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cosmic_cheese 12 hours ago [-]
This is ultimately the endpoint of all Chromium-based browsers. Even the most stalwart will throw in the towel on MV2 support sooner or later, because the effort required to maintain non-trivial patches against mainline becomes too great for the team to keep up with.
It's a great demonstration of how Chromium's open source nature is something of a technicality. Unless you have an army of software engineers on par with that of Google, you're eventually going to wind up living with Google's decisions whether you like it or not.
parsimo2010 11 hours ago [-]
This has been obvious to everyone who knows that the key feature to the devs of these browsers is “-based.” None of the chromium-based browsers are anything other than UI tweaks and certain extensions being included by default. None of them rewrite significant parts of the browser engine, because that would be too much extra work.
The only projects which have a hope of maintaining MV2 compatibility are those who are a hard fork of an earlier version of chromium or a totally different engine.
To my point: The article mentions that Opera still says they will maintain MV2 for as long as it is “technically reasonable.” Mark my works, Google will find a way to break Opera’s MV2 patches that makes it too hard to maintain.
pjmlp 11 hours ago [-]
I keep telling that folks shipping Chrome forks and Electron junk have helped Google turn the Web into ChromeOS Platform.
And then they complain about Safari.
Had it been today, and Google would have no issue pushing for PNaCL.
londons_explore 12 hours ago [-]
I don't think this is the case.
Having worked on Chromium, the codebase is very modular and internal API's change pretty slowly.
I can stop work on my project (which does fairly serious surgery to the internals of the rendering system) and come back a month later and typically spend less than a day to merge head back in.
throwup238 12 hours ago [-]
Maybe things have stabilized a bit?
I worked on multiple projects modifying Chromium and V8 a decade ago, and the GP matches my experience exactly. Absolute mountains of dev time just tracking the latest release and what we wanted to do wasn’t limited to one module or subsystem.
tbrownaw 12 hours ago [-]
> open source nature is something of a technicality
No, but maybe this highlights that it's never accurate to conflate "open source" or "free (as in speech) software" with end-users having power over the people providing resources to the project.
tredre3 10 hours ago [-]
> Unless you have an army of software engineers on par with that of Google
The main thing that is affecting adblockers with this MV2/MV3 change is the ability to dynamically block requests themselves rather than have to give a pre-computed list of patterns to the browser.
We're talking about hooking into right before http requests go out and make them fail here. Let's not pretend that maintaining this capability is out of reach for any serious fork if they actually cared. Let's also not pretend it's more than a few hours per month of dev time per month to maintain it (and most months it will be 0 hours).
And before you ask: Yes, I have worked extensively with chromium's codebase when I worked for a kiosk company.
1718627440 11 hours ago [-]
That's kinda true with every open source software. As soon as some branch has a sizable chunk of developers, forks are discouraged, because either you need to keep up or give up eventually. That's what makes torvalds/linux special and why people want to upstream. If the upstream doesn't accept: oh well.
Cider9986 12 hours ago [-]
Brave's built in adblocker is on par to uBlock Origin for me.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
Does it have the same configurability though? Custom lists and the like? I really need those.
I'd use Brave if someone made a fork with all the BAT token stuff removed but I haven't seen one.
12 hours ago [-]
nikanj 11 hours ago [-]
Fortunately all you need is one clanker to maintain the patches. What used to be immensely expensive human work (and tedious!), is now just ”claude please re-enable manifest v2 and rebuild an installer”
microtonal 12 hours ago [-]
Non-user hostile browsers will just build in the ad blocker. I have been using Brave Origin (the paid version of Brave that doesn't have all the extras) and the built-in ad blocking has been very good, including YouTube, etc.
bastard_op 11 hours ago [-]
Google is an ad company, ad blockers are bad. Why are you using a browser from an advertising company and expecting different results?
Microsoft repurposed Google's adware in Chrome into Edge telemetry/spyware to feed your browsing directly into windows telemetry to watch everything you do, they wanted that back when IE lost the war.
Google already went evil and set the precedent removing adblocking capabilities, now Microsoft can just blame them and feed everything you do into Bing for ad money as well as telemetry/spyware without you blocking it, that's effectively double-dipping all in on stupid windows users.
navigate8310 55 minutes ago [-]
Unfortunately, Chromium is widespread and extremely optimised for any HW it lays its hand on.
tim333 5 hours ago [-]
I use Chrome. uBlock Origin Lite works fine, basically as well as the old uBlock as far as I can tell. As to why, I kind of like it - the built in Google Lens tool is cool and I don't think is in the other browsers?
Marsymars 10 hours ago [-]
Hey now, I use Edge on macOS.
frizlab 6 hours ago [-]
Why?
bastard_op 28 minutes ago [-]
They must love giving their personal information to Microsoft. Mac users are used to it with the icloud "privacy" proxy they default enable on macos/ios users to slurp everything they do already, so I guess why limit yourself to giving your info to only to Tim Apple. Microsoft needs love too.
Marsymars 5 hours ago [-]
Firefox is my main browser, but I use all of Safari/Vivaldi/Edge with some specific configuration for some specific things. Edge primarily just to access MS sites, logging into the browser with MS account makes it easy.
VCFundedGenYer 11 hours ago [-]
This is why we all need to rally around Firefox (or Librewolf, or Waterfox, or whatever fork you prefer) and make sure that sacred goose is never tampered with.
pessimizer 10 hours ago [-]
That goose was already roasted. Firefox can't be trusted with Mozilla because Mozilla can't be trusted with Firefox. They intervened in the most important antitrust trial so far this millennium on Google's side (to support paying off their direct competitors), contributing to actual harm to society.
Somebody who has already made their money needs to fork the thing and put it into an actual public service nonprofit, rather than another creepy branch of the nonprofit-military-industrial complex. Not somebody whose CEO came from Voice of America, WeWork, Wikipedia, Northrop-Grumman, the NSA or some bank, talking about how much they need to innovate and create strategic partnerships. Instead, get somebody who wants to make and maintain a safe, minimal, light, modular browser that works exclusively for its user, and whose components can be easily be included in other projects.
