Someone ought to build a browser that is designed from the ground up to treat the web for what it is: the most hostile ecosystem on the planet.
uBlock/uMatrix functionality should be built into the core. Every domain and PSF should be sandboxed to its own profile. User agents and many js queries should return standard responses. Forcing display of video controls should be trivial. Manipulating pages to show/hide elements and customize feeds should be trivial. Right clicking to download any asset should just work.
And so, so much more.
The browser is my agent, not your mole.
tbeseda 4 minutes ago [-]
Vivaldi (not affiliated) kinda aims to do this. At least they build the blocker in. It uses the Blink engine, too. I don't think this move by Google will adversely affect Vivaldi in the same way it does Chrome.
throwatdem12311 31 minutes ago [-]
Firefox is the only sane option. It’s not perfect but it’s better than the alternatives.
Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking.
Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.
rpdillon 3 minutes ago [-]
Brave has an interesting approach where they have added core support for four key MV2 extensions to the core of the browser engine, bypassing MV3 entirely.
> Update: As of v1.81, we host the following Manifest V2 (MV2) extensions on Brave’s backend: AdGuard, uBO, uMatrix, NoScript. These extensions operate independently from the equivalent versions that are currently present on the Chrome Web Store, and have to be downloaded separately. Users can download and enable these 4 extensions from the brave://settings/extensions/v2 page.
As you alluded to, many Chromium forks (notable exception is Ungoogled) are backed by tech companies. There's already plenty of intentional changes they maintain in their forks, like Privacy Sandbox,[0] so I don't think preserving support for v2 is a large hurdle for them.
And sadly, Firefox on iOS is the only browser that doesn't have a the possibility to run an Adblocker. Safari can run uBlock Origin. Brave had one built-in. Hell, even Edge has Adblock Plus.
Does Mozilla have a contract with Google to not build one in as part of the search contract?
9999gold 6 minutes ago [-]
They allow extensions on the Android version. But yeah, on iOS I had to switch to Orion. It seems FF for iOS doesn’t get much attention.
aleqs 9 minutes ago [-]
Firefox on Android supports ublock, not sure why it wouldn't support it on iOS
qnleigh 1 minutes ago [-]
Naive question: will it not be possible for ad blockers to upgrade to ManifestV3? Is there something about it that makes ad blocking much harder. What does Manifest actually do?
ramijames 37 minutes ago [-]
Use Firefox. It's an excellent browser and needs your support.
whywhywhywhy 1 minutes ago [-]
If you look at the spending of the Mozilla Foundation they most certainly do not need our support they need to spend their resources on their browser instead of frivolities.
tbeseda 4 minutes ago [-]
Firefox might need my support, but Mozilla does not.
esskay 26 minutes ago [-]
Just a shame its a tiny bit slower than chromium based browsers still (the ui, not the web page rendering), and you dont have to take my word for it, a web search for something like 'firefox sluggish compared to chrome' will back this up too as I've tried switching multiple times but always end up back on a chromium variant because the firefox ui just doesn't feel like an upgrade.
Personally I've just given up trying with firefox and I now put up with brave - its certainly not perfect but at least the ad blocker isnt about to break.
aleksandrm 23 minutes ago [-]
Not in my experience. Never had issues with FF feeling sluggish at all.
dawnerd 21 minutes ago [-]
Only place I feel it slow is on Google Meet and clickup.
sheept 13 minutes ago [-]
Google Meet is definitely not going to perform better outside Chrome since based on recent web APIs proposed by Chrome (e.g. document PIP[0], element capture[1]), the Chrome team has shown they'll change the browser specifically to improve the UX of Google Meet.
tiny bit slower, all things being equal, maybe. For one, who cares? No one can see tenth of a millisecond speed difference. Second, without a proper ad blocker, rendering speed is meaningless, because all the power will be used to render garbage you never wanted to see in the first place.
toomuchtodo 20 minutes ago [-]
The UX aesthetically could use more polish, but agree it is an excellent browser replacement for Chrome.
dainank 4 minutes ago [-]
The Ladybird browser could potentially be a nice alternative in the future: https://ladybird.org/
whitepoplar 28 minutes ago [-]
A lot of people have been very vocal about this. I use uBlock Origin Lite and haven't noticed a difference between it and uBlock Origin. Am I missing something?
GeekyBear 4 minutes ago [-]
> For uBlock Origin users on Chrome, there’s uBlock Origin Lite. However, the Lite version “allows some tracking, its blocklist is a fraction of what the original blocked, and it can't perform the dynamic filtering that made the original effective,”
+1, Lite is mostly fine. The main difference seems to be that YouTube videos sometimes start a couple seconds late. Not quite annoying enough yet to switch browsers (tbh though, Firefox is totally fine these days, main downside for me is that the WebGPU implementation lags quite a bit behind Chrome and Safari).
Legend2440 22 minutes ago [-]
Same. I'm still not seeing ads.
I've realized over time that people on the internet love finding things to be mad about, because raging against evil is fun. They'll make up an injustice if they can't find one today.
Forgeties79 13 minutes ago [-]
They’re not “making up an injustice.” Google is actively trying to stop ad blocking, this is a fact. You can argue whether or not it’s as severe as some people make it sound or whether people should be upset at all (I think we should be), but let’s not act like this was made up whole cloth.
OsrsNeedsf2P 20 minutes ago [-]
Origin Lite _can_ be beat by advertisers rotating the URLs they serve ads from. That doesn't mean advertisers are actively bypassing Lite, but they could
lemagedurage 9 minutes ago [-]
Yes, and this might take some years to catch on.
