[HN Gopher] Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
___________________________________________________________________
Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
Author : deryilz
Score : 275 points
Date : 2025-07-12 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (0x44.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (0x44.xyz)
| daft_pink wrote:
| So what's the conclusion? Can we use a different Chrome based
| browser and avoid MV3? What's the decision for privacy after this
| has happened?
| j45 wrote:
| The little I've read bout this says that maintaining MV2 might
| be something as well.
|
| If other chromium based browsers didn't have this issue, that
| would be great, but likely in time Youtube won't support
| browsers that don't have MV3. Probably still have some time
| though.
| SSchick wrote:
| Switched to Firefox yesterday, I suggest you do the same.
| j45 wrote:
| That's a good reminder to update Firefox.
|
| I tend to oscillate back and forth every few years
| gradually.
|
| Lately not Chrome proper, there are some neat browser takes
| worth trying out like Vivaldi, Brave, Arc, etc that are
| Chromium based.
| dwedge wrote:
| Are they still funded to the tune of a billion a year by
| Google so that Google can pretend they don't have a
| monopoly? Are they still intent on redefining as an ad
| company?
| j45 wrote:
| When the billion began Chrome wasn't even a browser yet.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The google money isn't any great gotcha. It's wrong of
| them to have grown to be so dependant but so what? All it
| means is that some day the funded development will stop,
| just like all the forks are already.
|
| Let them take google money for as long as it flows. You
| can switch to librewolf at any time if FF itself ever
| actually goes bad in any critical way. But there's not a
| lot of reason to do so until the minute that actually
| happens. Go ahead and take the funded work and updates as
| long as it exists.
| dexterdog wrote:
| If you're going to switch you should switch to a better
| option. I've been using librewolf for years since Firefox
| doesn't have the best track record either.
| perching_aix wrote:
| This blogpost covers a workaround they discovered that would
| have let MV3 extensions access important functionality that was
| not normally available, only in MV2.
|
| This workaround was fixed the same year in 2023 and yielded a
| $0 payout, on the basis that Google did not consider it a
| security vulnerability.
|
| The conclusion then is that uBO (MV2) stopped working for me
| today after restarting my computer, I suppose.
| krackers wrote:
| >They decided it wasn't a security issue, and honestly, I agree,
| because it didn't give extensions access to data they didn't
| already have.
|
| So they admit that MV3 isn't actually any more secure than MV2?
| Neywiny wrote:
| I'd be shocked if anyone actually believes them. This article
| starts with the obvious conflict of interest. Of course letting
| an extension know what websites you visit and what requests are
| made is an insecure lifestyle. But I still do it because I
| trust uBO more than I trust the ad companies and their data
| harvesters.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I believe them. The restrictions are reasonable and
| appropriate for nearly everyone. Extensions are untrusted
| code that should have as little access as possible. If
| restrictions can be bypassed, that's a security bug that
| should be fixed because it directly affects users.
|
| I also think uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it
| should not only be an exception to the whole thing but should
| also be given _even more access_ in order to let it block
| things more effectively. It shouldn 't even be a mere
| extension to begin with, it should be literally built into
| the browser as a core feature. The massive conflicts of
| interest are the only thing that prevent that. Can't trust ad
| companies to mantain ad blockers.
| Barbing wrote:
| Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid,
| forcing new solutions? Worry about the interim where some
| publishers would presumably cease to exist. And who would
| remain afloat--those with proprietary apps, as Zucky as
| they are, I'd guess...
|
| UBO is absolutely incredibly important. Figure you might
| know more than me about how journalists and reviewers and
| the like can still earn a keep in a world with adblockers
| built in to every browser.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid,
| forcing new solutions?
|
| Absolutely. The web is mostly ad funded. Advertising in
| turn fuels surveillance capitalism and is the cause of
| countless dark patterns everywhere. Ads are the root
| cause of everything that is wrong with the web today. If
| you reduce advertising return on investiment to zero, it
| will fix the web. Therefore blocking ads is a moral
| imperative.
|
| > Worry about the interim where some publishers would
| presumably cease to exist.
|
| Let them disappear. Anyone making money off of
| advertising cannot be trusted. They will never make or
| write anything that could get their ad money cut off.
|
| People used to _pay_ to have their own websites where
| they published their views and opinions, not the other
| way around. I want that web back. A web made up of real
| people who have something real to say, not a web of
| "creators" of worthless generic attention baiting
| "content" meant to fill an arbitrary box whose entire
| purpose is to attract you so that you look at banner ads.
| jowea wrote:
| Why am I not allowed to trust an extension just as much as
| I trust the platform it is running on? This is the same
| logic behind mobile OSes creators deciding what apps can
| do.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Extensions are untrusted code that should have as little
| access as possible.
|
| It's entirely possible to manually vet extension code and
| extension updates in the same way that Mozilla does as part
| of their Firefox recommended extensions program.
|
| > Firefox is committed to helping protect you against
| third-party software that may inadvertently compromise your
| data - or worse - breach your privacy with malicious
| intent. Before an extension receives Recommended status, it
| undergoes rigorous technical review by staff security
| experts.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-
| extensions-...
|
| Other factors taken into consideration:
|
| Does the extension function at an exemplary level?
|
| Does the extension offer an exceptional user experience?
|
| Is the extension relevant to a general, international
| audience?
|
| Is the extension actively developed?
| sensanaty wrote:
| I get what you mean and I think we align here, but I trust
| the uBlock team infinitely more than I trust Google to make
| my own extension decisions. I know there's a subset of
| regular users who fall for all manner of scam, but Manifest
| V3 doesn't even solve any of those issues, the majority of
| the same attack vectors that existed before still exist
| now, except useful tools like uBlock can no longer do
| anything since they got deliberately targeted.
|
| Besides, there's ways of having powerful extensions WITH
| security, but this would obviously go against Google's data
| harvesting ad machine. The Firefox team has a handful of
| "trusted" extensions that they manually vet themselves on
| every update, and one of these is uBlock Origin. They get a
| little badge on the FF extension store marking them as
| Verified and Trusted, and unless Mozilla's engineers are
| completely incompetent, nobody has to worry about gorhill
| selling his soul out to Big Ad in exchange for breaking
| uBlock or infecting people's PCs or whatever.
| Barbing wrote:
| I wish I could browse the web kinda like this but minus the
| human:
|
| Make Signal video call to someone in front of a laptop,
| provide verbal instructions on what to click on, read to my
| liking, and hang up to be connected with someone else next
| time.
|
| (EFF's Cover Your Tracks seems to suggest fresh private tabs
| w/iCloud Private Relay & AdGuard is ineffective. VMs/Cloud
| Desktops exist but there are apparently telltale signs when
| those are used, though not sure how easily linkable back to
| acting user. Human-in-the-loop proxy via encrypted video
| calls seems to solve _most_ things, except it's stupid and
| would be really annoying even with an enthusiastic pool of
| volunteers. VM + TOR/I2P should be fine for almost anybody
| though I guess, just frustrated the simple commercial stuff
| is ostensibly partially privacy theater.)
| jowea wrote:
| https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html section "How I
| use the internet" ?
