[HN Gopher] Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
___________________________________________________________________
Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
Author : deryilz
Score : 945 points
Date : 2025-07-12 19:06 UTC (1 days 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.
| shakna wrote:
| Google using YouTube to block non-MV3 browsers, would be
| Google picking a fight with Firefox - who they use in court
| documents to say that they're not a monopoly. Their legal
| team will have a few words to say about it.
| 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.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Microsoft supposedly aligned with deprecating MV2 back when
| Google announced it _but_ they 've indefinitely postponed it.
| The KB about it still says "TBD", and there's zero mention of
| it around the actual browser. IMO it's a good alternative, if
| you trust Microsoft (I do).
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I would interpret that "TBD" to mean the moment Microsoft
| pulls in Chromium 139 changes. Anything else would be to
| costly for a small amount of goodwill from a niche community.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Try installing uBlock Origin Lite and see if it works for your
| needs.
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's a logic I fully agree with. As the owner of the
| computer, you should of course be able to do whatever you
| want. The APIs should still be designed around sandboxing
| and security though.
|
| I only trust free software, and only after I have read
| its source code and evaluated the distribution channel. I
| don't want proprietary obfuscated third party code
| running on my computer without some _serious_ sandboxing
| and virtualization limiting access to everything. I went
| so far as to virtualize an entire Linux system because I
| wanted to play video games and didn 't trust video game
| companies with any sort of privileged or low level access
| to my real Linux system.
|
| Malicious actors are known for buying up popular
| extensions that are already trusted by their user base
| and replacing them with malware via updates. The proper
| technological solition to such abuses is to make them
| literally impossible. Exceptions can and should be made
| for important technologies such as uBlock Origin.
| 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?
| xnx wrote:
| > It's entirely possible to manually vet extension code
| and extension updates
|
| I thought the core vulnerability of Manifest v2 is the
| new code can be loaded by an extension on the fly without
| any extension update. How would you vet that?
| krackers wrote:
| The same way it's done with V3, because no permission-
| level blacklist/whitelist is going to prevent the person
| from creating an interpreter within JS itself.
|
| Looking at https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/tro
| ubleshooting#a... it seems most of the heavily lifting is
| done with some combination of static/dynamic analysis
| during extension review. The same analysis (plus
| trivially catching eval) could be done with V2 as well.
| 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.
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| An extension I trust is by definition trusted code. What is
| trusted is for the user to decide, not the broswer
| developer.
| encom wrote:
| I trust ublock infinitely more than anything written by
| Google, a literal spyware company.
| 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
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It must be exhausting to be Stallman!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So... you want to use a shared VPN?
| Barbing wrote:
| Maybe more I want to have a library computer at my house
| that somehow doesn't use my ISP or, to go real paranoid,
| even click/type the way I always do.
|
| I should already be sharing iCloud Private Relay nodes
| with thousands upon thousands of people. Yet:
|
| "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the
| [~240k] tested in the past 45 days.
|
| Currently, we estimate that your browser has a
| fingerprint that conveys at least [over a dozen] bits of
| identifying information."
|
| -Cover Your Tracks results
|
| Apparently VPN is one thing, but then sites will analyze
| "operating system, graphics card, firmware version,
| graphics driver version, installed fonts", and more.
| Creepy even though I'm quite vanilla.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Maybe more I want to have a library computer at my
| house that somehow doesn't use my ISP or, to go real
| paranoid, even click/type the way I always do.
|
| You could build this yourself with relative ease[1], just
| add some software in the mix to tweak the typing and
| cursor movements. Have the "controller" connect via
| mobile network, Starlink or similar if you really want to
| separate concerns.
|
| [1]: https://pikvm.org/diy/
| 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
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > Most of the discussion about adblocking technically
| "still working" under MV3 misses this point.
|
| Because it's a dishonest point. Ad blocking still works.
| All the same ads can still be removed from the page.
| _Tracker_ blocking doesn 't. This is still a huge problem
| for privacy. But while nearly everyone dislikes seeing ads
| that interrupt your content, people who actually care about
| tracking privacy are a much smaller group. The latter group
| are trying to smuggle concern for the latter issue by
| framing it as the more favorable issue to garner more
| support from the former.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I assume that those who care to block ads also care to
| block trackers, if they care about MV3 at all.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I've started assuming bad intent after WEI, even though it
| was dropped.
| qwertox wrote:
| What I don't understand is why Google doesn't offer users the
| ability to add some extension ids into some whitelist to
| allow them using very sensitive permissions.
|
| Force those extensions to have an prominent icon on the UI
| with a clear tooltip asking "did you install this yourself
| [No]" for easy removal, in case someone else did install it
| without you knowing.
|
| There are so many ways to make this work, but they have zero
| interest in it.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| You really don't understand why? Money.
| amluto wrote:
| No, MV3 really isn't more secure. MV3 still allows extensions
| to inspect your requests -- it just doesn't allow extensions
| to _block_ them.
|
| It's almost comical how weak the security/privacy argument
| for MV3 is. Chrome _could_ have developed a sandboxed web
| request inspection framework to prevent data exfiltration,
| but they didn't even try. Instead they nerfed ad blockers
| without adding any security.
| mckravchyk wrote:
| I remember that another comical argument was performance.
| Supposedly, having extensions run in the background all the
| time is bad. So it's better to constantly, completely re-
| initialize them whenever an event wakes them up.
| krackers wrote:
| From https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-
| home/wiki/Frequently-as...
|
| >Keep in mind that uBO's own JavaScript-based network
| filtering engine has been measured to be faster than a
| well-known Rust-based filtering engine (though the
| measured difference back then was low single-digit us,
| not something that will ever be perceivable by a end
| user).
| cma wrote:
| Plus Google first entered the browser game with a toolbar
| for Internet Explorer that's main featured was it blocked
| popup ads.
| bapak wrote:
| The only security change is a policy one that did not need to
| be bundled with the rest: you can't load external code and run
| it in a privileged context like the background worker. However
| you can still load it into a frame and communicate with it.
| yard2010 wrote:
| This comment reads as if those villains have to provide
| explanations. Bitch they are Google they ask the questions. If
| they want they can pirate everything then sell it to make some
| cash, the stupid laws that we have to follow don't apply to
| them.
|
| IMO those organizations should pay the taxes for all the people
| in the country they're being used at. This will create the best
| incentive for them to succeed.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's _less_ secure.
| 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Seems strange to me to support Google with your money from
| a moral perspective. It is a spyware company.
| 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.
| jklas2hjdsdk wrote:
| Yes me too, and they fucked me.
| 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.)
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'd rather send money to the people I want to support
| than fund a middleman
|
| > which a majority of the developed world uses
|
| ... the USA? It's not a majority in any other country
| that I'm aware of
|
| I've got a Eurocentric view though, I have e.g. no idea
| if Singapore or China has a majority of Apple users or
| where you draw the line on 'developed' (critique on the
| term: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Factfuln
| ess&oldid...)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/...
|
| Basically any rich country has a majority of iPhones. And
| let's not even talk about tablets.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Without loading the image up in an editor and comparing
| color values, I can't tell which countries have a
| majority there. Looking it up myself, the third hit for
| "iphone market share" (the top two did not have a
| breakdown per country) is
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/iphone-ma... which shows how flawed this notion
| is: from a quick look, honduras, dominican republic, and
| albania are listed as over 50% but rich countries like
| the netherlands, germany, and new zealand are not
|
| Anyway, it's also the user's own choice if they want a
| closed ecosystem. I find it relatively irrelevant if
| someone chooses a jail and then complains that the jailer
| is too strict and they can't run the ad blocker software
| they want: that's the deal they picked and they're free
| to choose an open platform any day of the week. I don't
| even mean open source, just the zeroth, most fundamental
| freedom ("The freedom to run the program as you wish, for
| any purpose", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Soft
| ware_Definition#T...)
| 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.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'm not aware that you can pay for Google Search. That
| they have a paid tier for Youtube is probably to cater to
| another group of people rather than to "align with your
| values" and encourage people to actually pay for things
| online
| j45 wrote:
| It's an opt out fee from Ads.
| 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?
| fakedang wrote:
| There's a difference between a middleman that simply
| ensures that you're paid for your work on a fixed
| commission-based model, and a middleman who basically
| controls the entire platform you use to reach your
| audience. A better analogy would be OnlyFans vs a pimp.
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| Patreon and BuyMeACoffee are middlemen...
| fakedang wrote:
| There's a difference between a middleman that simply
| ensures that you're paid for your work on a fixed
| commission-based model, and a middleman who basically
| controls the entire platform you use to reach your
| audience. A better analogy would be OnlyFans vs a pimp.
| j45 wrote:
| It's a personal choice.
|
| Once someone reaches a level of individual support that's
| fine.
|
| YouTube remains a place for discovering channels and
| people and some people especially the majority who are
| not technical, can outwit a simple family fee.
|
| I use YouTube premium more than I ever used for paying
| Netflix for far longer. Value (and proven convenience) is
| in the eyes of the user.
| fakedang wrote:
| I agree about YouTube being a platform for discovering
| new content, and even great content. I've even bought
| Premium for my parents and brother just so they wouldn't
| need to go through all sorts of ads on YouTube.
|
| I would have bought the argument of the commenter if they
| talked about buying Premium to support the platform. But
| buying Premium to support the content creators? That's a
| bunch of horse manure.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Then subscribe to their Patreon instead of paying
| YouTube.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I was a bit surprised to find that Patreon also keeps a
| pretty large commission. But, yeah, at least it's not
| owned by Google and what else are you going to do when
| most creators list this as their only option. I'm just
| confused when there's easy options like sending cash
| directly to their IBAN or using a nonprofit like
| Liberapay (they just have their own donation page and,
| instead of taking a cut, make money that way:
| https://liberapay.com/Liberapay)
| lucb1e wrote:
| I don't think you're normalizing ad-supported content
| when running an ad blocker
|
| As for paying for the content you consume, most of the
| costs aren't on Google's side. I can understand paying
| for Youtube as a shortcut to hopefully giving some
| pennies to each person you watch, though, at least for
| those with no moral objection to making
| Google's/Youtube's monopoly in online video stronger
| 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?
| dangraper2 wrote:
| It is still my right to murder to uphold your lack of
| morals
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| There is nothing immoral about this at all. They're the
| ones who chose to send people videos for free, gambling
| on the notion that people would look at the ads. Nobody
| is obligated to make their unwarranted assumptions a
| reality. They are as entitled to our attention as a
| gambler is entitled to a jackpot.
|
| If someone gives you an ad filled magazine, you can rip
| out the ad pages and throw them in the trash, leaving
| only the articles you actually want to read. Same
| principle applies here. If some random person on the
| street gives you a propaganda pamphlet, are you obligated
| to read it just because some businessman paid for it? Of
| course not.
| 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.
| dangraper2 wrote:
| Not mind rape, actual rape.
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm not pretending. I know most people won't pay. The point
| is it doesn't matter.
|
| They're _giving their stuff away for free_ instead of
| charging money for it. They _gambled_ on the notion that
| people would "pay" by watching ads. Unfortunately for
| them, attention is not currency to pay for services with.
| We _will_ resist their attempts to monetize our cognitive
| functions. The blocking of advertising is _self defense_.
|
| They have absolutely nobody but themselves and their own
| greed to blame. Instead of charging money up front like an
| honest business, they decided to tap into that juicy mass
| market by giving away free sfuff. Their thinking goes: if I
| give them free videos with ads, then they will look at the
| ads and I will get paid. That's magical thinking. There is
| no such deal in place. We are not obligated to look at the
| ads at all. They don't get to cry about their gamble not
| paying off.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They have absolutely nobody but themselves and their
| own greed to blame_
|
| They're one of the most profitable media platforms on the
| planet. They'll be fine. Nobody is crying. There are just
| willing participants--as you say, on both sides--in what
| I consider a pretty silly battle one can opt out of with
| a small amount of money.
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Youtube isn't free
|
| Then charge for it like the other streaming services. If
| they send me ads, I'll block and delete them, manually or
| automatically, and I won't lose a second of sleep over it.
|
| > requires tons of infrastructure and content creation
|
| Not our problem. It's up to the so called innovators to
| come up with a working business model. If they can't, they
| _should_ go bankrupt.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Ads are social cancer that's spreading without any attention
| nor control from the authorities. Just like cigarettes 30
| years ago.
| 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.
| eviks wrote:
| No, if all the big supermarkets sell expired food from
| time to time to meet profitability expectations, there is
| no reason to believe one will be so unique as to be able
| to resist using the same industry standard, especially
| when it already has a much bigger expired food business
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| Can't you just stop subscribing when that happens? You
| aren't signing a 5 year contract.
| eviks wrote:
| It has never been ad-free, sponsored segments have always
| existed
| arccy wrote:
| you should blame the creators for being greedy, not YouTube
| for that
| eviks wrote:
| YT sets the rules of what content is allowed and sets the
| level of deception in their marketing regarding this
| "ours vs theirs" distinction in ads, so feel free to
| blame it as well.
| izzydata wrote:
| Youtube premium is still an ad driven business model. They
| are the ones making the problem worse so they can sell you
| the solution. The more you pay for Youtube Premium the more
| incentive they have to make ads worse.
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| _And that 's not to mention pretty much every single creator
| stuffing sponsored sections into their videos now._
|
| Fortunately I mainly watch the videos which are not made by
| "creators" looking for $$$ but just people sharing something
| interesting and useful; the ones which have no annoying
| intros or outros, "like share and subscribe" drivel, and are
| often not much more than raw unedited content. They still
| exist on YouTube.
| 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
| Hizonner wrote:
| > Maybe they'd even remove extensions that have (ab)used it
| from Chrome Web Store.
|
| So now it's abuse to make the user's browser do what the user
| wants, for the user's benefit, to protect the user from, you
| know, actual abuse.
| StrLght wrote:
| Well, I don't think so -- hence the parenthesis. Although,
| I am pretty sure that's how Google looks at it, given all
| MV3 changes.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Google isn't any less responsible just because somebody else
| also did something bad. Blame is not a zero-sum game
|
| If we think your line of argument to the logical extreme,
| then being upset at at somebody who ratted out a Jewish
| hideout to Nazis would shift blame away from Hitler. That's
| obviously absurd. Both are bad people, and one being bad
| doesn't make the other less bad. And if one enables the other
| being more bad then that makes both of them worse, it doesn't
| magically shift blame from one to the other
| 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.
| beeflet wrote:
| They do it for free
| 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:
| [flagged]
| 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.
| lucb1e wrote:
| The post says they had another bug _with_ a large bounty in
| the same year, so it doesn 't seem very useful for CV
| padding either
| userbinator wrote:
| What a selfish dickhead, helping them make better nooses to
| put around everyone's necks (including his own).
| 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?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yeah, surely if chrome broke important extensions people
| will get mad and switch.
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| At that point it's a feature, not a bug.
|
| Having millions of users on your side is great
| ammunition.
| WD-42 wrote:
| The exact wording was:
|
| > But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to
| report the issue to Google in August 2023.
|
| So why not go to someone that does know how to make a blocker?
| Nice snitch.
| Aurornis wrote:
| If a major adblocker used a bug or security vulnerability to
| work around restrictions, it would have been patched away
| immediately.
|
| The uBlock team was never going to ship code that depended on a
| bug to work.
| r4indeer wrote:
| I fully agree. The original comment and the other replies to
| it are bewildering. There was nothing to gain here, yet
| people are throwing ad hominem attacks left and right.
| romanovcode wrote:
| He was hoping to be a good boy and receive some cash from
| Google, as per article.
| 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"
| lucb1e wrote:
| There is also an argument to be made that adblocking is
| immoral. I think the idea is pervasive enough to fill a team of
| willing people, especially if you pay them 100k/year to at
| least go along with it for the time being
|
| I haven't made up my own mind about it yet, just that this
| might be a factor in why one would move the facilitating
| technology backwards in this way (and forwards in other ways,
| apparently: some people in the thread are reporting that uBlock
| Lite is faster. Not that I can tell the difference between a
| clean Firefox without add-ons (I regularly use that for work
| reasons) and a Firefox with uBlock Origin (my daily driver)
| except if the page is bogged down from all the ads)
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| I don't think ads are immoral but I think the way FAANG does
| ads and tracking is immoral. Google does not do enough to vet
| ads for malicious activity such as scams and viruses. The FBI
| in recent years has started recommending an adblocker for
| that reason.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Lol. Treating cancer is immoral. Miss me with this shit!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Advertising is cancer?
| userbinator wrote:
| They are being paid to think what they're told to think.
| 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
| homebrewer wrote:
| Maybe take a look at Vivaldi, it's a continuation of the
| old Opera, with basically the same development team. It's
| the most user-friendly and configurable option at this
| moment, they're very responsive to feedback, and are the
| only organization that doesn't have some horrible privacy
| violations in the past (maybe excluding Apple, I don't know
| and don't care, 90% of users on this planet can't run
| Safari).
|
| Also they are in Norway if you care about that sort of
| thing.
|
| It's not FOSS, though, at least for now.
| 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.
| esskay wrote:
| The crypto part is an optional thing, which takes a split
| second to turn off - thats it. Once its off you are basically
| running chrome without the google call home, and with a built
| in adblocker unaffected by manifest v3.
|
| It's also opensource so it's not like theres anything being
| hidden here.
| 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/
| eviks wrote:
| > When Google removes MV2 extensions from Chrome Web Store,
| they will be disabled for Brave users as well, except for
| these 4 supported extensions.
|
| Oh, thanks, welcome news! Wish Vivaldi did the same
| 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
| pnw wrote:
| I do turn off the wallet, VPN, AI and other bloat, but it's a
| minor inconvenience for a better browser.
| pxoe wrote:
| That's an absurd amount of tuning to make a browser
| acceptable to use. What you're saying is that it's unusable
| as is out of the box.
| esskay wrote:
| It takes less than a minute, one time. "tuning" really
| isn't the word here, it's literally flicking a couple of
| toggles and you're done.
| nh43215rgb wrote:
| https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
| swat535 wrote:
| Brave runs of Chromium, it's the same thing as Chrome..
| Manifest V3 will eventually be implemented.
| 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
| rustcleaner wrote:
| I think the ultimate fix is to make it a felony to pay
| someone to say a message as if it's his own (meaning an
| actor Ford pays to be in an ad needs to say "Ford paid me
| to say ..." at the start of every sentence uttered which
| states an opinion, if that is not the true opinion of the
| actor). It must also be a felony for someone to accept
| money in exchange for stating provided opinions as if
| they were his own. Customers in ads giving true
| testimonial reviews must state they are being paid (if
| so) at the beginning of their statements in the ad. Only
| quantitative and qualitative content about the product or
| service advertised should be allowed, anything which sets
| tone, vibe, or otherwise _emotionally_ communicates to
| the viewer needs to be banned. This also goes for food
| product boxes, with the additional rule that 75% of the
| non-barcode front label area must be nutrition and
| ingredients, while logo /brand work and propaganda is
| limited to the remaining 25%. Back label is an exact
| (maybe B&W) copy of the front. Ads should also mostly be
| found in directories where people go looking for services
| or things, and NOT plastered everywhere ready to rape
| brains for quick nickels. We need an advertising
| censorship board that keeps records on both ad makers and
| client businesses, so that chronic offenders get smacked
| down hard.
