There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

  • Google is transitioning Chrome’s extension support from the Manifest V2 framework to the V3.
  • This means users won’t be able to use uBlock Origin to block ads on Google Chrome.
  • However, there’s a new iteration of the app — uBlock Origin Lite, which is Manifest V3 compliant but doesn’t boast the original version’s comprehensive ad-blocking features.
bitjunkie ,

Next week: Over 30 million users pull the plug on Chrome, leaving Google execs to make the surprised Pikachu face and wonder aloud why millennials hate web browsers.

snailfact ,

Normal people are too lazy to care they are just going to get another ad blocking extension, even if it’s not as good as ublock.

thawed_caveman ,

Yeah, it takes some mental effort to change your habits, people are more likely to just install a new extension.

BUT, those extensions are probably next, dropping uBlock is part of a long-standing war by Google against ad blocking of all kinds. So at some point Chrome users won’t be able to escape ads, and then i do wonder if they’ll switch.

I feel like normal people who are too lazy to care would probably just use the default browser that came with their device. It will be Chrome if it’s an Android, but it will be everything but Chrome if it’s any other OS, it will be Edge or Safari.

Now i haven’t installed Chrome in a minute, but how many devices is it the default for? My understanding is that a lot of Chrome users specifically looked for it and installed it to use instead of the default, especially Windows users. And for that public, i do think it matters, i do think they would consider switching.

stoly ,

The sort of person who would sit through a Youtube ad or is still on Reddit won’t change. They’ll just get angry or perhaps not even notice.

InternetUser2012 ,

That type of person didn’t use ublock to begin with. Anyone that did is going to be a Firefox user today.

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

Even if only a fraction of those kinds of users switch, that’s still millions of users chrome loses, and no longer get to make a buck off of.

stoly ,

I agree that every one counts but it won’t break Google’s profit margin.

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

Doesn’t have to. I’m quite content with google’s profits getting hurt even if it is a little bit.

madcaesar ,

FYI TELL YOUR LOVED ONES ABOUT THIS

If you are on here you’re probably like me “the it guy of the family”

Mom and dad aren’t going to switch themselves, remove chrome for them as the default install Firefox and tell them to use that unless something absolutely refuses to work. Pick your battles.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t even get my mom to stop believing that her bank would text her asking for her account info.

Prethoryn ,
@Prethoryn@lemmy.world avatar

Good news for Mom, Firefox doesn’t really change functionality wise compared to Chrome.

A_Random_Idiot ,

Sometimes people just refuse common sense and have to be left to ruin their own lives, no matter how much you love them.

Cause theres no point drowning yourself, trying to keep idiots that refuse to swim above water.

SkunkWorkz ,

If you are the IT guy just buy a raspberry pi or a cheap mini pc and install pi-hole at your parents place that you can access remotely. That way their entire network is blocked from ads and you can troubleshoot from anywhere.

madcaesar ,

Honestly that’s way too much work. Keep it simple imo.

SkunkWorkz ,

It is simple. Probably simpler than educating a stubborn boomer to use a different browser.

almost1337 ,

And then it gets blamed every time something doesn’t work right with the internet

lightnsfw ,

I gave my parents 3 "The internet stopped working so I reset the router"s before I stopped trying. If you can’t follow the simplest instructions you’re on your own. Enjoy your adds and paying for subscription services.

CancerMancer ,

Yeah that’s what happened with my wife. Had to scrap PiHole because she didn’t want to deal with it.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I have said this in other threads about this issue in response to all the “use Firefox” comments.

Thousands upon thousands of school children are currently using Chromebooks they get from their schools. Now they will be forced to look at ads.

bitwaba ,

Gotta get 'em hooked while they’re young…

TotalFat ,

Joe Camel

CafecitoHippo ,

Now they will be forced to look at ads.

I’m pretty sure they would’ve been seeing ads anyways. I doubt that school IT administrators had uBlock Origins as an extension that was being installed and I really doubt they didn’t have the chromebooks locked down so students could install whatever extensions they wanted.

madcaesar ,

Good, smart IT would have installed ublock and locked that shit down. Saves bandwidth and protects the kids.

But you’re probably right, most IT departments are useless.

