Firefox says it will keep supporting uBlock Origin even as Microsoft Edge and other Chromium browsers phase it out under Manifest V3.
If they ever stop supporting it I will continue to use the last version to support it, any website that breaks compatibility with this Firefox version can get fucked.
That’s a significant security risk, unfortunately.
If that happens, I’d suggest a fork with a built in blocker, one that still gets security patches from upstream Firefox.
Exactly. Ublock origin is notable only for being part of 0 ad companies and 100% trustworthy. The blocking lists are universal. If it’s built into the browser, you’re golden
Well…
With a fork, one is very dependent on the browser dev. Not just on their benevolence, but on their security practices too. And on them pulling in upstream security patches, quickly.
TBH, this is why I do finance stuff on vanilla Firefox. I love browser forks, I really do, but I’m a bit more cautious with them, too.
The most used forks are usually larger teams tbf, not a single dev
True, sometimes. But they don’t have the sheer manpower dedicated to security that Mozilla has, nor the institutional policies that try to mitigate losing a key/account or something like that. Also, technically, vanilla Firefox is first to get the zero-day patches before they filter downstream.
Not that the forks are dangerous or anything, generally.
“Dev” as if it’s just a singular person
Most of the forks are teams of 10-20 devs
i mean… blocking lists are universal, but the other features ublock offers are not - i’m making heavy use of ublock’s dynamic filtering panel and per-site switches. one important thing i use ublock for is to whitelist which sites get javascript permissions and to get rid of remote fonts to make pages more readable. those features need manifest v2.
if firefox drops manifest v2 and you’re relying purely on those inbuilt blocking lists then you might as well use the manifest v3 version of ublock without seeing a difference, right?
you might as well use the manifest v3 version of ublock without seeing a difference, right?
Can confirm, I was thinking about switching off of Chrome due to this but since I don’t use the custom stuff (much) I’m not noticing a difference with the v3 compatible “light” version of uBlock Origin.
if firefox drops manifest v2
I think they said they will go out of their way to keep the extension APIs in Mv3 that uBlock needs
I’ll just spend my reading time reading more books than I do now. Forcing me to look at ads will not work.
wait for 4g books that serve you unskippable ads
Librewolf would probably still support it
librewolf does not have much developer capacity to maintain such heavy patches. you may remember some chromium forks telling they will maintain a patch when google completely removes this API from chromium, but it seems none of them will follow through. I can’t really fault them because it is likely a gargantuan task. but I’ll fault them for claiming something they (should) have known they can’t deliver. but my point is if vivaldi and others can’t keep it, how could librewolf?
I’d probably go retro, use something like Dillo and stick to more classic webpages. Or go full Gopher/Gemini.
as a websev, you’re gonna have a bad time
I can’t imagine using the web without firefox and ublock. Even the cookie consent popups are awful.
LibreWolf, WaterFox and Vivaldi
vivaldi recently disabled uBO and said it’d soon be unsupported. you can re-enable for now
I was using vivaldi and they were kind enough(seriously) to inform me that they don’t support ublock anymore maybe a week ago.
Not sure about the reason but I think that it’s a technical thing the Google changed to deliberately make it easy to end ublock on a lot of browsers. Might not be the only reason(actual tech upgrades) but I believe it’s part of the reason since major conspiracies seem much more likely these days.
Anyway, I switched back to Librewolf even though it can’t play x.265 files (jellyfin). Anything that kills the use of ublock is dead to me even though they have their own shitty, bullshit blocking solution. It’s never going to be as good as ublock edit grammar and shit
Anyway, I switched back to Librewolf even though it can’t play x.265 files (jellyfin).
you should check that again, Firefox gained support for it last year.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Guides/Formats/Video_codecs#hevc_h.265
check the browser compatibility column in the table. it seems maybe Firefox is the only one supporting it even for those without hardware acceleration?
Admittedly, I haven’t tried too hard to get it working in any of the FF browsers lately…my unraid server blew up and it was handling hardware acceleration with a cheap intel vid card. I haven’t felt like messing with until now so I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the info
edit: no transcoding when l tried an x.265 in regular firefox. sweet
I didn’t know that, well glad I went to LibreWolf.