|
| Once advertising is dead, you will see a much more free
| and level internet.
| xnx wrote:
| I hate ads with a passion and would stop using Chrome
| immediately if I started seeing ads.
|
| I agree on all counts. uBlock Origin Lite has been a
| totally satisfactory substitute. I honestly couldn't tell
| you when the switchover even happened.
| 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?
| lucb1e wrote:
| > super vague stuff, like links to the FAQ that list a
| bunch of technical details
|
| Not being able to block remote fonts is a vague
| technicality? It's a feature I use, a user-facing
| setting, not an under-the-hood technicality. (Budding web
| designers have a tendency to pick overly thin fonts
| because it looks fancy/unique at a glance and being
| interested in the actual text on the webpage was not
| their job description)
|
| I'm less familiar with the other things. Clicking one
| experimentally, it mentions:
|
| >> The primary purpose of dynamic URL filtering [is] to
| fix web page breakage
|
| Webpages break on adblocking not infrequently. I'm not a
| blocklist developer so I can't say how useful this
| particular function is, but I'm also not going to assume
| that, just because I don't know the technical details,
| that it's just handwavey technical details nobody needs
| to care about and everything will be the same regardless
| of what the most qualified person on the topic is saying
|
| > 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
|
| Consider that you're not paying for someone to produce
| marketing material; it's a free thing. Sometimes that
| means that finding out information requires reading
| source code, or in this case, it's probably data files
| that contain these dynamic thingies so you could see the
| list of what mitigations will stop being possible and on
| what kinds of sites those are. If you (or someone else)
| do a writeup that fills the information gap you are
| looking for, I'm sure a lot of other people also
| appreciate that existing
| pests wrote:
| > web designers have a tendency to pick overly thin fonts
| because it looks fancy/unique at a glance
|
| Mac's have this font thing where it basically makes
| font's have a heavier weight. This is the result of that.
| ufmace wrote:
| Well the people posting that link seem to believe it's a
| clear and direct response to the question of why uBO Lite
| is insufficient when I or others say it works fine for
| us.
|
| > Not being able to block remote fonts is a vague
| technicality?
|
| I suppose not, but I never noticed whether it was or was
| not being blocked. I'm not really sure why that's so
| important. It certainly doesn't seem to justify the "oh
| no google is totally super evil for killing manifest v2"
| vibe that goes on.
|
| > Webpages break on adblocking not infrequently...
|
| Maybe, I guess. But exactly which websites are broken on
| uBO Lite that were not on "full"? Can anybody give me
| even a single example? I've been using Lite for I think
| like a year or something and haven't noticed any.
|
| I can see being a little mad if, say,
| https://mytotallyimportantwebsite.com was really broken
| on Lite and that was your favorite website. I just can't
| get all hot and bothered though at the idea that maybe
| some website that I've never seen and nobody can name is
| broken on Lite.
|
| > Consider that you're not paying for someone to produce
| marketing material; it's a free thing.
|
| I get that I'm not entitled to somebody's work to create
| a simple and clear explanation. But the argument I'm
| making is that uBO Lite is perfectly fine actually, which
| I don't think requires any evidence. It's the other side
| of the argument - that uBO Lite is insufficient - that
| needs to provide evidence to convince me. You're more
| than welcome to make that argument if you care to.
|
| I'm telling you and others that posting links of
| technical details is not going to convince me that Lite
| is not good enough, that I need to be super mad at Google
| and switch browsers etc. If you try to tell me to do work
| to "educate myself", I'll say no thanks and keep on
| browsing just fine with uBO Lite. In my opinion, it's
| somebody who cares enough to make the case that I should
| change who should gather sufficient evidence to convince
| me. It's sure funny that they're all indignant and
| demanding as long as it's someone else they think should
| do work to change, but they suddenly get all quiet when
| asked to actually gather and present evidence to make a
| case to an audience that's skeptical instead of fawning.
|
| Or more simply, if somebody wants to be a smug link-
| dropper, how about a link to even one single website
| that's broken on Lite, which I have yet to see anybody
| anywhere provide.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Right, I see what you mean. Just to not ghost the
| conversation, I can only say that I don't have such an
| example because I don't use Google Chrome or uBlock Lite
|
| You may be in a better position to do this comparison
| than me, if you stumble upon a broken site (they're
| likely infrequent indeed) and could quickly check whether
| it works with full uBlock (ideally in the same browser
| engine, since some sites are nowadays only tested on
| Chromium's implementation of the web standards, but
| Firefox is probably a good second option when Chromium
| simply can't do it anymore)
| ufmace wrote:
| Okay, that's fair.
|
| I currently do most of my browsing with Chrome and UBO
| Lite, and have yet to find a site that it doesn't work
| with _. I do keep a copy of Firefox with full UBO and
| NoScript open on my desktop computer, just on general
| principles I guess.
|
| _ Well, except for the other thread here where somebody
| pointed out Twitch, which doesn 't block ads on either in
| stock form, which I did just check myself. Though I had
| already stopped using Twitch anyways, more because all of
| the other dark patterns it has are rather annoying.
|
| By all means, browse with whatever setup you please. I
| just wish people would take it easy a little on the
| assertions that UBO Lite is inadequate.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| This might not qualify according to one's perspective,
| but: Twitch.
|
| Twitch takes a userscript to block ads. UBO Full can run
| userscripts, uBO Lite can't, so now you need an
| additional extension to run the script.
|
| Of course, if you run Tampermonkey anyway, it makes no
| difference.
| raydev wrote:
| You're reminding me, Twitch somehow got around UBO a few
| years ago. Oddly it was basically the only site (that I
| used regularly) that UBO couldn't catch.
|
| Are you saying that everyone using UBO had to add their
| own script to get around it? Why didn't UBO just do it?
| ufmace wrote:
| It's the most real example anyone's provided so far.
|
| I tested it on both regular Chrome with UBO Lite and
| Firefix with stock full UBO, and both show ads on Twitch.
| I haven't looked into how to actually block them, but
| I'll take your word that that's the only way to do it in
| both cases.
|
| It seems to me, both cases require some extra action to
| block ads. Full requires you to dig up a userscript and
| how to load it into UBO, while Lite requires you to find
| and install a whole extra extensions. Doesn't seem like
| that huge of a difference to me. I suppose some may
| disagree, but it's not at all hitting my bar for
| declarations others have made like that Lite is
| inadequate or Google is terrible for disabling Manifest
| V2.
| stubish wrote:
| Switch to v3, and not notice as adtech slowly starts
| leaking through, such as people have already started
| seeing on Youtube. The key is to slowly crank up the
| number of ads that get through, boiling the apocryphal
| frog.
| ufmace wrote:
| What is the adtech that's leaking through? I regularly
| use Youtube with uBO Lite, and it does infact
| consistently prevent me from seeing ads. I've yet to see
| a single one.
|
| There does seem to be a war going on between Youtube and
| adblockers where sometimes Youtube will show me a screen
| saying that adblockers are prohibited instead of playing
| the video. But usually a full-page reload which I guess
| refreshes uBO's rules (either the original Full or the
| new Lite) fixes it. I'm pretty sure this also happened
| under the original full uBO, so I don't think it's
| specific to any new limitations of Lite.
| rpdillon wrote:
| There are a lot of different ways to respond to you,
| since there are so many features that have different
| effects. But I'll focus on one I care about, related to
| tracking. UBo can detect cname cloaking, where a provider
| hosts 3rd party tracking via a CNAME DNS record attached
| to their domain. UBo can detect this and block it, while
| the lite version cannot.
|
| If you care only about ads, then you can determine
| whether the extension is working purely based on your
| annoyance level while surfing. But I care about tracking
| as well (CNAME cloaking is one example), as well as the
| ability to customize the experience (import my own filter
| lists, for example).
|
| These capabilities aren't present in UBo Lite. So it
| feels like a real gap to me. For context, I was an avid
| UMatrix user for a very long time, but Gorhill
| discontinuing that showed that I was in a tiny minority.
| Reminds me of when James Gosling told me I was a dying
| breed because I still used Emacs. If the inventor of the
| technology doesn't even use it, maybe it's time to move
| on! =)
| ufmace wrote:
| Thanks for providing a specific example! That does make
| more sense.
|
| So I suppose Lite is indeed at least somewhat worse at
| blocking tracking. It's a legitimate concern. I admit
| that I don't have a ton of awareness of just how much
| tracking we're all subject to on the public mainstream
| web. Unfortunately, I fear it may be a losing battle.
|
| What concerns me more is that there are dozens of medium
| to huge tech companies working full-time to track the
| hell out of us. That's not exactly great. uBO Lite blocks
| some of their stuff. I suppose uBO Full blocks more of
| it. But how do I know what either of them isn't blocking?
| It's got to be more than a full-time job to keep track of
| all the ways and means by which we're being tracked. Can
| a few determined independent individuals really
| effectively stop them? I tried using Firefox with
| NoScript for a while, but it's just too much work to
| fiddle with it on nearly every random site until that
| site works well enough to be usable.
|
| I tend to think that, if one is truly concerned about ads
| and tracking, it's better to focus on staying on smaller,
| independent sites that do not do that at all. At least,
| more effective than being an individual in the middle of
| a full-time war between ad companies and individuals
| trying to block ads, trying to go to these big sites but
| not see the ads or be tracked.
|
| Maybe the Brave solution is the better one - keep actual
| extensions to a more limited API, but more thoroughly
| integrate blocking of ads and tracking into the browser
| core. I know some people have other beefs with them, but
| there aren't any perfect solutions in this world.
|
| It's also worth keeping in mind, in my opinion, that
| upwards of 95% of the world isn't using any ad blockers
| at all. Have you seen a "mainstream media" news website
| without any adblocking at all? Good god there's a ton of
| ads! How can anyone handle that! I guess we're already in
| a minority for trying to block ads at all, and it's an
| even smaller sub-minority that really cares about
| creating complex rules to actually block all tracking.
| 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"?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Do you not agree that "properly" means "having all the
| functionality they had with MV2"?_
|
| Of course it doesn't, if MV2 provided a bunch of edge
| case stuff that doesn't matter for normal adblocking.
|
| > _So your argument is that if an extension could block
| even a single ad with MV3_
|
| That's a silly thing to say. No, it's that if it's
| blocking 99.9+% of ads it should definitely be considered
| to be functioning properly. Which uBOL definitely is.
|
| Quibbling over whether it blocks 99.999% or 99.99999% is
| not relevant to whether it functions "properly". It
| clearly does.
| 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.
| StrLght wrote:
| > This is demonstrably false, ublock lite proves that
| adblockers can work without it
|
| uBO Lite is missing plenty of features:
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-
| as...
| consumer451 wrote:
| I believe that another change is that ad blockers cannot update
| as quickly now? If that is true, since ad blocking is a cat and
| mouse game, doesn't that make ad blocking with a delay less
| functional?
| charcircuit wrote:
| No, that's not true either. Updating rules is allowed. The
| restriction is about updating code.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Hmmm, according to this post [0], ad blocking lists must
| now be updated via store updates. Is that not the case?
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17as8o8/
| the_r...
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Remotely hosted code, or RHC, is what the Chrome Web
| Store calls anything that is executed by the browser that
| is loaded from someplace other than the extension's own
| files. Things like JavaScript and WASM. It does not
| include data or things like JSON or CSS.
|
| https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migr
| ate...
|
| Rules are not javascript or wasm.
| maxloh wrote:
| If I recalled it correctly, Chrome's developers imposed a
| stricter limit on dynamically loaded (fetched) DNR rules.
| That's why updating rules with the store is the more
| conventional method.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Chrome allows for 300,000 static rules, 30,000 dynamic
| rules, and 5,000 session rules.
|
| While not 1 to 1, for reference, EasyList has a little
| over 30,000 rules.
| sgentle wrote:
| It depends on how you interpret the word "properly". There are
| ads and adblocker-detection techniques that can't be blocked by
| MV3-style static filtering.
|
| If "properly" means "can block all ads" then you're wrong. If
| it means "can block some ads" then you're right. If it means
| "can block most ads" then you're currently right, but likely to
| become wrong as adtech evolves around the new state of play.
|
| Don't forget Chrome launched with built-in popup blocking. Now
| we just have popunders, in-page popups, back-button hijacking
| etc. Ads, uh... find a way.
| krade wrote:
| UBO Lite doesn't support cosmetic filters or custom rules.
| 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.
| Etheryte wrote:
| You don't have to guess, they're as capable as MV2 and
| AdGuard has been around for a long time.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I find the "switch to Safari" talk amusing because the
| adblockers available for Safari are functionally
| equivalent to the MV3 API that everyone's complaining
| about. The problem with the "static list of content to
| block" approach that Safari and MV3 use is that you can't
| trick the site into thinking that ads have been loaded
| when they haven't, like MV2 allows via Javascript
| injection. The effect of this is that you'll run into a
| lot of "disable your ad blocker to continue" pop-ups when
| using an adblocker with Safari, while you won't see them
| at all when using an adblocker with Firefox.
| lapcat wrote:
| A Safari content blocker can be combined with an MV2
| Safari extension in one app for JavaScript injection.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Thank you for the correction, it looks like Adguard uses
| this approach.
| 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
| 0xblinq wrote:
| Facebook entered the chat
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Facebook doesn't sell your data to other companies
| either. Your data is too valuable to sell. Companies tell
| FB what demographics they want to target.
| 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!
| rasz wrote:
| There must be ways of injecting custom non static js
| because mv3 version of tampermonkey works https://chromew
| ebstore.google.com/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgff...
| lapcat wrote:
| After dragging their feet for literally years, Google
| finally implemented a specific userscripts API. However,
| the implementation was initially just statically declared
| rules like DeclarativeNetRequest, which sucked, and it
| also required that the user enable developer mode.
|
| In Chrome 135, which is very recent--the public is
| currently on Chrome 138--Google added an execute() method
| to run an individual script. However, the API is not
| available from the extension content script, so if it
| needs to be triggered from the content script, you have
| to make an async call to the background script (or more
| accurately, the background service worker, which is a
| whole other nightmare of MV3). Moreover, the API accepts
| only a string for JS code or a filename; you still can't
| use a Function() constructor for example.
|
| In Chrome 138, the current version, Google switched from
| developer mode to a dedicated userscripts permission
| toggle in the extension details, which is disabled by
| default. I think Google is still working on but has not
| finished a permissions request API. Remember this is
| almost SEVEN YEARS after Google first announced Manifest
| V3. The entire time, Google has been stalling, foot
| dragging, practically getting dragged kicking and
| screaming into doing the least possible work here.
| rasz wrote:
| Iv been following
| https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644
| since 2020. I remember a moment in 2021 where Google came
| out with this ridiculous notion of User code stored on
| User computer and executed by User Agent being "remote"
| because it wasnt under Google control, but somewhere
| around 2022 things started clearing up and Jan Biniok
| managed to get a working mv3 version a year ago in May.
|
| Surprisingly this async serialize/deserialize nature of
| the API (https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/blo
| b/cdfc253c07... ?) somehow still manages to inject and
| execute scripts fast enough to make them act like content
| scripts at document_start. The only problem is no
| arbitration between extensions, cant force Tampermonkey
| inject before uBO (tons of adblock filters disable
| functions required for Tampermonkey and effectively kill
| Tampermonkey in the process).
| zer00eyz wrote:
| I don't think in this case your argument is as clear cut
| and the use cases that people have today arent solved by
| the choices out there.
|
| George Carlin: "You don't need a formal conspiracy when
| interests converge. These people went to the same
| universities, they're on the same boards of directors,
| they're in the same country clubs, they have like
| interests, they don't need to call a meeting, they know
| what's good for them and they're getting it."
|
| The interests of APPLE (who makes money on hardware, and
| credit card processing) don't align with the interests of
| Google (who makes money on ad's). I am all for open
| source, I'm all for alternatives. But honestly if you own
| an iPhone and a Mac then safari makes a lot of sense. I
| happen to use safari and Firefox on Mac and am happy to
| bounce back and forth.
|
| I also keep an eye on ladybird, but it isnt ready for
| prime time.
|
| And I'm still going to have a chrome install for easy
| flashing of devices.
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| macOS isn't locked down like iOS. There are things like
| SIP which prevent some hacking/customising of the system,
| but:
|
| 1. These can all be disabled by advanced users (largely
| without consequence)
|
| 2. They dont prevent things like installing apps or even
| gaining root access in the first place.
|
| The very fact that you can install Linux is evidence of
| the different approach taken with macs (you can't easily
| install Linux of ios devices)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The last macbook I owned had an Ethernet port, so I
| wasn't sure how much had changed in the interim. I knew
| that had added some lockdown and I wasn't sure how much.
| That seems like a reasonable compromise.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yep, you can run Firefox on every Mac released for the
| past couple of decades. (Maybe more?)
|
| Most of them also work with Linux, although it's a little
| more spotty on the more recent ARM-based ones ("apple
| silicon").
|
| Macs are essentially "real computers" that you can run
| whatever software you want on, whereas iPhones and iPads
| are much more locked down. (Even when they have the same
| CPU.)
| Sunspark wrote:
| Yes, and the different browsers on iOS are all actually
| just skins on top of Safari's WebKit.
| technofiend wrote:
| I recently discovered that my jetkvm won't work on
| chrome, firefox or safari in macos, even after trying
| various workarounds to enable webrtc. The fix was to boot
| up Fedora in parallels and use Firefox there. In fact I'm
| thinking about shifting all my browsing to that
| combination just for further isolation.
| omnimus wrote:
| I am pretty sure jetkvm works on macos browsers. We have
| two in office where most people have macs.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Orion browser using Firefox plugins I have found to work
| quite well on iOS
| pkaeding wrote:
| I tried to use Orion as my daily driver on Mac OS
| (instead of Firefox) but I couldn't get the simplelogin
| extension to work (it wouldn't authenticate to my
| account). Also, it was slower than FF (I know, everything
| says that it is super fast, but that wasn't my
| experience).
|
| After a month or so, I gave up and switched back to FF.
| 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.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| They just don't know. If you show them internet without
| ads they are amazed that something like that is possible.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| That might be true for normal users, but there are many
| developers who still use Chrome or its derivates in 2025.
| What excuse do they have?
| evo_9 wrote:
| Ditto - I'm on Zen browser a FF fork, it's a clone of Arc
| and quite love it. No way I'm going back to chrome or any
| chromium browsers.
| xg15 wrote:
| That's nice for you, but the monopoly is still there. In
| fact, you've strengthened Google's side in antitrust
| proceedings where they pretend they are not a monopoly
| because a small number of people use Firefox.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Yeah I'm surprised Google isn't imposing the same
| policies on Firefox. They ought to have considerable
| influence on Mozilla.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| They do. They are just more underhanded about it, but no
| worries, the effect will be the same.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| What do you propose then? Be a browser accelerationist,
| let Google do whatever the hell they want on your
| computer, and hope for big daddy government to tell them
| to stop?
| xg15 wrote:
| Google _is_ already doing what the hell they want on the
| vast majority of people 's computers. (As are Apple and
| Microsoft)
|
| Sure, go ahead and install Firefox, LineageOS, etc. (I
| did so too and am a happy user of both). But I'm just
| saying that this is not fighting the monopoly in any way,
| it's just retreating into a bubble where we can ignore it
| for a while.
|
| I have no answers as to what to do instead, but I think
| acknowledging that a strategy has failed would be a
| useful first step.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| The main thing holding me back is lack of pwa support,
| since there are a few apps that i need to use that only
| exist as progressive web apps on Linux. And using another
| browser for pwa has shown to be a bit cumbersome.
|
| I know pwa is coming back to Firefox soon-ish.
| slenk wrote:
| Firefox on Windows has PWA support at least
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Multi-account containers are brilliant. I recommend the
| following extensions: * uBlock Origin
| * Privacy Badger * Multi-Account Containers
| * Flagfox * Cookie Autodelete
| ekianjo wrote:
| Extensions are potential sources of future
| vulnerabilities. The less the better.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| If you choose Firefox, you can take advantage of the
| security vetting extensions must go through to become one
| of their recommended extensions.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-
| extensions-...
