You can only catch so much at the edge and DNS level. Browser extension catches the stragglers that get through. But we've mitigated virtually all browser induced malware possibilities by just moving to cloud-based internet isolation. It's similar to what the DoD uses, if anyone's familiar with their use case: https://www.bylight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CBII_2020-2025.pdf
I'm not always working in the office, and they've asked us to connect to VPN only if we need access to the internal network. Email and Teams work without VPN, but now you want me to log in for web access? A browser blocker is better imo.
My IT department uninstalled it from my work laptop, and told me not to reinstall it because - and I quote: "The only browser IT officially supports is Google Chrome."
What makes this doubly stupid is that I'm a web developer. I literally can't test my stuff on another browser...
I used to develop ads (non intrusive things for home depot or go RVing) and i used ad blockers. When testing, i would just run private browsing with plugins disabled...
Same here. The worst thing is in their justification of disallowing Firefox they listed that it was not an enterprise application. I get that it might be extra effort to support it but don't list something factually untrue as a lame cop out for why you don't want to.
Was told it wouldn't be allowed because you couldn't restrict it using GPO... Until I told them they could absolutely apply those restrictions using GPO and even provided the ADMX templates.
At large organizations you're generally not allowed to download much of anything without it passing through IT security and management first. If it's a no, it will probably stay a no.
This matters more for some industries than others. But this attitude lets a malicious employee install basically whatever they want in service of "the job" and you won't even know you're being breached until after it's all over.
Well, we still have to get approval. But it just seems like they don't mind as much. For example, I don't know how many companies out there would be fine with installations of AutoHotkey and LibreOffice.
Just to be clear, I mean it's literally managed at the Group Policy level (in Windows server environments at least) and no amount of asking will suddenly give your user account permissions to be able to save files of any kind.
You generally literally cannot download it without going through IT to get them to approve of and give your account access first.
Ya I forgot I have escalated device privileges and an admin account, which I definitely would have used for installing anything. Although I believe I can also skirt the rules using winget on a user account. That will probably get you in trouble however!
In your experience, what large organization restricts this? I've worked at a few SaaS companies and a FAANG that always gave us full install rights and browser choice. Granted we are on the software side, but I haven't experienced this at all.
I can't install anything. I'm lucky I can install uBlock Origin because I worked out later most extensions are disabled too. But I guess it's only matter of time until that disappears.
If you had uBlock origin already, you may have gotten a message through Chrome that it was no longer supported, so it's been disabled, and gives you the option to remove it. I noticed you don't have to remove it, and it can be re-enabled. However, I need someone smarter with adblockers than I to say if this is actually helpful and not hazardous.
People are saying manifest v2 (the old API that ublock uses) will be gone soon, which I think should effectively make ublock unusable whatever you do unless you stop updating chrome maybe (which could open you up to a ton of security issues) ? Not sure, don't care since I've ditched chrome long ago
Edge extension store still has it I think. Use it until Edge removes it as well. Then tell the IT to use Firefox highlighting the importance of adblocking.
I don't like my chances of swaying IT. The organisation is too big and I'll get told I should be using Edge which is the only officially supported browser.
Is there any firefox based browser on android where I can have easy gestures for the arrow buttons? All the firefox versions I can find require me to do this in two clicks which for the way I browse is a pain in the arse. Can I fix this somehow?
Yeah, I switched to Firefox when this whole Manifest V3 thing was announced, I only still have Chrome installed because it's better for PDFs than Firefox and once in a great while i run into a site that doesn't work right on Firefox.
I actually really like Firefox for reading pdf's, how is it in chrome? I've never actually tried chrome for that because I was still using okular back when I still had chrome installed on anything.
The main issue I have with Firefox is that some pdfs have this side-by-side layout (especially rpg pdfs) that Firefox respects and I keep having to turn it off every time I load a new one. Chrome doesn't respect it and shows it a page at a time like I want. My eyes don't work too good so side by side the text is just too small.
Interesting, funny enough I have sorta the opposite problem using Firefox for PDFs: I like the side by side view of two pages and Firefox always loads books with single pages, zoomed way too far in for my taste. Have you tried it for PDFs recently? It's a new way of reading them for me, and I wonder if they've changed it since you used it last.
Yeah, it's still set as my default for handling PDFs, so I keep opening them in there and then copying the address over to chrome by hand because I'm too lazy to go find the default app settings.
Yeah it’s always been an ad company. And you are correct, blocking apps is new, welcome to the last stage in the ad-blocking arms race. Glad I degoogled my digital life a decade ago.
Hey, can you tell a little bit about your stack, what apps and services do you use? Also on phone?
I guess in a decade you could work that out pretty well.
Im old enough to remember the internet before ads, and with ads became a thing and you had to make sure to keep your speakers low/off all the time less some screaming loud ad popped up somewhere to burst your eardrums at 2am.
There were so many obnoxious, visual cancer ads.
Then they became actual digital cancer by being injection points for viruses and malware, and thus adblockers became a necessity.
And they remain a necessity to this day, for the same reason as they were 20+ years ago.
and yet the ad servers want to blame the end user for adblocking.
not their absolute refusal to moderate or police any of the content they deliver.
and yet the ad servers want to blame the end user for adblocking.
not their absolute refusal to moderate or police any of the content they deliver.
This is the American way. You try to shit blame elsewhere so noone puts the onus on you to improve so you can keep a larger portion of the profit. "Fuck you I got mine" should be printed on our money lol
Instead we get an almost unusable internet where ads take up more and more real estate.
Its even worse than just hurting usability. Lots of ad networks are not policing their advertising customers and malicious payloads have been injected from ads. So allowing ads is a security risk because of the lack of security at the various ad networks.
It's even worse when you consider the entire point of advertising is to deliver a targeted payload at a very specific demographic. So you can target IT folks of a specific company, etc.
I was about to comment something similar but you said it before I did. Sometimes I'll mistakenly open YouTube with Chrome and then I realize I messed up because I have to sit through three, sometimes one-minute long ads just to watch a twenty second video. I'll typically just nope out and switch to Firefox. The worst thing is they're unskippable and I swear for some of them the ad actually pauses if you switch to another tab or browser. I'm getting ads even on super old videos so I'm pretty sure it isn't all to do with the channels themselves monetizing their videos.
But ublock origin lite is by the same dev.. Not as many features but it conforms to the new rules and is still much better than not having a blocker if you use chrome or edge.
Filter lists only update with the extension, you cannot update them dynamically
No making your own filters and thus no element picker for blocking annoyances on a webpage (a feature so good apple literally baked it into safari)
No support for external lists (which means if you back up your own filters into a list you cannot easily reimport)
No changing behavior on a per site basis
A number of other features as well that are more strictly power user features but still really handy like dynamic filtering and strict blocking domains.
If you have the option stop using chrome and edge, they are some of the worst options you could choose. Even outside of adblock and manifest v3 chrome is horrendous for data harvesting bullshit and edge isn’t great. If you don’t have the option because of an overzealous it dept or whatever and are forced to use it ubo lite is your best option probably and my heart goes out to you
I'm a bit confused as an Adblock Plus user, why did the ublock dev drop those features? ABP uses manifest v3 too and it still has all of those. So it's clearly not about them being impossible.
With Manifest V3, Adblock Plus is required to limit how many filter lists we have available to users. We’ll have the ability to offer up to 100 pre-installed filter lists that you can turn on and off depending on your preferences. From these available filter lists, users will be able to choose 50 that they can keep turned on at any given time. We’re working to ensure that popular filter lists our users love are supported by us, and that any updates to these lists are brought to you by frequent new releases of the extension. This does mean that initially, our users will no longer be able to subscribe to any filter lists outside of what is provided in the extension.
Re: Element Blocker:
The Block element feature will continue to exist even after the Manifest V3 version of Adblock Plus officially launches. Manifest V3 does require us to adhere to limits with filter lists and user created blocking rules, so there’s a chance things may change in the future. However, we don’t have details quite yet! If you have any more questions about this or anything else, our support team are the best people to ask at [email protected].
So this says to me that baked in filter lists are now required, custom lists will not work, and Block Element is probably functioning illegally if it is indeed still functioning though that may change in the future in either direction.