KetoManx64 10 hours ago [-]
Ladybird is the future. Firefox is a joke at this point
nvme0n1p1 10 hours ago [-]
Ladybird may be the future, but for us non-time-travelers, Firefox is currently the best option.
paxys 9 hours ago [-]
Why is Firefox a joke?
doublerabbit 8 hours ago [-]
Because of Mozilla.
paxys 8 hours ago [-]
Doesn’t answer the question
doublerabbit 5 hours ago [-]
Yes it does. Just read up on Mozilla.
Mozilla receives the vast majority of its funding—roughly $400 million annually from Google
Mozilla has made announcements regarding transforming Firefox into an AI-heavy browser and have started alienating longtime open-source supporters
Massive salaries paid to Mozilla Foundation executives.
Firefox is a joke because it's no longer a users browser. Rather than it just being a browser it's now a VPN, Ai and other.
I give it two years before it starts shoving advertisements.
paxys 4 hours ago [-]
I have used Firefox every day for over a decade. There are no AI features. There is no advertising. There is no restriction on extensions. Have never seen a VPN or anything other than an address bar that loads websites. It is probably the only modern standards complaint browser that is fully FOSS and out of corporate control.
Stop getting your news from corporate propaganda and the outrage mob.
3 hours ago [-]
MarkWayneNewton 13 hours ago [-]
If this thread is indicative of the sort of browser discourse in <current year> it's no wonder Google won.
Nerds used to know how to computer, is what i'm saying.
joquarky 8 hours ago [-]
This industry doesn't really hire nerds anymore.
HR prefers brogrammers who can fast talk.
draw_down 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
anaisbetts 15 hours ago [-]
Welp, the biggest reason that I use Edge just got thrown out, time to switch to Firefox.
Dwedit 12 hours ago [-]
Until 2023, Edge was sending every URL you visited to bingapis.com.
Microsoft's current privacy statement also says "Depending on your settings, this browsing history is sent to Microsoft"
1718627440 11 hours ago [-]
That seems to be true to every major application release by MS. No, the OS is of course secure, pinky promise!
tredre3 10 hours ago [-]
> Microsoft's current privacy statement also says "Depending on your settings, this browsing history is sent to Microsoft"
Edge allows to sync history (as Chrome and Firefox also do). Given that functionality, what else do you want them to say in their privacy statement..?
mancerayder 9 hours ago [-]
Sent to MS is one thing - OneDrive/sync/etc. Used by MS and processed for nefarious purposes is another. Does it say that it 'may' be used for telemetry purposes?
tonyhart7 11 hours ago [-]
what browser that respect your privacy ??
DeathMetal3000 11 hours ago [-]
Firefox
gruez 13 hours ago [-]
The telemetry and ads (on start page) didn't bother you? I'm surprised there's seemingly a contingent of people who are too lazy to install any other chrome fork (eg. Brave), but are motivated enough to up sticks and switch to firefox the moment ublock is removed.
smallerize 12 hours ago [-]
At least that's something I can just rant about a couple of times a year, and enjoy tracker blocking the rest of the time.
HPsquared 13 hours ago [-]
Ad blocking is a big deal.
paxys 11 hours ago [-]
All the software freedom people here will do everything except use Firefox.
zem 7 hours ago [-]
I've been using firefox happily for years; I'm still emotionally invested in chrome having proper ad blocking, because that's good for users.
unlimit 12 hours ago [-]
I never stopped using Firefox.
Krssst 11 hours ago [-]
It always feels weird to see so much more complaining about Firefox than Chrome and Edge, while it's still so very much far ahead in terms of respecting user choices. All AI features can easily be turned off (and I am assuming those respect user privacy better than the ones of Chrome/Edge). When you say no to Firefox, it remembers it. Chrome keeps asking me every few days / weeks to become the default browser.
If we lose Firefox the web is going to be a worse place to be in.
VCFundedGenYer 11 hours ago [-]
I feel a lot of the "complaints" about Firefox are misinformed opinions from a decade ago or more. I hear falsehoods such as "it's slower" or "it takes up more RAM" which are both patently false in modern times. That was all fixed up years ago.
roryirvine 10 hours ago [-]
Sadly, I suspect there are also a lot of culture war aspects driving some of the most vocal Firefox hatred.
(There's a steelmanned form of their argument - that Mozilla ought to be held to a higher standard than their commercial competitors - which you might think would speak in favour of LibreWolf and the like. But those who complain most forcefully about Firefox often turn out to be Chrome / Opera / Brave users)
sodapopcan 11 hours ago [-]
It had a pretty annoying bug on Mac (which I ass-u-me was a memory leak) up until a couple of years ago. Every time you'd try and tab back to it, there would be a delay that would very, very slowly get longer over time until you closed and opened it again. I switched over to Arc at the time but after The Browser Company so epicly dropped the ball, I switched back to FF and it's been really great ever since.
sfink 3 hours ago [-]
Title has a weird spin. I'd say that "stronger" is more accurate than "older". Ironically, MV2 blockers can do dynamic updates and so are often "newer" in the relevant sense.
I do wonder if we haven't seen the effects of an MV3-only web yet. As in, once the vast majority of browsers lose MV2 support, will ad networks evolve to get around the limited MV3 capabilities? uBlock Origin Lite might be good enough for you now, but how about in a year or three?
s0ss 13 hours ago [-]
Advertising companies shouldn’t be in the browser business. It’s a really bad conflict of interest. Chromium is a mistake.
Firefox is pretty great. But IMO they have some poor ux defaults that make it unappealing to random people who simply want a browser.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
And, Mozilla is more and more becoming an advertising company which is really worrying.