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| Hey Richard Stallman uses Invidious
| krackers wrote:
| One of the main goals of MV3 seems to be nullifying
| protection against tracking URLs. Most of the discussion
| about adblocking technically "still working" under MV3 misses
| this point. It doesn't matter if you're actually served ads
| or not, when when your underlying habits can still easily be
| collected from the combination of fingerprints and tracking
| URLs.
|
| https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/302
| labrador wrote:
| I'd gladly pay for YouTube without ads if I trusted that it would
| remain ad free, but the track record from various companies on
| this is not good.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| So pay now and stop paying if they introduce ads? It's not like
| it's a lifetime subscription.
|
| I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was
| watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.
| labrador wrote:
| That's good to know. I was hoping for a reply like yours. I
| will subscribe. YouTube is an amazing resource for human kind
| and I agree those of us who can afford it should pay to
| support it.
| j45 wrote:
| Totally, there's not a lot of places to vote with your
| dollars to get rid of interruptions like Ads, and also get
| back a lot of time of your life.
| naikrovek wrote:
| I pay for YouTube premium for my family and there haven't been
| any _injected_ ads at all. Only the ones that the video
| themselves have in, which are also very annoying.
|
| I can't speak for the future, but I've had this for probably 5
| years and I haven't seen a single ad, only the videos that I've
| asked to see.
| j45 wrote:
| Same experience.
|
| The family plan is nice to share with family to reduce how
| much everyone's exposed to ads.
|
| In-Video sponsorships are a pain, sometimes they are
| chaptered out enough and can be skipped.
|
| If I could pay for an ad-free google search I probably would.
| Off the shelf, not doing API calls.
| kenmacd wrote:
| <cough> SponsorBlock (https://sponsor.ajay.app/) <cough>
|
| It works amazingly well provided a video's been out for at
| least a half hour or so. It also has the option to skip the
| "like and subscribe" parts too.
|
| I also tried the https://dearrow.ajay.app/ extension to
| replace clickbait titles, but decided I'd rather know when
| a channel/video is too clickbait-y so I can
| block/unsubscribe.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| I wish many of these suggestion worked for casting.
|
| Browser extensions don't fix a chromecast skipping ads,
| for example. It'd have to be written into the casting
| client, I'd presume.
| j45 wrote:
| Yeah, this can be a consideration, and also a non-issue
| with Youtube Premium
| dexterdog wrote:
| That's what sponsorblock is for
| Karsteski wrote:
| I tried paying for YouTube premium then they fucked around by
| not giving me all the features I paid for when I was visiting
| another country. There's no winning with these people.
| dandellion wrote:
| I paid premium a few months, then they added shorts and there
| was no way to block them, so I installed a blocker and
| stopped paying for it.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| If you simply add a `-` (en-dash) between the `t` & 2nd `u` in
| the URL, your viewing experience automatically skips all
| external ads, without login/premium.
|
| Syntax: www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
|
| This also works for playlists, and auto-repeats.
|
| edit: is this _getting downvoted_ because it works and people
| are worried this service might disappear _should this bypass
| become too popular_..? Just curious.
| j45 wrote:
| Youtube premium has remained adfree as far as I know.
|
| Best to try it out yourself. I can't watch Youtube with Ads
| ever anymore.
|
| If a 100% Ad-free youtube premium at the current price point
| ever went away, something would have to change about the ads.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Nah, Firefox with ublock origin is better than giving money
| to google.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| You also give money to the creators you watch by watching
| ads or watching with YouTube premium.
|
| You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of
| the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched a
| YouTube video on something other than an Apple device for
| example.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| >You also can't block ads on iPhones, which a majority of
| the developed world uses. My girlfriend has never watched
| a YouTube video on something other than an Apple device
| for example.
|
| People really live like this... ? Like those who watch
| movies on their phones lmao.
|
| Also, Brave works on iphone -> m.youtube.com adfree :)
|
| Then again I went years not using conditioner and
| moisturiser for my skin, only deo... We all need tips
| from people who know better you know. (Im white.)
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| I get an ad-free YouTube experience for $0 with software. Why
| do you pay for it?
| dandellion wrote:
| Plus you can block shorts. You can't do that with premium.
|
| I got fed up and stopped paying for premium, now I get no
| shorts and no ads, it's a win-win.
| cbeley wrote:
| Because I want to actually support content creators. I also
| want it to be more normalized to pay for things vs having
| ad supported content.
| card_zero wrote:
| Do you think giving money to the world's largest ad
| agency will encourage them to change their business
| model?
| cbeley wrote:
| Their business model is already in line with my values. I
| give them money and in exchange I get an ad-free
| experience. They don't need to change.
| card_zero wrote:
| If you care about whether content is ad supported or not,
| then Google are behind most of the world's ad supported
| content, and need to change, irrespective of your own
| transaction, unless you think transactions like that will
| change them. That's why I asked. It would be nice if it
| worked.
| fakedang wrote:
| Folks be adopting all sorts of irrational arguments just
| so they can defend their habits. Do you also prefer
| having middlemen in other areas such as healthcare and
| education?
|
| Creators can just as easily pop a Patreon or BuyMeACoffee
| these days in a few clicks. In fact, most creators
| constantly admit that Google pays them peanuts for their
| view counts. But support the leviathan for reasons
| unknown I guess.
| cbeley wrote:
| I also back people on patreon. Isn't it irrational to
| expect something for free? If you don't like the service
| or it doesn't align with your values, simply don't use
| it.
|
| Also, isn't patreon also a middleman by your definition?
