Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week
Chrome's Manifest V3 transition is here. First up are warnings for any V2 extensions.
::Laughs in Firefox::
Who knows... Firefox might just follow suit. If devs have to write their extensions one for Chrome and once for Firefox, the Firefox one will probably be the first to die.
That's not how it works. Firefox has full support for Manifest v3 extensions, but it does also support MV2 at the same time, and aims to keep MV2 support alive in the future.
From the article:
Firefox plans to support Manifest V3 because Chrome is the world's most popular browser, and it wants extensions to be cross-browser compatible, but it has no plans to turn off support for Manifest V2.
I doubt they'll ever choose to shut down V2, but Google is already forcing their hand a little by making them require supporting V3 to stay relevant
Then there will be thousands, millions of people continuing development of FF extensions.
Firefox plans to support Manifest V3 because Chrome is the world's most popular browser, and it wants extensions to be cross-browser compatible, but it has no plans to turn off support for Manifest V2.
If Google decided to break V2 compatibility with V3, Mozilla should announce V4 (or V3 extended), which is V3 but with the missing stuff readded.
That'd be a good practical and great product/tech marketing move. Just like most people won't see how V3 is worse than V2, V4 will indicate it's the evolved and improved V3.
It would also simplify supporting V3 and V4 at the same time for extension authors. A great practical gain for extension authors, not having to read and understand two manifest schemes and APIs.
Mozilla’s V3 implementation already extends out removing artificial limitations from it. Mozilla’s doing a reverse E3 and I’m all here for it.
Now if only the nincompoop IT dept on my company allowed me to run Firefox…
When my company enabled Microsoft InTune this year, so that our administration could ensure software is updated on our PCs, it repeatedly downgraded my Firefox back to before a security update, on every login. lol
We went through all this shit with Microsoft and Internet Explorer. It’s time to break up Google’s monopoly.
I'll develop my own browser before using an ad-infested internet. Luckily I don't have to do that, because there are alternatives and also because it would be a damn time consuming project to put it mildly 😅
I wonder what would happen if µBlockOrigin was just pulled from the Chrome Webstore. Would that drive people to other browsers?
Some would switch, some would install another ad blocker extension, and some wouldn't know any better and do nothing.
Unfortunately, most people don't care all that much.
but there are some people who do care.
There's uBO Lite, which is an MV3 version so one step towards making adblockers less useful as Google planned.
Many people have said they have switched already and have said it works without issues (as far as they know). I'm sure there is a huge amount of sites and configs that didn't make it into the lite version, I guess we'll find out when a huge userbase refuses to migrate from chrome and installs the uBo-lite
37 million Chrome users have downloaded Ublock Origin (if that isn't including duplicate downloads/multiple accounts on one user).
5.3 billion people use the internet. 307 million in the U.S. as of 2022... what is that, 10% of Americans using Chrome using adblock? Less?
So max 37M users possibly willing to switch away from Chrome should it not be available anymore. Not nothing.
I went back to FireFox way back when the announcement of V3 killing adblockers in chromium first was made. I could go without everything else a browser offers, as long as it has ad blocking.
I legit want AR glasses for the same thing; to block ads IRL.
Literally just gave up brave for Firefox two weeks ago just for that reason even though brave isn't supposedly gonna be affected. I have no doubt Google might deliberately just break chromium one day once and for all.
I actually really like the AR glasses idea. That said, They need to be open source and de-spookified, and there needs to be some kind of regulation that they can't store or transmit images without first displaying a recording indicator.
It's probably not going to happen like that, though, so I'm not mad existing ones have such bad battery lives.
Reminder than most other browsers are based on chromium, and Google can probably break ad blockers on them if they want to.
it is so sad that e is dead
You left out the 'N' and the 'tscape Navigator'
Brave's native adblock works better than anything else I've tried.
Give Brave a look, folks.
Use Firefox. The crypto bros running Brave have been caught multiple times gathering and selling user data. You use Chrome as the base when you want to hoover data.
No thank you, I'll use Firefox instead. Brendan Eich the CEO of Brave is a POS, he donates to shitty causes and then pretends that those donations don't define him as a bigot.
"In other words, because he silently donated to causes seeking to strip rights from minority groups instead of directly harassing them, the outrage was unjustified."
It’s also a chromium based browser so good chance it will loose any ad blocking ability if google decides to play hardball.
That's fine. Do what you like.
If someone unironically wore gloves like that I would bully them without hesitation.
Those aren't gloves, they're just weirdly soft knuckle dusters.
Firefox or Vivaldi. I prefer Vivaldi with its built-in blocking. I also use NextDNS for DNS level blocking. Free plan is good enough for my use.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary Other groups don't agree with Google's description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 "deceitful and threatening" back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system "will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit."
Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it's not clear how that aligns with the goals of "improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness."
Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.
Google now says it's possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for "safe" rule set changes, but even this is limited to "static" rulesets, not more powerful "dynamic" ones.
In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google's public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.
For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that "over time, this toggle will go away as well."
Saved 67% of original text. :::