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I also love Multi-Account containers, but the UI is a bit
| of a mess. I get annoyed each time I have to futz with
| it.
| kxrm wrote:
| You really shouldn't double up on ad/tracking blockers.
| That can cause problems for the predefined filters. Go
| with one or the other. I prefer uBlock Origin personally.
| trinix912 wrote:
| I'd also recommend Consent-O-Matic for auto-clicking
| through most GDPR cookie notices ;)
| tmtvl wrote:
| I recommend uBlock Origin, Multi-Account Containers,
| NoScript Security Suite, CanvasBlocker, and
| Decentraleyes.
| chrsw wrote:
| I still find some pages don't work 100% correctly in
| Firefox. But not nearly enough to keep me from using it on
| my personal machines. (My employer doesn't allow any
| browser except Chrome and Edge). For me, the most important
| feature of a browser is the web experience. I guess it
| should be security but I try to be careful about what I do
| online, regardless of what browser I'm using.
|
| Many years ago I used to run the Firefox NoScript extension
| exclusively. For sites that I trusted and visited
| frequently I would add their domains to an exceptions list.
| For sites that I wasn't sure about I would load it with all
| scripts disabled and then selectively kept allowing scripts
| until the site was functional, starting with the scripts
| hosted on the same domain as the site I wanted to see/use.
|
| Eventually I got too lazy to keep doing that but outside of
| the painstaking overhead it was by far the best web
| experience I ever had. I started getting pretty good at
| recognizing what scripts I needed to enable to get the site
| to load/work. Plus, uBlock Origin and annoyances filters
| got so good I didn't stress about the web so much any more.
|
| But all this got me thinking, why not have the browser
| block all scripts by default, then have an AI agent
| selectively enable scripts until I get the functionality I
| need? I can even give feedback to the agent so it can
| improve over time. This would essentially be automating
| what I was dong myself years ago. Why wouldn't this work?
| Do I not understand AI? Or web technology? Or are people
| already doing this?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| > I still find some pages don't work 100% correctly in
| Firefox.
|
| find that hard to believe. but even if you find something
| using an api not implement by firefox, chances are you
| definitely do not want that feature anyway, the firefox
| gave in to really awful stuff and only drew the line on
| obviously egregious privacy violation ones.
| chrsw wrote:
| It's rare. But it does happen. Razer had this problem
| until recently. Looks like they fixed it because I just
| checked and it seems fine now.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
|
| I definitely run into pages broken in firefox desktop or
| especially firefox mobile. Extra especially on proofs of
| concept advertised here on HN.
| quacksilver wrote:
| Sometimes devs rely on Chrome specific quirks, or are
| shipping broken apps that Chrome manages to make the
| correct guesses for it to be functional.
|
| Many see 'it works on Chrome and mobile Safari' as 'it
| works' and they can get project signoff / ship / get paid
| / whatever and don't care about other users
|
| The company that has the application may not know until a
| few users complain (if they complain) and by that point
| it could be too late due to the contract, or they may not
| understand what a different browser is or care either.
| Faark wrote:
| Yes, it is a thing. I open ms edge every time i want to
| view logs in our spring boot admin. Same one for one of
| the jira ticket workflows. Might find the time to look
| into it someday...
| mrandish wrote:
| > I still find some pages don't work 100% correctly in
| Firefox.
|
| Sometimes this is simply because the site preemptively
| throws an error on detecting Firefox because they don't
| want to QA another browser with a smaller market share.
| Usually those sites work fine if you just change the user
| agent Firefox reports to look like Chrome (there are add-
| ons for that). Personally, I haven't had to resort to a
| non-Firefox browser or user agent spoof even once in well
| over a year now.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Some of us never left !
| vmladenov wrote:
| How do multi-account containers differ from Chrome
| profiles? I hadn't paid much attention to Firefox outside
| of Linux installs as I mainly use Safari with Chrome as a
| backup, but I'm interested to try again.
| calgoo wrote:
| First, they are color coded / icon specific tabs, not
| full windows like chrome. I have used it a lot in the
| past when I'm doing sso testing at work, or logging into
| 5 or 6 different AWS accounts at the same time. It's
| really nice to jump from the green tab (Dev) to the red
| tab (prod) to check some settings or logs. They feel a
| lot lighter then full on chrome profiles. You can also
| tie each to specific proxy profiles, so in my last setup
| we used ssh tunnels to access different environments, so
| each container connected to different ssh tunnels.
| tzs wrote:
| > I switched to Firefox and it's been wonderful. I wonder
| why I didn't switch earlier
|
| Maybe because a few years ago it could be very annoying? It
| was mostly pretty good at rendering web pages but it had
| many UI problems that could really get on your nerves after
| a while.
|
| For example somewhere around late 2020 or early 2021 after
| several years of using it as my main browser on my Mac I
| switched because a couple of those problems finally just
| got too annoying to me.
|
| The main one I remember was that I was posting a fair bit
| on HN and Reddit and Firefox's spell checker had an
| extraordinarily high false positive rate.
|
| This was quite baffling, actually, because Firefox uses
| Hunspell which is the same open source spell checker that
| LibreOffice, Chrome, MacOS, and many other free and
| commercial products, and it works great in those with a
| very low false positive rate.
|
| Here's the ones I hit and reported: ad hominem,
| algorithmically, all-nighter, another's, auditable,
| automata, backlight, ballistically, blacksmithing, bubonic,
| cantina, chewable, coaxially, commenter, conferenced,
| counterintuitive, dominator, epicycle, ethicist,
| exonerations, ferrite, fineable, hatchling, impaction,
| implementer, implementor, inductor, initializer,
| intercellular, irrevocability, licensor, lifecycle,
| manticore, massless, measurer, meerkats, micropayments,
| mischaracterization, misclassification, misclassified,
| mistyped, mosquitos, partygoers, passthrough, per se,
| phosphine, plough, pre-programmed, preprogrammed,
| programmability, prosecutable, recertification, responder,
| retransmission, rotator, seatbelt, sensationalistic,
| shapeshifting, solvability, spectrogram, splitter,
| subparagraphs, subtractive, surveil, survivorship,
| synchronizer, tradeoffs, transactional, trichotomy,
| tunable, underspecified, untraceably, untyped,
| verifiability, verifier, webmail.
| flkenosad wrote:
| That's funny. Maybe they need to update the dependency?
| al_borland wrote:
| It happened before, multiple times.
| 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.
| al_borland wrote:
| The HN comparison doesn't really hold water. There are a
| lot of options for tech news and forums. Lots of
| platforms, self-hosting options, with many business
| models, or simply self-funded.
|
| That is very different than a world where every browser
| relies on Google for the core of their browser... and
| those who don't rely on Google for funding (as they pay a
| lot of money to be the default search option in major
| browsers). Even Microsoft gave up on making their own
| browser, and now depends on Google. They used to own the
| entire market not so long ago.
|
| People are saying this is a psyop, but I'm not sure what
| Google stands to gain from giving off the impression that
| they are seeking to control the entire market so they can
| steer the direction of the web for their own profit. That
| doesn't make them look like the good guy, and should keep
| them neck deep in anti-trust filing from various
| governments. Where's the upside? People feeling like they
| don't have an option, so they give up and settle like
| Microsoft? Is that the angle?
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Somewhat related - is Microsoft Edge a set of patches on
| top of the latest Chromium release or is Microsoft
| running a hard fork from a X years old version?
| homebrewer wrote:
| It's just a set of patches on top of Chromium, as any
| other Chromium rebuild.
|
| They use the same numbering scheme and go in lockstep:
|
| > The trigger for Beta and Stable major releases is an
| equivalent Chromium release.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-
| edge-...
| homebrewer wrote:
| Users were supposedly massively exiting Reddit when that
| cesspool imploded, but if you find one of those threads
| through any search engine and click around on usernames
| who were leaving their "last messages ever, fuck reddit,
| I'm out", I'd estimate about 95% of them never left.
|
| Do it if you have 10 minutes to waste, it's easy to check
| and changes your opinion about how much people are
| willing to endure to avoid actually doing anything.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > I legitimately feel there is a grave issue with the
| internet if one wallet controls all of the actual
| development of our browsers.
|
| Aside from Ladybird and Servo, it mostly is one wallet.
| Chrome and Firefox are both funded by Google, and Apple
| also receives significant funding from Google for being the
| default search engine in Safari.
|
| Btw, some informal estimates at team sizes (full-time
| employees) of the various browsers (by people who have
| worked on them / are otherwise familiar):
|
| Chrome: 1300
|
| Firefox: 500
|
| Safari: 100-150
|
| Ladybird/Servo: 7-8 (each)
|
| Which gives you an idea of why Chrome has been so hard to
| compete with.
| 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)
| glandium wrote:
| Where did "check feature, not browser name" go?
| thayne wrote:
| Some developers are lazy. Some probably don't know that
| that is the right way to do it. There is a lot of legacy
| code from when checking user agents was more acceptable.
| It is much more difficult for server code to know the
| capabilities of the client (although in practice this
| isn't usually much of an issue).
|
| Also, sometimes the feature exists so the feature check
| is positive, but there is a bug in one browser that
| breaks your functionality, so you put in a user agent
| check. Then the bug gets fixed, but the user agent check
| isn't removed for years. I've seen that happen many
| times.
| bloaf wrote:
| There are definitely sites which _block_ firefox, even
| though they work fine in firefox. Most of the time, the
| block can be bypassed with simple user-agent spoofing.
| thayne wrote:
| There are also a handful of sites I've run into that only
| work on cheomium based browsers because they rely on non-
| standard experimental APIs that are only implemented in
| chromium.
| devmor wrote:
| What part of the Verizon website doesn't work on Firefox?
| I am curious if it's actually the browser or its the
| aggressive privacy options.
|
| > a well known kindergarden
|
| I am baffled by the choice to include this laughably
| obscure example alongside a major telecom. Surely there
| are better options less likely to be the fault of a
| random lazy web developer.
|
| Youtube, for example seems deliberately hampered on non-
| chrome browsers.
| maest wrote:
| For Verizon, it's one of their log in forms that doesn't
| work on Firefox, even with ublock disabled. Works just
| fine with Chrome. I was able to reproduce the behaviour
| on both my and my wife's laptop. (I haven't tried
| disabling the FF privacy features)
|
| > I am baffled by the choice...
|
| Rereading what I wrote, I see the unintended humour in my
| association.
|
| That being said:
|
| 1. These are both websites where I don't have much of a
| choice whether I use them or not
|
| 2. I actually expected Verizon to have a terrible website
| based on the sum of my interactions with them (both
| online and over the phone) and how uncompetitive the
| market is. But I was surprised the kindergarden had a
| needlessly restrictive website because I thought they'd
| care more about their online presence. And, to be clear,
| the kindergarden's website is fancy and expensively
| designed, so their lack of Firefox support can't easily
| explained by laziness.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| I get serious slowdown with multiple (3--5) youtube tabs
| open in firefox, but not chrome. Seems to happen when
| tabs are open for a long time (weeks), so probably some
| leak. Lots of others mention it on forums.
| thayne wrote:
| Google has a history of sabatoging Youtube on Firefox.
| See for example
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-
| delaye....
|
| It isn't unique to youtube either. Gmail offline mode
| only works on chrome, even though other browsers have the
| necessary APIs. And menu copy and paste in google docs
| uses a special chrome-only extension that google pre-
| installs in chrome, instead of the clipboard API that
| works in other browsers as well.
| 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.
| oblio wrote:
| Just bite the bullet and use Tree Style Tabs or
| Sideberry.
|
| I didn't, for decades, but it was a mistake.
| batiudrami wrote:
| Firefox now has vertical tabs built in. Not as feature
| filled of course though tab groups and vertical tabs
| together replaces all the functionality I needed from
| Tree Style Tabs.
| XorNot wrote:
| The average user does not notice any of these things.
|
| Except the YouTube thing but that's because I'm not even
| sure what you're talking about: I leave YouTube windows
| open in Firefox for weeks.
| fud101 wrote:
| Bro you probably have a monster mac pro with 256gb
| unified ram. I'm typing this on a N100 minipc. We're not
| the same. I just tried to switch to firefox (with 3 tabs
| including HN and youtube) and my load topped out at 2.5.
| I'm back to chrome now with the same tabs (and a couple
| more) and it's hovering at 1.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I've been using an n100 as my daily driver for months
| with librewolf and it's fine. I tend to end up with
| dozens of tabs at least before I finally decide I'll
| never sort through them and close the window.
| fud101 wrote:
| 16gb of ram also? I think it's youtube more than anything
| else. I am having a lot of problems with youtube, my
| other machine is a netbook which crashes while
| listening/watching to videos on youtube. Not sure why we
| put all our content (software engineering, etc) on that
| platform. It's awful.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I can confirm the youtube issue. No idea if it might be
| some edge case with my distro or hardware. Forcing a GC
| collection helps but input events to the entire browser
| still feel laggy until I restart it. It's been going on
| for years now.
|
| It occurs to me that it could be a pathological edge case
| triggered by ublock and youtube interacting. I'm not
| going to disable it to find out.
| immibis wrote:
| Go to about:processes and kill the YouTube process. All
| YouTube tabs and embeds will be marked as crashed, with a
| button to reload them. The memory leak will be reset and
| you won't have to restart the whole browser.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "memory leaks related to Youtube"
|
| News to me.
|
| If this is even true, in the end it's still "so what?"
| Meaning, the alternative is even worse so, let's say
| granted there is this problem. Where is the better
| alternative that does not have this problem? Chrome
| doesn't have other equivalent or worse memory problems?
| Even if not leaking, it simply uses so much it's the same
| end result.
|
| I've never consciously noticed a problem with youtube so
| if there is a problem, it's not one that necessarily
| matters.
| 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. ;)
| homebrewer wrote:
| Though his brave is a relatively small company, they have
| enough resources to have developed, and continue
| maintaining their own low-level ad blocker, which IME has
| been just as effective as uBO, but is supposedly more
| efficient (since it's written in the R-word language and
| compiled into native code integrating deeply inside the
| browser):
|
| I can't imagine what hoops Google would have to jump
| through to block third parties from integrating their own
| ad blockers. You don't need MV2 for that AFAIK.
|
| https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
| Phemist wrote:
| I also installed Brave on my partner's iPhone and I agree
| there are no big qualitative differences in the blocking.
|
| Probably for Google the easiest way to keep 3rd-parties
| from integrating native ad blockers is through licensing
| agreements for new code/modules in chromium. At this
| point there will be a fork of chromium, taking the latest
| non-adblockerblocker-licensed version and the two
| versions will start to diverge with time.
|
| My point however was not that Google might one day block
| 3rd-parties from integrating ad-blockers in their own
| chromium variant. My point was that building on the
| chromium-base will improve the chromium-base, which will
| improve Chrome and additionally allow them to claim they
| haven't monopolized the browser market.
|
| Genuine incompatible-by-time forks of chromium are not in
| Google's interest and thus Google needs to balance their
| competing interests of maximizing ad revenue, but also
| keeping Chrome a high-quality product and not being seen
| as a browser monopolist.
| thayne wrote:
| Has any chromium based browser committed to continue
| supporting MV2 or building an alternative API for ad-blockers
| to intercept web requests in MV3 even after the code for MV2
| is removed from upstream chromium?
|
| If not, then no, switching to another chromium based browser
| is not enough.
|
| And fwiw my experience trying Brave was that the user
| experience was actually more different from chrome than
| Firefox.
| eviks wrote:
| > Google still controls Chromium so it's not good enough" is
| exactly the kind of FUD
|
| Ok, so which of the forks plan to support MV2?
| 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Chrome was made to fracture, and everything started with the
| aptly named "Atom" editor (they "invented" Electron).
|
| Everybody choose convenience over efficiency and standards,
| because apparently nobody understood what "being lazy"
| actually is.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Microsoft invented Electron, when Windows Active Desktop
| came to be.
|
| Mozzilla also invented Electron, when XUL applications were
| a thing.
|
| Both failed, as shipping regular processes with the default
| browser kept being used.
| necovek wrote:
| KDE invented Electron, when they built KHTML as
| independently embeddable HTML + CSS + JS engine.
|
| Mozilla did it with Gecko even earlier, really -- but
| they gave up on it to focus on browser itself. (There
| were a number of Gecko-based browsers like GNOME default
| browser Epiphany using it)
|
| Apple built WebKit on top of KHTML just as Gecko stopped
| being updated: I guess they invented it too.
|
| Tools like Windmill (web rendering automation for
| testing) took programmable concept further.
|
| And Sun did very similar things with Java applets and
| Java applet runtime for desktop.
| brookst wrote:
| Consumers never really pick products for ideological reasons,
| no matter how galling that is to ideologues
| pjmlp wrote:
| Except, many developers contributed to the actual
| situation.
|
| The same excuse was given regarding IE.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You should block adds for practical reasons too though, not
| just for moral reasons.
|
| I can't fathom how there are so many devs that don't use
| adblockers. It is so strange and when I look over their
| shoulders I get a shocking reminder how the web looks for
| them.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think ads go well past "ideaology". very few like ads,
| and they have only gotten more persistent over recent
| years.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| And they slow down already dog slow web2.0 shit.