CafecitoHippo ,

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s not a good practice, but I just don’t see them doing it.

kogasa ,
@kogasa@programming.dev avatar

Don’t think it saves bandwidth unless it’s a DNS level block, which IT should also do but separately from uBO

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I was able to install it on my daughter’s Chromebook.

captainlezbian ,

Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a goal of the chromebook project

atocci ,

I was done with school before giving out computers to students was the norm, but my brother’s school district seems to be issuing Surface Laptops instead of Chromebooks. With Firefox preinstalled.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It must be a wealthier school district because Chromebooks are far cheaper, even in bulk, than Surface notebooks.

discountcomputerdepot.com/shop?product_listings=C…

atocci ,

Wow those things can really get down in price. I think the district is issuing the original Surface Laptop Go, which went for about $500 when they were new and bought individually. No idea what kind of discount they could get for buying in bulk though, educational institution pricing is hidden behind having to “contact sales”.

ReveredOxygen ,
@ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works avatar

They’re forced to look at ads anyway, as the IT dept blocks installing extensions

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

The IT department at my daughter’s school allowed me to install the uBlock Origin extension last year. Granted, some extensions (and websites for that matter, no PornHub) were blocked, but not that one.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

I’m willing to bet you’re the exception and not the rule. I can confirm from my own experience that we couldn’t even alter the system settings of the individual device.

atocci ,

Altering system settings wasn’t possible when I was in school, but browser settings weren’t so locked down. Extensions were freely available to install on the school computers.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

That wasn’t the case for us, we couldn’t download anything that didn’t come pre-installed. If the teachers wanted to use a website that was blocked by the cartoonishly restrictive web filter they had to wait upwards of a week because all of the IT was done by one guy who was also a teacher.

atocci ,

Our IT team was pretty cool I think.

I had a technology class when I was there that only had 6 students in this little computer lab in the back of the cafeteria. There were way more computers than than students though, so the few of us that were there started unplugging monitors from the unused computers next to us and giving our computers multiple monitors. We couldn’t rearrange the monitors since they were physically attached to the tables, and they couldn’t be reordered in Windows since system settings were locked, so we just had to remember that to get to the left monitor we’d actually have to move the mouse to the right for example.

Not even a week later, someone from IT showed up to check on things. We thought that would be it for our multi-monitor setups and they’d make us put them back, but not a beat was missed between them noticing what we had done, realizing that the monitors were in the wrong order, and offering to fix it for us in the settings.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah our IT guy was cool and always tried to be helpful, it’s just that he was given the job of a whole team on top of being a full time teacher, while also constantly facing criticism from the school board for being unable to keep up. You could tell he was only there for the students, because his bosses treated him like shit.

Except he was also a big time trump supporter and ended up losing his job after (from what I heard) bringing a gun on a school trip.

So nobody’s perfect I guess.

Lets_Eat_Grandma ,

I would personally push adblockers in a professional environment. They eliminate a lot of unwanted threat vectors.

There is a very rare occasion where it breaks things just one ticket later and a little education and it’s good.

JusticeForPorygon ,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Definitely! It’s just unfortunate that many times the people in charge of doing that don’t know that.

Trainguyrom ,

Around the time the FBI quietly updated their security recommendations to include recommending adblocking a couple of large local colleges in the very conservative area I live started pushing uBlock Origin to all of their computers. And if I were higher on the foodchain at my place of work I’d be pushing to enact a similar policy update

A_Random_Idiot ,

given the typical IT inertia, that will be a problem when they update chrome in 5 years.

Showroom7561 ,

Thousands upon thousands of school children are currently using Chromebooks they get from their schools. Now they will be forced to look at ads.

I don’t want to be “that guy”, but the ads school-aged kids are viewing come from the apps they are using, not their web browsing on Chrome.

And they are even more heavily impacted when their favourite content creator hucks sponsored products, which can’t be blocked with an adblocker.

I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet by not being exposed to 99.9% of the ads out there, but that’s only because I don’t use toxic social media apps or YouTube in its designed form.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Except no they don’t because they have to do things like research for their essays, which requires using the web in general.

Showroom7561 ,

Maybe it depends on the school system, but my kid’s Chromebook was locked down, so they couldn’t really explore the full internet. Many sites are either white or blacklisted, so they were researching from a website designed to be used by students - not many ads, but yeah, going off script would get them into ad territory.

Still, they aren’t seeing the majority of ads from the few minutes they need to look up a research topic.

DudeImMacGyver ,
@DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works avatar

Intrusive ads and…

MALWARE!

