Google is weakening ad blockers as part of their MV3 extension standard and this will trickle down into all Chromium browsers. Built in ad blockers lack features compared to uBlock Origin as well.
Who is the Lemmy user not aware of this? Show yourself!
Google is not killing uBlock Origin. It’s changing how Chrome works. uBlock Origin will continue to work in my Firefox and other browsers.
They’re changing how chrome works… …in a way that just coincidentally makes ad blockers a lot less functional.
They’re an advertising company, no conflict of interest there at all
Ashit Pie doing his work
This is a shit take. Manifest v3 is like activex. As of right now, it shuts down extensions they don’t want. Going forward, it sets up a system for extensions that are publisher-approved. When internet explorer took over the market I could still use Netscape until I couldn’t. I’m hoping Firefox doesn’t reach the same end
Manifest v3 is like activex. As of right now, it shuts down extensions they don’t want.
ActiveX was the opposite of this… It gave third party code way too much access. It was essentially unsandboxed native code running directly in the browser, like if you were to write a Windows app and let a site automatically download and run it.
Yes, awful title. I agree.
LMAO welcome to Firefox, the objectively better Browser. Might also use a custom search engine or DDG while at it.
Why the LMAO?
Firefox was and still is recently vulnerable to a massive zero day:
Mozilla is now using users for their new AI focus.
We need to support continuous competition in the browser market through enhanced support and integration of W3C standards. And at the most important, decoupling corporations from the browsers. At the moment, it seems Google is being actively defensive (see manifest v3) against that while Firefox (Mozilla corporate) is just sort of moot on the issue, more concerned with AI.
As soon as you think it’s “us vs them” and your browser is also owned by a for profit company, we’ve lost
There are Firefox forks like LibreWolf if you need to be a crybaby about Mozilla being a company that needs to pay their developers with the most user friendly way possible…
Also their AI is more of a play thing for some of their developers, they need to go with the flow at least a bit. Its also opt in where i am, idk if thats the case everywhere, but if not its opt out.
Furthermore, from your own article:
Mozilla has patched a critical security vulnerability in its Firefox Web browser that’s being actively exploited in the wild
Oh noooo they patched it.
Keep being a crybaby and use Opera, for all i care you can even install yourself red star OS.
Still better than Chrome. Mozilla is not perfect, but in comparison to Google and its behavior they are saints.
was and still is
Me when I lie.
Unfortunately, firefox is becoming just as bad as chrome.
What?
Mozilla is now focusing on the advertising business.
To reduce reliance on Google… With the goal to change how advertising works, less annoying, less asshole ads would benefit everyone.
It’s not my browser’s job to report to advertisers, period.
Its not doing that, you can use a fork if you want, or, and that would be the important part, put a condom over your internet cable before it enters the router, safety first.
Why are you talking about things you don’t fully understand?
Its not doing that
It literally is, with an opt-out feature.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct
Your lack of concern is not relevant to the desires of other users.
Mozilla is mostly funded by google. With the current cookie laws from the eu to try and stop user tracking, they developed a new solution together.
Both chrome and firefox analyze your behaviour on your pc/phone/device. Then instead of giving websites the right ads, your browser tells every website you visit (with such ads) about you. You can google “privacy sandbox” if you’d like to know more.
So you better not be gay in a place like iraq, and be in need of using your school’s website on a personal computer.
Hey, you dropped your nose.
🤡
Unfortunately, your statement probably only deserves bothsides.jxl. Please attempt to honestly and objectively compare things, despite the personal inconvenience.
They make mistakes, but Firefox and Mozilla are obviously nowhere near as fucked up as Chrome and Google by any measure. And Firefox would only improve if people stopped running back to Chrome when something was not perfect.
As for that context you’re missing, I’m counting them as equally bad because they run the same privacy violating approach to tracking user data and putting it where it shouldn’t go
Maybe actually read or ask for context. I didn’t include it in the comment because I figured that people who care enough to ask would ask
Pretend privacy or anti privacy
I’d say they both are bad except pretend privacy is much worse.