| imhoguy wrote:
| But consumers pick products for convenience reasons and
| Chrome updates crossed PITA line. Even my "boomers" family
| switches to FF.
| necovek wrote:
| If that was really the case, it would start showing up in
| the stats too. Firefox is still declining last I checked
| (I am still using it, but more and more sites have
| problems in FF.
| pyrale wrote:
| Oh no, instead consumers pick products because of
| advertising.
|
| What an improvement.
| onion2k wrote:
| Consumers pick _largely_ based on cost and features, with
| a things like brand, ethics, and environment coming
| second. However, consumers can only pick an option from
| choices they've heard of. Advertising is about getting
| into the list (and influencing choice a bit by
| demonstrating the brand image); the product itself still
| has to a good choice for the customer to make a purchase.
| brookst wrote:
| Being prescriptive about human nature will always be
| frustrating. You and I can argue about what consumers
| "should" do but the reality is they will always pick the
| highest _perceived_ benefit at the lowest _perceived_
| cost, even if deeper technical knowledge or improved
| ideological perspective would change those choices.
| pyrale wrote:
| I don't really mind about what people _should_ do. Cats
| should probably not kill birds when they aren 't hungry.
| But my opinion has no bearing on cats.
|
| My lament is more about the current situation and our
| apparent inability to escape it.
|
| In this case, I may also be annoyed a bit about your rant
| on ideologues. Just because people don't make decisions
| based on _their_ ideology doesn 't mean they don't make
| decisions based on ideology.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| They have nothing to pick, google already picked chrome
| for them.
| immibis wrote:
| FYI, this is not downvoted because you're wrong. It's
| downvoted because you called everyone with a different
| opinion to you an ideologue.
| echelon wrote:
| The answer is antitrust.
|
| The FTC / DOJ should strip Google of Chrome.
|
| Honestly, they should split Google into four or five "baby
| Bell"-type companies. They're ensnaring the public and web
| commerce in so many ways:
|
| - Chrome URL bar is a "search bar"
|
| - You have to pay to maintain your trademark even if you own
| the .com, because other parties can place ads in front of you
| with Google Search. (Same on Google Play Store.)
|
| - Google search is the default search
|
| - Paid third parties for Google search to be the default
| search
|
| - Paid third parties for Google Chrome to be the default
| browser
|
| - Required handset / Android manufacturers to bundle Google
| Play services
|
| - Own Adsense and a large percentage of web advertising
|
| - Made Google Payments the default for pay with Android
|
| - Made Google accounts the default
|
| - Via Google Accounts, removes or dampens the ability for
| companies to know their customer
|
| - Steers web standards in a way advantageous to Google
|
| - Pulls information from websites into Google's search
| interface, removing the need to use the websites providing
| the data (same as most AI tools now)
|
| - Use Chrome to remove adblock and other extensions that harm
| their advertising revenues
|
| - Use Adsense, Chrome performance, and other signals to rank
| Search results
|
| - Owns YouTube, the world's leading media company - one
| company controls too much surface area of how you publish and
| advertise
|
| - Pushes YouTube results via Google and Android
|
| ... and that's just scratching the surface.
|
| Many big tech companies should face this same judgment, but
| none of the rest are as brazen or as vampiric as Google.
| worik wrote:
| Yes to everything except the first statement:
|
| > The answer is antitrust.
|
| Anti-trust is crucial to make the capitalist economy work
| prperly, I agree
|
| But another answer is "Firefox"
| gg82 wrote:
| I would love to say another answer is "Firefox" (which is
| my default browser), but Mozilla have gotten fat of
| Googles money over the years and got distracted by other
| things.
| al_borland wrote:
| I would love if some of these projects that fall backward
| into loads of money would stay lean, and invest that
| money in a way that allowed them to become truly
| independent. So when the money dries up, or the funding
| becomes dirty, they have the freedom to cut ties and
| continue their lean operations, self-funded by the
| interest from their investments.
| hkt wrote:
| It isn't a coincidence that Google continue to fund
| Mozilla: Firefox is, arguably, a fig leaf. A few hundred
| million a year is a small price to pay to Google if they
| have even a semi-willing participant in allowing them to
| bulldoze through the standards bodies.
| lenkite wrote:
| Controlled opposition to avoid anti-trust is a MegaCorp's
| standard operation procedure.
| bborud wrote:
| So why do people choose Chrome?
|
| (I use chrome, but I am unable to articulate why. Surely
| some of you know why you use Chrome :-))
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > So why do people choose Chrome?
|
| It's actually kinda simple: they don't, at least not
| continuously. It's "what you use" because you decided
| that's true at some point in the past. All you have to do
| now is decide that some other browser is "what you use".
| You can even take it a step further and decide that
| Chrome is "not what you use".
|
| (And actually, if you go through with it, you might
| discover reasons for why you don't want to switch like
| "bookmarks" and "saved passwords". In my opinion, if it
| is not easy to transfer those things, that is further
| reason to switch because vendor lock-in is user-hostile.)
| jpc0 wrote:
| Chrome is explicitly "not what I use" however there are
| literally services I cannot use on a firefox derived
| browser so I must have a chromium derived browser
| installed and occasionally use it.
|
| For a normal user they would just switch back to chrome
| because that is what works, they don't care about our
| complaints, they care that what they want to use works.
| Filligree wrote:
| Because, last time I tried it, Firefox decided to force
| Pocket integration and I accidentally uploaded some of my
| bookmarks.
|
| Also performance, but the behaviour of Mozilla is the
| main reason I keep away.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Pocket - fair enough (though Google probably uploads all
| it can). But performance? No way. Unless you are talking
| about Google properties which are specifically un-
| optimized for Firefox, in which case I don't think it is
| Firefox you should avoid.
| orwin wrote:
| > Anti-trust is crucial to make the capitalist economy
| work prperly
|
| No it isn't. If you want your capitalism to be liberal,
| you need antitrust, true. If you only want capitalism,
| and don't really care about the 'liberty' part, you can
| check the mercantile capitalism of old. It worked quite
| well for people with power.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > If you only want capitalism
|
| Yeah, I prefer not to die in a coal mine at ripe age of
| 14, so a coal baron can increase their wealth by 0.001%.
| echelon wrote:
| Capitalism is a great model that results in evolutionary
| pressures for the efficient development of goods and
| services.
|
| One failure mode of unchecked and unregulated capitalism
| is the establishment of monopolies that can starve oxygen
| from the rest of the ecosystem.
|
| In order to have maximally efficient and broadly
| beneficial capitalism, you need strong anti-trust
| mechanisms to reoxygenate the environment for new
| competition. Regular enforcement also means that labor
| and investment capital reap the most rewards instead of
| calcified, legacy incumbents.
|
| Companies need to be constantly fighting to survive. If
| they're sitting comfortable and growing without controls,
| something went wrong and the rest of the fitness
| landscape is being distorted by an invasive species.
|
| Antitrust Regulation is incredibly pro-market and pro-
| competition.
| userbinator wrote:
| IE was far less user-hostile than Chrome.
| leptons wrote:
| Only because Microsoft got slapped on the wrist way back
| when.
|
| Google should get slapped too, and they might be headed
| that way...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-5367750/google-
| breakup-...
|
| Safari is also pretty user-hostile, which is why Apple is
| getting sued by the DOJ for purposely hobbling Safari while
| forbidding any other browser engine on IOS. They did this
| so that developers are forced to write native apps, which
| allows Apple to skim 30% off any purchase made through an
| app.
| userbinator wrote:
| There's a huge difference between antitrust concerns, and
| mass surveillance and anti-user hostility. MS' business
| back then was to sell software, not monetise users.
| leptons wrote:
| You don't think Microsoft is doing mass surveillance?
| They own Outlook and Teams, and Windows 11 is quickly
| turning into a platform for training AI on your data. I
| doubt Edge is going to be much different. It's the reason
| I'm switching to Linux.
| userbinator wrote:
| They started going down that route many years ago now
| (Windows 10 "telemetry" being a critical inflection
| point), but the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s and even
| early 2000s was not about mass surveillance but selling
| software.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Perhaps you're right, but by the time Microsoft acquired
| Hotmail in 1997, MSN was already two years old and had
| its own dialup service. Microsoft knew what they were
| doing.
| twilo wrote:
| Yes but like the post above says MS didn't start to
| "monetize" their users until the 2000s and it was mainly
| because Google set up that beautiful business model... on
| top of Microsoft's platform (Windows) which makes the
| whole thing really funny
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The irony may be much stronger than that; I'd go as far
| as suggesting that Microsoft went for that business model
| _because of_ the antitrust case.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > Apple is getting sued by the DOJ for purposely hobbling
| Safari
|
| I don't believe the lawsuit claims this, does it?
|
| > which allows Apple to skim 30% off any purchase made
| through an app.
|
| This is untrue.
|
| - Most developers pay 15% for in-app purchases. Only the
| tiny proportion of developers earning more than a million
| dollars a year pay 30% and even then, it's 15% for
| subscriptions after the first year.
|
| - This is not any purchase made through an app. This only
| applies to digital goods and services.
| xdennis wrote:
| > IE was far less user-hostile than Chrome.
|
| What exactly do you mean by this?
|
| IE was horrible to use which is why so many people switched
| to Firefox. It wasn't because of web standards.
|
| IE didn't have tabs when every other browser moved to that.
|
| IE didn't block pop ups when every other browser would do
| that.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Excuse me. If it's on MDN, I'm going to use it if it's useful
| for my app. Not my fault if not all browsers can keep up!
| Half JK. If I get user complaints I'll patch them for other
| browsers but I'm only one person so it's hard and I rely on
| user feedback. (Submit bug reports y'all)
| jmb99 wrote:
| Why not only use features that are compatible with all
| browsers? You don't need to use every bleeding edge feature
| to make a website.
| hdjrudni wrote:
| I mostly do stick to baseline widely available, but once
| in awhile something can only be done with a niche API
| unless perhaps I include a 10 MiB, slow, clunky polyfill.
| And for a hobby site without paying users, I basically
| just don't care.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Welcome to Microsoft world of IE.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The issue is completely different if the users of an app or
| a website are customers. Then you have to make it work for
| them or you'll lose sales. If it's non-commercial project
| then it doesn't matter if it works with all browsers or
| not.
| azangru wrote:
| > instead of learning Web standards, rather ships Chrome
| alongside their application
|
| I am confused.
|
| - The "shipping Chrome alongside their application" part
| seems to refer to Electron; but Electron is hardly guilty of
| what is described in the article.
|
| - The "learning web standards" bit seems to impune web
| developers; but how are they guilty of the Chrome monopoly?
| If anything, they are guilty of shipping react apps instead
| of learning web standards; but react apps work equally well
| (or poorly) in all major browsers.
|
| - Finally, how is Chrome incompatible with web standards? It
| is one of the best implementer of them.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > how is Chrome incompatible with web standards? It is one
| of the best implementer of them.
|
| They have so much market share that they control the
| standards bodies. The tail wags the dog.
| JimDabell wrote:
| This is not true yet, but it's getting close.
|
| The pattern is this:
|
| - Google publishes a specification.
|
| - They raise request for feedback from the Mozilla and
| WebKit teams.
|
| - Mozilla and WebKit find security and privacy problems.
|
| - Google deploys their implementation anyway.
|
| - This functionality gets listed on sites like
| whatpwacando.today
|
| - Web developers complain about Safari being behind and
| accuse Apple of holding back the web.
|
| - Nobody gives a shit about Firefox.
|
| So we have two key problems, but neither of them are
| "Google controls the standards bodies". The problem is
| that they don't need to.
|
| Firstly, a lot of web developers have stopped caring
| about the standards process. Whatever functionality
| Google adds is their definition of "the web". This
| happened at the height of Internet Explorer dominance
| too. A huge number of web developers would happily write
| Internet Explorer-only sites and this monoculture damaged
| the web immensely. Chrome is the new Internet Explorer.
|
| The second problem is that nobody cares about Firefox any
| more. The standards process doesn't really work when
| there are only two main players. At the moment, you can
| honestly say _"Look, the standards process is that any
| standard needs two interoperable implementations. If
| Google can't convince anybody outside of Google to
| implement something, it can't be a standard."_ This makes
| the unsuitability of those proposals a lot plainer to
| see.
|
| But now that Firefox market share has vanished, that
| argument is turning into _"Google and Apple disagree
| about whether to add functionality to the web"_. This
| hides the unsuitability of those proposals. This too has
| happened before - this is how the web worked when
| Internet Explorer was battling Netscape Navigator for
| dominance in the 90s, where browsers were adding all
| kinds of stupid things unilaterally. Again, Chrome is the
| new Internet Explorer.
|
| The web standards process desperately needs either
| Firefox to regain standing or for a new independent
| rendering engine (maybe Ladybird?) to arise. And web
| developers need to stop treating everything that Google
| craps out as if it's a done deal. Google don't and
| shouldn't control the definition of the web. We've seen
| that before, and a monoculture like that paralyses the
| industry.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They are at the edge of transforming the Web into
| ChromeOS Platform, with the complacency of everyone that
| helped it become a reality.
| flkenosad wrote:
| At least chromeos is open source. We can fork it anytime.
| You'd rather everyone run ios or windows?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Open source in code but not in spirit, you "can't"
| contribute to ChromeOS without being a Google employee or
| some special person
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Firstly, a lot of web developers have stopped caring
| about the standards process. Whatever functionality
| Google adds is their definition of "the web".
|
| Businesses who hire such web developers will lose huge
| amounts of sales, since 90% of visitors are on mobile and
| half of those are on Safari.
| JimDabell wrote:
| How do you think that's going to play out once Apple are
| legally barred from mandating WebKit on iOS?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Web will finally become ChromeOS, takeover goal achieved.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Or other engines gain a foothold and web devs have to go
| back to standards.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Which other engines?
|
| Why would they gain a foothold on iOS when they haven't
| on desktop?
| nsomaru wrote:
| Extensions without going through the App Store is one
| JimDabell wrote:
| You don't need a different engine for that; Orion can
| install extensions without going through the App Store
| today.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I think most people will continue using the default
| Safari browser.
| internet2000 wrote:
| That's not how it played out on desktop and it isn't how
| it will play out on mobile.
| immibis wrote:
| I use Chrome on Android because it's the default browser
| and I'm lazy, not because I actually like it. When a
| phone forces me to choose one I'm not very likely to
| choose Chrome. It's going to be the same for iOS users.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Mozilla and WebKit find security and privacy problems
|
| This is a little disingenuous because Apple often falsely
| claims security when it's to hold back tech that could
| loosen the App Store grasp.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Can you give an example?
|
| Generally speaking, when Apple rejects a proposal,
| Mozilla do too. What's Mozilla's motivation for doing
| this and lying about it?
| TsiCClawOfLight wrote:
| Apple actively removed PWA features to prevent feature
| parity with native apps.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Which PWA features did Apple and Mozilla remove on
| security grounds? What was Mozilla's justification?
| What's your justification for claiming they lied about it
| and it wasn't for security reasons?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| One touted security feature is that app store gatekeeps
| malware. It's praised as a killer feature of apple
| echosystem.
| immibis wrote:
| PWA is an antifeature anyway; it's an operating system
| inside a browser. This benefits companies that have
| market-dominant browsers and do not have operating
| systems; on a technical level it's just stupid.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I love PWAs when the alternative is Electron, I'd rather
| let one browser instance run my crapps since it improves
| memory sharing and other resource utilization.
|
| I really like being able to install websites as apps too
| so my WM can manage them independently.
| bergfest wrote:
| Why not forbid them to ship any non-standard feature in
| their pre-installed default build of Chrome? Experimental
| features could be made available in a developer build,
| that would have to be manually installed in a non-obvious
| way, so that they cannot gain traction before
| standardization.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| webdev in 2005: webapp spa just werk everywhere, and werk
| fast and efficiently, only add these 20 lines of code for
| compatibility :3
|
| webdev in 2025: OMGWTF NOTHING WORKS WITHOUT THIS NEW
| SHINY FEATURE RELEASED YESTERDAY AAAAAAAAA!!!!!111
| pjmlp wrote:
| Web features being pushed by Google via Chrome, aren't
| standards, unless everyone actually agrees they are worthy
| of becoming one.
|
| Shipping Electron junk, strengthens Google and Chrome
| market presence, and the reference to Web standards, why
| bother when it is whatever Chrome is capable of.
|
| Web devs with worthy skills of forgotten times, would
| rather use regular processes alongside the default system
| browser.
| duped wrote:
| There are no realistic alternatives to Electron. So
| calling it "junk" when its the baseline for "cross
| platform GUI application" is nonsense.
|
| I get that you don't like it, so go build an alternative.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The alternative already exists, processes using the
| system browser, for several decades now.
|
| Or actually learn how we use to ship software on the
| glory days of 8, 16 and 32 bit home platforms.
|
| Now I do agree there are no alternatives for people that
| only care about shipping ChromeOS all over the place.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > The alternative already exists, processes using the
| system browser, for several decades now.
|
| Yes, Windows supported Electron-like applications back in
| the 90s with HTAs. If you want something modern and
| cross-platform, Tauri does this:
|
| https://v2.tauri.app
| charcircuit wrote:
| You can't trust the system browser to be up to date and
| secure or for it to render things how you want. You can
| not guarantee a good user experience unless you ship the
| browser engine with your app.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Yeah sure but I use most web apps through the browser
| either way so I'm already in "possibly incompatible land"
| and you can reasonably expect any user facing device to
| have an updated browser OR one specific browser in case
| of embedded. We're not in Windows XP software
| distribution times anymore.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Are we really trying to argue about cross platform GUI in
| 2025? This was solved decades ago. Just not in ways that
| are trying to directly appeal to modern webdevs by
| jamming a browser into every desktop application.
|
| I don't even hate Electron that much. I'm working on a
| toy project using Electron right now for various reasons.
| This was just a bizarre angle to approach from.
| ogoffart wrote:
| I'm actually working on an alternative called Slint =>
| https://slint.dev
| quacksilver wrote:
| Devs, particularly those with pressure to ship or who don't
| know better, unfortunately see 'it works in Chrome' as 'it
| works', even if it is a quirk of Chrome that causes it to
| work, or if they use Chrome related hacks that break
| compatibility with other browsers to get it to work in
| Chrome.
|
| - Sometimes the standards don't define some exact behavior
| and it is left for the browser implementer to come up with.
| Chrome implements it one way and other browsers implement
| it the other way. Both are compatible with the standards.
|
| - Sometimes the app contains errors, but certain permissive
| behaviors of Chrome mean it works ok and the app is
| shipped. The developers work around the guesses that Chrome
| makes and cobble the app together. (there may be a load of
| warnings in the console). Other browsers don't make the
| same guesses so the app is shipped in a state that it will
| only work on Chrome.
|
| - Sometimes Chrome (or mobile Safari) specific APIs or
| functions are used as people don't know any better.