Zen, though I think that’s basically Firefox under the hood.
And Brave, don’t forget brave
No, you should forget brave it’s yet another piece of shit chrome knock off. Just like the rest. It ain’t immune. It can kick and scream but either the entire project dies or they bend the knee eventually.
Not to defend Brave (seriously, don’t use Brave), but it has built-in ad-blocking.
As long as chromium is open source I see no problem down the line… and if Google one day stops the funding of open source projects, well, the Firefox is also toast
…may you elaborate?
LibreWolf has it pre-installed and is Open-source. It worked on waterfox an Open-source fork of Firefox, last time I tried.
As for Vivaldi I guess use Brave instead.
Brave is the money generator of a far right hate group. Fuck Brendan Eich, fuck their ad replacement scam, fuck everything Brave.
Really??? I had no clue!!!
I just got back into being into the open source life after going back to Ubuntu after almost 20 years later. I stopped using Ubuntu in 2009 when Pigeon was an aio instant messenger client.
… Well shit. Yeah fuck that guy.
Ublock Lite still works in Chrome (and it still blocks YouTube ads, not sure about cookie popups), but you get no control over the filters. Just a slider with some presets to choose from. So while better than nothing, just stick with Firefox.
Pretty sure full ublock origin still works in helium no?
Pretty sure I’ve read months ago that the maintainers said they’ll try to support it as long as possible but at the moment v2 support is removed from the source code, they’ll won’t have the resources to add it back again.
The best extension :)
+ a mediocre browser
No, you’re a mediocre browser
And his mom is too
Can confirm; Dan’s mom = very mediocre. Not worth the journey to her house 3/10.
Gotem!
His dad is a great Bowser though
this is legit one of the funniest comebacks
What is mediocre about it? What would be an example of a good browser, and what are the differences?
Don’t feed the troll, down vote and move on
im an old web dev and im stuck in my shitty ways which includes not liking how ff is the only effing browser that takes extra effort to make the front-end look and function correctly. tbh, i do use ff on android 99% of the time, but ff on desktop breaks too many sites if you have any inkling of ff’s security turned on.
im not wrong, you all are just fanboys
complaints not parsed into action items aren’t worth anyone’s time.
you assume im here to enrich your online experience. im not. parse your own shit
3 days later and that’s all you’ve got? No wit in that staircase. The only time you’re worth is the catharsis in telling you to kick rocks; so kick rocks.
Yes, 3 days later because I’m not terminally online like you
yeah no you’re still not worth my time. time to block your little wet fart of an existence. byeeeeeeeee
Why?
It’s bait. The only “better” browsers are downstreams of FF.
No, you’re a towel
Yeah, but it does run uBlock Origin, renders web pages just fine, can do WebRTC, and even has support for bookmarks and pinned tabs. What else do you want from a web browser?
Chrome’s advantages were in the security and performance departments. But Firefox isn’t that much worse.
Google is locking down Android too!
Is there a good small cheap repairable phone out there? I have a fairphone4 and I LOVE /E/ OS. But I would also like to actually USE a linux phone. And I cant experiment as much as I would want on my main phone.
Ive almost thought about carrying a tiny burner phone then a small laptop for everything else.
I have a fairphone4 and I LOVE /E/ OS. But I would also like to actually USE a linux phone
What do you mean? You can’t use your FP4?
I’m considering getting a FP6 relatively soon, and would be using it as my only one…
I use android via /e/os. But I cannot experiment with my only phone. There is 2fa and other such services that I have to have access to. Worst case, I cant get into accounts and such.
FF is a great phone btw.
There is 2fa and other such services that I have to have access to. Worst case, I cant get into accounts and such.
That’s my main concern too.
Here in Denmark, the MitID authentification app is completely integral to functioning online, and last I checked it doesn’t work on GrapheneOS, so /e/os is probably not likely either 🫤
I got myself a physical code chip because MitID doesn’t work with /e/. The code chip works great.
The app is probably convenient, but I am also very happy not to depend on my phone to sign in to everything.
