63 ms·

Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

• xkapastel 8y ago
  I don't think I can go back to the internet without uBO+uMatrix. On a related note, why doesn't Chrome for Android have extensions? I get the sense it's because it was more strategic to ban extensions entirely than to allow ad blocking on mobile.
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head.
  • 8bitsrule 8y ago
    Can't remember the site, but uBO reported blocking over 1100 requests when I landed there the other day. I can't imagine browsing without it.
    • twoheadedboy 8y ago
      I think a lot of requests get repeated once they fail. So in reality it's a lot less. Don't quote me on that though.
    • dzader 8y ago
      serious question - what sites are you visiting that you run into these issues? I use chrome without any adblock and have for as long as chrome has been around. I have NEVER once ran into this situation.
      • ohyeshedid 8y ago
        You probably run into hourly since you don't use adblocking, you just don't see it because trackers/analytics engines aren't usually visible.
    • lozenge 8y ago
      (I hope) it was just a poorly written JS that retries on failure
  • davidgerard 8y ago
    uBlock Origin is why I use Firefox on Android.
• decebalus1 8y ago
  I'm very happy about this change. Hopefully Firefox would gain a plethora of new users.
  • techntoke 8y ago
    Mozilla is really no better than Google... in fact Chromium on my Linux distro vastly outperforms Firefox.
    • decebalus1 8y ago
      What does performance on a Linux distro has anything to do with Mozilla being better/not better than Google?
      • techntoke 8y ago
        Because Firefox doesn't offer any extra security controls over Chromium, in fact I would say they are way worse than vanilla Chromium on Arch. Therefore it makes sense to go with the browser that performs well, rather than one consuming a bunch of resources unnecessarily.
        • decebalus1 8y ago
          what security controls are you referring to? Also, I think we were talking about performance. How is performance relevant to security controls? And again, how does that imply that Mozilla is better/not better than Google? I'm starting to believe I'm talking to a bot.
          • techntoke 8y ago
            I'm referring to the security controls that Mozilla and their Apple-like fan group claims give it an advantage over Chromium. I am saying that I do not believe that it has any security or privacy advantage to Chromium, and the performance is worse, so there is no reason to be in the Mozilla cult-like fan club.
• yingw787 8y ago
  I'd like to use Chrome or be on the ecosystem for the developer tools and website compatibility but not have to...well...suffer through this. Maybe Brave or another maintained fork of Chromium fits the bill.
  • _red 8y ago
    I've been using Brave for a few months now and they have come a long way -- with many bumps along the road. When sync is finally released (its in beta now), I really think it will be a contender.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jf 8y ago
  I will stop using Chrome entirely if this change is made.
  • gerdesj 8y ago
    Me too.
    • whatever_dude 8y ago
      Same. I've already been on the fence but this would be the last straw.
      • gerdesj 8y ago
        Silly me, did I just say "me"? That'll be me and my customers (probably not enough to make much of a dent in the stats but rather more than a few users)
      • pdimitar 8y ago
        I've been a double user of Chrome and Firefox for the last several months. Firefox irks me in some ways still but I've gradually grown accustomed to it. It's also much more customizable. Indeed, if Chrome breaks uBlock Origin and uMatrix, I am just ditching it and will only use it for testing.
  • fantyoon 8y ago
    Same for me. There is no real reason that I use Chrome rather than any other browser. I switched to it like 10 years ago for whatever reason and I had no reason to switch away from it since then. I use Firefox on mobile, despite all the issues I encounter with it, because its the only browser that allows me to use uBlock origin. I will no doubt switch for that reason to Firefox on Desktop too.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • driverdan 8y ago
    Don't wait, switch now.
• metalliqaz 8y ago
  Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.
  • ultimoo 8y ago
    Yep, made the switch to Firefox with DuckDuckGo little less than a year ago. It was surprisingly fast to get used to and I haven't been more at ease since. I highly recommend trying this out for at least 1 week for everyone out here!
    • metalliqaz 8y ago
      With the news that Edge would switch to chromium, Firefox is really the only thing preventing a complete web browser monoculture. Support Firefox if you can!
      • saagarjha 8y ago
        > Firefox is really the only thing preventing a complete web browser monoculture WebKit?
        • OptionX 8y ago
          Trading Google overlords for Apple overlords does not seem like an upgrade.
