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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

#211

Post by Vinnl »

rjh29 wrote: post #109
Vinnl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are either, but like the rest of that group , I expect that you'll keep using Chrome anyway. Because it's not like uBO will stop working, it'll just be a bit worse.

I dunno. The new version does not strongly affect end users (according to the devs) but there is a psychological barrier around switching from the full version to the minus version, which I think will cause me to switch to Firefox. Even if the new version works now, Google are clearly going to tighten the vice over the next few years.

Hmm, I guess it depends on what this will look like long-term, but I'd expect that regular uBO will be "upgraded" to this version when MV2 is deprecated in Chrome for good, possibly including the name change (if allowed by Google).

Edit: ah, looking at gorhill's comments it looks like this is not intended to be the MV3 version of uBO, but just one that has minimal permissions. Then I guess uBO will migrate in its own time.

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

#212

Post by Vinnl »

gorhill wrote: post #169
nightpool wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be the point of still requiring those broad permissions while losing features and the ability to innovate on extension-side matching algorithms The point would be to have those features, obviously? Cosmetic filtering is extremely important, there was never any possibility that MV3 was going to remove it, and you just removed it yourself for absolutely no reason. I'm sorry, but if you're just removing fea…

> removed it yourself for absolutely no reason I clearly stated the reason: to avoid having to require broad "read/modify data on all websites" permission. I purposefully decided to create a permission-less version of uBO for people who would rather not grant broad "read/modify data on all websites". > You're taking a single reason that they gave, two years ago The current documentation regarding the purpose of decla…

Does this mean that you're planning to migrate "regular" all-website-data uBO to MV3 at some point as well, with the caveat that some features won't work on Chrome?

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

#213

Post by tpxl »

horsawlarway wrote: post #125
tyingq wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The majority of users won't genuinely notice any difference between an adblocker running on m3 vs m2" I think that'll be true for a short time. But once the advertisers figure out that ad blockers have been crippled on the most popular browser... They'll figure out how to take advantage of that. Once Chrome takes away the ability to do live heuristics, and leaves you with just a static-ish blacklist, it's pretty eas…

But you can already work around adblockers by just serving ads directly from your own servers. Frankly - you can also move to a service that implements adblocking at a different layer (I've seen an explosion of dns based adblockers as a service, likely inspired by the likes of pi-hole). Those services are using roughly the same feature set that's still available in m3. The big dealbreaker (imo) was the inability to c…

> But you can already work around adblockers by just serving ads directly from your own servers.

Ad companies will never allow this because it makes click fraud very easy.

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

#214

Post by midoridensha »

yoasif_ wrote: post #209
midoridensha wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Firefox on Android to completely unusable for many of the sites I visit because it doesn't support the Google Translate plugin for some completely idiotic reason. I can only use it on sites that are in English. For everything else, I have to use Chrome.

You can enable translation on Firefox Nightly - I blogged about this (and other) extensions: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...

I have Firefox Nightly, and it still shows the same small handful of extensions as regular Firefox. Is there some secret menu I have to go to or something? Honestly, this is ridiculous, and it's pretty obvious that Mozilla simply does not want us using any other extensions. They have no right to complain when I use Chrome instead. I need translation just to survive and pay my bills.

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

#215

Post by tpxl »

plaguepilled wrote: post #204
krono wrote: post #31

Tangent but let's stop referring to it as a mere ad blocker, it's a content blocker - it's even a very useful and impactful accessibility tool in that capacity. ADHD sucks and I have a lot to thank to these types of tools for acting as my "crutches" that allowed me get where I am today.

Google profits off hurting neurodivergent people (think YouTube ads, recommended videos, etc) so this is sadly consistent with their business model.

Sorry, what? How are youtube ads hurting neurodivergent people in a way they don't hurt 'normal' people? If you can't handle youtube ads, don't go to youtube.

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

#216

Post by Vinnl »

nightpool wrote: post #147
s-video wrote: post #97

No cosmetic filtering might still tip me over into switching to Firefox.

Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly what the removal was designed to do—nothing about MV3 impacts cosmetic filtering in any way, and it seems to have been removed by the developer purely out of a sense of stubborn pique.

Judging by their comments now, the point is to show that the stated reasons for crippling MV3 are invalid - because the technology that allows for cosmetic filtering undermines those goals. However, if you do care about those goals, you can use Minus, which applies further restrictions in line with the stated reasons.