With their anonym acquisition and the "privacy preserving" attribution stuff they now have an active interest in advertising.
terminalbraid 13 hours ago [-]
Chromium being open source is not a mistake. Letting google be the sole driver and not forking it has been. People who want control over their browsers have options. It's a fight because most people don't care about these things.
clipsy 12 hours ago [-]
There is no “browser business,” because people are - with rare exceptions - unwilling to pay for a web browser. Even Firefox is ad-supported indirectly via its default search contract with google.
layer8 12 hours ago [-]
There is a browser business when the browser company is also in the ad business.
causality0 13 hours ago [-]
Right. For example, Firefox Mobile doesn't support hitting ctrl+T to open a new tab, completely breaking flow for anyone on a tablet with a keyboard or their phone docked to a monitor.
ktosobcy 12 hours ago [-]
<surprised pikachu> time for everyone using Chromium-based crap xD
vdfs 11 hours ago [-]
Chromium is a solid browser, Firefox is second atleast in every aspect, but their companies "politics" is what make the difference, it's hard to swallow pill but Chromium is popular for a reason
sodapopcan 10 hours ago [-]
What is better about it? I switched back to FireFox several years ago (with a very brief stint on Arc in there) after using Chrome for years and I couldn't describe a single hit I took in QOL. I remember, at the time at least, that FF's dev tooling had more useful things, at least for me (I couldn't tell you what those were at this point... I think I remember nicer flex/grid inspecting tools). From what I can tell, Chromium is popular because so many apps don't test on anything else, but I don't use a lot of web apps so I guess I probably don't run into this as much.
poulpy123 16 hours ago [-]
I honestly don't know how people do without ad blockers. Even with being ok with ads, they are so overwhelming that I could not use internet without blocking them
cake-rusk 16 hours ago [-]
Most laypeople I know haven't seen an ad blocker in action ever.
massysett 14 hours ago [-]
I don’t use adblockers. If a site has too many ads to be usable, I don’t visit it.
garciansmith 12 hours ago [-]
It's still a security risk though: you still have to visit those sites to determine if they have ads or not. Why browse without proper protection?
mancerayder 9 hours ago [-]
>I don’t use adblockers. If a site has too many ads to be usable, I don’t visit it.
Excuse me. I take it you don't read any mainstream news (NYT, Bloomberg, WSJ, WSP, etc etc).
WhyIsItAlwaysHN 14 hours ago [-]
So no youtube?
mancerayder 9 hours ago [-]
If you pay for YouTube, there are no ads. [edit] except for those ones that podcasters add in the middle. "[15 minutes in] Alright, now is a great time to tell you about my sponsor tell you about my sponsor!", and you skip ahead, and it shows the product nonetheless.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
That's what sponsorblock is for <3
yndoendo 12 hours ago [-]
I find _yt-dlp_ to be the best ad-block solution for Youtube. One can watch it offline and archive it if value has been found.
Web Brower with ad-blocking setup can still have advertisements leak through. When it does and it still does after three refreshes, I just don't watch and move on.
I will always be a sunk-cost for Google.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
Yes and if you follow certain channels a lot, tube archivist is a really great tool to automate that.
massysett 14 hours ago [-]
YouTube is tolerable with ads. If I found it intolerable, I would pay. Or not visit.
tornikeo 13 hours ago [-]
Humans are just so damn different in their tolerance to wasting time. I can't take feeling like I wasted 10 seconds of my time on an ad even when watching an video for recreation.
noman-land 13 hours ago [-]
If an ad isn't blocked, I fast forward through it. If I can't fast forward, I mute it. If I can't mute it, I'll mute my computer and change tabs for the duration. If it's a page in a magazine, I flip it quickly. If it's a billboard I'll avert my gaze. If it's in an airplane I take out my headphones and cover the screen.
I find being advertised to so annoying there's no way in hell I will spend my limited time on this planet willingly consuming an ad.
1718627440 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, why should I watch your content? If you want me to watch your crap, please pay me. Otherwise it's my time and attention, you expect to get for free.
cindyllm 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
massysett 12 hours ago [-]
Or you could not consume the content.
Marsymars 10 hours ago [-]
The problem I run into is e.g. if I need to replace the the steering wheel cruise control buttons in my car, a random youtuber doing that is the only reasonable option getting instructions on that, which isn't something a youtube subscription scales to.
massysett 8 hours ago [-]
So random youtuber gave you something of value - something that saved you hundreds of dollars from not having to get a professional repair - yet you have something against random YouTuber getting paid?
Marsymars 7 hours ago [-]
If I could give the youtuber cash in exchange for the video, I'd have no problem with that.
Watching ads simply isn't something I'm willing to consider. Like if the transaction was "have someone spit in your face and in exchange you get a how-to video and they get paid based on the amount of spit you get in your mouth", I'd feel similarly about that business model.
noman-land 10 hours ago [-]
I'd rather do all the stuff I said.
shakna 12 hours ago [-]
If modern ads weren't built to be intentionally manipulative to the nth degree, whilst also extracting a huge amount of private data of the viewer, I might be more tolerant of them.
ndriscoll 12 hours ago [-]
It's doubly crazy to me that someone would let a machine take their time like that. An inanimate object, and they give it any amount of respect instead of fixing it to do what they want.
rascul 11 hours ago [-]
Lately without an ad blocker YouTube will give me an ad every minute. Basically unusable.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
Yes I noticed this too when I watched it once in my VR headset which doesn't have a blocker.
Really how do people put up with that shit??
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
Why pay if you can simply block? Google has more than enough money.
Having said that YouTube is so enshittified in other ways too (screaming thumbnails and titles, sponsors which need sponsorblock, random AI clickbait videos) that I rarely feel like watching it at all anyway.
Ylpertnodi 13 hours ago [-]
'Rainbow Dome Musick', by Steve Hillagr..glorious soothing music, then 30 mins in, a Barilla pasta advert.
Sorry, youtube - I tried.
NeutralWanted 13 hours ago [-]
YouTube premium is one of the best subs you can buy if you watch a lot of YouTube. Plus you get Music.
Krssst 13 hours ago [-]
YT Music would be be better if I did not have to double check every of its suggestion for AI generation. Some accounts to make their AI use public which is nice but there's no way to see their channel info in YT Music to look for that.