          • saagarjha 8y ago
            That's totally fine, but it's still disingenuous to claim that Firefox is the only other browser out there.
            • vertexFarm 8y ago
              Chrome------------------64.15% Internet Explorer--------10.83% Firefox-------------------9.89% Edge---------------------4.30% Safari--------------------3.80% Opera--------------------1.58% Safari will survive since Apple is their patron. Obviously Internet Explorer is only a lumbering undead husk at this point, and it's pretty shameful that it's still outgunning Firefox by a small amount. Even more sad that it's got over twice as many users as Edge, lol.
• kabwj 8y ago
  I hope they don’t go on with this... I really don’t want to go back to Firefox.
  • kiwijamo 8y ago
    Recent versions have improved hugely. Have you tried them?
    • kabwj 8y ago
      I don’t trust the Mozilla Corporation. Putting ads on my home page a few weeks ago was the last straw. But if Google does this, that’ll be almost worse. https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/mozilla-ad-on-firefoxs-new-tab-page-was-just-another-experiment/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/mozilla-ad-on-firefoxs-ne... It’s funny when you think of it, now both browsers want to shove ads down my throat. I hate the modern internet.
      • ctrlaltdev 8y ago
        You can deactivate the featured by pockets and the highlights sections. => about:preferences#home
      • tivert 8y ago
        > I don’t trust the Mozilla Corporation. Putting ads on my home page a few weeks ago was the last straw. I have my Firefox homepage set to a blank page and see nothing of the sort. Because of your comment, I temporarily set my homepage back to "Firefox Home," but didn't see any ads. Just a a few recommended news articles.
      • ticmasta 8y ago
        >> But if Google does this, that’ll be almost worse. Yes, google never shows you ads.
      • 43920 8y ago
        I agree that ads aren't a great solution, but the entire reason Mozilla is doing things like that is to avoid having all their revenue (and thus their existence) dependent on Google. How else do you think they should make money? It's also worth pointing out that the included ads are targeted locally on your computer, and none of your browsing data gets sent to Mozilla (https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-recommendations https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco...). And it's also really easy to turn them off (preferences > home > "sponsored stories").
• kiwijamo 8y ago
  Yet another reason to use Firefox.
• lettergram 8y ago
  Well, highly recommend Firefox. Works great after the updates last year and even use it on mobile. It bothers me that iOS doesn’t support addons to Firefox mobile. But on Android you can even install ublock origin
  • dwighttk 8y ago
    iOS might not support Firefox addons, but you can use a system wide ad block app with Firefox.
    • lern_too_spel 8y ago
      The "system wide adblock" on iOS has the same restrictions as this new Chrome extension system. It does not support the extension API that uBlock Origin uses. https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/ContentBlocker.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...
      • nyolfen 8y ago
        there are dns rule-based adblockers for ios
      • pdimitar 8y ago
        Not versed in the technical details but 1Blocker X for iOS Safari has prevented practically 99.9% of all ads I used to see in an unmodded Android Chrome before. I've only seen 2 websites have some form of ads in the last 14 months.
        • lern_too_spel 8y ago
          Then Chromium's Manifest v3 is for you. Most of the other people commenting here want something more powerful.
        • gruez 8y ago
          >I've only seen 2 websites have some form of ads in the last 14 months. It doesn't work on reddit, which makes up a lot of page visits for most people. Also, they can't defuse/bypass anti-adblock scripts.
• WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  Acquire, Embrace, Extinguish I think we're at Stage 3.
  • scrollaway 8y ago
    That's not the correct quip (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish); and even if it were, it doesn't make any more sense in this context than your version does. Even in the most skeptical reading of the situation, Google never "embraced" adblockers, they allowed them. You'll note there's no extensions on Chrome for Android for example.
    • JetSpiegel 8y ago
      But uBlock Origin works flawlessly on Firefox for Android.
    • cpeterso 8y ago
      Embrace: Google shipped its own ad blocker in Chrome last year. It blocks all ads on sites that violate ad standards set forth by the Coalition for Better Ads. If Chrome's basic ad blocker can encourage the publishers to clean up their most annoying ads, then Chrome users might be less likely to install a full-featured ad blocker like uBlock Origin. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker-features https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad...
• deprave 8y ago
  This was only expected. Why would an advertising company care about web experience, security, or privacy?
