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“UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

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Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#21

Post by nightpool »

Just so I understand correctly: This version removes *all* of the features that read or modify a user's data, so as to abide by the ""stated intent"" of MV3, rather than taking full advantage of all of the actual MV3 APIs? For example, this commit removes the "scriplet injection" and cosmetic filtering features, which AFAIK work perfectly fine on MV3?

    if broad "read/modify data" permission is to be used, than there is not much point for an MV3 version over MV2, just use the MV2 version if you want to benefit all the features which can't be implemented without broad "read/modify data" permission.
Huh? But ... the "read/modify data" permission isn't getting removed by MV3? I don't understand how this follows. This is like saying "Google implemented all of the same things we could do in MV2 in MV3, so we went ahead and removed all of the features anyway". I don't see any way to interpret this as anything except cutting off your own nose to spite the face of Google. It certainly doesn't seem to be a good faith attempt to reproduce the features of uBlock within the new technical framework of MV3.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#22

Post by kibwen »

googlryas wrote: post #19
kibwen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers are an existential threat to Google. If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power , because the alternative is the death of their entire bus…

Are they? I see ad blocker ads on YouTube all the time. Presumably google would block them if they were a real threat.

If adblockers can afford to pay for ads, that means they have a business model, and the one and only adblocker business model is "pay to play", where companies pay adblockers to allow their ads through.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#23

Post by horsawlarway »

I approve (of both the release and the name).

I see plenty of folks in here lamenting this release at all - in the hopes that the lack of it will push folks to Firefox. It won't. Those who care about this are already on Firefox, and frankly - Firefox isn't going to be the answer here (to be clear, this is opinion).

I'm also not thrilled at manifest v3, although for very different reasons than the adblocking limitations - I do lots of extension development, and I think the service worker approach taken is a bad mistake, forcing a distributed consensus model onto extensions without understanding the limitations that model imposes given how often extensions span multiple js contexts (across tabs/frames/content_scripts/windows/etc).

Frankly - the environment is also still riddled with bugs... everything from docs that are wrong, to serious issues like a service worker not activating on simple, basic, required events (like chrome.action.onClicked, which is literally about as basic as it gets for extensions).

Overall - my first impression of the manifest v3 upgrade was fairly neutral (it's not really solving any of my pain points, and it requires a lot of changes to support - but it seemed functional). My opinion after porting several large extension projects to the space is... bad. It's a bad set of changes as implemented in chromium right now.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#24

Post by jbverschoor »

dilap wrote: post #14
driverdan wrote: post #4

If you're still using Chrome now is the time to switch to Firefox. This is an interesting experiment but the only solution is to stop using Chrome.

First time in a while running Firefox on Mac, and I'm happy to report it finally supports bounce scrolling! In general scrolling is very smooth and performance seems excellent.

Nope, not here. No bouncing, maybe due to 'no animation settings' in display. Also, scrolling feels different. Different speed, different acceleration.

Still doesn't feel native at all.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#25

Post by titaniczero »

kibwen wrote: post #5
fezfight wrote: post #3

How many people use adblockers? Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome to build a community around an open alternative, like we did when we abandoned IE for Firefox all those years ago?

Adblockers are an existential threat to Google. If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power , because the alternative is the death of their entire bus…

> If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power, because the alternative is the death of their entire business model and the end of the company)

Even easier, they would just sabotage their own web versions (like reddit with mobile.reddit.com) to force people to use the app versions where tracking/ads is harder to block.

The web is the best platform for us, the users, and the way to go - good sandbox, transparent, customizable. We should fight tooth and nail to preserve it.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#26

Post by revlolz »

ainar-g wrote: post #9
fezfight wrote: post #3

How many people use adblockers? Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome to build a community around an open alternative, like we did when we abandoned IE for Firefox all those years ago?

> How many people use adblockers? About 43 %, according to [1]. > Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome […] No. Google Chrome is pretty much in the same position as Internet Explorer used to be. It's the default browser in the most popular mobile OS and the first thing people install on their PC (or get it installed by someone else). Mozilla can barely play catch-up with…

The 43% number is huge imo. A large quantity of devices either cannot install adblock (or cannot do so easily) such as "smart" tvs.

