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Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

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Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#381

Post by philipov »

easton wrote: post #251
philipov wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nuisances are minor. They're enough that if you're just thinking of switching, you might notice them and not do it. But after a while, you forget about them. I couldn't tell you what they were anymore. And there are advantages as well, such as better autoplay avoidance.

As I understand it, the autoplay avoidance is the same but Chrome has a list of sites that they allow to bypass the policy. YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, etc. about://media-engagement according to the docs (which implies engaging with the site is required, but I don’t think it is for YouTube).

Youtube is where I notice it, and where I want it to stop autoplaying the most. "It doesn't autoplay, except all the places you want it to not autoplay" isn't what I'd call "The same"

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#382

Post by zwaps »

happybuy wrote: post #376
zwaps wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you ever notice how the only people who ever say anything positive about Safari's adblock ecosystem are those who literally sell adblocker software? It is like clockwork. Despite the fact that most of your posts on HN are ads for magiclasso, the fact remains that even most basic features (like whitelisting or blocking cookie banners) require payment. Furthermore, you do not even come close to uBlock origin. Of co…

Does uBlock Origin have a lot more customisable power user features? Yes. Are they relevant to the majority of users who want to be able to enable an ad blocker and get great results without a lot of fuss? Probably not. Does uBlock Origin also use a slow, memory and performance inefficient means of blocking ads? Yes. Does uBlock Origin also use ad blocking ruleset that have thousands of obsolete rules that are rarely…

I am really not breaking new ground when I say that the "modern API" is entirely neutered. It has been discussed here at length. It is so neutered, that literally no one uses it except where it is mandatory. And here is the real banger: YOU DON'T EVEN USE IT when you try to block ads on youtube.

Let's recap: You are worse at blocking ads, because you can not block dynamically and the user can not add rules to sites or elements. For example, whenever my favorite news site fixes its ad block blocker, I'd have to wait for you to update the block list instead of just killing the new script. This happens on the reg, and you can't do anything about it. Or consider websites who hijack right-clicking or scroll bars. Consider people who have to use usability tools to make those sites work for them, like text2speech. Your product doesn't do a single thing there.

Let's recap more: You have "best in class" ad blocking on youtube? uBlock blocks all ads, period, with 100% success, on any video site. For years now. Your product? "More or less" perhaps a good description? And best of all, you have to follow 1Block and inject your own browser addon, literally breaking your privacy promise to the user for EVERY WEBSITE THAT HAS VIDEOS. This is not even close to being a good option, but you come here and say your ad blocker is more privacy conscious when it just isn't (if it is supposed to block ads). What?

Let's move on: You can't block trackers because you cannot block fingerprinting. You only have a block list when we now know that's not enough. You can't do things PrivacyBadger does, since the EFF has already determined it doesn't work due to the new and "improved" API. You are selling snake-oil here.

So. Even without any expert features, your product is simply inferior. You can not even hold the promise of privacy, because you literally need to break it to have any chance of blocking anything on youtube. Well guess what, there are more sites than youtube out there.

None of this is news. We have been through this many times. In every measurable way the "legacy adblockers" are superior.

What IS necessary to discuss is you having the gall to come to this website and market your product with obvious falsities - things like the new API being anything but ineffective, and then going ahead and posting the refutation of exactly that point on your own website [1].

Are you even serious? I hope not.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/youtube-adblocking/

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#383

Post by hakube »

romanovcode wrote: post #104

The moment uBlock Origin stops working on Chrome is the moment I will switch to a different browser. Fortunately I have no loyalty to a browser.

There's Brave with built-in ad-block. Also uBlock works well with Firefox. uBlock on Chrome crashes the browser in my experience

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#384

Post by commoner »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #378
commoner wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

h264ify is free and open source. You can inspect the source code and also compile/package it yourself, if you do not want to trust addons.mozilla.org: https://github.com/erkserkserks/h264ify

Yes, so we’re a number of other products which have been purchased by another party where updates have since been pushed that contain malware.