Changing blocker behavior on specific sites is the only thing in that list that I see UBO disallow and ABP not mention at all. Not sure why that was changed.
I've read that too, but I still have the ability to add a custom list. It says initially, so I assumed they got around that issue by now, considering it isn't the case for me.
I technically use Edge which afaik still allows MV2, so in case the extension somehow implements both and defaults to mv2 if available, I've decided to install Chrome and get ABP there to test. Even in Chrome, the ability to add a custom list is still there. As are all the other features, like manual updating. With custom list I mean both the ability to add a list per URL, and the ability to add custom arbitrary rules directly.
I don't really see why element blocking wouldn't be possible or allowed under Manifest v3. Like, it's entirely client-side. Manifest never comes into play there.
What I can imagine is that custom lists might work that same way too, removing the ads from the page after they've already loaded rather than blocking the web request directly which is afaik how adblocking works in mv2. I can't tell you if that's the case or not.
Probably because of the Adblock Plus mention. It's mired in controversy because of its acceptable ads toggle and requiring ad giants to pay for it. So I can imagine people downvoting comments that put it in a positive light compared to other adblockers.
You may be right, but whether you hate ABP specifically or not should be irrelevant to the question. The question was why other extensions - like Adblock - can have those feature but uBlock Lite can't. What's different?
I'd also like to know, personally. I'd wondered the same thing.
My work uses a web-based interface that's very annoying to use on Firefox. I'm unfortunately tied to Chrome in the meantime, so uBlock lite is a lifesaver.
Firefox was stubborn enough not to support H.265 till JUST recently and only on windows.. Doesn't work with my 4k security cameras as well as Chrome or Safari based browsers.
H.265 is patent encumbered. Blame the 2 or 3(?) patent pool holders (for-profit corporations, unlike non-profit -and-slowly-losing-market-share Mozilla) for not making it free to use for everyone.
This is why AV1 is preferred, it saves bandwidth and there's no threat of being sued into oblivion.
This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
It was removed because Google did away with manifest v2 for browser extensions, and uBlock Origin worked almost entirely from a feature provided in manifest v2. So it was removed because it can no longer work on chromium devices, unless the browser manually adds back in support for it. Firefox has chosen to continue to support manifest v2, so the original uBlock origin is still available. uBlock lite is still available in the chrome store, and uses the new manifest v3. It is more limited in it's capability, but should be able to get the most obtrusive stuff. The lite version is definitely not nearly as powerful as the original.
On a side note, it seems to me like the link still works for now. Idk how much longer that will last.
I am from Germany and it is just sad how many people use these apps from shit companies without thinking, when suitable alternatives exist everywhere. Just use Firefox, it will work for 99,9% without any flaw. I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but could only convinge a few people to change to Signal. It is as easy as downloading a new app to prevent supporting Meta, but that's too much effort for many :-(
By that argument the time was a long time ago then. Vivaldi still works with uBlock so nothing has changed on their end. I think it's still reasonable to use Vivaldi until they are forced to Manifest 3. Despite being Chromium based they've always been privacy focused and vocally pro ad blocking. As far as the cult of Firefox, they've been showing their true colors lately. They are no saints and their biggest funder is Google. Never forget to follow the money. I'm not personally convinced that a switch on a purely ideological level is indicated.
Honestly, hadn't logged in for a few days, so didn't even know I was severely downvoted. Leaving Reddit has helped me not scroll through every day for hours on end on Lemmee.
And good to know about the Brave CEO thing. I legit cannot keep up with everything.
I wish more people were like you. Not everyone can keep up with everyone's beefs (this one not so much) but it really grinds my gears when I see seemingly polite, on topic, engaging or contributing comments with no replies but still geyting down voted. Especially on a forum as thirsty as Lemmy users are for more user involvement.
It makes me think there are too many people in the world conditioned to be preset to hate thst the fact a person doesn't know they're supposed to hate something is enough grounds to be shunned and hated on. Lol. It's cool to see someone jump in and say:Hey homie, we don't hate you we hate a person who is unrelated to the topic of the thread or the context of your comment but we do hate them enough to hate on you
Edit: the parenthesis comment was meant to imply hating Trump monkeys is glaringly obvious. My comment was about lemmy etiquette and wasn't about why or why not OP was getting downvoted.
It's gotta be some kind of sheep brain activation; crowd following behavior. It can be very annoying sometimes.
Sometimes you're just voicing a neutral opinion and it gets destroyed. And by neutral I mean it's not controversial or anything, like racism, it could just be something not exactly everyone would agree with.
I wish people would use the down vote as Reddit once intended it to mean: off topic and not contributing to the discussion, or perhaps rude, etc. Not "I don't agree with this". You should explain why you don't agree with something, or up vote a comment that already explains it.
And that is why I went to Firefox once Google announced this bullshit.
Swapping is pretty painless. It even brings over all your passwords and stuff these days. Best get to swapping before Google disable that as well. They'd just love to keep you hostage.
I really hope some team has been following the changes in Chrome/Chromium by Google to remove Manifest v2, and has been keeping a patchset that will undo the damage? Time to make a hard fork and get some funding to try to keep it going?
Well I would seriously consider paying money to a team that keeps it there, if Chromium actually removes the code. I hope others will consider it as well. We need to fight this, even if it means paying some money to a foundation to do so.
There's the futile hope I suppose that antitrust cases going on against Alphabet might force Google to divest Chrome from its advertising arm, so that there's no pressure to make this whole thing worse. Hah, in my dreams.
On paper they gave the keys to the Linux foundation, but since they still pay most of the developers working on it the only thing it might achieve is taking resources away from Servo.
that would be funny, won't happen--but funny af. google loses chrome, new owners revert mv2's removal and go all-in on user control of their browser experience.
But then the whack-a-mole game continues, and you're constantly having to find new extensions to serve the same task. When you could simply switch to firefox, deal with the very minor growing pains, and keep using uBlock with no problems whatsoever.
I was a super early adopter for firefox. I started using it back in 2005-2006. I'm pretty sure it was still in beta when I started using it.
Over the past 20 years I've watched while firefox users have formed a goddamn cult around a software. It's insane to me, especially because I'm seeing exactly the same things from Mozilla that I was seeing from Microsoft (and later Google) at the time I decided to switch from IE to firefox to begin with...
Firefox isn't special. It's falling for all the cloud-based privacy invasive enshittification that Chrome has so far. It's just getting there slower.
So cool your jets. Especially considering uBlock Origin Lite is uBlock Origin. It's just compatible with the Manifest V3 standard.
Yeah, I heard someone say a week or so ago that they straight disabled it in the browser, and now only the gimped version that works with Manifest V3 works now. Thankfully I switched to Firefox when all this Manifest V3 stuff was announced. As far as I know it's the only browser out there that isn't based on Chromium (which Google also controls, so browsers like Brave will likely be affected by this soon as well, unless a bunch of those smaller browsers get together and fork Chromium and maintain it themselves, which I'm not very hopeful about) and so doesn't have to worry about these shenanigans.
Brave and Vivaldi are chromium based but have adblocking built in rather than relying on an extension. So while they will eventually be impacted on extension support, the built in adblocking (which is quite robust) won't be affected.
But then you're indirectly giving the enemy (Google) power by increasing their browser market share, which in turn lets them dictate the future of the web.
This isn't a direct replacement for tab groups, but there's a Firefox extension called Tree Style Tab that organizes your tabs into a nested tree structure. I use it a lot to emulate tab groups and the way it lays out the tabs makes it much easier to read imo. It might be worth taking a look if tab groups are chromium's "killer feature" for you.
If you don't mind me asking, are there any other must-have features that chromium has that Firefox doesn't?
It's mobile where I like the tab groups really, and unfortunately the extensions I've found that try to mimic the functionality don't work there. Honestly that's the big one but it's pretty major for me. With the way I tend to browse and research topics it's hard to manage without tab groups.
The only other big one is services that don't support Firefox. I use GeForce Now for game streaming so I do that through Brave.
Odd, I've been using Brave for a few months now and have not seen any ads on YouTube. I specifically use it on my phone to avoid YouTube ads and allow background playback.
they are probably testing how ads cant be blocked, they will move onto youtube, whom they tried many times to stop ad blocking. i would love to support some youtubers, who arent pos. but the ads are just too untenable.