Twiglet ,

Yep, the main reason I started using adblockers in the first place is because I was tired of the weekly disinfection routine of my pc.

Hiding ads wasn’t my main motivation to start with, I just wanted to keep my system safe and shit free.

Evotech ,

To be fair, some add-ons are the worst malware you can have. Google is trying to combat that

DudeImMacGyver ,
@DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works avatar

Bullshit, they are trying to kneecap ad blocking to protect their bottom line. They could have protected people from sketchy add one without fucking up ublock

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

Stop making you extensions/site only work on chromium based browsers

primrosepathspeedrun ,

okay, opera only, heard.

what do we do if a user isn’t running iOS? can it involve spiders?

theangryseal ,

Chromium got opera bruh…I’m sorry.

primrosepathspeedrun ,

right but can we still have spiders pop out of the phone of anyone who visits our website on an OS other than iOS? or did they put that off until HTML6?

theangryseal ,

Oh, well that I don’t know. That’s fun.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

If it still blocks ads, use it. Don’t care.

ngwoo ,

Use Firefox. If something you use ABSOLUTELY needs Chromium yell at whoever makes the thing. If that still doesn’t work use Brave. But then go back to Firefox for everything else.

Huckledebuck ,

I’ve switched to Brave. I only use it for general internet use. What am i missing out on if i don’t go back to Firefox?

Voltage ,
@Voltage@sh.itjust.works avatar

I know its everyone’s personal choice and all that but in my opinion people should stop using chromium engine browsers. It was a good engine however the fact that chromium has the majority users is the only thing holding lazy developers from porting websites to work with other browser engines gives google more control.

Huckledebuck ,

So what are the better options. I don’t know much (anything) about web engines. Privacy is my top priority.

stetech , (edited )

Most “browsers” being marketed out there are based off of Google’s Chromium project. They are effectively re-skins of it (simplifying a little). Examples include Brave, Vivaldi, Opera I believe.

Firefox is completely separate and independent from this ecosystem (which is also why there’s a separate extension store for Firefox).

The third and last major (>a couple % market share) engine is WebKit, which is the basis of Apple’s Safari.

There’s tons of cool stuff out there, but it’s either niche (platform/use case), unstable to use, and/or both. Examples: Servo, Ladybird, Orion

To sum it up, if you’re a normal, average user:

  • If you have exclusively Apple devices, probably try Safari (for the synchronization & battery efficiency)
  • If not, Firefox!
  • If you need it because of some really messed up development/compatibility issues, the last resort is ungoogled/de-googled Chromium

While on the topic, here’s some cool browser extensions:

Edit: fixed a link

Huckledebuck ,

Wow, thanks! I had no idea there was Bitwarden extension.

hanrahan ,
@hanrahan@slrpnk.net avatar

Support for Chromuin backed browsers ?

I keep Throriim there for the odd shit ball site thear refuses but then thats the point.

pyre ,

fuck brave. use librewolf.

Huckledebuck , (edited )

Cool, I’ll give it a shot.

Edit: is there a mobile version?

hswolf ,
@hswolf@lemmy.world avatar

short answer: No

long answer: Most people just like to shout-out what they like, and don’t want to know your use case. If you need pc/mobile sync, Firefox will be your best choice here.

Tja ,

What you are missing out on? Probably not much. Some sites might even work worse if you switch, due to lazyness or sabotage by devs.

Using Firefox is good for the ecosystem in general, to have a counter balance to Google. I use both Firefox and chromium and see very little difference. Some extensions might be worth it (like the title says), so that might be a difference for you.

Huckledebuck ,

Thank you!

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Screw that. Use Firefox, but if you need Chrome, use brave, use Vivaldi, use Opera for all it mattwrs. Asanything that still works is fine.

This brave paranoia is just insane. You don’t want crypto, don’t use it. You don’t trust brave use Vivaldi, but spreading fake fear is BS.

CafecitoHippo , (edited )

You don’t want crypto, don’t use it.

I use Brave as my Chrome based browser when not using Floorp but there were other issues with Brave in the past like injecting their affiliate links unbeknownst to users so they could make money off them. They have reverted that decision but that they thought it was acceptable in the first place leaves some to question, rightly, what other shenanigans they might pull. They’ve also had issues with paying out Creators BAT tokens.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Yep company’s not totally trustworthy neither is Google neither is Microsoft. By the way, Firefox still sends all of your websites to Google to get safe traffic prompts.