Unfortunate that people are fooled by Mozilla’s pretend privacy promises.
It’s not like we have great options here. Safari isn’t supported on Windows or Linux. Opera has its own issues (like predatory loan apps) even if you’re willing to pay for it. Crossing my fingers that Ladybird will work out, but it has a long way to go (though it did better than I thought it would when I tried it a few months back). Everything else is some variant of Chrome.
If you need to be on the web at all, Firefox still seems like the best of the shit pile.
There’s also the Firefox forks like Zen and Floorp. It’s still early days for Zen, but it’s looking promising.
Not just that, not everyone who was listed in their open letters apparently agreed to or knew they were in them
Firefox and its other forks are the best option right now
Has been for as long as I can remember.
Duh, Firefox. This is not a problem.
I’ve recently switched to FF as my main browser, but I still need Chrome for some work things. And some people will want to stay on Chrome. So for them, this IS a problem.
Just dismissing it because other browsers exist isn’t helpful.
Yes it is. It’s not some unobtainable solution like you need to give 1/10 of your pay or giving away your freedom. It’s easy, free and almost painless solution that will solve your problems. You can’t try to cure your lung cancer and continue smoking.
You missing the part where some people still have to use Chrome for certain things?
Sneering about how they should use other browsers does not help them.
Nor is the lung cancer thing helpful, so much as it is an utterly absurd comparison.
You missing the part where some people still have to use Chrome for certain things?
That might just be a question of the User Agent being sent with requests, i.e. a lot of apps / websites were coded up with the assumption that Firefox / Gecko does not support certain features (which is mostly nonsense). Switching the user agent to Chrom(e|ium) resolves the issue most of the time.
The more people use Firefox, the better. Lots of people had to use Internet Explorer for things… Until they didn’t because Chrome was faster and web devs focused on browser-agnostic technologies.
I don’t disagree. But there are cases where Chrome is either the only option, or sometimes even just a better option.
Having a go at people for not using Firefox is not the way to get them to use Firefox. It’s a way to get them to feel like they’re not part of the club.
The only thing I need a Chromium based browser for is casting my totally legit streams of sporting events to my TV.
Usually I sympathize with sentiments like this (“people use X because of uncontrolled circumstances”), but browsers are not one of them.
If you have a website that requires the use of Chrome, then just use Chrome for that website! It’s not an either-or thing – you can install both browsers and use Firefox as the primary one.
And some people will want to stay on Chrome.
And that’s what makes this statement so problematic. You don’t earn anything by staying exclusively on Chrome, when both it and Firefox can work alongside each other.
Exactly - which is what I do :-)
The weakening of ad blockers still affects me for those specific sites though.
They made a choice, they live with the consequences.
One, this isn’t some huge life defining dilemma, it’s a browser FFS.
And two, if people have to use Chrome, as is the case sometimes, then they did not make a choice, but are still subject to the changes being discussed.
Acting like some superior know-it-all is not helping anyone.
It was referring to this part:
some people will want to stay on Chrome. So for them, this IS a problem.
They want to keep using a product even though they don’t like it. A product that is free to use just like most of its alternatives.
Maybe they like/need some parts of it, but not others.
Eg - Firefox lacks native support for progressive web apps. Chrome has that, and it’s tremendously useful.
For a regular everyday user, the perception is that Chrome works while Firefox does not.
You’re not going to persuade people that Firefox is the better option by sneering at them and making them feel small or stupid for not having made the same choice as you.
So sure, try to persuade people to at least try changing browsers. But don’t act like they’re idiots if they don’t, or haven’t yet.
I am under the same predicament, but found that I can still use FF by spoofing the user agent on those “chrome only” websites. I don’t recall ever having an issue, but in case a specific functionality fails for you, all you gotta do is open up a chromium browser to sidestep the problem.
Thanks. My main issue is the lack of progressive web app ability in Firefox. I have my Outlook, Gmail, Keep, Calendar, Netflix and other sites set up that way, but can’t do it with FF.
