AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3 • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by CameronNemo » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

Multicomp wrote: post #22

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…

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually r…

If Firefox even deprecates WebRequest, LibreWolf will probably announce their intention to patch it back in and people will switch en masse.

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

#152

Post by schleck8 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

therealmarv wrote: post #68

alexb_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.

It's all opt-in. Brave is self sustainable for opt-in privacy respecting ads and crypto is a way for making users opt-in and getting paid. Compare that with Firefox which does not have a real sustainable business model and relying on Google or other sponsors.

Everything but their crypto is opt out

- Wallet = has to be removed from the toolbar manually

- Crypto background ads = has to be deactivated

- Crypto Exchange ads = has to be deactivated

- Decentralized domain resolving = has to be deactivated

- BAT = Not enabled by default but has to be removed from the toolbar manually

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

#153

Post by novax81 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #126

avhception wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to say that you (content blocker devs) have been heard, maybe not by the majority of browser users but at least people like me are championing Firefox over webkit-based browsers precisely because to do otherwise would be to loose control of the web to FAANG, especially Google. I've been telling everyone who would listen about how Google leverages Chrom(e/ium) against user interests and have deployed Fir…

I also recommend people I know to use Firefox, but a lot of people either don't understand the problem or just don't care. A lot of people even conflate Google Chrome, Google Search and other Google services (understandable, as Chrome's home page is a big Google logo with a search box), so they think that they cannot use Google anymore if they install Firefox. The stats [1] speak for themselves: only 3.3% of users us…

It's harder to get people to switch browsers nowadays. When Chrome first came out as a breath of fresh air (IE was IE, Firefox was better but a bit "heavy", Opera was... Opera), normal users would just nod and agree if you recommended a switch, and even as a power user, I only had to migrate a handful of extensions and behaviors over. At this point, browsers (particularly Chrome and Safari on their respective platforms) have ingrained themselves into their users daily routine. Things like bookmarks and some habits transfer pretty quickly, but casual users won't care enough about this (until they're impacted more).

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

#154

Post by nottorp » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

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.

I tend to skip sites that don't work in Firefox + Ublock Origin.

Unless someone pays me to open them (read: I need them to do work), then I do keep an instance of Chrome around. But only if there is no other choice.

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

#155

Post by gnomewascool » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #113

Multicomp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: Classi…

> There were operating systems which took the approach XPCOM has to extensibility, they're not doing so great

The Emacs OS is still doing well! :)

> "Mozilla did kill XPCOM" isn't a deviation from their stated intent.

The issue is that their stated intent changed over time, and their communication about their precise intentions was often pretty poor.

It didn't help that the Webextension transition came on the heels of the e10s transition (5 firefox versions separated deprecating non-e10s add-ons and disabling e10s add-ons), but with relatively little warning, which meant that:

1. Many people implicitly believed that once they adapted their addons for e10s, they'd be safe.

2. Many people put in a huge amount of work to adapt for e10s and then had to redo a large part of it to convert their add-on into a webextension.

3. Some people put in a huge amount of work to adapt for e10s and found out that their work was pointless because their add-ons couldn't be converted into webextensions.

From a technical point of view, much of Firefox's XPCOM/internals were actually sufficiently stable post-webextension (57) that old e10s extensions could have continued to work with little changes. (e.g. VimFx continued to work with minimal changes for ~30 Firefox versions, on Nightly, with very slight hacking. AFAICT it still continues to work, with slight changes, but now with major hacking to get it to actually install.)

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

#156

Post by RunSet » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #67

thrdbndndn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manifest V3 is a horrible attempt to kill adblocking I really don't understand the push of MV3. I don't believe they're just for security as Google claimed but at the same time I feel thinking it's "just" to ruin ad blocking is equally baffling. Could someone who is more involved elaborate the nuance of (intent of) MV3?

I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers. It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechani…

> I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking

Have you also consulted the actual decision-makers at the world's largest advertising corporation who sign those real engineers' paychecks?

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

#157

Post by ameshkov » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

d4rti wrote: post #142

ameshkov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's pretty hard to search bugzilla, so to save anyone else time, this is what I ended up finding (9 bugs) https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&b...

Let's be fair to Safari devs, you should probably search for all statuses and not just the bugs and feature requests that are still open:

https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&b...

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

#158

Post by bovine3dom » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #131

chrismorgan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say fairness also requires mentioning how the browser has been able to improve because of killing off XUL extensions; technologically, they were holding things back. Firefox is considerably faster than would have been possible without breaking a great many XUL extensions anyway. And more secure, if you care about that kind of thing, which normal people probably do or should, but frankly it’s the performance I car…

Regarding pentadactyl, I'm using tridactyl on Firefox and essentially for all my use cases it behaves the same as pentadactyl. I realise that some of the advanced functionality of pentadactyl is not available (IIRC pentadactyl allowed you to essentially reprogram the browser), but I have to say I'm not really missing much.

For what it's worth, manifest V3 could effect Tridactyl as it could block code that is evaluated at runtime from accessing the browser APIs.

It will make it less programmable by the end user.

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

#159

Post by ameshkov » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #112

ameshkov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No plans were announced so these are purely my speculations but to me it seems logical.

The only piece of reliable information is this: I once asked Google engineer whether they plan to support declarative cosmetic rules (that's what we do ourselves in MV3 and that's why the extension still requires wide permissions) and the answer was that they definitely do plan to do that in the future.

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

#160

Post by freediver » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

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…

> If there are no more (effective) adblockers for Chrome, users will frantically begin to search for an alternative

More likelier scenario: Most Chrome users do not even know what an ad-blocker is, let alone difference between Manifest v3 and v2. The franatical run, if one was ever a thing, already happened when Google announced V3, long time ago. The few people (relatively speaking) that cared about it already switched browsers.