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

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

#211

Post by staticassertion » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #121

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…

How about simply not supporting chrome. I believe some responsibility for this lies with us developers. It was developers who made extensions for chrome. We as technologists recommended chrome to our friends and families. Without us chrome would likely not be in the position it is today and google could not dictate the terms like they do. Maybe it is time that extension authors abandon ship, and we recommend alternat…

I use Chrome because it's faster, safer, more stable. I don't believe V3 in any way is a serious issue for the internet in any meaningful sense either.

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

#212

Post by jacooper » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #176

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?

Firefox on android is horrible. Full of bugs and slow downs.

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

#213

Post by Dwedit » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #29

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…

Now that uMatrix development is inactive, this third strike could be their last for me.

UMatrix is not only out of development, it is also broken on current Firefox. Sometimes you randomly lose session cookies, which is not acceptable.

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

#214

Post by staticassertion » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:33 PM UTC

BeefWellington wrote: post #100

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…

It feels like this was always going to be how this played out. Google being the world's largest ad company has a vested interest in ensuring ads are still displayed to users and once a sizeable enough amount of the Chrome userbase started adblocking it directly threatened their revenue growth. The only option here it seems is to switch browsers.

But these changes don't ensure that ads are displayed to users. This won't impact Google's ad revenue at all. At most it will negatively impact their revenue because the less powerful API will let the sketchier advertisers try to bypass the filters.

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

#215

Post by staticassertion » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:34 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…

Isn't it very clearly not killing adblocking given that... this adblocker just released a version using it.

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

#216

Post by staticassertion » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

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?

Just install any adblocker that supports v3.

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

#217

Post by somehnacct3757 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #210

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…

Presumably that permission does not mean the same thing in v3. That is, the site can still read/modify data but, of course, only through the specific declarative APIs that delegate the work to the browser .

MV3 splits permissions into host permissions and classical permissions (tabs, storage, etc). Putting in your host permission list means that whatever the extension does, it can do it on all possible urls you may visit in the browser. In this sense, it's no different than in MV2.

What's different is the classical permissions. Previously you could use the webRequest permission to execute custom JS functions in response to network activity. In MV3 you must now write a declarative rule instead using the declarativeNetRequest permission. By moving from an imperitive model to a declarative one, Google now has exacting control over what ad blockers can and can't do.

Gorhill's argument is that the stated reasons for MV3 do not align with the implementation. The example he gives is that Google claims the new API is more private. However you still need so the extension is as un-private as its MV2 equivalent. The only difference is that now Google controls what blocking you're allowed to declare and how much of it you're allowed to do.

There's a similar community discovery where MV3 implementation is provably counter to Google's claims of performance enhancement - MV3 extensions need to rehydrate state every 5 minutes as Chrome shuts down their service worker and for highly active extensions such as ad blockers this is actually less performant than the MV2 implementation with a long-lived background.

Basically, Google is full of shit.

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

#218

Post by JeremyNT » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #181

Multicomp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Don't these run on Firefox nightly on android? You need to change some advanced settings, but according to [1] they should work. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

Parent asked about Firefox for Android. This functionality you mention is only available in Firefox Nightly, and even then it requires setting up a curated list on Mozilla's service to use it.

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

#219

Post by Bedon292 » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

Fatnino wrote: post #205

ameshkov wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of boycotting will only work when widely supported by both developers and users and this is not the case. Despite all the public outcry and news outlets telling that the end is near, it didn't affect the Chrome's share. > Without us chrome would likely not be in the position it is today and google could not dictate the terms like they do. I kind of disagree with this. Google Chrome's current popularity stan…

If suddenly there was no ad blocking available on Chrome cold turkey we would see nearly all users who are accustomed to an ad free experience go looking for a new browser. Coordinate this with a marketing blitz from Firefox and essentially you can take nearly all the Chrome ad block users and turn them into Firefox users. And from there it's word of mouth even from the non-techies. Good ad blocking is an essential p…

What is the market share of Chrome users who use ad blocking though? I don't know if its large enough to make a dent in the overall market share. And even then not sure everyone who has one installed would jump. I have it in my mom's browser but if it stopped working tomorrow she wouldn't know enough to make any changes.

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

#220

Post by pkulak » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #141

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…

I hope filtering proxies like Proxomitron become popular again. They'll work on all browsers, and as long as locked-down corporate environments with their own needs for filtering content and the requirement to go through a proxy exist, it's not something they can easily kill off (despite trying their hardest to do so with all the "security" propaganda.) Stop being at the whims of the Google-controlled browser monopol…

Man, I used Privoxy back in the day and it was amazing. Now, however, you need to set up custom certs so that you can MITM yourself, plus those things can only look at the initial HTML without running any JS. I don't know how less effective that would make filtering, but it can't help.

I'd love to be proven wrong though! Right now I run DNS-based filtering because, no, it's not perfect, but I really like having network-wide blocking.