I did hear that they might be working on adding it though, which would be great.
Adding it back. They pioneered it way back, even before there was a PWA, they had a similar solution. It was not perfect, but scratched many itches and was trending in the right direction. Then they dropped. One of the many casualties of Mozilla’s mismanagement. And this one really tickles the conspiracy theorist in me.
On a more practical note: add shortcuts to these sites in your desktop/start menu/launcher. It’s not the same, but your muscle memory will thank you.
Thanks, yeah, I actually started doing that, but having those sites open as tabs in browser windows just wasn’t working for me. That, and the favicons just being the FF logo instead of the logo for each “app”. I might have another go, but I’ve been busy with work and have just taken the path of least resistance so far.
That’s interesting about FF and PWAs, I didn’t know that it used to do something like that. I guess Google aren’t the only ones who kill useful stuff! 😁
Considering Mozilla owes more that 50% of its funding to Google, I can see their behavior rubbing off on them.
Ah, fair point!
Great, they’re going to make browser exclusive content. Locked down even worse than it is. Intentional, not just lazy incompatibilities.
just set Firefox User Agent = Chrome
That doesn’t always work. Especially if Web Environment Integrity were to take hold.
While that does fool many websites now, it’s trivial to see through if they have any level of competence.
Since they use totally different engines, there’s no way to make gecko look like chromium
I have trouble displaying like 10% of the internet
let’s see what’s on YouTube…
Opens Firefox next to Chrome
the trick is to set Firefox to report as Chrome
in case this isnt a joke, how the fuck would that help?
Because many sites intentionally give you different code because you’re not in a chrome browser and that code is frequently tested with lower priority or not at all due to market share. And Firefox is able to run chrome code.
Additionally some sites actively tell you that your browser is not supported and downgrade the experience because you are not using Chrome.
But in reality the sites really only react to the user-agent, so doing this just makes them use the chrome code.
Change your default internet browser to Firefox. Uninstall Chrome and any chrome based browser.
As a person who cares about css , it’s still a problem. There are so many cool features that everyone has implemented Firefox. I still use FF as my daily driver, because, as you said, duh, but every time I see new stuff added to the spec, I check MDN, and it’ll be all green except Firefox.
I mean, maybe if the Firefox/Chrome market share ratio inverts, ff will suddenly have a lot more pressure to keep up?
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even really care about new web features. It’s all come with so much shit that I can’t say the internet today is a better experience than it was back before marketers leaned into it so much and everyone wanting a piece of that data money drowned out much of the rest of it.
I’d take the current feature set with ad blocking and reader mode over any feature set without those. Well, reasonable feature sets. But then again, if I had the option of getting a star trek holodeck but had to let marketers regularly nag me about buying their shit any time I wanted to use it, I’d still be conflicted.
Everything else that has green are still chromium based? Then it’s basically just 1 that has it implemented one that hasn’t
That’s true, but, obviously there’s a market share difference between those two. And the fact that it’s ALWAYS ff that lags behind, it’s not like there’s cool things that ff can do that chrome can’t.
And, more importantly, there’s the browser I like (ff) which doesn’t do the thing, and the browsers I don’t like, which do.
FWIW tho, i don’t think OP will actually apply to ALL chromium browsers. I’ve been using Vivaldi when I cheat on Firefox, and none of the anti-adblock changes Google’s been making have impacted Vivaldi, and I assume that pattern will continue.
You have to remember that sometimes when that shiny new CSS feature comes out, it is underspecced, with unhandled corner cases – “just do what Chromium does” is not a standard – or is it? Having multiple implementations of a spec prove that it is interoperable - without that, you might have a good spec, or you might have a spec that says “whatever Chrome does is what is expected”. Not sure that is what we want from new CSS (or any) features.
You make a compelling point, for sure. There are definitely features that fall into that category (eg page transitions), there are a lot of other things coming out these days that just make life easier.
