2mo ago

Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe.

www.quippd.com Google is Killing uBlock Origin. No Chromium Browser is Safe.

We’ve been anticipating it for years,1 and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the ...

We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.

Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.

I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.

This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!

270 comments

Switch to Firefox
- Or a fork :)
  
  Or a spoon

We kept Firefox alive for you all these years. You're welcome.
- Didn’t Google paying them loads of money keep FF alive?
  
  Yes, but Google would not have done that if nobody used Firefox
  
  Yes and it's likely that they will not be allowed to any longer after Google lost their anti-trust case.

Finally made the switch to Firefox just 2 days ago. Great so far.
- be sure to check out the extensions, there's several that are game changers.
  
  What are some of the game changing extensions?
- No, HVEC / H.265 codec support so no modern 4K security camera or plex/jellyfin etc high quality video support.
  
  According to caniuse.com, it works now in the Nightly builds and can be enabled in other builds via the media.wmf.hevc.enabled pref in about:config.
  I use Firefox Dev Edition and I think it’s enabled there. But either way, you can enable it on stable.
  
  Probably no ads on your self-hosted frigate/jellyfin pages though, so you can just keep using chrome for that ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
  
  plex/jellyfin etc high quality video support
  H265 isn't the only option there. AV1 is great and fully supported by Jellyfin (and I imagine Plex?)
  
  Jellyfin
  Use the desktop client or jellyfin-mpv-shim and you'll get HEVC support and superior image quality.
  
  https://caniuse.com/hevc
  looks like the bigger issue is hvec itself. Also the support is extremely spotty with all the other browsers as well, with it still only having limited support in Chrome as well depending on your hardware.
  Or just use av1 instead. I've literally never run into this as an issue before lol.

lol. Obligatory “you guys use chromium?”
- For interface unity I use Voyager in Chrome's web app functionality, it's nice to have the same interface. The last multi platform Lemmy app was Liftoff which was really nice but it's dead.
  Lemmy in a tab in Firefox, no matter the front end is so... I want the sleek experience dang it!
  Firefox, give web app functionality on desktop!

Can I just add a different perspective on this?
My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.
Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on. ~~Queue~~ Cue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.
I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.
- Nooooo, but MV3 is all about security!
  This is how I know this is bullshit. I was reading the article and thinking "So, let me get this straight. The ads aren't the security risk. It's the ad blockers!"
  Sure. Pull the other one.
- Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an "Acceptable ad standard"? Like, maybe even something within web specs?
  A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We've had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn't pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.
  That is...perhaps a vain hope though. It's just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.
  
  Google would never push this because it would cost them money in the short term, eg, next quarter.
  They can't have that.
  
  You mean like https://acceptableads.com/ which is only supported so far by Adblock Plus (and its parent company)?
  The problem is until there is some kind of penalty for being too annoying or too resource consuming, it will always be a race to the bottom with more, worse ads. As people add ad blockers to their browsers, the user pool that isn't running them begins to dry up and more ads are needed to keep the same revenue. This results in even more people blocking them.
  Two of the things I had hope for on the privacy side was Mozilla's Privacy-Preserving Attribution for ad attribution and Google's Privacy Sandbox collection of features for targeting like the Topics API. Both would have been better for privacy than the current system of granular, individual user tracking across sites.
  If those two get wide enough adoption, regulation could be put in place to limit the old methods as there would be a better replacement available without killing the whole current ad supported economy of most sites. I get that strictly speaking from a privacy perspective 'more anonymous/private tracking' < 'no tracking' but I really don't want perfect to be the enemy of better.
- I think you mean cue, not queue.
  
  Yep thanks
- so what you're saying is; this will bring old-school computer repair shops back? i'm sort of in favor of that 😂
- Buy a Raspberry PI, install PiHole or AdGuard, change router DNS, and you are good to go. Yes, not perfect, but doesn't rely on a browser extension that can go extinct next time the browser decides it is time for a change.
  
  .... or use Firefox and migrate their bookmarks.
  
  Or just do what I do. Use Firefox and only keep Chromium around for those few sites that work better in Chromium.
- You could leverage Kitbogas software in relation to scam/sketchy download protection.
  https://www.seraphsecure.com/
  
  Paid and closed source with a proprietary license.

Kids, remember, Google is an advertising company.

