We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.
Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.
I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.
This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!
Can I just add a different perspective on this?
My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.
Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on.
QueueCue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.
Buy a Raspberry PI, install PiHole or AdGuard, change router DNS, and you are good to go. Yes, not perfect, but doesn’t rely on a browser extension that can go extinct next time the browser decides it is time for a change.
Or just do what I do. Use Firefox and only keep Chromium around for those few sites that work better in Chromium.
… or use Firefox and migrate their bookmarks.
I recently switched back to Firefox, and almost immediately ran into an issue where I couldn’t log into Dropbox. It took me far longer than I’d like to admit, to realize that
Firefox was the problemit wasn’t working because Dropbox doesn’t properly support Firefox. I popped into edge and logged in immediately no problem.I’m still gonna stick with Firefox, but it’s annoying that it doesn’t work all the time.
Edit: what’s with the down votes? I like Firefox, I’m using Firefox, but I won’t deny that I ran into issues with it 🤷♂️
Edit 2: I realize now that the tone of my message sounds like I’m blaming Firefox. That was not my intention. It’s a complicated issue and they are getting a rough deal. Not their fault. I’ve struck out the offending line.
This is part of Googles strategy. Ever since the Chromium engine took off enough and everyone else fell behind they began introducing more and more changes that merely benefits them, with less public debate or proper communication (or even adherence to common standards). Last thing I remember, aside of manifest v3, was them killing off JPEG XL as it was a competitor to webp and webm (which they control). JPEG XL was actively worked on and would’ve probably turned out better before they killed it without any previous notice.
Given Googles dominant market position, their influence and everyone wanting to cut corners wherever possible sometimes Firefox support is just ignored.
tl;dr It’s not Firefox’ fault. It’s Google’s sabotage.
Ah I see, it sounds like I’m saying it’s Firefox fault. No I definitely agree, chromium is the largest market share, and gets the most support, and doesn’t always follow standards, so some websites will have compatibility issues if they don’t specifically focus on Firefox support.
It’s just a sucky situation.
Uhh, that doesn’t seem normal at all. Is this a default config? Any extensions in use?
Fresh install of Windows 10, fresh install of Firefox, fresh install of Dropbox.
I was trying to log into Dropbox to authenticate the app, but every time I got to the part where I had to enter my 2fa it would say it was expired. I grew concerned that I was hacked and it was changed, but trying it on my old computer it worked fine.
Then I said fine, I had accidentally paired my Dropbox account with my Google account years ago, so I guess I’ll use that. So I logged into Google, and then clicked sign in with my Google account, and I got stuck in a loop where the page was refreshing everything few seconds.
The page would load, it would say “signing you in with your Google account”, then it would say at the top in red letters something like “sorry, you haven’t signed in recently enough to do that, please log in”, and the entire page would refresh and start the loop over, “signing you in with your Google account” etc etc. I left it go through several cycles, it was never gonna work.
It was about then that I guessed that Firefox might be the problem, and it was 🤷♂️
The only non standard thing about my config, is that Windows is inside of a VM. That could very well be it too? But edge was also in that same VM, and it worked. I only used edge because I’m trying to keep the VM light, so I didn’t install chrome for a one off thing.
I don’t know why I got down voted in my earlier comment, I’m not pooping on Firefox. I honestly want it to work, and am still going to use it. But the facts are facts, I literally just ran into this issue yesterday 🤷♂️
The 2FA thing sounds like it’s all on the Dropbox side if you are just entering a code you got from an authenticator app. The Google login issue may be a real issue – did the Google login specifically work on another browser?
That’s what I ended up doing. It was a weird conversation though, telling him that if it seemed like some website wasn’t working, try it on chrome and it just might work
You’re awesome!
You could leverage Kitbogas software in relation to scam/sketchy download protection.
Paid and closed source with a proprietary license.
Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an “Acceptable ad standard”? Like, maybe even something within web specs?
A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We’ve had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn’t pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.
That is…perhaps a vain hope though. It’s just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.
You mean like https://acceptableads.com/ which is only supported so far by Adblock Plus (and its parent company)?
The problem is until there is some kind of penalty for being too annoying or too resource consuming, it will always be a race to the bottom with more, worse ads. As people add ad blockers to their browsers, the user pool that isn’t running them begins to dry up and more ads are needed to keep the same revenue. This results in even more people blocking them.
Two of the things I had hope for on the privacy side was Mozilla’s Privacy-Preserving Attribution for ad attribution and Google’s Privacy Sandbox collection of features for targeting like the Topics API. Both would have been better for privacy than the current system of granular, individual user tracking across sites.
