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Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

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Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#371

Post by bnegreve »

cletus wrote: post #302
bnegreve wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So rather than be alarmist [..] we should be pushing for changes that make this workable If, as the author suspects, the intent is to break popular adblockers, I have no interest in trying to make this workable. Personally, I think this is a typical half-legit move: there's a good intention (security) but it's also hard to believe they did not realize that by pushing these changes, they were going to break several…

How hard exactly is it to use Firefox instead of Chrome? It literally takes 2 minutes to switch. This isn't a Microsoft situation where, at the time, there was no alternative to Windows. It is the easiest thing in the world to change browsers. Google knows this too. Not every surface is a slippery slope.

> How hard exactly is it to use Firefox instead of Chrome?

I don't understand, you're saying these discussions are useless because anyone can switch to Firefox anytime? But why would anyone decide to switch to Firefox if it weren't for these discussions. This is not something users can experience directly (like bad UX), clearly they need some level of understanding.

And Google taking full control on yet another thing on the web, does sound like a slippery slope to me.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#372

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

cletus wrote: post #307
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if requests are blocked then content publishers can very easily detect ad-blockers and intentionally degrade the user-experience or add nag screens that aren't part of the usual ad network code. If it's an SPA then it'd be almost impossible to untangle easily when the site's developers can add their "is-adblock-detected?" checks anywhere in their SPA codebase and mess with the UX at-will.

Ok, so of all the replies here, this is the first I've read that's actually raised a really good point. Simply blocking requests will make ad block detection easier for Websites. Then again, this seems to be pretty prevalent already (as in lots of sites I visit already detect this).

Most adblocking scripts I’ve seen work by detecting if an ad loaded into its ad-placeholder. If you disable JavaScript completely then you don’t get the nag-screen. Some variants use CSS to show the nag screen by default and only removes it if it sees the ad loaded fine.

But server-side connection-blocking or request-blocking detection works even when JS is disabled, but it requires a lot of infrastructure and cooperation between publishers, ad-networks, and more - both technical and political/business cooperation.

Eventually in the future, web-browsers will render a page twice: one fully-loaded page, hidden from the user, that the ad code will think is what the user sees, while a network-sandboxed version is shown to the user with the already-loaded ad images replaced with white boxes or so. The client scripts can’t tell the ads haven’t loaded and even if they did they can’t phone-home to snitch on the user, while the browser still made those HTTP requests for the ads so the ad-network is satisfied it made an impression.

Perhaps we could get fake ad-loading working without wasting downstream bandwidth by spoofing the IP source address field?

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#373

Post by yyyk »

apexalpha wrote: post #162
johnpowell wrote: post #86

Back in the IE 6 days I was in charge of fixing my families computers, and my family's friends computers. I was dealing with a few things a week, some requiring a full re-install. This was back in the early 2000's. Eventually I snapped and started charging hourly unless people switched to Gmail and Firefox. I started getting a lot less calls since Gmail was pretty good about filtering out malicious attachments and IE…

Nowaways I put a pihole in every home of my family members. Together with unchecky (windows) my calls dropped by 95% or so.

It won't work for long. With eSNI and DoH you won't be able to use DNS for blocking, and IP is very easy to switch around, especially in IPv6 but even in IPv4 (ad networks have money, shortage is not a problem for them).

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#374

Post by nvrspyx »

fastball wrote: post #367
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Google introducing this change upstream in Chromium? This means that it will affect downstream browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and a number of others[1]. The only way they will keep the old functionality is if they fork it and maintain it themselves going forward, which could potentially be made more difficult by further upstream changes made by Google. A few have vowed to do so[2], but…

All Chromium "based" browsers are forks already -- how is this any different?

They’re less so forks than re-builds. They rely heavily on upstream and Google can certainly make it more difficult for them to maintain a “fork” that diverges too much from Chromium proper. Manifest V3 may be something they can easily keep out of their builds while maintaining the old method, but I’m no expert so I won’t comment on that.

A fork implies maintaining most or all of the code base themselves, when in reality, most Chromium derivatives simply change the “front-end” or the UI while keeping everything else upstream, except for a few tweaks here and there. To maintain an entire fork themselves would be a massive undertaking, especially since Google now has a practical stronghold on the development of the open web. “Forks” would have to ensure they work with the standards (and non-standards) that are being pushed by Chromium and there’s no easy way to do that besides using Chromium and “re-building” it with their broswer’s specific features and UI. Google could make Manifest V3 harder to exclude from those re-builds.