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| Patreon and BuyMeACoffee are middlemen...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Paying to avoid ads just makes your attention even more
| valuable to them. Always block them unconditionally and without
| any payment.
|
| Ads are a violation of the sanctity of our minds. They are not
| entitled to our attention. It's not currency to pay for
| services with.
| luoc wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit? Why would that make my attention
| more valuable than other's?
| tyre wrote:
| If you are a paying subscriber, you are self-identifying as
| (likely) a higher net-worth. The problem for ad platforms
| allowing paid opt-out is that the most valuable users leave
| the network.
|
| Then they have to go to advertisers and say, "advertise on
| our network where all the wealthier people are not." A
| brand like Tiffany's or Rolex (both huge advertisers)
| aren't going to opt into that.
| layer8 wrote:
| A YouTube subscription doesn't exactly break the bank.
| Being able to afford it doesn't make you wealthy.
|
| Apart from that, you can bet that YouTube is pricing it
| in a way that they aren't losing out compared to ad
| revenue.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| It's a decent chunk of change for the sole purpose of
| avoiding ads on a single platform that barely pays the
| people actually producing the content. If you're looking
| to access premium content and YouTube Music, it's a
| slightly better value proposition (but only slightly,
| because YTM sucks, especially compared to what GPM used
| to be). For that ~$120 a year, you could buy a bunch of
| Steam games to occupy the same amount of time as your YT
| habit. Or you could buy a sub to services like Nebula
| which actually pay content creators decently. Or you
| could buy an external hard drive, install yt-dlp, and
| embrace Talk Like A Pirate Day, Groundhog Day-style.
| layer8 wrote:
| I mean, yeah, if you don't actually get much use out of
| YouTube, then it might not be worth it to you. But that's
| the same for all streaming services. And I wasn't
| commenting on whether it's worth it or not, which of
| course is subjective, but on how big an expense it is in
| absolute terms. The former doesn't relate to the "higher
| net worth ads" argument, the latter does.
|
| Personally I do like YouTube Music, due to all the user-
| uploaded content that isn't available on other platforms.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| $12 is a week of chicken thighs, man. It's enough gas to
| make $60-$80 running UberEats orders. In America. In
| "absolute terms", it's $100+ dollars a year to turn off
| ads on a single platform for content the creators are
| compensated pennies for.
|
| People who choose that without much thought - because
| it's barely an expense for them - are definitely tending
| towards "higher net worth" nationally, let alone
| globally. A lot of those people just don't realize it,
| because the entire point of seeking that kind of status
| is so that they can enter a socioeconomic bubble and not
| have to care about annoyances (like advertising).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Because by paying you are demonstrating you have more than
| enough disposable income to waste on their extortion.
| You're paying for the privilege of segmenting yourself into
| the richer echelons of the market. You're basically doing
| their marketing job for them and paying for the privilege.
|
| At some point some shareholder value maximizing CEO is
| going to sit down and notice just how much money he's
| leaving on the table by not advertising to paying customers
| like you. It's simply a matter of time.
|
| Take a third option. Don't pay them _and_ block their ads.
| Block their data collection too. It 's your computer, you
| are in control.
| krelian wrote:
| You gotta love the mental gymnastics people will go
| through to convince themselves that not paying and
| blocking ads is the morally correct thing to do.
|
| If you truly have those beliefs the right moral action is
| to not use YouTube at all but god forbid you'd have to
| make any sort of sacrifice.
| card_zero wrote:
| I don't use Youtube at all, but I keep thinking I'm
| missing out and should make the effort to find a way to
| circumvent tracking. I can't see that the morality points
| to an obligation to absorb adverts. There can be no
| contract on the basis of what your mind must do.
|
| Edit: let's step through this. If I use a towel placed
| over the computer to block ads, that's morally the same
| as using blocking software, I think? If I block the ads
| by putting my fingers in my ears and staring at the
| ceiling, also the same thing, morally. If I block them by
| watching them in a negative frame of mind, saying that I
| dislike ads and won't do what they suggest, I'm still
| doing the bad thing, the same as using an ad blocker - if
| it _is_ a bad thing. My obligation, if it is an
| obligation, is to be receptive. Otherwise what, it 's a
| sort of mind-fraud?
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Adding: advertisements use as many hacks as possible to
| grab your attention. You could broadly categorize things
| that behave in this way as akin to a) a baby's cries
| (attention-seeking by something that absolutely requires
| your assistance), b) an alarm (attention-seeking by
| something that seeks to warn you), or c) being accosted
| (attention-seeking by something that seeks to harm you
| for its own benefit). Which are advertisements most
| closely aligned with? Is it the same across all
| advertisements, or do intentions vary? People likely
| assign varying levels of morality to the above examples;
| does advertising inherit the morality of the most closely
| aligned example?
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| That's quite a stretch. I loathe ads as much as anyone else
| here, but I don't consider being exposed to them as violating
| the sanctity of my mind (is my mind even sacrosanct, such
| that it could be violated?) it's just something I don't like.
|
| And yes, attention is absolutely a currency that can be used
| to pay for things. Like any other voluntary transaction, no
| one is entitled to my attention unless we both voluntarily
| agree to it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I don't consider being exposed to them as violating the
| sanctity of my mind
|
| I do. I think it's a form of mind rape. You're trying to
| read something and suddenly you've got corporations
| inserting their brands and jingles and taglines into your
| mind without your consent. That's unacceptable.
|
| > attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to
| pay for things
|
| No. Attention is a cognitive function. It has none of the
| properties of currency.
|
| These corporations are sending you stuff _for free_. They
| are _hoping_ you will pay attention to the ads. At no point
| did they charge you any money. You are not obligated to
| make their advertising campaigns a success.
|
| They are taking a risk. They are _assuming_ you will pay
| attention. We are entirely within our rights to deny them
| their payoff. They sent you stuff for free with noise and
| garbage attached. You can trash the garbage and filter out
| the noise. They have only themselves to blame.
| card_zero wrote:
| That implies voluntarily _paying attention_ to adverts, as
| an informal contractual obligation. You aren 't allowed on
| Youtube any more because you haven't been allowing the
| adverts to influence you enough. You can't look away or
| think about something else, that's cheating on the deal.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Advertisements have been proven _countless_ times to be a
| form of psychological manipulation, and a very potent one
| that works very well. After all, if it didn 't work we
| wouldn't be seeing ads crop up literally every-fucking-
| where, including these days even in our very own night sky
| in the form of drone lightshows. The ad companies have huge
| teams of mental health experts in order to maximize the
| reach & impact of their advertisements on the general
| populace.
|
| Ads are _so_ powerful that they 've even managed to twist
| the truth about plenty of horrific shit happening to the
| point of affecting the health and safety of real people,
| sometimes literally on a global scale. Chiquita bananas, De
| Beers, Nestle, Oil & Gas companies, and must I remind you
| of Tobacco companies (and surprise surprise, the same
| people who were doing the ads for Big Tobacco are the ones
| doing ad campaigns for O&G companies now)? There have been
| SO MANY examples from all these companies of using
| advertisements to trick and manipulate people &
| politicians, oftentimes just _straight up lying_ , like the
| Tobacco companies lying about the adverse health effects
| _despite knowing for decades what the adverse health
| effects were_ , Or Oil & Gas companies lying about climate
| change via comprehensive astroturfing & advertisement
| campaigns [1].
|
| This all barely scratches the surface, too, especially
| these days where you have platforms like Google and Meta
| enabling genocides, mass political interference and pushing
| things like crypto scams, gambling ads and other similarly
| heinous and harmful shit to _the entire_ internet.