If those two get wide enough adoption, regulation could be put in place to limit the old methods as there would be a better replacement available without killing the whole current ad supported economy of most sites. I get that strictly speaking from a privacy perspective ‘more anonymous/private tracking’ < ‘no tracking’ but I really don’t want perfect to be the enemy of better.
Acceptable Ads is bullshit on many levels:
- It’s made by an ad company
- The same ad company runs multiple popular ad blockers (including AdBlock Plus)
- There are no standards on privacy invasion
uBlock Origin, or at least uBlock Origin Lite on Chromium-like browsers, are must-haves.
The best browser you can set up for a family member, IMO, is Firefox. Disable Telemetry (which should rid them of Mozilla’s own ad scheme too), install uBlock Origin, remind them to never call or trust any other tech support people who reach out to them, and maybe walk them through some scam baiting videos.
I’m still evaluating which Chrome-likes are best at actual ad blocking, and the landscape is grim.
Google would never push this because it would cost them money in the short term, eg, next quarter.
They can’t have that.
Nooooo, but MV3 is all about security!
This is how I know this is bullshit. I was reading the article and thinking "So, let me get this straight. The ads aren’t the security risk. It’s the ad blockers!"
Sure. Pull the other one.
I think you mean cue, not queue.
Yep thanks
so what you’re saying is; this will bring old-school computer repair shops back? i’m sort of in favor of that 😂
Honestly I’d say the Internet isn’t safe, and it’s because of Google, fuck you Google. It’s not just the wine I’ve been drinking, it’s true dammit.
You can make a windows registry change to have Chrome let you keep using uBlock Origin, with the V2 manifest. It will buy you six more months, basically the enterprise support period.
There was a handy shortcut created by the Security Now podcast you can use as a one-click file to update the policy. The show notes also give a more detailed breakdown of what’s going on.
The relevant section in the notes is page 10. The link to the file is page 12. https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-995-notes.pdf
Or just use Firefox and not deal with that.
Opera GX has promised to keep MV2 in their code. So I’ll just keep using that until I see something different. The other thing is that Opera GX has built in ad-blocker which is pretty much on par with third parties.
Firefox is not the “great browser” you think it is. It has had its fair share of fuckups and failures over the years, like laxed security certificate updates leaving users in limbo.
Google didn’t come and just out do Firefox. It was the other way around, firefox fucked themselves with poor management and failure after failure, and people left. Chrome was the new boy in town, and that is why firefox is where it is today.
Also, I would never use firefox, if I do need an alternative browser renderer, I use WATERFOX which is far more privacy compliant than firefix ever has been.
brave i think has that too which is a controversial browser as well waterfox is a great browser tho.
here are the reasons you shouldnt use opera or even operagx btw: https://rentry.co/operagx and braveHoly fuck, I knew about Brave, but not Opera… I’m glad I never even tried it.
Yw dude :)
Opera GX has promised to keep MV2 in their code. So I’ll just keep using that until I see something different. The other thing is that Opera GX has built in ad-blocker which is pretty much on par with third parties.
I couldn’t find a source for either of these claims. Can you help me out?
Doesn’t opera gx have horrible privacy issues?
yeah but it’s GAMER so it’s okay
It kills the full version of uBlock but there is a lite version that has fewer functions as well.
For now. And Google super mega promises to never rug pull that one.
Oh great. Back to sucking Google’s teat for me then!
Can we ban bot-posted articles with incomplete body text?
Seriously. We don’t need bot bullshit on Lemmy.
This is the start of the slide for Reddit is just going to be worse here because there are fewer controls to actually detect and do something about bots.
Who’s a bot?
Explain your methodology for posting this post, including any edits made to the original post.
What are you a captcha?
I wear many hats. You failed, BTW.
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It blows my mind that there are major companies that are actively, and very publicly- working their asses off to undermine the interests of their own customer base. And not only are they still are enabled to exist- they’re profits are constantly growing. Which means, despite their nefarious and intrusive updates to their services…. People are eating it up!
Nothing will change until people do the work to make that change.
Take YouTube for example:
They have screwed people over time and again. From their content creators, to those that enjoy watching them. Yet- those that hate it so much would seemingly never organize themselves to boycott their services on a level that will ever hurt them.
So they continue to do it unstopped.
Nothing changes until something changes. It isn’t ever easy, but if you want it to happen badly enough, it is always worth it.
All it takes is for someone to stand up and take the reins!
(I cannot be that person as I have ADHD and will probably forget that I wrote this come later this afternoon)
Well said. Also maybe you forgot you wrote the comment by the afternoon, but it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to finally research more into adhd for better managing it, so thanks!
Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?
This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.
Sooo… those that buy ads you mean.
Google is an advertising company. Vertical integration ftw?
You’re correct, but your argument is bad. I also paid $0 for Linux.
And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.
Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.
lol. Obligatory “you guys use chromium?”
For interface unity I use Voyager in Chrome’s web app functionality, it’s nice to have the same interface. The last multi platform Lemmy app was Liftoff which was really nice but it’s dead.
Lemmy in a tab in Firefox, no matter the front end is so… I want the sleek experience dang it!
Firefox, give web app functionality on desktop!
What date is is getting rid of mv2? Read the article couldn’t find a date
We will now [Oct 9] begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.
So there is no single date for normal users, but June 2025 is fixed for enterprise (and expected date for Brave, Vivaldi)
is ungoogled chromium affected i use that as a secondary browser for some extensions
Yes, by default every Chromium browser is affected. It is just a matter of
- whether they want to extend it to the enterprise time (which Edge and Opera won’t do IIRC)
- whether they’d try to keep it working after enterprise time (maybe Brave and Vivaldi, but it could take a lot of effort)
- whether they even have an alternative place to download extensions from if CWS takes MV2 extensions down (Brave has some workaround for few extensions, not sure about others)
Maybe there will be some devs working on Ungoogled Chromium to keep the support, but they also have to think where users would even get the extensions from.
Ohh okay I wanted to try bromite on pc bcs it has a inbuilt adblocker but it broke some my extensions
After i uninstalled chrome some time ago, i noticed it had been slowing down my entire system even when its not on. There is nothing of worth in using it or any other browser derived from it.
Hardened Firefox, here I come.
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For people who want to keep using Chrome for whatever reason, remember to disable auto-update.
Never updating your browser again is a pretty bad idea when it comes to security
You can always keep Chromium installed for the odd site that doesn’t work in Firefox (my daily driver). I do web development and test in every browser and I almost never encounter sites or features that don’t work in FF. The only one I can recall is something in the Azure Portal, probably because Microsoft wants you using Edge.
Typically, Safari is the laggard and any developer worth their salt would make sure their site works on iPad and iPhone. When a new web standard is released, usually Chromium supports it first but even then, not always. And web developers usually don’t use features that aren’t implemented across the board yet. I know I go to caniuse.com before I use something fresh out the oven.
If a site requires chrome, it doesn’t require me. If I need it for work, I’ll use Edge instead.
but edge is based on chromium???
Finally made the switch to Firefox just 2 days ago. Great so far.
be sure to check out the extensions, there’s several that are game changers.
What are some of the game changing extensions?
Camelizer, will give you price history for anything on amazon.
Vimium. Allows you to use your keyboard to navigate instead of needing to always reach for the mouse.
probably different for everyone, for me i use Adblocker Ultimate Ublock Origin Enhancer for Youtube DeArrow Stylebot Buster Context play/pause
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You used a comma once. You could have used it again …
Looking at the source of the comment, OP only hit enter once per extension name they entered, and that’s why they’re showing up as if they’re one long run-on sentence. @Num10ck@lemmy.world probably didn’t know that you have to double enter for things to show up on separate lines.
I went ahead and found links for all of them, for anyone curious to check em out. I don’t personally know any of them, besides uBlock and Stylebot:
thanks Riot, it looked fine in Voyager when i was creating it. hitting enter once for carriage return has been correct for a century, whats with the double enter system?
As far as I know, that’s just always how it’s been for markdown, which is what Lemmy uses. So in order to be sure that your comment looks the way you want it to, it’s a good idea to use the Preview function, which Voyager thankfully also has under the 3 dots menu in the lower right.
@Mr_Blott@feddit.uk also mentioned that you can put two spaces at the end of each word, and then it’ll count the one enter as a proper line break.
Like this. You can also do as I did, and just put a dash in front of everything, and then it’ll turn into an unordered list.
Oh thanks! Dearrow looks interesting
New tab tools.
You can even do a trick to make it your home tab
For me, it was multi-account containers. All Meta properties open in their own independent, sandboxed tabs now. Xwitter opens in a different independent, sandboxed tab. It makes their tracking cookies useless, plus it also lets you be logged into the same service with multiple accounts simultaneously.
Ad nauseum
Underrated
We’ll, uBlock 😎
Listen here, you little shit
Listen here, you little shit
Libredirect
“I don’t care about cookies” although it does occasionally break some websites
No, HVEC / H.265 codec support so no modern 4K security camera or plex/jellyfin etc high quality video support.