OTOH it's not out of the question that some open source non-extension Chrome mod emerges that will then block those kinds of ads. Brave is already shipping this anyway.
skeeter2020 20 minutes ago [-]
it's not nearly as complete: You only get filter list updates when the extension updates, there's no custom element picker, no per-site switches, no strict-site blocking, no dynamic filtering and you can't import block lists. It's better than nothing (which is pretty much unbearable IME) but not as good.
kgwxd 14 minutes ago [-]
Hiding elements on the page should be the last goal. A lot of the traffic uBO-proper blocks, has nothing to do with what you see. "Ad blocker" is a lame name, it's not even the important part.
colechristensen 14 minutes ago [-]
Yup, unless you're really intense about blocking ads, uBlock Origin Lite is at worst a minor loss in quality most people wouldn't notice.
"Closing the door" on ad blockers is quite an exaggeration.
catlikesshrimp 15 minutes ago [-]
This is HN. The topic has been discussed so many times already. Please read the developer's post about it.
My understanding is they're doing this in the name of security, though it obviously has some benefit to ads. this policy more closely aligns with what Safari does today. And it prevents add-ons from scraping information since they have to put in the block list ahead of time.
I've been using manifest v3 version of Adblock and it's worked just fine for me. But obviously is not perfect, but it fell into more towards security and privacy of the user against malicious extensions.
9dev 3 minutes ago [-]
I primarily use Safari, and only switch to Chrome if a site misbehaves; every time I do so, I'm aghast by the ads and popups I suddenly get everywhere - despite having uBlock installed. I refuse to take that as an acceptable state of browsing the internet.
summarybot 4 minutes ago [-]
Eh, Google controls the add-ons marketplace though. They control what add-ons are allowed, and they could even audit the add-ons for malicious code/behavior. Google, being a company that collects 75% of its revenue from ads, is being disingenuous by claiming this is a security-centered position. If security were the priority then the add-ons themselves should be inspected thoroughly, that much is obvious.
neves 42 minutes ago [-]
Will Brave, which is based in Chromium, still block ads? Since they are changing Chromium, I don't think so.
rpdillon 40 seconds ago [-]
I mentioned this above, but Brave both includes its own ad blocking engine and has also added support for the MV2 version of UBo to the core engine.
Pretty sure Brave shields isn't based on an extension API so it shouldn't be affected.
Have people actually noticed worse performance from uBlock Origin lite?
This article isn't nuanced enough. Ad blockers will continue to work.
everdrive 32 minutes ago [-]
I'm still confused about what makes uBlock Origin Lite less powerful than uBlock Origin. I don't use it or Chrome in any case, but I would prefer to understand the difference.
"Chrome is looking to permanently drop MV2 extension" really doesn't tell a general audience what is happening here. No wonder it gained little notice.
bcye 37 minutes ago [-]
Neither does MV3 close the door on ad blockers. This title seems like gigantic clickbait.
neves 42 minutes ago [-]
The current title is a lot better.
rafram 36 minutes ago [-]
You mean the title of this post? It's much worse, in my opinion - plenty of strong ad blockers run on MV3. Even the developer of uBlock Origin (Lite) seems to have conceded that the MV3 approach is less resource intensive and didn't require sacrificing any of the features that 99.9% of users use.
deafpolygon 13 minutes ago [-]
Do you have a source for this ?
Rendered at 15:29:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
uBlock/uMatrix functionality should be built into the core. Every domain and PSF should be sandboxed to its own profile. User agents and many js queries should return standard responses. Forcing display of video controls should be trivial. Manipulating pages to show/hide elements and customize feeds should be trivial. Right clicking to download any asset should just work.
And so, so much more.
The browser is my agent, not your mole.
Chromium forks are at the mercy of Google doing everything they can to stop ad blocking.
Firefox forks are often maintain by just “some dude”. If they decide they don’t want to maintain it anymore, it’s done. If everyone switches to a fork and then Firefox goes away because nobody is using the browser anymore, it’s done.
> Update: As of v1.81, we host the following Manifest V2 (MV2) extensions on Brave’s backend: AdGuard, uBO, uMatrix, NoScript. These extensions operate independently from the equivalent versions that are currently present on the Chrome Web Store, and have to be downloaded separately. Users can download and enable these 4 extensions from the brave://settings/extensions/v2 page.
https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
[0]: https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/10742158329613-W...
Does Mozilla have a contract with Google to not build one in as part of the search contract?
Personally I've just given up trying with firefox and I now put up with brave - its certainly not perfect but at least the ad blocker isnt about to break.
[0]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/document-pict...
[1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/web-platform/element-captu...
https://www.pcmag.com/news/googles-next-chrome-update-will-f...
I've realized over time that people on the internet love finding things to be mad about, because raging against evil is fun. They'll make up an injustice if they can't find one today.
OTOH it's not out of the question that some open source non-extension Chrome mod emerges that will then block those kinds of ads. Brave is already shipping this anyway.
"Closing the door" on ad blockers is quite an exaggeration.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
My understanding is they're doing this in the name of security, though it obviously has some benefit to ads. this policy more closely aligns with what Safari does today. And it prevents add-ons from scraping information since they have to put in the block list ahead of time.
I've been using manifest v3 version of Adblock and it's worked just fine for me. But obviously is not perfect, but it fell into more towards security and privacy of the user against malicious extensions.
https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
Have people actually noticed worse performance from uBlock Origin lite?
This article isn't nuanced enough. Ad blockers will continue to work.