For example, in chrome (and in the spec) you can now animate between ‘height: [number]’ and ‘height:auto;’ just the other day, I had to write a python function to estimate the highest of a menu based on its length * the line height of the list items, so I could provide an exact height to animate to. It works, but it’s hacky and gross. It would be nice to have access to the solution.
Make no mistake, what Google is doing is absolutely dangerous. Malvertisements are definitely a thing. Back in 2010, I got a virus from an ad on a meme site that just went through and trashed my hard drive.
It’s unfortunate that there are use cases out there where Chrome is absolutely required. Firefox can’t display large directories, for instance. It’ll lock up while chromium browsers work fine.
If you have examples, maybe you can report it on their issue tracker? I wish the browser had built-in ways to report problems like how amd’s bug reporter works
Can you expand on what you mean by Firefox can’t display large directories? Curious to see this for myself with FF and a couple of forks I’m playing with.
The only example I can think of off the top of my head is something I’ll have to DM you.
Now introducing Enshittium Browser ad diarrhea flows freely
Oh I should market this idea, maybe polish up the slogan. I will pay all users half of the ad revenue, which they can see tick up on their browser…
Then it will be super invasive and vacuum up as much user data as possible, but not mention it to the users, so they don’t think to quantify it.
The first thing I thought of for user assessment testing was the enhanced reality helmet from Space Cop where it’s just pop ups and malware until you get ran over by one of those digital mobile billboard platform trucks you see in Vegas.
Highly recommend setting up a PiHole. It may not be quite as comprehensive as uBlock, but it cuts the ads way down, and it’s not something that browsers can easily bypass. You do have to make sure to shut of DNS over HTTPS, or setup a separate solution for that to tunnel into PiHole.
aaaaaaand then there’s Android.
Android will not remove your default DNS, and will only use added DNS servers as additional rather-than instead of.
edit: this is only if you aim individual devices at a pihole instance and not wrapping your whole network or vlan to pihole. If you’re forcing every request the phone makes, it doesn’t matter and this is moot.
There are free apps that make localhost VPNs on your device to bypass this that force your network to use a chosen DNS server.
This is also a built-in function of Tailscale, setting Tailscale’s DNS to Pihole or Adguard, and were you running wireguard or openvpn already, you could use them as entrypoints as well.
Mullvad and other paid VPN services often also offer to use DNS servers that blocks ads, tracking and malware.
Pihole has always worked as expected on my Pixel phones. To the point that I have to drop off of our wifi to visit some sites when they don’t load correctly. Pihole is happening at the router level though, not a setting on my phone. Unless Android starts tunneling around it (I wouldn’t put this past Google), then all traffic will continue to go through Pihole since it’s going through our router. Any device connected to our network has Pihole as its DNS.
Ah, I see. That’s my big difference. I’m penciling it into each device as the chosen DNS server per device, which Android doesn’t like.
I’ve never trusted that one raspberrypi enough to aim my whole router at it and hope my network stays up while I’m gone.
Makes sense. We send everything through it by default and then we have a separate device group for non-Pihole DNS handling. Devices such as work computers that might get weird or have issues get put in this group. Everything else is by default put through Pihole until we have a reason otherwise.
Not sure that’s right on all phones. Browsing on my Pixel 6 shows noticeably fewer ads when I’m at home compared to anywhere else.
My scenario is under the assumption that you’re selectively aiming individual devices to Pihole’s DNS and not aiming your entire network at it.
I’m holding a Pixel 6 too.
Underrated phone, gets a lot of flak.
I use blokada. I have no idea how it works or if is safe, but I haven’t seen an ad even in apps since I installed it
I know that ploum blog post gets cited way too often on Lemmy, but this is a situation where I think Google has either intentionally or inadvertently executed a variation of the “embrace, extend, extinguish” playbook that Microsoft created.
They embraced open source, extended it until they’ve practically cornered the market on browser engine, and now they are using that position to extinguish our ability to control our browsing experience.
I know they are facing a possibly “break up” with the latest ruling against them.