|
| - Some security / WAF / anti-bot software relies on Chrome
| specific JavaScript quirks (that there may be no standards
| for) and thinks that the user using Firefox or another
| browser that isn't Chrome or iOS safari is a bot and blocks
| them.
|
| In many ways, Chrome is the new IE, through no fault of
| Google or the authors of other browsers.
| lowwave wrote:
| Before shipping any web site/app, make sure it works in
| Apple Safari Mobile is usually the one that is dragging
| it is foot in Web Standards.
| gus_tpm wrote:
| Even in portugal/spain se have to worry about this.
| Safari mobile users are a minority here but they usually
| spend or have more money to spend
| meindnoch wrote:
| Those stupid rich people don't know what's good for them
| and keep buying iPhones. I wonder why?
| flkenosad wrote:
| They have no friends who like them enough to help them
| troubleshoot their androids.
| pjmlp wrote:
| On the contrary, they are the last one standing fighting
| Google takeover of the Web as ChromeOS development
| platform.
|
| Without Safari we are done, just close shop on the Web
| standards group.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is a lesson in capitalism. It's so much more
| profitable to ignore small users bases when you can just
| tell them to "try switching to Chrome".
|
| I think you're wrong about Safari itself being the reason
| chrome isn't a 90%+ market owner; rather, it's apple's
| requirement that no other browser engine can exist on
| iOS.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is exactly the same by another words
|
| The moment Chrome gets free reign on iOS variants, it is
| about time to polish those CVs as ChromeOS Application
| Developer instead of Web Developer.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Other browser engines can exist. JIT has to be the
| system's. Others can use Apple's JavascriptCore to gain
| access to it and do whatever they want on top.
| flkenosad wrote:
| JIT only has to belong to the system because of
| capitalism. If users could install whatever software they
| want, Apple couldn't exist.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > I think you're wrong about Safari itself being the
| reason chrome isn't a 90%+ market owner; rather, it's
| apple's requirement that no other browser engine can
| exist on iOS.
|
| It sounds like capitalism has so far saved us from a
| Chrome monopoly, then.
| mopenstein wrote:
| Capitalism doesn't exist. The fact that trademark,
| copyright, and patents exist nullify capitalism.
|
| There can be no free market if your government intervenes
| in every transaction.
| ako wrote:
| True capitalism can never exist due to lack of
| transparency, urgency, monopolies, etc. The best we can
| have is government controlled capitalism.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Web Standards(tm) [1]
|
| __________________
|
| [1] some feature a Chrome engineer decided to implement,
| to boost their yearly performance review
| js4ever wrote:
| No, Safari is the new IE, nothing works on it, it's full
| of bugs and Apple is actively preventing web standards to
| move on. Do you remember how much Apple prevented web
| apps to be a thing by blocking web push, and breaking
| most things if run in PWA mode?
|
| Apple are by far the worst offender and I can't wait for
| Safari to die
| srcreigh wrote:
| It's death by a million papercuts with safari.
|
| I made a reader app for learning languages. Wiktionary
| has audio for a word. Playing the file over web URL works
| fine, but when I add caching to play from cached audio
| blob, safari sometimes delays the audio by 0.5-15
| seconds. Works fine on every other browser.
|
| It's infuriating and it can't be unintentional.
| badgersnake wrote:
| > how is Chrome incompatible with web standards? It is one
| of the best implementer of them.
|
| Easy when they make Chrome do whatever they want and call
| it a living standard (whatever that is). There is no such
| thing as web standards now.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Not everyone. Some of us used Firefox all along and didn't
| just go with the "default" invasive thing.
| genman wrote:
| The main wrong lesson learned was to promote Chrome instead
| of Firefox (also in what many HN readers have been guilty
| of).
| Ygg2 wrote:
| That's fundamentally a mischaracterization.
|
| Everyone focused on short term gains. Optimizing for browser
| with 30% market share, backed by Google makes more sense than
| a browser with 20%. Repeat with 40% and 20% respectively. And
| so on, and so on.
|
| There isn't a lesson to learn. It's just short term thinking.
|
| Now Google has enough power and lacks scruples that would
| prevent it from exploiting.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over
| the future direction of the web._
|
| Because that has worked so well so far...
| janalsncm wrote:
| "Sorry, we don't support any browsers other than Chrome"
|
| I agree exploiting a bug isn't a sustainable solution. But it's
| also unrealistic to think switching is viable.
| oehpr wrote:
| Keep chrome installed and fall back iff forced to. That way
| the majority of usage statistics show up as other browsers so
| when developers are making guesses at which browser to
| support, those statistics will push them away from chrome.
|
| Additionally: you would be surprised how infrequently you
| have to switch to chrome
| zos_kia wrote:
| Can't remember the last time I actually had to open a
| website on chrome for compatibility reasons. Is that still
| a thing?
| Steven420 wrote:
| I only have to switch to chrome for e-transfers.
| Everything else seems to work
| julianz wrote:
| The F1TV site didn't work on Firefox earlier this year
| but send to be fixed now, other than that I haven't had
| any issues.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Btw, the 'website requires chrome browser' problem is often
| solved if you just make Firefox user agent say it is
| Chrome.
| XorNot wrote:
| The problem is this needs to be a standard Firefox
| feature.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| There's one site I have to switch to Firefox for. And it's
| a big one that handles a lot of money, so that's kind of
| surprising. Can't log into their site in chrome, no matter
| how hard I try. Nor edge.
| tankenmate wrote:
| By that logic attempting to change anything at all is not
| viable; e pur si muove.
| bayindirh wrote:
| For me "switching" is to start using something else rather
| than Firefox, so switching from Chrome is viable.
| slenk wrote:
| Most sites let you ignore that, but just keep like Ungoogled
| Chromium around as a backup
| userbinator wrote:
| Find who is responsible for such sites and send them
| strongly-worded emails. If it's a commerce site, tell them
| they just lost a potential customer. In my experience it's
| usually the trendchasing web developers who have drunk the
| Goog-Aid and are trying to convince the others in the
| organisation to use "modern" (read: controlled by Google)
| features and waste time implementing these changes ---
| instead of the "deprecated" feature that's been there for
| decades and will work in just about any browser, and the
| management is usually more driven by $$$ so anything that
| affects the bottom line is going to get their attention. I've
| even offered to "fix" their site for free to make it more
| accessible.
| janalsncm wrote:
| This is common on internal company websites. Devs only
| support chrome officially.
| yard2010 wrote:
| "This site requires Internet Explorer 6 to work"
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This wasn't really the point of the article, which in fact says
| the workaround was patched in Chrome 118.
| irrational wrote:
| Because the author reported it. Personally I would have told
| the ublock origin developers instead of google.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| To what end? So Google can see how it works and still patch
| it?
| deryilz wrote:
| Yeah, this was my thought process. I get the appeal, but
| I don't think a million-user open-source extension is
| gonna start relying on a clear bug to function.
| scotty79 wrote:
| At least it would make them work for it.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It would be creating more work for the Ublock Origin
| developer[1]; as far as I can tell it wouldn't be
| creating any extra work for Google, which has to patch
| the issue anyway.
|
| 1: Assuming he even elected to do it; I know I wouldn't.
| autobodie wrote:
| > _the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome_
|
| History shows mere boycotts to always be abysmal failures one
| after another. The only few examples of ostensible outcomes
| were critically meaningless and necessitate zero-friction
| alternatives, like when bud light was encouraged to spend a bit
| of its marketing budget differently -- wow, really showed
| them!!
|
| There's no detour for politics.
| worik wrote:
| > History shows mere boycotts to always be abysmal failures
| one after another
|
| The South African apartheid regime was brought down by
| boycotts.
|
| The Israeli genocide regime will suffer the same fate if
| there is any justice left in the world.
|
| Boycotts are very powerful. Users boycotting ads is
| dismantling the surveillance web.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| South Africa didn't have the U.S. Government and its allies
| actively propping it up, and punishing anyone who tried to
| boycott it.
| linguae wrote:
| The history is a little more complicated than this...it
| is true that South Africa was eventually sanctioned by
| the US for its apartheid policies, and this helped lead
| to the end of apartheid. However, the US supported South
| Africa during much of the Cold War period as a bulwark
| against communism. Some US politicians were willing to
| look the other way when it came to apartheid before
| support for South Africa became increasingly politically
| difficult.
| zorked wrote:
| It wasn't just boycotts, however and unfortunately. The
| South African army was defeated militarily by FAPLA-Cuba.
| There's a reason why Nelson Mandela's first visit as chief
| of state was to thank Fidel Castro in person.
| codeguro wrote:
| >like when bud light was encouraged to spend a bit of its
| marketing budget differently
|
| But that was the whole point. They were marketing to
| children. They _still_ haven 't recovered from that backlash.
| Anheuser-Busch took a pretty damning financial hit and it
| sent a message to all the other companies not to pull this
| kind of stunt because it's bad for business. Changing their
| behavior was the entire point.
| miohtama wrote:
| Most complainers are hypocrites who are complaining for the
| sake of complaining, too lazy to do anything and just come up
| with excuses to avoid this.
| greatbit wrote:
| Ditching Chromium for Firefox isn't much better since Firefox
| sells user data.
|
| Next would be Safari.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Firefox only shares anonymized data with partners. Is there
| evidence OHTTP can be deanonymized?
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Websites I use regularly for banking don't work outside of
| chrome. I've done the pure firefox forray recently but after 6
| months it gets tiresome to have 2 browsers and 3 weeks ago Ive
| admitted defeat for the second time and went full chrome. Who
| am I lying to -- market cornered, ggwp. It's like trying to eat
| food without paying a cent to cargill.
| elyobo wrote:
| Really? I've been FF only for years and everything works
| reliably, including banking sites (Australia & New Zealand).
| wavesquid wrote:
| E.g. the Qantas business rewards website was broken in
| Firefox, along with Qantas hotels
| worik wrote:
| > Websites I use regularly for banking don't work outside of
| chrome.
|
| What countries banks?
|
| I am in New Zealand and have not had that problem in years.
|
| 15 years ago I had to edit my user agent string to look like
| IE (IIRC) for the University of Otago's website
| (PricewaterhouseCoopers getting lots of money for doing a
| really bad job)
|
| Makes me wonder have you tried that trick? Less tiresome than
| switching browsers....
| eikenberry wrote:
| Why not switch banks or move to a credit union?
| internet2000 wrote:
| This is not a reasonable suggestion.
| flkenosad wrote:
| Why not? Credit unions are great.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Treat it as isolating banking from the rest of your browsing,
| there are enough CVEs coming out for Chromium in spite of (or
| maybe because of) Google pouring billions into it.
| esperent wrote:
| This is what I do. Chromium for Facebook, banking, and
| Google (photos and map). Firefox for everything else. It's
| a very tiny inconvenience to switch between browsers for
| these tasks.
| Lio wrote:
| Really? Which ones are broken? Every banking website I use
| works in Firefox.
|
| I can't imagine voluntarily using a browser without working
| ad blocking.
| jacquesm wrote:
| ABNAMRO in nl, for starters. Their transaction form breaks
| somewhere halfway if you are not using Chrome. I've found a
| workaround (the transaction gets archived, so you just
| click on the list of transactions once more and then you
| can continue). It's annoying though and they do not respond
| to reports of it breaking. They also change the site more
| and more to work better on chrome so now you can no longer
| cut-and-paste a number of transactions in Firefox (handy
| during tax season) but you have to download a badly
| formatted CSV with way too much information in it, strip
| that and then you may be able to import it.
| mattigames wrote:
| Hit then where it hurts would be political action, not
| individuals switching to Firefox, that does nothing.
| toofy wrote:
| like most solutions to complex societal/economic issues:
|
| it's almost certainly going to take both of your ideas, more
| diversity in the browser space _and_ political actions. and
| then other actions as well.
|
| the collective We have fallen into a trap where we
| consistently talk down other important ideas because we think
| ours is important too (and it is.) i definitely catch myself
| doing this far too often.
|
| i just hope We can get back to a place where We recognize
| that different ideas from our own are _also_ important and
| will need to be used in our effort to solve some of our
| issues. because so many of these cracks we're facing will
| require many many many levers being pushed and pulled, not
| one magic silver bullet.
| wrasee wrote:
| In a democracy it's actually the other way around, over time
| at least. Politicians follow votes.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| > Politicians follow votes.
|
| we have enough data to show that this is not the case, in
| general.
| wrasee wrote:
| Perhaps a better way to phrase it is to simply say that
| politicians are elected, and are nothing without votes.
|
| A politician isn't even a practicing politician without
| votes. Democracy is ultimately driven by citizens. Of
| course politicians will do their best to influence public
| opinion (it's their job) but are ultimately in service to
| it though elections.
|
| It's why what people think (and vote) matters in a
| democracy.
|
| And back to the point, why voting with your feet
| (switching to Firefox) actually means something.
| hulitu wrote:
| > only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome
|
| There is more Chrome than Chrome: Edge, Chromium and all their
| forks.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I think you're missing the point of the article.
|
| Isn't really about bypassing it to support the development of
| new extensions. It's more just a blog about a new bug that the
| author found during their security research.
|
| It's really more a fluff piece promoting themselves than it is
| anything else. And to be honest, I'm fine with that.
|
| My bigger takeaway from that article was how impressive this
| individual already is. They're still a student and already
| finding and reporting several bugs in major platforms. Kudos to
| them.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Also if you don't like advertising then hit the back button on
| advertising heavy sites.
| amelius wrote:
| We need webmasters to nudge people away from Chrome. E.g. show
| an annoying popup on opening the page or add a small delay.
| al_borland wrote:
| We also need Google to stop showing annoying pop-ups every
| time someone goes to their homepage, Gmail, or any other site
| they own. They also need to stop promoting users on mobile to
| open links in Chrome, when the user doesn't even have Chrome
| installed, and has chosen the "default browser" option 100
| times already.
|
| I'm so fed up with these nudges.
| kevincox wrote:
| And most importantly these are anti-competitive. They are
| using Google's other markets to give them an unfair
| marketing advantage that other browsers do not have.
| Neither Firefox, Brave or anyone else can have these
| prompts on Android, Google Search. They are using an unfair
| advantage to take over the market against the common good.
| amelius wrote:
| Better yet, include some piece of code in your webpage that
| is dynamically loaded from e.g. EFF.org or mozilla.org.
|
| That way, you give these organizations the power to nuke
| Chrome, one day.
|
| This can also be seen as a kind of mutually assured
| destruction approach, to keep Google in check.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Webmasters who make their money on ads seem like the group
| least likely to do this.
| SarahC_ wrote:
| PROXOMITRON!
|
| Local proxy filter that is like a Pi-hole, but locally!
|
| It's OLD, and became obsolete when browser plugins were
| invented, but now more relevant than ever!
|
| Because it's between the server and the client - it can do what
| it wants!
| belter wrote:
| A gift to reduce global CO2 search emissions...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron
|
| https://www.proxomitron.info/
| driverdan wrote:
| Wow, that brings me back. I used to use Proxomitron before
| plugin ad blockers were a thing.
| belter wrote:
| It's 2025.
|
| Here is a list of great browsers committed to MV2 support. If
| anybody from Google tries to gaslight you with "but
| security..." review this:
|
| https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=gmail.com
|
| and ask them why do they still support connection with so many
| insecure tls suites ;-)
|
| Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
|
| Vivaldi: https://vivaldi.com/download/
|
| Brave: https://brave.com/download/
|
| Waterfox: https://www.waterfox.net/download/
|
| LibreWolf: https://librewolf.net/installation/
|
| Pale Moon: https://www.palemoon.org/download.shtml
|
| Thorium: https://thorium.rocks/
|
| Ungoogled Chromium: https://ungoogled-
| software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...
|
| Floorp: https://floorp.app/en-US/download
| throw123xz wrote:
| There's essentially 2 browsers in that long list: Firefox and
| Chromium.
|
| Everyone using Chromium as base committed to MV2 support, but
| that's while Chromium itself still supports MV2. What will
| happen when Google changes things enough that the small
| browsers can't merge updates in a day or two while
| maintaining MV2 support? I doubt Vivaldi and Brave have the
| resources to actually fork Chromium... not even going to
| mention small projects like Thorium or Ungoogle Chromium.
|
| And the Firefox-based browsers are in a similar position. The
| 2 or 3 students working on Floorp can't do much if Mozilla
| decides to drop support and then introduces changes that
| breaks compatibility with old code.
|
| Of course those browsers can decide to stop merging upstream
| code, but then you get a Pale Moon... even if we ignore
| security flaws (which are a problem for you and your
| machine), a visit to their forum tells me that it struggles
| with a few websites.
| konart wrote:
| This should also mention Orion: https://kagi.com/orion/
| bitlax wrote:
| What browser would you suggest? Firefox is a privacy nightmare
| as well.
| qoez wrote:
| I just tried firefox because of this update but I had to switch
| back because it's so slow. Sacrificing competitive advantage
| stings too much to much just for this.
| paulluuk wrote:
| Interesting, I also just installed Firefox because of OPs
| comment, and I'm amazed at how much faster it is then Chrome.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've run across several websites that won't load in Safari
| but work great in Chrome.
|
| One of them is my router.
| kiney wrote:
| For me it depends on open tabs: with modern firefox 4 digit
| number of open tabs on a 64GB machine is no problem.
| Chromium crawls to a halt at low 3 digits.
| ncr100 wrote:
| I've been satisfied with Firefox speed for several years,
| ever since Chrome manifest version 3 crap started to become
| reality.
|
| I keep many browsers on my laptop and use whichever one I
| must for in-compatibility reasons and primarily Firefox
| which makes me generally a happy camper. Mac os.
|
| Mobile is different.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Yeah, it's not Firefox that is slow, it is Google properties
| that are slow on Firefox. Otherwise FF is fast, or at least
| Chrome is just as slow or slower (judging by seeing others
| use it).
|
| I mostly avoid Google websites, but when I can't, I always
| use Brave/Edge/Chromium on those. E.g. Google Earth is
| especially useless outside of Chrome-land.
|
| Firefox (with uBO) also probably wins any realistic speed
| comparison simply because it still supports MV2. I really
| don't care how fast the ads are loaded, I prefer blocking
| them. Especially the most privacy invading ones (i.e. by
| Google).
| ErrorNoBrain wrote:
| Let's not forget, you'll have to ditch Chromium based
| applications too, like discord, VScode, spotify, and whatever
| else is basically a chrome browser.
| querez wrote:
| Why? I fail to see how using chromium as basis for other apps
| has impact on who has the power to innovate in the browser
| space?
| flkenosad wrote:
| Because then the bugs we find in your app contribute back
| to chrome rather than Firefox. Then over time, chrome a
| becomes faster and more efficient browser which makes it
| harder to convince users to switch. Big picture thing.
| internet2000 wrote:
| Don't put this on the users. The blame is 50% on web
| developers, 25% on Mozilla for screwing the pooch, 25% on
| Google themselves for advertising it so strongly across their
| properties.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| "yeah the free internet, sure, but have you considered Firefox
| Pocket and also woke?"
