22 ms·

Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update

1044 points by deryilz 1y ago

ur-whale 1y ago
[flagged]
- rf15 1y ago
  Our ideals do not simply change the fact that chrome and its derivatives are the most used browser by a big margin at this moment. And, looking at how this came to be and how things were with IE before it, they are going to stay a bit longer still. Stop being in denial about the way most people function: they don't care, they will eat the most convenient slop they are being served and not question it much. Because it doesn't matter as long as it allows you to browse your socials.
  - bowsamic 1y ago
    I hate to use this word but this is a huge amount of projection in response to the comment you replied to, which did not seem to make any of the points you ascribed to it.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  > unless you're still using the spying machine So a computer?
  - bowsamic 1y ago
    If you use a free operating system https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html then you have less chance of being spied on. At least you can check
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      > At least you can check I don't think they enable me to inspect e.g. my CPU's firmware, or that they're able to provide any guarantees about the hardware itself. So it still just makes for a large shopping bag sized trust-me-bro box executing hundreds of billions of instructions a second. But now with a false sense of comfort. I'm more than happy to concede on this being overly dramatic though, provided you concede on having been engaging in a similarly unserious hyperbole of your own.
      - bowsamic 1y ago
        I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually. (It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not). But yes of course the hardware must be free too, at least insofar as it does not impede on our freedom to understand what it is doing to the software we run on it, and the firmware must also be free software
        perching_aix 1y ago
        > I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually. Me neither, considering that doesn't even work grammatically. Very clearly I was referring to "unless you're still using the spying machine" being the unserious hyperbole. > It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not. I must have been continually missing "big tech's" efforts on that front. They do engage in other efforts that go against either the spirit or the proliferation of software freedom, but what you describe I legitimately have not witnessed at all.
    - hk__2 1y ago
      Yes you can, but do you?
      - bowsamic 1y ago
        If I say yes, you’ll just call me an extremist and make fun of me. If I say no, you’ll call me a hypocrite. So I refuse to answer
      - kentm 1y ago
        I don’t think they need to for there to be value. Sure, maybe there’s spyware in free software that they haven’t found. But we know that these advertising companies are putting e-stalking code into all their products right now. Trading that certainty for an unknown is a net benefit.
        perching_aix 1y ago
        Tracking typically works through fingerprinting. Using free software alone won't magically protect you against this, every website's a program with JavaScript on. Lots of free software is also multiplatform. You'll want to apply additional defensive measures, but you can apply those even on Windows, running Firefox or Chrome. Mind you, you'll then stand out for using those defensive measures. I generally appreciate source code access and independent auditability, and I do have an appreciation for the intent. But the way people discuss these topics is downright embarrassing, which is what I was hoping to shake out of this. "Just install Linux bro, it's better than pussy bro. What, u still got dat spyin machine goin on?? [links a 30 minute Mutahar video with him faffing about with some technologically trivial bollocks he visibly barely understands]" Please. I think it's pretty agreeable at least that this about as far removed from well supported decision making as one can casually get to be. Most people switching to Linux and free software alternatives in hopes of better privacy do so based on vibes, not on any rigorous research. And that's fine. Just wish they didn't pretend it wasn't the case.
        bowsamic 1y ago
        > "Just install Linux bro, it's better than pussy bro. What, u still got dat spyin machine goin on?? [links a 30 minute Mutahar video with him faffing about with some technologically trivial bollocks he visibly barely understands]" Please. I think it's pretty agreeable at least that this about as far removed from well supported decision making as one can casually get to be. Such a person may exist but why do you insist that that person is here in the room with us? Let us talk and find out what the other people are like. You’ve already shown what you really are like: someone who will assert that the others are a certain way even before they talk
unit149 1y ago
[dead]
bborud 1y ago
I remember back in the day, one of the big selling points for Google’s search engine used to be that the advertising didn’t get in the way. Imagine that.
- le-mark 1y ago
  I stopped saying this because no one remembers. Or the people I was talking to were to young. It’s way worse now than askjeeves ever was!
- RevEng 1y ago
  The big reason for me was that it "just worked". Altavista was the biggest player at the time but you had to learn a while query language to get good results. Google's search engine took plain English keywords and have relevant results.
daft_pink 1y ago
So what’s the conclusion? Can we use a different Chrome based browser and avoid MV3? What’s the decision for privacy after this has happened?
- j45 1y ago
  The little I've read bout this says that maintaining MV2 might be something as well. If other chromium based browsers didn't have this issue, that would be great, but likely in time Youtube won't support browsers that don't have MV3. Probably still have some time though.
  - SSchick 1y ago
    Switched to Firefox yesterday, I suggest you do the same.
    - j45 1y ago
      That's a good reminder to update Firefox. I tend to oscillate back and forth every few years gradually. Lately not Chrome proper, there are some neat browser takes worth trying out like Vivaldi, Brave, Arc, etc that are Chromium based.
    - dwedge 1y ago
      Are they still funded to the tune of a billion a year by Google so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly? Are they still intent on redefining as an ad company?
      - j45 1y ago
        When the billion began Chrome wasn't even a browser yet.
      - Brian_K_White 1y ago
        The google money isn't any great gotcha. It's wrong of them to have grown to be so dependant but so what? All it means is that some day the funded development will stop, just like all the forks are already. Let them take google money for as long as it flows. You can switch to librewolf at any time if FF itself ever actually goes bad in any critical way. But there's not a lot of reason to do so until the minute that actually happens. Go ahead and take the funded work and updates as long as it exists.
krackers 1y ago
>They decided it wasn't a security issue, and honestly, I agree, because it didn't give extensions access to data they didn't already have. So they admit that MV3 isn't actually any more secure than MV2?
- Neywiny 1y ago
  I'd be shocked if anyone actually believes them. This article starts with the obvious conflict of interest. Of course letting an extension know what websites you visit and what requests are made is an insecure lifestyle. But I still do it because I trust uBO more than I trust the ad companies and their data harvesters.
  - matheusmoreira 1y ago
    I believe them. The restrictions are reasonable and appropriate for nearly everyone. Extensions are untrusted code that should have as little access as possible. If restrictions can be bypassed, that's a security bug that should be fixed because it directly affects users. I also think uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should not only be an exception to the whole thing but should also be given even more access in order to let it block things more effectively. It shouldn't even be a mere extension to begin with, it should be literally built into the browser as a core feature. The massive conflicts of interest are the only thing that prevent that. Can't trust ad companies to mantain ad blockers.
    - Barbing 1y ago
      Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid, forcing new solutions? Worry about the interim where some publishers would presumably cease to exist. And who would remain afloat—those with proprietary apps, as Zucky as they are, I’d guess… UBO is absolutely incredibly important. Figure you might know more than me about how journalists and reviewers and the like can still earn a keep in a world with adblockers built in to every browser.
      - matheusmoreira 1y ago
labrador 1y ago
I'd gladly pay for YouTube without ads if I trusted that it would remain ad free, but the track record from various companies on this is not good.
- Karsteski 1y ago
  I tried paying for YouTube premium then they fucked around by not giving me all the features I paid for when I was visiting another country. There's no winning with these people.
  - dandellion 1y ago
    I paid premium a few months, then they added shorts and there was no way to block them, so I installed a blocker and stopped paying for it.
  - jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
    Yes me too, and they fucked me.
- iLoveOncall 1y ago
  So pay now and stop paying if they introduce ads? It's not like it's a lifetime subscription. I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.
  - labrador 1y ago
    That's good to know. I was hoping for a reply like yours. I will subscribe. YouTube is an amazing resource for human kind and I agree those of us who can afford it should pay to support it.
    - rightbyte 1y ago
      Seems strange to me to support Google with your money from a moral perspective. It is a spyware company.
throwaway73945 1y ago
So OP got Google to patch a harmless "issue" that could've been used by addon devs to bypass MV3 restrictions. Hope it was worth the $0.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  Yeah, that was my take as well. OP did some free work for a megacorp and made the web a little bit worse, because "security, I guess" ? Good job.
  - deryilz 1y ago
    Sometimes you get $0, sometimes you get more. I would like to mention this stuff on my college applications, and even if I tried to gatekeep it, it'd eventually be patched. Not sure what your argument is here.
    - sebmellen 1y ago
      Incredibly impressive to do this sort of work before applying to college!
  - busymom0 1y ago
    Google would have found this bug if any extensions tried to rely on it and patched it instantly anyway.
  - mertd 1y ago
    The author claims to be 8 years old in 2015. So that makes them still a teenager. It is pretty cool IMO.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Are you guys honestly arguing like the zero day industry would, for a vector that couldn’t be used by any ad blocking extension since Google has them under an electron microscope 24/7? To pick on a very young, enthusiastic programmer? What the hell??
- StrLght 1y ago
orliesaurus 1y ago
I honestly thought reading this blog post was quite refreshing and I had a little smirk at the caption of the photo. Thank you for sharing!
- deryilz 1y ago
  Author here, thank you! A lot of the comments here are more general arguments about MV3 and Google (which I kinda expected) but I'm glad see someone who liked my post :)
SuperShibe 1y ago
[flagged]
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
  Well, in his defense it would have been patched immediately after the first adblocker used it, and he would have gotten nothing at all out of it. Oh wait he got nothing at all anyway ;)
  - _feus 1y ago
    Not really, this sort of fame farming is what makes candidates stand out in infosec interviews. A bug in Google systems is good for his future career.
    - lucb1e 1y ago
      The post says they had another bug with a large bounty in the same year, so it doesn't seem very useful for CV padding either
    - userbinator 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - m4rtink 1y ago
    Would be quite different if they patched it and broke important extensions, possibly facing serieous outcry and bad publicity.
    - rollcat 1y ago
      Important extensions like, dunno, uBlock Origin?
      - eddythompson80 1y ago
