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Google Chrome will limit ad blockers starting June 2024 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by DolphinMath@slrpnk.net to c/technology@beehaw.org

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The "Manifest V3" rollout is back after letting tensions cool for a year.

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[-] ptz@dubvee.org 97 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Google's sales pitch for Manifest V3 is that, by limiting extensions, the browser can be lighter on resources, and Google can protect your privacy from extension developers.

Emphases mine. Funny, I use extensions to protect my privacy from Google.

Chromium needs to be fully divested from Google. End of story. There's too much conflict of interest in letting the world's largest advertising company have this much control over one of the two major browsers. If you don't see the problem with that, imagine if Taco Bell was also the world's largest producer of anti-diarrhea medicine.

[-] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 13 points 7 months ago

The second being Safari, right?

Right?

…right…

[-] anlumo@feddit.de 36 points 7 months ago

As a web developer, Safari needs to either die in a fire or be transferred to a company that actually cares. It’s more than half a decade behind everybody else.

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 20 points 7 months ago

Tell me about it. Every time I implement some new thing in my app:

Firefox/Chrome: You cast HTML5 video. Critical hit!

Safari: Your spell fizzles....

[-] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

... Safari added support for HTML5 video in 2009. Chrome did not even exist yet in 2009.

In fact, Safari was the first to support it. At the time you had to use Flash to deliver video in every other browser.

Firefox added a half assed implementation of the video tag shortly after Safari but it wasn't fully supported until 2013 according to caniuse.com. In fact FireFox was the last browser to fully support HTML5 video.

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Not looking to start a flame war here, but if that's the case, then Apple's had even longer to get it right. lol. I implemented my video containers using the MDN specs which worked for both FF and Chrom(e/ium) as-is. Had to read through Apple-specific specs to figure out why Safari wouldn't render them (not autoplay but render at all).

While it's not quite "IE all over again", it's in the ballpark where I have to make special concessions to support a specific browser that is only offered on one company's platform. History may not be repeating, but it's certainly rhyming.

[-] abhibeckert@beehaw.org 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Ah - that's got nothing to do with supported features. Apple has always been a major backer of web based video distribution - a lot of the tech (from video formats to delivery platforms like HTTP Live Streaming to the tag were partially or even fully invented by Apple.

Your video wasn't working because the by default Safari assumes (correctly) that most video on the web is an ad. Safari generally only tolerates text/image ads* and to get video to work, you need to make it clear to Safari that the video is a real video the user wants to see.

Safari also silently blocks something like 99% of cookies... only cookies that behave like login/session/etc cookies are allowed. That's a lot more problematic than blocking video... since there's often just no way around it.

(* even text/image ads are barely tolerated... as far as I know, Safari is the only major browser that includes explicit support for ad blockers - Chrome/FireFox/etc allow extensions to arbitrarily manipulate the page, but safari actually has an ad blocking API - though they call it "content blocking").

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[-] anlumo@feddit.de 4 points 7 months ago

It also took 6 years longer than everybody else to support WebGL2, and it's the only browser without a working WebGPU implementation. It also has no timeline for wasm-gc, while Chrome already ships with it default enabled and Firefox will ship with it on the next release.

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[-] vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 7 months ago

Firefox gang rise up!

[-] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 7 points 7 months ago

sad WebKit noises

[-] Veraxus@kbin.social 5 points 7 months ago

I really like Orion, which is based on WebKit... but it's Mac only. 😢

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[-] Veraxus@kbin.social 90 points 7 months ago

Remember, Firefox is great and has no dependency on upstream Google code.

Use Firefox.

[-] soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Preaching to the wrong crowd there buddy, you want to be convincing the exact type of person who isn't on Lemmy

[-] kratoz29@lemm.ee 5 points 7 months ago

I'm pretty sure ad experience will move some masses, I liked Chrome because Ublock works fine there, it has great extensions support and the best compatibility with the websites, but if you remove the adblocker support I would have moved (if I hadn't already) in a heartbeat

[-] PeWu@lemmy.ml 13 points 7 months ago

The one and only, my beloved 🔥🦊

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 months ago

Firefox is my daily, but the fact I have to fire up a chromium browser to use web serial or midi is an endless annoyance. Mozilla won’t add that functionality as they see it as a security risk.

[-] jtk@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 7 months ago

? I'm quite positive I've used MIDI in Firefox on hooktheory.

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[-] marco@beehaw.org 5 points 7 months ago

For a while I was a bit confused, because Mozilla said they would also implement V3 Manifest ...

by implementing Manifest V3 on its own terms, Mozilla saves developers who are switching to the new platform from having to support two different versions of their extensions (for Google Chrome and Firefox) at the same time. On the other hand, it allows content-blocking extensions that were originally built using the less restrictive Manifest V2 to continue working at full tilt.

https://adguard.com/en/blog/firefox-manifestv3-chrome-adblocking.html

[-] DeForrest_McCoy@beehaw.org 58 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You have a choice A. Be a Chad who Dumps Chrome and chromium based browsers . or B. remain a whiny loser who has to deal with ads.

[-] glennglog22@kbin.social 8 points 7 months ago

Firefox has been fantastic for me.

[-] Reddit_Is_Trash@reddthat.com 4 points 7 months ago

Even without all this ad blocker bs from Google, I like Firefox a lot better than the chrome based browser I used before, opera.

It's a lot cleaner and feels faster

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[-] ulkesh@beehaw.org 37 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Google can go fuck themselves for this. The moment their stupid Manifest v3 bullshit came to light, I quickly migrated to Firefox and haven’t looked back.