NeutralWanted 13 hours ago [-]
Cant say I've ever heard any AI generated music on YTM before
hnuser123456 13 hours ago [-]
This probably depends on if you've used it enough to make some playlists and give it an idea of the real music that you like.
layer8 12 hours ago [-]
You can actually tap on the channel name and scroll down to see the About section (at least on iOS).
I never had genAI tracks being suggested on YouTube Music. Though it might be a factor that my account predates genAI music.
Krssst 12 hours ago [-]
I use the web version and when clicking an artist's name I only see a description for well-known ones. Other channels don't show any description even though the YouTube side has one.
I assume one requirement for getting genAI tracks is being initially fine with hearing music from random channels and also hearing music produced after 2022; if one only cares (for example) about pre-2020 very well-known music they're probably going to be safe.
layer8 11 hours ago [-]
I regularly listen to recent music, but often tracks I explicitly search for, and autoplay based on those I “liked”. My “Liked Music” playlist has several thousand entries, so I suspect that heavily steers what I’m presented with.
iso1631 10 hours ago [-]
You talking about the creators that have ads in their videos?
I tend to skip those, although map men's are good, but I also tend to prefer those who don't have ads.
squigz 15 hours ago [-]
I install Firefox and uBlock on friends/family devices as often as I can.
jmclnx 14 hours ago [-]
I use noscript instead of an ad blocker. I find it blocks the intrusive ads. I do not mind what I view as normal ads (ie: text or link), but these video and popup ads drive me crazy. I find noscript blocks the "bad" ads.
Balinares 15 hours ago [-]
In case your assumption here is that TFA is about Edge disabling adblockers: it's not. It's just removing ManifestV2 support. ManifestV3 is still supported. Despite what one might assume, MV3 does not seem to measurably diminish the effectiveness of adblockers; if anything, it improves it. (Source: https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0027.php)
Larrikin 13 hours ago [-]
The only reason anyone knows about the switch between manifest 2 and 3 is that the only meaningful difference is the crippled ad blocking ability. Nobody knows any other difference unless they are an extension developers or worked on making the Internet a worse place.
crazygringo 11 hours ago [-]
Right, but there is no meaningful difference in terms of ad blocking ability.
It's all theoretical. In practice, uBlock Origin Lite works amazingly on MV3. In my experience, it blocks all the ads. And I've been using it for a while now.
Larrikin 5 hours ago [-]
The creator and maintainer of uBlock Origin has said it's inferior and listed why. I don't understand the point of your anecdote.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
Does it also block the background tracking you don't see with the same effectiveness?
Also the amount of configurability is extremely reduced. I personally need that because I use custom lists to reduce websites to just a list of headlines (similar to hacker news). Removing all the highlights, polls, other crap I don't need.
I mainly use Firefox anyway so I use the real ublock origin.
armadyl 12 hours ago [-]
I mean you’re right about the awareness of it due to ad blocking but
> Nobody knows any other difference unless they are an extension developers or worked on making the Internet a worse place.
MV3 comes with a ton of security improvements over MV2, a side effect is the perceived weakening of ad blocking extensions but the benefits outweigh the cons.
MV2 effectively allowed a permanently open RCE pathway.
The browser itself should ideally be handling ad blocking as it’s more effective and efficient at it (Brave, Vanadium, Trivalent).
Safari has already been on an MV3-like extension system for years yet only Chromium draws ire. I mean they got flack at first but it died off and now there’s no real difference.
lelanthran 7 hours ago [-]
> The browser itself should ideally be handling ad blocking
"The fox himself should ideally be guarding the henhouse"...
I mean, you do realise that google has a conflict of interest when it comes to blocking ads, right?
Marsymars 10 hours ago [-]
I've found ad-blockers other than uBlock Origin MV2 to struggle with particularly aggressive anti-adblocking scripts.
I don't particularly notice, but my wife was getting frustrated last night when she was looking for recipes, an ad network was blocked at the DNS level, and despite local ad-blockers, every recipe site she was visiting was redirecting her to a "please disable your ad blocker" page.
LelouBil 14 hours ago [-]
Isn't the main issue that for MV3 you can't have a dynamic blocklist ? And so you have to update it with an extension update ?
phire 14 hours ago [-]
There is a dynamic API too that allows extensions to modify the blocklist at runtime.
I’ve been using UBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone for a while, and that works great, keeping itself updated from EasyList and allowing for custom rules.
In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. Sometimes you have to flip it into “complete mode” (and give it full access to modify the current site) to get good blocking.
gruez 13 hours ago [-]
>In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. Sometimes you have to flip it into “complete mode” (and give it full access to modify the current site) to get good blocking.
I don't how this is supposed to be a demerit given that the v2 version had full access to every site you visit. Safari just made that more explicit.
phire 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, and you can change the defaults of UBO lite to always have full access to every site.
NeutralWanted 13 hours ago [-]
Running Unbound on my gateway with a curated adblock list. Easy setup, network-wide ad blocking on every device / browser.
gruez 13 hours ago [-]
DNS based adblockers have strictly worse adblocking capabilities than manifest v3 adblockers. I mean, sure they have their uses (eg. blocking ads/telemetry in apps or whatever), but bringing them up in this context doesn't really make sense.
NeutralWanted 12 hours ago [-]
I'd rather have 100% of devices on my network have near 90% of all ads effectively ad blocked than deal with installing ad blockers on all possible clients. Sure, I use an ad blocker on my personal machine with firefox, but none of the phones besides mine does. None of the family that visits do. Barely any of my friends that come over do. None of the TVs and streaming devices and whatnot do. I am blocking more ads from ever reaching my network than the majority of people who only use browser based adblockers do.
c0_0p_ 11 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised to hear that it's so successful beyond banner ads. I figured most platforms would use the same domain for their ads as their content. I'm pretty sure YouTube and my "smart" TV do that. Plus I'd prefer to use DNS over HTTPS instead of using unencrypted DNS.
tredre3 10 hours ago [-]
> Plus I'd prefer to use DNS over HTTPS instead of using unencrypted DNS.