I stayed away from Chrome alternatives, as it had the best Canvas/HTML5 performance (Which oddly enough, was quite important for most of my browsing needs). However, this news means I will have to switch. Installed Firefox for my primary browsing needs, and a few Chromium-based ones to try out for specifically the aforementioned use case.
i was able to load it in a (not chrome) chromium-based browser without issue, just the notice across the addon's page.
the 'lite' version is also on there, seems to work 'ok'. adguard and a few others are also there--they must all be mv3, as only the full ubo has the warning notice on its page of those i checked.
all the mv3 ones run the risk of having updates rejected or delayed by google, especially if they contain code or filter updates (filters must be packed with the addon in mv3) to combat changes google makes to their own sites. firefox or a trusted customized build or maintained fork is the way to go now.
It’s funny how things work out. I had a Chromebook that couldn’t have Firefox installed. I heard that Chrome would remove ubo, my Chromebook died the following month. So I got a cheap laptop instead. The problem solved itself.
I noticed they recently marked it deprecated or unsupported (i forget the wording) and tried to get me to remove it. I think it was even disabled automatically. I kinda saw this coming.
I've been on Firefox since I left Internet Explorer many years ago. But, recently, I switched to LibreWolf, and I've been checking out Pale Moon. Pale Moon is close to doing everything I want, but not quite there.
Chrome hasn't been my main browser in a while but I kept it as a backup and because Firefox doesn't support PWAs and I didn't want to mess with the extension. Turns out, the extension only takes about 3 minutes to get set up and now Chrome has been uninstalled. And on a random Tuesday, who knew?
librefoxlibrewolf is very good; it comes with ublock and various other privacy features pre-installed, i've been leaning toward them more just because they embraced mastodon more. mullvad also has one.
i typically go between firefox nightly and librefoxlibrewolf.
Zen is worth checking out. It isn't my favorite, but it's trying to do some cool stuff. It might eventually become my favorite once it becomes more stable.
Right now, I'm digging FireDragon. It has two sidebars: one vertical tab bar and one for gadgets. And the vertical tab bar collapses to icons when you aren't hovering over it.
Does Vivaldi not just use the Chrome store for extensions? Also, aren't they losing manifest V2 as soon as it's dropped from Chromium in a few more months?
Not sure how Vivaldi uses extensions since you cannot add new ones from the chrome store, but if that happens we're gonna need to go to Firefox eventually. I currently love Vivaldi due to simplicity and the swipe up to open tabs page. Wish more browsers integrated that or just better & fluid animations
I'm trying. I'm trying so hard. But it keeps pissing me off because I have to dig through settings to undo changes they made to browser features that are standard across both Firefox and Chrome. It's free and I'm not tryig to sound entitled but almost every single change they made to Chromium aside from the privacy stuff has me going WHYYYYYY?
The way they handle open in new tab, tlds like.internal, and ctrl+click to complete urls were the worst offenders off the top of my head.
Plus their ad blocker doesn't even come close to uBlock Lite.
I just want v8 in a hardened vanilla Firefox wrapper that doesn't go to the extremes that LibreWolf goes) :(
Any Chromium-based browser will be in the same boat sooner or later. None of them have the resources to continue to support v2 long-term, or to support their own extension stores.
At this point the only viable alternative is Firefox and its dirivatives.
I have used firefox from like 2005 to 2024. I am now using brave and I am quite happy with it. I just disabled all this useless cryptobro crap that it comes with. I tried most of the chromium based browsers and this is by far the one that better fits my needs. It has an adblocker that works well, it has a sync option that is not on google servers and supposedly they dont have that insane telemetry that chrome has. And yes an adblocker is tottally needed and will probably be allways needed. I do run a network adblocker with pihole and nextDNS. I haven't seen a single add in years and do not miss them at all. I rather ahve a half broken page than some random website trying to sell me satisfiers and blue pills.
Probably not a popular choice, but my VPN comes with an ad blocker which works great.
I'm still using Nord VPN as I got an insane deal a few years ago. Now it has something called Threat Protection which blocks all ads whether on my desktop browsers or on mobile.
✨Edit to add:
Yeah down vote me. Nord was a blackfriday deal from 3 years ago. Much has changed since then.
I travel full time and I'm now in the market for a new VPN provider. I don't have my own router.. I don't even have a home.
Instead of just down voting, perhaps come with some constructive ideas or suggestions, thank you! ✨
In all my travels, in all the cafés, libraries, hotels and co-working spaces I've used around the world, never have I seen anyone pull out their own router.
I'm not dismissing it's potential or usefulness, I just think that for me to avoid adverts and to connect to a few streaming services from weird locations it might be a bit overkill.
Many chromium browser have built-in adblockers and some of them are on-par with uBO. These are not extensions, so Google can't really do anything about them. Not worried in the slightest.
EDIT: Let's both save our time: "Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc... ". I don't care. Mozilla isn't less shitty at all and Firefox is mediocre (source: have been a FF user/advocate from 2002 to 2021).
You're not interested in debating because you're scared of being shown how wrong you are. Don't say anything if you don't wish to debate anyone, it's an open forum, in case you forgot. You don't dictate the rules.
Ima be honest. I don’t run ad blockers. The way I see it, if I’m consuming content from a given source and that source invested time and/or money into said content then they deserve to be compensated for it. I am not willing to pay a subscription for every website out there, so ads are an acceptable compromise.
I agree with you in principle but in practice way too many sites are doing ads in bullshit ways. If they were just along a sidebar or at the top/bottom of the page I'd have no issue but usually they affect the actual usability of the site and I'm not dealing with that. If they want to expose me to ads they need to make it not a problem for me.
The big assumption here is that the website had time or money invested in it. I feel like the vast majority of websites these days are just ai garbage with enough ads to prevent you from even reading the thing and give your computer herpies as a bonus. The era of good faith advertising where the ads were reasonable and balanced with the quality of content is long gone. Most sites are now explicitly designed for exploitive data harvesting and endless ad delivery.
Of course, some websites are exceptions to this and adblock can easily be toggled off for those websites if you really want to support them. Taking off protections for a trusted partner though is quite different from raw dogging the whole internet
Look, the boot tastes perfectly fine. Besides, how will the millionaires eat if I don't spend my attention to get them paid? What's another ad. And another ad. Ads when I drive, ads when I park. Ads when I'm reading the news and ads when I'm watching TV. Anyone else hungry for lol.
Not everything I view online deserves money. I decide what is worth it to give money to and I decide what news articles I'm allowed to read.
I run ad blockers. As a security measure. Ad companies collect insane amount of data and do a bunch of shady stuff whenever they can get away with it.
I want to support websites whenever I'm able, but the way ad companies operate just ain't it.
If they clean up their act, maybe then I could stop using ad blockers, but it's been decades and I don't have high hopes.
Also using ad blockers for performance and usability reasons. For example, I used to use a bunch of Fandom wikis and couldn't understand why people hated the UI. Then I saw how Fandom looks like without ad blockers and holy shit how can humans live like this
I agree with your reasoning but I still do run an adblocker. There are only 3 things in my life (that I can think of) where what I think is right and what I actually do don't align: adblocking, piracy and eating meat.
If enough people block the ads then that’s a significant hit for publications.
It doesn’t really annoy me though. I guess I have high tolerance. Maybe it’s also because I rarely use YouTube, thats the only place ads have annoyed me and only because they are constant and impossible to ignore.
I respect your stance and I agree with the subscription vs ads decision, websites need to make money somehow and I dont want to pay a subscription for everything either. I do run an adblocker but whitelist websites I use often and that dont have intrusive ads.
It unfortunately affects websites that I visit quickly and dont come back to, they get a visitor but no advertisements. Its not a perfect solution but ads tend to be very intrusive on random websites.
I do, but it's less about the ads and more about privacy. I don't use things like sponsor block because there's pretty much no privacy violation there. But I do use an ad blocker because advertisers track me across websites to build up a profile.
I also don't want to make a free account, again because of privacy concerns (both from the site and from any data breaches.
I'm happy to pay a little for content, but I haven't yet seen a system that respects my privacy and is reasonably priced. If that was a thing, I'd totally pay.
I just use Safari and private relay for that. But yeah I can understand that particular point. I mean I’m not against ad blockers, it’s just that I don’t use them for the reasons I stated.
