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Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week

Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!

  • Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
  • The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
  • Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Other groups don’t agree with Google’s description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 “deceitful and threatening” back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system “will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit.”

Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it’s not clear how that aligns with the goals of “improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness.”

Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.

Google now says it’s possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for “safe” rule set changes, but even this is limited to “static” rulesets, not more powerful “dynamic” ones.

In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google’s public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.

For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that “over time, this toggle will go away as well.”

The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

LifeLikeLady ,
@LifeLikeLady@lemmy.world avatar

Long live Firefox.

Jarlsburg ,

hear ye

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Pretty great outcome for firefox really.

I don’t think firefox numbers will get a huge & immediate bump, but I think that over time it will support a reputation for firefox as being cool different and just plain better.

I can’t imagine raw-dogging the internet without an ad blocker in 2024. I’m aware that most people aren’t bothered by ads, but surely… surely some people might be interested in blocking them if they become aware that it’s possible and easy.

OsrsNeedsF2P ,

Switched to Firefox at work today. Looks like I still need Chrome to do the VPN handshake, but the more of us there are, the more pressure we have on IT!

AnActOfCreation OP ,
@AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

If you still need Chrome, consider Ungoogled Chromium!

Veraxus ,

Is that project going to maintain Manifest V2 support?

AnActOfCreation OP ,
@AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

I have no idea. I’d guess not, as it’s not a strong fork like other Chromium-based browsers. Its main selling point is that it’s nearly identical to Chrome, but with a lot of the Google garbage stripped out. I don’t use it as a daily driver, but only when I need something Chromium-based like the use case mentioned by @OsrsNeedsF2P. It’s very likely to work wherever Chrome does.

Ephera ,

I don’t have official information, but I doubt it. They tend to stick as closely to the Chromium experience as possible, with the exception of the ungoogled part, of course. Maintaining Manifest v2 support would also just be a massive amount of work, for which they likely don’t have the manpower.

Emptiness ,
@Emptiness@lemmy.world avatar

I’m still confounded by workplaces that run the old nineties way of VPN handshake by browser. Clunky, clumsy just straight up bad digital workplace setup.

There is no reason to not do it the modern way where all the handshaking and connecting is done under the hood, hidden from the user. At the most you as a user should only see the tiny little systray icon switch how it looks.

expatriado ,

firefox extensions are the best patches i have for enshittification

parpol ,

What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?

Imagine ad blockers not working on youtube only on chromium browsers, or tracking cookies/pixels/scripts not being blockable only on chromium browsers.

AnActOfCreation OP ,
@AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

They expect most users to not care, and sadly they’re right.

overload ,

I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.

I do my best to transition people I know across, but people are retty comfortable on chrome. If ad blockers stop working, I think there will be people who care just enough to switch.

shalafi ,

Used Firefox on and off since it came around, not a fan. But if chromium blocks ad-blockers, I’m switching instantly. I doubt many people know or care enough to switch.

overload ,

I’ve been on Firefox almost exclusively for about a decade and I can’t really tell the difference between them honestly in terms of performance of normal web browsing.

I’m having some weird graphical issues with my NAS frontend Web portal display on Firefox atm though, so keep chromium installed for that.

NoRodent ,
@NoRodent@lemmy.world avatar

I honestly don’t understand why anyone would refuse to switch from away Chrome. It’s not like the other browsers lack functionality or are slow. The only problem they might encounter is some rare incompatibility which is the result of Firefox (and its forks) small market share and web devs not caring enough.

I’ve never used Chrome as my primary browser and I don’t think I missed anything. I started using Opera years before Chrome was even a thing (back when everyone was using IE) and then when the old Opera died, I didn’t think even for a second about switching to Chrome and went straight to Firefox. Which could at least be highly customized to bring some Opera exclusive features (eg. mouse gestures, tab grouping) back.

grue ,

I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.

Safari is only “not based on Chromium” in the sense that the heredity goes in the other direction (Chromium is based on it).

Firefox is the only browser that maintains a rendering engine codebase fully separate from Chrome. That’s why using Firefox, and evangelizing it to help keep up its marketshare, is so vitally important for the health of the web.

overload ,

Huh, I didn’t know that about Safari/Chromium. Absolutely agree that having a Google-controlled browser monopoly would be catastrophic.

Ephera ,

I think, they just stopped caring about users instead. They’ve got enough market share. Might as well internet-explorer it for a while.

Wild_Mastic , (edited )

80% of people I know does not use an ad block, even the ones more tech savvy. I have no clue how brainwashed they are for eating ad garbage all day long.

NoRodent ,
@NoRodent@lemmy.world avatar

To be fair, let’s be glad that 80% of people don’t use an ad block. If it were the opposite and 80% did use ad block, web services would be much more aggressive in combating ad blockers and many more of them would end up pay-walled (although it seems we’re heading there anyway).