• ddingus 8y ago
  Right now, I still use Chrome. This change would end that use for all but a couple small niche cases. Installing Firefox on mobile today. Time to prep.
  • usuallymatt 8y ago
    The nice thing about the mobile version is that you can add uBlock there too. I switched to Firefox a couple years ago and haven't looked back. Also have been DuckDuckGo for about a year and last year I switched my email over to Fastmail. Funny because I used to be the biggest Google Fanboy a few years back.
• aerovistae 8y ago
  Used to love google, for many many years. Slowly starting to despise them, though. It's different for everyone, but for me it started with this gmail redesign that made the product so slow it's almost worthless to me. And worst of all is I feel like there isn't even a good competing service to switch to. And now Chrome...
  • sixothree 8y ago
    I think for most people, their image of Google was formed when gmail was released. Most mail providers offered mailboxes 10MB in size and Google upends all of that offering "free" mailboxes 1000MB. Respect for their command of technology formed with every product. Then people started to realize Google only introduces products that collect data in a new way from its other products. If it can't survive that test then it doesn't exist. Ugh.
  • sstangl 8y ago
    I switched back to Thunderbird and have been content ever since. IMAP works fine.
    • throwaway180118 8y ago
      Are you using GMail, or have you found another email host too?
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    The comments in the linked thread don't really go into why this change was made, but I think Google deserves the benefit of the doubt that the proposal was made in an effort to improve other aspects of the browser (speed or maintainability, for example)
    • village-idiot 8y ago
      No sane person should give Google the benefit of the doubt, triply so when it comes to ads and ad-blocking.
• nostrademons 8y ago
  I've switched to Brave for most everyday browsing. Still use Chrome for work, but mostly just on sites that I pay for, with no or limited ads.
• redfast00 8y ago
  This might actually be good; would certainly drive some users over to Firefox
• jchw 8y ago
  Ouch, I understand why they want to not have a blocking webRequest API but I consider uBlock Origin to be a must-have extension. Hopefully this is relaxed somehow. I personally still use Firefox at home despite recent issues, but I honestly would prefer having both as an option, plus I always recommend uBlock Origin to everyone. (Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on Chrome, opinions are mine and not my employer's.)
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    Have there been recent issues? I've been using Firefox consistently for years and lately it seems better than usual.
    • jchw 8y ago
      My main concern is the questionable use of Studies and other experimental paths to test things like advertising in Firefox. I don't like this. I would prefer my browser to be more neutral. Of course I can disable it if I want. But, I wish I could simply trust my browser vendor to do the right thing. The browser itself seems solid, I've been happy since Quantum and look forward to seeing WebRender rollout.
    • magicalhippo 8y ago
      It's quite memory hungry. Not saying leaking per-se, but my 16GB machine at work started swapping heavily mostly due to Firefox today. Only had about 15 active tabs (though a number of dormant ones since last FF restart). Between the various processes, FF was using about 6-7GB of memory. Closing almost all of the tabs reclaimed about 2GB, so still a lot left over. That said I'm not too bothered, I can restart FF every other week or so.
    • AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
      A lot of usability issues, for example: You can't disable Ctrl-Q on Linux due to a bug that they do not seem to be willing to fix. In the past I used to depend on the "are you sure you want to close N tabs?" confirmation dialog thing but now they have removed it.
    • 8y ago
• paulryanrogers 8y ago
  Doubtful they will make such a popular extension impossible permanently. Doing so risks alienating influential users.
• tbodt 8y ago
  > With such a limited [...], I am skeptical "user agent" will still be a proper category to classify Chromium. epic burn
• greymeister 8y ago
  ... and yet another downside to Microsoft moving to Chromium.
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    Why would Microsoft be driving this change? Google is the company with the huge advertising business.
    • fantyoon 8y ago
      I assume they meant that with Microsoft moving to Chromium there is less competition and thus less reason to fear that the change will hurt Chrome.
    • tivert 8y ago
      Because by moving to Chromium, Microsoft increased Google's control of the browser ecosystem by killing one of the last remaining competitors to it. Now only Firefox is left. Before they dropped Edge, a move like this would have been a great marketing opportunity for Microsoft: "Come to Edge, where your ad blocker still works."
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • blibble 8y ago
    presumably they are capable of putting in the engineering work to restore the old feature then they'd be able to sell their browser as having ad blocking when chrome doesn't the market would take care of the rest
• SamReidHughes 8y ago
  Well, it was nice mooching off the work they put into Chrome while it lasted.