Honestly I'd say the Internet isn't safe, and it's because of Google, fuck you Google. It's not just the wine I've been drinking, it's true dammit.

Welcome back to Firefox everyone! At least if you're as old or older than I. 😁

You can always keep Chromium installed for the odd site that doesn’t work in Firefox (my daily driver). I do web development and test in every browser and I almost never encounter sites or features that don’t work in FF. The only one I can recall is something in the Azure Portal, probably because Microsoft wants you using Edge.
Typically, Safari is the laggard and any developer worth their salt would make sure their site works on iPad and iPhone. When a new web standard is released, usually Chromium supports it first but even then, not always. And web developers usually don’t use features that aren’t implemented across the board yet. I know I go to caniuse.com before I use something fresh out the oven.
- If a site requires chrome, it doesn't require me. If I need it for work, I'll use Edge instead.
  
  but edge is based on chromium??????

Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I'm personally very bored with my kids' schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won't open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.
- I've said it before and I'll say it again. If your site doesn't work on Firefox your site doesn't work. As web developers your job is to develop applications for the web not for one specific browser. This goes double for essential services.
  
  Doesn't really matter to a regular user, in that case it's"Firefox doesn't work"
  
  My job requires login to most internal websites via Microsoft Azure AD SSO using Kerberos authentication using passwordless, smart card auth.
  This switch happened this week. Up until yesterday I was 100% Firefox until this.
  Firefox for MacOS is not able to do this. I spent an hour or so looking for solutions. Chrome on MacOS also doesn't. Safari does and now I have to fucking use Safari FFS.
  
  "ugh just use a normal browser"
  everyone
  
  That's some BS. You and i both know that Chromium has the largest share in the browser business, so it makes sense from a development perspective to develop websites that will reach the most people. It's on Firefox to optimise their browser so that it can run these sites as well.
- Firefox can't fix all the broken sites in the world, but they do investigate issues reported to https://webcompat.com
  You can help by reporting sites that don't work for you.
- Okay that's fine, but when websites are effectively writing
  undefined
  
  if user_agent_string != [chromium] break;
  It doesn't really matter how good compatibility is. I've had websites go from nothing but a "Firefox is not supported, please use Chrome" splash screen to working just fine with Firefox by simply spoofing the user agent to Chrome. Maybe some feature was broken, but I was able to do what I needed. More often than not they just aren't testing it and don't want to support other browsers.
  The more insidious side of this is that websites will require and attempt to enforce Chrome as adblocking gets increasingly impossible on them, because it aligns with their interests. It's so important for the future of the web that we resist this change, but I think it's too late.
  The world wide web is quickly turning into the dark alley of the internet that nobody is willing to walk down.
  
  As a developer, I can foresee websites using features other than navigator.userAgent to detect Chrome, because it's easy to change its value. For example: for now, navigator.getBattery is available only in Chromium, and it doesn't need permissions to be checked for its existence through typeof navigator.getBattery === 'function' (also, the function seems to be perfectly callable without user intervention, enabling additional means of fingerprinting). While it's easy to spoof userAgent, it's not as easy to "mock" unsupported APIs such as navigator.getBattery through Firefox.
- Slack calls disabled for firefox users, but if you change the user agent to chrome it works...
  
  Almost like it does work on Firefox but for some reason they don't want you using it. Honestly it's so damn weird, why do that? Is there some incentive for them?
- What you're talking about is webcompat and is a very complicated issue. Also I've talked to some Mozilla devs who gave me multiple examples of Chromium rendering something wrong, and they'd have to intentionally break Firefox to render it incorrectly too, just so the end user would get a more consistent experience. Of course these issues happen more and more when things are only tested for one browser.
  
  This is Chromium monopoly. At this time instead of W3C standards, Chromium itself becomes the standard.
  
  Maybe there could be some sort of compatibility flag in Firefox which detects non-standard pages designed for Chrome. We could call it... hmm... something like Quirks Mode?
- I can't think of a single example where a web page doesn't work on FF.
  if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups
  Lol. I remember when FF was the most popular browser.
  
  I just need a „install as app“ Feature in Firefox, that is not as pain as the webapp Manager app we currently have
  
  There was a point in time where Firefox had the most market share? When was this?
- Can you send me an example? I don't think I ever really encountered those sites and I use FF almost exclusively for ~20 years.
  
