https://www.androidauthority.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-changes-3386506/
Google has announced that it will move forward with Manifest V3 on Chrome, sounding the death knell for ad-blockers like uBlock Origin.
I love Firefox, but we need more variety in browsers and Chromium is just making it worse! There has to be a way to make building browsers simpler without everyone ending up relying on the product that was designed to ruin the free internet.
Yeah, the biggest problem with Firefox is that its engine is so hard to embed. Chrome has endless clones because it's just so damn easy to embed. And Firefox just has some weak forks like Librewolf.
I'd really rather see Mozilla focus on this rather than all their other stupid endeavors....
Wish this got upvoted more tbh. The devs of Pulse Browser are trying to make an environment where making a Firefox fork would be easier, but it's not like Chromium where the engine could be easily embedded. I've also heard Second Life had to move to Chromium for their embedded browser after using Gecko and having problems with it.
What we actually need is more variety in rendering engines. There were never that many, and two or three (Presto, Trident, and Spartan if you count it) have been killed off within the past ten years. All that's left are two lineages: Google's Blink and its barely-threre parent WebKit (in Apple's Safari), and Mozilla's Gecko and its barely-there child Goanna (in Pale Moon).
Unfortunately, the rendering engine is probably the largest single chunk of code in a browser, and writing a new one (or even forking an existing one) is non-trivial.
Servo still exists, it is under the Linux Foundation umbrella now after Mozilla abandoned it. Just got some funding in January.
Sure, they just need to fix their annoying bugs on Android.
Everytime I leave a tab open and switch to another app, it's a 50/50 whether I return to a black screen and am forced to restart it or it just works fine.
Yup that's been a long running issue with Firefox on android. Thought it was just me at first then saw forums where tons of people have the issue and the only suggestion is to reinstall it
I thought it was a problem with my phone since I'm using a custom ROM and it did not happen before. When I open Firefox and it has been in the background for a while, it shows a black screen where the web content should be and often crashes if you try to open another tab or do something else. Also happens if I open a link from another app. The only solution is to close Firefox and swipe it off the recent apps and reopen it. Is this the same problem you have?
Yep, I have it on my Poco F5 with MIUI and a friend that has a Galaxy S23 with stock OS also has the same issue.
I never had an issue with Firefox. Sounds like it's specific to your friend's settings not model.
A lot of people are saying they suffer the same and me and my friend have completely different devices with different Android flavours.
It doesn't seem to be what you are saying.
I have never had an issue either. We're all just tiny anecdotes in a sea of users. I mean, people that don't have issues won't generally post about it on forums, so of course people will generally only see others posting about similar issues unless they are some magical unique unicorn.
I had to uninstall since it was draining my battery. On one day it was 40% of my battery usage with just 1 minute on time actually open.
Actually I'm sure most of us are just baffled that people will make extremely shitty choices just because others do
Since Firefox is also implementing Manifest v3, will this also eventually be an issue in Firefox?
https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/develop/manifest-v3-migration-guide/
Possibly, though for now, they've worked with the ad blocker devs and kept everything working WITH v3 in FireFox. Google will not do it in Chrome because defeating the ad blockees is the point.
Last I heard, Firefox is making carve outs for some of the APIs that Mv3 is supposed to deprecate.
Firefox fans spamming F5 for any thread that they can comment "Firefox" on
Geez you guys can't take a joke.
The thing is — not trying to sound snarky about this — do you honestly believe there is someone on the fediverse that hasn't heard of Firefox before.
I believe there are people here who still haven't switched, and this post about a problem and the obvious solution could convince them.
Do they already know the argument? Sure. It's a pretty simple one.
The post can, yeah. The predictability with which all posts or comments containing the word "Google" will have several responses underneath evangelizing Firefox almost certainly will not, after it exceeds a point it very clearly routinely exceeds.
Not because you guys are wrong, (you're not), but because you're annoying, which is almost as bad. There is something in psychology called reactance theory, and it's the reason why, when you're just about to do the dishes and then someone else tells you to do them, it's suddenly the last thing on earth you want to do.
It is a choice so small it isn't worth arguing over, but it's no longer your choice born out of your own free will, and now you feel cheated and resentful and you are not doing it, both out of spite and more truthfully to regain your sense of choice.
This is the same reason everyone hates vegans so much. They're not wrong. They're annoying. Firefox has vegan PR.
I held off listening to Hamilton for three years for no other reason than nobody else I met would shut the goddamn fuck up about Hamilton. Same with the TV version of Good Omens, whatever stupid cartoon jester thing has been in a third of the memes lately, and a hundred other things.