|
| The TL;DR of all of this is that yes, advertisements
| _absolutely_ are psychological warfare. They have been and
| continue to be used for absolutely vile and heinous
| activities, and the advertisers employ huge teams of people
| to ensure that their mass influence machine runs smoothly,
| overtaking everyone 's minds slowly but surely with nothing
| but pure lies fabricated solely to sell people products
| they absolutely do not, and will never need.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The point is most people will never pay. That makes the
| Adblock/anti-adblock war inevitable for them. If you can
| afford it, you sidestep it. If you can't or won't, you don't.
| Pretending there is some point where those folks would pay is
| a little delusional in my view.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Or rather, don't use YouTube without paying.
|
| Youtube isn't free, and unlike a simple blog, requires tons
| of infrastructure and content creation. None of that is free,
| and people wanting that to be free is why we're in adscape
| hell.
|
| Edit: I'd love for a competitor to youtube, but there isn't.
| Rumble isn't a real competitor, and none of my favorite
| channels place their content there either.
|
| I wish there was a youtube alternative that was more of a
| federation, but every attempt I've seen of federations have
| been mess.
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| I've been paying for YouTube premium for probably 2 years now.
| Never had any inserted ads. Only the "this video is sponsored
| by" stuff, which you can just skip over.
|
| I can't possibly go back to non-Premium YouTube, and if they
| mess around with Premium I'll probably be moving on from
| YouTube.
| stefan_ wrote:
| They rolled out the Chrome "kill adblockers" update globally
| then unleashed the new wave of YouTube "anti-adblock" a month
| later. While in a literal losing court case thats suggesting
| Chrome be split out from Google as a whole. They must be so
| confident nothing can touch them.
| raincole wrote:
| Youtube premium has been ad-free for 10 years. What kind of
| track record do you need? 20 years? 100 years?
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Netflix and other streaming sites have ads on some paid
| subscriptions. First they start with ad free subs, then
| introduce ads and introduce a higher priced tier to get rid
| of ads
| raincole wrote:
| So if one supermarket sold expired food, we should avoid
| another supermarket that has not been doing that for 10
| years? Google/Youtube doesn't own Netflix. If anything, the
| reasonable response would be to unsub Netflix and sub its
| competitors, like, uh, Youtube.
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| Can't you just stop subscribing when that happens? You
| aren't signing a 5 year contract.
| jorvi wrote:
| Don't let everyone responding gaslight you. YouTube Premium is
| absolutely stuffed with ads[0] (sorry, 'promoted content' /
| 'sponsorship'). The only probable explanation I have for this
| is that Google has successfully boiled the frog and people
| mentally don't even register these things as ads anymore.
|
| And that's not to mention pretty much every single creator
| stuffing sponsored sections into their videos now. We have
| Sponsorblock for now, but I imagine Google will try to
| introduce random offsets at some point which will render
| Sponsorblock mute. Maybe an AI blocker will rise up in the
| future?
|
| At any rate, fight fire with fire. Just use every bit of
| adblocking on desktop, Revanced on Android and hope that
| Revanced or Youtube++ comes to iOS 3rd party stores at some
| point.
|
| [0]https://imgur.com/a/3emEhsF
|
| Edit: since people are too lazy to click on the link and
| instead ram the downvote button in blind rage, image 1 and 4
| contain straight up ads, unconnected to creators.
| jowea wrote:
| I think people just decided it doesn't count as ads when it's
| the creator doing it. And it feels more tolerable since the
| money is going to the creator that they probably like instead
| of megacorp Google.
| jorvi wrote:
| 1 and 4 contain straight up ads.
| imiric wrote:
| I'm honestly baffled why anyone who objects to ads would
| still want to use any of the official YouTube clients.
| Whether or not they show ads to you on YouTube, they still
| track your every move and use it to improve their profile of
| you so that they can show you ads on any of their other
| platforms, sell your data, or whatever other shady business
| they do behind the scenes to extract value from it.
|
| Adtech cannot be trusted. I refuse to support their empire
| whether that's financially or with my data and attention.
| npteljes wrote:
| I just pay them until it works, and I'll reconsider once it
| changes. Don't worry about track record, you can stop paying
| anytime.
| throwaway73945 wrote:
| So OP got Google to patch a harmless "issue" that could've been
| used by addon devs to bypass MV3 restrictions. Hope it was worth
| the $0.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Yeah, that was my take as well. OP did some free work for a
| megacorp and made the web a little bit worse, because
| "security, I guess" ?
|
| Good job.
| deryilz wrote:
| Sometimes you get $0, sometimes you get more. I would like to
| mention this stuff on my college applications, and even if I
| tried to gatekeep it, it'd eventually be patched. Not sure
| what your argument is here.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Incredibly impressive to do this sort of work before
| applying to college!
| busymom0 wrote:
| Google would have found this bug if any extensions tried to
| rely on it and patched it instantly anyway.
| mertd wrote:
| The author claims to be 8 years old in 2015. So that makes
| them still a teenager. It is pretty cool IMO.
| 9dev wrote:
| Are you guys honestly arguing like the zero day industry
| would, for a vector that couldn't be used by any ad blocking
| extension since Google has them under an electron microscope
| 24/7? To pick on a very young, enthusiastic programmer? What
| the hell??
| StrLght wrote:
| I don't agree with this conclusion. Google is fully responsible
| for MV3 and its' restrictions. There's no reason to shift blame
| away from them.
|
| Let's do a thought experiment: if OP hasn't reported it, what
| do you think would happen then? Even if different ad blockers
| would find it later and use it, Google would have still removed
| this. Maybe they'd even remove extensions that have (ab)used it
| from Chrome Web Store.
| Barbing wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Perhaps a hobbyist would code "MV2-capable" MV3 adblocker for
| the fun of it, forking UBO or something, as a proof-of-
| concept. How much time would anyone spend on its development
| and who would install it when the max runway's a few days,
| weeks, or months?
| DALEK_77 wrote:
| It seems someone's already done it. It requires some extra
| setup, but I managed to get it working on my machine.
|
| https://github.com/r58Playz/uBlock-mv3
| tech234a wrote:
| Associated Show HN post from 5 hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44543094
| raincole wrote:
| Really? You think Google is that dumb? As soon as any ad
| blocker that people actually use implements it, it'll be
| patched. It's not something you can exploit once and benefit
| from it forever.
| BomberFish wrote:
| Said bypass would exist for maybe a day max before getting
| nuked from orbit by Google. If anything, there was a non-zero
| chance OP would've gotten paid and he took it. I don't blame
| him.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I honestly thought reading this blog post was quite refreshing
| and I had a little smirk at the caption of the photo. Thank you
| for sharing!
