on Firefox for failing to remain
| competitive in the engineering arena.
|
| If it's too expensive to develop a viable alternative to
| chromium, just say that.
|
| The Firefox that has been trundling along for years is really
| just an excuse to keep the chromium monopoly afloat.
| dmead wrote:
| Makes me happy I never used chrome.
| zfg wrote:
| uBlock Origin always worked best in Firefox anyhow:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
| tech234a wrote:
| This removal can be bypassed until June (edit: or possibly even
| August) by changing some flags or setting enterprise policies:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1itw1bz/end_o...
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| How long do you reckon before firefox/mozilla follow suit? Weeks?
| Months? Years? A year is my guess.
| kingstoned wrote:
| Meanwhile scam cookie stuffing extensions like Honey are
| 'featured'
| deadbabe wrote:
| Use Brave, it's been many years and people have few complaints.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Monopolists gonna use every anti-competitive tactic in the book
| to protect their racket.
| JimmaDaRustla wrote:
| How long until other chromium browsers follow suit? I'm currently
| using Edge.
|
| I also wonder when someone one will "hack" chromium to run
| whatever extensions they want - I could build my own extension,
| or build uBlock Origin from the source (if available) and execute
| the extension regardless of the store.
| pmdr wrote:
| A lot of Chromium browsers use Google's extension store, so
| even if they're not as strict about it now, you won't be able
| to install it anyway.
| Deprogrammer9 wrote:
| sideload it! mine is working fine still.
| buyucu wrote:
| the internet is unusable without uBlock origin. I would never use
| a browser that did not support uBlock.
| sorenKaram wrote:
| This happened to me so I just switched over to Adblock Plus.
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adblock-plus-free-a...
|
| AddBlock is still available. I was wondering if there is some
| issue with the extension itself that it got flagged? Maybe an
| update to the codebase would make the extension installe-able
| again?
| the_af wrote:
| Wasn't Adblock Plus the plugin to be shunned because they
| allowed certain ads as long as the advertisers paid them money?
| I remember a scandal like that a few years ago, but I might be
| mistaken since there are many similarly named plugins.
|
| uBlock Origin didn't have this problem, which is why it got
| recommended so much.
| Chaosvex wrote:
| You're not mistaken. They had a default enabled whitelist of
| advertisers that were paying them to be there. Basically a
| racket.
| m4rtink wrote:
| So they really want to get broken up due to shady advertising
| deals. :-)
| pete1302 wrote:
| I was here, I saw the crime
| pmdr wrote:
| The crime has been years in the making, this is just burning
| the body.
| kenanfyi wrote:
| As a person who switched constantly between browsers (except
| Chrome, never used it after 2015) in the past 10+ years, I can
| confirm that realigning the habits are not that difficult. Learn
| to use the web, not the tool to browse it.
|
| So, switch to something which has privacy respecting attitude or
| at least tries to have it and ditch everything who does not. It
| is not just the browser itself, but also the services and tools
| that you use to do your job: browsing. After some time, you will
| realize how horrible browsing the web with Chrome was in this
| respect and how easy it is to just browse the web without a
| bloated piece of advertising machine.
| loughnane wrote:
| I desperately want to pay for a browser that caters to me
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Google is betting hundreds of billions of dollars against you
| being able to do that.
| atum47 wrote:
| On kinda related news: Firefox don't allow you to set the default
| homepage. What's up with that?
| atum47 wrote:
| I've moved from chrome to ff because of ublock extension, but I
| also have an app that remembers of stuff set as my default
| homepage, the other day I realized that ff don't allow for a
| custom home page. That why I left the comment above, I think
| they are somewhat related
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Use Brave browser - both on phones and laptops. The ad-free
| experience will change your perspective on what internet looks
| like. You won't miss Google.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's amazing that every post about Brave gets downvoted. I wish
| the downvoters would explain why they're doing this, but I
| guess they aren't very... brave.
| aerhardt wrote:
| I have it installed on Arc and it still works, I guess that's
| expected but it will degrade soon? I love Arc but I'd better not
| see an ad or that will be reason to jump ship. I pay for quite a
| few web services I like (eg, Youtube) but I'd drop a bollock if I
| saw a display ad on the open web.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I have moved to Firefox since the announcements that Chrome won't
| allow must have extensions such as uBlock. That Firefox allows
| extensions both on desktop and mobile is great.
|
| But there are some things that I miss from Chrome, especially for
| web development. In Chrome it is possible to adjust the CSS of
| grid and flex containers within the developer window, which can
| be helpful. Firefox and Firefox Developer Edition don't have
| this. Firefox also seems to sometimes have problems with
| reloading a page when it is changed during development, whereas
| in Chrome this always was instant. Then there are some small
| feature and UI differences, like the reading-mode on Firefox is
| nice, but the UI of Chrome feels just a bit nicer.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Now you are a real developer.
| moritonal wrote:
| I have Firefox for normal use and then Chrome for Web
| development. Simple enough.
| anjel wrote:
| Just curious, has google solved the ads-as-malware-vector of
| infection?
| ein0p wrote:
| Uh, do Brave users need to sideload now? What about updates? Any
| official guidance from Brave on this?