It would be interesting to see if they force divestiture of chrome from the ad business. The incentives are perverse when you do both with such dominance and its a massive conflict of interest.
I’m laughing at myself right now. I keep wishing people would switch to more progressive politics when people cannot even switch to a free piece of software with zero drawbacks even when their software starts blocking other software they use.
I’m no longer surprised by people who “doesn’t like change” when they have to change things, but will just accept (even if they complain internally) when someone above them changes things that impact their quality of life.
People accept the most ridiculous things. The amount of potential we have to improve everything is enormous.
Fuck Google.
Vivaldi (and Brave I think) are safe until July 2025.
Any chromium browser is with a flag enabled.
Just switch to Firefox or a derivative already guys.
LibreWolf or mullvad browser both FF based.
“Safe until” = not safe
No, it’s safe “for now” You have time to find a better solution
Yes
Gonna stick with Vivaldi until its last breath, love this browser
Chromium
No
What makes you say this? Brave is my primary and doesn’t need uBlock to effectively block ads
My comment is specifically around v2 Manifest support for addons. uBlock Origin requires v2 manifest. If you’re fine without it, you can’t ignore all of this discussion. However, uBlock Origin can block more than ads.
Yeah I will probably need to switch over to firefox if Brave is gonna break. Are the blockers in Brave V2 do you know?
I don’t know. I’m not a Brave user. I saw the v2 Manifest comments elsewhere when looking at Vivaldi info, and it was also mentioned Brave was following the same July 2025 as Vivaldi for v2 manifest (old school addon format) support.
Honest question: why is it not safe after then? They developed their own adblocker if I’m not mistaken? What am I missing?
I’m using the word “safe” here to mean “dependable”. As in, you can depend on Vivaldi to support v2 manifest addons (of which uBlock is one). If you use any addons you like that require v2 manifest in a Chromium based browser, you can Vivaldi (or Brave, I believe) to continue to support your desired addons until July 2025. After July 2025, the code in the browser that allows v2 manifest addons will be removed from all supported Chromium browsers (that I’m aware of).
Ok, thanks for clarifying. FWIW, I find the built-in adblocker in Vivaldi extremely dependable, without the performance cost of loading an add-on (especially on top of a base browser that is significantly slower to begin with).
deleted by creator
I switched to Firefox about a month ago for personal use. It’s nearly impossible for me to quit using Chrome, though, due to work.
I don’t hate Firefox, but it does absolutely do some stupid shit that I don’t like.
What kind of stuff?
As someone who uses Vivaldi, which has a significant number of power user and customization features, the fact this is no longer a thing is fucking bonkers to me
I can turn on an unsupported flag to make the UI a little cleaner for me
To me, it’s wild that the browser for the user decided to deprecate an option like that. Since they dropped XUL support I have very few options on customizing my browser outside of a theme or just writing my own CSS
From there, I’d just point to:
Firefox pulls in like 500 million dollars a year from Google. Barely any of those features exist in Firefox
I started with Firefox. I used it from day one, when it was an experiment coming out of the Mozilla suite.
I want to use it day to day so bad
But it’s become “how do we chase chrome”
And occasionally they get wins like this. And it no longer feels like
“How can we be best?”
Have I got a pleasant surprise for you: Zen Browser is to Firefox what Vivaldi is to Chromium: a feature-rich powerhouse.
It looks really good, not quite as good as Vivaldi but hopefully it gets there. One thing that bothers me is the CPU requirement, that is bonkers, you can’t run a browser if you don’t have a decently modern CPU?
- It’s not super simple to setup multiple, completely separate profiles like it is in Chrome
- I never, ever visit google.com while I do visit gmail.com at least daily. Yet, when I type ‘g’ the suggestion is always google.com
- I visit m.fark.com on my phone quite frequently. Firefox on my phone randomly decides I want to do a google search for ‘m.fark.com’ instead of visit the site
- I don’t want the recently closed tabs to be tracked and listed, yet there is no way to turn that off
- If the menu bar is displayed the the first browser tab is left aligned. If the menu bar is turned off then the first browser tab is indented for no obvious reason.