        Yeah, surely if chrome broke important extensions people will get mad and switch.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
No judgement but I would love to hear from Google employees who worked on this. Do they believe they are improving the internet in any way?
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- stackedinserter 1y ago
  "Job's shit but pays a lot"
- lucb1e 1y ago
  There is also an argument to be made that adblocking is immoral. I think the idea is pervasive enough to fill a team of willing people, especially if you pay them 100k/year to at least go along with it for the time being I haven't made up my own mind about it yet, just that this might be a factor in why one would move the facilitating technology backwards in this way (and forwards in other ways, apparently: some people in the thread are reporting that uBlock Lite is faster. Not that I can tell the difference between a clean Firefox without add-ons (I regularly use that for work reasons) and a Firefox with uBlock Origin (my daily driver) except if the page is bogged down from all the ads)
  - yard2010 1y ago
    Lol. Treating cancer is immoral. Miss me with this shit!
    - paulryanrogers 1y ago
      Advertising is cancer?
      - asadotzler 1y ago
        Yes. Advertising is inherently manipulative, a cancer not of the brain, but of the mind. Advertising is also a exploitation vector. Removing a security threat that's damaging my mind is like removing a physical health threat that's damaging an organ.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
https://getfirefox.org https://getfirefox.org Even ignoring the adblock issues, Chrome isn't worth it... Google themselves spy on you with it. Cockblocking adblock just puts extra emphasis on what you should have already known.
- victor9000 1y ago
  And FF + UBO also works great on Android
pnw 1y ago
Haven't missed Chrome once since switching to https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
- Etheryte 1y ago
  Of all the browsers you could be using, giving your data away to sketchy crypto bros should really not be at the top of the list.
  - Supermancho 1y ago
    It's the top of the list because it works so well. I forget it's a different browser most of the time. I was able to turn off everything extraneous that I was concerned about. Brave is also Open Sourced.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - bung 1y ago
    Might as well edit and add some suggestions
    - homebrewer 1y ago
      Maybe take a look at Vivaldi, it's a continuation of the old Opera, with basically the same development team. It's the most user-friendly and configurable option at this moment, they're very responsive to feedback, and are the only organization that doesn't have some horrible privacy violations in the past (maybe excluding Apple, I don't know and don't care, 90% of users on this planet can't run Safari). Also they are in Norway if you care about that sort of thing. It's not FOSS, though, at least for now.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I really don't care about crypto stuff. If you do, I can understand why that's a dealbreaker for you. But for me, it doesn't matter at all. I just turn the crypto features off and continue on my way.
deanc 1y ago
Chrome full on blocked uBlock Origin (and others) this week. There is still four flags [1] you can play with that will allow you to re-enable it again, but this is a losing battle of course. The inevitable is coming. Nothing comes close to Safari battery life on MacOS, followed by chrome, followed by firefox in last place (with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome). I've tried taking Orion for a spin which should offer the battery life of Safari with the flexibility of running FF and chrome extensions - but it hasn't stuck yet. As much as I'd like to use FF, I really don't want to shave 10-20% (?) off a battery charge cycle when I spend 90% of my day in the browser. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/restoring_access_to_ubo_on_chrome_138_using_flags/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/resto...
- echelon 1y ago
  This should lead to a full-on antitrust breakup of Google. Period. They own the web. I can build my business brand, own my own dot com, but then have to pay Google ad extortion money to not have my competitors by ads well above my domain name. And of course the address bar now does search instead of going to the appropriate place. Google is a scourge.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  And I value FF way more than an hour of battery. All day every day my computer works fine. That difference in battery, if it exists, doesn't actually materially manifest anywhere. But the difference between FF and anything else matters basically every minute all day. On top of that, even if I ever did actually run into the difference, needing to plug in before I would have anyway, it's an annoyance vs a necessity. The ability to control my own browser is frankly just not negotiable. It doesn't actually matter if it were less convenient in some other way, it's simply a base level requirement and anything that doesn't provide that doesn't matter what other qualities it might have. You might say "a computer that's dead doesn't work at all" but that never actually happens. I'd need an 8 hour bus ride with no seat power to get to the point where that last missing hour would actually leave me with no computer for an hour, and that would need to be a commute that happens twice every day for it to even matter. For me that's just not the reasonable priority.
crazygringo 1y ago
> Adblockers basically need webRequestBlocking to function properly. Pretty convenient (cough cough) for a company that makes most of its revenue from ads to be removing that. Why does this keep getting repeated? It's not true. Anyone can use uBlock Origin Lite with Chrome, and manifest v3. It doesn't just work fine, it works great. I can't tell any difference from the old uBlock Origin in terms of blocking, but it's faster because now all the filtering is being done in C++ rather than JavaScript. Works on YouTube and everything. I know there are some limits in place now with the max number of rules, but the limits seem to be plenty so far.
- zwaps 1y ago
  It is true though. Like, literally. Why do you think it is called Lite?
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    > It is true though. Like, literally. Doesn't seem true to me. If it's true, then why is uBlock Origin Lite functioning properly as an adblocker for me? > Why do you think it is called Lite? Because it's simpler and uses less resources. And they had to call it something different to distinguish it from uBlock Origin.
    - fsflover 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41871873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41871873
    - rstat1 1y ago
      Its called Lite because it has tons of missing functionality from the not-Lite version that make the not-Lite version more effective as a content blocker.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        It's not "tons of missing functionality". It still blocks all the ads in practice. Maybe it's less effective in some theoretical case, but not anything I've seen. People talk as if it's only blocking 10% of the ads it used to, when the reality seems to be 99.999% or something. And it's faster now. And they removed stuff like the element zapper but that has nothing to do with Manifest v3. It's because they literally wanted it to minimize resources. You can install a dedicated zapper extension if you want that. I genuinely don't understand where this narrative of "adblockers don't work anymore on Chrome" is coming from. Again, it's just not true, but keeps getting repeated like it is.
al_borland 1y ago
Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.
- high_priest 1y ago
  Its not happening
  - Etheryte 1y ago
    I don't know, I switched to Safari and it was painful for like two hours and then I stopped thinking about it. The only thing I somewhat miss is the built-in page translate, but I don't need it often enough to be bothered much.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
      I find switching from chrome to safari essentially doing nothing. If you switched to a non-big-company owned browser, it would make sense but Apple has plenty of lock in which is as bad as chrome lock in.
      - fny 1y ago
        I'm a huge fan of Orion by Kagi: you should have a look! It's a little rough around the edges but the extension support on iOS is amazing.
        const_cast 1y ago
        Orion is the only viable option on iOS IMO. The fact that, to this day, Safari has no way to block ads on iOS means it's just awful. Before Orion, I avoided using my web browser like the plague, because the experience was just bad. Now I'm on Android, and Ironfox is pretty good and Firefox is also available. The browser story on Android is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS.
Beijinger 1y ago
I did not even realize my ublock origin was turned off. My HOST FILE script did the same service: https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy-advanced-ublock-origin-wont-work-with-chrome-anymore-ad-and-tracker-blocking-using-a-hosts-file/ https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy-advanced-ublock-origin-w... More concerning is that social fixer was turned off: https://socialfixer.com/ https://socialfixer.com/ MFGA Make Facebook Great again ;-)
- Beijinger 1y ago
  Why the downvote?
  - neuroelectron 1y ago
    Google is here
- kingo55 1y ago
  Changing your hosts file helps but it would only block hostnames primarily used for ads and trackers - it wouldn't address those trackers and ads loaded from hostnames shared with actual content. The more sophisticated sites will proxy their tracking and ads through their main app: E.g. www.cnn.com/ads.js I prefer having multiple layers just in case anything drops off: 1. VPN DNS / AdGuard local cached DNS 2. uBlock Origin It's like wearing two condoms (but it feels better than natural).
- RevEng 1y ago
  Hosts alone won't solve many ads. Plenty of companies include their own annoying content from their own domains. uBlock lets you get far more fine grained, blocking specific paths.
crinkly 1y ago
Signed up to complain about this. YT is no longer worth watching ads for. Anything that is worth paying for, the money needs to go via Patreon so the publisher isn't demonetized at a whim. The rest is brain-rot, utter shit and a lot of damaging misinformation. I hope it dies. While it remains easy to do so, I will "steal" with yt-dlp and proudly watch it ad-free on VLC on my computer. If they break that then I'm no longer interested. When this became adversarial, which was a battle that lasted the last year of inconvenience I ended up dumping every Google thing I have. So the Pixel is GrapheneOS now with no Google crap. Browser is Firefox. Email has moved from Gmail to Fastmail with a domain. My Google account is closed after 20 years. The relationship is dead. They can do what they want. I don't care any more.
- hengheng 1y ago
  You didn't really mention what aggravated you.
  - crinkly 1y ago
    Initially the increase in frequency of the advertising on Android youtube app. Followed by uBlock being broken in Chrome. Followed by uBlock being tarpitted in Firefox. Followed by FreeTube client getting 403 IP forbidden requests and DRM content shovelled down which could not be rendered. They just did everything to make sure I watched the ads and burn all my bandwidth, which can be somewhat limited and expensive as I travel a lot.
    - myko 1y ago
      Did you consider YouTube Premium? It works really well and no ads. Seems like a pittance for the service YouTube provides
      - jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
        $180 dollars annually is a pittance to you? So please enlighten us...? You could certainly change a persons life with that. It is not a trivial sum, so please do not insult poorer members of this community.
urda 1y ago
You bypass it by installing Firefox.
- qustrolabe 1y ago
  Firefox is awful. Both as a browser itself and as a base for other browsers. Such a shame that Zen didn't use Chromium :(
  - dangraper2 1y ago
    Weird, Firefox blows Chrome out of the water. What do you smoke?
    - lucb1e 1y ago