I'd really like some extension where I can compensate websites in exchange for not having ads. Let me load up a balance and present the option to deduct $0.0X to see read/watch past the teaser. The website wouldn't need to track me to get paid, and the browser/extension could merely track balances and keep an anonymous accounting of transactions to send a single larger payment later (to save on fees).
Axate (used to be called Agate) is trying something like this. Popbitch (sue me) use it to charge 0.25 per article or 0.50 for access for a week, but it doesn't seem to be very widespread
I tried https://popbitch.com/royal-blush/ on firefox with ublock turned off and the microtransaction box after the faded out text still didn't display so it might have some way to go yet
At this point ad blocking is more about security and optimization than stopping ads themselves. If a site wants to run some banner ads to pay for costs, I have nothing against it, but once Javascript is involved, that just becomes a vulnerability for attack.
Also, websites that bury their content in layers of overlay and popup ads with loud audio and several unrelated videos can go fuck themselves.
Flattr was a Swedish-based microdonation subscription service, where subscribers opted in to pay a monthly patronage to help fund their favourite websites and creators. It shut down in November 2023.[1]
Flattr subscribers installed an open-source browser extension that records which websites they frequent and shares this data with Flattr.[2] Flattr processes this user data and pays out shares of the user's subscription to each registered Flattr creator based on which websites the user consumed.[3] Flattr filtered websites by domains with a default allowlist of participating domains, but individual users could override and contribute to any website they want or withhold contributions from any website.[4]
I used it for a while, but not many websites and creators used it, so most of my money was going towards a select few.
I still use Google news, I really need to get rid of it but I've been slacking. Anyways, every once in a while I'll click on a story and the website will literally be paragraphs separated by gigantic, scrollable ads, and ads between paragraphs done in a way that you're not sure if you've actually finished the story or not.
I can't use fathom being on those websites without an adblocker. It's horrendous.
Great point. Hadn’t thought about that. Maybe that’s why ads don’t bother me? But then again if a website has an rss feeeed that means they consent to serving their content ads free, so I don’t think it contradicts my stance.
But I never said I was against ad blockers anyways, I just said I didn’t use them because I feel it’s a little unfair. I have no intention of passing judgement on those who do use it, it’s up them, and like someone else at the individual level it makes little difference.
laughs in Firefox
Cries in only Chrome and Edge at work 😢
Tell your IT.
Yeah. What company wouldn't allow it?
When I was working for an ad exchange, everyone had adblock installed in their browsers, I found that quite ironic.
I would argue it's a security issue not to have any ad blocking. Many scams online start with popups or fake ads.
So if you get the opportunity to talk to IT that's what I would mention.
A good IT is blocking ads at a company-level. Browser extensions wouldn’t matter, and in fact, shouldn’t be allowed for the same reason.
You can only catch so much at the edge and DNS level. Browser extension catches the stragglers that get through. But we've mitigated virtually all browser induced malware possibilities by just moving to cloud-based internet isolation. It's similar to what the DoD uses, if anyone's familiar with their use case: https://www.bylight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CBII_2020-2025.pdf
Even with CBII ads still make the internet cancerous to even look at
I'm not always working in the office, and they've asked us to connect to VPN only if we need access to the internal network. Email and Teams work without VPN, but now you want me to log in for web access? A browser blocker is better imo.
The FBI agrees with you
(Although they have since taken down their PSA woth no explanation)
My IT department uninstalled it from my work laptop, and told me not to reinstall it because - and I quote: "The only browser IT officially supports is Google Chrome."
What makes this doubly stupid is that I'm a web developer. I literally can't test my stuff on another browser...
I used to develop ads (non intrusive things for home depot or go RVing) and i used ad blockers. When testing, i would just run private browsing with plugins disabled...
Officially only Edge is supported, but Chrome is tolerated. It's a full MS environment.
Same here. The worst thing is in their justification of disallowing Firefox they listed that it was not an enterprise application. I get that it might be extra effort to support it but don't list something factually untrue as a lame cop out for why you don't want to.
Was told it wouldn't be allowed because you couldn't restrict it using GPO... Until I told them they could absolutely apply those restrictions using GPO and even provided the ADMX templates.
Click on every single ad and banner, click "I agree" on every pop-up. Make that computer hate it's life!
uBlock Origin Lite does work, but it's predefined lists only. You can't use the element zapper 🙁
lame
How To Get Fired 101
My condoleances
Download Firefox portable
At large organizations you're generally not allowed to download much of anything without it passing through IT security and management first. If it's a no, it will probably stay a no.
I work for a non-profit and they are way more lenient about what we would like to install as long as the job gets done.
Then you have bad opsec and security holes.
This matters more for some industries than others. But this attitude lets a malicious employee install basically whatever they want in service of "the job" and you won't even know you're being breached until after it's all over.
Well, we still have to get approval. But it just seems like they don't mind as much. For example, I don't know how many companies out there would be fine with installations of AutoHotkey and LibreOffice.
Just remember,it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission!
Just to be clear, I mean it's literally managed at the Group Policy level (in Windows server environments at least) and no amount of asking will suddenly give your user account permissions to be able to save files of any kind.
You generally literally cannot download it without going through IT to get them to approve of and give your account access first.
Ya I forgot I have escalated device privileges and an admin account, which I definitely would have used for installing anything. Although I believe I can also skirt the rules using winget on a user account. That will probably get you in trouble however!
In your experience, what large organization restricts this? I've worked at a few SaaS companies and a FAANG that always gave us full install rights and browser choice. Granted we are on the software side, but I haven't experienced this at all.
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Link for convenience.
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Download a Firefox based browser from the Microsoft store?
some "infosec" systems tags firefox as a "vulnerability" risk
ahem tenable ahem
Store is disabled
Wellp, time to get a new job.
I can't install anything. I'm lucky I can install uBlock Origin because I worked out later most extensions are disabled too. But I guess it's only matter of time until that disappears.
If you had uBlock origin already, you may have gotten a message through Chrome that it was no longer supported, so it's been disabled, and gives you the option to remove it. I noticed you don't have to remove it, and it can be re-enabled. However, I need someone smarter with adblockers than I to say if this is actually helpful and not hazardous.
People are saying manifest v2 (the old API that ublock uses) will be gone soon, which I think should effectively make ublock unusable whatever you do unless you stop updating chrome maybe (which could open you up to a ton of security issues) ? Not sure, don't care since I've ditched chrome long ago
Good to know, thanks.
Edge extension store still has it I think. Use it until Edge removes it as well. Then tell the IT to use Firefox highlighting the importance of adblocking.
I don't like my chances of swaying IT. The organisation is too big and I'll get told I should be using Edge which is the only officially supported browser.
Yeah, that's true.
I would have run already.
I just downloaded the Kagi Orion browser and I can install extensions from both Chrome and Firefox web stores!
Nice!
Is there any firefox based browser on android where I can have easy gestures for the arrow buttons? All the firefox versions I can find require me to do this in two clicks which for the way I browse is a pain in the arse. Can I fix this somehow?
You mean swiping left up go back? Works fine for me in regular FF on Android...
Doesn’t work for me. I don’t have “plain” android but a specific type that’s compatible with my eink screen.
Chromium gestures work fine though.
No feature for it that I know of. They may be thinking of the swipe to change tabs support?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-gestures-in-firefox-android
Unknown, i can use gestures on my phone which work in Firefox. Maybe it's is a phone problem.
I haven't tried it, but Iceraven has a lot of extensions available compared to Firefox. Maybe there is one to do exactly what you need?
Chrome is no longer available in my Start menu.
Been a loooong time
But my time is finally near...
Yeah, I switched to Firefox when this whole Manifest V3 thing was announced, I only still have Chrome installed because it's better for PDFs than Firefox and once in a great while i run into a site that doesn't work right on Firefox.
Sumatra!
I actually really like Firefox for reading pdf's, how is it in chrome? I've never actually tried chrome for that because I was still using okular back when I still had chrome installed on anything.
The main issue I have with Firefox is that some pdfs have this side-by-side layout (especially rpg pdfs) that Firefox respects and I keep having to turn it off every time I load a new one. Chrome doesn't respect it and shows it a page at a time like I want. My eyes don't work too good so side by side the text is just too small.