I am very likely to switch over to Firefox myself in the ever-nearing future. That ice is breaking. But it will not be because a bunch of strangers whined at me over my own choices for over a decade. It will be because the cons of whatever Google, Windows, etc. have done finally outweigh the pros of not having to exert effort to maintain my experience.
It bears consideration that in the meantime, Firefox users have a tendency not to even read the several duplicate comments before they start jacking off into them, not uncommonly in a way that's loudly judgemental towards their own target audience.
The resultant spam cements a mental association between Firefox, the brand and the feeling of being annoyed and insulted. Don't be those vegans. If I had to think, be like the art community treats Adobe. Fuck Adobe, but I'm not just gonna overload someone with aggressive pompousity who's only using the industry default.
Google Chrome fans spamming F5 on the news page to see what features are being removed next.
I didn't want you to think I down voted because I disagreed with you. You're quite right. I down voted you because it was a dumb joke.
I think the main issue is the people here suggesting and evangelising Firefox not really listening to those who aren't, which frustrates the other person. I think I fell into this with the fediverse, in the early days of Elon fucking up Twitter. There are perfectly valid reasons to not use Firefox right now. Maybe one browser or other works better for them, or has that one killer feature they can't live without. Firefox has that for some of us, too. Or Firefox has some weird quirk or bug that other browsers don't.
I personally use Firefox and Vivaldi. Vivaldi has tab tiling which is great for when I'm in the zone adding music to MusicBrainz or RYM, and it's not too clunky either. Tile Tabs WE doesn't cut it for me. For casual browsing, vertical tabs is nice and I use Firefox + Sidebery for that, which is better than Vivaldi's vertical tab implementation.
I think the main issue is the people here suggesting and evangelising Firefox not really listening to those who aren’t
That's exactly it. A few months ago I saw a conversation on Lemmy where someone was listing the features they were missing in Firefox, and someone literally replied "There is no way you need any of this shit".
And even when they say tab hibernation does exist, they're calling OP a dumbass. If I did that to my friends who want to try Linux, they'd be back on Windows in a heartbeat.
I've also been shouted at here for telling a user asking about Vivaldi that the culture here does not like Chromium-based browsers like it and they likely won't get their answer here. It's like they wanted me to shut up and not criticise their behaviour.
That, my friends, is why we kept fighting for firefox. It doesn't matter if you like or dislike Mozilla foundation, they have to exist because of shit like this
Firefox has the same problem with V3, it has nothing to do with the browser, adblocker V2 will stop working, because are the advertising companies wich will use V3 scripts. For Chrome and Chromium the only thing is, that are no more V2 adblocker in the Chrome Store and installed adblock extensions won't work anymore. after June 24. But don't panic, the fact that adblocker V2 stops working does not exclude that there will be adblocker V3, the devs of these are not going to rest on their laurels either.
to my knowledge Firefox is keeping compatibility with most current extensions at least in terms of adblockers and privacy tools as they transition to manifest v3
Firefox has the same problem with V3, it has nothing to do with the browser
Didn't they say they will implement V3, but change it slightly to allow extensions like ublock origin to block web requests? Also I'm pretty sure there's still no timeline for any deprecation of V2 in FF, unlike for Chrome, which will disable all V2 extensions.
Also not a problem in Vivaldi, it has a own inbuild ad/trackerblocker, no need of the Chrome Store for this. Anyway until June 24 also the adblocker devs have updated their products for sure.
until June 24 also the adblocker devs have updated their products for sure.
If you understood the differences between manifest v2 and v3 you'd understand that it's pretty much impossible to make an ad blocker with the same effectiveness in V3 as in V2.
So they will exist, just be worse.
No https://blog.shahednasser.com/chrome-extension-tutorial-migrating-to-manifest-v3-from-v2/ How long do you think it will take the devs to change the adblockers to v3? 3..2..1..
That doesn't even mention the changes to webrequest. Here's an intro: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/migrating/blocking-web-requests/
Only hard and adrich times for Chrome users and some work of the devs from adblockers and other browsers.
Firefox has the same problem with V3, it has nothing to do with the browser, adblocker V2 will stop working, because are the advertising companies wich will use V3 scripts.
What the hell are you talking about? This has nothing to do with what advertising companies do.
The main reason adblockers don't like manifest V3 is that the webRequest API is gone. The proposed replacement, declarativeNetRequest, does not have the same functionality.
yet we already have a working implementation of ublock origin for mv3 by it's main developer, gorhill
When I read about that like a year ago gorhill had clearly stated that the mv3 version's efficacy is severely kneecapped and while it works as well as it can it's extremely bad in comparison to the present version on Firefox and Edge
Edge has been picking and choosing what features to carry over and off the top of my head announced they wouldn't be merging in the most unpopular MV3 changes
Thank goodness for Firefox. Google is really doing their best to make the Internet unusable.