• PaulHoule 8y ago
  Google has shown some Chutzpah to sell their own ad blocker when they are the #1 advertising vendor. If feel they have enough impunity to get away with that, then it is no surprise that they will try to put other ad blockers out of business too. Other ad networks might be big enough to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Google (although they probably won't last long enough) but Ad Blocking is such a niche market that they couldn't possibly sue.
• darkpuma 8y ago
  So we have a browser with nearly 70% market share, made by an advertising company that's arguably the most powerful business on the internet, interfering with ad blocking. And of course there is no regulatory body that is able or willing to step in. Great.
  • pnw_hazor 8y ago
    "President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general, William Barr, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he would focus attention on the “huge behemoths” in Silicon Valley at the center of a debate over antitrust enforcement. " https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-barr-antitrust/trump-ag-pick-concerned-by-silicon-valley-behemoths-idUSKCN1P92FU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-barr-antitrust/... We can only hope.
    • Klonoar 8y ago
      Barr is notably for a surveillance state, more or less. Relying on a pick of Trump's to solve anything in the Valley is a recipe for disaster.
      • shard972 8y ago
        Do you know of a WH official that was ever against the surveillance state? And why does trump picking him make him automatically a disaster? I feel like this is being completely dismissive of any kind of progress that could be made because orange man is bad.
        • metalliqaz 8y ago
          A fish rots from the head down, and Trump's avowed preference would be to attack companies for spite if they haven't been nice to him personally. Those kind of regulations are probably not productive.
        • abapologist 8y ago
          I think the heuristic is whether someone accepts a nomination from trump.
• devoply 8y ago
  No this is about killing content blocking, while not saying so explicitly... > the 30,000 limit is not sufficient to enforce the famous EasyList alone).
• tyteen4a03 8y ago
  I can't wait for the day Firefox stops killing my MacBook.
• girishso 8y ago
  I sometimes use Chrome these days, it’s time for goodbye for good to Chrome now.
• jenscow 8y ago
  Not sure if they're purposefully blocking uBO. Those who are effected will either move to Firefox (and encourage their friends to), or just use another content-blocking technique (eg, DNS). For the few extra ad clicks they'll gain, it's just not worth the upset.
  • darkpuma 8y ago
    Their captcha is deliberately vindictive against users who don't have google accounts, use firefox and use uBO. For instance, the tile "fade in" lasting several seconds that plays absolutely no role in making the captcha difficult for ML to solve, existing only to punish real humans who don't comply with Google's surveillance system. So in light of that, I see no reason to not assume malice in this case too.
    • Zarath 8y ago
      Oh my god that tile fade in irritates me to no end.
• sergiotapia 8y ago
  This will affect even Brave browser right? Really any browser that uses chromium?
  • scottlocklin 8y ago
    No.
• jcomis 8y ago
  it's like they are trying to get you to switch to firefox.
• swypych 8y ago
  You can read the spec here "In Manifest V3, we want activeTab-style host permissions to be the default, with a number of extra options. Instead of being granted access to all URLs on installation, extensions will be unable to request <all_urls>, and instead the user can choose to invoke the extension on certain websites, like they would with activeTab. Additional settings will be available to the user post-installation, to allow them to tweak behavior if they so desire." --- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3NzzhHzc-qnk4w4PX-0XMw8/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3Nzz... yup it looks bad.
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    Is that for security?
    • droopyEyelids 8y ago
      That is one of the reasons to do this.
    • ndnxhs 8y ago
      Security of googles profits.
    • lightedman 8y ago
      No, it is so they can load stuff early enough in the data stream so that their ads load before the ad blocker can do its job.
  • foob 8y ago
    Yikes! I'm one of the maintainers of the Remote Browser open source project [1]. It's a cross-browser compatible automation framework which heavily leverages the power of vanilla JavaScript and the Web Extensions API to offer features comparable to those of Selenium (without the legacy cruft). Removing the ability for extensions to interact with arbitrary pages would effectively break Remote Browser's compatibility with Chromium/Chrome overnight. I have a feeling that there are a staggering number of interesting extensions that will break due to the various V3 manifest changes. Hopefully the outrage over uBlock Origin will push Google to reevaluate this decision. [1] - https://github.com/intoli/remote-browser/ https://github.com/intoli/remote-browser/
• coffeedrinker 8y ago
  People who have grown to know and love ad blocking will move en masse to Firefox. That would be a good thing. The attempt to force users into a system they don't want when there are other options available results in a loss of users.
