Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#261

Post by kitsunesoba » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

Despegar wrote: post #63

phs318u wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently Safari complains that uBO will slow down your browser. But it still lets you load it.

Yes but as far as I understand it doesn't actually use the native API. The Content Blocker API has benefits from a performance and privacy perspective.

Yes, content blocker extensions are many times more lightweight than old-style blocker extensions (virtually zero negative impact on resource usage and site load speed), can never be hijacked to do anything malicious, and know nothing about you or your web traffic.

I use them on my iOS/macOS devices and the their effectiveness is quite apparent, especially on the iPhone where CPU and bandwidth aren’t as abundant.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#262

Post by justsee » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #199

rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the benchmark results, aggressively stripping ads and tracking can result in pages loading twice as fast and hours of extra battery life. I'm happy to pay money to view your website, but modern web ads are a ridiculous and punitive payment scheme.

What you're doing is the equivalent of walking into a store, picking up $100 of merchandise, slapping $10 on the counter and walking out because "I'm happy to buy your products, but your prices are ridiculous". It's not a very moral position to take.

gorhill makes a moral argument on the other side of yours [1]:

That said, it's important to note that using a blocker is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea. The ultimate logical consequence of blocking = theft is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy.

Your analogy is flawed because it assumes the customer walking into the store retains their privacy and is not charged any hidden costs.

A more accurate example would be one in which the customer walks into a store that:

* data mines as much about that person as possible to profile them

* sells that data without consent to unvetted global buyers

* increases the risk that customer's devices are compromised (drive-by malware installs through ad placements on mainstream sites)

* charges them a hidden surprise fee (in the form of increased data usage, battery usage etc from poorly-designed ad systems).

Presenting naive analogies is harmful to our ability as a society to reason about the costs of systems like this.

I'd urge anyone to have a read and/or follow Ad Fraud Historian to understand how bad / harmful the existing ad-tech ecosystem is. [2]

It's truly awful, and anything that moves the internet away from this dystopian, incompetent and fraudulent monetisation approach to content is doing all of humanity a huge favor.

[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#philosophy

[2]: https://twitter.com/acfou

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#263

Post by jchw » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:01 AM UTC

King-Aaron wrote: post #226

joshschreuder wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, never knew that was a thing. I found FF's dev tools quite bulky and clunky in the past, but I might have to give it another go.

That's the only reason I keep falling back to Chrome, the dev tools are just so much more refined.

The one thing I always liked about Chrome dev tools was the ability to introspect WebSocket frames. Last I checked this couldn’t be done in Firefox :(

Otherwise, I have found Firefox dev tools to be fairly competitive. I liked the CSS Grid stuff they had around the launch of Quantum; it made it easier for me to jump into Grid.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#264

Post by AaronFriel » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

jchw wrote: post #29

redwards510 wrote: post #13

Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome. Never heard of a paid version of Chrome before! Can anyone elaborate on this? I gotta say I'm kind of glad Google is doing this. It will force me to finally abandon Chrome, something I should have done awhile ago.

Googler here, but I do not work on Chrome and I’m speaking on a personal capacity. I believe this is a misnomer. The enterprise deployment stuff I’m aware of in Chrome/Chromium is accessible by any user, as far as I know, and in the past I’ve used it to force private browsing on always for my own personal usage. That said, I switched to Firefox when Quantum came out and haven’t looked back. Mozilla has done some anno…

I don't believe it's accurate to say it's "accessible by any user", the net effect of the policy will be (over a time span of months or years) to limit ad blocking only to the most technically capable users who understand how to do what you describe.

Moreover, extensions that continue to use this behavior are required to adhere to manifest v2, and support for that manifest will likely eventually be deprecated. Chrome blocked the store from serving and updating manifest v1 extensions after a deprecation period.

Google rapidly deprecated version 1, from Chrome 18's release adding version 2 in March 2012 to blocking updating in March 2013, to removal of all extensions that had not updated from the Chrome Web Store in September 2013.

If Manifest v3 follows a similar trajectory, Chrome is on a path to remove uBlock Origin from its web store in 2 years.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#265

Post by andrewprock » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #248

tyingq wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Content can still be blocked with extensions" Well, without live heuristics. Chrome ad blocking is basically now limited to a dumb, limited list of URI patterns. Better than nothing, but much less capable than before.

And without privacy invasion implications. Apple introduced content blocking 4 versions ago implemented nearly the same way. No one would accuse Apple of trying to help Google make more money.

Google pays Apple for access to their browser.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#266

Post by AaronFriel » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #243

AaronFriel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part of the code doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it's baked in at a rather low level in the browser. That's how it can block requests! In JavaScript! Google will begin by deprecating the webRequest block API (that's in progress). Then they will begin deprecating the code that supports it. Then they will begin removing and deleting the "unnecessary" code. Then, at some point in the future, they may make other brea…

as long as they're still supporting that API in enterprise installs, they're going to have a difficult time deprecating the code that drives it

Google Chrome Enterprise didn't exist when Manifest version 2 was introduced (and version 1 deprecated), so it's difficult to guess what will happen this time around. But if the policy now is the same as then, here's what will occur:

Chrome will deprecate in a release, approximately 1 year later Chrome will block updating of any extensions using the old manifest, and after approximately 18 months they will remove any extensions from the Web Store that have not updated, and approximately 2 years after the deprecation later the code to support the manifest will be removed.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#267

Post by asark » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #199

rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the benchmark results, aggressively stripping ads and tracking can result in pages loading twice as fast and hours of extra battery life. I'm happy to pay money to view your website, but modern web ads are a ridiculous and punitive payment scheme.

What you're doing is the equivalent of walking into a store, picking up $100 of merchandise, slapping $10 on the counter and walking out because "I'm happy to buy your products, but your prices are ridiculous". It's not a very moral position to take.

It's more like taking a whiz when commercials come on TV, but automated and you don't have to get up.

Automatic whiz-taker. That's what they should call add blockers.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#268

Post by rnotaro » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #212

btown wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> smaller players to come together and form an open-source working group based on a chromium fork Google can and does use DRM to block even this from happening: https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked... Even Mozilla needed to license Widevine from Google to support modern video: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm Based on the policy evidenced in Maddock's post, it seems impossible t…

Use an open-source DRM solution?

DRMs are integrated by websites owners.

If a website is using Proprietary DRM A, your browser needs to be licensed to use DRM A.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#269

Post by ravenstine » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly.

I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problems playing video, streaming, or anything of the sort. I keep tons of tabs open. I just can't really say anything wrong about Firefox at this point.

It was once the case that Firefox had significant disadvantages in contrast to Chrome, but now the only reason I have to still keep Chrome installed is when work forces me to use some Google-proprietary page that doesn't work in other browsers.

If you had problems with Firefox 2 years ago, try it again before bringing up performance when people are considering it as an alternative to deleting Chrome. The more people who uninstall Chrome, the better.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#270

Post by xur17 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

khally wrote: post #188

I switched to the Brave Browser a few months back (learned about it via Coinbase Earn). Its a great alternative to chrome with solid ad-blocking & I got $10 out of it.

I did the same a few weeks back, and the ad blocking's been great. Hasn't behaved any different from Chrome + uBlock.