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Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

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Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#231

Post by bensecure »

antonok wrote: post #113
derefr wrote: post #15

Two questions I haven't seen addressed by any coverage of this change: 1. Will the ultimate removal of Manifest V2 support affect other Chromium-based browsers, or only Chrome itself? If the support for Manifest V2 isn't removed upstream in Chromium, but only disabled in Chrome, then I would expect that we will end up in a world where other browsers (e.g. Edge, Brave, Opera) continue to allow the installation of Mani…

I work on adblocking at Brave. 1. Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera have all announced they'd maintain support for Mv2 past Google's deprecation date [1]. 2. Your guess is correct - one of Google's stated motivations is to make the extension review process easier and less error-prone; having a way to opt-out would be counterproductive in that regard. I strongly doubt they'd accept the PR upstream; there is a chance other pla…

> there is a chance other players could maintain patches to modify Mv3 but the effort of designing and implementing a new spec around the Mv3 spec and convincing extensions to maintain yet another platform means this is unlikely to happen in practice.

The design has already been completed, in that mozilla has already done this in their implementation of manifest v3. The difficulty of convincing extension developers to support it should thus be no more difficult than convincing them to ship a firefox version of their extension.

> Keeping Mv2 around is a more reasonable approach (and one that is compatible with Firefox, as well).

This isn't a long term solution. Brave for example has only committed to maintaining mv2 support as long as chrome continues to support it internally. If chrome removes it, the work of continuing to support it would become untenable.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/extensions-addo...

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1684654531723026434

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#232

Post by asddubs »

bensecure wrote: post #231
antonok wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on adblocking at Brave. 1. Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera have all announced they'd maintain support for Mv2 past Google's deprecation date [1]. 2. Your guess is correct - one of Google's stated motivations is to make the extension review process easier and less error-prone; having a way to opt-out would be counterproductive in that regard. I strongly doubt they'd accept the PR upstream; there is a chance other pla…

> there is a chance other players could maintain patches to modify Mv3 but the effort of designing and implementing a new spec around the Mv3 spec and convincing extensions to maintain yet another platform means this is unlikely to happen in practice. The design has already been completed, in that mozilla has already done this in their implementation of manifest v3. The difficulty of convincing extension developers t…

so in summary, all the clonium browsers depend on the company who is currently in the process of removing mv2 to not remove mv2 in their repo. good luck with that

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#233

Post by lern_too_spel »

antonok wrote: post #219
lern_too_spel wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads for cryptocurrency grifts in the settings cannot be disabled.

Can you be more specific? There are admittedly lots of settings menus, but to my knowledge there are no ads inside the settings menus.

There are two top-level settings categories advertising the cryptogrift. Brave Rewards and Wallet. Brave Rewards is the second settings category, right after Shields. https://global.discourse-cdn.com/brave/original/3X/6/d/6dc62...

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#234

Post by DonHopkins »

doublerabbit wrote: post #201
mrastro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Plus OP may be severely underestimating the complexity and expense related to developing a new fully featured browser. JavaScript engine, CSS rendering engine, supports for dozens of additional add-ons like WebGL, sandboxing, WASM etc. Microsoft is a case study on this given their attempt and eventually ended up forking off Chromium. Pouring more resources into existing projects seem more realistic.

> Plus OP may be severely underestimating the complexity and expense related to developing a new fully featured browser. Not at all. I'm just done with the drama and shite that keeps occurring over the piss battle of Chrome and Firefox. The internet is just a waste land and all those technologies you posted I have not seen one decent product come from them. Please feel to prove me wrong. All of those technologies cou…

How is GIMP not a poorly implemented overly complex kitchen sink of incoherent features with bad user interfaces? And how are GIMP scripts any more safe and secure than JavaScript?

Or are you suggesting making GIMP the browser?

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#235

Post by DonHopkins »

doublerabbit wrote: post #202
layer8 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Serenity can do it Microsoft, on the other hand, gave up on it.

Microsoft, who were paid to give up on it. But they won't tell you that.

So your best argument is a totally implausible baseless conspiracy theory without any proof or explanation or even links to batshit crazy youtube videos?

As such a gigantic international organization with so many people, how has Microsoft managed to keep that a secret for so long?

Microsoft must really know how to do security right, if they haven't leaked such a big story.

That would be bigger than then OpenAI soap opera! Eric S Raymond would rise up from his Racist MAGA Libertarian Climate Change Denying Gun-Nut Cesspit like the Creature From The Black Lagoon and run a victory lap!

It follows from your own conspiracy theory that Microsoft must be one of the most security conscious and proficient companies on Earth, leaving Apple in the dust, to keep such a huge story from getting out for so long!

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#236

Post by sgent »

Solvency wrote: post #144

Can anyone explain why there isn't a robust and thriving adblocking solution available at the router or OS level? Why are we all forced to grasp at the straws of the browser?

With encrypted DNS queries becoming more popular, it is impossible to block something at the router level without decrypting the packets which bring up more privacy concerns.

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#237

Post by jacooper »

bonzini wrote: post #165
jacooper wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave isn't affected by this anyway, brave shields don't depend on the extension API. Also Gecko is just a factually worse engine, that's why they didn't use it.

Gecko is not worse, though it used to be worse before Electrolysis landed. It's just that Mozilla Corp is mostly kept alive by Google so might as well remove the indirection and go straight to the browser that Google maintains

It's faster, supports more features and is more secure, especially on Linux [1].

1. https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#238

Post by vlod »

eastbound wrote: post #221
idonotknowwhy wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 clicks to turn them off mate.

I’ve searched for so long that I found the documentation of Mozilla saying, on the day of the release, that no, the shortcuts on the home page, can’t be removed. Today I can see that the ads shortcuts can be removed: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy Unfortunately, Firefox is still an ads machine. They keep coming up with “WE PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY” dark patterns to make us gobble up ads. The worst i…

> The worst is getting downvotes every time we point this out

I didn't down vote you.

No solution is 100% perfect in the tech world. I won't knock them for trying to make some money to keep afloat, even if they aren't (probably) the best at managing money.

I care if I can't turn them off. As you've pointed out, you can do that.

There's no date on your referenced article (pet peeve), so I can't tell when it was done. However it's been a long time (so much I so, I can't even remember) that I've seen ads that I couldn't turn off.

Re: Chrome pushes forward with plans to limit ad blockers in the future

#240

Post by Accujack »

squarefoot wrote: post #195

I fear this scenario in a few years: 1- non hacker users too starting to realize corporate friendly browsers like Chrome and many derivatives can't be used anymore for painless surfing, then flocking to Firefox. 2- corporations and advertising companies pushing for a new closed HTTP standard that requires their browser, or an old browser using a closed extension that doesn't allow adblockers when using a given servic…

I'll take option 3: a new browser using better technology (better design, protocols, etc) than chrome gets written by hundreds of open source advocates working together. The new browser becomes the standard for the Internet because it is not under the control of corporate interests and because of its superiority to decade old browsers.

Corporations and services are once again forced to standardize on open standards for web access or lose customers because the public (and techies specifically) will not support a proprietary software model for the public internet.

It's a cycle - corporations become big and successful, try to establish proprietary control, then lose massive market share to newly created competitors.

Once successful corporations get large, they tend to forget that eventually the frog getting boiled does jump out of the pot, and is usually angry when that happens.

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