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Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

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Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#171

Post by matheusmoreira »

mmis1000 wrote: post #50
matheusmoreira wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new declarative APIs are great. They will protect user data from potentially malicious extensions. The thing is uBlock Origin is just so important and trusted that these restrictions shouldn't apply to it. The functionality of uBlock Origin is just so fundamental and unambiguously pro-user it should be integrated into the browsers themselves. Conflicts of interest prevent that unfortunately but the fact remains t…

> They will protect user data from potentially malicious extensions. No, they won't. You can still log requests however you want. The only difference is you can't modify/stop it. So the privacy concern is pure BS.

How so? From what I've read, the whole point of the declarative API is to tell the browser what you want done so that it can do it without letting the extension actually touch any data.

If this doesn't work, then there's no point to the new API.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#172

Post by jimmydorry »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #14

This is great news for Firefox. I switched a year ago and was forced to use Chrome once or twice (lack of call support in Teams web app; I'm unwilling to install the native (?) app). The main difference between Chrome and Firefox is that Chrome feels passively (and sometimes actively) user-hostile with things like not-so-intuitive Chrome-vs-Google login and many other things that may seem trifle details but are in fa…

Because Firefox will most likely follow the same path?

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#173

Post by matkoniecz »

shadowfaxRodeo wrote: post #69

Removing webRequest's blocking will completely destroy my web extension. It helps people get work done by blocking website's they're addicted to. I've just started out on a new version, not sure what to do.

Develop it for Firefox and recommend people to remove Chrome as part of using it? Though it has Leechblock already.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#174

Post by innocenat »

joelthelion wrote: post #114

I don't understand why this (and all the rest) is not driving people back to Firefox. Are we really going to wait for Mozilla to die, and then lament that Google has taken over the web?

I have attempted to move to Firefox twice: once 12 years ago and once 8 years ago (probably, I don't really remember exact time). I know, Firefox has come a long, long, long way since then, but the same were also promised 8 years ago, and it turn out Firefox cannot handle my use case well to the point of almost being unusable. (That said, my use case are definitely not normal)

It's a lot of effort to move everything: current session, bookmarks, extensions, sync (which mean I need to move on my 5+ devices at once). I have been bitten twice -- not sure if I want to risk it again. No matter how much people are saying how good it is now, it's hard to muster up the effort to move again.

EDIT: Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Back when Firefox was saying it's as fast as Chrome without being multi-process. They were saying that it's better. I tried. I moved. I got f*cked up. I move back. Twice. You'd excuse me if I no longer believe what the Firefox dev were saying about their browser.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#175

Post by Glench »

I run a service that lets browser extension developers take payments in their extensions without needing to run their own servers* and it's been frustrating watching the MV3 rollout. The documentation isn't good, there are unresolved issues, and every developer making an extension adopts it because Google says that's the new thing everyone has to use.

And sigh, I hope uBlock Origin continues to work — the web sucks without it. Maybe Mozilla could hire the devs and integrate it into Firefox.

* https://extensionpay.com

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#176

Post by matheusmoreira »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #47
matheusmoreira wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new declarative APIs are great. They will protect user data from potentially malicious extensions. The thing is uBlock Origin is just so important and trusted that these restrictions shouldn't apply to it. The functionality of uBlock Origin is just so fundamental and unambiguously pro-user it should be integrated into the browsers themselves. Conflicts of interest prevent that unfortunately but the fact remains t…

Google is first and foremost an advertising company, it's in their interest to hobble ad blockers as much as possible. Personally I'm hoping that they do, because it'll drive people away from Chrome and nip what's looking increasingly like a monopoly in the bud by driving users to browsers that do support ad blocking.

> it'll drive people away from Chrome and nip what's looking increasingly like a monopoly in the bud by driving users to browsers that do support ad blocking

I certainly hope so. I showed Firefox and uBlock Origin to all my friends and they loved it, especially the fact it blocks YouTube ads. Lots of people simply don't know about this.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#177

Post by bryanrasmussen »

chii wrote: post #77
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, people really trust those sites that offer to install something to improve your browser performance and keep you from being tracked.

well, at least this one ad would be true, and hopefully, those who would otherwise have clicked on that shady "web-accelerator" ad would've instead been saved by this one!

if there was one Nigerian prince who transferred 1 million dollars to a person's account that would set a bad precedent for all the gullible folks out there.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#178

Post by happybuy »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #111
smaddock wrote: post #19

As someone who is intimately familiar with the Chrome extensions internals and is not employed by a big tech company, I believe most of the changes seem like a step in the right direction.* I've been working towards implementing greater support for Chrome extensions in Electron which has involved reading and interacting with Chromium code [0]. - Using service workers instead of a hidden background webpage is more idi…

I remember some people saying Safari's extension changes and specific content blocker API would be a good thing because ad blockers would use less resources. The change happened, uBlock Origin broke for Safari and here we are several years later and the Safari ad blocker ecosystem is an absolute joke and most of it barely works or demands subscription fees (and the ones that do are certainly not worth paying for beca…

That’s not true re the Safari ad blocker ecosystem.

We develop a Safari ad blocker [1] that works on iOS and macOS which provides performant and private ad blocking. Unlike previous ad blockers using other extension mechanisms, it also can’t see which web pages you visit. We recently released best in class YouTube ad blocking features too. The mechanisms for doing this is different, but the ad blocking results are as good with better performance.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#179

Post by j-bos »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #25

I have a stupid idea. But first, a bunch of questions: - Can you legally advertise a product you're not affiliated with? Is this OK by the ToS of major ad networks? - Is it possible to target ads by user's browser? I'm thinking, maybe we should crowdfund a public interest ad, targeted at people browsing from Chrome, with some attention-grabbing art or distracting colors, and a clear message: "Want to stop seeing this…

Duckduckgo had been running similar ads on Texas billboards. Not specifically regarding ads, but about the value of not being tracked. Offline anti-ads may be the means to get around the FAANG wall. Edit for clarity

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#180

Post by XorNot »

xwdv wrote: post #144
mmis1000 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad providers are obfuscating domains to bypass blocks. Currently only ublock origin deobfuscate and block based on the original domain.(It is supported on firefox only anyway) But after the change... I guess no one on chrome can do. And ad blocking will be totally useless at that point. See also: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...

What about first party domains

Behavior-based blocks take care of those largely. I think only Facebook is reliably staying ahead?
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