| antonok wrote:
| uBlock Origin is available from brave://settings/extensions/v2;
| see https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
| nilslindemann wrote:
| For the moment I can still see the "Add to Chrome"-Button on that
| page in Ungoogled Chromium :)
| cratermoon wrote:
| But hey! We got command and commandfor in HTML! Progress,
| amirite?
| throw7 wrote:
| The only chrome browser I'm using is on a cheap chromebook I
| bought.
|
| It looks like I could turn on the linux vm and run firefox, but
| it "only" has a 16GB ssd of which like 12GB is "system space"
| (ridiculous) and I only have 1GB left which isn't enough to
| enable the linux dev environment.
|
| I could look into seeing if I can get native linux on the
| hardware, but it's probably not worth the time and trouble for
| it.
| grimblee wrote:
| Just stop using chrome, fight the monopoly, don't be a sheep.
| It's inconvenient ? Convenience is a trap, stop giving away your
| freedom and agency for convenience.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This. The fact that so called "hackers" would be using Chrome
| is the reason why the world is shit and tech is stagnant. They
| keep using Chrome and writing Javascript.
| raajg wrote:
| Time to set up Pi-Hole on my Rapsberry Pi 4
|
| https://pi-hole.net/
| bhrlady wrote:
| There are only two business models on the web: either you pay for
| your browser, or someone else does. This is why Orion is entirely
| user-funded, and can continue serving users by prioritizing
| privacy, control, and features like powerful, built-in ad-
| blocking. Not third party deals, ads, or any other incentive to
| corrupt the user experience and overall quality.
|
| (Disclosure, I work for Kagi, creator of the Orion browser.)
| kccqzy wrote:
| There are only two business models on the web: either you pay
| for your content, or someone else does. And that someone is
| usually advertisers. Blocking ads while consuming content
| upsets that business model. That's why Brave Browser's BAT is a
| fundamentally good idea marred by terrible execution. On the
| other hand I do not believe built-in ad-blocking in the browser
| can ever become mainstream for that same reason.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| An interesting day on which to impose this restriction, given:
|
| "DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next"
|
| <https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...>
|
| HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43323485>
| m4r1k wrote:
| Today marks my last day as a Chrome user. And fellas I encourage
| y'all to switch away from Chrome
| codedokode wrote:
| Note that Google Chrome contains features that allow sharing your
| interests with advertisers and "measuring" ads performance. It
| looks more and more as ad browsing client rather than a web
| browser: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13355898
| ur-whale wrote:
| If are unfortunate enough to still use Chrome, please read:
|
| https://contrachrome.com/
| exiguus wrote:
| Consider discontinuing the use of Google, AWS/Amazon, X (formerly
| Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and ChatGPT if you value
| freedom. There are numerous excellent alternatives available.
| mulakosag wrote:
| Good luck with AWS. You need to stop using the internet. Are
| you going to check IP address of each website's web server you
| visit?
| isaachinman wrote:
| Out of the loop. What's the story with WhatsApp? Backdoors?
| benkaiser wrote:
| As a developer, the one feature I really love in Chrome is PWAs.
| But Firefox abandoned PWA support years ago, and seems to have no
| appetite for adding PWAs back[1]. Maybe I'll just have to split
| my usage across PWAs in Chrome (since I trust those apps/websites
| anyway) and Firefox for general browsing.
|
| [1] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-
| progress...
| leke wrote:
| How is it still running on Brave then?
| antonok wrote:
| https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
| firebot wrote:
| works fine here, though it says it "may soon no longer be
| supported"
|
| Edge store doesn't even mention that, in fact it's featured.
|
| I switched to edge canary on my phone because the dev options
| allow you to install extensions by id/crx, which I've used to get
| ublock origin, though it crashes sometimes, and doesn't work when
| you reload the whole browser, until you refresh the page or
| manually reactivate the extension....
| 5etho wrote:
| how about vivaldi? original developers from Opera? I totally
| forgot about it in last 5 years, ayone using it?
| sotix wrote:
| This is the death of the hacker. We have allowed new heights of
| power and unchecked control decide they know better than us. We
| are no longer allowed or trusted to make choices in our best
| interests. Many practice apologetics for why this is necessary,
| pointing to Apple and Mozilla, as if that doesn't make this
| change any less devastating. It was a great run.
|
| The silver lining is it can be the birth of a new generation of
| hackers. This generation's version of the printer inspiring those
| who refuse to accept the hostile hand they've been dealt. Tech
| doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to accept these
| changes. Rebel! Start hacking away. Don't join these companies.
| Found new ones that prioritize valuing users first forever. It's
| a difficult task. But all difficult tasks we've solved were.
| pmdr wrote:
| > Many practice apologetics for why this is necessary
|
| Sadly, on HN, of all places...
| Funes- wrote:
| Just use Brave if you can't be bothered to use some extremely
| ethical alternative that's harder to set up. It blocks
| _everything_ out of the box. Now, if you do worry about
| supporting more ethical browsers, try qutebrowser (with some
| greasemonkey scripts added in).
| niedzielski wrote:
| Brave has a history of very concerning behavior: https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers....
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-10 23:00 UTC)