I think you should be able to emulate /e/ OS to try out some stuff? Maybe someone else can chime in. Dont know if that helps or not.
My 2fa works in /e/ but im going to assume other OSes probably wont.
You can’t use something like bitwarden for mitid?
Nope, you’ll need mitid specifically. It’s run by the government and mandated 😮💨
Every Linux phone uses an android shim just because it isn’t possible to change the firmware iirc
I love my FP6
You named it the Fairphone is the best Linux phone.
You have a point.
…it is a really nice phone.
I just cant afford two. First world problem haha.
I have a FP5 and a similar problem to you. My FP3 before it died on me so it’s not much help.
I’m low key planning to find a second hand FP3 and use it to experiment with Linux until I find there are no big problems with using it as a daily driver. In practice I don’t really have enough time to put into it so I’ll probably keep on using /e/ for the forseeable future.
The Commedore phone, if you want something minimalistic that does have Android compatibility.
I’m looking at preordering it. Shipping now would be Dec-Jan.
Last I was aware, Linux phones work really well on Google Pixel 3as. They’re no longer supported by stock Android nor still manufactured so I assume the second hand ones will be cheap.
I appreciate the response.
I have owned two google phones. Both had hardware issues/battery issues and one almost exploded. One day it got super hot and the battery turned into a spicy pillow. Sorry but im not going to get another google phone as long as I live. Neither lasted more than 2 years.
That’s fair. Which models did you have? I had a couple problems with the earlier Google Pixels, but I’ve found the later ones have really ironed out their hardware problems.
I think your main problem is going to be finding phones for cheap that also work well as Linux phones. I think the lowest-effort options like Pine phones are gonna cost you more. But I wish you luck.
I had a p7 and it only lasted 3 yrs. Motherboard went. 750 euros that had cost brand new. First phone I have bought that didn’t last > 5 yrs
I had a 4 I think? That one lasted about a year and a half before the battery wouldn’t last more than half a day. Then it bricked one day. Not sure what happened.
The 6a was the worst. It was cheap and good at first. But then kept getting hotter and hotter…almost burnt me.
get the new Jolla Linux phone.
As far as I know the Google Developer Verification BS won’t reach Custom ROMs right? But yea in the long run it probably makes sense to make the jump one day or another.
Alternate headline: Firefox is now the only browser worth using.
And in any case, lumping Firefox as one browser is disingenuous. There are numerous Firefox forks, just like every other major browser is in fact a Google Chromium fork.
it still boggles my mind that Microsoft developed Edge as a standalone browser as a replacement for IE then just said “nah, let’s just use Chromium.”
In the future it will probably come out there was a massive backroom deal. Neither this nor dropping Windows Phone have made any sense.
Like a true google hate inspired hipster I have been using Firefox for at least the past 9 years. Don’t let one of the shittiest companies control even more of the world because you are too fucking lazy to switch to a different browser. If you have to deal with a few shitty websites made by morons that only work in chrome keep a secondary chromium install on standby when you have to hold your nose and use it.
Honestly I can only think of one. Weirdly a “developer platform”
Well I guess a couple more because keyboard firmware sites do that usb browser thing that terrifies me is a thing and only chrome supports.
Firefox recently grew that terrifying WebSerial USB thing!
I have been a web dev for over 25… oh god… approaching 30 years, and most web dev teams with an ounce of self respect will spend the honestly trivial time to test against different browsers. I consider it a basic part of the god damn job. Even still banks and government sites seem to not give a fuck.
For a while I think it was Papa Johns, or Dominos, some pizza chain site didn’t work on Firefox. Worse than that though when I was in highschool I remember some school district stuff didn’t work on Firefox
In my experience even one of the platforms with moronic developers eventually fixed their Firefox support. I dunno if the surge in Linux users had anything to do with it or not, or if it was because I would browser there, make my payments fail then switch to the Falkon browser every single time.
Being unable to use manifest v2 extensions anymore on most chromium based stuff has resulted in me writing off almost all browsers that are base on chromium. Kudos to Firefox for continuing to support it! Let’s hope that does not change at all anytime soon.
fortunately uBlock still works on Helium
Future is dark:
-
Android getting locked down
-
They are asking your government ID to use OS, access internet etc.
