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AdGuard publishes the first ad blocker built on Manifest V3

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

#71

Post by gorhill »

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 is the same required permission to "read or modify host data" as with MV2, but with a network filtering engine capabilities gated by Google (an advertising company).

We can't innovate anymore the filtering capabilities of our content blocker engines as we have been constantly doing over the years.

For a recent example, there has been discussions lately with filter list maintainers of whether uBO should support AdGuard's proposed capability of being able to support pattern-matching for `domain=` filtering option[3] (uBO supports AdGuard lists).

That sort of proposition is not possible to entertain with MV3 since only Google get to decide how the filtering engine will evolve, if at all. All content blocking issues will have to be resolved with the Google-controlled filtering engine, and left unaddressed if the solution can't be shoehorned in the declarativeNetRequest API.

* * *

[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/12/manifest-v3-now-available-...

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

[3] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/CoreLibs/issues/1550

* * *

Edit: removed stray `[` character.

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

#73

Post by lapcat »

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…

> They shouldn't do this IMHO.

AdGuard is a business, and Chrome is the world's most popular web browser. They don't have much of a choice. uBlock Origin can pass because it's not a business.

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

#74

Post by dreen »

alexb_ wrote: post #64
therealmarv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to Brave, you will still maintain 99% of the bell and whistles of Chrome (because it's a Chrome fork) and you will have an Adblock engine directly in the browser core written in Rust. How cool is that... Especially on mobile Brave is a game changer. https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust

I despise anything that has touched cryptocurrency, which is why I don't like Brave.

I've been using Brave for years and still have no idea what their crypto angle is, because I didn't want or have to find out.

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

#75

Post by wccrawford »

koenvdb wrote: post #50
XorNot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get where "not that bad" is coming from with Firefox these days. Firefox is just plain good, and has been for a while.

From my experience, almost every website doesn't feel as nice in Firefox as it does in Chrome. Ofcourse some of those sites are maintained by Google (YouTube).

And some things don't even work. For instance, my dentist had a sign "rate us here on google" with a QR code. That code didn't work on my phone. I eventually figured out that it works fine in Chrome, but doesn't work in Firefox. In fact, there's no way to rate businesses on Google.com from Firefox on my phone. The links just aren't there, and going directly gives a 404.

Everything works fine on Chrome.

That's obviously done maliciously by Google, of course.

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

#76

Post by wccrawford »

KronisLV wrote: post #17
cube00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking that in 2022 there are still sites that (or have been forced) to only work in Chrome. Looking at you Google search results [1] (but I understand their motivation), however I do have one local company site that refuses to move beyond their loading splash in Firefox. I guess I should be thankful it's no where near as bad as the IE6 days where HTML standards were completely disrespected in the quest for mo…

User agent spoofing seems like what should be done on the user's end in those cases, if it's not possible to avoid using such sites for whatever reason. Problems would begin once we'll eventually get Chrome-specific functionality or something that Mozilla won't implement due to a variety of concerns, thus simply breaking sites: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ Then we'll basically be back in the days of…

Didn't Google say it was going to make Chrome have the same generic user agent forever in the future? Seems like using that one will be the way to go once that happens.

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

#77

Post by lapcat »

Manifest v3 is going to be a slaughter. Extension developers have known the slaughter was coming, but Chrome users are going to be taken by surprise. Many free Chrome extensions aren't going to get updated at all for v3, because it's too much work. Many aren't going to work right anymore because of the new restrictions. And ad blocking aside, v3 seems like a nightmare in general, and still quite buggy. The service workers vs. background script issue discussed by AdGuard will affect many or most extensions.

I've been postponing the migration of my extensions to v3 for as long as possible. One extension should be fine, but the other one... I'm afraid of what that's going to be like.

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

#78

Post by Multicomp »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #63
syrgian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Which add-ons are you missing from Firefox for Android?

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

#79

Post by Ygg2 »

drexlspivey wrote: post #33
vbezhenar wrote: post #2

Are we going to lose ublock origin on chrome when v2 will be disabled?

World's biggest ad company getting rid of ad-blockers, who could see that coming? > Chromium got its webRequest API at a time it was trying to gain market share against Firefox (Sep 2011), where Adblock Plus, Ghostery, Disconnect, NoScript, and other such extensions were the most or among the most popular extensions on Firefox. So the only reason they even implemented this browser standard was to gain market share an…

Ah, the extinguish phase, of EEE.

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

#80

Post by bogomipz »

drexlspivey wrote: post #33
vbezhenar wrote: post #2

Are we going to lose ublock origin on chrome when v2 will be disabled?

World's biggest ad company getting rid of ad-blockers, who could see that coming? > Chromium got its webRequest API at a time it was trying to gain market share against Firefox (Sep 2011), where Adblock Plus, Ghostery, Disconnect, NoScript, and other such extensions were the most or among the most popular extensions on Firefox. So the only reason they even implemented this browser standard was to gain market share an…

Interesting, so the WebRequest API has its origins at Mozilla? I remember discovering all those wonderful plugins at the time via Firefox but I didn't understand that was the enabler.
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