| deryilz wrote:
| Author here, thank you! A lot of the comments here are more
| general arguments about MV3 and Google (which I kinda expected)
| but I'm glad see someone who liked my post :)
| SuperShibe wrote:
| >finds way to make adblockers work on MV3
|
| >snitches to Google
|
| cool, thanks man
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Well, in his defense it would have been patched immediately
| after the first adblocker used it, and he would have gotten
| nothing at all out of it.
|
| Oh wait he got nothing at all anyway ;)
| freed0mdox wrote:
| Not really, this sort of fame farming is what makes
| candidates stand out in infosec interviews. A bug in Google
| systems is good for his future career.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Would be quite different if they patched it and broke
| important extensions, possibly facing serieous outcry and bad
| publicity.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| That's what they already did.
| rollcat wrote:
| Important extensions like, dunno, uBlock Origin?
| deryilz wrote:
| I agree that would change things but I can't picture an
| open-source extension with millions of users pivoting to
| rely on something that's clearly a bug.
| 38 wrote:
| wow what a scumbag
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| No judgement but I would love to hear from Google employees who
| worked on this. Do they believe they are improving the internet
| in any way?
| stackedinserter wrote:
| "Job's shit but pays a lot"
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| https://getfirefox.org
|
| Even ignoring the adblock issues, Chrome isn't worth it... Google
| themselves spy on you with it. Cockblocking adblock just puts
| extra emphasis on what you should have already known.
| victor9000 wrote:
| And FF + UBO also works great on Android
| pnw wrote:
| Haven't missed Chrome once since switching to https://brave.com/
| Etheryte wrote:
| Of all the browsers you could be using, giving your data away
| to sketchy crypto bros should really not be at the top of the
| list.
| Supermancho wrote:
| It's the top of the list because it works so well. I forget
| it's a different browser most of the time. I was able to turn
| off everything extraneous that I was concerned about. Brave
| is also Open Sourced.
| bung wrote:
| Might as well edit and add some suggestions
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I really don't care about crypto stuff. If you do, I can
| understand why that's a dealbreaker for you. But for me, it
| doesn't matter at all. I just turn the crypto features off
| and continue on my way.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Not being able to run Twitch on it has me switch for brief
| periods.
| bung wrote:
| You're personally unable to look at twitch on it?
| Supermancho wrote:
| The adblock causes a twitch stream error. I can watch until
| the first ad. This is annoying, so I switch to vanilla
| chrome.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| You can turn off the adblock per site.
|
| Do you even try to use software you are using? Click
| shield icon and turn off...
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Do you even try to use software you are using?
|
| GL with whatever.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Heh, funny, Twitch was the primary reason I installed Brave
| because it was being glitchy on Firefox (at the time years
| ago - no longer the case). I've never had trouble with Twitch
| on Brave.
| deryilz wrote:
| From my experience (as a Brave user), using a User-Agent
| switching extension and setting it to Firefox for twitch.tv
| gets around that :)
| rollcat wrote:
| It's the same Blink engine underneath. Talk about lipstick.
|
| I'm not aware of a Blink-based browser that isn't dropping
| manifest V2. That would be a soft fork, and wouldn't survive
| long.
| CharlesW wrote:
| https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The point is you don't need to worry about manifest v3
| interfering with ad blockers, because Brave has an ad blocker
| built into the browser. Also makes it a good Chromium-based
| option for mobile, since you can't install extensions on
| Chrome mobile at all.
| CharlesW wrote:
| In the "cons" column, Brave is still a for-profit and has a
| bunch of features that continue to give some people the ick. In
| the "pros" column, there's a bunch of "how to debloat Brave"
| content showing how to improve the default kitchen-sink
| confifguration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6cKFliWW6Q
| deanc wrote:
| Chrome full on blocked uBlock Origin (and others) this week.
| There is still four flags [1] you can play with that will allow
| you to re-enable it again, but this is a losing battle of course.
| The inevitable is coming.
|
| Nothing comes close to Safari battery life on MacOS, followed by
| chrome, followed by firefox in last place (with all its other
| issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome). I've
| tried taking Orion for a spin which should offer the battery life
| of Safari with the flexibility of running FF and chrome
| extensions - but it hasn't stuck yet. As much as I'd like to use
| FF, I really don't want to shave 10-20% (?) off a battery charge
| cycle when I spend 90% of my day in the browser.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/resto...
| echelon wrote:
| This should lead to a full-on antitrust breakup of Google.
| Period.
|
| They own the web.
|
| I can build my business brand, own my own dot com, but then
| have to pay Google ad extortion money to not have my
| competitors by ads well above my domain name. And of course the
| address bar now does search instead of going to the appropriate
| place.
|
| Google is a scourge.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| And I value FF way more than an hour of battery.
|
| All day every day my computer works fine.
|
| That difference in battery, if it exists, doesn't actually
| materially manifest anywhere. But the difference between FF and
| anything else matters basically every minute all day.
|
| On top of that, even if I ever did actually run into the
| difference, needing to plug in before I would have anyway, it's
| an annoyance vs a necessity. The ability to control my own
| browser is frankly just not negotiable. It doesn't actually
| matter if it were less convenient in some other way, it's
| simply a base level requirement and anything that doesn't
| provide that doesn't matter what other qualities it might have.
|
| You might say "a computer that's dead doesn't work at all" but
| that never actually happens. I'd need an 8 hour bus ride with
| no seat power to get to the point where that last missing hour
| would actually leave me with no computer for an hour, and that
| would need to be a commute that happens twice every day for it
| to even matter.
|
| For me that's just not the reasonable priority.
| rstat1 wrote:
| >>with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have
| stockholm syndrome
|
| What issues? Works just as well as Chrome ever did (before they
| started blocking extensions at least) for me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Adblockers basically need webRequestBlocking to function
| properly. Pretty convenient (cough cough) for a company that
| makes most of its revenue from ads to be removing that._
|
| Why does this keep getting repeated? It's not true.
|
| Anyone can use uBlock Origin Lite with Chrome, and manifest v3.
| It doesn't just work fine, it works great. I can't tell any
| difference from the old uBlock Origin in terms of blocking, but
| it's faster because now all the filtering is being done in C++
| rather than JavaScript. Works on YouTube and everything.
|
| I know there are some limits in place now with the max number of
| rules, but the limits seem to be plenty so far.
| zwaps wrote:
| It is true though. Like, literally. Why do you think it is
| called Lite?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _It is true though. Like, literally._
|
| Doesn't seem true to me. If it's true, then why is uBlock
| Origin Lite functioning properly as an adblocker for me?