Running unbound or a pi-hole on your network doesn't preclude that.
Your devices talks to the gateway/router/pi-hole on the network, who will then use your chosen DoH providers for upstream requests.
hnuser123456 13 hours ago [-]
I thought the whole issue with manifest v3 is that prevented extensions from being able to block connections? That DNS blocking is actual blocking, while the extension can only do filtering after the connections are made.
gruez 13 hours ago [-]
>I thought the whole issue with manifest v3 is that prevented extensions from being able to block connections?
>The chrome.declarativeNetRequest API is used to block or modify network requests by specifying declarative rules. This lets extensions modify network requests without intercepting them and viewing their content, thus providing more privacy.
Daedren 13 hours ago [-]
They can block, it just has to be declarative unlike before. It's better than DNS adblockers since you can still do content filtering, CSS/JS injections and whatnot.
cmeacham98 13 hours ago [-]
Some ads (e.g. I know YT ads used to be this way, haven't looked recently) can't be blocked at the network level because they are served from the same domain/servers as the content.
NeutralWanted 13 hours ago [-]
Sure, but have YT Premium for the family. Don't know how anyone can use YT without it. And it blocks 90% of ads, the rest are tolerable / go mostly unnoticed.
Cider9986 12 hours ago [-]
>Don't know how anyone can use YT without it.
With an adblocker..
Why would you need yt premium with an adblocker?
JohnTHaller 6 hours ago [-]
I use uBlock Origin on my Windows, macOS, and Android versions of Firefox but I also pay for YT Premium. It means I can use the official YouTube client on my Android devices without ads. I get YouTube Music. The creators I watch get a share of my monthly fee.
soniczentropy 12 hours ago [-]
The funniest part of this is that you're paying to still see 10% of the ads. I use Firefox and see 0% of the ads for free
lelanthran 7 hours ago [-]
> Don't know how anyone can use YT without it.
It's easy, we use FF :-)
microtonal 12 hours ago [-]
I use a browser with a built-in blocker (Brave Origin) and I don't see ads in YouTube.
Izkata 11 hours ago [-]
Same with ublock origin on firefox, been years since I've seen any ads. There was a period where they tried to break through the blocking and occasionally I'd see one, but it kinda seems like they gave up.
layer8 12 hours ago [-]
You’re just saying that 90% of your internet usage is YouTube?
zem 7 hours ago [-]
something I've really been wondering about is is mv2 really a serious security loophole? if I think about it, browser extensions really do have a scary amount of access to sensitive webpages, so google's rationale for restricting the attack surface is at least plausible. and as the maintainers of the overwhelmingly dominant browser, they can't build ad blocking into the core engine, not because google is an ad company, but simply because that level of putting their thumb on the scales would lead to a huge backlash.
genxy 11 hours ago [-]
These companies that "own the web" shouldn't be allowed to also own the browsers. We went through this already.
roryirvine 11 hours ago [-]
uBO 1.7.3 was released just 3 days ago, so it would be more accurate to say "better" rather than "older".
raverbashing 17 hours ago [-]
I guess it still will be the best browser to download Firefox
anticrymactic 11 hours ago [-]
> I guess it still will be the best browser to download Firefox
```cmd
winget install Mozilla.Firefox
```
Should always work out-of-the-box now.
Marsymars 10 hours ago [-]
Good as long as you don't want the EME-free version.
biglyburrito 17 hours ago [-]
It always was.
jmclnx 14 hours ago [-]
Lets hope it stays that way :)
But if offered enough $, I fear it will join that no-bocker bandwagon.
DarkmSparks 13 hours ago [-]
Vivaldi for the win.
computronus 11 hours ago [-]
Vivaldi is about to drop support for Manifest V2 as well:
I'd been using it solely for GMail / Google Drive / etc. at work, for whatever improved compatibility a Chromium browser might provide over Firefox, which I use for everything else. I got the warning that UBlock Origin won't work, and I immediately ditched Vivaldi. I'm sad about it, I think Vivaldi otherwise is a good browser.
g8oz 12 hours ago [-]
I love Vivaldi, but it also uses Chromium. If an extension is not in the Chrome Web store Vivaldi will not be able to install it.
Firefox seems to be the only reasonably mainstream option for proper ad blocking.
KetoManx64 11 hours ago [-]
Vivaldi has ad blocking built into it, and has no issue with you enabling developer settings and sideloading extensions from a file you download from Github Releases.
tredre3 10 hours ago [-]
Vivaldi is still dropping support for MV2, which means no more uBlock Origin (non-lite). Being able to side-load extensions doesn't matter if the API is gone.
14 hours ago [-]
KronisLV 11 hours ago [-]
For what it's worth, I daily drive Edge on my Windows machine and it's an okay browser, haven't had a reason to install Chrome in ages (though did run Firefox for a while due to liking their dev tools better, it's still on my MacBook cause I like the UI more than Safari).
Even when my Intel Arc B580 has its drivers freeze the browser, I can just kill the GPU rendering process and it picks back up with no data loss, whereas with Firefox I had to restart the whole thing. Seems related to video decode, changing ANGLE backends or whatever in the browsers didn't really help and disabling hardware acceleration makes the experience suck more than it otherwise should.
If not for that, I'd still probably be on Firefox fully, despite Mozilla not exactly being the most sane of companies, though maybe trying to fund developing a browser and a whole org is a bit crazy as it is.
Brave was okay but nothing special. Maybe I should look at Vivaldi again, but it's an odd position to be in, when upstream is pushing changes on you, so it probably doesn't matter what they do or don't want to support long term, same as with every other Chromium derived browser.
Bummer about Chromium fucking over people who dislike ads.
supermatou 9 hours ago [-]
>I can just kill the GPU rendering process
>and it picks back up with no data loss,
>whereas with Firefox I had to restart the whole thing
about:processes > kill the GPU process without having to restart Firefox.
KronisLV 7 hours ago [-]
Thanks!
I will try it out the next time when I jump back to Firefox!