  • needle0 8y ago
    I’m not so sure about that. From a nontechnical users’s point of view, they aren’t entirely shutting down adblockers outright, but merely slightly inconveniencing them - most users will probably migrate to a different, less powerful ad blocker and just keep using Chrome. We’re all frogs in water while Google keeps raising the temperature just ever so slightly higher.
• LeoPanthera 8y ago
  I don't understand the technical details of this - could someone explain it to an idiot? - Is the change specifically to block ad blockers, or uBlock specifically? Or is it just a new extension API? - Could ad blockers adapt to the new version to work again? I am reminded of the new version of (Mac) Safari, which features a new extensions API. It took a while for them to appear but there are now good ad blocking extensions again, like AdGuard for Safari.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • GraemeL 8y ago
    The problem is with the limit on the number of filters. On desktop Firefox I have ~120,000 network filters active on uBlock. Safari on iOS limits the number of filters an adblocker can have active to 50,000 and Google are proposing limiting it to 30,000 on Chrome.
    • LeoPanthera 8y ago
      On iOS and macOS, blockers can have more filters than this "limit" by simply exposing more than one list, since the quota is per-list. I think AdGuard exposes four, for example.
      • GraemeL 8y ago
        Is there something special that needs to be done to configure it? Every time I go over 50,000 I get a red warning at the bottom of the AdGuard filters setting screen telling me that I'm over the limit.
    • simongr3dal 8y ago
      1Blocker for iOS and Mac works around this limitation by segmenting it's blocker list into categories, and each category is a separate blocker extension but they are all shipped together in the same app. This way they can have pretty much as many multiples of 50,000 rules as they need.
• scrollaway 8y ago
  Please don't editorialize :| Suggested title: Chromium Extension Manifest v3 change would break uMatrix/uBlock Mods?
  • abtinf 8y ago
    The current title ("Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin") is more reflective of linked comment. The essential quote from the linked comment is this: "If this ...[change to chromium is implemented]... [it] essentially means that two content blockers I have maintained for years, uBlock Origin ("uBO") and uMatrix, can no longer exist." "can no longer exist" is much closer to "disable" than "break".
    • scrollaway 8y ago
      The problem is I see a ton of people in the comments assuming this is a change made with the intent of disabling/breaking ublock. Clearly it's not, and it will affect more extensions than just that. We should demand a LOT more evidence before claiming that Google intends to break adblockers before accusing them of that. If they are doing that, I want to be the first one raging against them, and I don't feel comfortable raging on something that deserves the benefit of the doubt.
      • abtinf 8y ago
        > Clearly it's not What is your basis for this claim? I am not an expert on this topic, but Gorhill is and has a demonstrated history of technical/privacy judgement. Gorhill's comment makes it clear that impacting the functionality of blockers is an intentional change, as the proposal not only removes previous functionality, but also enshrines one particular and limited approach to blocking. Edit: I would also note that "break" may suggest the possibility of altering blocking extensions such that they could keep working and maintain their present functionality. Gorhill's comment makes it clear that this is not the case.
        • scrollaway 8y ago
• fireattack 8y ago
  I will reserve my opinion until this one made it into the final or the dev showed no sign of willing to change.
• abtinf 8y ago
  I started using uMatrix full-time about a year ago. At first, I was shocked by how much traffic it would block - sometimes dozens of tracking domains. I didn't understand the sheer scale of the tracking industry. Losing the full efficacy of uBlock and uMatrix is a deal-breaker - not just for Chrome, but many other Google services. That such a proposal is even being considered is stunning and causes me to reconsider Google's reputation.
• followbl 8y ago
  Has anyone considered they are trying to do something good here? Publishers are dying left and right...ads support a lot of good businesses!
  • govg 8y ago
    Sure, but the plague of dark patterns and intrusive ads far far outweigh the few legitimately non intrusive ad supported websites. I agree there needs to be some way for sites to make money, but there is just too much stuff out there that should be blocked.
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    If they are explicitly making these changes to support ads, that's not a good thing. Google is the Internet's largest advertiser. If that business is driving decisions in Chromium, then the project (and the Internet) is in big trouble.
