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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?
>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?

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.
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.
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!
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?
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.

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/resto...

> 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.

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.
Let's not forget, you'll have to ditch Chromium based applications too, like discord, VScode, spotify, and whatever else is basically a chrome browser.
Don't put this on the users. The blame is 50% on web developers, 25% on Mozilla for screwing the pooch, 25% on Google themselves for advertising it so strongly across their properties.
"yeah the free internet, sure, but have you considered Firefox Pocket and also woke?"

^ Every single time this comes up on HackerNews for the past decade

  > ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers).
People should do this for many reasons. Monopolies are not good for anyone, including Google[0].

For most people, that means installing Firefox or using Safari. There are others, but the space is small. Don't listen to people, Firefox is perfectly good and most people wont see major differences.

Truth is we like to complain. It's good to push things forward and find issues that need to be fixed, not nothing is perfect. For every complaint about Firefox there's another for Chrome. You can't just switch to Brave, Edge, Opera or some other color of Chrome. Things will feel different, but really it's easy to make mountains out of molehills. So what do you care more about?

[0] short term, yes. Long term no. Classic monopoly gets lazy and rests upon its laurels

> If people don’t agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers).

I disagree, on two fronts.

First, I think that the underlying root cause is a level lower - it's the fact that so much content on the web is funded via privacy-invasive and malware-laden advertisements, rather than direct payment.

Second, there are multiple valid things that you can do - you don't just have to pick one.

You can work on Manifest V2 bypasses and you can boycott Chrom{e,ium} and you can contact your representatives to ask them to craft regulation against this and you can promote/use financial models where you pay for stuff with money instead of eyeballs. All are useful! (especially because regulation is incredibly difficult to get write and takes a long time to build political will, draft, pass, and implement)

"If people don't agree with Google move, the only correct course of action is to ditch Chrome (and all Chromium browsers)."

Is it OK to use non-Chromium browsers that send search query data or other behavioural data to Google by default

"Hit them where it hurts and take away their monopoly over the future direction of the web."

Let's say, hypothetically, the company behind a particular non-Chromium browser is Google's business partner and dependent on Google for its continued existence

And that Google can effectively pull the plug on this non-Chromium browser at any time for any reason

Would choosing this particular browser be a correct course of action to "hit them where it hurts"

Firefox is very nice these days, and will prompt you to import all your Chrome data if you haven't opened it in a while. It's a very easy thing to do, and U-block origin works on it.
Why ditch Chromium browsers? Forks can still get away from the Chrome specialities. (Eg Brave)
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-w...

More concerning is that social fixer was turned off: https://socialfixer.com/

MFGA Make Facebook Great again ;-)

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.
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.

You bypass it by installing Firefox.
Try Safari, Firefox, or any other non-Chrome browser.
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.

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> 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?

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.

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