      The smoke on the water! More seriously, I'm a Firefox user since ~2006 but I'm about equally surprised by the statement that Firefox should blow Chrome/ium out of the water as that Firefox supposedly sucks. They're both browsers. I think Chromium is a bit faster in page rendering, whereas Firefox is more open, privacy-friendly, and customizable. Similar to how I wish consumers would not choose an anti-consumer organization (anyone who values a free market and general computation1 should not choose iOS), I think nobody should choose Chrome but, still, I can understand if someone does choose it because they've gotten used to how it works and they're not willing to change. It's about equal in practical functionality that 95% of people use, wouldn't you say? Or in what way is Firefox blowing Chrome out of the water? ¹ https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-war-on-general-computation https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-war-on-general...
      - eviks 1y ago
        > Firefox is more open, privacy-friendly, and customizable. How do you customize the default keyboard shortcuts?
        opengears 1y ago
bradgessler 1y ago
Try Safari, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser.
heraldgeezer 1y ago
Just use Firefox with ublock origin. On Android too. Nightly has tabs on tablet. At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing with AI is nice) We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF. Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.
- OlivOnTech 1y ago
  Firefox has had vertical tabs (and tabs groups) for few months now
  - heraldgeezer 1y ago
    Indeed. I love the FF vertical tabs too, I should say. Too bad the work one is still locked to 128 ESR :(
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fracus 1y ago
> But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions usin Well, thanks for nothing?
- deryilz 1y ago
  Author here, sorry. I don't think any open-source extension (especially large adblockers with millions of users) could actually get away with using this bug, because Google is paying close attention to them. It would've been patched immediately either way.
  - physicles 1y ago
    You’re right, and good on you for paying attention to the human/business context behind the code.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - deryilz 1y ago
      Hi, I appreciate your opinion, but really disagree. First of all, this is one bug, and most of the ones I find don't "act against user's interests" (not that this one could have been used effectively without being patched anyway). Doing bug finding is how I make a difference and a skill I feel proud of. I USED to keep bugs (read: exploits) for myself without sharing them, but after a while I realized it was not worth it and my skills were basically going to waste. You can say philosophical stuff about ads if you want but bug finding for me is a fun challenge with a good community. I'm not pretending Google is my best friend. Plus, doing this gets me a bit of money. It's either this or I work summers at a grocery store, and I prefer this.
      - jonas21 1y ago
        Yes, this is a mature way of looking at things.
breve 1y ago
The best bypass is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- Aperocky 1y ago
  Never realized anything was happening as I was on Firefox, until I saw ads as my wife was browsing youtube despite installing ublock for her years ago.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    YouTube recently started showing ads through uBO in Firefox.
    - djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
      On what platform? I've been using Firefox and uBO on Linux and Android for over a decade and never seen a YouTube ad.
      - stubish 1y ago
        They do staged rollouts, maybe a-b testing. It seems to generally be region based rather than platform.
        aspenmayer 1y ago
        You might need to check that you are using all appropriate blocklists as well. The subreddit usually has a sticky/pinned post for YouTube related issues as this has been a slow moving target for about a year now.
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        I'm on Windows 10.
      - 1y ago
znpy 1y ago
Somebody should probably fork chromium. I remember when Firefox was getting traction, it had a killer feature: speed. A chromium fork could come with a simple killer feature: bringing back the possibility of blocking requests. I’m pretty sure it would quickly gain traction.
- slig 1y ago
  That's Brave, a fork with native AdBlock.
  - jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
    Exactly... brave is the de facto choice for cryptobros. The copying of UBOs work is a nice addition too.
    - paulryanrogers 1y ago
      Satire?
      - znpy 1y ago
        I'd say copium.
  - znpy 1y ago
    Ah nice, I’m installing that then
raspasov 1y ago
I use Safari.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mococa 1y ago
Safari + Wipr2 FTW!
ltbarcly3 1y ago
I was able to bypass the chrome changes by installing firefox. Honestly it's better than I thought it would be, and I have no serious complaints, or broken sites. Yay web standards.
- ltbarcly3 1y ago
  [flagged]
loloquwowndueo 1y ago
Luckily I only need to use chrome on my work laptop, I use Firefox everywhere else. Still sad to see uBlock origin stop working which was useful to keep a cleaner experience when browsing the web for work reasons (research, documentation, etc).
akomtu 1y ago
Google is running an experiment: how much ads crap users are willing to tolerate before they switch supplier.
rasz 1y ago
> It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions soo will this still just work if we give uBo webview permission?
- deryilz 1y ago
  Unfortunately extensions can't have webview perms :(
  - rasz 1y ago
    "'webview' is only allowed for packaged apps, but this is a extension." :( but maybe Vivaldi and Brave could remove this check just for fun.
unstatusthequo 1y ago
I’ve been happy with Orion on macOS. I get it’s WebKit but at least it’s not Chrome. Brave was also good if you must have chromium.
RockstarSprain 1y ago
Would love to give Firefox a chance but one thing that stops me (apart from occasional website loading bugs) is inability to install PWAs. Not sure why it’s not implemented like it has been for a long time in Chrome and all its forks. I have found a 3rd party extension that claims to facilitate this (0) but still feel uncomfortable to use this for privacy reasons. (0) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-fire...
- rs186 1y ago
  If you really care, it's ok to just Firefox for the majority of your web browsing activities but use Chrome or a fork for PWA. Although using Firefox increasingly means a worse experience, including: * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling) * WebUSB support I have personally run into all of them. Some are under Firefox's control but others are not. I do still use Firefox for most websites unless it's technically not possible, but unfortunately the exception is happening more and more.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    I don't run into CAPTCHA loops with Firefox. Have you tried changing your user agent to pretend to be Firefox on Windows or Mac? I've heard Linux users are more likely to be interpreted as bots.
    - rs186 1y ago
      The machine is on a corporate network, that's the issue. I don't have issues when 1) using Chrome/Edge on that same machine on corporate network 2) using Firefox on Linux on corporate network 3) using Firefox on Windows on my own machine at home Unfortunately.
  - acdha 1y ago
    > * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling) The first two are likely due to extensions rather than the core Firefox. I find at least as many cases where it’s faster, and it usually uses less memory. The third one has high variability - I’ve reported enough bugs against all of the major browsers not to trust any of them but these days there are a lot of web developers who only test on Chrome and half of the time I find what appears to be a bug in Safari or Firefox it’s really an unnecessary reliance on something Chrome specific.
alex1138 1y ago
1) A lot of ads are terribly overdone and even sometimes actively malicious (malware or tracking). It makes no sense to aggressively try to stamp it out like Google is doing 2) Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah it really did happen) what happened to Google? They've always been a bit incompetent but their behavior (ie Chrome and increasing censorship on Google/Youtube the last few years) has been really bad, I thought they were basically founded off idealism
- jacquesm 1y ago
  > and even sometimes actively malicious Most of the times. In fact, the situations where they are not actively tracking are exceedingly rare.
- acdha 1y ago
  > Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah it really did happen) what happened to Google? They bought DoubleClick in 2009, with an outcome similar to the way Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas but their management culture was taken over by acquired company. They haven’t launched a popular product since and their preexisting products have clearly been shifting to an “ads justify the means” mentality over time.
- RevEng 1y ago
  Idealism does with capitalism. Executives and shareholders don't care about ideals: they want money. All of the questionable things Google has done have been in pursuit of ever larger profits.
froderick 1y ago
As an exclusive Firefox user, with really great ad blocking features, I didn’t notice that Chrome got worse on this front. I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps it’s time for a change. Best of luck.
CommenterPerson 1y ago
Why not use DuckDuckGo?
andxor 1y ago
Just use uBlock Origin Lite.
sciencesama 1y ago
Using ebpf to block ads would be fun !! Need a way to translate rules into blocking rules for ebpf
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  How would that work? Isn't having all the browser and doc context what makes UBO (MV2) the most robust blocker? Would the browser be talking to the kernel through some back channel?
est 1y ago
I got downvoted for commenting this, why can't we make a ManifestV2-like framework using .DLLs ? This can enable network control for ad blockers and Google can do nothing about it.
- deryilz 1y ago
  I think the trouble is that certain adblocking features (like skipping ads on YouTube, Twitch, etc) require modifying the page you're viewing in your browser; just filtering network requests isn't enough. So right now a browser extension is the most natural choice for an adblocker, but honestly that might change if browsers keep being so hostile towards them.
  - est 1y ago
    expose DOM and JSON to external .DLL then browsers should have open Web standards as well as open local runtime.
zulban 1y ago
I don't "bypass" Chrome when they want to melt my brain with their business model, I use Firefox. I don't "bypass" Windows when they want to melt my brain with their business model, I use Linux. No idea why so many "hackers" doing "bypasses" can't instead take action that is simpler, long lasting, and easier. Do people need to jerked around 50 times for 20 years before realizing it will keep happening and their "bypasses" are just temporary bandaids?
- flufluflufluffy 1y ago
  Bro it’s for the fun and interest of figuring it out. That’s what hackers do. The writer obviously knew it’s a “temporary bandaid” — they notified Google about it themself.
- pharrington 1y ago
  Billions of non-programmers, who have no idea what an extension manifest even is, use Chrome.
- eviks 1y ago
  > for 20 years ... just temporary bandaids Using superior software for two decades is a very good bandaid
- arcfour 1y ago
  You should read the article before commenting; your comment is a non-sequitur.
  - doctorpangloss 1y ago
    I don’t know. Eventually you read enough of this stuff and you would rather the next breath be, take leadership on a real solution. To me it’s a “sequitur” to say, the biggest fuck you is to convince people to stop using Chrome, not to fix bugs for their extremely highly paid engineers for free.
    - spenczar5 1y ago
7645915939 1y ago
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7645915939 1y ago
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atlintots 1y ago
I bypass Google's big anti-adblock updates by using Firefox
pogue 1y ago
Why couldn't someone just compile Chromium and strip out webRequestBlocking from the code?
sneak 1y ago
So theoretically Chrome is open source. Open source is supposed to prevent issues like this, as it is possible to fork Chrome pre-MV3 and preserve this functionality. However, this appears to have not happened. Perhaps we need a better definition of “open source”, or well-funded organizations that are adversarial in nature to the maintainers of open source commercial software. Lots of f/oss has malware and misfeatures in it, hiding behind the guise of “open source”. It doesn’t count unless there are non-corporate interests at work in the project that are willing and able to fork.
- yard2010 1y ago
  Chrome is open source just like Russia and Iran are democratic dictatorships. Just in the naming.