Even to install on Android Firefox it took more effort than I expected.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#27

Post by btown »

blibble wrote: post #7

this is actually a clever way of hurting Google if gorhill simply refused to release UBO for manifest V3 then someone would, and release something similar without the negative branding (plus eyeo crapware "ad blocking" extensions would gain market share) this way the users are being reminded that on Google's platform you're getting an inferior blocker

It's also an interesting magnet for traditional media - imagine if CNN ran a lede "Ad blockers. You may use them, you may not, but Google is on the warpath against them. Here's the developer of the popular uBlock Origin Minus describing why his software suddenly has that odd name."

Sadly, this is likely not to happen, as every newsroom relies on online ad clicks for a revenue stream...

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#28

Post by staticassertion »

antonok wrote: post #17
staticassertion wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers might be an existential threat to Google, but MV3 won't change anything for Google. Google AdSense ads will almost certainly still get blocked, they're not hard to block/ obfuscated. I really doubt this will change anything for Google with regards to ads. At most you can argue that this is "step 1" in a larger plan to eventually bypass these adblockers or something, which I'll totally buy, but V3 has gotte…

> V3 has gotten better at blocking ads over time, not worse. That may be true, but it's still significantly limited compared to MV2. And at the current rate, that is unlikely to change by the time Manifest V2 support is removed. What's important is that MV3 adblocker developers no longer have full control over how they're allowed to modify pages. Given how adversarial the relationship between adblockers and websites…

Yeah, so I'm against V3 mostly because I think that the pros of developers having power outweigh the cons of potential malicious extensions. I personally would have preferred rethinking a few other areas first:

1. Auditability - both in terms of the code and the behaviors

2. Improved permissions - could we have split WebRequest up?

3. Improved performance - could we have leveraged new APIs, like the declarative API, for improved performance? What about compiling to wasm? Or new APIs?

4. Capabilities/ Sandboxing - Within an extension could we slice out capabilities?

5. Improved UX around permissions. Surfacing the permissions and performance implications of extensions would be worth exploring and aided by any ability to slice up permissions more.

Chrome could even create 'sanctioned' extensions that wouldn't trigger scary popups in order to make it that much clearer when something is scary - something like "if you publish your extension such that it is digitally signed, you use 2FA or whatever, you have good standing with us, blah blah blah, we will waive that popup". IIRC Firefox did this to lower their review burden, NoScript was one of the ones on the list I think, but that would have been many years ago and I don't know if it has changed since.

That said, I don't think V3 is the end of the world. I would have preferred the other options, and I bet some people at Google explored them too and know much more about why they are/aren't viable, but I'm OK with V3. I don't really think that Google Adsense is driving this decision at all nor do I expect it to benefit them, at least not in the short/medium term.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#29

Post by dessant »

staticassertion wrote: post #11
kibwen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers are an existential threat to Google. If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power , because the alternative is the death of their entire bus…

Adblockers might be an existential threat to Google, but MV3 won't change anything for Google. Google AdSense ads will almost certainly still get blocked, they're not hard to block/ obfuscated. I really doubt this will change anything for Google with regards to ads. At most you can argue that this is "step 1" in a larger plan to eventually bypass these adblockers or something, which I'll totally buy, but V3 has gotte…

Google will be able to use a variety of ad delivery methods that are not yet blockable with the filtering API they will now also fully control in Chrome.

Re: “UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

#30

Post by puffoflogic »

btown wrote: post #27
blibble wrote: post #7

this is actually a clever way of hurting Google if gorhill simply refused to release UBO for manifest V3 then someone would, and release something similar without the negative branding (plus eyeo crapware "ad blocking" extensions would gain market share) this way the users are being reminded that on Google's platform you're getting an inferior blocker

It's also an interesting magnet for traditional media - imagine if CNN ran a lede "Ad blockers. You may use them, you may not, but Google is on the warpath against them. Here's the developer of the popular uBlock Origin Minus describing why his software suddenly has that odd name." Sadly, this is likely not to happen, as every newsroom relies on online ad clicks for a revenue stream...

Wait, are you suggesting that technologies that may be bad for news media profits get unfavorable coverage?
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