Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

pogue wrote: post #3

How are they going to be adding uBlock Origin to Chromium going forward if manifest v2 gets completely deprecated/removed entirely?

AFAIK some of the other chromium forks (brave and/or edge?) were committed to backporting manifest v2 (or more specifically the webRequestBlocking API) for future chromium versions.

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#5

Post by willtemperley » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

mrbluecoat wrote: post #2

> cause havoc, and put people first An odd pairing

Not really. Every activist that made a real difference for the good caused some kind of havoc.

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#6

Post by feverzsj » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

pogue wrote: post #3

How are they going to be adding uBlock Origin to Chromium going forward if manifest v2 gets completely deprecated/removed entirely?

Nothing. It will be a huge burden for them to maintain all the removed code. Their only choice is to integrate brave's adblocker.

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#7

Post by willtemperley » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

In the same sense that a blockchain can be forked by using software that only accepts certain types of block, is it possible to fork the WWW in a similar manner? e.g. with changes that neuter the ad-mongers.

For example coming up with a way to get rid of these god awful cookies. Maybe ad-monger sites could be allowed in the same way an insecure connection is allowed behind a series of warnings?

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#8

Post by feverzsj » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

They messed up basic color scheme, making it almost unusable.

[0]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1532

[1]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1850

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#9

Post by duskdozer » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

feverzsj wrote: post #8

They messed up basic color scheme, making it almost unusable. [0]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1532 [1]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1850

This is mostly an argument for full user customization. I'm willing to bet some people prefer the current scheme. Presumably the developer(s).

Re: Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

#10

Post by pogue » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

feverzsj wrote: post #6

pogue wrote: post #3

How are they going to be adding uBlock Origin to Chromium going forward if manifest v2 gets completely deprecated/removed entirely?

Nothing. It will be a huge burden for them to maintain all the removed code. Their only choice is to integrate brave's adblocker.

This seems to be the only way forward from what I can figure. Helium's main selling point is that it's essentially degoogled chromium + a few miscellaneous patches & full uBlock. But once Google completely strips all that out of Chromium project, that won't be a tenable option.

I'm not sure what Opera/Vivaldi/et al. use for their native adblocking, but Brave's rust adblocker makes the most sense to me. Really it's uBlock's filtering lists that keep the whole thing working anyway.