Brave also got and slapped by the SEC for the handling of their crypto sales.

The link issue you’re speaking of was 4 years ago. The CEO issued a formal apology.

They’re a funded company they are trying to make money to pay the developers to stay solvent.

On the upside they’re using that money to fight Google’s ad blocking and to keep manifest V3 optional.

The way they block the ads happens outside of manifest so even if they take the manifest code they still won’t have ads. Of the chromium ancestry browsers they are the most likely to continue running long-term. They’re also the fastest solution for YouTube blocking when YouTube makes changes.

I main Firefox but still use brave over edge or opera.

Right now, we need all the boats we have. Not everything works in Firefox you need to have a backup,

JackbyDev ,

Brave altered URLs clicked to add their own affiliate links. Browsers should go to where you click. That’s like their whole job. There are reasons to dislike Brave apart from crypto.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

4 years ago

Also Firefox sends all of your browser data to Google for safe browsing checks Right now.

JackbyDev ,

Are you talking about this? They say it only calls out to get updated lists and when you actually arrive at a phishing page to check if the page is still marked as suspicious.

Source: …mozilla.org/…/how-does-phishing-and-malware-prot…

Also, I agree it was 4 years ago. That’s a fair point. To me it’s super important and they’ve probably permanently lost my trust (or at least it’s always going to be besmudged). If you believe they’ve changed in that time period (or it’s not as critical to you) then that’s fine.

For what it’s worth, when I need a Chromium based browser because the site has a bug and won’t work with Firefox my (current) go to is Brave. I use it on a semi regular basis because dndbeyond.com works poorly with Firefox. So every 2 to 4 weeks I use it for that.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

You can also disable FF from connecting to safe browsing with flags. I prefer to let my DNS handle that list.

My Work ADP portal also misbehaves in FF.

I’ve also made FF stop using Google search for anything.

I advocate people use whatever works for them. I’d advocate for Edge, but they have already clarified they intend to follow Chrome to the letter.

Vivaldi has claimed they intend to fork and not enforce V3, but acknowledge it’s no small feat and they may fail.

Operam I believe has claimed they intend not to enforce V3

Brave goes as far as saying that they’re immune to it even if they turned it on.

I don’t trust any browser 100% Firefox was close and is still my most trusted.

I’m down with pushing everyone into Firefox, but I’m not loving the chrome variant hate. Use whatever works unless the browsers are currently acting bad.

Rob ,

What’s the general consensus on Arch? I really like the UX, although I stuck to Firefox on mobile.

kokesh ,
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

What a disaster… USE FIREFOX

800XL ,

The only thing that runs Chrome is my work computer only because they installed it and who gives a fuck if they get hacked? I don’t even discern search results because I don’t get paid enough to care.

Lumisal ,

Just make sure your router is updated. I recommend gl.inet routers if you’re a beginner - easy to keep up to date and their version of OpenWRT has AdGuard installed. Malware can affect more than just the computer you use

800XL ,

I never do personal stuff or even search for non-work related stuff on the machine, and when I’m at home it’s on a guest network by itself on a different subnet. Outside of work hours I manually turn off wifi on the machine and block it on the router.

Rehydrate054 , (edited )

Could use Brave, built using chromium but has ad block built in.

Edit - have been made aware that brave is not ideal - Link

Edit edit! - Yeah, Brave’s CEO sounds like a grade a dick. I’ve switched to Firefox for sure. Not been here in a while.

ByteOnBikes ,

No thanks. Brave got some serious problems and you might as well use Edge or something that isn’t owned by a bigot.

Rehydrate054 ,

Oh shit, I’ve only got a few lines into the article but will read the rest soon. Ty.

finickydesert ,
@finickydesert@lemmy.ml avatar

Even the FBI sent a warning imploring everyone use AdBlockers

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

vanderbilt ,
@vanderbilt@lemmy.world avatar

Hopefully the DoJ case against Google includes getting bent over a barrel for abusing their position as a market maker to force their revenue model.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Skill issue

henfredemars ,

KilledByGoogle up next: Chrome. You mean they pulled the plug on Chrome.

A lot of momentum to dissipate but the ad blocker defines a bearable web experience.

vin ,

Nah, chrome will block “intrusive” ads to maximise Google’s revenue

ravhall ,

Does anyone still use chrome? lol.