Firefox is adding optional builtin promoted paid services tho. (VPN, email obfuscator) This stuff should be extensions. Makes me worry.
More than the company that literally is a for profit that makes a browser that kneecaps adblocking and puts an ad targeting protocol onto the Browser?
Mozilla Corporation is a for profit company that builds Firefox. The Mozilla Foundation is nonprofit.
MZLA Technologies, the Thunderbird company, is also for profit which is why donations to them are not tax deductible.
Those two aren't bad, IMO. It lines up with what people think their principles should be.
You want something to make you worry? They're integrating Fakespot, an AI-based review scanner that Mozilla acquired a while back, into Firefox. Never mind that industries are having problems auto-scanning content for AI generated prose...
Google justified this change by highlighting how extensions using the Web Request API could access and modify all the data in a network request, essentially being able to change everything that a user could do on the web (
which is pretty scary and problematic when you think about itwhich is a perfectly valid usecase of a user-installed extension).
People don't even know about manifest v3 let alone switching to Firefox. They will just use whatever google throws at them.
The point is they will know once their adblocker stops working, and they start to investigate why this happened.
You can't do much about users that just don't care. But more technically inclined folks often do care and these are the people that develop the web and maintain the computer/browser for other people.
A lot of folks in my circle use chrome, but the moment the AdBlock plugin stops working they'll likely switch to anything that works better. They are not necessarily too concerned about privacy, but they also don't want to have most of their browsing made effectively impossible by ads everywhere.
I mean, just try and use the web without any sort of blocking. A lot of sites don't even have their content visible.
Because you don't randomly insist that your tab UI is some extremely fucking specific way that is somehow required to use the Internet! The nerve!
This article is really wrong, wow. There is already a Manifest V3-compliant version of uBlock Origin, it's discussed in this thread: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338
I don't know if it's stated definitively anywhere, but I'm pretty sure the plan is to roll out that different version to Chrome users as an update to the existing extension. It's going to be slightly worse because MV3 is still missing some API features.
that version works but it's always been a lite version compared to the standard ublock origin with far less capabilities and features.
Right, my point was just that the article is wrong/clickbait. The changes won't "disable uBlock Origin" or "essentially kill off uBlock Origin".
The V3 version of ublock should really use a different name to make it clear it doesn't have the same capabilities as in V2/Firefox. Maybe something like UBlock use-firefox-instead.
That's an important distinction. Whenever trillion dollar tech companies say they're not going to do something hugely unpopular and selfish because of public sentiment, what they really mean is they're not going to do it right then. Instead they back off, do something like this to get everyone's attention focused elsewhere, and then they'll push the original unpopular idea anyways, but quietly.
I've never really understood the obsession with this. Yes, it's true, but 1) they've never killed anything I actually cared about 2) they can't support infinite software forever. 3) this discussion has nothing to do with anything here. They aren't going to "kill" ads, it's literally the one thing about their company that will never not be the focus.
It was something else. Web drm : Web Integrity API.
Tho I don't think they canceled the mobile variant of it for apps.
They backed off their web drm, because it was hugely unpopular, but also because they remembered they own chromium and can just disable adblockers directly. They tried to over-engineer something that requires everyone else to adopt a new standard, when all they ever needed to do was use a sledgehammer.
They did update the Declarative Net Request API to be more useful apparently.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964509/google-manifest-v3-rollout-ad-blockers
People all this stress can be avoided if more channels upload videos on peertube. U block origin wouldnt even be needed as generally no ads are on peertube.
Peertube doesn't give ad revenue sharing, so most content creators can't afford to make content for a platform with no return. If someone was uploading a video for their friends, or a school project, then sure, open platforms are perfect.
Vast majority of creators make pennies from youtube ads. They make their money from patreon and sponsorship, neither of which are incompatible with peertube.
The biggest problem vis-a-vis youtube is that people won't find you if you are not on it and blessed by the algorithm. Youtube is a monopoly because of metcalfe's law.
Seemed like people were uploading before youtube started paying people, so I dont buy that %100
Maybe I could meet you in the middle there because I can see that happening.
People were uploading, and still are. Uploading a video for my friends, or a school project which needs no return open platforms work perfectly. Irrelevant to my point.
Companies/Content Creators are on the platform because it pays them. If being on youtube did not pay them, they would go to a platform that did, eg twitch, tiktok.
They can't afford? YouTube creators do it for attention and the possibility to become well known, not for the few dollars that YouTube shares with them. And also for the pleasure of helping others.
Literally any real job pays 100x what YouTube pays, so if money was the objective, these guys would not sit and make YouTube videos.