|
| ^ Every single time this comes up on HackerNews for the past
| decade
| godelski wrote:
| > ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers).
|
| People should do this for many reasons. Monopolies are not good
| for anyone, including Google[0].
|
| For most people, that means installing Firefox or using Safari.
| There are others, but the space is small. Don't listen to
| people, Firefox is perfectly good and most people wont see
| major differences.
|
| Truth is we like to complain. It's good to push things forward
| and find issues that need to be fixed, not nothing is perfect.
| For every complaint about Firefox there's another for Chrome.
| You can't just switch to Brave, Edge, Opera or some other color
| of Chrome. Things will feel different, but really it's easy to
| make mountains out of molehills. So what do you care more
| about?
|
| [0] short term, yes. Long term no. Classic monopoly gets lazy
| and rests upon its laurels
| physPop wrote:
| Safari is also not adblocker friendly. Lots of other entrants
| to try though. Brave in particular is great!
| abandonliberty wrote:
| Adguard works fine? How are they not friendly?
| ale42 wrote:
| But Brave is a Chromium browser, which is out of scope
| according to the comment.
| healsdata wrote:
| > Don't listen to people, Firefox is perfectly good and most
| people wont see major differences.
|
| I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. I used Firefox
| exclusively for about a year and had a website not work about
| once a month. This included my state's unemployment portal
| and a small business store.
|
| When it happens, there's no indication of why. It's only
| because I'm technical I thought too try it in Chrome. My non-
| technical family isn't going navigate that.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > If people don't agree with Google move, the only correct
| course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium
| browsers).
|
| I disagree, on two fronts.
|
| First, I think that the underlying root cause is a level lower
| - it's the fact that so much content on the web is funded via
| privacy-invasive and malware-laden advertisements, rather than
| direct payment.
|
| Second, there are multiple valid things that you can do - you
| don't just have to pick one.
|
| You can work on Manifest V2 bypasses _and_ you can boycott
| Chrom{e,ium} _and_ you can contact your representatives to ask
| them to craft regulation against this _and_ you can promote
| /use financial models where you pay for stuff with money
| instead of eyeballs. All are useful! (especially because
| regulation is incredibly difficult to get write and takes a
| long time to build political will, draft, pass, and implement)
| 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?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Google is here
| 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.
| myko wrote:
| Did you consider YouTube Premium? It works really well and
| no ads. Seems like a pittance for the service YouTube
| provides
| jklas2hjdsdk wrote:
| $180 dollars annually is a pittance to you? So please
| enlighten us...? You could certainly change a persons
| life with that. It is not a trivial sum, so please do not
| insult poorer members of this community.
| crinkly wrote:
| The value is the content not the delivery mechanism.
| 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 :(
| dangraper2 wrote:
| Weird, Firefox blows Chrome out of the water. What do you
| smoke?
| lucb1e wrote:
| The smoke on the water!
|
| More seriously, I'm a Firefox user since ~2006 but I'm
| about equally surprised by the statement that Firefox
| should blow Chrome/ium out of the water as that Firefox
| supposedly sucks. They're both browsers. I think Chromium
| is a bit faster in page rendering, whereas Firefox is more
| open, privacy-friendly, and customizable. Similar to how I
| wish consumers would not choose an anti-consumer
| organization (anyone who values a free market and general
| computation1 should not choose iOS), I think nobody should
| choose Chrome but, still, I can understand if someone does
| choose it because they've gotten used to how it works and
| they're not willing to change. It's about equal in
| practical functionality that 95% of people use, wouldn't
| you say? Or in what way is Firefox blowing Chrome out of
| the water?
|
| 1 https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-war-on-
| general...
| eviks wrote:
| > Firefox is more open, privacy-friendly, and
| customizable.
|
| How do you customize the default keyboard shortcuts?
| opengears wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
| eviks wrote:
| This can't change the browser defaults, it only works in
| some, not all, contexts, so you can't have a consistent
| experience
| lucb1e wrote:
| Sadly they dropped XUL some years ago. I stuck to that
| version for all the customizations it allowed, but became
| untenable and it was clear I couldn't run a browser from
| 2017 for the next 50 years so I bit the bullet. I'm now
| also on webextensions instead of real add-ons
|
| Yet it's still _more_ customizable for users than Chrome
| /ium is. That there is a particular customization they
| got rid of is a shame and what you mention in the sibling
| comment (only works in some contexts) bothers me every
| day when I try to use mouse gestures on a settings page
| or mozilla domain and it refuses to work, but those new
| limitations don't make the statement untrue as a whole
| eviks wrote:
| Firefox is less customizable than Chromium-based Vivaldi,
| so the statement is still not true
| bluehatbrit wrote:
| Your comment is pretty meaningless without more specifics.
|
| I switched to Firefox again back in 2017, I have 0 issues
| with it. If anything it's faster and less resources hungry
| than chrome in my usage. The extension ecosystem is now
| arguably better with MV3 being rolled out to chrome.
|
| Probably the only annoying thing was learning where the
| buttons are in the devtools. They're all still there, just
| laid out differently. It took about a week to get to grips
| with that.
|
| What exactly makes you say it's an awful browser?
| srcoder wrote:
| I use Zen everyday and a love it! I am glad they chose
| Firefox as a base, otherwise I would have skipped it. Firefox
| is stable, I open it when I boot my PC which runs for weeks
| and never think anything about it. On topic of ad blocking, I
| think that there are more ways to anoy users using ad
| blockers today despite of which browser someone uses, with ad
| block detection and blocking access. If your browser is build
| by a ad company, expect these changes. For this reason I
| won't use these browsers
| 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.
| physicles wrote:
| You're right, and good on you for paying attention to the
| human/business context behind the code.
| userbinator wrote:
| That's why you should keep stuff like this quiet.
|
| I see from the other comments here that you're still young,
| so I'll give you a word of advice: Google and the other
| megacorps are NOT your friends. Don't think that helping them
| and acting against users' interests will result in anything
| positive for you in the long term.
|
| "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
| deryilz wrote:
| Hi, I appreciate your opinion, but really disagree. First
| of all, this is one bug, and most of the ones I find don't
| "act against user's interests" (not that this one could
| have been used effectively without being patched anyway).
| Doing bug finding is how I make a difference and a skill I
| feel proud of.
|
| I USED to keep bugs (read: exploits) for myself without
| sharing them, but after a while I realized it was not worth
| it and my skills were basically going to waste. You can say
| philosophical stuff about ads if you want but bug finding
| for me is a fun challenge with a good community. I'm not
| pretending Google is my best friend.
|
| Plus, doing this gets me a bit of money. It's either this
| or I work summers at a grocery store, and I prefer this.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Yes, this is a mature way of looking at things.
| userbinator wrote:
| s/mature/bootlicking/
| ifwinterco wrote:
| Google can see extension code, there's no way you could
| have used this to make an adblocker without them patching
| it.
|
| You're inventing a moral dilemma here that simply doesn't
| exist
| deryilz wrote:
| Also, dude, from your other comments: "What a selfish
| dickhead, helping them make better nooses to put around
| everyone's necks (including his own)."
|
| And "People like this are enemies of freedom and should be
| called out publicly."
|
| What the ?
| userbinator wrote:
| You're too young to realise what the corporate propaganda
| has done to you.
|
| Please read Richard Stallman's "Right To Read".
| IshKebab wrote:
| He may be young but it seems like he has already learnt not
| to be patronising and wrong.
| 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...
| Aperocky wrote:
| Never realized anything was happening as I was on Firefox,
| until I saw ads as my wife was browsing youtube despite
| installing ublock for her years ago.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| YouTube recently started showing ads through uBO in Firefox.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| On what platform? I've been using Firefox and uBO on Linux
| and Android for over a decade and never seen a YouTube ad.
| stubish wrote:
| They do staged rollouts, maybe a-b testing. It seems to
| generally be region based rather than platform.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You might need to check that you are using all
| appropriate blocklists as well. The subreddit usually has
| a sticky/pinned post for YouTube related issues as this
| has been a slow moving target for about a year now.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I'm on Windows 10.
| gpvos wrote:
| Ubuntu.
| weberer wrote:
| Do you have other extensions? For example, I can see that
| uMatrix is also blocking all requests to doubleclick.net
| madaxe_again wrote:
| My wife was _pissed_ when I installed an adblocker for her -
| turns out she likes the ads.
| abbadadda wrote:
| "Heavy sigh."
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| There was a podcast I was listening to this week, and they
| were discussing the purpose of marketing emails, and they
| came to the conclusion that they're for women who actually
| open all of them lol. It was half sarcasm and pretty funny,
| not trying to by misogynist or something
| nashashmi wrote:
| Yes, they do open them all with so much eagerness it
| makes me wonder how they are able to manage so many
| emails. But eagerness and window shopping is their
| calling.
| flkenosad wrote:
| Massive generalization but sure lol
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| I recently saw my GF's inbox, it's full of marketing
| emails, and when I told her she can unsubscribe or block
| them, she said she likes them as well.
| bloudermilk wrote:
| Switched (back) to Firefox from Chrome years ago and haven't
| looked back. Between uBlock and Privacy Badger my web
| experience is pretty good despite the endless assault on end
| users.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I can't help seeing ad blockers as fairless content
| consumption, like choosing to download films, musics and books
| without paying the creator and the distributor (VOD, MOD,
| concerts, libraries...). Sounds great for you but how would
| that work if _everyone_ would do the same?
|
| Although we all be happy to se more competition, using an ad
| blocker on Google sites (and G-add financed-sites) have no
| positive effect for the competitors.
|
| Don't take me wrong, I hate Ads and Google methods but we can't
| _all_ rob the same store and hope there will be infinite food
| on the shelves and that the next store will benefit from that.
| chgs wrote:
| Almost all content I consume is not funded by adverts, it's
| funded by passion or subscription or donation.
|
| Adverts have no positive effects for anyone other than the
| advertising firm. They cost the viewer more than the provide
| the advertiser
| tonyhb wrote:
| if they're not funded by adverts then you don't need an ad
| blocker, right?
| chgs wrote:
| bbc news is full of tracking despite not showing adverts.
| mercantile wrote:
| I _sincerely_ hope that having produced a comment like that,
| you are not using ad blockers of any kind in any browser,
| including the reduced functionality Chrome uBlock Origin on
| manifest V3.
|
| For me, ads broke the informal social contract between
| provider and end user years ago. Small, unobtrusive
| advertisements might've been okay, but ads eating an
| inordinate amount of my time and bandwidth, which exfiltrate
| my personal information, and which are served to me via SEO
| tricks and dark patterns are not okay. If sites want to ban
| me for not viewing their ads, fine. In the meantime, I won't
| lose any sleep over using my adblocker.
|
| For you, if you are lecturing us on the moral imperative of
| viewing ads, then you better be viewing those ads yourself
| rather than only espousing cheap rhetoric.
| breve wrote:
| Google doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not written in the
| stars that Google must succeed. If Google's business model
| doesn't meet web users expectations then it's perfectly
| alright for Google to fail as a business. Businesses fail all
| the time.
|
| Google is not special or different. Google can adapt or die.
|
| Remember also that as Google has grown and captured more of
| the available attention and advertising dollars, other
| businesses that rely on attention and advertising such as
| free-to-air TV or print media have contracted and even
| failed. Google has shed no tears for them and,
| correspondingly, there's no need to shed tears for Google.
| flkenosad wrote:
| The other funny thing is Google could probably exist purely
| from its innovations. Its just too hard to convince the
| shareholders to give up on the safe and lucrative ad
| business.
| throwaway77385 wrote:
| I principally agree with you. But in reality, the ad-funded
| model has failed. It failed a long time ago.
|
| There were never any restrictions placed on it, so it became
| a self-sustaining downward spiral to the current state of
| things. When I see the internet without an ad-blocker it is
| completely unusable. Quite frankly, I would most likely stop
| using most of the internet altogether if I couldn't block
| ads.
|
| So what is the alternative? Same as always: paid services. A
| service / platform can either work out a pricing model that
| works for people, or it shouldn't / can't exist in that form.
|
| Some people will argue that they'd rather have ads and also
| content for free and that's fine. Maybe some people can
| tolerate them. I cannot. I find them to be as close to
| experiencing physical pain as possible. It's like pure mind-
| poison and I will bend over backwards to avoid ads.
|
| I am waiting for the age of smart-glasses to begin so that I
| can filter out ads in real-life as well. I simply never,
| ever, under any circumstances want to see any advertising
| ever.
|
| If I want a product or service, I'll go search for it. I
| don't need anything to be suggested to me. And this is just
| my battle-hardened mind. I daren't think of what ads do to
| un-developed, children's minds.
|
| It should be the government's responsibility to severely
| restrict advertising until it nearly doesn't exist. But
| that's not the world we live in, so I have taken matters into
| my own hands.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| This is a comical view. If protection of downloadable
| material that someone wants you to pay for, is removed by an
| ad blocker, then that is broken by design. Make a website
| that is suitable to sell things, is the solution.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| This is a candide view: IRL store use RFID doors for a
| reason, and customers do pays indirectly for those doors.
|
| However I'm not 100% sure to have understood your phrase so
| please tell me if I missed your point.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Sorry, I skipped some part while writing. Edited to make
| sense.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Sounds great for you but how would that work if everyone
| would do the same?
|
| I guess we would be free from companies such as Meta and
| Google? Where do I sign up?
|
| You also seem to think that advertisement has no impact on
| alternative distribution methods. The fact that other viable
| options are scarce currently only shows that ad companies
| have a stranglehold on creative industries through their
| monopoly.
| aetimmes wrote:
| Running ad blockers for me is a matter of principle. The
| amount of tracking and telemetry that exists on the Internet
| is 1. massively invasive from a privacy perspective and 2.
| massively wasteful from an energy, bandwidth and time
| perspective.
|
| If you have something worth selling, then sell it.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Adblocking is security
| gpvos wrote:
| I wouldn't mind if Google et al. went bankrupt. Only Youtube
| would be somewhat of a loss.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It seems to me that adblocking adoption increases the more
| companies actively fight it/ramp up their advertising and
| drown us in it. I mean you have Microsoft injecting ads
| straight into their OS last I heard (correct me if I'm wrong)
| and they even charge for windows.
|
| People clearly will live with ads but there is a point where
| it becomes way too much and some people simply won't tolerate
| it at that point.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Most people are not thinking deeply about the nuances. But it
| seems fair: Google take away thing, for fake reason, Google
| bad.
| norskeld wrote:
| Speaking of 'works best in Firefox'... I mainly use Chrome
| (kinda have to), and it's practically impossible to use it for
| reviewing big GitHub PRs with many files changed (UI just
| freezes), but everything's perfectly fine in Firefox!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Could this be a subjective experience? Is it reproducible on
| multiple machines? And have you tried it with a new profile?
| norskeld wrote:
| Well, many people have complained about this very issue,
| and it was actually from this [1] discussion that I learned
| that Firefox handles big PRs just fine. No amount of
| jumping through hoops, including creating a new profile,
| helped to make it work in Chrome.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/39341
| abustamam wrote:
| Our CTO was giving a hybrid presentation in a conference room
| on zoom, and his M3 Mac kept complaining of high memory
| usage. Chrome was rated at taking 60GB of memory.
|
| No single consumer application should be taking over 60gb of
| memory.
| gavinray wrote:
| I use Edge on both Win + Android, and uBlock Origin works
| perfectly on both.
| throw123xz wrote:
| Last time I used Edge (early this year), it asked me if I
| allowed to track me (the usual cookies message) when I opened
| a new tab, so while they still support Mv2, I'm not sure if
| it's the browser to use if you want some privacy and block
| ads.
| 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.
| slig wrote:
| That's Brave, a fork with native AdBlock.
| jklas2hjdsdk wrote:
| Exactly... brave is the de facto choice for cryptobros. The
| copying of UBOs work is a nice addition too.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Satire?
| raspasov wrote:
| I use Safari.
| delduca wrote:
| Safari + Wipr2 FTW!
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I was able to bypass the chrome changes by installing firefox.
| Honestly it's better than I thought it would be, and I have no
| serious complaints, or broken sites. Yay web standards.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I absolutely love that people are downvoting this. What is
| wrong with this site now?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Luckily I only need to use chrome on my work laptop, I use
| Firefox everywhere else. Still sad to see uBlock origin stop
| working which was useful to keep a cleaner experience when
| browsing the web for work reasons (research, documentation, etc).
| akomtu wrote:
| Google is running an experiment: how much ads crap users are
| willing to tolerate before they switch supplier.
| rasz wrote:
| > It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions
| using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions
|
| soo will this still just work if we give uBo webview permission?
| deryilz wrote:
| Unfortunately extensions can't have webview perms :(
| rasz wrote:
| "'webview' is only allowed for packaged apps, but this is a
| extension."
|
| :( but maybe Vivaldi and Brave could remove this check just
| for fun.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| I've been happy with Orion on macOS. I get it's WebKit but at
| least it's not Chrome. Brave was also good if you must have
| chromium.
| RockstarSprain wrote:
| Would love to give Firefox a chance but one thing that stops me
| (apart from occasional website loading bugs) is inability to
| install PWAs. Not sure why it's not implemented like it has been
| for a long time in Chrome and all its forks.
|
| I have found a 3rd party extension that claims to facilitate this
| (0) but still feel uncomfortable to use this for privacy reasons.
|
| (0) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-
| fire...
| rs186 wrote:
| If you really care, it's ok to just Firefox for the majority of
| your web browsing activities but use Chrome or a fork for PWA.
|
| Although using Firefox increasingly means a worse experience,
| including:
|
| * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior
| performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page
| scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling) * WebUSB support
|
| I have personally run into all of them. Some are under
| Firefox's control but others are not. I do still use Firefox
| for most websites unless it's technically not possible, but
| unfortunately the exception is happening more and more.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I don't run into CAPTCHA loops with Firefox. Have you tried
| changing your user agent to pretend to be Firefox on Windows
| or Mac? I've heard Linux users are more likely to be
| interpreted as bots.
| rs186 wrote:
| The machine is on a corporate network, that's the issue. I
| don't have issues when
|
| 1) using Chrome/Edge on that same machine on corporate
| network 2) using Firefox on Linux on corporate network 3)
| using Firefox on Windows on my own machine at home
|
| Unfortunately.
| acdha wrote:
| > * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior
| performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page
| scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling)
|
| The first two are likely due to extensions rather than the
| core Firefox. I find at least as many cases where it's
| faster, and it usually uses less memory. The third one has
| high variability - I've reported enough bugs against all of
| the major browsers not to trust any of them but these days
| there are a lot of web developers who only test on Chrome and
| half of the time I find what appears to be a bug in Safari or
| Firefox it's really an unnecessary reliance on something
| Chrome specific.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Probably wants to share state though (cookie jar, history,
| password manager, etc)
|
| The bottom line is that Google invests more in Chrome than
| Mozilla can afford to invest in Ff, so the latter will likely
| never catch up in features or performance.
| alex1138 wrote:
| 1) A lot of ads are terribly overdone and even sometimes actively
| malicious (malware or tracking). It makes no sense to
| aggressively try to stamp it out like Google is doing
|
| 2) Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah it
| really did happen) what happened to Google? They've always been a
| bit incompetent but their behavior (ie Chrome and increasing
| censorship on Google/Youtube the last few years) has been really
| bad, I thought they were basically founded off idealism
| jacquesm wrote:
| > and even sometimes actively malicious
|
| Most of the times. In fact, the situations where they are not
| actively tracking are exceedingly rare.
| acdha wrote:
| > Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah
| it really did happen) what happened to Google?
|
| They bought DoubleClick in 2009, with an outcome similar to the
| way Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas but their management
| culture was taken over by acquired company. They haven't
| launched a popular product since and their preexisting products
| have clearly been shifting to an "ads justify the means"
| mentality over time.
| froderick wrote:
| As an exclusive Firefox user, with really great ad blocking
| features, I didn't notice that Chrome got worse on this front.
| I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps it's time for a change. Best of
| luck.