[-] tesseract@beehaw.org 7 points 7 months ago

As someone who never switched to chrome in the first place, it's fun to watch all the smoke and fire now.

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[-] villasv@beehaw.org 30 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Firefox is just the only decent option. And while at it, use Piped or Invidious while you still can, people!

[-] DJDarren@thelemmy.club 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I tried using Invidious, but found that it misses quite a lot of new posts in my subscriptions. So in the end I ~ahem~ flew to Ukraine to take advantage of family Premium for around £3 a month.

Because honestly, I have no real problem paying for Premium, but I massively object to paying £20 A MONTH to watch (mostly) amateur content that YouTube aren’t actually paying anyone to commission. How is Disney+ almost half the damn cost of a YT Premium family plan? Because Google are money-grubbing cunts, that’s how.

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[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 points 7 months ago

I'd recommend archiving all of the channels you can from Youtube, it's clear they don't want our traffic at all.

[-] Alto@kbin.social 8 points 7 months ago

I mean, yeah. They absolutely don't want to be spending bandwidth on those of us who use adblockers. What I don't think a lot of people realize is that Google is perfectly happy with the people who are essentially never served an ad not using the service anymore. Saves them money.

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[-] ericjmorey@beehaw.org 17 points 7 months ago

Mozilla is implementing Manifest V3. They plan to implement it slightly different than Chrome: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/

They have published a guide for extension developers: https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/manifest-v3-migration-guide/

More background on Manifest V3:

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2019/07/googles-plans-chrome-extensions-wont-really-help-security

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/11/manifest-v3-open-web-politics-sheeps-clothing

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening

https://www.eff.org/am/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

[-] myofficialaccount@feddit.de 29 points 7 months ago

Relevant part from the blog post:

What are we doing differently in Firefox? WebRequest

One of the most controversial changes of Chrome’s MV3 approach is the removal of blocking WebRequest, which provides a level of power and flexibility that is critical to enabling advanced privacy and content blocking features. Unfortunately, that power has also been used to harm users in a variety of ways. Chrome’s solution in MV3 was to define a more narrowly scoped API (declarativeNetRequest) as a replacement. However, this will limit the capabilities of certain types of privacy extensions without adequate replacement.

Mozilla will maintain support for blocking WebRequest in MV3. To maximize compatibility with other browsers, we will also ship support for declarativeNetRequest. We will continue to work with content blockers and other key consumers of this API to identify current and future alternatives where appropriate. Content blocking is one of the most important use cases for extensions, and we are committed to ensuring that Firefox users have access to the best privacy tools available.

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 months ago

i wish mozilla would just drop webextensions and webmanifest. webextensions are terrible. :/

[-] DolphinMath@slrpnk.net 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

friends dont let friends use google chrome

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

for those who haven't switched to firefox, might i recommend:

https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher - which adds a chrome like profile switcher to your firefox toolbars

and

https://github.com/muckSponge/MaterialFox - which changes the look of firefox to chrome's new 2023 material design refresh

edit: sorry! see the reply below i had the wrong repo for the updated materialfox. it's actually: https://github.com/edelvarden/material-fox-updated

[-] kib48@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago

MaterialFox hasn't been updated in a very long time, unless you're talking about a fork and just copied the wrong link?

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 7 months ago

sorry!

i remembered it was a fork that i saw which had the material refresh and i went back and sure enough it was further down in my starred repositories!

the correct link is: https://github.com/edelvarden/material-fox-updated

for reference i found it through: https://old.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/17a9a6l/implemented_chrome_refresh_2023_redesign_in/

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[-] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 11 points 7 months ago

Enterprise users with the "ExtensionManifestV2Availability" policy turned on will get an extra year of Manifest V2 compatibility.

Who are these enterprise users 🤨 🤔...

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 9 points 7 months ago

Any way of migrating chrome passwords to other password managers? And any good free password managers? That's what's keeping me from switching

[-] DolphinMath@slrpnk.net 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Bitwarden has a great free tier, it’s open source, and cross platform. I highly recommend it!

https://bitwarden.com/help/import-from-chrome/

If you want something that’s not cloud focused, check out KeepassXC too!

[-] xenspidey@lemmy.zip 8 points 7 months ago

Another vote for bitwarden, mobile apps are great as well. If you are so inclined, it can be self-hosted if you want to retain full control

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 7 months ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

A year later, Google is restarting the phase-out schedule, and while it has changed some things, Chrome will eventually be home to inferior filtering extensions.

Google's blog post says the plan to kill Manifest V2, the current format for Chrome extensions, is back on starting June 2024.

The company says: "We expect it will take at least a month to observe and stabilize the changes in pre-stable before expanding the rollout to stable channel Chrome, where it will also gradually roll out over time.

On the high end now for me, Slack is drinking 500MB, while a single Google Chat tab, created by this company that is so concerned about performance, is at 1.5GB of memory usage.

Google is adding a completely arbitrary limit on how many "rules" content filtering add-ons can include, which are needed to keep up with the nearly infinite ad-serving sites that are out there (by the way, Ars Technica subscriptions give you an ad-free reading experience and make a great holiday gift!).

Mozilla's blog post on the subject promises "Firefox’s implementation of Manifest V3 ensures users can access the most effective privacy tools available like uBlock Origin and other content-blocking and privacy-preserving extensions."

Saved 72% of original text.

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