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

#217

Post by yoasif_ »

midoridensha wrote: post #214
yoasif_ wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can enable translation on Firefox Nightly - I blogged about this (and other) extensions: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...

I have Firefox Nightly, and it still shows the same small handful of extensions as regular Firefox. Is there some secret menu I have to go to or something? Honestly, this is ridiculous, and it's pretty obvious that Mozilla simply does not want us using any other extensions. They have no right to complain when I use Chrome instead. I need translation just to survive and pay my bills.

> Is there some secret menu I have to go to or something?

Kind of. See the setup section: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...

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

#218

Post by plaguepilled »

tpxl wrote: post #215
plaguepilled wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google profits off hurting neurodivergent people (think YouTube ads, recommended videos, etc) so this is sadly consistent with their business model.

Sorry, what? How are youtube ads hurting neurodivergent people in a way they don't hurt 'normal' people? If you can't handle youtube ads, don't go to youtube.

YouTube ads directly try to game the users attention. This is distinct from regular advertising (billboards et al) because your engagement directly and quickly affects what ads are served to you.

People who have particular sensitivity to attention changes ('attention deficit' might be a term for it, but there are other ways it can manifest) are going to be affected disproportionately by this, even if they don't disproportionately make up the revenue of the platform.

Because of the increased sensitivity, the disruption also has the potential to affect the neurodivergent user more destructively than the neurotypical one.

You can make the case that 'if you can't handle YouTube ads, don't go on YouTube', but then that runs counter to a lot of YouTube's content marketing and brand image. So if you take that stance, you then have to necessarily question the motives behind their other choices.

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

#219

Post by b112 »

leni536 wrote: post #206
simondotau wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree here. Flash represented a proprietary takeover of web standards. It was bad technology with a bad license and had bad consequences. Apple’s ideology resulted in a pure gain for the open web. Apple’s dictatorial control over browser engines on iOS represents, somewhat ironically, the last significant defense in the cause of browser engine diversity. While Apple’s motives might be less pure here, the ou…

> it was bad technology Was it really?

It was horrible. Completely and totally horrible.

Adobe very poorly maintained it, it had constant security issues, it was poorly coded, and was abused as an ad platform.

When Linux moved to amd64 / 64bit exes, it took them years to port it from 32bit to 64bit. Why? The codebase was a mess, and they put one dude on it, and his complaints leaked all over the place (I'm sorry it's taking me so long, but this codebase is a mess of spaghetti, I'm having to re-write the whole thing, etc)..

As with everything Adobe buys, their only goal was to ride it into the ground. It is a testament to how popular flash was, that they even updated it at all, ever!

Apple/Jobs may have had fiscal reasons for this move, but it was a great benefit for all regardless.

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

#220

Post by pmontra »

gorhill wrote: post #169
nightpool wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be the point of still requiring those broad permissions while losing features and the ability to innovate on extension-side matching algorithms The point would be to have those features, obviously? Cosmetic filtering is extremely important, there was never any possibility that MV3 was going to remove it, and you just removed it yourself for absolutely no reason. I'm sorry, but if you're just removing fea…

> removed it yourself for absolutely no reason I clearly stated the reason: to avoid having to require broad "read/modify data on all websites" permission. I purposefully decided to create a permission-less version of uBO for people who would rather not grant broad "read/modify data on all websites". > You're taking a single reason that they gave, two years ago The current documentation regarding the purpose of decla…

I use cosmetic filtering a lot on Firefox Android. I routinely remove all the sticky-ish headers and footers from sites I visit often, because they are distracting, sometimes move, appear and disappear and uselessly take away space and distract me. Some popups too, even on Firefox desktop.

I'm sure that there are other extensions doing that (Stylish? but the element picker of uBlock origin is extremely quick to use) however Firefox allows only very few extensions to run on Android. They are moving to v3 too [1] so I'm worried that I'm going to lose that feature on my phone or that it's going to become so inconvenient to use that I won't hide annoying elements as much as I do (lazyness, other things to do, etc.)

I'm more than happy to give "read/modify data on all websites" permission to a trusted extension. I hope that you'll keep maintaining the current permission-full version of uBlock Origin too.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2021/05/27/manifest-v3-updat...

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