Interesting, funny enough I have sorta the opposite problem using Firefox for PDFs: I like the side by side view of two pages and Firefox always loads books with single pages, zoomed way too far in for my taste. Have you tried it for PDFs recently? It's a new way of reading them for me, and I wonder if they've changed it since you used it last.
Yeah, it's still set as my default for handling PDFs, so I keep opening them in there and then copying the address over to chrome by hand because I'm too lazy to go find the default app settings.
Or in my app drawer
or in ~/.local/share/applications
Google is not an IT company. It’s an advertising company. Surprised Pikachu, it blocks ad blockers.
It's been an ad company for a long time, though, and blocking ad blockers is new.
Because they are at the end of their growth phase and have entered their squeeze until dead phase.
Yes, but enshittification doesn't happen all at once. And this is a textbook example of the actual meaning of enshittification.
Yeah it’s always been an ad company. And you are correct, blocking apps is new, welcome to the last stage in the ad-blocking arms race. Glad I degoogled my digital life a decade ago.
Hey, can you tell a little bit about your stack, what apps and services do you use? Also on phone? I guess in a decade you could work that out pretty well.
I love this movie but honestly it's getting to the point where I can't even watch it without getting upset.
What movie is that?
Idiocracy
Movie turning into a documentary in real time.
Listen scro, Imm just tryin to keep the people from gettin deaded
I only made it through like one season of Handmaid's Tale, it was too real.
some some youtubers that had setup like that, it was so cringey. its from idiocracy
uBO is not just an ad blocker, its almost a firewall against malware and a tracking filter
Im old enough to remember the internet before ads, and with ads became a thing and you had to make sure to keep your speakers low/off all the time less some screaming loud ad popped up somewhere to burst your eardrums at 2am.
There were so many obnoxious, visual cancer ads.
Then they became actual digital cancer by being injection points for viruses and malware, and thus adblockers became a necessity.
And they remain a necessity to this day, for the same reason as they were 20+ years ago.
and yet the ad servers want to blame the end user for adblocking.
not their absolute refusal to moderate or police any of the content they deliver.
This is the American way. You try to shit blame elsewhere so noone puts the onus on you to improve so you can keep a larger portion of the profit. "Fuck you I got mine" should be printed on our money lol
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU WON!!!
Its even worse than just hurting usability. Lots of ad networks are not policing their advertising customers and malicious payloads have been injected from ads. So allowing ads is a security risk because of the lack of security at the various ad networks.
It's even worse when you consider the entire point of advertising is to deliver a targeted payload at a very specific demographic. So you can target IT folks of a specific company, etc.
I was about to comment something similar but you said it before I did. Sometimes I'll mistakenly open YouTube with Chrome and then I realize I messed up because I have to sit through three, sometimes one-minute long ads just to watch a twenty second video. I'll typically just nope out and switch to Firefox. The worst thing is they're unskippable and I swear for some of them the ad actually pauses if you switch to another tab or browser. I'm getting ads even on super old videos so I'm pretty sure it isn't all to do with the channels themselves monetizing their videos.
3 one minute long adds are better than those 2 hour long prageru racist propaganda videos trying to masquerade as "Educational" content
I went to help out a friend, a few years ago, he runs vanilla Edge, I can't believe anyone actually uses the internet like that.
I'd be okay with sites showing me unintrusive non targeted ads, but since it's all or nothing I choose nothing.
But ublock origin lite is by the same dev.. Not as many features but it conforms to the new rules and is still much better than not having a blocker if you use chrome or edge.
Missing critical features:
Filter lists only update with the extension, you cannot update them dynamically
No making your own filters and thus no element picker for blocking annoyances on a webpage (a feature so good apple literally baked it into safari)
No support for external lists (which means if you back up your own filters into a list you cannot easily reimport)
No changing behavior on a per site basis
A number of other features as well that are more strictly power user features but still really handy like dynamic filtering and strict blocking domains.
If you have the option stop using chrome and edge, they are some of the worst options you could choose. Even outside of adblock and manifest v3 chrome is horrendous for data harvesting bullshit and edge isn’t great. If you don’t have the option because of an overzealous it dept or whatever and are forced to use it ubo lite is your best option probably and my heart goes out to you
I'm a bit confused as an Adblock Plus user, why did the ublock dev drop those features? ABP uses manifest v3 too and it still has all of those. So it's clearly not about them being impossible.
According to Adblock Plus' own blog post about the matter:
Re: Element Blocker:
So this says to me that baked in filter lists are now required, custom lists will not work, and Block Element is probably functioning illegally if it is indeed still functioning though that may change in the future in either direction.
Changing blocker behavior on specific sites is the only thing in that list that I see UBO disallow and ABP not mention at all. Not sure why that was changed.
I've read that too, but I still have the ability to add a custom list. It says initially, so I assumed they got around that issue by now, considering it isn't the case for me.
I technically use Edge which afaik still allows MV2, so in case the extension somehow implements both and defaults to mv2 if available, I've decided to install Chrome and get ABP there to test. Even in Chrome, the ability to add a custom list is still there. As are all the other features, like manual updating. With custom list I mean both the ability to add a list per URL, and the ability to add custom arbitrary rules directly.
I don't really see why element blocking wouldn't be possible or allowed under Manifest v3. Like, it's entirely client-side. Manifest never comes into play there.
What I can imagine is that custom lists might work that same way too, removing the ads from the page after they've already loaded rather than blocking the web request directly which is afaik how adblocking works in mv2. I can't tell you if that's the case or not.
Lol who downvoted this
Probably because of the Adblock Plus mention. It's mired in controversy because of its acceptable ads toggle and requiring ad giants to pay for it. So I can imagine people downvoting comments that put it in a positive light compared to other adblockers.
You may be right, but whether you hate ABP specifically or not should be irrelevant to the question. The question was why other extensions - like Adblock - can have those feature but uBlock Lite can't. What's different?
I'd also like to know, personally. I'd wondered the same thing.
Or just use Firefox
My work uses a web-based interface that's very annoying to use on Firefox. I'm unfortunately tied to Chrome in the meantime, so uBlock lite is a lifesaver.
Or just use a fork of firefox. Firefox isn't looking very favorable lately.
I'm giving Floorp a try right now. It's actually pretty good.
Try zen browser too!
Who will develop the underlying browser then?
Firefox was stubborn enough not to support H.265 till JUST recently and only on windows.. Doesn't work with my 4k security cameras as well as Chrome or Safari based browsers.
H.265 is patent encumbered. Blame the 2 or 3(?) patent pool holders (for-profit corporations, unlike non-profit -and-slowly-losing-market-share Mozilla) for not making it free to use for everyone.
This is why AV1 is preferred, it saves bandwidth and there's no threat of being sued into oblivion.
Chrome is no longer available on my computer.
Never has been 🔫 (at least for a couple of years)
I only use chrome for my work stuff, and that's because I work with g-suite a lot.
Chrome fucking sucks
I wish I could say the same. Web dev. 🫡 But at least I'm using Chromium, if that's even slightly better.
Use firefox
And if you don't like Firefox, use one of the Firefox forks. Some of them are very Chrome-like.
Which ones do you mean?
FireDragon, Zen Browser, and LibreWolf. Zen feels like a streamlined Chrome.
Ah right. But none of them are true forks, really. They still rely on the Firefox project to port features in etc.
They’re too strict, unless you have one that’s usable by default?
"Too strict" how? I don't know what's "usable" for you.
This: fingerprinting resistance is either too strict or none at all
Fingerprinting resistance is either too strict or none at all
Cookies are removed when the browser is closed, and iirc history isn’t saved by default. It just makes it a pain for regular users
or even better, use librewolf.
I'm not really sure it's better tbh
This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
Never was.
the what store now
I take this as a sign that it genuinely still works to block ads and hasn’t sold out and become malware like those others that used to be popular.
It was removed because Google did away with manifest v2 for browser extensions, and uBlock Origin worked almost entirely from a feature provided in manifest v2. So it was removed because it can no longer work on chromium devices, unless the browser manually adds back in support for it. Firefox has chosen to continue to support manifest v2, so the original uBlock origin is still available. uBlock lite is still available in the chrome store, and uses the new manifest v3. It is more limited in it's capability, but should be able to get the most obtrusive stuff. The lite version is definitely not nearly as powerful as the original.
