Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin phaseout has begun
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/15/24270981/google-chrome-ublock-origin-phaseout-manifest-v3-ad-blockerOpen linkView original on lemmy.world580
Comments179https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/15/24270981/google-chrome-ublock-origin-phaseout-manifest-v3-ad-blockerOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
"Time to switch to uBlock Lite or another ad blocker"
No. Time to switch to Firefox or derivative such as Librewolf.
Unfortunately I'm stuck with Chrome at work so having something like Ublock Lite available is somewhat helpful. I just hope it still blocks youtube ads because they're the worst.
I strongly suspect that is exactly what they're trying to stop.
You can't run
firefox --profile /somewhereor (Windows) Firefox portable?You should be able to bring up
about:profilesin your browser and set up and launch profiles from there.Firefox portable keeps me sane at work. I don’t give a shit about the IT policy of either chrome or edge.
I am running a portable LibreWolf on my work issued, locked-down-with-a-chastity-belt-and-thrown-the-keys-into-the-fires-of-Mount-Doom-in-Mordor laptop with uBlock extension installed.
Try that and see if it works.
clearly not that locked down if they’re allowing an external device access. cute story tho
Did they mention external device access? I only see a mention of portable LibreWolf which I assume is referring to the “can just be ran from a folder dropped anywhere on the filesystem” version of portable, not necessarily that it’s an external device.
This sort of exaggeration is typically used for comedic effect. Sorry for trying to throw a smile on a random person’s face. You must be very fun to hang around at parties.
Contact the admin
I consider browser ab blocking a reasonable accomodation for ADHD and I'm not even joking. I haven't had to ask for this yet but, seriously. Banner ads are extremely distracting.
I think it makes sense
ah you too work for a company that will let you install firefox but no extensions or addons??
fml
We handle a lot of IP so I can't install anything on the PC that isn't pre-approved (like MS Teams). I am able to add certain extensions like Ublock but not others like Keepa (Amazon price tracker).
Can you install Brave? Because that has ad-block built-in.
My company enforces specific add-ons for Firefox so I installed and use LibreWolf which our admins don’t lock down - only Chrome and Firefox. I wanted a browser that I would use separately from my work that didn’t specifically need their add-ons which include traffic sniffing crap. I know that if I want to do any personal browsing and guarantee it’s personal, I should use my own device but I was honestly just annoyed by the additional CPU cycles the security add-ons were using.
it seems to work on youtube so far, but that could also be due to the previous custom filters I installed months ago when yt ramped up their "no adblocker" campaign. UBO still works in the sense that all of the filters and lists you've installed are still there and functioning, you just can't update the extension. I'm still running UBO alongside UBO lite and it's working fine for now (knock on wood) until I can afford a new Windows machine.
when I swapped my laptops, I already had chrome on the newer ones which I'm still using, but when I heard about this ublock origin saga, I started putting all my passwords in protonpass, and customised my Firefox install to my liking, CSS and everything. All ready to switch now, and I'm gonna be thanking my past self profusely for actually choosing to switch instead of vegetating.
Lynx
Brave is actually very good and seems to have a great blocker
ps. their mobile browser has also been great on older phones
Is Brave the one with the built-in crypto scheme and its own ads?
not enabled by default, but if you want to use them, yes
i haven't seen a single ad or been annoyed by any crypto shite so far
I installed Brave earlier this week and that's mostly true. There's some built in stuff that will show by default, notably the toolbar buttons and the notification style alert on the new tab page for one of those things mentioned, but you can just close the notification and remove the toolbar buttons and you're set.
That said, I think it's still in the data monetization market like Alphabet with anonymized tokens, though I don't remember the details.
this is disabled by default, i think that is the BAT system that also uses crypto somehow
i also made a handful of tweaks to tidy up the UI, easily done in the settings
ps. Brave has also built-in P2P and TOR features among other features
actually an interesting browser
Be careful with the Tor features, they allow you to open some onion sites but don't supply the extra anonymity/security of the actual Tor browser.
good point, i think this feature just makes it easier to access TOR domain sites without an extra browser rather than being the anonymity tool that TOR browser is
Yup, it's my backup to Firefox if I need a Chromium browser for whatever reason.