  Its a frequency of use thing, and also some required sites. Examples are sites hosted by schools, government, or workplaces.
  Although most people using Firefox aren't aware of spoofing the client to look like chrome, so that might need to be talked about more.
  That all said, I don't have problems with any required usage, the only ones I have an issue with are on my phone, using mull, some sites payment forms won't load or work correctly. Taco bell is pretty bad for that and then the app wouldnt work either for a while. I also run grapheneos though so its hard to say what's the cause there.
- Yeah, unfortunately the next step will be sites rejecting "unsecure" browsers because they want the ad money.
  This is going to get worse, not better.
- Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on
  Care to share some examples Firefox has trouble with? The only issues I have with websites is due to my aggressive use of Noscript.
  
  There's some streaming video sites that deliberately block Firefox. It used to be that Firefox didn't support the necessary web standards, but now it does. The site put up blocks telling you to use Chrome, and never got around to taking them down.
  
  I'm on a Surface Pro, which is a somewhat weaker device. For whatever reason, Microsoft Edge (Chromium) runs YouTube and Twitch much better than Firefox. This might be due to efficiency in the browser, or the site video code itself being built for it.
- I encounter this very infrequently. I think I only have 1-2 examples at work. It's not a huge deal for me to spin up a chrome for those one or two occasions.
  
  I recall I didn't get some sites working on Chrome either, when Firefox fails me 😅
  
  Just make an electron out of those sites 🌚
- It's pretty trivial to just use an alternate browser for the garbage sites that don't support FF.
- What to do when the site is not compatible with Firefox: Alt + ←
- If I create a blank HTML file, every single web browser will open it perfectly fine. If I add browser-specific things that firefox doesn't have, it is my responsibility to create an alternative that keeps the site working. A user shouldn't have to switch browsers due to incompetence of webdevs.
- I just want my modern codecs to function. Why can't I play .mov or h264??

Also Firefox mobile has nearly all of the extensions as the desktop version so it's more similar across all of your devices. Personally, I use LibreWolf on desktop and Mull on mobile, but they're just tweaked versions of Firefox with some bloat and telemetry removed and preconfigured to be more private.

Yet another reason to never use Chrome
- for personal needs

You can make a windows registry change to have Chrome let you keep using uBlock Origin, with the V2 manifest. It will buy you six more months, basically the enterprise support period.
There was a handy shortcut created by the Security Now podcast you can use as a one-click file to update the policy. The show notes also give a more detailed breakdown of what's going on.
The relevant section in the notes is page 10. The link to the file is page 12. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-995-notes.pdf
- Or just use Firefox and not deal with that.

After i uninstalled chrome some time ago, i noticed it had been slowing down my entire system even when its not on. There is nothing of worth in using it or any other browser derived from it.

Honest question here, since chromium (vs chrome) is open source, can someone not fork an older version, or remove the new code blocking ublock?
I mean i assume it cant be done, but i dont know why
- It can be done, but then whoever forks that will need to stay on top of keeping that fork up to date with other changes in the original chromium, and that gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and more changes are made to the same or related parts of the codebase.
  
  Also all the ad blocking extensions would have to continue maintaining forks of their own projects for increasingly obscure manifest V2 Chromium browsers.

When was chrome or chromium safe?
Bloated memory hole in the last 10yrs.
The way it goes about Sucking up resources convinced me to switch to Firefox completely long ago.
- Yes it was performance that first got me to switch too. But now I have plenty more reasons.

Hardened Firefox, here I come.
- For people who want to keep using Chrome for whatever reason, remember to disable auto-update.
  
  Never updating your browser again is a pretty bad idea when it comes to security

It blows my mind that there are major companies that are actively, and very publicly- working their asses off to undermine the interests of their own customer base. And not only are they still are enabled to exist- they’re profits are constantly growing. Which means, despite their nefarious and intrusive updates to their services…. People are eating it up!
Nothing will change until people do the work to make that change.
Take YouTube for example:
They have screwed people over time and again. From their content creators, to those that enjoy watching them. Yet- those that hate it so much would seemingly never organize themselves to boycott their services on a level that will ever hurt them.
So they continue to do it unstopped.
Nothing changes until something changes. It isn’t ever easy, but if you want it to happen badly enough, it is always worth it.
All it takes is for someone to stand up and take the reins!
(I cannot be that person as I have ADHD and will probably forget that I wrote this come later this afternoon)
- Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google's customer. Don't believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?
  This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.
  
