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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

#851

Post by zombieprocess »

kibwen wrote: post #353
m-p-3 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ditched Chrome and came back to Firefox, next step is to donate to Mozilla.

Note that charitable donations (of the 501(c)(3) variety) in the U.S. can only be employed for a very specific whitelist of purposes, and software development and marketing are not among those (the Mozilla Foundation uses donations to fund things like education programs instead). If you're a software developer who's interested in the health of Firefox specifically, consider instead donating your time by volunteering…

Is there a good starting point for this? Or like a "Getting started" page?

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

#852

Post by ehsankia »

danShumway wrote: post #511
ehsankia wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that list really is just bloated with rules that don't do anything anymore. > We measure how EasyList affects web browsing by applying EasyList to a sample of 10,000 websites. We find that 90.16% of the resource blocking rules in EasyList provide no benefit to users in common browsing scenarios. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.09160.pdf They've also mentioned the possibility of tweaking the 30k limit.

> in common browsing scenarios. Part of the point of an adblocker is to protect you in uncommon browsing scenarios. This is almost like saying that a malware list is bloated because some of the hashes its storing are uncommonly downloaded. Having as close to full coverage as possible is important. It also opens up an attack vector for advertisers that they absolutely will exploit. With unlimited rules, there's no rea…

Comparing it to a malware list is a bit extreme, isn't it? In one case, you actually get infected, in the other, you see one ad. Your next point about advertisers abusing it is a good one though.

I believe in the response, they said they are running benchmarks to see the performance hit, so they are definitely still looking at tweaking the limit.

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

#853

Post by dredmorbius »

ori_b wrote: post #843
dredmorbius wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XHTML was a step too far. It was rejected in favour of HTML4 & 5, ultimately.

xhtml seems to me quite a bit simpler to implement than HTML5.

XHTML is hard-structured, and among its negatives, requires being fully downloaded to be parsed and validated. HTML, including H5, has soft-fail modes.

At least that's the justification I generally see. See the Criticism section of the Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#Criticism

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

#854

Post by brianpgordon »

ljm wrote: post #98
user17843 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, almost the entire ad-blocking market is controlled by the company behind Adblock Plus (eyeo GmbH), who has contracts with Google. It appears they also own AdBlock, and uBlock (not confused with uBO), so during the last years they basically tried to capture the entire market. The fact that Eyeo has >150 employees tells us something about the amount of money to be made from ad blocking. Although they have only…

This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink. Electron, various browsers that are just skins over the embedded framework... We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013! Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome. The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong competitors in t…

Is this decision really baked so hard into Blink that forked browsers like Edge and Vivaldi can't provide their own APIs? Seems unlikely to me.

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

#855

Post by nostalgk »

riskable wrote: post #796
nostalgk wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My one issue with Firefox is the disk usage. Running on an internal SSD, the entire browser still slows to a crawl for 30+ seconds upon opening, regardless of the previous tabs open (although if a video is there, it takes even longer). I've done all the tweaks and configurations found online, and nothing has made a marked improvement whatsoever. Not going to switch, but it's incredibly frustrating.

Are you experiencing this pause on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux? I ask because my employer has some crap McAfee security theatre software installed (Windows) that causes this same issue for me for any application that loads any large-ish file (or large number of files) on startup. Since Firefox is going to load a bazillion things from cache on startup it (or similar software) could be causing the problem. I had support…

I'm experiencing it exclusively on Windows, as I don't use Linux for web browsing. I don't have any anti virus other than MalwareBytes and Windows Defender, and I've completely turned off all forms of caching for Firefox in a vain attempt to fix this.

I guess maybe it could be Windows Defender? Doesn't quite explain why the Firefox process is the one that is sucking literally my entire r/w bandwidth, slowing my computer to a crawl and inhibiting all OS functions. Defender does this every once in a while, randomly, but it doesn't show up during Firefox's start-up.

It works fine after like a minute of warm-up, but I still think that's unacceptable on an SSD. Still gonna use Firefox of course...

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

#856

Post by brlewis »

bhauer wrote: post #812
brlewis wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternate motivation: People stay engaged on the web more when pages are faster. One thing that makes pages faster is a faster browser. When people stay engaged on the web more, Google makes more money. Chrome's initial big selling point was being faster. Disclaimer: ex-googler.

The investment in speed and other user benefits was a loss-leader for the goal of increased control. The speed and other benefits were indeed a net positive for users (and motivated Mozilla to focus on performance in Firefox) but they were investment made for payoff. You've said it yourself: "the big selling point was being faster." And yes, there is obviously some marginal value for Google in simply making web exper…

> That extended web use is of no good to them if users are doing so at non-Google properties

Extended web use is often punctuated by google searches, even if a lot of the engagement happens on non-Google properties. If slowness causes people to get bored and go do something else, Google suffers.

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

#857

Post by ori_b »

dredmorbius wrote: post #853
ori_b wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

xhtml seems to me quite a bit simpler to implement than HTML5.

XHTML is hard-structured, and among its negatives, requires being fully downloaded to be parsed and validated . HTML, including H5, has soft-fail modes. At least that's the justification I generally see. See the Criticism section of the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#Criticism

That makes HTML5 harder to implement, not simpler.

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

#858

Post by benatkin »

Zelphyr wrote: post #777
lern_too_spel wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted because it misses the distinction between not doing evil, which Google never claimed, and not being evil. This is Google being evil.

You're right, and I stand corrected. I mistakenly thought their quote was "Don't do evil" when it was "Don't be evil"[1]. Still... I'll take the downvote because I was wrong, but your clarifying comment did more to educate me on my error than a downvote could. Apropos of my original comment; Apparently their new motto is "Do the right thing." which I question how they can justify this move to prohibit ad blockers as…

I think "do the right thing" has just the ambiguity they want. If you're trying to win at a video game, you do the right thing. It doesn't matter if you're playing a good character or an evil character. Same if you're trying to learn to golf. Google is a faceless and unprincipled company that has the profit motive and nothing more. They're shaping up to the perfect example of https://thecorporation.com/ only they're playing a very long game compared to the Exxons and Wal-Marts of the world, and part of it is tricking people into thinking they care about not being evil. I think they might harm the environment every bit as much as Exxon but perhaps it will be in the form of paperclip maximizers. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

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

#860

Post by dredmorbius »

ori_b wrote: post #857
dredmorbius wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XHTML is hard-structured, and among its negatives, requires being fully downloaded to be parsed and validated . HTML, including H5, has soft-fail modes. At least that's the justification I generally see. See the Criticism section of the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#Criticism

That makes HTML5 harder to implement, not simpler.

HTML5 != XHTML. (If that's what you're saying.)

HTML5 breaks soft. It's easier to write, which is what drives content. A parser for which there is no content becomes moot.

(I'd prefer far more rigorous document specification. That's not the Universe I inhabit.)

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