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AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

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

#171

Post by cycomanic »

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…

I think the stats are showing that we really need debundling of the browser from the OS. I'd wadger that those stats pretty closely align with the percentage of android and IOS users, or in other words the stats are completely dominated by mobile browsers, where hardly anyone changes browsers.

I can't understand why we have not seen strong regulatory/antitrust action on this front considering the precedent with MS.

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

#172

Post by wasmitnetzen »

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…

> Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually re-enable all of the webextensions on mobile, any day now

I harbor the (conspiracy?) theory is that Google told Mozilla based on their "No arbitrary code"-rule that they are not allowed to run arbitrary extensions anymore. And made Mozilla promise to never tell anyone.

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

#173

Post by vegai_ »

dmos62 wrote: post #20
vegai_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, just use Firefox for general browsing and Chrome/ium for the one or two things that only work on that.

> Chrome/ium for the one or two things that only work on that Firefox has been my daily driver for close to a decade, and I've not run into something that didn't work on it, but worked on Chrome.

It's mostly some specialized features, like conferencing in Microsoft Teams. Clearly some pieces of web software are optimized only against webkit/chrome. But yeah, not many things outright refuse to work on Firefox these days.

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

#174

Post by nightpool »

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…

Has Google said that they would reject CLs to the declarativeNetRequest API if filter list maintainers propose a new feature? Have any filter list maintainers tried to propose those CLs? Obviously it would require a new set of skills and talent to maintain the C++ code that now powers Chromium's ad-blocking capabilities, but Chromium is still an open project with guidelines for contribution, no?

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

#175

Post by kmeisthax »

moonchrome wrote: post #137
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 wonder why not create a ad-free/privacy fork of Chromium. Especially on Mobile, I'd use that for sure. Existing ones have huge strings attached. Mozilla is basically FUBAR at this point.

This exists, it's called Ungoogled Chromium. Removing whatever misfeatures Google adds to Chrome is fairly straightforward.

The real danger to having a single codebase for the whole web is spec validation. Most web standards rely on two independent implementations. For newer technologies we could technically count WebKit and Blink as separate, but Gecko was providing an entirely separate codebase that isn't a fork of anything.

Remember how WebSQL was basically put out to pasture because it was just SQLite, warts and all, shoved inside the web sandbox? That's the sort of problem we'd rather avoid. Single-implementation standards tend to pick up bugs and misbehaviors from their implementation, since everyone winds up depending on implementation bugs rather than getting them fixed to match spec.

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

#176

Post by Havoc »

Firefox seems pretty much on par with chrome these days and FF seems to win out on detection rates anyway so not sure why I'd want this combo?

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Does anyone has stats of adguard vs ublock by chance?

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

#177

Post by shadowgovt »

ameshkov wrote: post #159
shadowgovt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Supporting that makes sense to simplify the use case so that people don't have to write JavaScript for simple changes, but that doesn't imply they'll replace the JavaScript API with a purely declarative API there.

The difference between that and the traffic modification API is the threat model. The third party were to compromise uBlock Origin's servers, they would have a frightening amount of power over millions of machines because uBlock Origin essentially self-modifies; it downloads new rules for what should be blocked. So that breaks the security guarantees Chrome wants to provide; they can't say that the lock icon on a website means anything if a Chrome extension is allowed to arbitrarily modify traffic back and forth as a man in the middle on the last mile and Chrome web store maintainers haven't looked at the source code it's running.

I don't think there's a similar security threat for cosmetic changes.

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

#178

Post by rb666 »

syrgian wrote: post #32
Multicomp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Firefox will not go awry, read the actual facts in this thread.

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

#179

Post by Shank »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #106
webmobdev wrote: post #34

I don't know if it is cartelisation (both Apple and Google have an ad division and it is in their interest to work together on some aspects of this business) or Google bribed Apple (through its ios search engine deal), but Safari webkit also has limitations in ad blocking through the content blocking API which Apple created for Safari. (See Explanation of the state of uBlock Origin (and other blockers) for Safari #15…

Is it possible that Apple’s implementation uses less power and hence conserve battery life? Also, is it possible Apple’s implementation requires less trust in extension and is more private because no browsing information can exit? It is also possible for the above, and collusion to all simultaneously happen, and or Apple advancing their own ad business.

> Is it possible that Apple’s implementation uses less power and hence conserve battery life?

On WebKit, you can still use WebRequest to intercept and log all traffic, you just can't block it. I don't think that intercepting/recording all traffic and selectively blocking it would have a meaningful difference compared to just intercepting it all and letting it through.

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

#180

Post by marcolussetti »

Multicomp wrote: post #37
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?

For Android, I don't have a great answer for you. In theory you can install Fennec on F-Droid, version 57, the last version the last version of Firefox built by F-Droid that was based on the Fennec browser engine, but that has security vuln potential, increasingly so since its been a few years since Fennec -> Fenix switch. For now, because I don't want to be hit by security vulns in the browser itself, I'm holding my…

Firefox Nightly for Android supports most desktop extensions. It is clunky to enable them (you have to create a collection and then subscribe to it) and being a nightly build it does have some instability, but it works out pretty well.

Only caveat I've really found is that it gets stuck on the Guardian's website (after a few clicks).

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