  Sooo… those that buy ads you mean.
  
  You're correct, but your argument is bad. I also paid $0 for Linux.
- Well said. Also maybe you forgot you wrote the comment by the afternoon, but it reminded me that I've been meaning to finally research more into adhd for better managing it, so thanks!

Doesn't Vivaldi have built-in blockers?
- Yes, but it's neither as good at adblocking as UBlock Origin or as fully featured.
- Yes, Vivaldi does: https://vivaldi.com/features/ad-blocker/

It's time to fork chromium!

Is duckduckgo chromium based?
I don't use it, just curious.
- Unluckily, yes.
  There are only 3 independent browser engines left: Firefox, Chromium and Safari. And Chromium derives from Safari, so the only true alternative is Firefox.
  
  Gecko, blink and webkit
  
  There is also a developing project Ladybird (with homebrew libweb), although it is far from production-ready.
  
  Eh, Chromium's Blink and Safari's WebKit diverged quite some time ago, I think it's fair to consider them separate engines at this point.
  
  There is also Goanna / Pale Moon: https://www.palemoon.org/

Am I going to die?
- We all do.
  
  Some sooner than others.

What date is is getting rid of mv2? Read the article couldn't find a date
- We will now [Oct 9] begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.
  https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline#october_9th_2024_an_update_on_manifest_v2_phase-out
  So there is no single date for normal users, but June 2025 is fixed for enterprise (and expected date for Brave, Vivaldi)
  
  is ungoogled chromium affected i use that as a secondary browser for some extensions

It kills the full version of uBlock but there is a lite version that has fewer functions as well.
- For now. And Google super mega promises to never rug pull that one.
- Oh great. Back to sucking Google’s teat for me then!

I have been using a fork of Firefox called Floorp and so far pretty happy with it. Chrome and any variant of it has essentially a monopoly on the browser and Firefox will just follow what Google says anyway so I wouldn't recommend native firefox. It would be nice if Safari(WebKit) was more stable and available as an alternative.
Anyway: https://floorp.app/
- I use regular firefox with a hardened config, and for mobile I use the Mull browser(available on F-droid). It's a privacy focused firefox port made by the DivestOS team, which is my mobile OS of choice.

Even in Vivaldi???
- Vivaldi is a chromium browser so yes
- Yeah

Can we ban bot-posted articles with incomplete body text?
- Who's a bot?
  
  Explain your methodology for posting this post, including any edits made to the original post.
- Seriously. We don't need bot bullshit on Lemmy.
  This is the start of the slide for Reddit is just going to be worse here because there are fewer controls to actually detect and do something about bots.

I might try uBlock Origin Lite, then if it doesn't work very well then maybe I'll just use Firefox
I guess Google are betting that only a small segment of power users will switch to Firefox, while the mass of ordinary people won't be bothered enough to switch.
- Just use Firefox already
- The mass of people don't use any ad-blocking at all.
- This is definitely a selfish opinion but people who block adverts or torrent being a small percentage of users can be a good thing.
  If they lose even 5% of their userbase to Firefox over this decision, they'll find a way to make grand modifications to Google search and YouTube in a manner that stops you blocking ads from alternative browsers, and while I'm happy swapping to an alternative search engine, it'll definitely becometedious to sidestep Google's gaze.
  But if it's 0.1% of people who swap due to this, and Google already don't care about the small percentage they lose to Firefox then I would rather sit under the radar and not be cracked down on.

I think Brave said they arent affected by this
- It's addressed in the article. The brave CEO has stated they will continue to support manifest v2 as long as the needed code remains in Chromium. He made no promises what happens when it is removed, though ("I don't write checks of unknown amount and sign them")
  
  So that means they are just supporting it as long as it is easy to do, and that they are not brave enough to fork chromium.
- Why would anyone use that browser though? Besides all the rounds of shit it went through, the CEO seems like a nutcase. First he does anti-lgbt political donations, not just once, and has to resign from Mozilla among outrage after only 21 days as the CEO. Then he tweets uninformed shit about covid and has his staff remove criticism on reddit. Sounds like a real champ.
  
