I really wish Apple revived Safari for Windows.
In my opinion, it's the only browser that nicely balances performance, privacy, and security.
Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
721–730 of 962 posts
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the adtech that's leaking through? I regularly use Youtube with uBO Lite, and it does infact consistently prevent me from seeing ads. I've yet to see a single one. There does seem to be a war going on between Youtube and adblockers where sometimes Youtube will show me a screen saying that adblockers are prohibited instead of playing the video. But usually a full-page reload which I guess refreshes uBO's rules…
There are a lot of different ways to respond to you, since there are so many features that have different effects. But I'll focus on one I care about, related to tracking. UBo can detect cname cloaking, where a provider hosts 3rd party tracking via a CNAME DNS record attached to their domain. UBo can detect this and block it, while the lite version cannot. If you care only about ads, then you can determine whether th…
Thanks for providing a specific example! That does make more sense.
So I suppose Lite is indeed at least somewhat worse at blocking tracking. It's a legitimate concern. I admit that I don't have a ton of awareness of just how much tracking we're all subject to on the public mainstream web. Unfortunately, I fear it may be a losing battle.
What concerns me more is that there are dozens of medium to huge tech companies working full-time to track the hell out of us. That's not exactly great. uBO Lite blocks some of their stuff. I suppose uBO Full blocks more of it. But how do I know what either of them isn't blocking? It's got to be more than a full-time job to keep track of all the ways and means by which we're being tracked. Can a few determined independent individuals really effectively stop them? I tried using Firefox with NoScript for a while, but it's just too much work to fiddle with it on nearly every random site until that site works well enough to be usable.
I tend to think that, if one is truly concerned about ads and tracking, it's better to focus on staying on smaller, independent sites that do not do that at all. At least, more effective than being an individual in the middle of a full-time war between ad companies and individuals trying to block ads, trying to go to these big sites but not see the ads or be tracked.
Maybe the Brave solution is the better one - keep actual extensions to a more limited API, but more thoroughly integrate blocking of ads and tracking into the browser core. I know some people have other beefs with them, but there aren't any perfect solutions in this world.
It's also worth keeping in mind, in my opinion, that upwards of 95% of the world isn't using any ad blockers at all. Have you seen a "mainstream media" news website without any adblocking at all? Good god there's a ton of ads! How can anyone handle that! I guess we're already in a minority for trying to block ads at all, and it's an even smaller sub-minority that really cares about creating complex rules to actually block all tracking.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Remotely hosted code, or RHC, is what the Chrome Web Store calls anything that is executed by the browser that is loaded from someplace other than the extension's own files. Things like JavaScript and WASM. It does not include data or things like JSON or CSS. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate... Rules are not javascript or wasm.
If I recalled it correctly, Chrome's developers imposed a stricter limit on dynamically loaded (fetched) DNR rules. That's why updating rules with the store is the more conventional method.
Chrome allows for 300,000 static rules, 30,000 dynamic rules, and 5,000 session rules.
While not 1 to 1, for reference, EasyList has a little over 30,000 rules.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you think that’s going to play out once Apple are legally barred from mandating WebKit on iOS?
I think most people will continue using the default Safari browser.
That’s not how it played out on desktop and it isn’t how it will play out on mobile.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#725I suppose that switching to Brave will be one of the best solutions after all. They have already comment this in June: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3
What makes Brave trustworthy enough for us to run our entire life through it? For me it's irreparably forever tainted by crypto grifting.
Your favourite corporations commit all sorts of crimes (ethical and actual). But let’s remember that questionable thing Brave did for eternity.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#726Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
It's 2025. Here is a list of great browsers committed to MV2 support. If anybody from Google tries to gaslight you with "but security..." review this: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=gmail.com and ask them why do they still support connection with so many insecure tls suites ;-) Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ Vivaldi: https://vivaldi.com/download/ Brave: https://brave.com/download/…
There's essentially 2 browsers in that long list: Firefox and Chromium.
Everyone using Chromium as base committed to MV2 support, but that's while Chromium itself still supports MV2. What will happen when Google changes things enough that the small browsers can't merge updates in a day or two while maintaining MV2 support? I doubt Vivaldi and Brave have the resources to actually fork Chromium... not even going to mention small projects like Thorium or Ungoogle Chromium.
And the Firefox-based browsers are in a similar position. The 2 or 3 students working on Floorp can't do much if Mozilla decides to drop support and then introduces changes that breaks compatibility with old code.
Of course those browsers can decide to stop merging upstream code, but then you get a Pale Moon... even if we ignore security flaws (which are a problem for you and your machine), a visit to their forum tells me that it struggles with a few websites.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#727Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
Let's not forget, you'll have to ditch Chromium based applications too, like discord, VScode, spotify, and whatever else is basically a chrome browser.
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#728Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
Let's not forget, you'll have to ditch Chromium based applications too, like discord, VScode, spotify, and whatever else is basically a chrome browser.
Why? I fail to see how using chromium as basis for other apps has impact on who has the power to innovate in the browser space?
Re: Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
Websites I use regularly for banking don't work outside of chrome. I've done the pure firefox forray recently but after 6 months it gets tiresome to have 2 browsers and 3 weeks ago Ive admitted defeat for the second time and went full chrome. Who am I lying to -- market cornered, ggwp. It's like trying to eat food without paying a cent to cargill.
Why not switch banks or move to a credit union?
This is not a reasonable suggestion.