- I don’t think I can clear my history without it closing all of my Firefox instances and making me reopen everything.
There’s no one thing that is a show-stopper… just little annoyances.
It’s not firefox’s fault, but I still use music.youtube.com and google hangouts and there’s no option to treat them like standalone apps like there is with chrome.
I don’t think I can clear my history without it closing all of my Firefox instances and making me reopen everything.
That’s not true - are you using always private mode?
No, I’m using the ‘Forget about some browsing history’ button. You can selectively remove some entries just from history, but that still leaves them in your recent tabs list. If you just want the last 5 minutes of browsing gone then you have to do the rewind and that closes all tabs/instances.
Why not just open private browsing windows if you don’t want your browser remembering those pages? Are you deciding afterwards that you want to forget those pages?
Are you deciding afterwards that you want to forget those pages?
Frequently, yes… There’s also some pages/content on sites where you have to be logged in. Yeah, you could go private and login, but that’s just more steps. I just want to hit a button and have it nuke the last 5 minutes of my browsing without closing my current tabs/browsers.
Not trying to be obtuse here, but why are you pruning your history in the first place? Is someone auditing your browsing history? I’m personally not interested in removing my browser history for the most part - and certainly not frequently enough to notice this limitation.
You have way more requirements than me!
For profiles, from memory it’s --profile-manager
about:profiles
MS Teams does not work properly on Firefox for example (I’m forced to use it once in a while for work). Same with other web-apps that often don’t function correctly.
On Android Chrome manages to stay open while multitasking while Firefox will close the tab 90% of the time requiring reloading the page. That’s especially annoying during check-out or logins when I need to switch to a 2FA app.
Ah teams. Yes, yuck.
For me, it’s mostly that the Android app doesn’t have a tab bar, even on tablet (just a stretched out phone ui), and i want a browser i can sync across all my devices, so that issue with the tablet ui is enough for me to use a different browser (the amazing Vivaldi) everywhere.
I prefer the DDG browser for android.
I’m in almost exactly the same boat, I also switched to FF a month ago but need Chrome for some things. It’s a nice irony that your name is echo :-)
Agree completely with what you’re saying.
Turning off auto updates on chrome was convoluted. I assume everything will break when they force this update even with auto updates off.
It’s probably going to prevent security updates too and that’s worse than ad tracking.
looking at the 4“ woman poledancing in the bottom right corner of my windows vista screen
Huh?
VirtuaGirls?
Or use UBO-Lite? MV3 has some limitations but I’m tired of people acting like it ruins ad blocking when it doesn’t.
Afaik, UBO lite only updates filter lists when the extension updates, has no element zapper/picker, no per site switches, and no dynamic filtering.
If you can live without these features, then good for you. But there’s no need to get frustrated about our claims just because we need better ad-blocking and privacy functions than you.
Then build them. There is nothing about MV3 that stops you from improving things. I don’t blame you from wanting good ad blocking, as do I. But I also don’t want every MV2 extension being able to read my network traffic.
There is nothing about MV3 that stops you from improving things.
What about this stuff?
For situations where you’re forced to use chromium browsers it’s better than nothing, but abandoning chromium browsers is the right thing to do. An example of a situation where you can’t is an IT policy preventing you from using Firefox.
Abandoning Chromium browsers does nothing to improve security or privacy. I certainly encourage people to try Firefox and other browsers as they become available, but it’s mostly just a matter of preference in what features you want. If you want maximum privacy with Chromium or Firefox then you’re going to use policies, flags, etc. Otherwise both are prone to telemetry.
Why do you act as if telemetry is the worst thing that could possibly exist in a browser? You admit that it’s subjective about everything else but put telemetry on an objective pedestal. Chromium has an absolutely insane market share. Google controls Chromium. That means Google is controlling how a massive majority of people see and interact with the Internet. It allows them to unilaterally define de facto web standards. No amount of forking to disable telemetry is going to change that.