  I mean I write Javascript, also his crestion so theres that.
  I know some gay people who love Javascript and its always funny to remind them what the original creator of Javascript did

I still hope as part of the antitrust ruling, they rip chrome from Google and undo this crap.
I've had good luck with uBlock Lite.
(Yes I could swap browsers but nah).
- Just bite the bullet.
- Just swap from Chrome, it’s not gonna change your life to use Firefox

People you can still block the shit of using DNS Adblockers . There are a some free like Mullvad DNS and Adguard.
- That’s not as effective, since it can’t block anything that’s hosted from a hostname that also serves regular content without also blocking the regular content. It also can’t trick websites into thinking that nothing is blocked and it can’t apply cosmetic rules. I use it for my devices, but in browsers I supplement it with uBlock Origin (or whatever is available in that browser).
  
  Yeas. But for me is enough .

I just use DNS or VPN for adblocking , no need for browser addons
- This isn't sufficient. I've been running DNS adblocking for a decade, advertisers have wised up to it and can easily sidestep it.
  
  Oh I run DNS adblocking on the router and protons adblocking on the VPN . That seem to cover everything. I use ublock on the job PC though.
  
  how about adguard dns?
- To my knowledge, DNS blockers not only miss a ton of ads, they also trigger several false positives.
  A better solution is to switch to something not chromium like Firefox or whatever alternative the next Linux person to read this comment recommends
  
  Ublocks lists are available as hostlists as well. Yea Firefox for the PC , vanadium (chromium) for the phone. No problem running all of it as well , if you have a little bit of power to spare. Haven't had any issues on adguard DNS plus proton adblock

Opera GX has promised to keep MV2 in their code. So I'll just keep using that until I see something different. The other thing is that Opera GX has built in ad-blocker which is pretty much on par with third parties.
Firefox is not the "great browser" you think it is. It has had its fair share of fuckups and failures over the years, like laxed security certificate updates leaving users in limbo.
Google didn't come and just out do Firefox. It was the other way around, firefox fucked themselves with poor management and failure after failure, and people left. Chrome was the new boy in town, and that is why firefox is where it is today.
Also, I would never use firefox, if I do need an alternative browser renderer, I use WATERFOX which is far more privacy compliant than firefix ever has been.
- brave i think has that too which is a controversial browser as well waterfox is a great browser tho.
  here are the reasons you shouldnt use opera or even operagx btw: https://rentry.co/operagx and brave
  
  Holy fuck, I knew about Brave, but not Opera.. I'm glad I never even tried it.
- Doesn't opera gx have horrible privacy issues?
  
  yeah but it's GAMER so it's okay
- Opera GX has promised to keep MV2 in their code. So I'll just keep using that until I see something different. The other thing is that Opera GX has built in ad-blocker which is pretty much on par with third parties.
  I couldn't find a source for either of these claims. Can you help me out?

Will Brave haves a built-in blocker. So here's that.
- Vivaldi has that, too, without the cryptobro People owning the browser.
  I switched to Zen, personally as any chromium seems to be doomed unless someone manages to fork the base project and take it away from Google
  
  idk if this blog is right or wrong correct me:
  https://vivaldi.com/blog/why-vivaldi-will-never-create-thinkcoin/
  
  Vivaldi is closed source. Brave isn't. Even with all its very real problems, Brave is the best option aside from Firefox, especially once you turn off all the weird stuff
  
  Crypto stuff in Brave is opt-in. So just don't turn it on.
  personally as any chromium seems to be doomed unless someone manages to fork the base project and take it away from Google
  ungoogled-chromium (windows version) is that.
- Chrome, now with added crypto and homophobia
- https://www.spacebar.news/p/stop-using-brave-browser

didn't firefox remove ublock origin too?
- I read that they temporarily (and apparently accidentally) removed the uBlock Origin Lite extension but they’re not getting rid of Manifest v2 that allows normal uBlock Origin to work.
  The developer released the lite version on Firefox because it might be better for Android Firefox users. I guess there was some confusion.
  
  i suspect that they will remove manifest v2 support
- No. They didn't.
  It's even a "Recommended by Mozilla" extension.
  Begone, concern troll.

270 comments