On a side note, it seems to me like the link still works for now. Idk how much longer that will last.
I am from Germany and it is just sad how many people use these apps from shit companies without thinking, when suitable alternatives exist everywhere. Just use Firefox, it will work for 99,9% without any flaw. I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but could only convinge a few people to change to Signal. It is as easy as downloading a new app to prevent supporting Meta, but that's too much effort for many :-(
There's a way to save your already-installed extension, in "Manage Extensions..." Enable dev mode, then Pack Extension.
However the browser will probably just refuse to run it soon.
Vivaldi, for what it's worth, seems to still run uBlock Origin just fine. I am afraid to uninstall it now to test if it'll re-install properly.
My version: 7.1.3570.39 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Might be time to finally move to Firefox though, if Vivaldi doesn't keep Manifest V2 support.
Vivaldi isn't even fully open-source anyway, so it's worth leaving regardless.
I wish Vivaldi wasn't Chromium-based, because I think it's the slickest browser out there.
But it's chromium, so it's time to move on to Firefox regardless.
Ladybird development can't happen fast enough.
No, it can't! That's a very interesting one indeed, but I wouldn't risk moving to it at this time.
By that argument the time was a long time ago then. Vivaldi still works with uBlock so nothing has changed on their end. I think it's still reasonable to use Vivaldi until they are forced to Manifest 3. Despite being Chromium based they've always been privacy focused and vocally pro ad blocking. As far as the cult of Firefox, they've been showing their true colors lately. They are no saints and their biggest funder is Google. Never forget to follow the money. I'm not personally convinced that a switch on a purely ideological level is indicated.
Everyone should ditch chrome
My fucking organization refuses to support anything but Chrome. I hate it so much.
Brave user here. Never looked back.
I think the Brave CEO recently said some Trumpy shit (in case you're at all curious for the downvoting).
Honestly, hadn't logged in for a few days, so didn't even know I was severely downvoted. Leaving Reddit has helped me not scroll through every day for hours on end on Lemmee.
And good to know about the Brave CEO thing. I legit cannot keep up with everything.
I wish more people were like you. Not everyone can keep up with everyone's beefs (this one not so much) but it really grinds my gears when I see seemingly polite, on topic, engaging or contributing comments with no replies but still geyting down voted. Especially on a forum as thirsty as Lemmy users are for more user involvement.
It makes me think there are too many people in the world conditioned to be preset to hate thst the fact a person doesn't know they're supposed to hate something is enough grounds to be shunned and hated on. Lol. It's cool to see someone jump in and say:Hey homie, we don't hate you we hate a person who is unrelated to the topic of the thread or the context of your comment but we do hate them enough to hate on you
Edit: the parenthesis comment was meant to imply hating Trump monkeys is glaringly obvious. My comment was about lemmy etiquette and wasn't about why or why not OP was getting downvoted.
It's gotta be some kind of sheep brain activation; crowd following behavior. It can be very annoying sometimes.
Sometimes you're just voicing a neutral opinion and it gets destroyed. And by neutral I mean it's not controversial or anything, like racism, it could just be something not exactly everyone would agree with.
I wish people would use the down vote as Reddit once intended it to mean: off topic and not contributing to the discussion, or perhaps rude, etc. Not "I don't agree with this". You should explain why you don't agree with something, or up vote a comment that already explains it.
And that is why I went to Firefox once Google announced this bullshit.
Swapping is pretty painless. It even brings over all your passwords and stuff these days. Best get to swapping before Google disable that as well. They'd just love to keep you hostage.
Use a third party password manager, don’t rely on browser default ones
Some suggestions:
If you self-host Bitwarden you can also get the paid tier features
Just as a heads up:
Double space then
Enterto do a linebreak :)I’m using voyager it looked fine formatted there. Good to know though
They hate us
It is 100000% a reason to split Chrome and the ad sales part of Google into different companies.
It won't solve the problem but the pressures end up being orders of magnitude different.
Frankly they should probably split off the ad side from everything else.
Glad I don't use chrome anymore. Though unfortunately everyone else I know still does.
I really hope some team has been following the changes in Chrome/Chromium by Google to remove Manifest v2, and has been keeping a patchset that will undo the damage? Time to make a hard fork and get some funding to try to keep it going?
Multiple browsers have said they will keep support while the code is still there (in Chromium it's still there, only disabled for now).
When it is removed from Chromium, it's probably going to disappear for most or all major Chromium browsers.
Well I would seriously consider paying money to a team that keeps it there, if Chromium actually removes the code. I hope others will consider it as well. We need to fight this, even if it means paying some money to a foundation to do so.
Use Firefox and you don't need to worry about that. Everything being Chromium comes with a whole lot of different problems.
i expect at least the 'big' 'non megacorp' chromium based ones like vivaldi, opera, brave to keep mv2 as long as it is possible.
but i can totally see google doing some serious mangling of the codebase to make patching-in mv2 difficult.
There's the futile hope I suppose that antitrust cases going on against Alphabet might force Google to divest Chrome from its advertising arm, so that there's no pressure to make this whole thing worse. Hah, in my dreams.
On paper they gave the keys to the Linux foundation, but since they still pay most of the developers working on it the only thing it might achieve is taking resources away from Servo.
that would be funny, won't happen--but funny af. google loses chrome, new owners revert mv2's removal and go all-in on user control of their browser experience.
I switched to Firefox many years ago, after their announcement I switched to Waterfox and I'm very happy with it.
Didn't consider chrome before and still wont
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh
Doesn't cover 100% of what uBO did, but it still works just as good IMO with DNS based ad-blocking on top.
Surprised so few people are aware of this. It seems equivalent to me when you give it the same permissions Ublock Origin had.
Agreed. I haven't even found anything that it doesn't block that UbOrigin did.
But then the whack-a-mole game continues, and you're constantly having to find new extensions to serve the same task. When you could simply switch to firefox, deal with the very minor growing pains, and keep using uBlock with no problems whatsoever.
I was a super early adopter for firefox. I started using it back in 2005-2006. I'm pretty sure it was still in beta when I started using it.
Over the past 20 years I've watched while firefox users have formed a goddamn cult around a software. It's insane to me, especially because I'm seeing exactly the same things from Mozilla that I was seeing from Microsoft (and later Google) at the time I decided to switch from IE to firefox to begin with...
Firefox isn't special. It's falling for all the cloud-based privacy invasive enshittification that Chrome has so far. It's just getting there slower.
So cool your jets. Especially considering uBlock Origin Lite is uBlock Origin. It's just compatible with the Manifest V3 standard.
Always has been.
Thanks!!
Yeah, I heard someone say a week or so ago that they straight disabled it in the browser, and now only the gimped version that works with Manifest V3 works now. Thankfully I switched to Firefox when all this Manifest V3 stuff was announced. As far as I know it's the only browser out there that isn't based on Chromium (which Google also controls, so browsers like Brave will likely be affected by this soon as well, unless a bunch of those smaller browsers get together and fork Chromium and maintain it themselves, which I'm not very hopeful about) and so doesn't have to worry about these shenanigans.
Safari had its own web engine, WebKit, which chromium’s web engine, blink, is actually a fork of.
Opera Used to have it’s own web engine, presto, but they rebased to blink in 2013.
But yah, your options these days for the basis of your browser are basically WebKit(Apple), Gecko(Mozilla) and Blink(Google).
Brave and Vivaldi are chromium based but have adblocking built in rather than relying on an extension. So while they will eventually be impacted on extension support, the built in adblocking (which is quite robust) won't be affected.
But then you're indirectly giving the enemy (Google) power by increasing their browser market share, which in turn lets them dictate the future of the web.
Fair, unfortunately though the chromium browsers have features that I enjoy that are not available in Firefox on mobile (for example, tab groups).
This isn't a direct replacement for tab groups, but there's a Firefox extension called Tree Style Tab that organizes your tabs into a nested tree structure. I use it a lot to emulate tab groups and the way it lays out the tabs makes it much easier to read imo. It might be worth taking a look if tab groups are chromium's "killer feature" for you.
If you don't mind me asking, are there any other must-have features that chromium has that Firefox doesn't?