|
| > _Why do you think it is called Lite?_
|
| Because it's simpler and uses less resources. And they had to
| call it _something_ different to distinguish it from uBlock
| Origin.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41871873
| rstat1 wrote:
| Its called Lite because it has tons of missing
| functionality from the not-Lite version that make the not-
| Lite version more effective as a content blocker.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's not "tons of missing functionality". It still blocks
| all the ads in practice.
|
| Maybe it's less effective in some theoretical case, but
| not anything I've seen. People talk as if it's only
| blocking 10% of the ads it used to, when the reality
| seems to be 99.999% or something. And it's faster now.
|
| And they removed stuff like the element zapper but that
| has nothing to do with Manifest v3. It's because they
| literally wanted it to minimize resources. You can
| install a dedicated zapper extension if you want that.
|
| I genuinely don't understand where this narrative of
| "adblockers don't work anymore on Chrome" is coming from.
| Again, it's just not true, but keeps getting repeated
| like it is.
| rstat1 wrote:
| >>It's not "tons of missing functionality"
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/wiki/Frequently-as...
|
| Okay. Sure.
| tech234a wrote:
| Element zapper functionality is returning:
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/325
| rpdillon wrote:
| One of the most frustrating things about these discussions
| is that it-works-on-my-machine effect. Anecdotal evidence
| is easily surpassed by a deeper understanding of the
| mechanisms that are changing. Here's what the author of
| uBlock Origin says about its capabilities in Manifest V3
| versus Manifest V2.
|
| > About "uBO Lite should be fine": It actually depends on
| the websites you visit. Not all filters supported by uBO
| can be converted to MV3 DNR rules, some websites may not be
| filtered as with uBO. A specific example in following
| tweet.
|
| You can read about the specific differences in the FAQ:
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-
| as...
|
| My personal take is if you're a pretty unsophisticated user
| and you mostly don't actually interact with the add-ons at
| all, Manifest V3 will probably be fine.
|
| If you understand how ads and tracking work and you are
| using advanced features of the extension to manage that,
| then Manifest V2 will be much, much better. Dynamic filters
| alone are a huge win.
| ufmace wrote:
| I agree with crazygringo that uBlock Origin Lite seems to
| work fine for me as far as blocking ads on the websites I
| visit.
|
| I also agree that these discussions can be frustrating.
| In my opinion, that's because people claiming that Lite
| isn't good enough only seem to post super vague stuff,
| like links to the FAQ that list a bunch of technical
| details about what it can't do, when I don't understand
| the practical upshot of those things. Or vague assertions
| that it's not doing something which is allegedly
| important, where it's never actually explained what that
| thing it's not doing is and why it's important.
|
| I have yet to see anybody show a specific example of a
| website where Lite doesn't actually work well enough. Or
| of any other specific thing it's not doing. I don't think
| I should have to read a series of 20 web pages dense with
| specialized technical details to understand what it's
| supposedly not doing. If it can't be explained simply and
| clearly what it's not doing that's so important, maybe
| it's not actually missing anything important at all.
|
| I suppose I am a unsophisticated user of web browsers. I
| never got around to understanding or interacting with all
| the details of what "proper" uBO can do. Yet I still seem
| to browse the web just fine, and even build webapps
| sometimes, and I don't see any ads. So what's this great
| thing that I'm missing?
| tredre3 wrote:
| The statement was: "Adblockers basically need
| webRequestBlocking to function properly. "
|
| This is demonstrably false, ublock lite proves that
| adblockers can work without it.
|
| Whether or not ublock lite is missing functionalities because
| of MV3 is irrelevant to the original statement that
| adblockers _need_ webRequestBlocking.
| stavros wrote:
| So your argument is that if an extension could block even a
| single ad with MV3, it means that ad blockers function
| properly in MV3? Do you not agree that "properly" means
| "having all the functionality they had with MV2"?
| jwrallie wrote:
| > Whether or not ublock lite is missing functionalities
| because of MV3 is irrelevant to the original statement that
| adblockers need webRequestBlocking.
|
| It can be relevant depending of how you define _properly_.
| If it depends on any of those functionalities that are
| missing, then it's relevant.
| al_borland wrote:
| Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that
| isn't the right way forward. If people don't agree with Google
| move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and
| all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away
| their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
| high_priest wrote:
| Its not happening
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't know, I switched to Safari and it was painful for
| like two hours and then I stopped thinking about it. The only
| thing I somewhat miss is the built-in page translate, but I
| don't need it often enough to be bothered much.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I find switching from chrome to safari essentially doing
| nothing. If you switched to a non-big-company owned
| browser, it would make sense but Apple has plenty of lock
| in which is as bad as chrome lock in.
| fny wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of Orion by Kagi: you should have a look!
| It's a little rough around the edges but the extension
| support on iOS is amazing.
| const_cast wrote:
| Orion is the only viable option on iOS IMO. The fact
| that, to this day, Safari has no way to block ads on iOS
| means it's just awful. Before Orion, I avoided using my
| web browser like the plague, because the experience was
| just bad.
|
| Now I'm on Android, and Ironfox is pretty good and
| Firefox is also available. The browser story on Android
| is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS.
| tech234a wrote:
| Actually there are several adblockers available for
| Safari on iOS; the functionality was introduced in 2015.
| Adblock Plus and Adguard are some of the larger
| extensions available, and now uBlock Origin Lite is now
| being beta tested for Safari on iOS.
| const_cast wrote:
| I've never used these, but if I had to guess: these
| probably don't have the same power as full Manifest V2
| extensions.
|
| Also names like "Adblock Plus" scare me. I don't want
| someone I don't trust getting my web activity.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I don't use any Apple product, so no Orion for me
| vehemenz wrote:
| Apple isn't selling my data, and they make the best
| consumer hardware, so at this point there aren't many
| downsides to Apple lock in.
| sensanaty wrote:
| > Apple isn't selling my data
|
| Sorry to break it to you, but yes, they are.
|
| https://ads.apple.com/
| jampekka wrote:
| The greatest trick the Ad ever pulled was convincing the
| world it didn't exist.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| No company sells your data. They sell access to you based
| on the data they have about you. Apple is no different
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| The lock in is a downside.
| creato wrote:
| It's especially silly in this case because Safari
| extensions have _always_ been equivalent to MV3
| functionality.
| lapcat wrote:
| This is not accurate. Safari had webRequestBlocking
| functionality from 2010 to 2019 and indeed a version of
| uBlock Origin for Safari. What is true is that Safari was
| the first browser to ditch webRequestBlocking, replaced
| by its Apple-specific static rule content blocker API.
|
| Otherwise, though, Safari still supports MV2. Everyone
| seems to think webRequestBlocking is the only relevant
| change in MV3, but it's not. Equally important IMO is
| arbitrary JavaScript injection into web pages, which MV2
| allows but MV3 does not.
|
| MV3 is so locked down that you can't even use
| String.replace() with a constructed JavaScript function.
| It's really a nightmare.
|
| Google's excuse is that all JavaScript needs to be
| statically declared in the extension so that the Chrome
| Web Store can review it. But then the Chrome Web Store
| allows a bunch of malware to be published anyway!
| mattkevan wrote:
| Safari has had built-in page translate for years now. It'll
| detect different languages and show a translate option in
| the site tools menu. Works well.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'm aware of this, but in my experience it's pretty bad.
| It doesn't even cover all European languages, never mind
| the rest of the world. For the languages it does support,
| it's always a lottery whether it works with that specific
| site or not. I've tried using it a few times, but it's
| not even remotely close to what Chrome does.
| notatoad wrote:
| switching to safari because chrome disabled the good
| adblockers is completely counter-productive. safari has
| _never_ supported the good adblockers.
| lytedev wrote:
| It definitely is, buy I think the silent majority just don't
| care all that much. Is that what you're referring to?
