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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

#91
post #73
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.

Of course they can do this. They don't want to do it. How else would they push ads through their ad blocker?

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually r…

I also was and still am disappointed about both changes, but I don't think you're being at all fair to Mozilla. In both transitions, Mozilla made sure to support the needs of both uBlock origin and NoScript, extending the webextension API (such that uBlock origin on Firefox is more capable than on current Chromium) and working with uBlock to make its interface more mobile-friendly. They also extended the webextension…

I’d say fairness also requires mentioning how the browser has been able to improve because of killing off XUL extensions; technologically, they were holding things back. Firefox is considerably faster than would have been possible without breaking a great many XUL extensions anyway. And more secure, if you care about that kind of thing, which normal people probably do or should, but frankly it’s the performance I care more about. So this is a “yeah, it’s a pity, but there were good reasons and you have benefited from it, even as you suffered” kind of thing.

Also how much more reliable long-term extension/browser compatibility has improved: I’ve used Firefox Nightly as my daily driver for about ten of the last twelve years, and until 2017 I’d spot at least one or two breakages each year, mostly fairly minor, but the occasional major (a couple of which accounted for maybe six months of going back to stable—and the lead-up to the killing of XUL extensions was another few months on stable because not all that I wanted was ready on WebExtensions yet). The extensions were typically patched before the change hit stable Firefox, so normal users wouldn’t notice most. But since WebExtensions, I don’t recall a single breakage. I acknowledge that the biggest breakages were in functionality that cannot be replicated any more, like Pentadactyl (and I ended up not even trying to replace it), but still, the minor and subtle breakages are just gone.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked to a number of real engineers within Google. The folks building the browser have no desire to kill adblocking; they're never going to include first-party adblocking (not least of which because antitrust), but they're not out to break third-party adblockers. It really is the case that the same mechanisms that enable adblockers ("this extension may affect your traffic on every website") are also the mechani…

The solution here though is simple: As the sole publishing source of extensions users can install on Chrome, Google just needs to stop distributing malware from their extension store! But of course, that would require Google actually take some responsibility and do some legwork and neither of those things are in their core competency. If Google actually had any goals of improving security, they'd literally just delet…

They manually review and approve Android apps one-by-one.

The results have not garnered much acclaim.

I suppose you could argue they simply haven't budgeted enough $$$$ to get skilled reviewers taking enough time on each review.

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

#94
post #72

Just install Brave, its adblocker is natively implemented and not affected by Manifest V3 fiasco.

that's what Brave staff keep repeating but in the meantime all other extensions that need v2 are a pain to install, for example this one https://libredirect.github.io/ requires you to enable dev mode, load the extension and then apply any updates manually.

They announced a Brave Extensions Store years ago and there are no news as of today.

I'm actually thinking to go back to Firefox because of this.

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

#95

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

But also, a whole lot of other things I didn't ask for that are hard to entirely opt out of.

Other things such as?

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

#96
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?

For Android, I don't have a great answer for you. In theory you can install Fennec on F-Droid, version 57, the last version the last version of Firefox built by F-Droid that was based on the Fennec browser engine, but that has security vuln potential, increasingly so since its been a few years since Fennec -> Fenix switch. For now, because I don't want to be hit by security vulns in the browser itself, I'm holding my…

The latest Firefox for Android (104.1.0) has a limited set of add-ons available. One of those is uBlock Origin. Works out of the box.

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

#97
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually r…

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?

Hi, try Iceraven on android with a custom extension repo. They'll all install but are not guaranteed to work. I have most of those extensions working on Iceraven myself.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SingleFile Old Reddit Redirect User Agent Switcher Click to find out what HN says (heh) Fakespot Absolute Enable Force Right Click and copy Page Screenshot SponsorBlock

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32649895

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

#99
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…

Firefox is building MV3 and while they are coy with deprecating MV2, we all know, c'mon, they won't keep MV2 even a day after their minimum year promised. Their track record speaks against them. XPCOM extensions? Killed, but don't worry, we will re-implement all the needed APIs as WebExtensions (didn't happen). Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually r…

> Fennec to Fenix mobile extensions? Killed, you get these 10 blessed ones, don't worry, we will eventually re-enable all of the webextensions on mobile, any day now, (didn't happen, you have to do hacky hacks involving nightly version to do un-blessed extensions).

Yep:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647

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

#100
post #71

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 i…

It feels like this was always going to be how this played out. Google being the world's largest ad company has a vested interest in ensuring ads are still displayed to users and once a sizeable enough amount of the Chrome userbase started adblocking it directly threatened their revenue growth.

The only option here it seems is to switch browsers.

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