It's mobile where I like the tab groups really, and unfortunately the extensions I've found that try to mimic the functionality don't work there. Honestly that's the big one but it's pretty major for me. With the way I tend to browse and research topics it's hard to manage without tab groups.
The only other big one is services that don't support Firefox. I use GeForce Now for game streaming so I do that through Brave.
I used Brave for a while and found I still needed to use ublock to cover some things, especially stuff like Youtube ads.
Odd, I've been using Brave for a few months now and have not seen any ads on YouTube. I specifically use it on my phone to avoid YouTube ads and allow background playback.
I haven't used it in a couple years now, so maybe they've gotten better. shrug Also never tried it on my phone, I use duckduckgo's browser.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm
Still shows up for me
shows up but it is not selectable
My guess is that they're doing it in waves. I've been hearing about it removed for weeks, only happened to me a few days ago.
they are probably testing how ads cant be blocked, they will move onto youtube, whom they tried many times to stop ad blocking. i would love to support some youtubers, who arent pos. but the ads are just too untenable.
They are.
same here in firefox. uhh
Webserial is only reason I see to install Chrome. For everything else Firefox works great.
Not surprising, Google is an ad company at this point.
Have never used Chrome. Firefox is very good. I had 5-6 years when I preferred Opera, but since 2014, I've been using Firefox exclusively.
looks like you dropped opera about the same time it rebased to blink (chromium) from their own web engine, presto.
Correct me if I'm wrong but extensions can still be installed manually correct?
Manifest v2 extensions won't work, the API it needs will be gone soon
Also since 2015, Google has made it VERY hard to install extensions without the web store. This extends to most chrome derivatives as well.
There are workarounds if you use ungoogled-chromium (Method 2 should work with normal chrome as well).
The functionality to run those extensions has been removed, so manual install won't work.
That’s fine. Google can go fuck themselves
I stayed away from Chrome alternatives, as it had the best Canvas/HTML5 performance (Which oddly enough, was quite important for most of my browsing needs). However, this news means I will have to switch. Installed Firefox for my primary browsing needs, and a few Chromium-based ones to try out for specifically the aforementioned use case.
i was able to load it in a (not chrome) chromium-based browser without issue, just the notice across the addon's page.
the 'lite' version is also on there, seems to work 'ok'. adguard and a few others are also there--they must all be mv3, as only the full ubo has the warning notice on its page of those i checked.
all the mv3 ones run the risk of having updates rejected or delayed by google, especially if they contain code or filter updates (filters must be packed with the addon in mv3) to combat changes google makes to their own sites. firefox or a trusted customized build or maintained fork is the way to go now.
Chrome? I've heard of that once.
It’s funny how things work out. I had a Chromebook that couldn’t have Firefox installed. I heard that Chrome would remove ubo, my Chromebook died the following month. So I got a cheap laptop instead. The problem solved itself.
🎵So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye.🎵
I noticed they recently marked it deprecated or unsupported (i forget the wording) and tried to get me to remove it. I think it was even disabled automatically. I kinda saw this coming.
Vivaldi's built in adblocker still works fine.
Yeah, I'm using Vivaldi too and getting concerned about UBO's lifespan...
I also have pfBlockerNG running in my firewall, which blocks a load too, but not looking forwards to the future...
I removed all adblock extensions a while ago, and I am now running with the built in adblock alone. It works great for me. Also, it won't be deprecated: https://vivaldi.com/blog/manifest-v3-update-vivaldi-is-future-proofed-with-its-built-in-functionality/
Ahh, didn't look into that, I'll have to check if I can remove some redundant addons.
thanks
I've been on Firefox since I left Internet Explorer many years ago. But, recently, I switched to LibreWolf, and I've been checking out Pale Moon. Pale Moon is close to doing everything I want, but not quite there.
That was a loud ball drop from Google’s hands.
I'm shocked, really
Boycott these bastids
Recently switched to Waterfox from Firefox and loving it. Much faster than the latter and I can use all of my add ons.
Haven't used Chrome in years so they can suck it.
Chrome hasn't been my main browser in a while but I kept it as a backup and because Firefox doesn't support PWAs and I didn't want to mess with the extension. Turns out, the extension only takes about 3 minutes to get set up and now Chrome has been uninstalled. And on a random Tuesday, who knew?
Are you sure? In Brave browser it's all nice and dandy.
Going to guess that’s based on your region rather than your browser
Switch to vivaldi
switch to firefox (or a fork of firefox like librewolf).
vivaldi just uses chrome's web store (there's a discussion on the forums to build their own extension store but no movement yet: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/91160/vivaldi-s-own-extension-store/20)
Waterfox runs nicely on pc. Still a little rough on android though
i have ironfox on android.
I didn't realize there were firefox forks, are any of them significantly better than firefox?
librefoxlibrewolf is very good; it comes with ublock and various other privacy features pre-installed, i've been leaning toward them more just because they embraced mastodon more. mullvad also has one.i typically go between firefox nightly and
librefoxlibrewolf.edit: oops mistyped the name, thanks @[email protected]
Is there actually a librefox too? I only know of Librewolf which I started using
oops, sorry! i'm an idiot and i miss typed! >_>
No worries, happens to the best of us! I was also genuinely wondering if I missed another fork by that name
I use librewolf just because it’s privacy focused.
But, there is also waterfox, floorp, and mercury, just off the top of my head.
Zen is worth checking out. It isn't my favorite, but it's trying to do some cool stuff. It might eventually become my favorite once it becomes more stable.
Right now, I'm digging FireDragon. It has two sidebars: one vertical tab bar and one for gadgets. And the vertical tab bar collapses to icons when you aren't hovering over it.
waterfox, zen, "librewolf is just a rehashed version firefox, if you are looking for android version. you can look at ironfox for mobile.
Does Vivaldi not just use the Chrome store for extensions? Also, aren't they losing manifest V2 as soon as it's dropped from Chromium in a few more months?
Not sure how Vivaldi uses extensions since you cannot add new ones from the chrome store, but if that happens we're gonna need to go to Firefox eventually. I currently love Vivaldi due to simplicity and the swipe up to open tabs page. Wish more browsers integrated that or just better & fluid animations
Extensions in Vivaldi come from the Chrome Web Store, not sure what you mean by this
I'm using the mobile app which doesn't let you use extensions from the chrome store, if you guys are talking desktop, I might be wrong.
Okay that makes way more sense then yeah. I don't know of a single chromium browser that supports extensions on mobile so unsurprising
I'm trying. I'm trying so hard. But it keeps pissing me off because I have to dig through settings to undo changes they made to browser features that are standard across both Firefox and Chrome. It's free and I'm not tryig to sound entitled but almost every single change they made to Chromium aside from the privacy stuff has me going WHYYYYYY?
The way they handle open in new tab, tlds like
.internal, and ctrl+click to complete urls were the worst offenders off the top of my head.Plus their ad blocker doesn't even come close to uBlock Lite.
I just want v8 in a hardened vanilla Firefox wrapper that doesn't go to the extremes that LibreWolf goes) :(
Also highly recommend waterfox if you still want the chrome aesthetic.
Any Chromium-based browser will be in the same boat sooner or later. None of them have the resources to continue to support v2 long-term, or to support their own extension stores.
At this point the only viable alternative is Firefox and its dirivatives.
I have used firefox from like 2005 to 2024. I am now using brave and I am quite happy with it. I just disabled all this useless cryptobro crap that it comes with. I tried most of the chromium based browsers and this is by far the one that better fits my needs. It has an adblocker that works well, it has a sync option that is not on google servers and supposedly they dont have that insane telemetry that chrome has. And yes an adblocker is tottally needed and will probably be allways needed. I do run a network adblocker with pihole and nextDNS. I haven't seen a single add in years and do not miss them at all. I rather ahve a half broken page than some random website trying to sell me satisfiers and blue pills.
Probably not a popular choice, but my VPN comes with an ad blocker which works great.
I'm still using Nord VPN as I got an insane deal a few years ago. Now it has something called Threat Protection which blocks all ads whether on my desktop browsers or on mobile.
✨Edit to add: Yeah down vote me. Nord was a blackfriday deal from 3 years ago. Much has changed since then.
I travel full time and I'm now in the market for a new VPN provider. I don't have my own router.. I don't even have a home.