There must be real protest, revolution, something otherwise it will just get worst
pssst: it’s gonna get worse
Download a shitload of epubs, roms, backup of wikipedia, and get ready for full-on, unmissable, 1984-style marketing and propaganda culture. You’ll see it, you’ll have to see it, and there will be no option B.
What if instead we… stop that from happening?
You’re suggesting we send our own people into meatspace?
I am not sure what your comments mean. I am in tremendous back pain. And didn’t sleep For so long, and the fucking humidity.
I want to add more. And vent.
I am old enough and I saw similar actions, and the out come of it.
Slwoly we are forced to use ESIMS, where I live, I have to pay every time I switch phones.
And if I am outside of the country, I can’t even switch phones.
I love the idea of esims, but not how it is implemented.
Digiral data produced by me is so.expensive to keep.
It is the digital age, but not a digital .storage age, it is cheaper to print shit.
Optical storage can store terabytes of data, easy to maintain, you can design a device where the hdd store meta data and anyone from your family cam access the data stored on archival optical drives.
It is not built because they want us to use the cloud. Maybe it is greed, control, surveillance.
I just want a simple cartridge that can store my data for decads and technologically that is easily done. There are already archival optical storage sold to data centers, but why not to small businesses or consumers!?!?
It is basically several bluray discs in a cartridge.
The future is dark because of human nature.
And we will do nothing about because look at state of printers. The ink cost more than gold per gram
Look at air purifiers all proprietary filters that are over priced
And yes I know about CR boxes but those furnace filters are only sold in USA.
We are not good creatures
Sorry, I am coherent enough to know I am not coherent, I needed to vent.
I’ve got 100tb getting filled. I’m ready. Ok in reality its closer to 60 tb after raid and I’m duplicating the important stuff across 2 devices. But that’s only about 5 tb. But I’m including lots of PDFs epubs and zims as important stuff. The rest is just media.
-
I.e. it is the last usable browser.
IE was the first unusable browser
In unrelated news, Firefox is now the dominant browser and nobody knows why.
If only that were true. To many people are addicted to google to ever give up chrome/chromium without a series of catastrophic fuckups from google.
Doesn’t help that Mozilla leadership is incompetent and doesn’t know what their core audience wants
also dependant on GOOGLe for revenue too.
Unfortunate how momentum like that works. I haven’t managed to degoogle myself yet but switching to firefox has created zero issues in my daily usage
Well, it’s better if it’s a slow process, just like detoxing. Good luck by the way.
Dude, the last thing I use Google for is YouTube and the ads are so much now on my tv and when listening to stories in my car that I’m seriously considering either paying for nebula or just snorting whatever I find under the sink for amusement.
uBlock origin works on YouTube and works in Firefox for Android
Yes but I can’t install that on an appleTV or mess with it while driving so there are times I still encounter the bad.
You already made the choice to use appletv
I love nebula. Well worth it. Less content, but all but two of my preferred creators are on it (not including Dropout, which is also worth it). For those two, I use Freetube every month or so to check in, but they’re just Tiny little science channels that do simple experiments, and I can find the experiments they cite on their university webpages once I have the names of their demos.
i forget what its called… pihole? You can set up a small box on your network that can filter out ads on devices that you cant install adblocking on, like on your TV and stuff.
Pihike adblocker doesn’t work for streams, just static content.
Well color me informed.
does not work for youtube. for that, you need either a third party youtube app with builtbin blocking, or a patched official app that adds the blocking.
