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

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

#711

Post by criddell » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #600

strokirk wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Enough people use Gmail and YouTube that maybe it would make sense for Firefox to add support for ShadowDOM V0 API? It might not be a W3C standard, but if Google uses it heavily then it's a defacto standard.

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

#712

Post by close04 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

jqt wrote: post #670

close04 wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 and 5 are not Chrome Ok... I'd read it for you but that's not how it works. So here it is in nuggets: > "Both Android and Chrome send data to Google even in the absence of any user interaction," the study finds. "Our experiments show that a dormant, stationary Android phone (with Chrome active in the background) communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period, or at an average of 14…

Sure, if you disregard the entirety of my post it looks like Mozilla is full of saints. The truth is that they've backstabbed me several times and I won't allow them to do it anymore. Take from that what you will. Maybe, if the Mozilla Corporation changes hands, I will trust them again, but as it stands now, no way.

Wait, I thought you are are using Chrome because unlike Firefox they (Google) never backstabbed you. Except they actually did so your argument turns into "Mozilla sometimes employs the same tactics as Google but I'll pretend Google doesn't do it to justify my personal taste".

I have 0 interest in telling you what you should like or use, or pretending that Mozilla always plays fair. I just felt compelled to point out that the justification you presented here is horse manure. You use Chrome because you want to. Don't try to sell it as an objective conclusion even if it's written in the same sentence as a related objective argument. One is not based on the other.

Objectively both Mozilla and Google resort to trickery, only the scale is vastly different for the company that lives on monetizing your privacy. And mind you, I use Chrome 90% of the time. But I'm not fooling myself with explanations like "Google will protect my privacy" and "the devil I know must be good".

Here's a short list of other horse manure conclusions that can be extraneously drawn from accurate and objective arguments:

-I drive a VW car because GM was once caught cheating on emission tests

-I use an Intel CPUs because AMD CPUs once had a bug

-I use Windows because Linux had a vulnerability once

-I use Chrome because Mozilla once gave/sold my private data to some 3rd party

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

#713

Post by tyingq » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

deepstream wrote: post #617

dragonwriter wrote: post #114

The design doc — the part quoted in the note linked here even — explicitly notes that it will probably be required to retain some degree of the existing functionality slated for eventually removal until the new API and other replacements cover all use cases; the response linked here appears to (not improperly, in the context of making a case for why much of the functionality is needed) ignoring that and treating the…

To interject with a potentially inconvenient fact, I think the premise that ad blocking (request blocking) is now obstructed, is incorrect. Therefore this response seems exaggerated to me. This is because Chrome extensions can use the 'debugger' API to send remote debugging protocol commands to a page, to intercept and filter / block all requests. There is no need to use the provided Chrome extension APIs for blockin…

I'm interested in this. What's the CRDB equivalent of onBeforeRequest()?

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

#714

Post by Hippocrates » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

dogecoinbase wrote: post #472

sridca wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not track your incognito history and cookies unless you actually sign-in to your Google account in the incognito window of course.

Of course they do.

Yes, they are likely tracking users in incognito mode. You're still loading google analytics or doubleclick resources on many, many sites. Merely making that request (or any request to a google property) gives them your IP which is static enough to identify a household or corporate complex based on previously gathered data. From there these javascript libs phone home every bit of data they can from your browser, including UA string/browser minor version, plugins, resolution (fingerprinting). This can further narrow things down to an individual device you have used before, especially if you're just popping in and out of incognito.

Google also operates some of the most popular DNS services 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4 which can capture domains you query from your IP.

There are various measures you can go through to stop this to some degree, like DNS blocking, client-side ad/tracker blocking, VPNs etc. but to go all-out is very cumbersome and I'm not convinced that it would even be 100% effective. Google's business DEPENDS on collecting your data and tracking you, and they are very, very good at it. I highly recommend reading "The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism".

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

#715

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #711

AsyncAwait wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Enough people use Gmail and YouTube that maybe it would make sense for Firefox to add support for ShadowDOM V0 API? It might not be a W3C standard, but if Google uses it heavily then it's a defacto standard.

