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AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

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Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#61

Post by ryannevius »

therealmarv wrote: post #54
bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

Does Brave have the memory / slowdown issues attributed to Chrome on Apple silicone MacBooks?

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#62

Post by doliveira »

Longhanks wrote: post #19
bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

I think you overestimate the role adblockers play for regular users. Most people not affiliated with IT in any way I've met actually don't use an adblocker or have forgotten that they in fact do and would not notice the change to Manifest v3. Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's…

Yeah, I went to use my Mom's phone and I was appalled with all the ads and notifications. We can disable notifications, block intrusive ads or at least figure out which app is sending them to uninstall it, but for regular users the whole thing is an awful experience. I don't refrain from calling it "evil" anymore, because that's what it is. No wonder we're collectively going insane.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#63

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

syrgian wrote: post #32
Multicomp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually r…

Thanks for the summary. I had perceived the betrayal but I had never organized the thoughts nor verified the claims. What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? For now I am using Firefox on computer + Kiwi in Android, but I also expect those two to go awry in the mid term. * I see that after the edit, it doesn't look as bleak for Firefox PC. But what about Android?

Which add-ons are you missing from Firefox for Android?

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#64

Post by alexb_ »

therealmarv wrote: post #54
bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#65

Post by ajvs »

jeroenhd wrote: post #44
t6jvcereio wrote: post #31

So wait. What's wrong with ublock origin?

Nothing, except for that it may stop working in Chrom[e|ium] next year when Google kills the current standard for web extensions. There's been some work done on fixing this issue ( https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338 ) but the architecture of content blocking extensions will need to change to facilitate Google's new requirements.

They don't have to. I think gorhill recognises it's simply unfeasible to produce an effective content blocker on MV3, and I hope he puts his foot down and doesn't take on the maintenance burden of an additional nerfed browser extension.

If web devs want to make web experiences worse in Firefox by issuing warnings everywhere, then Firefox can even the score by having a useable ad-free experience.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#66

Post by emn13 »

taspeotis wrote: post #46
XorNot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get where "not that bad" is coming from with Firefox these days. Firefox is just plain good, and has been for a while.

I think Firefox is an important alternative to WebKit/Blink-based browsers. But as a web developer I semi-regularly butt up against bugs in it that have languished in Bugzilla since like, 2014, with absolutely no progress on them. I have dealt with two (maybe three?) bugs in Chrome ever and one of them was a pretty clear fuckup they rolled back within days.

I've dealt with many nasty rendering bugs in chromium that were never addressed, from weirdness that just made rendering a bit ugly, to spec-incompliant layout (that also differed from other engines), to iframe-related stuff that left half of the frame completely white, to animation/transition related gotchas, to outright renderer crashes, including some that brought down the chromium wrapper process (which may have been security risks, but figuring that out isn't easy). And ditto for firefox. This is years ago by now, but my impression isn't that chromium doesn't have bugs nor that it fixes bugs promptly, but rather that all websites and web-toolkits necessarily are designed with chromium limitations in mind. That's certainly what I did - no point in releasing anything that doesn't work on chromium; that'll just get you laughed at and ignored.

The chromium bugtracker too is full of ancient unresolved bugs, just like gecko's bugzilla: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?sort=id, and I'm sure that if you wanted to you could find a ton of decade old bugs that leave you wondering how those weren't fixed by now.

This just seems to be a fact of life with various browser engines. There are surely all kinds of more or less reasonable motivations to ignore those old bugs, but whatever the cause it's certainly the status quo.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#67

Post by JoshTriplett »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #35
bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

> Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking I really don't understand the push of MV3. I don't believe they're just for security as Google claimed but at the same time I feel thinking it's "just" to ruin ad blocking is equally baffling. Could someone who is more involved elaborate the nuance of (intent of) MV3?

I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers.

It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechanisms that enable malware in extensions, which are not at all rare.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#68

Post by therealmarv »

alexb_ wrote: post #64
therealmarv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.

It's all opt-in. Brave is self sustainable for opt-in privacy respecting ads and crypto is a way for making users opt-in and getting paid. Compare that with Firefox which does not have a real sustainable business model and relying on Google or other sponsors.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#69

Post by ocdtrekkie »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #67
thrdbndndn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking I really don't understand the push of MV3. I don't believe they're just for security as Google claimed but at the same time I feel thinking it's "just" to ruin ad blocking is equally baffling. Could someone who is more involved elaborate the nuance of (intent of) MV3?

I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers. It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechani…

The solution here though is simple: As the sole publishing source of extensions users can install on Chrome, Google just needs to stop distributing malware from their extension store!

But of course, that would require Google actually take some responsibility and do some legwork and neither of those things are in their core competency.

If Google actually had any goals of improving security, they'd literally just delete the Chrome Web Store and start over and manually reviewing and approving extensions one by one.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#70

Post by sbarre »

bambax wrote: post #57
akaike wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they port it to v3, yes, it won’t work anymore.

One can always block Chrome updates. It would be funny if this so-called "security" move resulted in a much worse security situation.

Until Google's services refuse to work until you upgrade..

So this might work for some (and in that case why not just change browsers?) but I wouldn't assume that Google will allow this to be a valid and widespread tactic.

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