Not sure why it doesn't show up under Task Manager as clearly as Edge's does.
delduca 13 hours ago [-]
Droped Chromium browsers and been using Safari with Wipr2, so far the best experience
rdx-amw 12 hours ago [-]
I wonder if this is from efforts to maintain the difference between upstream and Edge - such that Edge is trying to simplify development by following Chrome/Chromium closer.
ck2 11 hours ago [-]
all the forks in the world won't have widevine support
only Firefox is left which is fine by me
mancerayder 9 hours ago [-]
Please don't bite me -- question for this group, where "Firefox" is going back and forth as a topic.
Isn't Brave okay?
There's something toxic about Brave I'm not getting; I can tell you it's incredibly effective as a tool to block ads, scripts, and tracking. What am I missing? It's tracking me? The project owners are mean? There's something nefarious in the codebase? I have firefox and Brave, and both are 'OK', and better than Chrome or Edge which I only use for work. In the past I was told after being downvoted for mentioning Brave that the founder is controversial. Is that it?
lelanthran 7 hours ago [-]
> Isn't Brave okay?
Sure it is. I use both Brave and FF (FF more than Brave, TBH).
Brave's builtin adblocker is pretty great as well.
joquarky 8 hours ago [-]
The founder invented JavaScript, which is a subject that triggers knee-jerk reactions in people who approach problem solving emotionally.
jraph 7 hours ago [-]
This is not at all what is usually held against him.
Danox 11 hours ago [-]
No surprise they want to serve ads everywhere…
est 13 hours ago [-]
Why do browser vendors have such a control over browsers? Can anyone make a dll injection and bring back manifest v2 ?
terminalbraid 13 hours ago [-]
They have control over what they distribute. Chromium and Firefox are both open source and people can (and should) use derivatives they find acceptable.
Arnt 10 hours ago [-]
Sure, just change the source and build from source.
The reason is that V2 opened the door to some fairly nasty attacks. "This extension can read everything you enter on any form". There were some extensions that did exactly what you're thinking of.
I suspect that nobody will make a browser that lets a plugin do that any more. It's easy, but on closer reflection, would you do it?
1718627440 11 hours ago [-]
People can create the world, but they do need a lot of time. A lot of money buys you time, so nobody 'poor' can keep up. That wouldn't be a problem for web UAs, if the standards wouldn't be 'improved' at the same path as well. It's kinda like proof of work, but for standard bodies and ownership of a system.
feverzsj 15 hours ago [-]
Basically every chromium based browser.
olivermuty 15 hours ago [-]
Brave as well?
eddythompson80 13 hours ago [-]
Brave said they’ll keep some select MV2 extensions, though that remains to be seen. Especially if it causes too much maintenance headache with upstream chromium. Also it seems that Brave now distributes these select MV2 extensions. So I’m not sure if they have forked them, or if they just repackage upstream.
feverzsj 14 hours ago [-]
Brave's adblock isn't as powerful as ublock.
antonymoose 14 hours ago [-]
In what sense? As a normie-tier user of Brave’s internal and blocker, it’s worked great. I never became a power-user of uBlock.
orwin 13 hours ago [-]
Not saying this is it, but I never managed to block YouTube shorts with brave adblocker (in mobile), where I can do it with ublock. If you can do it, please explain, I promise I will try asap (I really dislike ff mobile UI).
briHass 12 hours ago [-]
On mobile (similar on Desktop), just go to Setting -> Shields and Privacy -> Content Filters.
In there are a bunch of Youtube related blockers (including Shorts), that I find work really well. Mobile Brave also lets you lock/screen off your phone while a YT video continues playing, which is a killer feature for listening to podcasts.
I found myself becoming addicted to YT Shorts, and Brave's filters totally solved my problem.
wild_pointer 13 hours ago [-]
+1, works well enough
zamadatix 14 hours ago [-]
It doesn't have to be so long as it still supports the above.
joquarky 7 hours ago [-]
I don't need the most powerful, I just need good enough.
Saris 13 hours ago [-]
I believe their adblock is built in to the browser and not an extension, so it can be more effective than the limited extensions.
Brave has its own downsides too, but at least the browser seems pretty effective at blocking ads and tracking junk.
rambojohnson 11 hours ago [-]
who uses Edge anyway..
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
95% of corporate users sadly due to Microsoft's lobbying
sombragris 12 hours ago [-]
The link is paywalled and the site requires me a subscription to keep reading TFA. This happens even after using the link with the Wayback Machine.
zb3 13 hours ago [-]
I use MV3 AdGuard and it blocks ads for me. I don't get the fuss about MV2 deprecation.. sure, MV3 is limited compared to firefox, but it's not like MV2 was that much better, no version ever supported rewriting request response.
MV3 DNR redirect is notably lame though, instead of replacing the response it generates a real redirect which breaks for example replacing the service worker response. But could MV2 webRequestBlocking replace the response? Well of course not.
sunaookami 12 hours ago [-]
Rules are limited (in syntax and number) and you can only ship updated rules with updated extensions (at least you can skip the queue if you only update rulesets but it's VERY annoying to do). It's also missing a bunch of features: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as... (I see here that replacing response body is possible with Firefox only, is that your use-case?). MV2 was miles better.
zb3 12 hours ago [-]
Besides AdGuard I also have my own extension that loads userscripts from my own server (that uses the new userScripts API), so I think I only see my own point of view and the things that would potentially limit my solutions.
So far I'm able to block everything I want, but I mentioned replacing the response body because this is the only way I could modify or even inspect the service worker.. I think this vector could help circumventing ad blockers, but again - it would only matter if there were ads I'd not be able to block.
When it comes to distribution, firefox sucks because I can't even run my own extensions there, my distro doesn't package firefox developer edition so signatures are required. In contrast, Chrome let's me load unpacked extensions without any problems.
boredhedgehog 11 hours ago [-]
> I don't get the fuss about MV2 deprecation
Just observe this thread. It's a tribal moment, an occasion for a consumer to reassure himself that he has the right philosophy, uses the right product and rightly hates these other things that deserve to be hated. The fellow believers can upvote each other and downvote any empirical observation which threatens the faith.
