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Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

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Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already get half a billion dollars a year from Google for very little in exchange. They just need to spend that money on the website browser and not nonsense. QFT. The biggest impediment to Firefox's success is the Mozilla Org, which sees it as a cash cow to fund a zillion projects no one wants (sacrificing the future of the browser everyone wants).

Quantum field theory? Quiet Firefox tremors? What is this QFT you speak of?

Quarterly Financial Targets? Questionable Functionality and Technology?

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#392
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If they're falling for things that they didn't used to fall for, that's sounds more like dementia than age.

"Being at an age" can include having age-related illnesses.

Right but an age-related illness that affects cognition is generally just called dementia.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#393
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one hold Google accountable? By fining them $1bn? $10bn? $100bn? To them it is just the cost of doing business. We're beyond holding huge companies accountable. The only way they could be held accountable is if there was personal risk involved for the CEOs. There isn't.

If a scam ad is found, at the very least, require them to disclose business records to show how much money the scam ad made (revenue, not profit), and make them repay it. Leave it up to the platform whether to recoup the paid-out share from the publisher or not. If they are caught doing it repeatedly without taking adequate measures to stop it, treat them as an accessory to the crime.

[deleted]

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#394

Few years ago when google announced their MV2 plan I moved to Firefox. I don't think in all this time I ever missed Chrome for anything in particular outside of maybe 1 or 2 websites that didn't have proper support. Switch to Firefox if you haven't already really.

For Work they actively deactivate Linux users for "security reasons", or Microsoft makes their web apps intentionally hostile like disabling copy/paste or disabling photo/picture or file uploads for Linux users when you're allowed in the policies.

Turns out, it's bypassable. They just check the User Agent and Sec-CH headers, so I built a small browser extension for Chrome that allows to modify those headers.

On top of that I built chromium-profiles [1], my tool for managing those isolated sandboxes so that I can tweak/change them based on the stupid policies per O365 tenant I have to work with.

So I use 3 different profiles for 3 different customers with 3 different security policies set for their organization... For being allowed to use a freaking web app.

That, for me, is the only reason I still have to have chromium installed. Microsoft stupidity.

I wish Firefox would focus on this sort of use case, like the "--pwa" and "--user-data" CLI flags and preinstallable extensions for those profiles. But it can't be done due to how they manage extensions with their own signing cert, how dev mode extensions are always cleared etc. Well, apart from Microsoft intentionally making webapps unusable in Firefox.

[1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/chromium-profiles

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#395
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for breaking up Google, but how do you see Chrome making money without ads? If they charged users directly, everyone would just switch back to Firefox.

Why does 'Chrome' need to survive as a standalone company? It never had a business model besides "support Google's monopolies", so it shouldn't survive (IMO). Lots of browser vendors already use Chrome's open source codebase, so those orgs can fork it, or they can collectively come together to fund development, or apply for government grants or something. I think that Chrome development team members will have plenty…

> Why does 'Chrome' need to survive as a standalone company? It never had a business model besides "support Google's monopolies", so it shouldn't survive (IMO)

You just explicitly claimed that Chrome has definitively a viable business model as a stand-alone company ("Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Definitely."). Now you claim the opposite...

Is the argument also as strong for the other cases?

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#397
post #198
post #174

Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad s…

The better thing would be to hold Google directly accountable for every malicious ad they allow through their network. If they cannot do that, they should not be in business selling ads then. Yes, that means amending the law (in the US). But the law as it is written facilitates crime.

all of this seems a little like second-level nonsense.

it's like ... "when my vacuum cleaner takes pictures of my wife naked, it should use HTTPS when uploading the pictures to the cloud"

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#398
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better thing would be to hold Google directly accountable for every malicious ad they allow through their network. If they cannot do that, they should not be in business selling ads then. Yes, that means amending the law (in the US). But the law as it is written facilitates crime.

Idk if apple can validate each and every apps before publishing to appstore, why can't google and facebook validate each and every ads?

Newspapers and magazines didn't sell ad space to obvious crooks back in the day. Scammers didn't have tv ads. Obviously there was somebody watching them. The trashy scams were reserved for the real scummy publishers: comic books.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#399
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story of just how little people who aren't as tech savvy don't differentiate between different parts of the browser UI (which naturally leads to clicking things that are best left unclicked) is when my grandmother told me her "internet was broken" and asked me to fix it. I was mentally preparing for a call to Verizon or something, but no, when she finally showed me, it turned out that one of the bookmarks…

It was even worse in the 90s/00s - on Windows, the IE browser icon was literally labeled “The Internet” iirc there was a story in The Onion about someone who “accidentally deleted The Internet” on their Windows system and the whole Internet stopped working. They were so sorry, maybe it was in the Recycle Bin, there was still hope for the world, lol

There’s this: [All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash | The Onion](https://youtu.be/lvpuT3aoypE?si=UI8wTzkNXdEKMO4x) which is pretty funny but doesn’t contain the idea of moving the internet into the trash bin… I feel like I remember that from somewhere too though

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#400
post #174

Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad s…

>Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. I've been using the internet since the 80s. This has always been the case. Even before graphical browsers.

Bitcoin changed everything. It used to be if you hacked somebody's PC you got.... a hacked PC. Big whoop.

Bitcoin provided both a financial use for stolen compute and a bankless online international payment system for ransoms.

That's what turned the script kiddies into professionals. Malice and lulz were replaced with dollars and cents.

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