On one hand, I feel kinda bad that my ad-free experience is only supported thanks to those who do undergo the torture of ads, on the other hand, the companies have only themselves to blame. If web ads were decent, only limited to sides and headers or even between paragraphs of web pages and didn’t cover the content you’re trying to view, didn’t try to trick you into thinking it’s part of the content, didn’t lead to malicious websites, didn’t autoplay videos with sound or didn’t put unskippable ads before and inside videos, I would have never felt the need to install an ad block.

exanime ,

What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?

If that happens en masse, which is extremely unlikely, Google can just pull its funding for Mozilla and cripple them

The entire sector is fucked because of lack of regulation

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

I am the only person at my work that even knows what an ad blocker is. My boss, director of IT, doesn’t use one. Uses chrome with no extensions like everyone else.

Potato__Ninja ,

Firefox Forever!!

alchemist2023 ,

won’t stop pihole

7U5K3N ,

Man for real.

overload ,

And they never will.

HarriPotero ,
@HarriPotero@lemmy.world avatar

You sweet summer child.

How long do you think Chrome will let DoH be opt-in?

AlphaAutist ,

You sweet summer child

How are they going to get past my firewall rules?

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Nerd fight! Nerd fight! Nerd fight! Show 'em your bionicles collection!

4am ,

By refusing to load

HarriPotero ,
@HarriPotero@lemmy.world avatar

Personally, I’d like to see them force in-browser DoH down my throat with my computer powered off. They’ll never see it coming.

admin ,
@admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

By using the same hostnames that you need for wanted content.

brbposting ,

https://files.catbox.moe/2nxvan.gif

Album ,
@Album@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s not up to Chrome.

HarriPotero ,
@HarriPotero@lemmy.world avatar

The day they do their own DoH in-browser it is definitely up to them. It’s already opt-in if you want to see how well your pi-hole won’t work with it enabled.

Next step is to do DoH by default, and finally making it compulsory.

Spotlight7573 ,

Chrome already does have DoH enabled by default from what I can tell.

support.google.com/chrome/answer/10468685

By default, Secure DNS in Chrome is turned on in automatic mode. If Chrome has issues looking up a site in this mode, it’ll look up the site in the unencrypted mode.

Album , (edited )
@Album@lemmy.ca avatar

They can do it all they want but it won’t work…

If I “opt in” it falls back to non doh immediately because using doh on my network is not up to Chrome.

use-application-dns.net + nxdomain for any known doh provider

I don’t use pihole but doh blocking works great on my network. It should work on a pihole tho it’s pretty basic stuff.

If you can’t resolve the domain you can’t validate the TLS certificate.

Railcar8095 ,

It’s still DNS level only, right? That wouldn’t stop YouTube ads, or remove annoyances.

Rai ,

Love my PiHole but you’re hella correct

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

You can block ads from being served to you.

But the flip side is that the website developer can make a website that won’t function if it can’t load the ads being served.

And most users are gonna want a functional website.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

Somebody’s going to need to write a web site with a very, very compelling function to make me give enough of a shit to not just click away if it is deliberately coded to not work with Firefox/adblockers. Like, gives me a million dollars per page load functionality.

Tag365 ,
@Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

Now we gotta have websites developing for all web browsers instead of Google Chrome like it’s Internet Explorer 2.0.

grue ,

There are effectively only two web browsers: Chrome and Firefox. Literally everything else, aside from some really niche things that can’t render modern webpages, is a fork of one of those two that uses the same rendering engine.

QuestionMark ,

What about Apple’s WebKit? Does it count?

grue ,

Nope, it doesn’t count. The only reason Safari/WebKit isn’t considered a fork of Chrome/Blink is that Chrome/Blink is a fork of Safari/WebKit instead.

brbposting ,

So it wasn’t, like, forked hard enough that now after the years it counts as a different browser? Expect it to render pages ‘n’ stuff pretty much like Chrome?

grue ,

I admit, I haven’t really looked into it. It’s possible Apple implemented new HTML/CSS/JS standards independently, but it’s also possible that Apple continued to backport Google’s changes. Unless they had a business goal of being independent (or NIH syndrome) I would guess that they’d do mostly the latter, but you’d have to go read the code to know for sure.

They are definitely still more related to each other than either is to Gecko (which is to say, not related at all), though.

bdonvr ,

I’m sure they’ve diverged enough for it to be pretty significant compared to the Chromium browsers

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

They’ve been separate for over a decade, and even before that they were heavily customizing it. They’re cousins, but absolutely not close enough at this point to be considered the same.

barsoap ,

You mean KHMTL, born in KDE’s Konqueror. That spawned WebKit (Safari), that spawned Blink (Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc). The whole thing then finally came full-circle when Konqueror dropped KHTML due to lack of development, now you have the choice between WebKit and Blink (via Qt WebEngine).

Then there’s Gecko (Firefox) and Servo which had a near-death experience after Mozilla integrated half of it into Gecko but by now development is alive and kicking again. Oh and then there’s lynx, using libwww, tracing its lineage back straight to Tim Berners Lee.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

No, they don’t mean KHTML. KHTML is an ancestor of WebKit and Blink, but WebKit forked from it over 2 decades ago. They meant WebKit.

barsoap ,

They also didn’t mean lynx and yet I mentioned it. How come? Might the distinct possibility exist that I used the opportunity to draw a wider picture, and “you mean X” has to be understood as internet brain-rot rhetorics, not literally?