You can compile/package the h264ify source code with only FOSS products, which can themselves be inspected and compiled from source. Your reasoning could be used to distrust any software, open source or not.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#385

Post by thioordc »

fregante wrote: post #306
breezeTrowel wrote: post #280

This is particularly amusing considering Google's extreme lack of v3 documentation. Their samples and examples Github, for example, has only 2 examples, iirc. They also introduce a lot of silliness like the inability to nest content scripts within folders. Not to mention all the limitations of the Chrome browser. The continuous difference between console.log and console.dir. The former only shows you a very limited v…

It's interesting that you mention Chrome’s silliness when I find Firefox’ dev tools to be severely lacking, especially for WebExtensions. Examples include: - complete inability to run code from the console into the content script context - content script errors are not shown in the console, you have to open a separate Browser Console - overall buggy dev tools (I don't remember anymore because I stopped using them a l…

Yeah each one has pros and cons. However if your doing POST and GET requests (Or monitoring network traffic in general) Firefox is much much better than Chrome!

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#386

Post by nottorp »

vehemenz wrote: post #283
jefftk wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ping" attribute is available to all sites and many content blocking extensions (including ad blockers) block these pings. This isn't changing with Manifest V3: extensions will still be able to block them. Note that on Firefox and other browsers that do not support "ping", Google Search still tracks which links you click on, but it uses URL rewriting. There are also extensions that block this.

Thanks for the correction. If I were Chrome, I would proxy these requests securely through an innocent-looking API. I hope no one is getting any ideas. It's probably moot anyway. We all know the direction Google/Chrome is going in. Not much we can do at this point.

> If I were Chrome, I would proxy these requests securely through an innocent-looking API. I hope no one is getting any ideas.

Don't they vet all urls you click on for malware? :) There's one of your innocent looking APIs.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#387

Post by melbourne_mat »

krono wrote: post #193
melbourne_mat wrote: post #154

Brave has ad blocking built in - you don't need extensions.

Brave is just crypto adware, they even went so far as to automatically append crypto exchange referral codes to urls [0] Funded by Palantir Technologies by the way [1] Their ad rewards system analyses and modifies the original webcontent, replacing existing ads with their own (and who knows what other code they inject) [2] Then there's their hidden tracker URL whitelist [3] No thanks. [0] https://twitter.com/cryptona…

Thanks for pointing that out - I feel dumb recommending Brave now

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#388

Post by ratww »

gerash wrote: post #337
ratww wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdBlock Pro for Safari also blocks YT, but without much ado and without hacks. It just uses the old APIs for blocking video. The bulk of the blocking work, however, is still done by the recommended blocking API. So far Apple seems happy with that.

It's such twisted economics for somebody to make a video, a platform to distribute it and an adblocker company to reap the benefits through its subscription fees. I'd argue the same folks are ok with looting Neiman Marcus stores during some protests because "they've rigged the system and are all rich anyways"

The one I posted is free, I have no idea why you're answering to me.

I also don't like people doing bad things other people's property. This is why I use AdBlockers: to prevent those platforms from running shit I don't want on my computer.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#389

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

commoner wrote: post #384
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so we’re a number of other products which have been purchased by another party where updates have since been pushed that contain malware.

You can compile/package the h264ify source code with only FOSS products, which can themselves be inspected and compiled from source. Your reasoning could be used to distrust any software, open source or not.

I’m not suggesting that you can’t trust any software, but the Mozilla App Store has proven to not be trustworthy. I avoid installing software from pip and npm also.

But you’re still missing the point, this should be compiled into Firefox core, if it’s a licensing thing badge it as Firefox-non free. Not everybody cares about altruistic goals, I just want a browser that works so I can do my job, securely.

Edit: but if you don’t already see a future where ultimately open source cannot be trusted unless it comes from a trusted repo (yum, apt) then you should start preparing for that.

Re: Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

#390

Post by HWR_14 »

a5aAqU wrote: post #336
HWR_14 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's strange is my adblocker makes everything run faster. So making the ad blocker faster at the cost of being less reliable seems like the whole system will be slower in general.

> making the ad blocker faster Does anyone seriously believe that an advertising company wants to improve the performance of ad blockers? It's obvious what Google is doing. If you want to see where things are going in the long run, look at Chrome for Android where you can't install ad-blockers at all.

> Does anyone seriously believe that an advertising company wants to improve the performance of ad blockers? It's obvious what Google is doing.

I believe some people at Google want to make plugins more efficient, some want to kill ad blockers and probably a few other reasons. Obviously Google is externally (and probably internally outside of specific teams) playing up the efficiency concerns. And I don't doubt most advocates we hear honestly think primarily about that.

That said, if you claimed they got the clout and priority to do that because of the ad concerns behind the scenes, I would say "duh"

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