They could, except that would effectively show Google that it can dictate what other browsers implement, alter its products on rapid basis to regularly break them etc. and at that point there's almost no point to an alternative, since we'd we're fully back in the IE era again, which is why I don't think it's a good idea.

If one cannot avoid it, I think it's a better idea to create Chrome desktop shortcuts for Gmail/YouTube and use Chrome exclusively for that, if you cannot use a desktop email client for Gmail and VLC/mpv/youtube-dl for some reason.

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

#716

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #659

AsyncAwait wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, it's totally anecdotal and just my experience. I would really like to use Firefox. I may try it again. Quantum made such a big improvement on Linux which is why I gave it a shot and stuck with it so long. But it still had issues for me.

Out of curiosity, what distro, display server and GPU drivers do you use?

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

#717

Post by dominotw » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #709

dominotw wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15045653 Winning argument was > It takes me all of 10 seconds to type duckduckgo.com, and maybe 30 to switch default search engines for the browser. [1][2] But an equivalent, i can just download FF in 10 seconds is not acceptable in this context. why? Infact, Google browser is way less dominant that the search engine. > I suspect a reply to your comment isn't going to cha…

>Why is that? Sounds a bit patronising It wasn't meant to be patronizing. People's views on anti-trust law vary enough that I don't expect a debate to settle things.

gotcha.

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

#718

Post by tyingq » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #688

pleasecalllater wrote: post #596

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 a…

Recall that Chrome was made when IE still had a dominant marketshare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m... IE was stagnating, slow, and extremely vulnerable to malicious behaviors. The net result was that the web became a very hostile place, while Microsoft was pitching various "post web" strategies like WPF. Google had been a big financial supporter of Firefox but not to a degree where the…

"Google is proposing a solution that offers more privacy from the extension, and it seems very similar to what Safari has done (and which is very widely viewed as a great design)."

It would only provide more privacy if ad block extensions go solely with static lists of uris. If they want to retain features like right-click block, or allowing users to customize the list, static blocks don't work.

These changes do nothing to inhibit the ability to log/store/etc requests anywhere you want as an extension author. They are only removing the ability to cancel in flight requests.

What's your source that the Safari ad blocking approach is viewed as a great design? Everything I look at shows it was a regression in effectiveness. Certainly the various adblock authors weren't thrilled. How well, for example, does it work with YouTube ads?

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

#719

Post by AsyncAwait » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #681

magicalist wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also spells out that the new API can consist solely of static, known ahead-of-time rules If it ends up as effective as Safari/iOS's content blocking, I don't see the problem. > The fact that the plan ends with extensions still able to see all web requests, record all web requests, forward a log of all web requests to any arbitrary endpoint, etc...means the "privacy" angle is pure bullshit. Yes, if you grant perm…

Safari/iOS's content blocking has a 50k limit, not a 30k limit. I don't own anything that can run Safari. Is there a credible comparison of how well it works versus Ublock Origin on Chrome? I'm skeptical that a static list would match up to the ability to dynamically make decisions. If I were in the ad business, I'd immediately make use of ads from the same root domain as the content, or subdomains mixed in with lots…

> how well it works versus Ublock Origin on Chrome? I'm skeptical that a static list would match up to the ability to dynamically make decisions.

The Safari content blocker is better than nothing, but it's extremely simplistic compared to uBlock Origin. It can't even block YouTube ads properly.

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

#720

Post by criddell » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #715

criddell wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough people use Gmail and YouTube that maybe it would make sense for Firefox to add support for ShadowDOM V0 API? It might not be a W3C standard, but if Google uses it heavily then it's a defacto standard.

They could, except that would effectively show Google that it can dictate what other browsers implement, alter its products on rapid basis to regularly break them etc. and at that point there's almost no point to an alternative, since we'd we're fully back in the IE era again, which is why I don't think it's a good idea. If one cannot avoid it, I think it's a better idea to create Chrome desktop shortcuts for Gmail/Y…

Firefox doesn't have the market share to push back on Google. The best way for Firefox to grow is to make the best browser from the user's perspective.