Or just open the Firefox website in the browser
I guess you meant the youtube website, but on a TV you won’t be able to block youtube ads in the browser either
I don’t use the smart TV functions, I connect a device to the TV to watch stuff on the TV. I certainly don’t use any apps to watch YouTube
So, I can finally point and laugh at the people who were saying that the manifest V3 thing was a non issue because their ad blocker was still working ?
no, because their ad blocker is still working
At a lower efficiency than before, and a lot of stuff now won’t get blocked because of the limit in definitions.
yeah, my point is that was never the concern of such people
Define “lower efficiency”, please.
only ads on big sites or ads by big providers are blocked. cookie prompts and other annoyances much less, because there is a great variety of them. data mining and hardware fingerprinting cannot even be thwarted anymore.
sure, if you only care about ads, but not at all about your privacy, it does not mean much to you. personally I would rather see ads (topic based) than give up my privacy, and the complete uBlock Origin is very useful for privacy too.
only ads on big sites or ads by big providers are blocked
This is false.
cookie prompts
Not part of any adblocker. Some, like Ghostery, have a separate mechanism to auto-reject these. I switched from uBO to Ghostery because uBO wasn’t doing anything against those.
data mining and hardware fingerprinting cannot even be thwarted anymore.
That’s not an adblock feature and there are hundreds of other extensions that handle that, like PrivacyBadger. Ghostery says it also handles trackers, but I haven’t verified that.
I would rather see ads (topic based) than give up my privacy, and the complete uBlock Origin is very useful for privacy too.
Look up tools made specifically for it, then. Also: privacy related stuff is not affected by Manifest v3, no?
Not part of any adblocker. Some, like Ghostery, have a separate mechanism to auto-reject these. I switched from uBO to Ghostery because uBO wasn’t doing anything against those.
this is false. and instead of just claiming so, here is proof: there are built-in (but disabled by default) blocklists specialized for cookie prompts and such
That’s not an adblock feature
and as I said, uBO is not just an ad blocker, so saying xy ad blocker can replace it well is false.
and there are hundreds of other extensions that handle that, like PrivacyBadger
except that not really. Because again, the required browser APIs were removed, and even before that, privacy badger was not so effective
Also: privacy related stuff is not affected by Manifest v3, no?
everything is effected that:
- needs to block network requests, including loading of certain site scripts
- depends on an up to date list of things to block
this is false. and instead of just claiming so, here is proof: there are built-in (but disabled by default) blocklists specialized for cookie prompts and such
Let me rephrase then: cookie prompt blocking capabilities are not tied to the Manifest version (clearly, as exemplified by things like Ghostery). uBO could easily switch to Mv3 and still do those things.
and as I said, uBO is not just an ad blocker, so saying xy ad blocker can replace it well is false.
But we’re discussing the ad-blocking features, because these are the ones affected by Mv3, no?
All these other features exist and are perfectly fine in other extensions.
except that not really. Because again, the required browser APIs were removed, and even before that, privacy badger was not so effective
Define “not so effective”. What’s “effectiveness” in this case?
everything is effected that:
- needs to block network requests, including loading of certain site scripts
- depends on an up to date list of things to block
OK, but again: what’s the difference for the end-user? Does it impact resources utilisation? Website loading times? Reactivity? I don’t see a difference in how my uBO browser behaves vs how my Ghostery browser behaves, so what am I losing because of the Mv3 switch?
Now I’m curious how anyone could possibly have a non obvious definition of ad blocker efficiency.
Well, considering I’m using a different adblock and I just… Do not see any ads on the web, how do you measure the efficiency of uBlock to be better? Resource consumption?
No, because ad blocks work perfectly fine.
I’m using Ghostery on Vivaldi (Chromium-based) and it works perfectly fine, including blocking ads during YouTube videos.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
Out of curiosity, why do you use Ghostery rather than uBlock Origin? It was quite controversial back in the day, but seems to be open source and stuff now. I still don’t see any advantage over uBO, though, so I wonder what would move you to use it instead.
I started using Ghostery because it had a cookies auto-reject mechanism. The ad-blocking stuff came in later, which I didn’t even realise, but I installed it first on a new device, did some browsing, noticed there’s no ads, and thought “well, good enough”.
I do miss the custom HTML-element cutting, though.
You would think Apple would take the massive opportunity and bake in proper privacy and ad blocking to safari. Wouldn’t hurt their bottom line.
They have pretty good privacy and anti-fingerprinting stuff in Safari, but not ad blocking— although they do have an odd tool for “hiding distracting items“ that can work as an ad hoc ad blocker of sorts. On the other hand, ublock origin light works wonderfully for me. Both on macOS Safari and iOS Safari.