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| I switched to Firefox and it's been wonderful. I wonder why I
| didn't switch earlier. It's only been a couple of months, but
| I can't imagine going back to a browser without multi-account
| containers.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The only time I've used anything but firefox for the last.
| Well probably since netscape honestly? I am so old. Is to
| get the in flight entertainment to work on american, but
| firefox has worked for that for a few years now. People say
| chrome is faster and in the early 2000s I might have
| agreed, but now I really don't understand why anyone not on
| a mac or iphone isn't using Firefox. It is great.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Firefox is great on Mac too.
|
| You have a point about iPhones, though. It's almost
| pointless, but not quite: it does get a few features,
| like cross-platform sync. "Real" Firefox is one of the
| things that keeps me on Android.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Can you still get real Firefox on mac? I thought they
| forced chromium on there now too? The only time I got
| MacBook I put linux on it within a few months.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > Can you still get real Firefox on mac?
|
| I have always been able to.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| You can use whatever you want on macos
| pdpi wrote:
| I assume that, by Chromium, you mean WebKit. At any rate,
| how or why would they have blocked Firefox on a machine
| where you can compile your own code?
| SllX wrote:
| So a couple of things.
|
| 1) Apple would never force "Chromium" on any of their
| platforms. You might be mistaking it for WebKit, but
| browsers are not required to use Apple's shipping version
| of WebKit on a Mac either.
|
| 2) Firefox on every single platform not on the iPhone &
| iPad uses and has always used Gecko. I'm not aware of any
| other exceptions besides those two platforms, but the Mac
| definitely isn't one of them.
| tmnvix wrote:
| > I really don't understand why anyone not on a mac or
| iphone isn't using Firefox
|
| I'm on a mac and happily use Firefox. Have done for over
| a decade. It would take a lot to encourage me to move to
| a proprietary browser (Edge, Chrome, Safari).
|
| Maybe I'm out of touch, but the attachment to Chrome that
| some people seem to have (despite the outright privacy
| abuse) is baffling to me. I mean, ffs, are a couple of
| minor UI compromises (not that I experience any - quite
| the opposite) enough to justify what I consider a frankly
| perverted browser experience? I'm inclined to conclude
| that some people have little self respect - being so
| willing to metaphorically undress for the big G's
| benefit.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I prefer Brave to Firefox, just because Mozilla is a pretty
| questionable company when it comes to ethics and
| censorship. That said, switching away from chrome is
| clearly the way to go imo
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Mozilla is more questionable than Google? By using Brave
| you're still staying within the Google ecosystem, sending
| them the signal that their Chromium internet is the
| better one.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| A lot of people seem to believe that switching to a de-Googled
| Chromium-based browser isn't good enough. I think that's a
| psyop promoted by Google themselves. Firefox is different
| enough from Chrome that it's a big jump for people who are used
| to Chrome. Brave, custom Chromium builds, Vivaldi, etc. are all
| very similar to Google Chrome, they just don't have Google spy
| features.
|
| The argument that "Google still controls Chromium so it's not
| good enough" is exactly the kind of FUD I'd expect to back up
| this kind of psyop, too.
| poly2it wrote:
| Isn't that the exact argument behind the Serenity project? I
| legitimately feel there is a grave issue with the internet if
| one wallet controls all of the actual _development_ of our
| browsers. Control over virtually all media consumption mustn
| 't be in the hands of a corporation.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The argument just doesn't hold water, though. That's like
| saying Y Combinator shouldn't be the only company paying
| for our tech forum. It's perfectly fine unless Y Combinator
| decides to ruin HN it somehow. And, if they did, wouldn't
| people just switch to one of the many HN clones overnight?
| That's what's known as FUD - "Fear, Uncertainty, and
| Doubt". FUD is often spread about the present, but it's
| often just as useful to spread it about the _future_.
| "Don't use product X, the company that owns it could make
| it unusable someday". Part of me thinks Google keeps
| threatening to disable adblocking (but never _actually_
| does it) as part of a grand strategy. But part of me thinks
| it 's just a coincidence that Google isn't capable of
| pulling off such a tricky psychological operation.
| sensanaty wrote:
| > Firefox is different enough from Chrome that it's a big
| jump for people who are used to Chrome
|
| I find this notion completely baffling. I use Chrome, Firefox
| and Safari more or less daily cause I test in all 3, and
| other than Safari feeling clunkier and in general less power-
| user friendly, I can barely tell the difference between the
| 3, _especially_ between chrome and FF (well, other than
| uBlock working better in FF anyways).
| const_cast wrote:
| I agree, there's little to no friction in switching to
| Firefox and I have never, not even once, noticed a
| difference with websites. The same is not true for Safari.
| maest wrote:
| There are definitely website that do not support Firefox,
| especially in the US.
|
| Whole portions of the Verizon website, for example. Or
| the website of a well known kindergarden I was
| researching recently.
| const_cast wrote:
| I'm sure they exist, I've just never seen them. I use
| banking and websites like Netflix, too. And, if I had to
| wager, you could bypass a lot of this "doesn't work on
| Firefox" by just changing your user agent.
|
| I think it's a case of yes, it does work, but web
| developers don't think so, so they implement checks just
| for kicks.
| sensanaty wrote:
| > And, if I had to wager, you could bypass a lot of this
| "doesn't work on Firefox" by just changing your user
| agent.
|
| Indeed, even in the codebase at $JOB that I'm responsible
| for, we have had some instances where we randomly check
| if people are in Chrome before blocking a browser API
| that has existed for 2 decades and been baseline widely
| available. These days 99% of features that users actually
| care about are pretty widely supported cross-browser, and
| other than developer laziness there's literally no reason
| why something like a banking app shouldn't work in any of
| the big 3.