It’s this very reason that Microsoft moved to Chromium as they could not keep up with the changes Chromium were pushing to the open web. They have also made it very clear that they’re not “forking” Chromium for the new Edge, but rather using it as their “back-end” so they can focus on their “front-end” while contributing back upstream to improve the back-end. Too much of a divergence would land them back to square one with the issues they had keeping up with old Edge.

If a company the size of Microsoft are unable to maintain a “fork” of Chromium, it doesn’t leave much hope for the smaller companies like Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. However, that does not mean that they are unable to exclude the Manifest V3 from their builds, just that they’re still beholden to the changes made to Chromium to some degree.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#375

Post by ibejoeb »

me_me_me wrote: post #34

Meanwhile me laughing in Firefox. I hope no one here is surprised by this G was more and more anti ad-blocking for years now. This is only natural conclusion after u are a de-facto browser monopoly.

Just tried updating to the latest firefox on MacOS Catalina and I get:

>“Firefox Software Update.app” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#376

Post by vbezhenar »

JohnFen wrote: post #365
vbezhenar wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not trying to kill advertisements. They want to replace API to provide better performance. That's about it. ad blocking extensions won't disappear. May be some will, and new extensions emerge.

> They are not trying to kill advertisements. They want to replace API to provide better performance. So they say. I see literally no reason to believe that claim, though.

Apple did similar move with Safari. And they are not ad company. So probably it is the valid reason.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#377

Post by woodrowbarlow »

pen2l wrote: post #305

This is not as terrifying to me as the other news brought to my attention by a post in today's Reddit's r/YSK, that if you use Adblock, your gmail can be closed. In the new TOS of Youtube [1], it states that if your account is not deemed commercially viable, your Google account (i.e. your Gmail, your Google Photos, your Google Drive, etc.) can be closed down: YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’…

just one more reason i continue to recommend that youtube is greatly improved by signing out. none of the signin-walled "features" are worth it anyway. comments are a banal wasteland, votes mean nothing for creator visibility, subscribing doesn't mean you'll see new videos when they're released, algorithm-driven recommendations actively harm diverse content discoverability...

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#378

Post by MrMember »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #377
pen2l wrote: post #305

This is not as terrifying to me as the other news brought to my attention by a post in today's Reddit's r/YSK, that if you use Adblock, your gmail can be closed. In the new TOS of Youtube [1], it states that if your account is not deemed commercially viable, your Google account (i.e. your Gmail, your Google Photos, your Google Drive, etc.) can be closed down: YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’…

just one more reason i continue to recommend that youtube is greatly improved by signing out. none of the signin-walled "features" are worth it anyway. comments are a banal wasteland, votes mean nothing for creator visibility, subscribing doesn't mean you'll see new videos when they're released, algorithm-driven recommendations actively harm diverse content discoverability...

I don't even visit the YouTube site that often anymore. I've set up a script to use youtube-dl to download new videos from channels I like on a daily basis.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#379

Post by JohnFen »

vbezhenar wrote: post #376
JohnFen wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are not trying to kill advertisements. They want to replace API to provide better performance. So they say. I see literally no reason to believe that claim, though.

Apple did similar move with Safari. And they are not ad company. So probably it is the valid reason.

Apple has a bit more credibility than Google, too.

Re: Google Begins Testing Extension Manifest V3 in Chrome Canary

#380

Post by JohnFen »

pfdietz wrote: post #246
mcv wrote: post #170

I'm in the process of switching as much as possible to Firefox. I now use Firefox Mobile on my smartphone, and my new laptop doesn't even get Chrome. And in many ways, it's been a breath of fresh air. Firefox gives my much more control over my privacy, and even recommends some extensions to improve it further. A couple of websites are sadly broken on my Firefox setup, but I can live without them. I want to get back t…

> I want to get back to the content-driven web rather than this ad-driven web we have now. Are you prepared to pay for it?

> Are you prepared to pay for it?

Sure. We're all paying for it anyway -- the only question is what currency we're paying with. I'd much prefer the currency be cash rather than data.

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