I agree it works good for me as well as is, but it sure would be nice to see one baked in and on by default. It’s legitimately a safety thing, I would never turn an old person loose on the web just raw dog lol guaranteed a disaster. Every computer I’ve ever setup for a friend or family member the first thing I do is get Firefox dl on windows and install ublock if it’s a pc, or get get a blocker going on safari if it’s Mac.
Oh, I agree. It really would be nice if ublock origin light was installed by default.
I haven’t used MacOS or iOS for years so I’m out of the loop, but I thought Safari on both had pretty good extension support? I know Adguard is still great on both, a friend uses it (and I use it on my Linux and Android devices).
It’s not in a bad state at all, I would just like to see adblockers baked straight into safari and on by default.
I prefer uBlock Origin Lite on Safari. I switched a while back because adblock wasn’t catching ads in YouTube.
A few years ago they made some changes to how extensions work (iirc it was supposedly aimed at improving privacy by restricting what extensions can access).
These days I use a paid iOS/macOS specific ad block app. It was like $3 one time purchase and it works great.
WebKit doesn’t run on Windows so this doesn’t matter to them.
You’re missing the point, WebKit not running on windows is exactly why this could be a good move for them. if they can do something better than what’s possible on windows they have a market advantage.
They’d rather people move to their platform and be locked in their ecosystem.
And this would be a way to make people want to do that.
I tried browsing the internet without uBlock Origin. I hated it in 5 minutes. I’m not going back to there anytime again. If your browser does not support uBlock Origin, then I am not using it.
Right? I just set up a new phone and had Firefox installed but no extensions yet. Had to search something and the website I ended up on was plastered in ads. Is this how some people actually live? I closed the site and installed uBlock Origin and then went back to the same site. Holy shit, night and day difference.
That will totally lead to websites not supporting or even blocking Firefox. Together with uBlock capitulating against Facebook and all those age registration nonsense, I really am scared about the future of the web.
Meh if a site doesnt work on firefox I move on. I dont want all the shit that comes with visiting from chrome. If I cnt buy because of cookies or ads then I wont buy from them.
first it was the news sites, then the shops and venues, but I didn’t speak up because I haven’t used them anyway.
then the utiliies companies did that, but I didn’t speak up, so far as I can pay the invoices personally it’s not a big deal.
then came the government sites, but meh, I can just go in person! sure it takes away many hours but it’s not worth the hassle to complain!
and by that time nothing else was left either, because all the other sites dropped support in the meantime, while I did not have the time anymore to notice it.
Fair point, I am speaking up though, I wont give them my money.
That will totally lead to websites not supporting or even blocking Firefox.
A lot of websites that really should be testing for this don’t work on Firefox.
Absolute worst case Firefox can focus on feature parity(as it already has a lot of), and lie on the UserAgent
Kids today don’t know that’s how life started for Firefox. Except the browser it had to copy was closed source.
I jumped to i2p for this reason. I think internet is dead, we will have to have a double identity to avoid brainrotting
and reddit is aggressively try to force thier login popup at everytime, it hasnt rolled out completely. but people already reported.
Yep with the login for old.reddit I’ve officially stopped using it completely. No I will not run their Javascript.
When I did a site that didn’t play nice with one of my various Mozilla Gecko/Fusion browser flavors, I try a different one.
When they all are failing, not just WaterFox, I either fire up DuckDuckGo Browser or Safari if on a Mac.
If that were to fail I probably would quit using that service.
My actual Google account isn’t allowed on most of my computers anymore, since I DeGoogled, and only have it operating in very sandboxed environments like one Vivaldi browser that lives inside of a VM.
That’s what the user agent string spoofer is for.
Other adblocks still work. I’m using Ghostery on Vivaldi (Chromium-based) and it works perfectly fine, including blocking ads during YouTube videos.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
No idea why uBlock specifically is being blocked, but it’s not like you can’t have an ad-blocker anymore.
because google took away the API for network traffic filtering. all that current filtering addons can do is pass a very brief, rarely updated network filter list to the browser, and insert cosmetic tweaks to the pages you visit. they can’t look anymore at all details of any network request and decide what do to. except on Firefox, where it has not been taken away.