|
| I guarantee you that if you set your `userAgent` to a
| Chrome one (or even better yet, a completely generic one
| that covers all browsers simultaneously, cause most of
| the time the implementation of these `isChrome` flags is
| just a dead simple regex that looks for the string
| `chrome` anywhere in the userAgent), all problems you
| might've experienced before would vanish, except for
| perhaps on Google's own websites (though I've never
| really had issues here other than missing things like
| those image blur filters in Google Meet, which always
| felt like a completely artificial, anti-competitive
| limitation)
| jeffbee wrote:
| The stuff INSIDE the viewport is pretty much the same
| across them all, but on the daily it makes a big difference
| how your other services integrate with the browser. Someone
| who is all-in with iCloud, macOS, iOS etc might find it
| annoying to use Firefox without their personal info like
| password and credit cards and bookmarks. And the same would
| be true I guess for Google fans switching to Safari and not
| having those things.
| stevage wrote:
| Me too. On mac, FF and chrome basically look and feel
| identical. Only devtools are quite different.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Firefox has multiple, user-affecting, memory leaks related
| to Youtube (unconfirmed if just youtube), going back at
| least 7 years. Tab scrollbar as no option to be disabled,
| so I had to write CSS to get tabs into a form _close_ to
| what I would like similar to chrome. Tab mute icon has no
| (working) option to disable the click event, so I had to
| write CSS to remove it.
|
| I made some other changes, but I forget what. At least FF
| still has the full uBlock Origin.
| Phemist wrote:
| I once made a comment along these lines (de-Googled Chromium-
| based browser isn't good enough, as it supports the browser
| monoculture and inevitably makes Chrome as a browser better)
| and got a reply from from Brendan Eichner himself.
|
| His point was that there isn't enough time to again develop
| Firefox (or ladybird) as a competitive browser capable of
| breaking the Chrome "monopoly". I don't know if I really
| agree.
|
| Evidently, Google feels like the time is right to make these
| kinds of aggressive moves, limiting the effectiveness of ad
| blockers.
|
| The internet without ad blockers is a hot steaming mess.
| Limiting the effectiveness of ad blockers makes people
| associate your browser (Chrome in this case) with this hot
| steaming mess. It is difficult to dissociate the Chrome
| software from the websites rendered in Chrome by a technical
| lay person. So Chrome will be viewed as a hot steaming mess.
|
| I guess we will soon see if people will stay on Chrome or
| accept the small initial pain and take the leap to a
| different browser with proper support for ad blockers. In any
| case the time is now for a aggressive marketing campaign on
| the side of mozilla etc.
|
| I am in no way affiliated with Google. So if you still think
| this is a PsyOp, please consider Hanlon's Razor:
|
| > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
| explained by stupidity.
|
| Although, please also consider that Hanlon's Razor itself was
| coined by a Robert J. Hanlon, who suspiciously shares a name
| with a CIA operative also from Pennsylvania. It is not
| unimaginable that Hanlon's Razor it in itself a PsyOp. ;)
| pjmlp wrote:
| A monopoly achieved thanks to everyone that forgot about IE
| lesson, and instead of learning Web standards, rather ships
| Chrome alongside their application.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I did not even realize my ublock origin was turned off. My HOST
| FILE script did the same service:
| https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy-advanced-ublock-origin-w...
|
| More concerning is that social fixer was turned off:
| https://socialfixer.com/
|
| MFGA Make Facebook Great again ;-)
| Beijinger wrote:
| Why the downvote?
| kingo55 wrote:
| Changing your hosts file helps but it would only block
| hostnames primarily used for ads and trackers - it wouldn't
| address those trackers and ads loaded from hostnames shared
| with actual content. The more sophisticated sites will proxy
| their tracking and ads through their main app:
|
| E.g. www.cnn.com/ads.js
|
| I prefer having multiple layers just in case anything drops
| off:
|
| 1. VPN DNS / AdGuard local cached DNS 2. uBlock Origin
|
| It's like wearing two condoms (but it feels better than
| natural).
| crinkly wrote:
| Signed up to complain about this. YT is no longer worth watching
| ads for. Anything that is worth paying for, the money needs to go
| via Patreon so the publisher isn't demonetized at a whim. The
| rest is brain-rot, utter shit and a lot of damaging
| misinformation. I hope it dies. While it remains easy to do so, I
| will "steal" with yt-dlp and proudly watch it ad-free on VLC on
| my computer. If they break that then I'm no longer interested.
|
| When this became adversarial, which was a battle that lasted the
| last year of inconvenience I ended up dumping every Google thing
| I have. So the Pixel is GrapheneOS now with no Google crap.
| Browser is Firefox. Email has moved from Gmail to Fastmail with a
| domain.
|
| My Google account is closed after 20 years. The relationship is
| dead. They can do what they want. I don't care any more.
| hengheng wrote:
| You didn't really mention what aggravated you.
| crinkly wrote:
| Initially the increase in frequency of the advertising on
| Android youtube app. Followed by uBlock being broken in
| Chrome. Followed by uBlock being tarpitted in Firefox.
| Followed by FreeTube client getting 403 IP forbidden requests
| and DRM content shovelled down which could not be rendered.
|
| They just did everything to make sure I watched the ads and
| burn all my bandwidth, which can be somewhat limited and
| expensive as I travel a lot.
| urda wrote:
| You bypass it by installing Firefox.
| qustrolabe wrote:
| Firefox is awful. Both as a browser itself and as a base for
| other browsers. Such a shame that Zen didn't use Chromium :(
| bradgessler wrote:
| Try Safari, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Just use Firefox with ublock origin. On Android too. Nightly has
| tabs on tablet.
|
| At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some
| nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing
| with AI is nice)
|
| We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF.
| Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.
| OlivOnTech wrote:
| Firefox has had vertical tabs (and tabs groups) for few months
| now
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Indeed. I love the FF vertical tabs too, I should say.
|
| Too bad the work one is still locked to 128 ESR :(
| fracus wrote:
| > But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to
| report the issue to Google in August 2023. It was patched in
| Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions usin
|
| Well, thanks for nothing?
| deryilz wrote:
| Author here, sorry. I don't think any open-source extension
| (especially large adblockers with millions of users) could
| actually get away with using this bug, because Google is paying
| close attention to them. It would've been patched immediately
| either way.
| breve wrote:
| The best bypass is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in
| Firefox:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
| znpy wrote:
| Somebody should probably fork chromium.
|
| I remember when Firefox was getting traction, it had a killer
| feature: speed.
|
| A chromium fork could come with a simple killer feature: bringing
| back the possibility of blocking requests.
|
| I'm pretty sure it would quickly gain traction.
| raspasov wrote:
| I use Safari.
| delduca wrote:
| Safari + Wipr2 FTW!
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