- arccy 1y ago
  open source only means you can use and fork it without too many restrictions. it doesn't mean open governance or did the greater good.
scotty79 1y ago
I switched away from Chrome years ago. Not because of their weird anit-adblock moves. Just because the quality of their software dropped. Because of various UI bugs of their tabs that didn't get fixed with updates. I remembers that when Chrome came out it was rock solid and fast so it's a huge disappointment. I tried out Firefox again and nowadays it is as fast and as solid as Chrome used to be. Never looked back. I still keep Chrome for cases when somebody YOLOed their website, but I use it the way I used to use IE, briefly and with distaste. With the next upgrade I might just start using builtin Edge for that and not bother to install Chrome at all.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
qwertox 1y ago
> For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0. Sure, not a security issue. But given how much Google hates Ad Blockers, they could have easily given him some USD 50,000.
raydenvm 1y ago
I suppose that switching to Brave will be one of the best solutions after all. They have already comment this in June: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3 https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3
- moffkalast 1y ago
  What makes Brave trustworthy enough for us to run our entire life through it? For me it's irreparably forever tainted by crypto grifting.
  - pixxel 1y ago
    Your favourite corporations commit all sorts of crimes (ethical and actual). But let’s remember that questionable thing Brave did for eternity.
    - moffkalast 1y ago
      Non-profits get a tiny bit more leeway in my book. Brave is not one of them.
  - esskay 1y ago
    The 'crypto grifting' is something you can turn off completely, it's there as a way to make the browser sustainable without accepting payments from Google to make it the default search engine. I'd argue its far more trustworthy than modern day Firefox/Mozilla, they're not exactly the second coming these days. What makes Firefox more trustworthy?
    - mathgradthrow 1y ago
      the lack of cryptogrifting.
    - moffkalast 1y ago
      That's kind of like saying "yeah this is a mafia pizzeria but you can come eat at hours when the goons aren't there". Besides, why does Brave need that much funding? All they make is a Chromium wrapper, Google does all the work for them. They're not really an actual alternative in that sense, they just stuff it full of adblock, crypto, and god knows what. There was even a thing recently where it autoinstalled a VPN. Yeah it's true that Mozilla's mostly financed from Google's anti-antitrust payments, but at least they actually made something of their own and have a trustworthy track record three decades long as a non-profit and Netscape before that.
deleted 1y ago
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closetkantian 1y ago
Would it be possible to create a web browser where different tabs are running other browsers? Like I could have chrome in one tab and Firefox in another? Almost like a VM?
- Doxin 1y ago
  You used to have an activeX plugin for internet explorer that would selectively render certain sites using google chrome
bgnn 1y ago
Reading the comments, I see a lot of hate for Firefox. What is the explanation for this (other than people not trying Firefox and assuming it's inferior)?
- jacquesm 1y ago
  I love Firefox, I've bee using it for as long as it exists and Netscape before that. It's Mozilla I have a problem with. Mozilla has allowed itself to become controlled opposition rather than the aggressive underdog that it should be. Lots of the money they take in that could go to improving Firefox is spent on stuff I could not care less about. There is no way to earmark funds sent to Mozilla as 'browser only'.
  - WhrRTheBaboons 1y ago
    Ultimately the issue is allowing Google to skirt around anti-monopoly rules by throwing money at Mozilla. Can't really blame the latter for cashing in when the rules fail at enforcing a competitive environment. Hate the game, not the player, basically.
- hashstring 1y ago
  Also their browser security always seems to lag behind…
- haloboy777 1y ago
  I love using firefox. Mozilla has lost all the trust I had in them. The biggest blow for me was them shutting down pocket.
- qilo 1y ago
  Mozilla sells user data to third parties. Their statement: The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
jacquesm 1y ago
An adblocker is a firewall for your brain. Google should have no say over what I consume and when and with for instance youtube being pretty much unavoidable their monopoly position is abused by forcing you to pay for it. Doubly so because of the bait-and-switch, I'm fine with platforms that start off being ad supported, I'm not fine with platforms that become huge on piracy that are free to use by everybody and not an ad in sight and then when bought out suddenly you end up as a captive lemon to be squeezed.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Switching costs for consumers are pretty low. Though I'd agree that for producers, it is hard to compete anywhere else.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    That's not really true. Youtube is the de-facto means through which a lot of companies and even governments communicate important information to the general public. It took the place of a lot of public broadcasting and documents supplied in paper form. This is highly annoying but hardly a choice on the part of the recipients.
Garvi 1y ago
I notice people being very reserved on their criticisms of Google, knowing Google can end their careers in an instant if it chooses to.
kldg 1y ago
Just for anyone here switching: Don't get firefox; get firefox developer edition. It's firefox but you don't need to pay Mozilla $20 and go through verification to local-load browser extensions you write for yourself. (you can do this on non-DE firefox but you have to reload extensions every time you restart browser) I've been off Chrome for a while after using it for about a decade. Firefox is nice to have around, but ngl, it's behind on standards and some of its implementations are wack. Its performance on video is poor, and its memory management relatively awful, especially if you're the kind of person who leaves your computer on for months at a time; be prepared to open a new tab and copy-paste any "HUD" tab URLs you leave open (e.g. CNBC for the top ticker). I feel like the kind of person who buys an Intel GPU, and I have some thoughts about Nvidia for pushing me here.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Does DE really persist local add-ons? Last time I tried, it still unloaded them on browser restarts.
  - kldg 1y ago
    yeah; I don't recall if I had to mess around with it at all to get it that way, but I have a couple addons I wrote which stay loaded after browser restarts and PC reboots. Edit: in about:config set xpinstall.signatures.required to false (also sorry for going so aggro on FF in earlier comment; I guess I was hungry or something)
john_alan 1y ago
who uses browser level Adblockers anymore? Just use Pihole. Traveling? VPN home then Pihole
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Apparently a lot of folks, at least judging by UBO user numbers. Pihole doesn't look trivial to setup.
exabrial 1y ago
Google hijacked the Internet by dominating web standards and abusing their market position. We could vote on a new RFC and Google gets the veto vote merely if they don’t want to put it in Chrome.
baxuz 1y ago
Just get AdGuard as it's a superior solution anyway. And I mean the actual app that can modify responses, not a simple DNS filter.
- jambutters 1y ago
  I thought it was just a DNS filter. I have it running on my pi
diebillionaires 1y ago
People shouldn’t be using chrome anymore. Not even the technologically illiterate. I’d go so far as to say even safari is possibly more private.
moffkalast 1y ago
> I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. > It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions. > For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0. Snitches get stitches, not rewards. FWIW, on Windows Google relies on the registry to determine weather to use V2 or V3, and it can be reenabled: https://gist.github.com/MuTLY/71849b71e6391c51cd93bdea36137de9 https://gist.github.com/MuTLY/71849b71e6391c51cd93bdea36137d...
- deryilz 1y ago
  No adblocking extension would ever rely on a clear bug to function. Google reviews extension code and would immediately patch the bug, and maybe use it as an excuse to kick the extension off the web store. I don't buy the idea that there was a viable second option here.
replyifuagree 1y ago
>(Shown above: my earnings from this bug.) I lol'd!
yyhhooq 1y ago
Good
BeautifulOrb 1y ago
finally switched to firefox. no regrets
ck2 1y ago
Supermium https://github.com/win32ss/supermium https://github.com/win32ss/supermium https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/ https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/
macinjosh 1y ago
i never made chrome my daily driver. firefox and safari are wonderful browsers.
coppa 1y ago
For work I need various profiles, The feature is so bad on Firefox…. Please community just fix that…
nomendos 1y ago
Stop using Chrome. (i.e. as main browser I use Firefox which with containers is unmatched and Brave for any websites that I used Chrome in the past mainly for faster JS, while speed is +/- per bench) This could not have much effect on Google in the beginning (technically informed users first), but at some point it can (and I predict will, as technical literacy and privacy awareness is increasing, plus greed and productization of user data does have limits..) be avalanche moment. It will take variable time due to many variables, but is inevitability (i.e. universe law of "optimal path"). In my opinion, Google has miscalculated with the move to obsolete MV2 (masking it as "security" adds to dishonesty and consequent distrust, which is the opposite from the original Google's founding principles)
RS-232 1y ago
I really wish Apple revived Safari for Windows. In my opinion, it's the only browser that nicely balances performance, privacy, and security.
- throw123xz 1y ago
  Safari isn't the solution in this case as they were actually the first ones to heavily restrict adblocking. Manifest v3 is inspired by what they did.
  - McAlpine5892 1y ago
    Safari does have heavy restrictions on extensions but I still rarely see ads with 1Blocker (Safari extension) and NextDNS. So rarely it feels like never. It’s also opened up somewhat in recent years. While I personally stick with Safari’s Content Blocking feature for performance reasons, 1Blocker and others do have a JavaScript-based option these days.
    - RS-232 1y ago
      I've had similarly good experiences with AdGuard and Wipr and prefer the latter for the UX.
- cbolton 1y ago
  Doesn't Safari have basically the same limitations as Chrome with Manifest v3?
shitonU2 1y ago
Being neither an expert nor illiterate I've been blocked, very recently, from websites vital to me. Whether caused by Microsoft (most likely) or Google (less so) I've never had problems like this before. Usually, a little patience and they resolve the issue in short order. I hope this is the case now. Long ago I used IE, then Firefox and finally settled on Chrome. These current issues, if they persist, will be enough to make me move.
Cyclone_ 1y ago
This seems to make a good case for the brave browser
- nemomarx 1y ago
  I do hope they continue to support it, but any chromium fork is going to struggle if Google changes the base engine more on them. I think a different engine is ultimately safer.
znort_ 1y ago
> But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. (...) For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0 rome doesn't pay traitors.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
brianzelip 1y ago
Stop using chrome
maxglute 1y ago
>If only I weren't 8 years old back then [bug discovery]... maybe I could have cashed in. Impressive and feels bad man.
kylehotchkiss 1y ago
My solution is easier: just use Safari. 1Blocker has been nearly bulletproof for me for years, and I enable some ads filtering on my router.
korse 1y ago
I keep hearing that no-one gives a shit about Firefox but I've used it since I was a kid in the mid-2000's (including on mobile) and never had an issue. The one exception is that I do allot of reading/web surfing using lynx with a couple of flags set but aside from this, I've never seen the need for other browsers. Why is Firefox 'dead' and why does anyone care what Apple/Google does with their proprietary bullshit?