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| Why not use DuckDuckGo?
| andxor wrote:
| Just use uBlock Origin Lite.
| sciencesama wrote:
| Using ebpf to block ads would be fun !! Need a way to translate
| rules into blocking rules for ebpf
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| How would that work? Isn't having all the browser and doc
| context what makes UBO (MV2) the most robust blocker?
|
| Would the browser be talking to the kernel through some back
| channel?
| est wrote:
| I got downvoted for commenting this, why can't we make a
| ManifestV2-like framework using .DLLs ? This can enable network
| control for ad blockers and Google can do nothing about it.
| deryilz wrote:
| I think the trouble is that certain adblocking features (like
| skipping ads on YouTube, Twitch, etc) require modifying the
| page you're viewing in your browser; just filtering network
| requests isn't enough. So right now a browser extension is the
| most natural choice for an adblocker, but honestly that might
| change if browsers keep being so hostile towards them.
| est wrote:
| expose DOM and JSON to external .DLL then
|
| browsers should have open Web standards as well as open local
| runtime.
| zulban wrote:
| I don't "bypass" Chrome when they want to melt my brain with
| their business model, I use Firefox. I don't "bypass" Windows
| when they want to melt my brain with their business model, I use
| Linux. No idea why so many "hackers" doing "bypasses" can't
| instead take action that is simpler, long lasting, and easier. Do
| people need to jerked around 50 times for 20 years before
| realizing it will keep happening and their "bypasses" are just
| temporary bandaids?
| arcfour wrote:
| You should read the article before commenting; your comment is
| a non-sequitur.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't know. Eventually you read enough of this stuff and
| you would rather the next breath be, take leadership on a
| real solution. To me it's a "sequitur" to say, the biggest
| fuck you is to convince people to stop using Chrome, not to
| fix bugs for their extremely highly paid engineers for free.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Uh sir the article is about JavaScript Browser APIS
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| every day, people are writing about javascript browser
| apis, why do you think we're reading about this one?
| zulban wrote:
| Right back at you. If you think my comment is a non-sequitur,
| maybe you didn't read the article?
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| It's a oui-sequitur for sure.
| pharrington wrote:
| Billions of non-programmers, who have no idea what an extension
| manifest even is, use Chrome.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| > No idea why so many "hackers" doing "bypasses" ....
|
| Because that's what it means to be a hacker. Yes, installing
| Firefox is simpler (and I'm a Firefox user) but I respect the
| effort to overcome Google's measures in disallowing certain
| addons.
| whatshisface 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 using
| opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions. For
| the report, I netted a massive reward of $0. 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._
|
| The effort to overcome the community's chance at discovering
| the workaround?
| chmod775 wrote:
| It was never going to last long enough anyways, being sure
| to get patched as soon as any adblocker uses it.
|
| It's however still interesting in the sense that it might
| be fairly trivial to change, so chances are the next
| adblockers are going to ship executable that wrap chrome,
| modifying something like that at launch, allowing their
| extension to make use of it.
|
| Obviously Google is going to hate it when random popular
| extensions start nagging users to download and install
| "companion" software in order to work, since that will
| train users to not think twice about these things and
| bypasses legitimate security efforts.
|
| But Google made their own bed - and that of their users.
| Now they all get to lie in it together.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Once the legitimate adblock extensions have made the tech
| news cycle by switching to an executable, all the sketchy
| adblock extensions will follow, and after them the
| downright malicious but heavily advertised adblock
| extensions. Before long Google will have plenty of
| examples to point to of adblockers shipping malware,
| allowing them to scare off all the tech-illiterate people
| (who are the vast majority of users)
| hinkley wrote:
| Meanwhile, mobile Safari literally has a menu item to
| allow you to use Firefox for ad blocking.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| The blog post shows clear effort that falls under the
| "hacker" umbrella. That I respect.
|
| The author informing google of the exploit was not the
| complaint of the parent comment which I took issue with.
| zulban wrote:
| "Because that's what it means to be a hacker."
|
| Sure. But to me "hacking" this cat and mouse game is not very
| compelling. I feel like I've seen a thousand articles exactly
| like this over the years. This won't work in 4 months.
|
| "It was patched in Chrome 118 by ..."
|
| Or already?
| owebmaster wrote:
| I'm with you with this idea but relying on firefox is not much
| better. I use PWAs a lot and Firefox decided that PWAs are not
| worth implementing or maintaining their past implementation.
|
| I still use firefox 70% of the time but this is wrong and go
| against what the users want.
| hannofcart wrote:
| +1 to this. This is probably the only thing that keeps me
| from ditching Chrome/Brave and going back to Firefox.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Yep. That and stuff like the filesystem API. That thing is
| so useful for apps like excalidraw, photopea, etc,. They
| really need to implement it.
|
| They should at least implement it behind a feature flag, if
| they feel like virtue signalling how they're oh-so-
| concerned for the privacy implications. (while
| simultaneously launching an ads business in the backdrop)
| grantith wrote:
| Floorp is a popular Firefox fork with PWAs enabled.
| owebmaster wrote:
| Thanks! Just migrated to floorp.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's more about the challenge of it than practicality.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| People like the service/product, but don't like cost.
|
| So the solution is mental acrobatics while using a backdoor for
| access.
| eviks wrote:
| > for 20 years ... just temporary bandaids
|
| Using superior software for two decades is a very good bandaid
| fooker wrote:
| Great, except firefox is pretty bad nowadays.
|
| Not their fault of course, with people not testing websites on
| non chrome derived browsers.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > except firefox is pretty bad nowadays.
|
| Pretty bad as in that isn't true?
|
| Firefox is the option that doesn't intentionally leave users
| vulnerable to hostile adtech. Firefox is the option with
| containers. Past that it is performant and reliable under a
| wide variety of user loads and platforms.
|
| or Pretty bad as in Firefox+forks are better than the
| alternatives?
|
| It is true that some unfortunate default options were
| recently added to Firefox configs.
|
| Those options are unfortunate because they are variants of
| anti-user options baked into Chromium - options created to
| keep Chromium users susceptible to big-tech's worst
| intentions.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Those "default options" are precisely "intentionally
| leav[ing] users vulnerable to hostile ad tech" (e.g. PPA).
| It's built into the browser and on by default. Mozilla have
| very explicitly stated they believe ads are critical for
| the web. It is still better the chrome though (and a patch
| set like librewolf is better still).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Those "default options" are precisely "intentionally
| leav[ing] users vulnerable to hostile ad tech" (e.g.
| PPA).
|
| The difference between Firefox's 1x and Chromium's 100x +
| 100x is in the degree of harm visited upon the user.
|
| Finding harsh fault with former while giving the much
| more egregious example a pass -- this makes sense if one
| feels Firefox isn't abusive enough towards it's users.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Like I said chrome is worse, but both are made by ad
| companies who sell their users. I use and recommend
| librewolf as a better firefox.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Mozilla can have this position (and probably have it due
| to most of their funding coming from an ad company), but
| can still hold the position that the user must remain in
| control and be able to remove ads if they wish, even if
| it goes against the beliefs of Mozilla. Meanwhile, Google
| is actively working to make it harder to block ads in
| Chrome and in general work on technology which take away
| users freedom to control how their own computers should
| behave.
| snowram wrote:
| I browse the web daily, and the number of website that ever
| gave me trouble on Firefox can be counted on a single hand.
| The website compatibility issue is vastly overblown.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > the number of website that ever gave me trouble on
| Firefox can be counted on a single hand
|
| Also important is that they tend to be Google assets like
| Gmail.
| awaaz wrote:
| > Also important is that they tend to be Google assets
| like Gmail.
|
| Long time user of FF on Linux. Primary email is on Gmail
| and I've never had any trouble. Is there some particular
| feature that doesn't work?
| matsemann wrote:
| It loads much slower, sometimes I even get a progress bar
| for a small blip.
|
| I don't blame that on Fx, though, more Google doing
| something wonky just to show me a list of emails.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, it's merely performance issues. If you used FF you
| don't notice it, but it's extremely apparent if you
| switched over from Chrome like me.
|
| Nothing dealbreaking, and I get that this is all on
| Google. But it's one of the clearest examples of where FF
| falls short of Chrome.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| > trouble on Firefox can be counted on a single hand
|
| *over the course of a few years, seriously.
|
| In particular, it's sad to encounter such a rare issue only
| to then discover its true origin - Firefox implemented a
| necessary functionality according to spec, whereas Chrome
| decided to do its own thing. Case in point video streaming
| with _Motion JPEG_ , Firefox dispatches events on every
| frame and uses a lot of resources, but Chrome decided not
| to do that, against the spec.
|
| I set my default choice to pro-privacy (Firefox) and
| occasionally give it up to some Chromium variant if I
| depend on a functionality and a website justifiable needs
| it. The disruption to my workflow here is such a minor
| thing compared to what I gain usability wise, especially in
| the long run. I would never treat a software program like
| some religion, and it saddens me that even computer-savvy
| people do just that.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| No, firefox is great nowadays.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| How? Seriously, I keep seeing this argument against using
| Firefox, but as a long time user I fail to see any glaring
| issues with it.
|
| The only websites that break for me are those I broke on
| purpose by using ad-block.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I keep seeing this argument against using Firefox, but as
| a long time user I fail to see any glaring issues with it.
|
| No glaring or usability issues.
|
| What happened is that Firefox added some defaults that
| mimic a tiny bit of Chromium browser behavior.
| Recommend extensions as you browse Recommend
| features as you browse Send technical and
| interaction data to Mozilla Allow websites to
| perform privacy-preserving ad measurement
|
| There's that and the long-time sponsored crap on the new
| tab page. It takes a moment to toggle it all off.
| ozim wrote:
| FF is my daily driver and I don't see any issues. Do you have
| examples?
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Firefox has been my main browser for almost 10 years and I
| haven't encountered any challenges other than availability of
| plugins, but even that has been a very rare issue.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I've switched to Firefox 3 years ago now after using Chrome
| for a decade. The list of things I missed from chrome:
|
| - Tab grouping, now added in Firefox as of a few months ago
|
| - built-in translation services. Firefox is slowly
| introducing this, but its missing many languages. In the
| meantime, a translation extension works fine.
|
| - Google products operating better... but the issue here is
| obvious and outside of Firefox's control.
|
| - various micro quirks from random sites I might find during
| research. Nothing functionality breaking, just clear examples
| where there was likely hard coded chrome user agent business.
|
| - the occasional extension on Chrome that didn't have a
| Firefox port. This happened maybe 4 times total.
|
| so, 2 things that are fixed (or close to), one anti-
| competitive measure, and the 2 smallest nitpicks I could
| imagine. I don't know what the fuss is that justifies Firefox
| being considered vastly inferior to Chrome these days. Even
| thsoe small issues are far offset by the ability to have
| proper adblock. Using Adblock on Chrome for my work computer
| is miserable.
| mumbisChungo wrote:
| What makes firefox better than brave?
| Sunspark wrote:
| For me, I like being able to set a default font/size/colour
| for all websites as an override. Chromium browsers don't do
| that out of the box.
|
| I like that it quarantines most of Facebook's shenanigans
| with cookies and the like.
|
| I can't compare Brave's adblock to uBlock Origin, but it's
| probably good enough.
| vachina wrote:
| Firefox is not a Chromium fork
| esskay wrote:
| And that makes it better why? Come on, this is pretty low
| hanging fruit.
| vachina wrote:
| Because it is an independent codebase free from any
| design decisions from Google. Chromium derivatives cannot
| stray far from Google's interests.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| It doesn't do crypto bullshit, for example.
| esskay wrote:
| The "crypto bullshit" which is a notice on the start page
| with an option to permanently remove and turn it off.
|
| I swear people slating Brave here haven't actually even
| installed it.
|
| Oh and its opensource, not like theres anything hiding in
| the shadows here, you can go and look at the code behind
| how its all working for yourself if you're that paranoid.
| swinglock wrote:
| It supports keeping long term history so you can find a page
| you visited years ago from the history search in the address
| bar. Chrome/Google likes when you have to search for it and
| Brave has inherited that.
| Retr0id wrote:
| The article is clearly not intended as an ad-blocking tutorial,
| it is an article about security research and API weirdness.
|
| Sure, it inspires ad blocking meta-discussion, but if you're
| complaining that the author has a strategically suboptimal
| approach to blocking ads then you have missed the point.
| billmcneale wrote:
| Not everyone has your luxury of being able to choose their
| tools.
| john01dav wrote:
| Another advantage of this approach is that collectively it
| applies pressure against such toxic business models. This
| pressure can have an outsized impact for the number of people
| that do it because it skews towards technical people who will
| naturally influence their area of expertise more than the same
| number of lay users.
| dheera wrote:
| Firefox still doesn't work.
|
| 1 - Google Meet consumes 40%-100% of my CPU on Firefox, and my
| laptop becomes a space heater
|
| 2 - My Yubikeys don't work. Touching them doesn't get into any
| of the websites I use that use 2FA.
|
| So, no Firefox.
| paffdragon wrote:
| Is this on Linux? Do you have an example of a website where
| Yubikey does not work? I'm curious, because I use Firefox on
| Linux for years, also for work, and never hit a site where my
| Yubikeys would not work. (I'm also using Google Meet
| regularly for work from Firefox without problems)
| dheera wrote:
| Yes, Linux.
|
| No site works for me. Facebook, Google, none of them work.
| Even the demo at https://demo.yubico.com/webauthn-
| technical/ does not work.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's strange. I use a yubikey under Linux/FF and it
| works like a charm and has done so since I started using
| them years ago.
| omnimus wrote:
| Both yubikes and gotrust idem kyes also work for me just
| fine. Maybe i am using them just for fido 2 factor and
| not some of the other protocols?
| anthk wrote:
| about:config
|
| Search for accel, look up the 'layout...' key, set it to
| true.
|
| Also, set the webgl force enabled... key to true too.
| DANmode wrote:
| They _finally_ enabled per site isolation by default after
| years of Chromium having it - still not in mobile though.
|
| Wonder what else I'm not aware of that they're slack on.
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| Bro it's for the fun and interest of figuring it out. That's
| what hackers do. The writer obviously knew it's a "temporary
| bandaid" -- they notified Google about it themself.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I switched to Firefox, but I'm unfortunately stuck to Windows
| for professional work. I need several high profile software to
| get proper Linux support before I can make that jump.
|
| When I eventually go indie, though: I am 100% making use of a
| Linux workflow.
|
| >Do people need to jerked around 50 times for 20 years before
| realizing it will keep happening and their "bypasses" are just
| temporary bandaids?
|
| Sadly, yes. The networkign effect is extremely strong. Twitter
| was complained about even before musk, but it still too 3 years
| before people really started considering the move. emphasis on
| "consider": because twitter still has a lot of foot traffic for
| what it is in 2025.
| chii wrote:
| > use Linux
|
| except that for a majority of users, windows is where their
| applications are at - such as gaming, word processing, or some
| other thing. Sure there are replacements (somewhat) for each of
| those categories, but they are not direct replacements, and
| require a cost of some kind (retraining, or a substitute
| quality). This is esp. true for gaming, and it's only recent
| that gaming has made some inroads via the steam deck (steamOS),
| which isn't available to a general PC (only handheld PCs with
| AMD processors iirc).
|
| People who say "just switch" to linux hasn't done it for their
| family/friends.
| ronjakoi wrote:
| Proton is available for desktop Steam as well, just pick your
| distro and go.
| debugnik wrote:
| > (steamOS), which isn't available to a general PC
|
| Most of its secret sauce is either in Proton or upstreamed
| into Wine, DXVK, SDL, etc. All available to a general PC.
|
| Unless your focus is competitive online games, which often
| come with Windows-only anti-cheats, you've got a huge
| catalogue of great games playable on Linux distros. I did the
| switch about four months ago and I'm not missing Windows, the
| only pain point has been Nvidia drivers and I'll be solving
| that by switching vendors.
| 0points wrote:
| > except that for a majority of users, windows is where their
| applications are at - such as gaming, word processing, or
| some other thing.
|
| Until you _switch to linux_ you won 't understand how
| inferior your windows setup always was.
|
| It's hard for us to tell you what you are missing out on, you
| simply need to experience it.
|
| I mostly game in a Windows 10 VM running on my Linux desktop
| computer. Single keypress to switch to Linux workspace.
|
| This is not because Linux gaming is horrible broken, but
| rather it gives me a fully separate leisure desktop, and my
| main Linux desktop is work only.
|
| It also gives me 100% compatibility, unlike wine.
|
| > People who say "just switch" to linux hasn't done it for
| their family/friends.
|
| When we say so here, we are telling _you_ to switch.
|
| Nobody should be forcing anything on friends/family.
|
| I always suggest MacOS for friends/family for ease of
| support. I would never recommend Windows to anyone.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > I mostly game in a Windows 10 VM running on my Linux
| desktop computer. Single keypress to switch to Linux
| workspace.
|
| Apologies for hopping on this thread with off topic
| question, but would you mind describing your setup?
|
| I haven't tried this in years, but last time I did I had
| trouble getting pass-through to some of my hardware, in
| particular my nvidia card.
|
| Agree with your approach 100%!
| ozyschmozy wrote:
| Can you comment more on your VM setup? Can it utilize the
| GPU properly? Any performance or compatibility issues with
| running windows in a VM? Etc.