Since Chrome does not "disable uBlock Origin" but Google deprecating manifest V2 in favor of manifest V3 it will be done in Chromium because Chromium does the heavy lifting and Chrome is "just a Chromium based browser".
They have been postponing it for a long time now. But uBlock origin has a light version they expect to work with V3. I wonder why they bother in the first place when they can just focus on Firefox
But uBlock origin has a light version they expect to work with V3
It just "kinda" works. It cannot nearly load all the network filters that it would normally use.
Yes, it blocks ads, and likely the YouTube ones too. The current problem with YouTube is just their anti-adblocker which needs very frequent filter updates and unlike MV2, filter updates in MV3 need the update of the entire extension (think approval periods etc).
That was my understanding. People talk about this change like it's going to disable adblock extensions completely which is clearly not the case. So far no one really explained what the actual impact will be. Do you know that? I see youtube ads might be harder to block. Anything else?
Yeah, I would like to know that as well.
Although if updating the adblocker's list is not instant, as with wm2, it is basically a losing race with Google, since they can change the ad domains even before the adblocker update is applied.
Or worse, since the adblocker no longer has direct access, they can just set chrome to ignore it's requests/changes when it benefits them.
Oh fear not, limiting filter list updates to addon updates is a huge problem. For those users who rarely restart their browsers it's even bigger of a problem: updating the addon (for the up to date filter lists) also means that all of the already loaded websites will lose the filters until you reload them, which is both not obvious to be needed and very painful, when you are using your browser for other things than consuming.
Also, does that also mean that custom filter lists are impossible anymore?
Besides these, also take into account that approval of addon updates can take a long time, quite often days, while the filters need to be updated more often (once or twice a day) for websites to not break for the majority of the users.
Yes, thinking about it, I still confidently think that chrome's changes are unacceptable and are dealbreakers, and google is very clearly trying to curb content blockers with whatever tools available. Fortunately I don't have to use that garbage anywhere.
Not really. In some cases it is able to, but as I said, ublock cannot load it's filters, and so it can filter out much less things. Don't forget that ublock does not only block ads, but disruptive popups and obsessive data mining too. With this change of chrome, it is simply unable to do that reliably.
Well, Firefox also plans to deprecate MV2 at some point (deadline to be announced at the end of this year), the difference is just that their implementation of MV3 is more flexible at the points Chrome was criticized for.
Didn't expect the day to come when I can no longer use Chromium based browsers.
Oh well, anyway.
Not sponsored, I just genuinely like the product. Adguard doesn't require manifests because it works outside the browser.
On the other news I hope this bullshit is finally the straw that kills chrome.
Not sponsored, I just genuinely like the product. Adguard doesn't require manifests because it works outside the browser.
But trivial to circumvent. Just change the origin url from (for example) 'ads.google.com' to 'google.com' and you no longer can block ads based on DNS blocking.
While it is now not a hugh thread it will eventually happen when they manage to eradicate adblockers in the browser.
Ublock origin is far way more advanced and complete than adguard, though. Cosmetic filtering, for example
Adguard does have cosmetic filtering thou. I'm talking about their paid app not dns servers.
While I have an old Gmail account I do not use it. My main email account is with (not much better) Microsoft. I also have an account with Proton Mail, which will eventually be my only account.
Hope springs eternal. Most people without an adblocker don't even notice that their web experience has become an ad-ridden hellscape.
Highly doubt it. So many other browsers on so many platforms (mobile, tv, Auto,...) are built on Chrome and will have this by extension.
And opening most links in Android apps still opens them in Chrome, even if Firefox is your default browser.
Time for Android to get the EU treatment.
I have stock Android device and have disabled Chrome and everything opens in FF (including the uBlock addon) in-app. You are spreading lies.
How about the US fixes some of its shit for once? Instead of exporting disgusting practices and forcing others to fix them?
I don't have this issue m Samsung galaxy s9+ on stock Android.
Everything opens in the duckduckgo browser by default. The only time I see Chrome is when it's for when a web site doesn't load in ddg or firefox
I'm doing this from a Samsung, so the steps might differ slightly, but go into apps, scroll down to Chrome, select it, and then tick the 'Disable' option. Now Chrome literally can't open anything.
I have only one problem with that: no other browser is capable of Casting (as in Chromecast to an Android TV). Trust me, I heard and tried ALL the suggestions there is. And no, I don't want to cast the whole phone screen, JUST the browser or the medium playing inside it. You know, science-kind media for my friend.
Where do you do that? There's only an option for Default Browser as far as I can see, and that's set to Firefox.
I found an option in the Developer Options called Webview implementation, but only the Android System Webview can be selected. On Pixel 7.
I honestly don't know anymore as I can't find it. Maybe it was just different in older Android versions, but now I akso just have FF set as my default browser and that's it.