1044 points by deryilz 1y ago

ur-whale 1y ago

[flagged]

rf15 1y ago
Our ideals do not simply change the fact that chrome and its derivatives are the most used browser by a big margin at this moment. And, looking at how this came to be and how things were with IE before it, they are going to stay a bit longer still. Stop being in denial about the way most people function: they don't care, they will eat the most convenient slop they are being served and not question it much. Because it doesn't matter as long as it allows you to browse your socials.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  I hate to use this word but this is a huge amount of projection in response to the comment you replied to, which did not seem to make any of the points you ascribed to it.
perching_aix 1y ago
> unless you're still using the spying machine So a computer?
- bowsamic 1y ago
  If you use a free operating system https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html then you have less chance of being spied on. At least you can check
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    > At least you can check I don't think they enable me to inspect e.g. my CPU's firmware, or that they're able to provide any guarantees about the hardware itself. So it still just makes for a large shopping bag sized trust-me-bro box executing hundreds of billions of instructions a second. But now with a false sense of comfort. I'm more than happy to concede on this being overly dramatic though, provided you concede on having been engaging in a similarly unserious hyperbole of your own.
    - bowsamic 1y ago
      I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually. (It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not). But yes of course the hardware must be free too, at least insofar as it does not impede on our freedom to understand what it is doing to the software we run on it, and the firmware must also be free software
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        > I don’t think that free software is an unserious hyperbole, actually. Me neither, considering that doesn't even work grammatically. Very clearly I was referring to "unless you're still using the spying machine" being the unserious hyperbole. > It really does exist, even though big tech wants you to think it does not. I must have been continually missing "big tech's" efforts on that front. They do engage in other efforts that go against either the spirit or the proliferation of software freedom, but what you describe I legitimately have not witnessed at all.
  - hk__2 1y ago
    Yes you can, but do you?
    - bowsamic 1y ago
      If I say yes, you’ll just call me an extremist and make fun of me. If I say no, you’ll call me a hypocrite. So I refuse to answer
    - kentm 1y ago
      I don’t think they need to for there to be value. Sure, maybe there’s spyware in free software that they haven’t found. But we know that these advertising companies are putting e-stalking code into all their products right now. Trading that certainty for an unknown is a net benefit.
      - perching_aix 1y ago
        Tracking typically works through fingerprinting. Using free software alone won't magically protect you against this, every website's a program with JavaScript on. Lots of free software is also multiplatform. You'll want to apply additional defensive measures, but you can apply those even on Windows, running Firefox or Chrome. Mind you, you'll then stand out for using those defensive measures. I generally appreciate source code access and independent auditability, and I do have an appreciation for the intent. But the way people discuss these topics is downright embarrassing, which is what I was hoping to shake out of this. "Just install Linux bro, it's better than pussy bro. What, u still got dat spyin machine goin on?? [links a 30 minute Mutahar video with him faffing about with some technologically trivial bollocks he visibly barely understands]" Please. I think it's pretty agreeable at least that this about as far removed from well supported decision making as one can casually get to be. Most people switching to Linux and free software alternatives in hopes of better privacy do so based on vibes, not on any rigorous research. And that's fine. Just wish they didn't pretend it wasn't the case.
        bowsamic 1y ago
        > "Just install Linux bro, it's better than pussy bro. What, u still got dat spyin machine goin on?? [links a 30 minute Mutahar video with him faffing about with some technologically trivial bollocks he visibly barely understands]" Please. I think it's pretty agreeable at least that this about as far removed from well supported decision making as one can casually get to be. Such a person may exist but why do you insist that that person is here in the room with us? Let us talk and find out what the other people are like. You’ve already shown what you really are like: someone who will assert that the others are a certain way even before they talk

unit149 1y ago

[dead]

bborud 1y ago

I remember back in the day, one of the big selling points for Google’s search engine used to be that the advertising didn’t get in the way. Imagine that.

le-mark 1y ago
I stopped saying this because no one remembers. Or the people I was talking to were to young. It’s way worse now than askjeeves ever was!
RevEng 1y ago
The big reason for me was that it "just worked". Altavista was the biggest player at the time but you had to learn a while query language to get good results. Google's search engine took plain English keywords and have relevant results.

daft_pink 1y ago

So what’s the conclusion? Can we use a different Chrome based browser and avoid MV3? What’s the decision for privacy after this has happened?

j45 1y ago
The little I've read bout this says that maintaining MV2 might be something as well. If other chromium based browsers didn't have this issue, that would be great, but likely in time Youtube won't support browsers that don't have MV3. Probably still have some time though.
- SSchick 1y ago
  Switched to Firefox yesterday, I suggest you do the same.
  - j45 1y ago
    That's a good reminder to update Firefox. I tend to oscillate back and forth every few years gradually. Lately not Chrome proper, there are some neat browser takes worth trying out like Vivaldi, Brave, Arc, etc that are Chromium based.
  - dwedge 1y ago
    Are they still funded to the tune of a billion a year by Google so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly? Are they still intent on redefining as an ad company?
    - j45 1y ago
      When the billion began Chrome wasn't even a browser yet.
    - Brian_K_White 1y ago
      The google money isn't any great gotcha. It's wrong of them to have grown to be so dependant but so what? All it means is that some day the funded development will stop, just like all the forks are already. Let them take google money for as long as it flows. You can switch to librewolf at any time if FF itself ever actually goes bad in any critical way. But there's not a lot of reason to do so until the minute that actually happens. Go ahead and take the funded work and updates as long as it exists.

krackers 1y ago

>They decided it wasn't a security issue, and honestly, I agree, because it didn't give extensions access to data they didn't already have. So they admit that MV3 isn't actually any more secure than MV2?

Neywiny 1y ago
I'd be shocked if anyone actually believes them. This article starts with the obvious conflict of interest. Of course letting an extension know what websites you visit and what requests are made is an insecure lifestyle. But I still do it because I trust uBO more than I trust the ad companies and their data harvesters.
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  I believe them. The restrictions are reasonable and appropriate for nearly everyone. Extensions are untrusted code that should have as little access as possible. If restrictions can be bypassed, that's a security bug that should be fixed because it directly affects users. I also think uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should not only be an exception to the whole thing but should also be given even more access in order to let it block things more effectively. It shouldn't even be a mere extension to begin with, it should be literally built into the browser as a core feature. The massive conflicts of interest are the only thing that prevent that. Can't trust ad companies to mantain ad blockers.
  - Barbing 1y ago
    Would that rip off the how-do-we-fund-the-web bandaid, forcing new solutions? Worry about the interim where some publishers would presumably cease to exist. And who would remain afloat—those with proprietary apps, as Zucky as they are, I’d guess… UBO is absolutely incredibly important. Figure you might know more than me about how journalists and reviewers and the like can still earn a keep in a world with adblockers built in to every browser.
    - matheusmoreira 1y ago

labrador 1y ago

I'd gladly pay for YouTube without ads if I trusted that it would remain ad free, but the track record from various companies on this is not good.

Karsteski 1y ago
I tried paying for YouTube premium then they fucked around by not giving me all the features I paid for when I was visiting another country. There's no winning with these people.
- dandellion 1y ago
  I paid premium a few months, then they added shorts and there was no way to block them, so I installed a blocker and stopped paying for it.
- jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
  Yes me too, and they fucked me.
iLoveOncall 1y ago
So pay now and stop paying if they introduce ads? It's not like it's a lifetime subscription. I've been paying for it for a year+ for my girlfriend who was watching more ads than content and we've never seen ads since.
- labrador 1y ago
  That's good to know. I was hoping for a reply like yours. I will subscribe. YouTube is an amazing resource for human kind and I agree those of us who can afford it should pay to support it.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    Seems strange to me to support Google with your money from a moral perspective. It is a spyware company.

throwaway73945 1y ago

So OP got Google to patch a harmless "issue" that could've been used by addon devs to bypass MV3 restrictions. Hope it was worth the $0.

antisthenes 1y ago
Yeah, that was my take as well. OP did some free work for a megacorp and made the web a little bit worse, because "security, I guess" ? Good job.
- deryilz 1y ago
  Sometimes you get $0, sometimes you get more. I would like to mention this stuff on my college applications, and even if I tried to gatekeep it, it'd eventually be patched. Not sure what your argument is here.
  - sebmellen 1y ago
    Incredibly impressive to do this sort of work before applying to college!
- busymom0 1y ago
  Google would have found this bug if any extensions tried to rely on it and patched it instantly anyway.
- mertd 1y ago
  The author claims to be 8 years old in 2015. So that makes them still a teenager. It is pretty cool IMO.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Are you guys honestly arguing like the zero day industry would, for a vector that couldn’t be used by any ad blocking extension since Google has them under an electron microscope 24/7? To pick on a very young, enthusiastic programmer? What the hell??
StrLght 1y ago

orliesaurus 1y ago

I honestly thought reading this blog post was quite refreshing and I had a little smirk at the caption of the photo. Thank you for sharing!

deryilz 1y ago
Author here, thank you! A lot of the comments here are more general arguments about MV3 and Google (which I kinda expected) but I'm glad see someone who liked my post :)

SuperShibe 1y ago

[flagged]

4gotunameagain 1y ago
Well, in his defense it would have been patched immediately after the first adblocker used it, and he would have gotten nothing at all out of it. Oh wait he got nothing at all anyway ;)
- _feus 1y ago
  Not really, this sort of fame farming is what makes candidates stand out in infosec interviews. A bug in Google systems is good for his future career.
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    The post says they had another bug with a large bounty in the same year, so it doesn't seem very useful for CV padding either
  - userbinator 1y ago
    [flagged]
- m4rtink 1y ago
  Would be quite different if they patched it and broke important extensions, possibly facing serieous outcry and bad publicity.
  - rollcat 1y ago
    Important extensions like, dunno, uBlock Origin?
    - eddythompson80 1y ago
      Yeah, surely if chrome broke important extensions people will get mad and switch.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

No judgement but I would love to hear from Google employees who worked on this. Do they believe they are improving the internet in any way?