Chozo ,

Nearly 3.5 billion people do.

"Does anybody still use [literally the most popular product in its industry]?"

ravhall ,

They deserve what they get.

Chozo ,

I deserve ads because Firefox won't render any of the web apps I use for work? Damn.

ravhall ,

What websites do you use for work that won’t work on Firefox?

Chozo ,

Firefox breaks Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, Jira, and several other internal/proprietary platforms I use. Many of our tools are integrated into each other (sometimes on the backend through the API, sometimes on the frontend through an iFrame), and Firefox really doesn't play nicely with these interactions. Either it doesn't like the fact that our apps are accessing multiple sites at a time and throws security errors, or it just doesn't render some parts of the page properly, making them unusable.

For instance, one ticketing tool we use is completely inaccessible in Firefox, because the page breaks after the header and loads the rest into a 10px-wide column that stretches for miles. Works fine in Chrome, Edge, and even Safari somehow.

Some of this could be fixed by using these platforms with their out-of-the-box software which may be more compatible with Firefox, without our modifications. But our mods are there because these integrations drastically improve our workflows, so that's unfortunately not a feasible option for our business.

A lot of this is due to Firefox having stricter standards, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe our developers should make our tools more standard-compliant and that might be better in the long run. But until then, I gotta use what works.

TheOctonaut ,

Firefox breaks…

(Long unnecessary nonsense that isn’t applicable to anyone else)

Maybe our developers should make our tools more standard-compliant

lol. So who broke it?

Chozo ,

(Long unnecessary nonsense that isn't applicable to anyone else)

I was answering a question that was asked directly to me, genius.

ShortFuse ,

Firefox, unfortunately, has been lagging behind. Safari is close to surpassing Firefox if they haven’t already. Safari really made a big shift for actually implementing web standards around 16.4.

  • No HDR - relevant for me because I mod PC games for HDR
  • Dropped PWA on desktop - even Apple went full 180° and embraced it now on Mac OS X. Chrome really gets a good push from this from Microsoft constantly helping push more app manifest stuff since it appears one of their goals is to render more things over Edge PWAs (eg: like the title bar), and resort less to having to use electron.
  • No masked borders - can’t do custom element borders like corner cutting or perfect squircles. Rounded edges only

Chrome is still the absolute best for accessibility. Neither Firefox nor Safari properly parse the aria labels when it comes to how things are rendered. Chrome will actually render text in accessibility nodes as presented on screen (ie: with spacing). Safari and Firefox only use .textContent which can have words beingmergedwhentheyshouldn’t.

Chrome also has Barcode and NFC scanning built right in. I’ve had to use fake keyboard emulators for iOS. Though, Chrome on Mac OS X also supports it. Safari has native support for Barcode behind a flag, so it’ll likely come in the future. Barcode scanning is still possible with Firefox through direct reading of the camera bitmap, which is slower but still good. There’s no solution for NFC for Safari, but if Chrome ever comes iOS, that would possibly be solved. I believe Face Detection is similar, but I’ve never used it.

ravhall ,

Sounds like chrome is going the way of Internet Explorer. Totally ignoring the W3C, and doing whatever they want. That won’t end well.

ShortFuse ,

What? They all have W3C specs. Firefox just chose not to implement them.

You think you’re trashing Chrome, but you’re trashing Firefox instead.

ravhall ,

Well, done of the drafts count. Because they’re drafts.

ShortFuse ,

Even line-height in CSS3 is draft. Saying no drafts should be implemented is a ridiculous standpoint: a standpoint not even Firefox aligns with:

Standardization requirements for shipping features

What evidence is necessary will vary, but generally this will be:

W3C - the specification is at the Candidate Recommendation maturity level or more advanced; shipping from a Working Draft or a less advanced specification requires evidence of agreement within the working group that shipping is acceptable

wiki.mozilla.org/ExposureGuidelines

But keep moving those goal posts.

ravhall ,

🤷‍♂️ whatever you say. I’ll keep on having zero issues with Firefox.

pivot_root ,

Your elitism is showing.

ravhall ,

I’m so elite because I choose to use a browser that respects my privacy lol.

Thank you, I guess?

saltesc ,

Aw man. I really like Vivaldi for its productivity and customisation. Guess I’ll have to go back to FF and try trick it out some.

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