yes it does, since Manifest v3 is being rolled out on Chromium (which Chrome is based on).
unless Brave and other forks (like Cromite, Vanadium, Ungoogled-Chromium) manage to disable MV3, which I think Google will make it impossible to do so, they are affected by this change.
This isn't true. I'm not a Brave user (I use FF), but Brave have said that
1/ they have adblocking built-in [0]
2/ they will continue to support Manifest V2 indefinitely, esp. so that uBlock Origin continues to work [1]
That doesn't mean uBlock will continue to exist... If it can't be installed on Chrome it's possible the sole dev will lose motivation (although he has already made a V3 version of the extension).
Ublock Origin is the only one that can be trusted. I use Brave on mobile and it's adblocker + JS toggle switch work great, but I don't fully trust them on ads considering how they've tried to push crypto BAT token stuff in the past.
Brave has written their own (open source) adblock engine (in rust) that is directly integrated into the browser (ie. not an extension, so is not affected by Manifest V3).
Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?)
Between this and Reddit casually crushing third party clients out of existence, we’ve probably entered into a new era of the web.
> Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?)
Isn't it a "Microsoft has shares in Apple so it has a competitor so they don't get sued/dismembered for being a monopoly" ? So, the next logical step for Google is to keep funding Moz/ff ?
No, during the recent antitrust trial Google was forced to reveal how much they pay each platform to be the default search engine. This is not a Chrome vs Firefox share deal thing. This is a Google Search vs "all other search engines" issue. Google pays most browsers to be the default engine, and has done so for many years.
The legality of it is not my area of expertise and I won't comment on that.
It’s shocking because Alphabet is in the business of making money at the expense of their users. They aren’t building Chrome because they believe in the open web, they build it to extract every last cent out of us. Ad blockers cost them millions, perhaps even billions, a year. Despite having the ability to stop it, they allow it to occur. And that is shocking from a capitalistic point of view.
Are we entering the period of the true 'dark web' like the dark ages where web innovation is stifled? If dark mode and other features are disabled, then chrome will go the way of navigator, long forgotten. Intelligence will reign victorious over greed, I guarantee that.
Is it? From TFA: "The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future..."
If this is true, then ad blockers will, de facto, be disabled in Chrome.
The title claims ad blockers will be disabled, and that is just not true. I would bet actual money that adblockers will continue to be available.
The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility. But nobody would say that Safari doesn't have adblockers, despite having a similar interface.
The "Google authorized updates to blocklist" bit looks like an even more blatant lie. Dynamic blocklists that aren't updated via Chrome Web Store are supported:
The title implies that Chrome is disabling Ad Blockers, which if true would have been big news. What's happening instead is that MV3 is going to roll out just like we all knew it eventually would. All of the relevant implications for ad blockers have already been discussed at this point (including reduced functionality for some ad blockers such as Ublock Origin). "Read better" is not the problem here.
The title claims that ad blockers such as ublock origin will be disabled, which is true.
Other things that don't and can't do the full job, yet have a name that claims "ad blocker", even "ublock origin lite", are something else and irrelevant.
I think this is an example of moving the goal post. Instead of ad blockers being disabled, now it's specific blockers such as ublock origin will be disabled, and even that isn't true.
An honest title would be "In June 2024, ad blockers such as ublock origin will have reduced functionality", or something along those lines.
Ublock origin lite is an ad blocker, it's not something else, and it's not irrelevant, and you use vague language such as "it cant do the full job" without explaining what this means. This is misleading and incorrect.
Ad blockers must use Manifest v2 on Chrome to achieve full functionality, and Manifest v2 extensions will be disabled in June. Any ad blocker that doesn't willingly reduce its functionality is going to be forcibly disabled. The title seems fine to me.
The title literally says ublock origin, and the entire point of the article and countless other such articles for at least the last year is exactly that ad blockers, and yes in particular ublock origin, will not be able to function.
No goal posts have moved and ublock origin is not just a random "specific blocker" it's the gold standard one that actually does what they all should, because the author is principled and not for sale.
In this context, "function" and "does what they all should" means "places ultimate control in the hands of the user" ie, allows you to do things that web sites and google don't like, but which you want. Most other ad blockers don't do that. They say they do, but they don't. Just like ublock itself, which caused the original author to fork and create ublock origin in the first place.
It's been exactly the same story ever since manifest v3 was first proposed.
If you somehow were unaware of that, consider yourself hereby informed.
It's really interesting to see the amount of misinformation being propagated lately.
Do people not bother to fact check anything?
The creator of ublock has made an ad blocker specifically for the new API and it's available to use right now. It's objectively incorrect to claim that ad blockers will not work after June 2024.
The ublock lite extension does have some limitations, such as not allowing you to create filters at runtime. This is the result of not allowing extensions to load code at runtime.