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
It's ending manifest V2, not just adblockers.
uBlock Origin lite is V3 and is still supported
s0ss 13 hours ago [-]
Inferior alternative
gruez 13 hours ago [-]
Serious question: which sites have you encountered where ublock lite doesn't do the job? Even tricky sites (eg. youtube) are defeated with scriptlets, not by intercepting network responses.
s0ss 13 hours ago [-]
I don’t have any data on that because chromium derivatives aren’t installed, haha. It’s not a matter of “does it work”. It’s philosophical.
novafunc 13 hours ago [-]
I've used uBlock Origin Lite and have had no issues with blocking ads. The only downside I've seen is that I can't do "Block Elements" to hide non-ad annoying parts of sites.
gorhill 10 hours ago [-]
> can't do "Block Elements"
In uBO Lite, it's called "Create a custom filter" in the popup panel.
It's a great demonstration of how Chromium's open source nature is something of a technicality. Unless you have an army of software engineers on par with that of Google, you're eventually going to wind up living with Google's decisions whether you like it or not.
The only projects which have a hope of maintaining MV2 compatibility are those who are a hard fork of an earlier version of chromium or a totally different engine.
To my point: The article mentions that Opera still says they will maintain MV2 for as long as it is “technically reasonable.” Mark my works, Google will find a way to break Opera’s MV2 patches that makes it too hard to maintain.
And then they complain about Safari.
Had it been today, and Google would have no issue pushing for PNaCL.
Having worked on Chromium, the codebase is very modular and internal API's change pretty slowly.
I can stop work on my project (which does fairly serious surgery to the internals of the rendering system) and come back a month later and typically spend less than a day to merge head back in.
I worked on multiple projects modifying Chromium and V8 a decade ago, and the GP matches my experience exactly. Absolute mountains of dev time just tracking the latest release and what we wanted to do wasn’t limited to one module or subsystem.
No, but maybe this highlights that it's never accurate to conflate "open source" or "free (as in speech) software" with end-users having power over the people providing resources to the project.
The main thing that is affecting adblockers with this MV2/MV3 change is the ability to dynamically block requests themselves rather than have to give a pre-computed list of patterns to the browser.
We're talking about hooking into right before http requests go out and make them fail here. Let's not pretend that maintaining this capability is out of reach for any serious fork if they actually cared. Let's also not pretend it's more than a few hours per month of dev time per month to maintain it (and most months it will be 0 hours).
And before you ask: Yes, I have worked extensively with chromium's codebase when I worked for a kiosk company.
I'd use Brave if someone made a fork with all the BAT token stuff removed but I haven't seen one.
Microsoft repurposed Google's adware in Chrome into Edge telemetry/spyware to feed your browsing directly into windows telemetry to watch everything you do, they wanted that back when IE lost the war.
Google already went evil and set the precedent removing adblocking capabilities, now Microsoft can just blame them and feed everything you do into Bing for ad money as well as telemetry/spyware without you blocking it, that's effectively double-dipping all in on stupid windows users.
Somebody who has already made their money needs to fork the thing and put it into an actual public service nonprofit, rather than another creepy branch of the nonprofit-military-industrial complex. Not somebody whose CEO came from Voice of America, WeWork, Wikipedia, Northrop-Grumman, the NSA or some bank, talking about how much they need to innovate and create strategic partnerships. Instead, get somebody who wants to make and maintain a safe, minimal, light, modular browser that works exclusively for its user, and whose components can be easily be included in other projects.
Mozilla receives the vast majority of its funding—roughly $400 million annually from Google
Mozilla has made announcements regarding transforming Firefox into an AI-heavy browser and have started alienating longtime open-source supporters
Massive salaries paid to Mozilla Foundation executives.
Firefox is a joke because it's no longer a users browser. Rather than it just being a browser it's now a VPN, Ai and other.
I give it two years before it starts shoving advertisements.
Stop getting your news from corporate propaganda and the outrage mob.
Nerds used to know how to computer, is what i'm saying.
HR prefers brogrammers who can fast talk.
Microsoft's current privacy statement also says "Depending on your settings, this browsing history is sent to Microsoft"
Edge allows to sync history (as Chrome and Firefox also do). Given that functionality, what else do you want them to say in their privacy statement..?
If we lose Firefox the web is going to be a worse place to be in.
(There's a steelmanned form of their argument - that Mozilla ought to be held to a higher standard than their commercial competitors - which you might think would speak in favour of LibreWolf and the like. But those who complain most forcefully about Firefox often turn out to be Chrome / Opera / Brave users)
I do wonder if we haven't seen the effects of an MV3-only web yet. As in, once the vast majority of browsers lose MV2 support, will ad networks evolve to get around the limited MV3 capabilities? uBlock Origin Lite might be good enough for you now, but how about in a year or three?
Firefox is pretty great. But IMO they have some poor ux defaults that make it unappealing to random people who simply want a browser.
With their anonym acquisition and the "privacy preserving" attribution stuff they now have an active interest in advertising.
Excuse me. I take it you don't read any mainstream news (NYT, Bloomberg, WSJ, WSP, etc etc).
Web Brower with ad-blocking setup can still have advertisements leak through. When it does and it still does after three refreshes, I just don't watch and move on.
I will always be a sunk-cost for Google.
I find being advertised to so annoying there's no way in hell I will spend my limited time on this planet willingly consuming an ad.
Watching ads simply isn't something I'm willing to consider. Like if the transaction was "have someone spit in your face and in exchange you get a how-to video and they get paid based on the amount of spit you get in your mouth", I'd feel similarly about that business model.
Really how do people put up with that shit??
Having said that YouTube is so enshittified in other ways too (screaming thumbnails and titles, sponsors which need sponsorblock, random AI clickbait videos) that I rarely feel like watching it at all anyway.
I never had genAI tracks being suggested on YouTube Music. Though it might be a factor that my account predates genAI music.
I assume one requirement for getting genAI tracks is being initially fine with hearing music from random channels and also hearing music produced after 2022; if one only cares (for example) about pre-2020 very well-known music they're probably going to be safe.