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]
stackedinserter 1y ago
"Job's shit but pays a lot"
lucb1e 1y ago
There is also an argument to be made that adblocking is immoral. I think the idea is pervasive enough to fill a team of willing people, especially if you pay them 100k/year to at least go along with it for the time being I haven't made up my own mind about it yet, just that this might be a factor in why one would move the facilitating technology backwards in this way (and forwards in other ways, apparently: some people in the thread are reporting that uBlock Lite is faster. Not that I can tell the difference between a clean Firefox without add-ons (I regularly use that for work reasons) and a Firefox with uBlock Origin (my daily driver) except if the page is bogged down from all the ads)
- yard2010 1y ago
  Lol. Treating cancer is immoral. Miss me with this shit!
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    Advertising is cancer?
    - asadotzler 1y ago
      Yes. Advertising is inherently manipulative, a cancer not of the brain, but of the mind. Advertising is also a exploitation vector. Removing a security threat that's damaging my mind is like removing a physical health threat that's damaging an organ.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

https://getfirefox.org https://getfirefox.org Even ignoring the adblock issues, Chrome isn't worth it... Google themselves spy on you with it. Cockblocking adblock just puts extra emphasis on what you should have already known.

victor9000 1y ago
And FF + UBO also works great on Android

pnw 1y ago

Haven't missed Chrome once since switching to https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/

Etheryte 1y ago
Of all the browsers you could be using, giving your data away to sketchy crypto bros should really not be at the top of the list.
- Supermancho 1y ago
  It's the top of the list because it works so well. I forget it's a different browser most of the time. I was able to turn off everything extraneous that I was concerned about. Brave is also Open Sourced.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- bung 1y ago
  Might as well edit and add some suggestions
  - homebrewer 1y ago
    Maybe take a look at Vivaldi, it's a continuation of the old Opera, with basically the same development team. It's the most user-friendly and configurable option at this moment, they're very responsive to feedback, and are the only organization that doesn't have some horrible privacy violations in the past (maybe excluding Apple, I don't know and don't care, 90% of users on this planet can't run Safari). Also they are in Norway if you care about that sort of thing. It's not FOSS, though, at least for now.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I really don't care about crypto stuff. If you do, I can understand why that's a dealbreaker for you. But for me, it doesn't matter at all. I just turn the crypto features off and continue on my way.

deanc 1y ago

Chrome full on blocked uBlock Origin (and others) this week. There is still four flags [1] you can play with that will allow you to re-enable it again, but this is a losing battle of course. The inevitable is coming. Nothing comes close to Safari battery life on MacOS, followed by chrome, followed by firefox in last place (with all its other issues - those claiming otherwise have stockholm syndrome). I've tried taking Orion for a spin which should offer the battery life of Safari with the flexibility of running FF and chrome extensions - but it hasn't stuck yet. As much as I'd like to use FF, I really don't want to shave 10-20% (?) off a battery charge cycle when I spend 90% of my day in the browser. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/restoring_access_to_ubo_on_chrome_138_using_flags/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1lx59m0/resto...

echelon 1y ago
This should lead to a full-on antitrust breakup of Google. Period. They own the web. I can build my business brand, own my own dot com, but then have to pay Google ad extortion money to not have my competitors by ads well above my domain name. And of course the address bar now does search instead of going to the appropriate place. Google is a scourge.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Brian_K_White 1y ago
And I value FF way more than an hour of battery. All day every day my computer works fine. That difference in battery, if it exists, doesn't actually materially manifest anywhere. But the difference between FF and anything else matters basically every minute all day. On top of that, even if I ever did actually run into the difference, needing to plug in before I would have anyway, it's an annoyance vs a necessity. The ability to control my own browser is frankly just not negotiable. It doesn't actually matter if it were less convenient in some other way, it's simply a base level requirement and anything that doesn't provide that doesn't matter what other qualities it might have. You might say "a computer that's dead doesn't work at all" but that never actually happens. I'd need an 8 hour bus ride with no seat power to get to the point where that last missing hour would actually leave me with no computer for an hour, and that would need to be a commute that happens twice every day for it to even matter. For me that's just not the reasonable priority.

crazygringo 1y ago

> Adblockers basically need webRequestBlocking to function properly. Pretty convenient (cough cough) for a company that makes most of its revenue from ads to be removing that. Why does this keep getting repeated? It's not true. Anyone can use uBlock Origin Lite with Chrome, and manifest v3. It doesn't just work fine, it works great. I can't tell any difference from the old uBlock Origin in terms of blocking, but it's faster because now all the filtering is being done in C++ rather than JavaScript. Works on YouTube and everything. I know there are some limits in place now with the max number of rules, but the limits seem to be plenty so far.

zwaps 1y ago
It is true though. Like, literally. Why do you think it is called Lite?
- crazygringo 1y ago
  > It is true though. Like, literally. Doesn't seem true to me. If it's true, then why is uBlock Origin Lite functioning properly as an adblocker for me? > Why do you think it is called Lite? Because it's simpler and uses less resources. And they had to call it something different to distinguish it from uBlock Origin.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41871873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41871873
  - rstat1 1y ago
    Its called Lite because it has tons of missing functionality from the not-Lite version that make the not-Lite version more effective as a content blocker.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      It's not "tons of missing functionality". It still blocks all the ads in practice. Maybe it's less effective in some theoretical case, but not anything I've seen. People talk as if it's only blocking 10% of the ads it used to, when the reality seems to be 99.999% or something. And it's faster now. And they removed stuff like the element zapper but that has nothing to do with Manifest v3. It's because they literally wanted it to minimize resources. You can install a dedicated zapper extension if you want that. I genuinely don't understand where this narrative of "adblockers don't work anymore on Chrome" is coming from. Again, it's just not true, but keeps getting repeated like it is.

al_borland 1y ago

Even if bigs exists to work around what Google is doing, that isn’t the right way forward. If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers). Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web.

high_priest 1y ago
Its not happening
- Etheryte 1y ago
  I don't know, I switched to Safari and it was painful for like two hours and then I stopped thinking about it. The only thing I somewhat miss is the built-in page translate, but I don't need it often enough to be bothered much.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
    I find switching from chrome to safari essentially doing nothing. If you switched to a non-big-company owned browser, it would make sense but Apple has plenty of lock in which is as bad as chrome lock in.
    - fny 1y ago
      I'm a huge fan of Orion by Kagi: you should have a look! It's a little rough around the edges but the extension support on iOS is amazing.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        Orion is the only viable option on iOS IMO. The fact that, to this day, Safari has no way to block ads on iOS means it's just awful. Before Orion, I avoided using my web browser like the plague, because the experience was just bad. Now I'm on Android, and Ironfox is pretty good and Firefox is also available. The browser story on Android is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS.

Beijinger 1y ago

I did not even realize my ublock origin was turned off. My HOST FILE script did the same service: https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy-advanced-ublock-origin-wont-work-with-chrome-anymore-ad-and-tracker-blocking-using-a-hosts-file/ https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy-advanced-ublock-origin-w... More concerning is that social fixer was turned off: https://socialfixer.com/ https://socialfixer.com/ MFGA Make Facebook Great again ;-)

Beijinger 1y ago
Why the downvote?
- neuroelectron 1y ago
  Google is here
kingo55 1y ago
Changing your hosts file helps but it would only block hostnames primarily used for ads and trackers - it wouldn't address those trackers and ads loaded from hostnames shared with actual content. The more sophisticated sites will proxy their tracking and ads through their main app: E.g. www.cnn.com/ads.js I prefer having multiple layers just in case anything drops off: 1. VPN DNS / AdGuard local cached DNS 2. uBlock Origin It's like wearing two condoms (but it feels better than natural).
RevEng 1y ago
Hosts alone won't solve many ads. Plenty of companies include their own annoying content from their own domains. uBlock lets you get far more fine grained, blocking specific paths.

crinkly 1y ago

Signed up to complain about this. YT is no longer worth watching ads for. Anything that is worth paying for, the money needs to go via Patreon so the publisher isn't demonetized at a whim. The rest is brain-rot, utter shit and a lot of damaging misinformation. I hope it dies. While it remains easy to do so, I will "steal" with yt-dlp and proudly watch it ad-free on VLC on my computer. If they break that then I'm no longer interested. When this became adversarial, which was a battle that lasted the last year of inconvenience I ended up dumping every Google thing I have. So the Pixel is GrapheneOS now with no Google crap. Browser is Firefox. Email has moved from Gmail to Fastmail with a domain. My Google account is closed after 20 years. The relationship is dead. They can do what they want. I don't care any more.

hengheng 1y ago
You didn't really mention what aggravated you.
- crinkly 1y ago
  Initially the increase in frequency of the advertising on Android youtube app. Followed by uBlock being broken in Chrome. Followed by uBlock being tarpitted in Firefox. Followed by FreeTube client getting 403 IP forbidden requests and DRM content shovelled down which could not be rendered. They just did everything to make sure I watched the ads and burn all my bandwidth, which can be somewhat limited and expensive as I travel a lot.
  - myko 1y ago
    Did you consider YouTube Premium? It works really well and no ads. Seems like a pittance for the service YouTube provides
    - jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
      $180 dollars annually is a pittance to you? So please enlighten us...? You could certainly change a persons life with that. It is not a trivial sum, so please do not insult poorer members of this community.

urda 1y ago

You bypass it by installing Firefox.

qustrolabe 1y ago
Firefox is awful. Both as a browser itself and as a base for other browsers. Such a shame that Zen didn't use Chromium :(
- dangraper2 1y ago
  Weird, Firefox blows Chrome out of the water. What do you smoke?
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    The smoke on the water! More seriously, I'm a Firefox user since ~2006 but I'm about equally surprised by the statement that Firefox should blow Chrome/ium out of the water as that Firefox supposedly sucks. They're both browsers. I think Chromium is a bit faster in page rendering, whereas Firefox is more open, privacy-friendly, and customizable. Similar to how I wish consumers would not choose an anti-consumer organization (anyone who values a free market and general computation1 should not choose iOS), I think nobody should choose Chrome but, still, I can understand if someone does choose it because they've gotten used to how it works and they're not willing to change. It's about equal in practical functionality that 95% of people use, wouldn't you say? Or in what way is Firefox blowing Chrome out of the water? ¹ https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-war-on-general-computation https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-coming-war-on-general...
    - eviks 1y ago
      > Firefox is more open, privacy-friendly, and customizable. How do you customize the default keyboard shortcuts?
      - opengears 1y ago

bradgessler 1y ago

Try Safari, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser.

heraldgeezer 1y ago

Just use Firefox with ublock origin. On Android too. Nightly has tabs on tablet. At work I use Edge (MS integration w SSO and all). Edge has some nice features like vertical tabs and copilot. (yes, email writing with AI is nice) We are allowed Chrome and FF so have those too with ublock on FF. Chrome is 3rd choice if a site really needs it and for testing.

