Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

adguard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 371 posts

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#111

Post by unethical_ban »

Longhanks wrote: post #19
bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

I think you overestimate the role adblockers play for regular users. Most people not affiliated with IT in any way I've met actually don't use an adblocker or have forgotten that they in fact do and would not notice the change to Manifest v3. Also, most people care much more about "it simply works", and that is Chrome. Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly). There's…

I helped my mom try out a smartphone for the first time this weekend, and she won't really use the web much on it except maybe weather. So I go to weather.com or something to show her how she can get to it.

I got a full screen cookie consent popup, a location permission popup, and ads were everywhere on the screen. Must have been 50% of screen space for the top part of the page. It's absurd!

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#112

Post by shadowgovt »

ameshkov wrote: post #81
gorhill wrote: post #71

One of the stated goal of MV3 by Google[1] was to avoid extensions with broad permissions: > our new declarativeNetRequest API is designed to be a privacy-preserving method for extensions to block network requests without needing access to sensitive data This MV3-based AdGuard extension still requires a broad permission to "read or modify host data" on all sites[2]: "host_permissions": [ " " ], So what you have now i…

All true, and we (content blockers devs) were saying this all for years, since MV3 was first announced. MV3 brings very little (if any) privacy and security enhancements, this is for the future MV4 when extensions will be dumbed down to sets of declarative rules. We'll now need to rely on Chrome team for implementing what we need. But they do it painfully slow or not do at all. Also, where will we get the new ideas i…

> this is for the future MV4 when extensions will be dumbed down to sets of declarative rules.

I haven't heard of this plan. Do you have more information?

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#113

Post by tialaramex »

Multicomp wrote: post #82
gnomewascool wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also was and still am disappointed about both changes, but I don't think you're being at all fair to Mozilla. In both transitions, Mozilla made sure to support the needs of both uBlock origin and NoScript, extending the webextension API (such that uBlock origin on Firefox is more capable than on current Chromium) and working with uBlock to make its interface more mobile-friendly. They also extended the webextension…

> I don't think you're being at all fair to Mozilla > In both transitions, Mozilla made sure [to keep top popular addons mostly happy and ensure adblockers are happy] Those are all fair points, and yes, I was probably too harsh with my language overall, that post written before I was corrected that Mozilla was not developing MV3 the same as Google was. I stand by my strikes that Mozilla did kill XPCOM, and failed to…

"Mozilla did kill XPCOM" isn't a deviation from their stated intent. XPCOM was a magnet for Hyrum's Law problems, because obviously XPCOM plugins are going to depend on the inner workings of the browser, that's just how XPCOM is designed - so now if you touch these internals it breaks third party stuff. There were operating systems which took the approach XPCOM has to extensibility, they're not doing so great: Classic Mac OS, the Amiga Workbench, MS DOS... That's just not a sustainable situation, Mozilla had to kill XPCOM.

So to the extent Mozilla failed to deliver here it's on the replacement APIs. But how much is enough?

I would like lots of things to have APIs that don't. For example I'd like a way to do some basic queries on the built-in Public Suffix List for Firefox instead of needing to either bake the PSL into each plugin (and keep it up to date) or call out to a web API (ugh) or just guess that TLDs are "enough" and make everybody who needs other suffixes mad.

But in that particular case there are two reasons we don't have such APIs. #1 Nobody did the work. I didn't do the work, you didn't do the work, the work didn't get done. #2 In many cases (I think not mine but it's always arguable) the PSL is the Wrong Thing™ and so encouraging more use of the PSL makes things worse.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#114

Post by hgsgm »

tgv wrote: post #91
lapcat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They shouldn't do this IMHO. AdGuard is a business, and Chrome is the world's most popular web browser. They don't have much of a choice. uBlock Origin can pass because it's not a business.

Of course they can do this. They don't want to do it. How else would they push ads through their ad blocker?

No post body was provided.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#115

Post by prmoustache »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #63
syrgian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the summary. I had perceived the betrayal but I had never organized the thoughts nor verified the claims. What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? For now I am using Firefox on computer + Kiwi in Android, but I also expect those two to go awry in the mid term. * I see that after the edit, it doesn't look as bleak for Firefox PC. But what about Android?

Which add-ons are you missing from Firefox for Android?

The one I am missing the most is the multicontainer addon

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#116

Post by pessimizer »

Ygg2 wrote: post #79
drexlspivey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World's biggest ad company getting rid of ad-blockers, who could see that coming? > Chromium got its webRequest API at a time it was trying to gain market share against Firefox (Sep 2011), where Adblock Plus, Ghostery, Disconnect, NoScript, and other such extensions were the most or among the most popular extensions on Firefox. So the only reason they even implemented this browser standard was to gain market share an…

Ah, the extinguish phase, of EEE.

Firefox did them a favor by trashing the extension ecosystem that had put the pressure on Google in the first place.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#117

Post by resoluteteeth »

groovybits wrote: post #41
syrgian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the summary. I had perceived the betrayal but I had never organized the thoughts nor verified the claims. What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? For now I am using Firefox on computer + Kiwi in Android, but I also expect those two to go awry in the mid term. * I see that after the edit, it doesn't look as bleak for Firefox PC. But what about Android?

> What do you think is the future (+2 years) for people with hatred for ads? DNS-based blocking

> DNS-based blocking

Google cracks down on VPN based adblockers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32636412

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#118

Post by prmoustache »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #58
soraminazuki wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is neither preinstalled nor as compatible as Chrome (nor as fast or user friendly) Compatible against what? The web standards or Google Chrome?

Compatibility against real world websites is the thing that actually matters. Firefox does fine for me though.

and regardless of their respective performance differences, a firefox with an ad blocker is faster than a chrome without one.

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#119

Post by dspillett »

lapcat wrote: post #77

Manifest v3 is going to be a slaughter. Extension developers have known the slaughter was coming, but Chrome users are going to be taken by surprise. Many free Chrome extensions aren't going to get updated at all for v3, because it's too much work. Many aren't going to work right anymore because of the new restrictions. And ad blocking aside, v3 seems like a nightmare in general, and still quite buggy. The service wo…

> but Chrome users are going to be taken by surprise. Many free Chrome extensions aren't going to get updated at all for v3, because it's too much work

On one of the occasions I flipped from mostly Firefox to mostly Chrome/Chromium¹ was due to significant changes to add-ons – and an add-on that was one of my significant points for friction stopping me move over more was one that didn't get updated immediately².

But I think many people will blame the add-ons, and just stick around & complain instead of moving away from the source of the problem. The many dozens of us who will move, not matter how loudly we do so, simply won't be important enough in the grand scheme of things for Google to care.

----

[1] this happens every few years² as one or the other irritates me in various ways

[2] I'm currently long overdue a move towards Firefox, maybe V3 will be the final push this time around

[3] in fact, for some time IIRC, by the time a new version appeared I no longer needed it

Re: AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

#120

Post by kevin_b_er »

bambax wrote: post #7

> By releasing an extension built with Manifest V3 today — first among developers of ad blockers – we can say that we've met the challenge that Google posed to us. They shouldn't do this IMHO. Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking (under the banner of "security", as always). But, the web is completely unusable without adblocking. If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will franti…

I recall they also claimed performance benefits at one point.
Post reply on HN