No. Brave has a history of modifying links you click on to add affiliate information. The only time to use Brave is if user agent spoofing for "chrome only" websites doesn't make it work.
ps. i also first started using Brave when certain streaming sites refused to work in Firefox :)
Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/
thanks, but it's a performance/timing/codec issue on an older laptop as the same sites work fine on a much higher spec machine
they appear to have stopped that 4 years ago and apologized for the mistake
Right, but I don't trust them as a result and I don't feel comfortable recommending them or not pointing it out. Meddling with links you click is malware behavior.
they have not acted as malware since correcting this mistake
the VPN was a feature of the software at the time and not enabled unless you signed up but as you point out if software changes its service without explicitly telling users these days it feels bad
according to the minutes of research i did ;-) i got the impression the service was disabled by default. i don't know the tech details otherwise so i don't know if it made the system vulnerable or unstable in any way. i didn't find anything like that.
more to the point is that they should have said that VPN resources were being installed
To add: the CEO got kicked out of Mozilla and switched to crypto after he was caught donating to outlaw gay marriage.
that was before 2008 as far as i can tell, has eich and/or the organisation continued to act homophobicly?
He got caught sending money to a bigoted organization, got in trouble, and then embraced dark money.
Until he makes it right to the LGBTQ+ community and makes his finances public, only a fool or another bigot would give him the benefit of the doubt.
i didn't see any mentions of eich using dark money can you link me to more info? that's interesting
You are being obtuse because you don't mind supporting homophobia but don't want to feel bad about it.
i was just checking to see if you were making things up
Chrome only exists to download Firefox.
Just like how Micro$oft Windows is advertsiting Linux, Google Chrome advertsites Firefox!
LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX
winget install firefoxNo chrome (or edge) needed
You mean ’apt'.
you mean
Fun fact,
aptapparently is an alias tozypperon my openSUSE Leap system.'Yum' could work too.
Your package manager of choice :)
Sad saga, but here we are. I remember when Chrome was new and brought much needed speed and low resource usage to the browsing experience of the day. I even got email from a Chrome engineer once about a bug I mentioned in a forum, asking me for more information.
Google was already an ad company by then so anyone could have looked forward to this inevitability. Some did. Most of us did not.
Chrome has just always been there for some younger people but it will now live in my memory as a fully encapsulated end-to-end enshittification experience that I really should have always expected.
And just like it used to be with Internet Explorer, I am forced to use Chrome at work all day because thats the IT & security approved / enterprise-managed browser.
I, too, switched to Chrome around when they launched due to drastically better performance. But shortly after (a couple years?), I found out Opera had similar performance and had cool other features, so I switched to that. Opera then converted to a Chrome-clone, so I switched to Firefox, which had largely caught up w/ performance by that time.
If you have the option, request that Firefox be added to the supported app list or whatever by your IT team. Tell them you need some Firefox-specific extensions or something for your job.
I don’t really care what’s installed on my work computer, which I use solely for work purposes. Should I?
You're the one using it, so I should think so...
Made me feel better when I said I wish I knew what would come, back in the day when I was installing Chrome for people - and someone here replied “hey we all wish we knew when we did that” 🫂
Imagine having an OS that doesn't come with a proper package manager (and Firefox installed by default, for that matter).
Tell that to the unwashed masses.
Google Chrome's
uBlock Originphaseout has begunMy phaseout of Chrome was complete a long time ago.
I never phased into Chrome
I used it for a while. It honestly was a really good browser for a long time but since everything started going this shit it quickly fell from my good graces.
The only time I even think of missing it is when I have to open a page that is optimized against Firefox on purpose because the developers decided to use some janky Javascript plugin and didn't test.
I'm glad I don't use that piece of shit.
Firefox or nothing.
