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Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#331

Post by starshadowx2 »

sridca wrote: post #241
Hippocrates wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who feel that they have “nothing to hide” don’t quite understand the extent to which they’re being mined for personal data. Google offers all of this amazingly polished software for free so naive people like you will feed them your browsing history, email, location and search queries. They will then monetize that data by targeting ads to you, which generates over 80% of their revenue. If you are ok with that a…

> ask yourself if you’d be ok with [your browsing history, email, location and search queries] ever being exposed publicly. I already did, and the answer was "Yes, I'd be okay" (although the likelihood of that happening is extremely rare). > Ever googled something embarrassing? Use incognito mode. > Perhaps a medical condition or symptom? I have only one medical condition, which I'm not embarassed to talk about publi…

>Use incognito mode.

All this means is that it's not stored on your computer/history. This doesn't mean Google doesn't still have everything from those periods.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#332

Post by eliaspro »

maverick2007 wrote: post #314
jlarocco wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network level ad-blocking doesn't work very well. Privoxy (and Proxomitron before it) were doing it 20 years ago, but never caught on because they're a PITA to setup and can't handle inline adverts. Pi-hole is new, but it's even more work to setup, and suffers the same limitations. And as ad-blocking has become more popular the problems only gotten worse. It's unusual that I see any ads any more, but when I do it's a…

Why doesn't it? (Not a leading question, I just don't understand why it doesn't) Isn't the way uBlock and the like work is that they see network requests from a blacklist and not load those resources? Isn't network level blocking just moving that from the local device up a level?

A browser extension has access to the actual requests, while all a network level blocker has is the Server header of a TLS packet at best, just an IP with SNI encryption at worst. That's why PiHole works as a DNS proxy by only properly responding to non-blacklisted hosts with a proper DNS response, but even this might be useless in some cases due to "domain fronting".

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#333

Post by zcid »

mark-r wrote: post #310
sergiosgc wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install Tree Style Tab on Firefox. Moves tabs to a tree on the left. You can see a lot more, and better organized too. In the era of landscape screens, I think it's a must. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

I might have to try that. Looks like you still have the tabs at the top of the window too, not sure I'd like the visual clutter.

Not very user-friendly, but you can disable the horizontal tabs by editing userChrome.css in your profile directory: https://superuser.com/questions/1261660/firefox-quantum-ver-....

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#334

Post by bobajeff »

sodosopa wrote: post #300
staticassertion wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you're responding to, but no. Until uMatrix actually breaks for me, I'm not switching to Firefox. Switching is a pain, and I don't like Firefox's UI/UX. I'd switch if they did this because I value the extension very highly, but I wouldn't be happy about it.

I'm in the same boat. I'm not a fan of Firefox at all. Leadership, code, marketing, UI, etc. I'll probably move to Safari

There's also Brave and Kiwi browser if they disable/limit this api in their extensions there's no stopping Chromium-based browsers from implementing them natively outside of extensions.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#336

Post by londons_explore »

kabes wrote: post #319
londons_explore wrote: post #291

Quote from the linked design doc: The current webRequest API allows extensions to intercept network requests in order to modify, redirect, or block them. It is frequently used by content blockers. Currently, with the webRequest permission, an extension can delay a request for an arbitrary amount of time, since Chrome needs to wait for the result from the extension in order to continue processing the request. The basi…

You know what else takes up massive amounts of CPU and slows down a typical chrome instance? Sites filled with ads.

In my tests (albeit a few years ago), the actual text content on web pages was slowed down slightly by adblock plus. I measured with a video recording of the screen, and considered a page complete when the title and main body text of a page were loaded.

It became a dramatic slowdown with a slow CPU. I made a performance patch which saved 40% CPU time (by making a new css selector matcher). I even tried to submit the patch upstream, but my employer blocked it with bureaucracy.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#337

Post by mrawesome8 »

cheez wrote: post #195

If uBlock stops working... I stop using Chrome. Simple as that.

I highly suggest looking into Opera. It is also based on Chromium and therefore backwards compatible with extensions, bookmarks, etc. I switched around 6 months ago and haven't looked back since! They have built in VPN, adblocker, Turbo, screenshot, news, and more! Been really happy with it so far.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#338

Post by coolspot »

londons_explore wrote: post #291

Quote from the linked design doc: The current webRequest API allows extensions to intercept network requests in order to modify, redirect, or block them. It is frequently used by content blockers. Currently, with the webRequest permission, an extension can delay a request for an arbitrary amount of time, since Chrome needs to wait for the result from the extension in order to continue processing the request. The basi…

Google Chrome developers need to add limited virtual machine for filters like eBPF[1] with constrained execution time and resources.

[1] - https://opensource.com/article/17/9/intro-ebpf

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#339

Post by xfitm3 »

S4M wrote: post #191
QML wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox just doesn’t have enough advantages yet that would convince someone comfortable with Chrome to switch over. While privacy is an ever growing concern, it isn’t a strong enough feature for most people.

What are the advantages of Chrome over Firefox?

You get to view ads, apparently.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#340

Post by jlarocco »

maverick2007 wrote: post #314
jlarocco wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network level ad-blocking doesn't work very well. Privoxy (and Proxomitron before it) were doing it 20 years ago, but never caught on because they're a PITA to setup and can't handle inline adverts. Pi-hole is new, but it's even more work to setup, and suffers the same limitations. And as ad-blocking has become more popular the problems only gotten worse. It's unusual that I see any ads any more, but when I do it's a…

Why doesn't it? (Not a leading question, I just don't understand why it doesn't) Isn't the way uBlock and the like work is that they see network requests from a blacklist and not load those resources? Isn't network level blocking just moving that from the local device up a level?

uBlock (and AdBlock Plus) can access and prune/block individual DOM elements, and even has a built-in tool (the eye dropper icon) to select and block them. I think they call it "cosmetic filters". It's also available in the right-click context menu under "Block element".

I don't know exactly how it works under the hood, though. If I block a div with text in it, I know the div is still downloaded, just not displayed. I don't know what happens in more complicated cases, like if I block a div that contains an img tag. I think it's smart enough to prune the img tag before the browser downloads it, but IDK for sure.

I vaguely recall Privoxy having some kind of content filtering, but when I tried it, it wasn't html/css/javascript aware, and only did regex based replacement.

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