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| Of course it depends on what you're playing, but VM gaming
| is not 100% compatible, lots of anti cheats will ban VM
| users and it's a cat and mouse game to not get detected.
| tzs wrote:
| > I mostly game in a Windows 10 VM running on my Linux
| desktop computer. Single keypress to switch to Linux
| workspace.
|
| > This is not because Linux gaming is horrible broken, but
| rather it gives me a fully separate leisure desktop, and my
| main Linux desktop is work only.
|
| > It also gives me 100% compatibility, unlike wine.
|
| You would get a fully separate leisure desktop if you were
| running Linux in that VM so it sounds like you are running
| Windows in the VM because Linux gaming is not adequate.
| Xss3 wrote:
| Many popular games have anticheats that prevent vm use.
| atoav wrote:
| Fallout 4 is running better on Linux than on Windows these
| days.
| ezst wrote:
| That's so much less true nowadays,
|
| Web has become the default platform, where most people run
| most of their app/spend most of their time. Even Microsoft
| has had no choice but to embrace it, and Outlook (as in, the
| one from Microsoft office) is now a web first app (normal
| outlook is rebranded "classic" and we all know where this is
| heading, for better or worse). In a way, that makes switching
| OS much easier.
|
| If you add to that that Windows itself is getting major
| visual overhauls from version to version (sometimes even
| within) it's not like sticking with it protects you from
| having to learn different UX paradigms and habits.
|
| And regarding gaming, well, linux with Proton runs games
| faster than Windows nowadays, that's how little Microsoft
| cares about gamers/how good Valve is (depending on how you
| look at it), but the fact of the matter remains.
| bboygravity wrote:
| I was going to post a rant on drivers in Linux, but on my
| newest Lenovo laptop Linux Mint/Ubuntu off the shelve
| driver support is actually complete and Windows 10
| (unsupported by Lenovo) extremely lacking (no wifi driver,
| no lid driver, no proper standby). And there's no way I'm
| going to start using Windows 11.
|
| So yeah, maybe this is the year of Linux. After decades on
| this planet :p
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Thinkpad E14, same experience. Windows 11 installer
| doesn't even see the wifi card, under Ubuntu everything
| works ootb.
| begueradj wrote:
| The day Linux will be used more than Windows, it will be in
| more trouble than Windows will.
|
| Threat actors are attracted by the most used system.
| anthk wrote:
| Fedora Bazzite it's Steam OS. And with Flatpak and Lutris you
| can have that setup everywhere, but some distros optimize the
| setings and compilations for the desktop better than Others:
|
| - Solus OS
|
| - Fedora Bazzite
|
| - Catchy OS
| Takennickname wrote:
| I disagree that that's the majority of users.
|
| The majority of users either use only web applications, or
| web applications and Microsoft Office.
|
| The true majority of users are on mobile.
|
| Windows is only unreplaceable for gamers. Which is fine,
| because Windows is a toy anyway.
| baobun wrote:
| > Microsoft Office
|
| Doesn't even exist anymore. She's "365 Copilot" and web-
| first now.
|
| https://www.office.com/
| steine65 wrote:
| Web version sucks compared to desktop version, unless you
| use the apps minimally. That said, the Winapps repo is a
| good linux solution, running a windows VM and accessing
| the office apps via RDP so they feel like a native app.
| As soon as it gets wayland support, I'm making the full
| switch. Winapps in Xwayland has some issues.
| Xss3 wrote:
| Protected Sharepoint docs are only openable with the
| desktop app too.
|
| What is the business alternative to ms?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >Windows is only unreplaceable for gamers.
|
| And quite a few musicians. When they make my software for
| Linux - and, it works ootb - I/ we'll be willing to change.
| zulban wrote:
| You can always tell how much someone has tried Linux based on
| how they talk about it.
| sky2224 wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but the problem is the software does
| 90% of what I want really well and I like that they do that 90%
| super well and I want to keep that.
|
| In your Windows vs. Linux example, Linux just doesn't do a lot
| of things very well on the UI/UX side of things (e.g., window
| management, driver support, an out of the box experience).
| Knock Windows all you want, but it honestly does quite a few
| pretty important things very well.
|
| So that's why I'll spend some time to resist the negative
| changes.
| ObscureScience wrote:
| >In your Windows vs. Linux example, Linux just doesn't do a
| lot of things very well on the UI/UX side of things (e.g.,
| window management, driver support, an out of the box
| experience).
|
| That judgement confuses me a lot. Window management, drivers
| and out of the box experience has been much better in Linux
| for the last 10 years in my experience. Sure, there are some
| companies that don't ship drivers for Linux or the
| configuration software is not fully fledged. Window
| management has almost always been better in Linux, but of
| course depends on the WM. Windows innovated one nice feature
| in Vista (aero snap) which most desktop environments has
| implemented since.
|
| If you install Fedora, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, what are you
| lacking from that out of the box experience? Generally no
| driver installation needed, and no cleaning up of bloatware.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Have you ever used Linux with high DPI monitors? Windows
| handles them OK since Windows Vista, and really well since
| 8. I've seen the classic Windows XP bug of measurements not
| being scaled and labels being cut off on modern Linux.
|
| How about mixed DPI multi monitor setups? Great since
| Windows 10. On Linux, you're screwed. X doesn't support
| this. Wayland does, but not all apps work well with that,
| and not all apps and GPUs support Wayland.
| tpxl wrote:
| > How about mixed DPI multi monitor setups?
|
| I've been using this since at least 2019, it's been fine.
| The only two issues are the mouse doesn't (always) align
| when moving across monitors and having a window across
| the display border has one side stretched, but why would
| you have windows like that?
| omnimus wrote:
| This is a bit outdated i run mixed multi monitor setup
| and for last year or two it has been working no issues.
| Linux moves slowly but steadily and things eventualy get
| pretty great (another example sound and pipewire).
|
| I think people make mistake of trying Ubuntu LTS thats
| super conservative with updates so you are years behind.
| For desktop you really want Fedora or something even more
| up to date. I think people sould try Fedora silverblue or
| its derivatives (bazzite, bluefin) its "atomic" distros
| that cannot be easily broken (steamos does the same).
| Kwpolska wrote:
| I have tried this a year or two ago, with something that
| was not LTS. I was using KDE though, maybe GNOME is a bit
| less broken in that regard (but is in others).
| sky2224 wrote:
| With regard to window management, this will certainly
| depend on the distro. Ubuntu's WM has been quite good I'll
| admit, but that seems to have occurred in only pretty
| recent versions in the past 5 years or so. My previous
| experience with Ubuntu had the window management closer to
| the experience that MacOS provides (albeit slightly
| better). Ultimately, this point is subjective, so maybe it
| wasn't the best example.
|
| Driver support is still a very big problem in my opinion,
| especially if you're a laptop user. There was a lot of
| tweaking with power configuration that I needed to do to
| prevent my laptop running Ubuntu 22.01 from dying in 2
| hours. Additionally, trackpad drivers were horrendous,
| which made two-finger scrolling next to impossible to do
| with any sort of accuracy. Hardware accessories like
| printers, keyboards, etc. are still a gamble.
|
| You're right though that it has gotten a lot better, but
| it's these little things that prevent most users from
| making the switch.
| patrec wrote:
| And using Google Firefox instead of Google Chrome is more than
| a temporary bag aid?
| Waraqa wrote:
| If you are using Chromebook, switching the browser is not an
| option
| temporallobe wrote:
| I get it, and mostly agree, but sometimes consumers don't have
| much choice with browsers and OSs; moreover, most consumers are
| simply technologically ignorant or agnostic of those things.
| Many users don't even know exactly what a browser or OS is, and
| they just want to live their lives scrolling through tiktok or
| getting work done.
| zulban wrote:
| I wasn't writing about consumers though. I was writing about
| "hackers" who might read this article and try this hack.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| > No idea why so many "hackers" doing "bypasses" can't instead
| take action that is simpler
|
| Because hacking is about solving hard and unnecessary problems
| atlintots wrote:
| I bypass Google's big anti-adblock updates by using Firefox
| pogue wrote:
| Why couldn't someone just compile Chromium and strip out
| _webRequestBlocking_ from the code?
| sneak wrote:
| So theoretically Chrome is open source.
|
| Open source is supposed to prevent issues like this, as it is
| possible to fork Chrome pre-MV3 and preserve this functionality.
|
| However, this appears to have not happened.
|
| Perhaps we need a better definition of "open source", or well-
| funded organizations that are adversarial in nature to the
| maintainers of open source commercial software.
|
| Lots of f/oss has malware and misfeatures in it, hiding behind
| the guise of "open source". It doesn't count unless there are
| non-corporate interests at work in the project that are willing
| and able to fork.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Chrome is open source just like Russia and Iran are democratic
| dictatorships. Just in the naming.
| arccy wrote:
| open source only means you can use and fork it without too many
| restrictions. it doesn't mean open governance or did the
| greater good.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I switched away from Chrome years ago. Not because of their weird
| anit-adblock moves. Just because the quality of their software
| dropped. Because of various UI bugs of their tabs that didn't get
| fixed with updates. I remembers that when Chrome came out it was
| rock solid and fast so it's a huge disappointment.
|
| I tried out Firefox again and nowadays it is as fast and as solid
| as Chrome used to be. Never looked back. I still keep Chrome for
| cases when somebody YOLOed their website, but I use it the way I
| used to use IE, briefly and with distaste. With the next upgrade
| I might just start using builtin Edge for that and not bother to
| install Chrome at all.
| qwertox wrote:
| > For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0.
|
| Sure, not a security issue. But given how much Google hates Ad
| Blockers, they could have easily given him some USD 50,000.
| raydenvm wrote:
| I suppose that switching to Brave will be one of the best
| solutions after all. They have already comment this in June:
| https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3
| moffkalast wrote:
| What makes Brave trustworthy enough for us to run our entire
| life through it? For me it's irreparably forever tainted by
| crypto grifting.
| pixxel wrote:
| Your favourite corporations commit all sorts of crimes
| (ethical and actual). But let's remember that questionable
| thing Brave did for eternity.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Non-profits get a tiny bit more leeway in my book. Brave is
| not one of them.
| esskay wrote:
| The 'crypto grifting' is something you can turn off
| completely, it's there as a way to make the browser
| sustainable without accepting payments from Google to make it
| the default search engine.
|
| I'd argue its far more trustworthy than modern day
| Firefox/Mozilla, they're not exactly the second coming these
| days.
|
| What makes Firefox more trustworthy?
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| the lack of cryptogrifting.
| moffkalast wrote:
| That's kind of like saying "yeah this is a mafia pizzeria
| but you can come eat at hours when the goons aren't there".
| Besides, why does Brave need that much funding? All they
| make is a Chromium wrapper, Google does all the work for
| them. They're not really an actual alternative in that
| sense, they just stuff it full of adblock, crypto, and god
| knows what. There was even a thing recently where it
| autoinstalled a VPN.
|
| Yeah it's true that Mozilla's mostly financed from Google's
| anti-antitrust payments, but at least they actually made
| something of their own and have a trustworthy track record
| three decades long as a non-profit and Netscape before
| that.
| barryvan wrote:
| Or Firefox, which isn't just a reskinned Chrome...
| esskay wrote:
| If you think Braves just 'reskinned chrome' you've clearly
| not used it.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I've tried Brave a few times. Doesn't seem significantly
| different from Chrome. Chromium will likely still dominate
| future choices for web standards and Google will still
| control what implementations work on the biggest
| properties.
| wejick wrote:
| For just another chromium skin, I prefer vivaldi as it has more
| traditional offerings than brave. While having more
| customizable ui.
| closetkantian wrote:
| Would it be possible to create a web browser where different tabs
| are running other browsers? Like I could have chrome in one tab
| and Firefox in another? Almost like a VM?
| Doxin wrote:
| You used to have an activeX plugin for internet explorer that
| would selectively render certain sites using google chrome
| bgnn wrote:
| Reading the comments, I see a lot of hate for Firefox. What is
| the explanation for this (other than people not trying Firefox
| and assuming it's inferior)?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I love Firefox, I've bee using it for as long as it exists and
| Netscape before that. It's Mozilla I have a problem with.
| Mozilla has allowed itself to become controlled opposition
| rather than the aggressive underdog that it should be. Lots of
| the money they take in that could go to improving Firefox is
| spent on stuff I could not care less about. There is no way to
| earmark funds sent to Mozilla as 'browser only'.
| WhrRTheBaboons wrote:
| Ultimately the issue is allowing Google to skirt around anti-
| monopoly rules by throwing money at Mozilla. Can't really
| blame the latter for cashing in when the rules fail at
| enforcing a competitive environment.
|
| Hate the game, not the player, basically.
| hashstring wrote:
| Also their browser security always seems to lag behind...
| haloboy777 wrote:
| I love using firefox. Mozilla has lost all the trust I had in
| them. The biggest blow for me was them shutting down pocket.
| qilo wrote:
| Mozilla sells user data to third parties. Their statement:
|
| _The reason we've stepped away from making blanket claims that
| "We never sell your data" is because, in some places, the LEGAL
| definition of "sale of data" is broad and evolving. As an
| example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines
| "sale" as the "selling, renting, releasing, disclosing,
| disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise
| communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other
| means, a consumer's personal information by [a] business to
| another business or a third party" in exchange for "monetary"
| or "other valuable consideration."_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
| jacquesm wrote:
| An adblocker is a firewall for your brain. Google should have no
| say over what I consume and when and with for instance youtube
| being pretty much unavoidable their monopoly position is abused
| by forcing you to pay for it. Doubly so because of the bait-and-
| switch, I'm fine with platforms that start off being ad
| supported, I'm not fine with platforms that become huge on piracy
| that are free to use by everybody and not an ad in sight and then
| when bought out suddenly you end up as a captive lemon to be
| squeezed.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Switching costs for consumers are pretty low. Though I'd agree
| that for producers, it is hard to compete anywhere else.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not really true. Youtube is the de-facto means through
| which a lot of companies and even governments communicate
| important information to the general public. It took the
| place of a lot of public broadcasting and documents supplied
| in paper form. This is highly annoying but hardly a choice on
| the part of the recipients.
| bborud wrote:
| I remember back in the day, one of the big selling points for
| Google's search engine used to be that the advertising didn't get
| in the way. Imagine that.
| le-mark wrote:
| I stopped saying this because no one remembers. Or the people I
| was talking to were to young. It's way worse now than askjeeves
| ever was!
| Garvi wrote:
| I notice people being very reserved on their criticisms of
| Google, knowing Google can end their careers in an instant if it
| chooses to.
| kldg wrote:
| Just for anyone here switching: Don't get firefox; get firefox
| developer edition. It's firefox but you don't need to pay Mozilla
| $20 and go through verification to local-load browser extensions
| you write for yourself. (you can do this on non-DE firefox but
| you have to reload extensions every time you restart browser)
|
| I've been off Chrome for a while after using it for about a
| decade. Firefox is nice to have around, but ngl, it's behind on
| standards and some of its implementations are wack. Its
| performance on video is poor, and its memory management
| relatively awful, especially if you're the kind of person who
| leaves your computer on for months at a time; be prepared to open
| a new tab and copy-paste any "HUD" tab URLs you leave open (e.g.
| CNBC for the top ticker). I feel like the kind of person who buys
| an Intel GPU, and I have some thoughts about Nvidia for pushing
| me here.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Does DE really persist local add-ons? Last time I tried, it
| still unloaded them on browser restarts.
| john_alan wrote:
| who uses browser level Adblockers anymore?
|
| Just use Pihole.
|
| Traveling? VPN home then Pihole
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Apparently a lot of folks, at least judging by UBO user
| numbers. Pihole doesn't look trivial to setup.
| exabrial wrote:
| Google hijacked the Internet by dominating web standards and
| abusing their market position. We could vote on a new RFC and
| Google gets the veto vote merely if they don't want to put it in
| Chrome.
| baxuz wrote:
| Just get AdGuard as it's a superior solution anyway.
|
| And I mean the actual app that can modify responses, not a simple
| DNS filter.
| jambutters wrote:
| I thought it was just a DNS filter. I have it running on my pi
| diebillionaires wrote:
| People shouldn't be using chrome anymore. Not even the
| technologically illiterate. I'd go so far as to say even safari
| is possibly more private.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > 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
| using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions.
|
| > For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0.
|
| Snitches get stitches, not rewards.
|
| FWIW, on Windows Google relies on the registry to determine
| weather to use V2 or V3, and it can be reenabled:
| https://gist.github.com/MuTLY/71849b71e6391c51cd93bdea36137d...
| deryilz wrote:
| No adblocking extension would ever rely on a clear bug to
| function. Google reviews extension code and would immediately
| patch the bug, and maybe use it as an excuse to kick the
| extension off the web store. I don't buy the idea that there
| was a viable second option here.
| yyhhooq wrote:
| Good
| BeautifulOrb wrote:
| finally switched to firefox. no regrets
| ck2 wrote:
| Supermium
|
| https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
|
| https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/
| macinjosh wrote:
| i never made chrome my daily driver. firefox and safari are
| wonderful browsers.
| nomendos wrote:
| Stop using Chrome. (i.e. as main browser I use Firefox which with
| containers is unmatched and Brave for any websites that I used
| Chrome in the past mainly for faster JS, while speed is +/- per
| bench) This could not have much effect on Google in the beginning
| (technically informed users first), but at some point it can (and
| I predict will, as technical literacy and privacy awareness is
| increasing, plus greed and productization of user data does have
| limits..) be avalanche moment. It will take variable time due to
| many variables, but is inevitability (i.e. universe law of
| "optimal path"). In my opinion, Google has miscalculated with the
| move to obsolete MV2 (masking it as "security" adds to dishonesty
| and consequent distrust, which is the opposite from the original
| Google's founding principles)
| replyifuagree wrote:
| >(Shown above: my earnings from this bug.)
|
| I lol'd!
| RS-232 wrote:
| I really wish Apple revived Safari for Windows.
|
| In my opinion, it's the only browser that nicely balances
| performance, privacy, and security.
| cbolton wrote:
| Doesn't Safari have basically the same limitations as Chrome
| with Manifest v3?
| throw123xz wrote:
| Safari isn't the solution in this case as they were actually
| the first ones to heavily restrict adblocking. Manifest v3 is
| inspired by what they did.
| shitonU2 wrote:
| Being neither an expert nor illiterate I've been blocked, very
| recently, from websites vital to me. Whether caused by Microsoft
| (most likely) or Google (less so) I've never had problems like
| this before. Usually, a little patience and they resolve the
| issue in short order. I hope this is the case now. Long ago I
| used IE, then Firefox and finally settled on Chrome. These
| current issues, if they persist, will be enough to make me move.
| Cyclone_ wrote:
| This seems to make a good case for the brave browser
| nemomarx wrote:
| I do hope they continue to support it, but any chromium fork is
| going to struggle if Google changes the base engine more on
| them. I think a different engine is ultimately safer.
| znort_ wrote:
| > But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to
| report the issue to Google in August 2023. (...) For the report,
| I netted a massive reward of $0
|
| rome doesn't pay traitors.
| brianzelip wrote:
| Stop using chrome
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