Been using Firefox for as long as I can remember now. Never had a reason to switch away, and I'm feeling rather vindicated.
There was a period some years ago where Firefox and Chrome were leapfrogging each other: Firefox would get slow and crap so I'd switch, then Chrome would get slow and crap and I'd switch back to FF, and so on. I've been on Chrome for quite a while it seems, until this development with uBO, well for me the internet is unusable without a shitblocker, so that's the end of Chrome. Thankfully FF is up to the job.
I switched to Chrome probably a decade ago, because at the time it was significantly faster. I switched to chromium at some point and ended up back on Firefox when Google's password manager stopped working on every browser except Chrome. Firefox is noticeably faster these days and doesn't crash as often.
Switch to firefox.
Just wait, there will be "features" that are mandatory on most sites, only supported in chrome.
I've dropped websites over less.
then I won't be visiting those sites I guess
I usually use a useragent switcher to bypass.
But the teams website for example opens a Microsoft specific browser api so its annoyingly locked to Edge specifically on mobile.
So download a user agent switcher and set it to show you as using chrome. This is what i do with firefox and i haven’t run across a site that thinks i’m using firefox.
I feel like I have seen this news since forever, I am happily living my life with Firefox... Although the android mobile really needs some love.
Oh man. Once Firefox on Android got extension support, I hopped on that train so hard. No ads on mobile browser? Heck yeah.
It has extensions support for like 6 years at this point. Unless you got some extreme obscure extensions
Huh. I was under the impression that proper extension support (eg ublock origin) only came about recently?
Been working for a lomg time now.
Well then. I'm unsure what news article I read that spurred me to try Firefox on mobile, but that's my recollection of the order of events.
You are correct in the proper extension support part. Until recently FF Android only supported a handful of selected addons made specifically for it.
uBlock Origin however has been one of those for almost a decade now.
I'm sorry you have been suffering ads all this time.
There were a few years when only a handful were supported. Before that it was as open as now, leaving compatibility responsibility to the extension developers.
Well, if my memory serves well, Ublock Origin has been in Firefox mobile for a long time already but I get you.
Although even before I did the switch I rarely saw ads on Google because I have always used DNS ad blocking (whether using my pi-hole or AdAway root version) but yeah Ublock Origin is just so much better.
One thing I would like is to selectively enable extensions in the "custom tab" modal for Firefox.
When I open an article, and it's riddled with js and auto play video, I have to hit "Open in Firefox" to get uBlock to engage.
It would be nice to have the reader mode button in this view as well.
If it helps, you can dig into Androids settings and use Firefox for the default in-app browser for most apps. That's what I did, anyway, and it's been fantastic.
Eh, Firefox on Android works pretty well for me (I actually use Mull). There are a handful of websites that have issues, but many of them also have issues on Vanadium (Chromium on GrapheneOS), so I just use my desktop for those.
What issues are you running into?
Tab management is plain bad, and the UI doesn't feel snappy as, let's say, Cromite or Chrome.
All those are paid off because of the extension ability in Firefox.
Really? Tab management seems largely equivalent to Chrome, and the UI feels totally fine to me. Are you on an older device perhaps? It's a bit slow on my old phone (4 years old), but my new one (Pixel 8) is absolutely fine.
Nah, my device is not high end, but it ships with a SD 865, and 6 GB of RAM.
Have you used Chrome recently? It is just a better experience with Android, except because of the ads and shitty Google's hand lol.
It feels so good to have your grouped tabs always accessible at the bottom and you can quickly switch just by tapping the little icon.
I've used Vanadium (GrapheneOS build of Chrome), which is fine. And I didn't know about that tab grouping feature, that's pretty nice! I tend to only have a few tabs open though, so I just swipe on the URL bar to jump between them, which works acceptably well.
Yeah, many of us hoard a lot of tabs, for the better for worse, but even after some simple web searches you can gather a lot of links quickly, so it is always handy to have a good tab management.