OlivOnTech 1y ago
Firefox has had vertical tabs (and tabs groups) for few months now
- heraldgeezer 1y ago
  Indeed. I love the FF vertical tabs too, I should say. Too bad the work one is still locked to 128 ESR :(

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fracus 1y ago

> But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions usin Well, thanks for nothing?

deryilz 1y ago
Author here, sorry. I don't think any open-source extension (especially large adblockers with millions of users) could actually get away with using this bug, because Google is paying close attention to them. It would've been patched immediately either way.
- physicles 1y ago
  You’re right, and good on you for paying attention to the human/business context behind the code.
- userbinator 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deryilz 1y ago
    Hi, I appreciate your opinion, but really disagree. First of all, this is one bug, and most of the ones I find don't "act against user's interests" (not that this one could have been used effectively without being patched anyway). Doing bug finding is how I make a difference and a skill I feel proud of. I USED to keep bugs (read: exploits) for myself without sharing them, but after a while I realized it was not worth it and my skills were basically going to waste. You can say philosophical stuff about ads if you want but bug finding for me is a fun challenge with a good community. I'm not pretending Google is my best friend. Plus, doing this gets me a bit of money. It's either this or I work summers at a grocery store, and I prefer this.
    - jonas21 1y ago
      Yes, this is a mature way of looking at things.

breve 1y ago

The best bypass is to use Firefox. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Aperocky 1y ago
Never realized anything was happening as I was on Firefox, until I saw ads as my wife was browsing youtube despite installing ublock for her years ago.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  YouTube recently started showing ads through uBO in Firefox.
  - djrj477dhsnv 1y ago
    On what platform? I've been using Firefox and uBO on Linux and Android for over a decade and never seen a YouTube ad.
    - stubish 1y ago
      They do staged rollouts, maybe a-b testing. It seems to generally be region based rather than platform.
      - aspenmayer 1y ago
        You might need to check that you are using all appropriate blocklists as well. The subreddit usually has a sticky/pinned post for YouTube related issues as this has been a slow moving target for about a year now.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      I'm on Windows 10.
    - 1y ago

znpy 1y ago

Somebody should probably fork chromium. I remember when Firefox was getting traction, it had a killer feature: speed. A chromium fork could come with a simple killer feature: bringing back the possibility of blocking requests. I’m pretty sure it would quickly gain traction.

slig 1y ago
That's Brave, a fork with native AdBlock.
- jklas2hjdsdk 1y ago
  Exactly... brave is the de facto choice for cryptobros. The copying of UBOs work is a nice addition too.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    Satire?
    - znpy 1y ago
      I'd say copium.
- znpy 1y ago
  Ah nice, I’m installing that then

raspasov 1y ago

I use Safari.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mococa 1y ago

Safari + Wipr2 FTW!

ltbarcly3 1y ago

I was able to bypass the chrome changes by installing firefox. Honestly it's better than I thought it would be, and I have no serious complaints, or broken sites. Yay web standards.

ltbarcly3 1y ago
[flagged]

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

Luckily I only need to use chrome on my work laptop, I use Firefox everywhere else. Still sad to see uBlock origin stop working which was useful to keep a cleaner experience when browsing the web for work reasons (research, documentation, etc).

akomtu 1y ago

Google is running an experiment: how much ads crap users are willing to tolerate before they switch supplier.

rasz 1y ago

> It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions soo will this still just work if we give uBo webview permission?

deryilz 1y ago
Unfortunately extensions can't have webview perms :(
- rasz 1y ago
  "'webview' is only allowed for packaged apps, but this is a extension." :( but maybe Vivaldi and Brave could remove this check just for fun.

unstatusthequo 1y ago

I’ve been happy with Orion on macOS. I get it’s WebKit but at least it’s not Chrome. Brave was also good if you must have chromium.

RockstarSprain 1y ago

Would love to give Firefox a chance but one thing that stops me (apart from occasional website loading bugs) is inability to install PWAs. Not sure why it’s not implemented like it has been for a long time in Chrome and all its forks. I have found a 3rd party extension that claims to facilitate this (0) but still feel uncomfortable to use this for privacy reasons. (0) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-fire...

rs186 1y ago
If you really care, it's ok to just Firefox for the majority of your web browsing activities but use Chrome or a fork for PWA. Although using Firefox increasingly means a worse experience, including: * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling) * WebUSB support I have personally run into all of them. Some are under Firefox's control but others are not. I do still use Firefox for most websites unless it's technically not possible, but unfortunately the exception is happening more and more.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  I don't run into CAPTCHA loops with Firefox. Have you tried changing your user agent to pretend to be Firefox on Windows or Mac? I've heard Linux users are more likely to be interpreted as bots.
  - rs186 1y ago
    The machine is on a corporate network, that's the issue. I don't have issues when 1) using Chrome/Edge on that same machine on corporate network 2) using Firefox on Linux on corporate network 3) using Firefox on Windows on my own machine at home Unfortunately.
- acdha 1y ago
  > * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling) The first two are likely due to extensions rather than the core Firefox. I find at least as many cases where it’s faster, and it usually uses less memory. The third one has high variability - I’ve reported enough bugs against all of the major browsers not to trust any of them but these days there are a lot of web developers who only test on Chrome and half of the time I find what appears to be a bug in Safari or Firefox it’s really an unnecessary reliance on something Chrome specific.

alex1138 1y ago

1) A lot of ads are terribly overdone and even sometimes actively malicious (malware or tracking). It makes no sense to aggressively try to stamp it out like Google is doing 2) Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah it really did happen) what happened to Google? They've always been a bit incompetent but their behavior (ie Chrome and increasing censorship on Google/Youtube the last few years) has been really bad, I thought they were basically founded off idealism

jacquesm 1y ago
> and even sometimes actively malicious Most of the times. In fact, the situations where they are not actively tracking are exceedingly rare.
acdha 1y ago
> Aside from the Page/Brin stealing tech salaries thing (yeah it really did happen) what happened to Google? They bought DoubleClick in 2009, with an outcome similar to the way Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas but their management culture was taken over by acquired company. They haven’t launched a popular product since and their preexisting products have clearly been shifting to an “ads justify the means” mentality over time.
RevEng 1y ago
Idealism does with capitalism. Executives and shareholders don't care about ideals: they want money. All of the questionable things Google has done have been in pursuit of ever larger profits.

froderick 1y ago

As an exclusive Firefox user, with really great ad blocking features, I didn’t notice that Chrome got worse on this front. I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps it’s time for a change. Best of luck.

CommenterPerson 1y ago

Why not use DuckDuckGo?

andxor 1y ago

Just use uBlock Origin Lite.

sciencesama 1y ago

Using ebpf to block ads would be fun !! Need a way to translate rules into blocking rules for ebpf

paulryanrogers 1y ago
How would that work? Isn't having all the browser and doc context what makes UBO (MV2) the most robust blocker? Would the browser be talking to the kernel through some back channel?

est 1y ago

I got downvoted for commenting this, why can't we make a ManifestV2-like framework using .DLLs ? This can enable network control for ad blockers and Google can do nothing about it.

deryilz 1y ago
I think the trouble is that certain adblocking features (like skipping ads on YouTube, Twitch, etc) require modifying the page you're viewing in your browser; just filtering network requests isn't enough. So right now a browser extension is the most natural choice for an adblocker, but honestly that might change if browsers keep being so hostile towards them.
- est 1y ago
  expose DOM and JSON to external .DLL then browsers should have open Web standards as well as open local runtime.

zulban 1y ago

I don't "bypass" Chrome when they want to melt my brain with their business model, I use Firefox. I don't "bypass" Windows when they want to melt my brain with their business model, I use Linux. No idea why so many "hackers" doing "bypasses" can't instead take action that is simpler, long lasting, and easier. Do people need to jerked around 50 times for 20 years before realizing it will keep happening and their "bypasses" are just temporary bandaids?

flufluflufluffy 1y ago
Bro it’s for the fun and interest of figuring it out. That’s what hackers do. The writer obviously knew it’s a “temporary bandaid” — they notified Google about it themself.
pharrington 1y ago
Billions of non-programmers, who have no idea what an extension manifest even is, use Chrome.
eviks 1y ago
> for 20 years ... just temporary bandaids Using superior software for two decades is a very good bandaid
arcfour 1y ago
You should read the article before commenting; your comment is a non-sequitur.
- doctorpangloss 1y ago
  I don’t know. Eventually you read enough of this stuff and you would rather the next breath be, take leadership on a real solution. To me it’s a “sequitur” to say, the biggest fuck you is to convince people to stop using Chrome, not to fix bugs for their extremely highly paid engineers for free.
  - spenczar5 1y ago

7645915939 1y ago

[flagged]

7645915939 1y ago

[flagged]

atlintots 1y ago

I bypass Google's big anti-adblock updates by using Firefox

pogue 1y ago

Why couldn't someone just compile Chromium and strip out webRequestBlocking from the code?

sneak 1y ago

So theoretically Chrome is open source. Open source is supposed to prevent issues like this, as it is possible to fork Chrome pre-MV3 and preserve this functionality. However, this appears to have not happened. Perhaps we need a better definition of “open source”, or well-funded organizations that are adversarial in nature to the maintainers of open source commercial software. Lots of f/oss has malware and misfeatures in it, hiding behind the guise of “open source”. It doesn’t count unless there are non-corporate interests at work in the project that are willing and able to fork.

yard2010 1y ago
Chrome is open source just like Russia and Iran are democratic dictatorships. Just in the naming.
arccy 1y ago
open source only means you can use and fork it without too many restrictions. it doesn't mean open governance or did the greater good.