It's fair to criticize this limitation, but that's not what's happening here.
This information is available, it's not hidden, you can read the readme of the ublock lite github repo or something, but are not even attempting to do this for some reason.
I have used the ublock lite extensions to see for myself if it's totally broken, and it worked fine for me, the main limitation for me is not having the "element zapper", but it not blocking ads was not something that I experienced.
I am all for criticizing companies actions, and ad blockers are very important to me just as well as anyone else here, but the dishonestly is very off putting and disappointing.
This seems like a blow to accessibility too. Beyond impact adblockers, would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism?
uBlock and Darkreader are really important tools for making the web usable for me. I don't mind not using YT, but there are some websites I am obliged to use.
> would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism?
No, those don’t use blockingWebRequest. Absolutely no relation.
Google clearly feels comfortable enough in their browser share market dominance to pull this rather user-hostile move, but I can't help but wonder if they're overplaying their hand. From my humble POV Chrome is only marginally superior to the alternatives. That margin has been sufficient to keep me around as a user - but crippling such a central feature easily outweighs all of Chrome's relative strengths and then some.
IMO the only question is one of magnitude. Based on a cursory search it appears that adblock addons are used by anywhere between 20-45% of users across all browsers. Based on this I wouldn't be wildly shocked if Chrome sheds anywhere between 5-10% of its userbase almost overnight.
I would also expect this to cause a modest-to-significant backlash against Google as a whole. This is a change that will be widely noticed among regular internet users, and rolled out at a time when Google's bread and butter (search) is at its weakest point in decades.
Moving into purely speculative territory here, but I also wonder what impact this might have on their business moving forward. Without having hard numbers to back this up, my anecdotally-backed hunch is that ad blocking is disproportionately popular among younger users. That's a risky demographic for any tech company to alienate in part or in whole.
Doubt it. Ad blockers still work on MV3, just not as well. The vast majority of people won’t notice a difference and the ones that will are the same ones that probably switched already.
Unlike amorphous concerns like “privacy” that for better or worse only resonate with a niche audience, ads are by definition hard to ignore.
Once users are forced to both potentially replace their adblocker entirely and begin mucking around with config settings and filter lists it seems inevitable that many simply jump ship. Doubly so if the advice gets amplified across social media / streaming platforms et al.
The crowd you’re referring to - i.e who follow tech news and the manifest rollout - are a tiny minority many of whom probably never used Chrome to begin with. That’s not who I have in mind here.
It won't take long for ads to start appearing that can't be blocked by a mv3 extension. I'm sure they have already been developed and are waiting for the switch.
From what I can tell from Facebook and Twitter threads, most people still do not use any kind of adblock. FAANG would love it for everyone to abandon desktop OSes and use locked down mobile devices forever.
They know it's anti-consumer. They see that the YouTube push is actually causing people to install more, smarter ad blockers. I myself have finally got around to setting up pihole. "We're serious, by 2027 your adblocker will be toast" whatever, if you think we're still using the browser to block ads, you grossly misunderstood your userbase.
Other than Firefox and Safari, there are a few but they're all maintained by small teams and you can expect them to have trouble with some modern sites.
You can look at the Wikipedia list of web browsers, any that aren't listed under Chromium (Blink-Based) will be fine, but notable browsers that WILL be affected:
Chromium:
Amazon Silk
Arc
Avast Secure Browser
Blisk
Brave
Cốc Cốc
Comodo Dragon[28]
Epic
Google Chrome (based on Blink since Chrome v. 28)
JioPages
Microsoft Edge[29]
NAVER Whale
Opera[30]
Opera GX
Puffin Browser
qutebrowser (Blink backend mostly stable)
Redcore
RockMelt
Sleipnir
SRWare Iron
Torch
Ungoogled-chromium (lol)
Vivaldi
Yandex Browser
Out of all the anti-trust cases, Google has the most obvious abuse of its monopoly position.
I feel for them. The make >80% of their profits from ads. Ads is everything to them. They need to sacrifice privacy and fuck over the users to satisfy their growth targets.
The world would be a better place if the ads division is split from the rest of org.
58 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadunless Brave and other forks (like Cromite, Vanadium, Ungoogled-Chromium) manage to disable MV3, which I think Google will make it impossible to do so, they are affected by this change.
Switch to Firefox.
1/ they have adblocking built-in [0]
2/ they will continue to support Manifest V2 indefinitely, esp. so that uBlock Origin continues to work [1]
That doesn't mean uBlock will continue to exist... If it can't be installed on Chrome it's possible the sole dev will lose motivation (although he has already made a V3 version of the extension).
[0] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822798299729925
[1] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822799700541446
https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust
Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors:
https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/
Between this and Reddit casually crushing third party clients out of existence, we’ve probably entered into a new era of the web.
