👋 Hello darkness 🌃, my old friend 🧑‍🤝‍🧑, I've come to talk with you again 🗣️. Because a vision softly creeping 👁️, left its seeds 🌱 while I was sleeping 🛏️. And the vision that was planted in my brain still remain 🧠, within the sound of silence 🔇. In restless dreams I walked alone 🚶, narrow streets of cobblestone 🛤️. 'Neath the halo of a street lamp 🔦, I turned my collar to the cold and damp 🌊. When my eyes were stabbed 🔪 by the flash of a neon light 📸 that split the night 🌉, and touched the sound of silence 🔉. And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people 🤼, maybe more. People talking without speaking 🙊. People hearing without listening 🙉. People writing songs that voices never share 🎤. No one dared 😶, disturb the sound of silence 🥁. "Fools" said I 🤓, "You do not know silence like a cancer grows 💗. Hear my words that I might teach you 🧑‍🏫, take my arms that I might reach you. 🫲" But my words like silent raindrops fell 💦, and echoed in the wells of silence 🕳️. And the people bowed and prayed 🙏 to the neon god they made 🌟, and the sign 🛑 flashed out its warning in the words that is was forming ⚠️. And the sign said, "The words of the prophets 📖, are written on the subway walls 🚈, and the tenement halls 🏠, and whispered in the sounds of silence🤫.

Title

repost from the hyprland discord, where i first found this meme

cry abt it

If you’ve been on YouTube or Reddit August last year, you might’ve seen this screen yourself, or a screenshot of someone else getting it. This of course, I am talking about the infamous YouTube ad blocker blocker popup, discussion exploded on Reddit mostly consisting of people complaining about ads, as well as an angry mob storming r/memes, turning it into a Firefox propaganda centre.

About a month later, different adblockrs eventually found their way of bypassing detection, and they work on YouTube again. So natrually Redditors thought they’ve won another war against big tech, completely ignoring Google’s original plan to kill off adblockers by June this year.

So all extensions, including adblockers follows a specification called the Manifest V2. The Manifest allows extensions to do certain things, say accessing browser tabs or to change browser settings. All while putting some limitations, and prevent extensions from doing crazy stuff like installing a virus to your system. But too much limitation, is what pisses off many extension developers about the upcoming ManifestV3.

In this article written by the EFF, they interviewed developers responsible for popular extensions, where most described ManifestV3 as a downgrade, with some accused it for being purposefully bad. I particularly like this one from the creator of SingleFile, “I consider the migration to Manifest V3 to be a major regression from a functional and technical point of view.”

After an update in June this year, a feature called the WebRequest API will be removed, and the adblockers and tracker blockers that depend on this feature will stop working. Since the business model of Google is to track your online activity and then show you personalised ads, it is not difficult to see why this feature is removed.

Not only are they sacrifising user experience for monetary gain, they are forcing the same update on all Chromium browsers as well. I am hereby devastated to inform you that this is not the first time they have done it, and it will not be the last time they will do it.

But there are also good news, non-Chromium browsers will not be affected by the Manifest V3, and if you are already using one, you will be exempt from any future nonsense Google throws in your way. So if you are considering switching to one, unless Safari is your goto browser, which lacks competent extensions support, you can still get your adblockers, another adblockers, all the adblockers.

So are you going to make the switch before the update? Let me know in the comments down below, anyways I will be seeing you in two weeks, have a good one.