Just a suggestion.

PopOfAfrica ,

Not to toot the kagi Horn, but they are talking about releasing thier webkit based Orion Browser on Linux. Ive been following that one closely since it has firefox extension support.

grue ,

I mean, if folks really want something like that, I’d say they shouldn’t have let KDE’s KHTML (which is what WebKit was forked from) die. But as I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, KHTML→WebKit→Blink are related and thus fail to combat Google’s web hegemony the way that Gecko (Firefox) does.

breakingcups ,

I’ve become very skeptical of anything Kagi, wishing they’d just focused on making one thing good instead of getting distracted by mediocre AI and a browser they can’t realistically support while their search is still subpar. Illusions of grandeur.

GregorGizeh ,

Iirc the browser is older than their search engine. If anything that is their og product

PopOfAfrica , (edited )

Subpar Search?

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, wtf is he/she talking about there :)

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

And safari, although it’s a cousin/uncle to Chrome at this point.

Not that I use it, but still.

JoMiran ,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/8f2012e6-830e-4773-a982-210b9eae0f76.jpeg

Bolt ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11186b68-0267-428d-b16e-9a329916c324.png

dumbass ,
@dumbass@leminal.space avatar

After bingeing that show, I have a constant fear that he’s been standing behind me the whole time, just waiting for me to catch a glimpse of him.

brbposting ,

Been here since Kevin helped the project out?

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/2c90b694-0114-4ccd-8ad0-8568fb9e6b2b.jpeg

ech ,

Oh no! Wait, I don’t use that shit because of shit like this.

HonorableScythe ,

I’d be glad to switch back to Firefox, but websites straight up don’t work on it anymore. That was the only reason I went to Chrome.

fuzzzerd ,

What websites? I use Firefox as my daily driver on desktop and mobile, and I rarely run into problems. Like so infrequently that I don’t even remember the last time.

TexasDrunk ,

Same. My Dark Reader doesn’t always show websites properly but Firefox hasn’t let me down in ages.

QuestionMark ,

Some websites display warnings even though everything works fine, like web.skype.com. But that’s the closest thing to doesn’t work I’ve ever seen on Firefox.

EtherWhack , (edited )
@EtherWhack@lemmy.world avatar

They are around… Try this one: (www.starbirdchicken.com/starbird-chicken-menu)

I was curious of what their menu looked like as I have one by my work. Haven’t checked it on desktop, but on Android, the menu items never get loaded. ($10-12 for an á la carte chicken sandwich from a fast casual place is a ripoff anyway)

Edit: It looks like it’s the mobile site/formatting that is broken. Using desktop mode lets the menu items come onto screen. (Firefox 126.01 on a pixel8pro with Android 14) The same issue seems to also be present with chrome under my work account.

I still argue that they are present, as I had to with it doing taxes a couple months ago. (Just not going to give those sites away)

Metz ,

works flawless here on Android 14 with Firefox 126.0.1. not tested desktop yet.

Womble ,

Works perfectly for me on desktop with firefox

airglow ,

No problems loading that page on Firefox for Android or desktop for me. Are you using Firefox or a fork of Firefox? Do you have any extensions or about:config changes that may be affecting the page rendering?

grue ,

That’s a reason to insist on Firefox even harder. Fuck those websites!

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I’ve yet to find a single website that doesn’t work in Firefox.

cmnybo ,

There are some sites out there that won’t work. ESC Configurator won’t work in Firefox because it needs web serial to program an ESC connected over a serial port. That’s the only site I use that I have to run in chrome. I’m sure there are more out there, but they are not very common.

brbposting ,

I encourage those in this situation to do their small, small part in fighting for the future of the open web by only switching to Chrome when necessary.

Which is almost never in my daily life!

Tag365 ,
@Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

How do we combat Google Chrome being Internet Explorer 2.0?

exanime ,

I have never encountered this… Do you have an example, just curious

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Which sites? Been using Firefox since forever and all is well.

HonorableScythe ,

Last I tried, I had serious issues using it on Comcast’s billing pages and Quest Diagnostic’s site, among others. The pages would not load at all until I went to Chrome.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I use Firefox and Brave at work. I need a Chromium-based browser, and Brave’s ad-blocker works, otherwise I would be Firefox only.

ColdWater ,
@ColdWater@lemmy.ca avatar

Oh no, anyway

PopOfAfrica ,

I really like KDEs Falkon browser, based on QT web.

But it having no extension support kind of kills it for me…

AnActOfCreation OP ,
@AnActOfCreation@programming.dev avatar

What engine does it use?

Ephera ,

It’s Chromium under the hood.

Funnily, KDE’s early KHTML engine got forked into WebKit, which got forked into Blink, which is at the heart of Chromium. So, we’ve gone full circle…

Scrollone ,

kHTML, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time

I feel old

Etterra ,

Meanwhile, Firefox.

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