Yup, I regularly get 10+, but I clean them out pretty quickly on my phone and usually leave 1-2 open the rest of the time. My desktop is another story though, I can easily get 100+ on there, especially in the middle of a project.
i like it, tbh I barely use the phone. I need more RAM on it for it to be more useful. It's crazy that even 8GB is not good enough. Dam Samsung bloat. I wish I had a stylus option for Google pixel or something that can take a privacy respecting OS.
The Samsung bloat is real. I have two identical Galaxy Tabs, one with Lineage and one stock, and the software on the stock one is so annoying to go back to after using the Lineage one.
Have you tried to debloat your phone?
And my phaseout of Chrome is complete. My two browsers are now Firefox and Edge. Bit surprised at the latter tbh but it seems reasonably adequate as a secondary browser.
My understanding is that Edge is Chromium and will also eventually be impacted by this.
Opera is also Chromium but they said they are not going to do what Chrome is. So there must still be some flexibility.
Fingers crossed.
Edge isn't really better in any way. It's both Google and Microsoft, like the marriage of awful
Yup same here Firefox for personal use and Edge for work since it deals better with all the MS sites
Between Manifest V3 and the Play Integrity API, Google is really trying hard to kill the open internet and android.
but android is google and google is chrome 😶🌫️
But thankfully Manifest V3 is only relevant to Chromium browsers, and there are other options. The proposed web environment integrity API would be much worse, as they could simply blacklist any browsers they don't like, and deny them access to the most popular websites.
I have always used Firefox on all my devices, except for one: the Chromebook I was forced to buy because of compatibility with my college's test proctoring spyware.
On that device, not only did uBlock Origin quit working the other day, but today Chrome even kept disabling uBlock Lite with the error message that "This extension reloaded itself too frequently". It could be some kind of legitimate bug, but it sure feels a lot like foul play on Google's part.
Stopped using that garbage browser a couple of weeks ago. Hardened Firefox ftw. Just using stock Firefox isn't enough if you're concerned about your privacy on the internet btw. If all you're looking for is an ad free experience tho, then stock Firefox should be enough.
Firefox's future isn't looking good with all that layoffs and lost money. I am very scared that it might go the way of Opera, and then we will trully have nothing left.
There's a crucial difference:
Firefox is open source, Opera isn't.
Librefox, Tor, Mullvad browser... etc. I can never have nothing left.
Those are made on Firefox engine. That is made and maintained by the company Mozilla. Which is experiencing those problems.
It's like those people who say that they don't use chrome because it's shit and breaks privacy, they use edge and brave.
Firefox is a fully open source browser. Whether or not it fails and goes down doesn't really matter, as its source code is out there for anyone to use, and build a browser off of it.
It kinda does matter. It's an enormously complicated project, and it's possible that nobody will be able to be an ultimate fork if needed.
People are dedicated out here.
All of those are still standing on Firefox's shoulders and the actual rendering engine on the browser isn't really trivial thing to build. Sure, they're not going away, and likely Firefox will be around too for quite a while, but the world wide web as we currently know it is changing and Google and Microsoft are few of the bigger players pushing the change.
If you're old enough you'll remember the banners 'Best viewed with on ', and it's not too far off from the future we'll have if the big players get their wishes. Things like google suite, whatever meta is offering and pretty much "the internet" as your Joe Average understands it wants to implement technology where it's not possible to block ads or modify the content you're shown in any other way. It's not too far off from your online banking and other very much real life affecting services start to have boundaries in place where they require certain level of 'security' from your browser and you can bet that things which allow content modifying things, like adblocker, doesn't qualify for the new standards.
On many places it's already illegal to modify or tamper DRM protected content in any ways (does anyone remember libdvdcss?) and the plan is to include similar (more or less) restrictions to the whole world wide web, which would say that we'll have things like fediverse who allow browsers like firefox and 'the rest' like banking, flight/ticket/hotel/whatever booking sites, big news outlets and so on who only allow the 'secure' version of the browser. And that of course has very little to do with actual security, they just want control over your device and what content is fed to you, regardless if you like it or not.
