273
Google to push ahead with Chrome's ad-blocker extension overhaul in earnest
(www.theregister.com)
Welcome to Firefox
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
273 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
59587 readers
2689 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
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/
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
Why not log into a Google service while using Firefox?
Basically just don't want to give them the ability to track my every click.
Thankfully Mozilla Firefox will be supporting Manifest v2 for the foreseeable future.
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?
It’s not that crazy to use both.
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.
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
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.
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
time to treat that firefox allergy of yall if ya want to keep adblocking.
Switched the other day. It's just as good
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.
For now
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.
Who uses chrome by choice?
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.
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."
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.
I'm slowly converting my dad on it but the rest of my family likely sees me the same way, lol.
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. 🤦♀️
Have you tried earnestly starting the discussion, or are you expecting others to start the conversation on your behalf? 🙃
I was actually just answering the person's question and continued with a bit of rambling.
Anyone who uses anything Google makes is a fool.
But Google search has gotten so much more interesting these days. Glue in pizza, spaghetti in gasoline sauce, jumping off bridges when feeling depressed.
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.
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.
Ironically, the Google Pixel with GrapheneOS is a very privacy-focused option with no bloatware.
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.
The original article contains 585 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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.
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?
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.
Got it, that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
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.