this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024

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273

Google to push ahead with Chrome's ad-blocker extension overhaul in earnest (www.theregister.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Non-targeted advertising for random electronics on tech sites and games on videogame sites will probably net a similar amount of interest from users at a much lower cost both financially and morally than invasive targeted advertisements. Google wouldn't have anything to sell though, so... time to blame the users who want to be left alone now, I guess.

Just looks like an economic bubble on life support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

So, I keep meaning to look into this but I come from the wrong background to have an intuitive grasp of the pieces at play here. My work is primarily in back end systems development for data driven models and I have very little understanding of how networking elements interact or even what they are, for the most part. If someone with that background is reading these comments and willing to take the time, would you be able to provide an explanation for the differences between Manifest V2/V3 and how V3 prevents ad blockers from working?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The webRequest API allowed intercepting any network request in v2. Firefox also has an api for dns resolving. Lastly chrome now has a limited size for content blocking rules. All adding up to more limited blocking.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

With manifest v2, extensions could block the content however they wanted, reading and modifying DOM as they see fit.

Google claims that it is a security risk, so with manifest v3, extensions can only create and give the browser rules and the browser itself will block content based on them. The rules have a limit in size and capabilities.

If that was still not clear, try thinking of unrestricted SQL access vs a UI for modifying a database.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Got it, that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Anyone who uses anything Google makes is a fool.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, in mobile phones, there is little choice. It is almost 100% Android or iOS. Even a lot of "flip" phones are now Android. I'd love to have a KDE based phone, but the options are slim, and the functionality is missing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Ironically, the Google Pixel with GrapheneOS is a very privacy-focused option with no bloatware.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But Google search has gotten so much more interesting these days. Glue in pizza, spaghetti in gasoline sauce, jumping off bridges when feeling depressed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

To be honest, jumping off a bridge stops feeling depression... And so the other feelings.

But for real, I hope nobody did anything irreversible due to this stun.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago (2 children)

time to treat that firefox allergy of yall if ya want to keep adblocking.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I use Firefox as my daily browser, but I tried the manifest v3 based uBlock experiment in Chrome and honestly I couldn't tell the difference between it and the regular uBlock.

I welcome people switching over, but I don't think this is anywhere near the killing blow to adblocking people think it is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

it is. it wont be updated as often, and ads will slip in between them. it also won't be able to block as many trackers because the api is more limited.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

For now

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Switched the other day. It's just as good

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Who uses chrome by choice?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I use it and I like it. Also have a Chromebook which I love for the Android integration and ability to stream apps from my phone. Thus, I'd appreciate a more in-depth discussion here what this means for me, but all you see on Lemmy is circle jerk and hate. 🤦‍♀️

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried earnestly starting the discussion, or are you expecting others to start the conversation on your behalf? 🙃

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I was actually just answering the person's question and continued with a bit of rambling.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A lot of people use it because it's been the default for so long, but I'm slowly getting friends and family to swap.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (3 children)

OK, so ambivalence. I'm lazy, I can get behind that. Also, I appreciate the work you're doing. I gave up years ago and am still labeled by my family as "the one who cares too much about things that don't matter."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I'm slowly converting my dad on it but the rest of my family likely sees me the same way, lol.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I usually tie it into a discussion about password managers and show them Bitwarden too. Like with my in-laws I did a dark web scan and showed them their own passwords were basically public knowledge. Could they use it with Chrome? Sure. But they want to know they're secure and they trust me, so I get them on Firefox with a password manager.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Welcome to Firefox

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The transition was a little weird for the first week, now I just use Chrome when I have to login with Google for some stupid shit. Otherwise it sits in my app drawer, because I'm definitely never logging in to a Google service while using Firefox.

YouTube is better, browsing is better, ad block works, it's just overall a superior browser.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Use the multi container extension for Firefox and have all your Google stuff in one container, banks in another, social media in another etc.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

I’m definitely never logging in to a Google service while using Firefox.

Could you elaborate on this? Why not use Firefox for logging into Gmail, Youtube, etc

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why not log into a Google service while using Firefox?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Basically just don't want to give them the ability to track my every click.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thankfully Mozilla Firefox will be supporting Manifest v2 for the foreseeable future.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I guess extension developers will slowly stop, unless extremely hampered.

Will there be many extensions with active development that still use V2? Either they focus on Firefox or they have two versions.

At that point, why not make ublock part of Firefox, like brave did?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think Firefox will support both v2 and v3 extensions, so devs can use whichever makes more sense for their project. It has been a while since I looked into it though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

For the time being, yes, they will support both. But V2 will only work on Firefox (and forks) and I think brave, a very small percentage of users.

So given that it will be like supporting two different extensions, I assume most extension developers will just switch to v3.

How long after most extensions are v3 until Firefox drops/stops supporting is anybodies guess.

It's actually a great example of how chromes dominant position is screwing other browsers

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It’s not that crazy to use both.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Unless it's literally no effort to maintain extensions that use both, a large portion of maintainers will develop what has the largest market share. Sure for uBlock Origin, there's enough momentum to maintain a v2 version for Firefox, but for a new extension with one developer, it's unlikely that they'd make two versions.

Either this backfires, and Firefox ends up having the better extensions using v2 manifest, or new extensions will be developed with the limitations of v3 and Firefox users will have an unnecessarily neutered experience as Chrome users.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

It's more work and will create different set of features.

So no, not crazy, but really inconvenient and for a very limited amount of users

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

"Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension.

The most salient of these is the blocking version of the webRequest API, which is used to intercept and alter network traffic prior to display.

Under Manifest V2, it's what extension developers use to stop adverts, trackers, and other content appearing on pages, and prevent certain scripts from running.

The new MV3 architecture reflects Google's avowed desire to make browser extensions more performant, private, and secure.

Li acknowledged the issue by noting the ways in which Google has been responsive, by adding support for user scripts, for offscreen documents that have access to the DOM API, and by increasing the number of rulesets in the declarativeNetRequest API (the replacement for webRequest) to 330,000 static rules and 30,000 dynamics ones.

And by the beginning of 2025, when the API changes have been available for some time in the Chrome Stable channel, Manifest V2 extensions will stop working.

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