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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

#241
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you willing to accept an inferior adblocker, instead of switching to another browser that maintains support for fully featured adblockers?

I've had multiple (typically but not always google) sites not work as well with firefox, as well as minor things like more captchas. I also don't want to worry and keep checking if my subpar performance on a site is because Google, a lazy dev or a lib didn't optimize for FF. Further, I just have a bunch of settings, extensions, saved password, history etc. already setup in Chrome.

OK but you can use other Chromium based browsers that will keep good adblocking support, if you dislike Firefox.

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

#242
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, yeah, turning on "Reduce motion" does indeed disable bounce scroll in Firefox. Definitely a strange choice on their part! (It doesn't affect it in other apps.) > I changed my system settings, as I don’t like the default speed and acceleration I see, that could make sense, if Safari was honoring those changes and Firefox wasn't, in some way. I've got mostly stock settings (slightly bumped up speed and three-finge…

> Huh, yeah, turning on "Reduce motion" does indeed disable bounce scroll in Firefox. Definitely a strange choice on their part! (It doesn't affect it in other apps. The current safari bounce effect bounced ALL fixed elements when you bounce the page body. And by copy that. It basically make youtube(or probably any similierly designed website) unusable for anyone have motion sickness. Because the most part of UI is f…

Interesting. OK, so I think two things here, if I understand you correctly:

– Bounce effect IS disorienting for some people in some contexts. Hence the decision to disable it in line w/ "Reduce motion" pref.

– On YouTube, Safari bounce-scrolls the whole page, whereas Firefox just bounce-scrolls the scrollable part. I agree the Firefox behavior seems better here (and it sounds like Safari might adopt it).

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox still isn't a suitable Chrome replacement. Chrome may be beaconing half your browsing data back to Mountain View quietly in the background, but Firefox shoves its monetization strategy right in your face every time you open a new tab (Pocket, VPN ads, etc). Firefox is also drastically more complex in the UI and menus, and is missing a lot of UX niceties in the window and address bar itself (extra clicks to se…

If the feature you're listing here is searching across all tabs... I think it's perfectly fine. Both have features not available in the other one. > Mozilla has no one to blame but Mozilla for where Firefox isn't in terms of market share. I think you should read up on how Chrome was/is advertised, how is pushed to users and what marketing channels and resources Google has.

No post body was provided.

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

#244
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 The available heuristics in UBO can block those with many different techniques today, especially for a short list of very popular sites. I assume many of them stop working with MV3. I'm aware of the DNS based adblockers, what I'm saying is that the advertisers might take action on all of them once the best option is hobbled…

> I assume many of them stop working with MV3.

Most of them will not.

The only real limitation in m3 is the lack of blocking a network request on its way out to inspect it (you absolutely can block it - and the second time it's made you can block it after inspecting the first instance, but you can't inspect then block). To be clear - that's still a loss, but it's just not on the same scale as the type of loss that was originally worried about when Google first announced m3 without a way to update blocklists dynamically.

At the time - they were intending blocked URLs to be placed into the manifest file directly, which can't be updated without a full update to the extension in the webstores (2 to 3 days for chrome, couple of minutes for Firefox after first review).

That's a real pain, since you couldn't do something like heuristically determine that a request was serving an ad and then block it the next time it comes around.

But you can, now (and again - it's not as nice as it was, but it's still there).

There are still some limitations that are a pain to juggle (max size of the blocklist, max number of dynamic rules) that do make life a bit harder, but those I can genuinely see compelling reasons for adding - every comparison the browser is making against a blocklist for each outbound url is adding overhead on TTFB for the user - I think their caps are too low still, but at least I have a technically compelling reason to understand why the limitation was added (something other than - Google wants to unblock ads).

Basically - I'm telling you, as a subject matter expert in this space: Most users will not notice a difference. Some very discerning users, and some technical users might, but a lot of those folks are already off the Chrome train anyways.

> what I'm saying is that the advertisers might take action on all of them once the best option is hobbled. Then it's worth doing something that will break almost all the adblockers. One effort that puts everything to rest.

What? What power do you think advertisers have here that will suddenly undo the foundational hierarchy of the internet? DNS ad blockers literally aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and I agree with the general thrust of "If Google destroys ad blockers - users will leave", I just don't think they've done that with m3.

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

#245
post #156
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was fully in the Google world prior to gorhill's posts on manifest v3 as a direct result the only thing I have left is a pixel phone, which will be going with the new iPhone (and in the meantime my entire family has been 'helpfully' migrated too) I may be up the extreme end of the distribution, but this sort of grassroots push is what dethroned IE, and the resultant loss of control of the web eliminated Microsoft's…

Not to burst your bubble but if you are leaving the Android ecosystem because of Chrome manifest v3 I definitely urge you to see what you're getting yourself into. Not only does Apple enforce that you use their browser engine, it also abuses this position to disable features that they keep enabled on desktop Safari where users have an actual browser engine choice. Also, Safari imposes limitations on extensions that a…

> I finally got fed up and switched back to Android where I grabbed Fennec F-Droid, installed uBlock Origin and finally had a decent mobile browser.