Isn't it a "Microsoft has shares in Apple so it has a competitor so they don't get sued/dismembered for being a monopoly" ? So, the next logical step for Google is to keep funding Moz/ff ?
The legality of it is not my area of expertise and I won't comment on that.
Also, news of the manifest v3 timeline discussed a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292409
If this is true, then ad blockers will, de facto, be disabled in Chrome.
The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility. But nobody would say that Safari doesn't have adblockers, despite having a similar interface.
The "Google authorized updates to blocklist" bit looks like an even more blatant lie. Dynamic blocklists that aren't updated via Chrome Web Store are supported:
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-fi...
AFAIU, this is indeed the case of uBlock Origin lite: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
Well, "crippled" is a no-no…
Other things that don't and can't do the full job, yet have a name that claims "ad blocker", even "ublock origin lite", are something else and irrelevant.
An honest title would be "In June 2024, ad blockers such as ublock origin will have reduced functionality", or something along those lines.
Ublock origin lite is an ad blocker, it's not something else, and it's not irrelevant, and you use vague language such as "it cant do the full job" without explaining what this means. This is misleading and incorrect.
No goal posts have moved and ublock origin is not just a random "specific blocker" it's the gold standard one that actually does what they all should, because the author is principled and not for sale.
In this context, "function" and "does what they all should" means "places ultimate control in the hands of the user" ie, allows you to do things that web sites and google don't like, but which you want. Most other ad blockers don't do that. They say they do, but they don't. Just like ublock itself, which caused the original author to fork and create ublock origin in the first place.
It's been exactly the same story ever since manifest v3 was first proposed.
If you somehow were unaware of that, consider yourself hereby informed.
Do people not bother to fact check anything?
The creator of ublock has made an ad blocker specifically for the new API and it's available to use right now. It's objectively incorrect to claim that ad blockers will not work after June 2024.
The ublock lite extension does have some limitations, such as not allowing you to create filters at runtime. This is the result of not allowing extensions to load code at runtime.
It's fair to criticize this limitation, but that's not what's happening here.
This information is available, it's not hidden, you can read the readme of the ublock lite github repo or something, but are not even attempting to do this for some reason.
I have used the ublock lite extensions to see for myself if it's totally broken, and it worked fine for me, the main limitation for me is not having the "element zapper", but it not blocking ads was not something that I experienced.
I am all for criticizing companies actions, and ad blockers are very important to me just as well as anyone else here, but the dishonestly is very off putting and disappointing.
uBlock and Darkreader are really important tools for making the web usable for me. I don't mind not using YT, but there are some websites I am obliged to use.
No, those don’t use blockingWebRequest. Absolutely no relation.
I would also expect this to cause a modest-to-significant backlash against Google as a whole. This is a change that will be widely noticed among regular internet users, and rolled out at a time when Google's bread and butter (search) is at its weakest point in decades.
Moving into purely speculative territory here, but I also wonder what impact this might have on their business moving forward. Without having hard numbers to back this up, my anecdotally-backed hunch is that ad blocking is disproportionately popular among younger users. That's a risky demographic for any tech company to alienate in part or in whole.
Once users are forced to both potentially replace their adblocker entirely and begin mucking around with config settings and filter lists it seems inevitable that many simply jump ship. Doubly so if the advice gets amplified across social media / streaming platforms et al.
The crowd you’re referring to - i.e who follow tech news and the manifest rollout - are a tiny minority many of whom probably never used Chrome to begin with. That’s not who I have in mind here.
This may advantage Google in the short-term, but it'll suffer in the long-term.
Firefox is the _only_ alternative unless you're on Mac and can use Safari.
They know it's anti-consumer. They see that the YouTube push is actually causing people to install more, smarter ad blockers. I myself have finally got around to setting up pihole. "We're serious, by 2027 your adblocker will be toast" whatever, if you think we're still using the browser to block ads, you grossly misunderstood your userbase.
E.g. If sites used a hardcoded IP address, pihole will be useless. Same applies if devices such as TVs use their own DNS/DNS over TLS.
Sort of see IP + DNS blocking catching on next once pihole becomes ineffective.
Might be worth making a list of other alternative browsers that are not based on Chromium... if there are any.
Almost donated to mozilla.org too but they kept pushing the recurring donation so I ran away.
You can look at the Wikipedia list of web browsers, any that aren't listed under Chromium (Blink-Based) will be fine, but notable browsers that WILL be affected:
Chromium:
"Privacy firewall for your house, now just Eur 100".
I feel for them. The make >80% of their profits from ads. Ads is everything to them. They need to sacrifice privacy and fuck over the users to satisfy their growth targets.
The world would be a better place if the ads division is split from the rest of org.