LibreWolf is great btw, if you're to lazy to manually harden Firefox. It also comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed. Also check out their community: ![email protected]
Yeah, I know.
Chrome is the adblock-block? You might have outblocked me today, but I'll firefox you away!
🎶 I want to see your adblock-block-block
🎶 Your adblock-block
I don't understand why all these chrome derivatives and firefox don't just band together and extend manifest v3 with some vendored standardised extension that addresses the limitations.
Browsers do that for CSS and JavaScript features already. An extension could just check if the browser supports the "unlimited filters" option and use it if its available.
I have never researched it but heard that the permissions of manifest v3 are much better for privacy.
I am in favor of removing manifest v2 if the vendored extension becomes a reality.
Browsers already have too much complexity, lines of code and feature creep.
Firefox implements v3 without the restrictions.
Firefox is the solution people, make the switch.
Brave browser is the solution.
Brave is chromium.
Yes its fantastic 👍🦾
Firefox with uBlock Origin add-on will sort many chrome issues.
...in time for Black Friday & the holiday sales?
It's totally ok. I've phased Chrome out in the beginning of the year already.
I frequently forget that chrome is installed on my phone. The only time I'm forced to use it is about once a year when I order Papa John's Pizza takeout. Their checkout page doesn't seem to work in any other browser.
It’s so Papa John’s to support only one browser.
This was published last month btw (Oct 15, 2024)
I've been dual welding browsers since chrome came out. The second they started talking about deprecating manifest 2, I test drove Vivaldi and Brave. Now they're set up as my second.
I tried to convert over to Libwolf, But it absolutely massacres my passkeys.
I plan to main Firefox until they do something stupid which I think is inevitable with their recent statements.
I'm just hoping that by the time The other Firefox shoe drops there will be something else viable on the market. I don't know how long Brave and Vivaldi can hold out with chromium changing underneath them
I wouldn’t trust Brave as it has a poor track record for privacy and is often used as a crypto miner behind the scenes.
That's a fairly long time ago now and the crypto token crap is off by default. As far as I know they are the only browser with a paid development team that is trying to combat YouTube ads. And they're blocking technique is unique amongst the options we have. If it comes down to using Brave for YouTube, I have no problem with doing that.
Vivaldi, run by the old opera team, has their own adblock built into the app itself
And that's why I keep them in the running. They openly claim that they intend to support V2 for as long as they are able but they admit the possibilities of having to push that code in if chromium made it difficult enough to maintain.
Yup. I always get shat on for mentioning that the crypto crap is off by default. I quite like the idea behind it, have the browser send you ads and then allow you to choose what to do with the earnings but in practice it doesn't work so well sadly
Yeah, sadly, bringing Brave into any browser conversation is like saying, "Please take a dump on my face." And I get some of the vitriol. Brave would likely sell you down the river for $7 if they thought they could get away with it, but so would two-thirds of the browsers out there. Even Firefox, the last true holdout at the moment, is hungry. I hope they find a rev stream before they do something drastic.
I like the concept of letting you choose the ads you see and earning some of the compensation. But it needs to happen at the advertiser level. I'd like a world where I pay a little to the browser, a little to the originator, and maybe get a small pool to dedicate to a site or cause I want to patronize.
The only thing stopping me moving to Brave is the awful bookmark sync implementation... when I used it for a small period in the past it was keeping some I'd long deleted on other devices etc
I also would prefer it to implement bookmark separators (like both Vivaldi and FF do) but I can live without those if they sorted out the sync.
Yeah, I don't use their sync for bookmarks. I just keep the plugins the same with that. I installed the X bookmarks plugin everywhere and just do a manual export/import when I want to. Is keeping my toolbars lined up between all the different browsers.
Oof I was considering LW but now am worried about the passkeys. Was that from an import or a remove and recreate?
Been meaning to try Zen but maybe I should test more before trying either
It won't trigger or accept my Bitwarden passkeys, and on google, if I do the use other device, it pops on my phone for bio auth, but the browser just never accepts the credentials.
