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Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

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Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#741

Post by SquareWheel »

zwaps wrote: post #566
SquareWheel wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manifest V3 still supports ad blocking. I don't know why so many in this thread think it doesn't.

It does not allow blocking Google\any tracking and Google ads, essentially, and gives the Ad industry (and malware) a way to circumvent the blocker with modern tech, because it is a non smart ad blocker but a dumb filter list from 2002. This is fully intended to give Google the ability to use sophisticated scripts to serve ads and track you despite blocking. Everything else Google says about this is bull! They probab…

>It does not allow blocking Google\any tracking and Google ads

Why not? Have you read the spec for chrome.declarativeNetRequest? Please substantiate your comment.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#742

Post by bad_user »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #725
bad_user wrote: post #709

For those of you not familiar with what is being proposed ... Chrome engineers want to replace the ability to block any request with a standardized ad-block functionality based on a list of provided rules and inspired by Safari. In other words the ad-blocking functionality becomes built-in. However this facility excludes dynamic capabilities that plugins like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger need. Also I’m speaking wi…

Today it is, unfortunately history has shown that trusting Mozilla is also foolish.

Really? How so?

I've been a Firefox user ever since the beginning and I can't remember once when they violated my trust.

It seems to me that Mozilla is held to much higher standards in this community. I often see a huge double standard.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#743

Post by SquareWheel »

shawnz wrote: post #629
cortesoft wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think that is correct. You can still stop a web request, but you can only stop it by providing chrome with a list of url patterns to block. The current method passes the url being requested to the extension, which can then decide to block it or not. The new way has the extension give a list of patterns to block to chrome, and from there it will block any request that matches. The stated reason is that thi…

It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying. It's clear to see because the observational capabilities of the API aren't being removed -- only the blocking capabilities. So the privacy issue is still there. Supposedly, this change is just for performance.

>It's not for privacy, the people who were saying that are either mistaken or intentionally lying.

They're not lying. This was listed as one of the reasons by Google.

>The declarativeNetRequest API provides better privacy to users because extensions can't actually read the network requests made on the user's behalf.

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReques...

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#744

Post by nickflood »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #727

I say this all the time when this kind of thing comes up. Please use Firefox! Even if it's worse. Even if its slower[1]. Even if it doesn't have that one feature or bug fix that you personally consider really important. Just use Firefox anyway. Find a workaround. Suffer whatever it is you dislike about Firefox because in the end if we don't act as individuals against the chrome monopoly then google are going to own t…

I think, this situation is the same as when you tell people to "vote with your wallet" as to not spend money on the inferior product when the issue is clearly far beyond where people can freely decide this.

Edit to add: Not defending Chrome. I've used IE and Edge since IE9 came out because I saw this thing coming. And I promoted other browsers all the way. Didn't help. I am not moving to Chrome ever and will try and avoid the Chromium Edge as long as I can as I'm not a stranger to sticking with a strange browser choice :)

I'm just saying that maybe something else should be done about Google's browser market share.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#745

Post by SquareWheel »

SquareWheel wrote: post #341
seangrant wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule-based ad blocking limited to 30k, as stated in the article. That's why people are upset.

It has the advantage of being faster, with the disadvantage of being less dynamic. Existing rule lists will need to be slimmed down. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because all they ever do is grow without being pruned of old rules. It seems to me people are upset because they read the title and misinterpreted it to me that adblocking as a whole is going away. But to be fair, even the article itself does a poor j…

I wish I could edit this comment to correct a mistake, but HN does not allow it.

>misinterpreted it to mean

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#746

Post by nerdponx »

Liquix wrote: post #716
eternalban wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding those "why"s: both of these companies are in my opinion outsourced Total Information Awareness projects. This is not "surveillance capitalism". It is surveillance in guise of capitalism.

Bingo. Deanonymize the majority of users to the point where only privacy activists, power users, and grey/blackhatters are running adblockers, compile a comprehensive list of such users, and then either find another way to track them or straight up ban adblockers because "only the bad guys use them, what do you have to hide?" Their concern about losing the ability to "personalize" ads smacks of NSA/GCHQ concern that…

This is compelling, but possibly too charitable to the ad tech industry. Google isn't a hapless vassal of the surveillance state. They make a fuckton of money off of your attention.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#747

Post by SquareWheel »

plorkyeran wrote: post #371
SquareWheel wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has the advantage of being faster, with the disadvantage of being less dynamic. Existing rule lists will need to be slimmed down. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because all they ever do is grow without being pruned of old rules. It seems to me people are upset because they read the title and misinterpreted it to me that adblocking as a whole is going away. But to be fair, even the article itself does a poor j…

Google has not shared any actual evidence that there's a performance gain to be had. Non-google benchmarks of uBO show it not being a performance problem in the first place, so there simply isn't much room to be faster than it.

uBO is not the only adblocker around. It's likely not even the most popular. These changes will apply to all of them, bringing the baseline of performance up.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#748

Post by snazz »

nh2 wrote: post #440
ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

Firefox has significant performance and correctness problems. * Multi-second UI jank/freeze ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546847 ) * HTTP2 is broken, infinite-stalls and internal errors surface if you upload enough files ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540574 ) * WebGL is very slow on Linux ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1010527 ) * High CPU on Linux even when in the…

I’m guessing most people don’t suffer from the first issue because they don’t have 800 tabs open? The bug reports were very nicely done, however.

I’d recommend using bookmarks instead of keeping tabs open and unloaded, but I do think that insane numbers of tabs should be something that Firefox can handle.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#749

Post by brlewis »

Quiark wrote: post #681
jwr wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uBlock (not confused with uBO) This naming is a catastrophe. I just tried to find out which is which and it isn't easy, even if you know what you're looking for. I'd think that uBlock Origin should consider changing the name. Yes, "it means giving up", but it's a battle they can't win anyway, and at least users will be able to tell which one is owned by eyeo. EDIT: AdBlock and AdBlock Plus are similarly confusing.

If uBO changes name to for example "Ant Block", somebody will come and create "Ant Block Plus"

Change it to "Ant Block", offer a paid "Ant Block Pro" so that the name is used in commerce, and register a trademark.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#750

Post by snazz »

dhimes wrote: post #720
finder83 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just switched to Firefox today after a few years hiatus, and I agree that it is hugely improved, and rendering speed is at least on part with Chrome if not faster. They've done a great job with it, and the dev tools seem greatly improved in the developer edition as well. The issue I have with firefox on both Linux and Windows is not speed, but stability. I think it's the process model. Windows freeze if I open too…

I'm wondering if Google degrades performance on its properties, like youtube and gmail? I use Chrome for GSuite and that's all. I'm fine with FF's performance on YT, but I'm not very picky about such things.

They do use APIs that are unsupported outside Chrome on their properties to advantage themselves. Search for Shadow DOM v0 for lots of info.
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