Jellyfin
Use the desktop client or jellyfin-mpv-shim and you’ll get HEVC support and superior image quality.
plex/jellyfin etc high quality video support
H265 isn’t the only option there. AV1 is great and fully supported by Jellyfin (and I imagine Plex?)
H.265 is the defecto standard on Security cameras, and I am not going to migrate content to AV1 that is already in H.265.
Jellyfin can handle the transcoding to AV1 where needed. Albeit that’s a bit less ideal than direct play as you need the hardware to transcode.
Not spending hundreds to upgrade my server to support 4K to 4K transcoding. Even accelerated on a VERY recent CPU or GPU Encoding in AV1 is costly while at the same time decoding H.265.
Again Essentially every major browser supports HVEC now, other than Firefox.
If it’s a personal machine in which you have a choice on browser why not just use one of the native Jellyfin apps?
major browser supports HVEC now, other than Firefox.
Every other major browser is an overcommercialized pile of crap (or built atop the same) that can afford to pay for the licenses to use HEVC or has no qualms shipping proprietary code with their software that they don’t control.
Also apparently on Windows you can enable experimental HEVC hardware decoding support. You’ll need to install “HEVC Video Extensions” (from Microsoft themselves) ($0.99) in the Windows App Store and toggle “media.wmf.hevc.enabled” in about:config.
Use VLC to view the video feed for your cams, better experience overall for that
Not when you are using an NVR with scrubbing and everything in the web UI. https://frigate.video/
All in all it would be an inconvenient workaround for something that already works seamlessly across Safari, Edge, Chrome etc.
damn dude, all you do is bitch. maybe get a different camera setup.
Na man I have modern 4k cameras, I need a modern browser… They have literally build chipsets around this and many standards call for h.264 or h.265. That isn’t changing.
Mozilla decided over 8 years ago not to support HVEC because of patents…
How is giving a sober and straightforward explanation of why he can’t use Firefox “bitching”? The simple fact is “switch to Firefox” isn’t a solution for everyone in every case. Burying your head in the sand about that benefits nobody.
According to caniuse.com, it works now in the Nightly builds and can be enabled in other builds via the
media.wmf.hevc.enabledpref inabout:config.I use Firefox Dev Edition and I think it’s enabled there. But either way, you can enable it on stable.
Night, windows only, and needs to be enabled with about: config… ie it almost has some support maybe. Also doesn’t work via webrtc so it doesn’t actually help me with the viewing the security cam feeds.
champagne problems.
Core web app compatibility vs … “enhanced” ad blocking. MS teams and some other business tools also don’t support Firefox but work fine in Chrome and Safari.
It is something the Firefox team needs to work on again. I used Firefox from when it was released until Chrome came out and mopped the floor with it. At the time Firefox became the bloated beast and went through a reset.
Unfortunately trying to have a firm stance on not implementing HVEC when they no longer had the largest market share was a bad move and they seem to be slowly back tracking on that.
MS Teams not working as well in Firefox is a “we want you using Edge or Chrome” Microsoft issue, not a Firefox issue.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of enterprise-sector MS websites that have went from works fine on Firefox to completely broken on anything but Chrome and Edge very quickly after Edge became Chrome with a lick of paint.
I work in IT I am well aware.
looks like the bigger issue is hvec itself. Also the support is extremely spotty with all the other browsers as well, with it still only having limited support in Chrome as well depending on your hardware.
Or just use av1 instead. I’ve literally never run into this as an issue before lol.
Probably no ads on your self-hosted frigate/jellyfin pages though, so you can just keep using chrome for that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Honest question here, since chromium (vs chrome) is open source, can someone not fork an older version, or remove the new code blocking ublock?
I mean i assume it cant be done, but i dont know why
I don’t know why either. What I do know is that most Chromium browsers that are not Chrome have ad-blocking built into the browser itself using the same strategies as uBo but not reliant on Mv2 or Mv3 because they’re not extensions.
It can be done, but then whoever forks that will need to stay on top of keeping that fork up to date with other changes in the original chromium, and that gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and more changes are made to the same or related parts of the codebase.
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And you have to know that if anyone actually tried, they would dedicate their infinite resources to making that as difficult as humanly possible.
Google: We changed a color
Fork Developer: they changed a color and it caused 50,000 breaking changes that a diff tool can’t handle automatically wtf.
Google: sorry wrong color here’s a new one
Fork developer: another 100,000 breaking changes that a diff can’t handle?!?!
Also all the ad blocking extensions would have to continue maintaining forks of their own projects for increasingly obscure manifest V2 Chromium browsers.