I'd try it if I were you, I do a lot of strange things. just check to make sure they work for you first.
pro gamer move
Time to switch to
uBlock Lite oranotherad blockerbrowser. Firefox fully supports ad blockers like uBlock Origin. LibreWolf removes all the Mozilla nonsense like Pocket, their new advertising crap, sponsored sites, etc. and comes with uBO preinstalled. There's also an official Lemmy community for it: ![email protected]I switched two years ago.
I really wish I could stop using shit google stuff for work...
I stopped using adblockers and simply set the entire operating system to use Mullvad's DNS over HTTPS/TLS, specifically the
adblock.dns.mullvad.netoption. It doesn't have all the other uBlock features, but all ads are blocked in all browsers.The big problem with DNS-based ad-blocking is that it doesn't prevent redirects. Sure, you'll get redirected to a harmless blank page, but then you need to go back to the previous page. You don't have that issue with uBlock.
Yes, that happens when I click affiliate links. Blank page and then I go back.
I like nextdns.io
Is it just me, or have I seen like 6-7 of these posts at this point?
https://www.pokemon.com/static-assets/content-assets/cms2/img/pokedex/full/079.png
Welcome all you shiny new Firefox users. Get a cup of a hot beverage and enjoy your freedom.
It'd be great if Cloudflare sites supported Firefox. No matter what I do, it always gives me the "prove you're a human" checkbox loop.
Interesting. I use Firefox on everything at home, usually windows or android, and I rarely get those. Could it be one of your extensions? Proxy?
You likely have a "better" IP address than OP. I have old DSL and new LTE, on the LTE I get captchas all the time, on DSL my experience was the same AS yours.
Yeah I considered that too, but it only happens in one browser.
No proxy. I've tried disabling the likely extensions with no change. It's not the builtin anti-tracking stuff, either.
"Bypass paywalls clean" caused this for me.
Tried a brand new profile?
Not yet. Firefox also has a troubleshooting mode where it disables all your extensions, etc., but keeps your profile. I'm going to try that next.
Is duck duck go browser safe?
I bet it is chromium too.
Check out Vivaldi. Yes it's still Chromium. Consider reading the link.
Vivaldi is my backup browser, but I don't want to contribute to Chromium's market share so Firefox it is 99% of the time.
My backup browser is cromite I was using ungoogled chromium but I found cromite a chromium browser with more privacy features.
Cachy browser ftw(librewolf based browser its a great main browser i use).
Vivaldi is nice, but some people may not like it due to it being closed source(some of vivaldi is open source with a closed source ui) , personally I think its a little bit sluggish.
That’s all valid.
I recently started using Brave Browser as I noticed YouTube ads were starting to seep through randomly. Seems alright no far.
Chromium fork. Chromium code, Google defining compatibility standards. Firefox (or it's forks) is the only real alternative.
Brave is like Chrome with spyware
Chrome is already spyware on its own. That's basically the reason Chrome exists.
Two spies, one browser. Very efficient.
Not sure why you are being downvoted just for not realizing about Brave using Chromium. That seems a bit harsh.
Here's a list of non-Chromium web browsers from August for you or anyone else who might find it helpful.
Brave was astro-turfed by crypto-scammers for way too long to give people suggesting it now the benefit of the doubt.
Once this starts affecting me is lonely what will push me to other Crowder's I've never felt the need to leave chrome. I have a lot of Google related services and products so it would be hypocritical of me to draw an arbitrary line at browsers but not the rest, because personally i don't care about tracking and whatnot cause it's mostly just to serve targeted ads and I don't see them for the most part so I don't care, gimme all your cookies. But if I stay seeing ads again more prominently and there's no workaround, then I'm out. Moving on.
And you think US government and 5 eyes countries won't have access? What happens when that elaborate detailed profile data of yours gets hacked?
You are free to choose at any point where you draw the line.
I live in the UK. I'm already watched by cctv in public almost at all times, I'm not bothered by people seeing what I do.
I'm in the UK also. I care about this though.