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Ask HN: Has Gmail stopped working for you with uBlock Origin on Chrome?

83 points by drimphgol ↗ HN
Noticed since a couple of days ago that my Gmail and Google Workspace emails weren't loading on Chrome while they continue to work on Firefox.

And then I realised today that when I turn off uBlock origin on Chrome, then my emails start loading again on Gmail.

Is this happening to others? Is Google actively trying to kill all adblockers in Chrome this way?

55 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 65.5 ms ] thread
sahin
My gmail is acting weird as well
rtsil
Working fine on Chrome 98.0.4758.102.
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pabs3
Might be a good idea to switch to an IMAP client instead?
cube00
...and enjoy Google's constant nagging that "you're using an insecure application password"
hammyhavoc
What's a decent IMAP client that supports labels properly?
tadfisher
I use notmuch[1] with lieer[2]. Notmuch maintains a tags database with full-text search indexing for a set of maildirs, and Lieer uses the GMail API to synchronize messages with a maildir and labels with notmuch tags. There are lots of notmuch frontends available, but I use the built-in Emacs frontend.

[1]: https://notmuchmail.org/

[2]: https://github.com/gauteh/lieer

curt15
Geary[1] is one option for Linux users. It stores all messages in a giant sqlite database and models labels by "tags". It's still defintely wip though.

I do recall reading somewhere that these days Thunderbird does deduplicate messages with multiple labels, but I haven't tested whether it is indeed true.

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/-/issues

drimphgol
Seems like a ublock origin bug. Proposed solution here: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/t2n77i/gmail_...
oefrha
It's an EasyPrivacy bug? That list is developed with ridiculously cavalier attitude. A few months ago they blocked workers.dev wholesale[1], that is, the entirety of Cloudflare Workers, for some sort of third party request on torrentfreak.com. I was flooded with user reports that day, and several days afterwards thanks to list caching. I was shocked that people who seemingly have no idea of public suffixes are tasked with blocking domains.

[1] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/e4b0216bd18bacf5...

exikyut
Hmm. I guess this is the rub of https://xkcd.com/2347/ ("Dependency"): narratives along the lines of "half the world's infrastructure depends on this random tiny support column maintained by one specific super-smart individual in their spare time (give them more money)" can make for fun junk food to feed our inferiority complexes, but that kind of sentiment rings of a distinct positivity and optimism when compared to how that same infrastructure can wind up on life support by (perhaps unwitting) incompetents who find themselves with noone to give account to because of the entrenched position they've wound up in in the woodwork.

I guess the moral of the story to me (TIL) is that there really is no limit to the places that Hanlon's razor (do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity) can pop up in the most cognitively-dissonant ways :v

soraminazuki
It's called a mistake. I see nothing "ridiculously cavalier" about it.
oefrha
There are certain categories of entirely preventable mistakes you don't make. Entirely preventable mistakes that cause reputation damage (see this very thread), lost revenue, a lot of wasted manpower, etc. on others. Blocking (and by definition, breaking to a certain extent) things shouldn't be taken lightly, if you can't do it responsibly don't do it. As someone running a FOSS web service who go out of their way to respect user privacy, I shouldn't be a victim of their crappy practice.
johndfsgdgdfg
This is an wake-up call for everyone to migrate to other email service providers. Google only cares about invading our privacy, showing ads and making money. Thre's no reason to use products from a company like that.
globalproctd
Yeah, how dare those pesky businesses exist and try to make money.
clamprecht
If there's fee I can pay to allow uBlock origin to keep working on Chrome, send me a link.
invalidname
Those other services aren't free so this isn't anti-business... The opposite. With Google we're the product and it doesn't serve us as customers.
m-p-3
It would be nice to have an add-on in Google One to turn off the ads for a monthly price.
tadfisher
I believe Workspace is tracking-free? At least their privacy policy says they do not use Workspace data for advertising.
hammyhavoc
I wish Gmail's web app was FOSS. Only use it as an interface for External Accounts.
IYasha
My wake-up call... calls were when they suddenly decided to distrust me, my password, my secret answer, and just disallow access to my mailbox for no reason. "You can't prove you are you, go away". A true goolag.
modriano
Yeah, I also observed it on Firefox. I was able to view emails by turning off only the "disable cosmetic filtering" filter.
m4rc3lv
Yes! Exactly this. My wife uses a Chrome book.
ck2
It's the filter lists you are subscribed to.

Sometimes they get a bad rule in them and then they don't fix it for a day or two, or you have to purge the rule caches and reload from source.

leros
I've had a few sites I normally use break today and start working after I turn off uBlock.
travoc
I switched to Protonmail and Google immediately stopped reading my e-commerce receipts to surreptitiously influence my purchasing habits.
trident5000
Why is anyone using Chrome would be my first question.
qchris
It's not just on Chrome--I ran into this issue on Firefox 96.0 as well today, and had to got to Setting -> "Purge My Cache" -> "Update Now" to get back to normal.
spacehome
No, because I broke up with Alphabet years ago.
danychok
I "fixed" gmail not showing body of emails while ublock is installed by toggling off the "cosmetic filtering".

Oddly on my other computer I didn't have to do this.

terrycody
Its working well on Firefox though.
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kornhole
I suggest you practice browser isolation and use chrome only for Google logged in services without ublock. Use other private browsers for other stuff with ublock (Librewolf or brave).
0xdeadb00f
Good advice. What I usually do is also create a few chrome profiles. One for Discord, one for Gmail, one for Shopping, etc.

Firefox is also great for this kind of thing with custom container tabs.

mech422
I use full on custom profiles for stuff like banking, shopping, etc... and containers within the profiles to separate amazon from walmart, etc.

edit: I probably should have mentioned, this is on Firefox

fsflover
If you want a more robust isolation, consider using Qubes OS with hardware-virtualized VMs.
dbuder
In a vm so you don't have that spyware scanning your computer
jimbob45
Toggle off/toggle on uBO appeared to solve the issue for me.