Instead of just down voting, perhaps come with some constructive ideas or suggestions, thank you! ✨
I use proton vpn but you'll get downvoted no matter what if you don't use the vpn the bandwagon likes.
This kind is behaviour is a major downfall on platforms like this.
💯 This is absolutely true. I'll look at Proton. Thank you so much
So, um, which VPN does the bandwagon like?
Lack of port-forwarding is a deal-breaker, unfortunately.
You can just use a free adblocking DNS for that.
A browser adblocker is better for a few tricky ads.
lmao
Like I said it will be unpopular, but it's about to expire anyway.
A more helpful response would be to recommend an alternative
Mullvad VPN
Much appreciated, thank you!
Always my recommendation as well
Why is that lmao
GL-AX1800 router with mullvad wireguard vpn config and adguard
I travel full time, so I don't have my own internet connection.
That's a travel router, meant specifically for people in your situation.
Appreciated, however I'm down to a 45 liter carry on bag now and I literally have no space to carry my own router around.
Understood. For what it's worth, this is another one of their products that's quite small:
https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt3000/
It supports several VPN services out of the box.
Thanks for the link.
In all my travels, in all the cafés, libraries, hotels and co-working spaces I've used around the world, never have I seen anyone pull out their own router.
I'm not dismissing it's potential or usefulness, I just think that for me to avoid adverts and to connect to a few streaming services from weird locations it might be a bit overkill.
Sure thing! It can absolutely all be done from your phone; this is just another method if you have multiple devices.
Many chromium browser have built-in adblockers and some of them are on-par with uBO. These are not extensions, so Google can't really do anything about them. Not worried in the slightest.
Name one that is remotely on par with uBlock and is open source.
Shields.
EDIT: Let's both save our time: "Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc... ". I don't care. Mozilla isn't less shitty at all and Firefox is mediocre (source: have been a FF user/advocate from 2002 to 2021).
I'm not interesting in debating.
You're not interested in debating because you're scared of being shown how wrong you are. Don't say anything if you don't wish to debate anyone, it's an open forum, in case you forgot. You don't dictate the rules.
If you don't care you shouldn't care to tell others about it either.
As soon as you tell others, others will tell you.
Brave bad, CEO evil, Chromium, cryptoooo, etc… Bullshit browser.
You people are so dumb, predictable and obtuse... Welcome to my blocklist :-)
Wow there's so many awesome people here :O
Cringe.
Blocked.
Ima be honest. I don’t run ad blockers. The way I see it, if I’m consuming content from a given source and that source invested time and/or money into said content then they deserve to be compensated for it. I am not willing to pay a subscription for every website out there, so ads are an acceptable compromise.
I legitimately don't understand how people tolerate using the internet without an adblocker just from a usability standpoint.
Some pages are fine but frequently wandering to new pages on the internet is an experience in frustration.
I use an adblocker. I wouldn't click on an ad even if I could see it.
I agree with you in principle but in practice way too many sites are doing ads in bullshit ways. If they were just along a sidebar or at the top/bottom of the page I'd have no issue but usually they affect the actual usability of the site and I'm not dealing with that. If they want to expose me to ads they need to make it not a problem for me.
Also ads have served a lot of malware
The big assumption here is that the website had time or money invested in it. I feel like the vast majority of websites these days are just ai garbage with enough ads to prevent you from even reading the thing and give your computer herpies as a bonus. The era of good faith advertising where the ads were reasonable and balanced with the quality of content is long gone. Most sites are now explicitly designed for exploitive data harvesting and endless ad delivery.
Of course, some websites are exceptions to this and adblock can easily be toggled off for those websites if you really want to support them. Taking off protections for a trusted partner though is quite different from raw dogging the whole internet
Not everything I view online deserves money. I decide what is worth it to give money to and I decide what news articles I'm allowed to read.
I run ad blockers. As a security measure. Ad companies collect insane amount of data and do a bunch of shady stuff whenever they can get away with it.
I want to support websites whenever I'm able, but the way ad companies operate just ain't it.
If they clean up their act, maybe then I could stop using ad blockers, but it's been decades and I don't have high hopes.
Also using ad blockers for performance and usability reasons. For example, I used to use a bunch of Fandom wikis and couldn't understand why people hated the UI. Then I saw how Fandom looks like without ad blockers and holy shit how can humans live like this
oh yea i been on those fandom wiki, and almost slows you down on mobile because the amount of ads.
I agree with your reasoning but I still do run an adblocker. There are only 3 things in my life (that I can think of) where what I think is right and what I actually do don't align: adblocking, piracy and eating meat.
Your annoyance does not pay the bills though. You are annoying yourself for nothing.
If enough people block the ads then that’s a significant hit for publications.
It doesn’t really annoy me though. I guess I have high tolerance. Maybe it’s also because I rarely use YouTube, thats the only place ads have annoyed me and only because they are constant and impossible to ignore.
You remind me of the old guy at work who called me a "FUCKING FREELOADER" because I told him about uBlock origin.
I'm never recommending it again to anyone and I have since kept it a secret that I use an ad-blocker. I guess it's a problem for people.
That guy sounds like he thinks his kids owe him money for raising them. Disregard the stupid bastard.
Don't let this one person stop you.
I'm still recommended it to everybody.
Bike cuck vibes
I respect your stance and I agree with the subscription vs ads decision, websites need to make money somehow and I dont want to pay a subscription for everything either. I do run an adblocker but whitelist websites I use often and that dont have intrusive ads. It unfortunately affects websites that I visit quickly and dont come back to, they get a visitor but no advertisements. Its not a perfect solution but ads tend to be very intrusive on random websites.
I do, but it's less about the ads and more about privacy. I don't use things like sponsor block because there's pretty much no privacy violation there. But I do use an ad blocker because advertisers track me across websites to build up a profile.
I also don't want to make a free account, again because of privacy concerns (both from the site and from any data breaches.
I'm happy to pay a little for content, but I haven't yet seen a system that respects my privacy and is reasonably priced. If that was a thing, I'd totally pay.
I just use Safari and private relay for that. But yeah I can understand that particular point. I mean I’m not against ad blockers, it’s just that I don’t use them for the reasons I stated.
That's totally fair.
I'd really like some extension where I can compensate websites in exchange for not having ads. Let me load up a balance and present the option to deduct $0.0X to see read/watch past the teaser. The website wouldn't need to track me to get paid, and the browser/extension could merely track balances and keep an anonymous accounting of transactions to send a single larger payment later (to save on fees).
I'd totally use that.
Axate (used to be called Agate) is trying something like this. Popbitch (sue me) use it to charge 0.25 per article or 0.50 for access for a week, but it doesn't seem to be very widespread
I tried https://popbitch.com/royal-blush/ on firefox with ublock turned off and the microtransaction box after the faded out text still didn't display so it might have some way to go yet
Huh, I hadn't heard about them, probably because they're UK based? Thanks! I'll check them out.
At this point ad blocking is more about security and optimization than stopping ads themselves. If a site wants to run some banner ads to pay for costs, I have nothing against it, but once Javascript is involved, that just becomes a vulnerability for attack.
Also, websites that bury their content in layers of overlay and popup ads with loud audio and several unrelated videos can go fuck themselves.
There have been very decent alternatives, but they never took off.
One such was Flattr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
I used it for a while, but not many websites and creators used it, so most of my money was going towards a select few.
Good, click on them for the rest of us
I still use Google news, I really need to get rid of it but I've been slacking. Anyways, every once in a while I'll click on a story and the website will literally be paragraphs separated by gigantic, scrollable ads, and ads between paragraphs done in a way that you're not sure if you've actually finished the story or not.
I can't use fathom being on those websites without an adblocker. It's horrendous.
Might I recommend an RSS reader? I use feeeds on iOS, it’s fantastic and 100% percent free.
But then how do you pay the content creator?
Great point. Hadn’t thought about that. Maybe that’s why ads don’t bother me? But then again if a website has an rss feeeed that means they consent to serving their content ads free, so I don’t think it contradicts my stance.
But I never said I was against ad blockers anyways, I just said I didn’t use them because I feel it’s a little unfair. I have no intention of passing judgement on those who do use it, it’s up them, and like someone else at the individual level it makes little difference.