scotty79 1y ago

I switched away from Chrome years ago. Not because of their weird anit-adblock moves. Just because the quality of their software dropped. Because of various UI bugs of their tabs that didn't get fixed with updates. I remembers that when Chrome came out it was rock solid and fast so it's a huge disappointment. I tried out Firefox again and nowadays it is as fast and as solid as Chrome used to be. Never looked back. I still keep Chrome for cases when somebody YOLOed their website, but I use it the way I used to use IE, briefly and with distaste. With the next upgrade I might just start using builtin Edge for that and not bother to install Chrome at all.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

qwertox 1y ago

> For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0. Sure, not a security issue. But given how much Google hates Ad Blockers, they could have easily given him some USD 50,000.

raydenvm 1y ago

I suppose that switching to Brave will be one of the best solutions after all. They have already comment this in June: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3 https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3

moffkalast 1y ago
What makes Brave trustworthy enough for us to run our entire life through it? For me it's irreparably forever tainted by crypto grifting.
- pixxel 1y ago
  Your favourite corporations commit all sorts of crimes (ethical and actual). But let’s remember that questionable thing Brave did for eternity.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    Non-profits get a tiny bit more leeway in my book. Brave is not one of them.
- esskay 1y ago
  The 'crypto grifting' is something you can turn off completely, it's there as a way to make the browser sustainable without accepting payments from Google to make it the default search engine. I'd argue its far more trustworthy than modern day Firefox/Mozilla, they're not exactly the second coming these days. What makes Firefox more trustworthy?
  - mathgradthrow 1y ago
    the lack of cryptogrifting.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    That's kind of like saying "yeah this is a mafia pizzeria but you can come eat at hours when the goons aren't there". Besides, why does Brave need that much funding? All they make is a Chromium wrapper, Google does all the work for them. They're not really an actual alternative in that sense, they just stuff it full of adblock, crypto, and god knows what. There was even a thing recently where it autoinstalled a VPN. Yeah it's true that Mozilla's mostly financed from Google's anti-antitrust payments, but at least they actually made something of their own and have a trustworthy track record three decades long as a non-profit and Netscape before that.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

closetkantian 1y ago

Would it be possible to create a web browser where different tabs are running other browsers? Like I could have chrome in one tab and Firefox in another? Almost like a VM?

Doxin 1y ago
You used to have an activeX plugin for internet explorer that would selectively render certain sites using google chrome

bgnn 1y ago

Reading the comments, I see a lot of hate for Firefox. What is the explanation for this (other than people not trying Firefox and assuming it's inferior)?

jacquesm 1y ago
I love Firefox, I've bee using it for as long as it exists and Netscape before that. It's Mozilla I have a problem with. Mozilla has allowed itself to become controlled opposition rather than the aggressive underdog that it should be. Lots of the money they take in that could go to improving Firefox is spent on stuff I could not care less about. There is no way to earmark funds sent to Mozilla as 'browser only'.
- WhrRTheBaboons 1y ago
  Ultimately the issue is allowing Google to skirt around anti-monopoly rules by throwing money at Mozilla. Can't really blame the latter for cashing in when the rules fail at enforcing a competitive environment. Hate the game, not the player, basically.
hashstring 1y ago
Also their browser security always seems to lag behind…
haloboy777 1y ago
I love using firefox. Mozilla has lost all the trust I had in them. The biggest blow for me was them shutting down pocket.
qilo 1y ago
Mozilla sells user data to third parties. Their statement: The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612

jacquesm 1y ago

An adblocker is a firewall for your brain. Google should have no say over what I consume and when and with for instance youtube being pretty much unavoidable their monopoly position is abused by forcing you to pay for it. Doubly so because of the bait-and-switch, I'm fine with platforms that start off being ad supported, I'm not fine with platforms that become huge on piracy that are free to use by everybody and not an ad in sight and then when bought out suddenly you end up as a captive lemon to be squeezed.

paulryanrogers 1y ago
Switching costs for consumers are pretty low. Though I'd agree that for producers, it is hard to compete anywhere else.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  That's not really true. Youtube is the de-facto means through which a lot of companies and even governments communicate important information to the general public. It took the place of a lot of public broadcasting and documents supplied in paper form. This is highly annoying but hardly a choice on the part of the recipients.

Garvi 1y ago

I notice people being very reserved on their criticisms of Google, knowing Google can end their careers in an instant if it chooses to.

kldg 1y ago

Just for anyone here switching: Don't get firefox; get firefox developer edition. It's firefox but you don't need to pay Mozilla $20 and go through verification to local-load browser extensions you write for yourself. (you can do this on non-DE firefox but you have to reload extensions every time you restart browser) I've been off Chrome for a while after using it for about a decade. Firefox is nice to have around, but ngl, it's behind on standards and some of its implementations are wack. Its performance on video is poor, and its memory management relatively awful, especially if you're the kind of person who leaves your computer on for months at a time; be prepared to open a new tab and copy-paste any "HUD" tab URLs you leave open (e.g. CNBC for the top ticker). I feel like the kind of person who buys an Intel GPU, and I have some thoughts about Nvidia for pushing me here.

paulryanrogers 1y ago
Does DE really persist local add-ons? Last time I tried, it still unloaded them on browser restarts.
- kldg 1y ago
  yeah; I don't recall if I had to mess around with it at all to get it that way, but I have a couple addons I wrote which stay loaded after browser restarts and PC reboots. Edit: in about:config set xpinstall.signatures.required to false (also sorry for going so aggro on FF in earlier comment; I guess I was hungry or something)

john_alan 1y ago

who uses browser level Adblockers anymore? Just use Pihole. Traveling? VPN home then Pihole

paulryanrogers 1y ago
Apparently a lot of folks, at least judging by UBO user numbers. Pihole doesn't look trivial to setup.

exabrial 1y ago

Google hijacked the Internet by dominating web standards and abusing their market position. We could vote on a new RFC and Google gets the veto vote merely if they don’t want to put it in Chrome.

baxuz 1y ago

Just get AdGuard as it's a superior solution anyway. And I mean the actual app that can modify responses, not a simple DNS filter.

jambutters 1y ago
I thought it was just a DNS filter. I have it running on my pi

diebillionaires 1y ago

People shouldn’t be using chrome anymore. Not even the technologically illiterate. I’d go so far as to say even safari is possibly more private.

moffkalast 1y ago

> I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. > It was patched in Chrome 118 by checking whether extensions using opt_webViewInstanceId actually had WebView permissions. > For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0. Snitches get stitches, not rewards. FWIW, on Windows Google relies on the registry to determine weather to use V2 or V3, and it can be reenabled: https://gist.github.com/MuTLY/71849b71e6391c51cd93bdea36137de9 https://gist.github.com/MuTLY/71849b71e6391c51cd93bdea36137d...

deryilz 1y ago
No adblocking extension would ever rely on a clear bug to function. Google reviews extension code and would immediately patch the bug, and maybe use it as an excuse to kick the extension off the web store. I don't buy the idea that there was a viable second option here.

replyifuagree 1y ago

>(Shown above: my earnings from this bug.) I lol'd!

yyhhooq 1y ago

Good

BeautifulOrb 1y ago

finally switched to firefox. no regrets

ck2 1y ago

Supermium https://github.com/win32ss/supermium https://github.com/win32ss/supermium https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/ https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/

macinjosh 1y ago

i never made chrome my daily driver. firefox and safari are wonderful browsers.

coppa 1y ago

For work I need various profiles, The feature is so bad on Firefox…. Please community just fix that…

nomendos 1y ago

Stop using Chrome. (i.e. as main browser I use Firefox which with containers is unmatched and Brave for any websites that I used Chrome in the past mainly for faster JS, while speed is +/- per bench) This could not have much effect on Google in the beginning (technically informed users first), but at some point it can (and I predict will, as technical literacy and privacy awareness is increasing, plus greed and productization of user data does have limits..) be avalanche moment. It will take variable time due to many variables, but is inevitability (i.e. universe law of "optimal path"). In my opinion, Google has miscalculated with the move to obsolete MV2 (masking it as "security" adds to dishonesty and consequent distrust, which is the opposite from the original Google's founding principles)

RS-232 1y ago

I really wish Apple revived Safari for Windows. In my opinion, it's the only browser that nicely balances performance, privacy, and security.

throw123xz 1y ago
Safari isn't the solution in this case as they were actually the first ones to heavily restrict adblocking. Manifest v3 is inspired by what they did.
- McAlpine5892 1y ago
  Safari does have heavy restrictions on extensions but I still rarely see ads with 1Blocker (Safari extension) and NextDNS. So rarely it feels like never. It’s also opened up somewhat in recent years. While I personally stick with Safari’s Content Blocking feature for performance reasons, 1Blocker and others do have a JavaScript-based option these days.
  - RS-232 1y ago
    I've had similarly good experiences with AdGuard and Wipr and prefer the latter for the UX.
cbolton 1y ago
Doesn't Safari have basically the same limitations as Chrome with Manifest v3?

shitonU2 1y ago

Being neither an expert nor illiterate I've been blocked, very recently, from websites vital to me. Whether caused by Microsoft (most likely) or Google (less so) I've never had problems like this before. Usually, a little patience and they resolve the issue in short order. I hope this is the case now. Long ago I used IE, then Firefox and finally settled on Chrome. These current issues, if they persist, will be enough to make me move.

Cyclone_ 1y ago

This seems to make a good case for the brave browser

nemomarx 1y ago
I do hope they continue to support it, but any chromium fork is going to struggle if Google changes the base engine more on them. I think a different engine is ultimately safer.

znort_ 1y ago

> But I don't know how to make an adblocker, so I decided to report the issue to Google in August 2023. (...) For the report, I netted a massive reward of $0 rome doesn't pay traitors.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]

brianzelip 1y ago

Stop using chrome

maxglute 1y ago

>If only I weren't 8 years old back then [bug discovery]... maybe I could have cashed in. Impressive and feels bad man.

kylehotchkiss 1y ago

My solution is easier: just use Safari. 1Blocker has been nearly bulletproof for me for years, and I enable some ads filtering on my router.

korse 1y ago

I keep hearing that no-one gives a shit about Firefox but I've used it since I was a kid in the mid-2000's (including on mobile) and never had an issue. The one exception is that I do allot of reading/web surfing using lynx with a couple of flags set but aside from this, I've never seen the need for other browsers. Why is Firefox 'dead' and why does anyone care what Apple/Google does with their proprietary bullshit?