I tend to skip those, although map men's are good, but I also tend to prefer those who don't have ads.
It's all theoretical. In practice, uBlock Origin Lite works amazingly on MV3. In my experience, it blocks all the ads. And I've been using it for a while now.
Also the amount of configurability is extremely reduced. I personally need that because I use custom lists to reduce websites to just a list of headlines (similar to hacker news). Removing all the highlights, polls, other crap I don't need.
I mainly use Firefox anyway so I use the real ublock origin.
> Nobody knows any other difference unless they are an extension developers or worked on making the Internet a worse place.
MV3 comes with a ton of security improvements over MV2, a side effect is the perceived weakening of ad blocking extensions but the benefits outweigh the cons.
MV2 effectively allowed a permanently open RCE pathway.
The browser itself should ideally be handling ad blocking as it’s more effective and efficient at it (Brave, Vanadium, Trivalent).
Safari has already been on an MV3-like extension system for years yet only Chromium draws ire. I mean they got flack at first but it died off and now there’s no real difference.
"The fox himself should ideally be guarding the henhouse"...
I mean, you do realise that google has a conflict of interest when it comes to blocking ads, right?
I don't particularly notice, but my wife was getting frustrated last night when she was looking for recipes, an ad network was blocked at the DNS level, and despite local ad-blockers, every recipe site she was visiting was redirecting her to a "please disable your ad blocker" page.
I’ve been using UBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone for a while, and that works great, keeping itself updated from EasyList and allowing for custom rules.
In some ways it’s better, in some ways it’s worse. Sometimes you have to flip it into “complete mode” (and give it full access to modify the current site) to get good blocking.
I don't how this is supposed to be a demerit given that the v2 version had full access to every site you visit. Safari just made that more explicit.
Running unbound or a pi-hole on your network doesn't preclude that.
Your devices talks to the gateway/router/pi-hole on the network, who will then use your chosen DoH providers for upstream requests.
No. See:
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/d...
>The chrome.declarativeNetRequest API is used to block or modify network requests by specifying declarative rules. This lets extensions modify network requests without intercepting them and viewing their content, thus providing more privacy.
With an adblocker..
Why would you need yt premium with an adblocker?
It's easy, we use FF :-)
```cmd winget install Mozilla.Firefox ``` Should always work out-of-the-box now.
But if offered enough $, I fear it will join that no-bocker bandwagon.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/1urieed/com...
I'd been using it solely for GMail / Google Drive / etc. at work, for whatever improved compatibility a Chromium browser might provide over Firefox, which I use for everything else. I got the warning that UBlock Origin won't work, and I immediately ditched Vivaldi. I'm sad about it, I think Vivaldi otherwise is a good browser.
Firefox seems to be the only reasonably mainstream option for proper ad blocking.
Even when my Intel Arc B580 has its drivers freeze the browser, I can just kill the GPU rendering process and it picks back up with no data loss, whereas with Firefox I had to restart the whole thing. Seems related to video decode, changing ANGLE backends or whatever in the browsers didn't really help and disabling hardware acceleration makes the experience suck more than it otherwise should.
If not for that, I'd still probably be on Firefox fully, despite Mozilla not exactly being the most sane of companies, though maybe trying to fund developing a browser and a whole org is a bit crazy as it is.
Brave was okay but nothing special. Maybe I should look at Vivaldi again, but it's an odd position to be in, when upstream is pushing changes on you, so it probably doesn't matter what they do or don't want to support long term, same as with every other Chromium derived browser.
Bummer about Chromium fucking over people who dislike ads.
>and it picks back up with no data loss,
>whereas with Firefox I had to restart the whole thing
about:processes > kill the GPU process without having to restart Firefox.
I will try it out the next time when I jump back to Firefox!
Not sure why it doesn't show up under Task Manager as clearly as Edge's does.
only Firefox is left which is fine by me
Isn't Brave okay?
There's something toxic about Brave I'm not getting; I can tell you it's incredibly effective as a tool to block ads, scripts, and tracking. What am I missing? It's tracking me? The project owners are mean? There's something nefarious in the codebase? I have firefox and Brave, and both are 'OK', and better than Chrome or Edge which I only use for work. In the past I was told after being downvoted for mentioning Brave that the founder is controversial. Is that it?
Sure it is. I use both Brave and FF (FF more than Brave, TBH).
Brave's builtin adblocker is pretty great as well.
The reason is that V2 opened the door to some fairly nasty attacks. "This extension can read everything you enter on any form". There were some extensions that did exactly what you're thinking of.
I suspect that nobody will make a browser that lets a plugin do that any more. It's easy, but on closer reflection, would you do it?
In there are a bunch of Youtube related blockers (including Shorts), that I find work really well. Mobile Brave also lets you lock/screen off your phone while a YT video continues playing, which is a killer feature for listening to podcasts.
I found myself becoming addicted to YT Shorts, and Brave's filters totally solved my problem.
Brave has its own downsides too, but at least the browser seems pretty effective at blocking ads and tracking junk.
MV3 DNR redirect is notably lame though, instead of replacing the response it generates a real redirect which breaks for example replacing the service worker response. But could MV2 webRequestBlocking replace the response? Well of course not.
So far I'm able to block everything I want, but I mentioned replacing the response body because this is the only way I could modify or even inspect the service worker.. I think this vector could help circumventing ad blockers, but again - it would only matter if there were ads I'd not be able to block.
When it comes to distribution, firefox sucks because I can't even run my own extensions there, my distro doesn't package firefox developer edition so signatures are required. In contrast, Chrome let's me load unpacked extensions without any problems.
Just observe this thread. It's a tribal moment, an occasion for a consumer to reassure himself that he has the right philosophy, uses the right product and rightly hates these other things that deserve to be hated. The fellow believers can upvote each other and downvote any empirical observation which threatens the faith.
uBlock Origin lite is V3 and is still supported
In uBO Lite, it's called "Create a custom filter" in the popup panel.