OK, sure, but what are the actual, real-life consequences of that?
I don’t see any ads online. So ad-blocking still works. What doesn’t work?
OK, sure, but what are the actual, real-life consequences of that?
uBlock Origin and any other effective content blocker had that as its most important weapon, without exaggeration. it has many other techniques for specific circumstances, but preventing to load the ad scripts, and preventing network requests that send back data to the advertising company, are universally a powerful tool.
I don’t see any ads online. So ad-blocking still works. What doesn’t work?
you don’t see them because addons can still insert unlimited cosmetic tweaks. CSS snippets that make specific elements hidden. but the ads are still loaded, consuming network and CPU resources, and the ad framework still collects usage, interaction and device data.
also, the addons now can’t regularly update the lists even for what cosmetic tweaks to apply. google has decided it does not allow addons in their addon store that fetch filterlists from the network. this means these addons need to embed the lists in themselves. list updates are released much less frequently, and can have several days delay while google decides whether the updated version contains something malicious or otherwise unacceptable to their policies. compared to that, uBlock Origin on Firefox updates the lists every day by default, with no delay, as it fetches the lists directly from their websites.
uBlock Origin and any other effective content blocker had that as its most important weapon, without exaggeration. it has many other techniques for specific circumstances, but preventing to load the ad scripts, and preventing network requests that send back data to the advertising company, are universally a powerful tool.
You’re just repeating what you already said.
My question is: since there are (and always have been) other privacy-oriented extensions (e.g. Privacy Badger, Ghostery) and they still work just as they always have, what is the advantage of specifically using uBO with Mv2?
you don’t see them because addons can still insert unlimited cosmetic tweaks. CSS snippets that make specific elements hidden. but the ads are still loaded, consuming network and CPU resources, and the ad framework still collects usage, interaction and device data.
I just loaded up YouTube and didn’t see a single call to a known ad server, so this seems to be false.
Also: the CPU usage of loading even a couple MB-worth of ads is negligible compared to the overall resource hungriness of Chromium.
(…) list updates are released much less frequently (…)
I did notice that every now and again YouTube would block me from using it due to detecting the adblocker, but is that an inherent disadvantage of Mv3? And why wouldn’t the extension developers then embed the updated filter lists and just release them as extension updates? Does Google limit the frequency of those?
I just loaded up YouTube and didn’t see a single call to a known ad server, so this seems to be false.
of course you didn’t. on youtube ads are not served from different domains. have you ever heard about pihole not being able to block youtube ads? that’s why. every ad is literally a video uploaded to youtube, it is even possible to watch them as videos, with their own video page.
Also: the CPU usage of loading even a couple MB-worth of ads is negligible compared to the overall resource hungriness of Chromium.
not always the case, differs by ad and ad framework, but the memory savings are still significant. and the difference matters more on weak computers, old computers, battery powered computers and when you are on a metered network.
I did notice that every now and again YouTube would block me from using it due to detecting the adblocker, but is that an inherent disadvantage of Mv3?
I don’t know if that’s what causes that. but not being able to update filterlists independently means that nobody can react quickly to when a website starts detecting a content blocker, or when ads start reappearing. the needs to wait for the next addon update, which may take multiple days.
And why wouldn’t the extension developers then embed the updated filter lists and just release them as extension updates? Does Google limit the frequency of those?
because all addon updates go through a review. the effectiveness of it is largely debatable, but it delays updates significantly.
of course you didn’t. on youtube ads are not served from different domains. have you ever heard about pihole not being able to block youtube ads? that’s why. every ad is literally a video uploaded to youtube, it is even possible to watch them as videos, with their own video page.
So it’s not a privacy issue, it’s an ad issue. Which doesn’t show, it’s blocked.
What does uBO do different here?
or when ads start reappearing. the needs to wait for the next addon update, which may take multiple days.
Just FYI - that only happens to me on YouTube every once in a while. Like, three times this year for a day or two.
Since there are only two major browsers… one of which admittedly wears many disguises.
