Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin • Hacker News Board

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

#591

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

tlavoie wrote: post #552

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the point the uBlock maintainer's make: "Extensions act on behalf of users, they add capabilities to a user agent , and deprecating the blocking ability of the webRequest API will essentially decrease the level of user agency in Chromium, to the benefit of web sites which obviously would be happy to have the last word in what resources their pages can fetch/execute/render."

Is it perhaps time to return to using external tools such as Privoxy, Pi-Hole and the like? Privoxy appears to still be around, and (I think) was originally at the forefront of user-managed web controls. Once the browser reaches its natural Borg-self, transparent user-level tools will be all that provide a semblance of control. Well that, and Firefox.

Tools such as Pi-Hole cannot block YouTube ads effectively.

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

#592

Post by hombre_fatal » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #515

happybuy wrote: post #244

To defend Google a bit, it looks like the change is being put in place so that users would have more privacy – by stopping extensions accessing all active URLs. In essence they are copying what Apple did with Safari and their content blocking APIs. In this model, content blockers provide the browser with a set of blocking rules and the browser executes them against pages during render & load. Ad blocking can occur an…

What is the limit on the number of rules you can give to Safari? Gorhill mentions a limit of 30K and EasyList alone has more than 40K rules.

50k per content blocker. Though a single app can bundle multiple content blockers.

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

#593

Post by AlexandrB » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #579

feanaro wrote: post #560

Why would Google be given any benefit of a doubt in the case of ad/resource blocking? They are a behemoth ad-based corporation that is becoming a monopoly in many areas of computing. In yet more areas, they are becoming an effective monopoly through size: they may not be the only company offering a type of service, but they are the only one able to offer it at scale and/or with a certain level of sophistication, give…

I think you overestimate the level of strategy here. This is simply an engineer spotting a performance bottleneck in Chrome and posting a design to resolve it. There is zero chance that Google's top brass told the engineer to deliberately cripple ublock.

> This is simply an engineer spotting a performance bottleneck in Chrome and posting a design to resolve it.

The #1 way to improve web browsing performance is with aggressive and comprehensive ad blocking.

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

#594

Post by rkangel » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:35 AM UTC

chacham15 wrote: post #568

Sidnicious wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensions should act on behalf of users but, like websites, some don't. A questionable or poorly-maintained extension can do more damage than any single website, and browsers can support user agency by replacing APIs with better ones: an effective declarative API for content blocking would majorly speed up extensions like uBlock Origin and make it harder for other extensions to follow users around the web. That said…

If you create a superior api (esp w/regards to speed) people will naturally move to extensions which use that api. Then once usage of the old api has dropped significantly, you can deprecate the old api.

It has been proven time and time again, that that's at best only partially true. There are two factors:

If they have something working with one API, they have to have a good reason to re-implement it with a new API. It may be 'fast enough' and reliable, so why go through all that pain?

Or, it's just the long tail of API consumers (e.g. site on the web). Some things aren't maintained and updated, but they don't go away.

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

#595

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #573

sixothree wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.

Chrome is still the best performing browser (even if it's a resource hog). I tried using Firefox for Linux for about 6 months last year, but had to give up. I got frustrated with the random UI pauses/latency, random crashes, and broken web rendering (not its fault). On the other hand, Chrome just works, and provides a very smooth, low latency experience on Linux. I don't like that I have to give up my privacy for a d…

To be fair that seems anecdotal. I've been on Firefox since v57 on Arch Linux with no major issues.

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

#596

Post by pleasecalllater » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:38 AM UTC

Google is an advertisement publishing company. All the things they do, they do to earn money, not to give people anything. When Chrome first appeared, I was wondering about the extremely huge cost of building the browser and how Google wants to earn from that. Then it started to be obvious: it's all to spy on people. Not from the beginning, but slowly... the google account integration... the forced logging into the account... adding custom adblock (which doesn't block most of the ads)... and now this: disabling adblockers.

I'm glad that I stopped using it.

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

#597

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

klardotsh wrote: post #553

antoineMoPa wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well now Firefox will have ad blocking plugins that works and Chrome will not.

We'll see how long it lasts. Firefox has mostly strived, in the Quantum era, to stay mostly-ish compatible with Google's interpretation of WebExtensions, from what I can tell.

They do have some parts that are Firefox-exclusive. This is an easy advantage to have over your competition practically for free. I hope they see that.

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

#598

Post by CannisterFlux » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:46 AM UTC

metalliqaz wrote: post #4

Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.

I worry that Mozilla will copy the API changes ("for compatibility!") and disable ublock on Firefox too, as Mozilla gets most of their funding from advertising companies too.

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

#599

Post by Lorkki » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:46 AM UTC

mr_custard wrote: post #409

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.

I switched because Firefox has Multi-Account Containers, which was extremely compelling. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

They're a nice feature, although after a long while of trying, I ended up using just the Facebook container. The main container extension felt like too much work in regular browsing, and the tracking protection seems otherwise adequate when combined with uBlock.

Sadly, Mozilla also seem to promote containers as an alternative to user profiles, while they're nowhere near as full-featured - sharing saved logins and bookmarks between my "personal" and "work" containers is almost never desireable. Managing and switching profiles, on the other hand, is virtually unchanged since the Netscape Communicator days.

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

#600

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

strokirk wrote: post #569

Solvitieg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about "a lot of sites". Very few, I'd say. Other web developers may want to chime in but I rarely have cross-browser problems between Firefox and Chrome. I can't recall the last one. The only time I encounter a problem with Firefox is looking at people's codepens where they're using webkit only prefixes or a draft API.

Youtube runs noticably slower on Firefox for me, regularly climbing up to 30-40% cpu and activating the fan, while Chrome handles it with 15-20 cpu.

It's the same for Gmail, but this isn't Firefox at fault. It's Google doing this on purpose by using the old, experimental, non-standard ShadowDOM V0 API, which only Chrome supports, and then using that across its products to break non-Chrome based browsers. Please don't reward them by using Chrome just because of this. That only shows them that such abusive behavior works.