Just to note, There's a full-desktop Firefox available with mobile layout in PostmarketOS for Linux Phones. Here's the device I drive daily[1].

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Poco_F1_(xiaomi-be...

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26284124

TL;DR: There is no proper UI, and it’s only usable if you either use the uM tables infrequently or feel like writing rules by hand all the time.

Agreed, what takes seconds now (click square or row, click to reload, repeat until it works well enough) would be going to take minutes, possibly large fractions of an hour. A two orders of magnitude change for the worse means that it's unusable. It's not life and death, where one adapts no matter what.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 initially punished a comment disagreeing with you, but after thinking about it more, I agree. Google's clearly signalled that they don't want Adblockers to use "read/write data on all websites"; just like Apple did, Chrome's whole idea with Manifest v3 was to make that go away. Frankly, with the genuinely malicious extensions people keep installing, probably for the best. Furthermore having uBlock Origin "continue…

    Google's clearly signalled that they don't want Adblockers to use "read/write data on all websites"
Where have they "clearly signaled this"? Gorhil even disproves this in his own comment: he links to an ad blocker in the Chrome webstore that uses MV3 and has been approved, even though it uses the "Read/write data on all websites" permission.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially punished a comment disagreeing with you, but after thinking about it more, I agree. Google's clearly signalled that they don't want Adblockers to use "read/write data on all websites"; just like Apple did, Chrome's whole idea with Manifest v3 was to make that go away. Frankly, with the genuinely malicious extensions people keep installing, probably for the best. Furthermore having uBlock Origin "continue…

Google's clearly signalled that they don't want Adblockers to use "read/write data on all websites" Where have they "clearly signaled this"? Gorhil even disproves this in his own comment: he links to an ad blocker in the Chrome webstore that uses MV3 and has been approved, even though it uses the "Read/write data on all websites" permission.

I got it from this comment: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32755925); and Chromium's official blog that hints at that:

https://blog.chromium.org/2020/12/manifest-v3-now-available-...

> To give users greater visibility and control over how extensions use and share their data, we’re moving to an extensions model that makes more permissions optional and allows users to withhold sensitive permissions at install time. Long-term, extension developers should expect users to opt in or out of permissions at any time.

> For extensions that currently require passive access to web activity, we’re introducing and continuing to iterate on new functionality that allows developers to deliver these use cases while preserving user privacy. For example, our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data.

> The declarativeNetRequest API is an example of how Chrome is working to enable extensions, including ad blockers, to continue delivering their core functionality without requiring the extension to have access to potentially sensitive user data. This will allow many of the powerful extensions in our ecosystem to continue to provide a seamless user experience while still respecting user privacy.

Basically, Chrome is hoping to use the same psychological effect as Apple's "Ad Tracking Transparency" (the opt-in screen for cross-app tracking) to make people opt-in for "read/write data on all sites" permission, to try to transition the amount of adblockers with that permission from 100% (currently) to ~20% (the amount of people who opt-in to tracking on iOS) by scaring users about extension permissions.

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

#249

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…

    Using this declarative approach dramatically reduces the need for persistent host permissions
Reduces != eliminate. Obviously, for some features, like adblockerblocker unblockers and cosmetic filtering, you still need persistent host permissions. Nobody has ever disputed that. The fact that DNR can remove persistent host permission for some ad blockers doesn't mean that it needs to remove them for all ad blockers. Also, you're taking that statement out of context: the documentation lists *three* separate reasons for DNR: privacy, performance, and compatibility with service workers. This reduces both the time it takes to process a network request (no need to serialize it to background page and then execute filter list matching in slow javascript) and the memory footprint of the browser (no need to keep an entire DOM background page loaded). It's clear that the performance goals here are at least as important as the security goals, if not more important, and they both go hand in hand.

    I don't understand what you perceive this negatively.
By calling this the "MV3" version of uBlock, you're implying that MV3 has limited uBlock to these features and these features only, when nothing could be further form the truth. It's simply a form of misinformation to label this as the "MV3" version of uBlock. That's why I'm reacting to it negatively—it's hard not to see this as a continuation of your frustration with Chromium development team, and an attempt to paint MV3 in a bad light by purposefully releasing a crippled version of the extension. Users are going to see this extension, see that it's named "MV3", and then blame Google for the lack of features. It's just the same as lying to your users.

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

#250
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to burst your bubble but if you are leaving the Android ecosystem because of Chrome manifest v3 I definitely urge you to see what you're getting yourself into. Not only does Apple enforce that you use their browser engine, it also abuses this position to disable features that they keep enabled on desktop Safari where users have an actual browser engine choice. Also, Safari imposes limitations on extensions that a…

> I finally got fed up and switched back to Android where I grabbed Fennec F-Droid, installed uBlock Origin and finally had a decent mobile browser. Just to note, There's a full-desktop Firefox available with mobile layout in PostmarketOS for Linux Phones. Here's the device I drive daily[1]. [1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Poco_F1_(xiaomi-be...

postmarketOS is incredibly promising, but unfortunately the devices I've tried it on are still very unstable.

Full-fat Firefox felt surprisingly usable on Pinephone under Phosh though.

Even then: Fennec F-Droid is a compelling choice. It has a pretty good mobile experience.

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