  • ceejayoz 8y ago
    I'm sympathetic to this argument, but browsing on my mobile device (where I don't have a good ad blocker) is regularly interrupted by redirects to malicious sites ("you're a winner!") that are clearly injected by ads. I'll happily whitelist any ads from a network that bans scripting in the ads they accept.
  • UnFleshedOne 8y ago
    Ad-supported businesses are an example of tragedy of the commons. They cause users to be product rather than customers. They make it harder for any other monetization strategy to take off the ground (it is hard to compete with "free"). Ads, and marketing in general, is a zero sum game with your resources being spent simply not to fall behind, just because your competitors are spending them (they are like lawyers and military in that regard). Ads enable and encourage parasitic businesses, like content farms and the like. For the marks, I mean, users, ads pollute visual field, occupy mental space, create and encourage unhealthy habits. Ad industry can't go out of business fast enough.
  • amiga-workbench 8y ago
• saagarjha 8y ago
  I'm all for getting out the pitchforks when Google does something anticompetitive, but this seems to me to be very similar to WebKit's content blocking API. How does this differ from that, and are extensions that run JavaScript no longer allowed?
• snarfy 8y ago
  > we will strive to limit the blocking version of webRequest, potentially removing blocking options from most events Is there any rationale why?
  • wtallis 8y ago
    The "blocking version of webRequest" means that page loading stalls until the extension decides whether to allow, deny or modify each request. This gives extensions enormous power, which can easily ruin user experience if the extension is slow about handling requests.
    • throwaway2048 8y ago
      unlike say, ads doing the same thing.
• hemantv 8y ago
  Brave is a great alternative. I just wish they could somehow integrate the whole chrome extension ecosystem in there.
  • companyhen 8y ago
    The new update added support for Chrome extensions. Are the ones it doesn't support?
• coolreader18 8y ago
  If they go through with this, they would lose a fair portion of their users, even non-fossy ones. I've seen memes on popular reddit subreddits like /r/me_irl and /r/teenagers about adblockers (e.g. "you can't stop me" "I know, but he can") and I would hope that this would maybe be a breaking point for those people - they'd google "adblock not working chrome", find an article that prescribes switching browsers (probably or hopefully firefox or some non-chromium browser), and chrome would lose around 5-10% of its share. Hopefully it will at least wake people up to the monopoly google has by exclusively controlling the most popular browser.
• pdimitar 8y ago
  The only thing that surprises me about this announcement is that it took them that long. Oh well, they'll just give me a reason to accelerate my full migration to Safari and Firefox and to only touch Chrome when testing a website.
• zapita 8y ago
  I switched from Chrome back to Firefox last year and haven't looked back once.
• lubujackson 8y ago
  "We went ahead and uh, fixed the glitch."
• gingerbread-man 8y ago
  Could someone please help explain the technical details of this? From what I can gather from the chrome.webRequest and chrome.declarativeNetRequest documentation, it looks like this change would make it difficult to have long lists of blocked hosts, or perhaps to update such lists automatically. Obviously there is a conflict of interest here for Google, but it looks like there are at least a few non-bogus justifications for the proposed change. See also (especially the section "Comparison with the webRequest API): https://developers.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetRequest https://developers.chrome.com/extensions/declarativeNetReque...
  • 43920 8y ago
    There's a couple of different issues with the proposed API: * There's a limit of 30k blocked rules, which isn't enough to fully block every ad (for example, EasyList alone is 87k filters right now). * The declarativeNetRequest API only supports a limited set of filter options. Currently, uBlock supports a bunch of additional options that give you more fine-grained control over what is blocked [0]; most of that wouldn't be possible in the new API. * AFAICT, the ruleset can't be updated dynamically, which would prevent uBlock's dynamic filtering [1] mode from working. Google's argument is that doing this improves performance (because it doesn't require communicating with the extension), and that it improves privacy. The privacy issue does have some merit - uBlock's author seems to be trustworthy, but other extensions might not be - but the performance argument in particular seems really shaky. uBlock's benchmarks [2] show that it takes around 0.1ms to decide whether to allow a network request. The only way it could noticeably impact performance is if the overhead of communicating with the extension process is really high, and that sounds like something Google should fix rather than eliminating it. [0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-effic...
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  The design doc — the part quoted in the note linked here even — explicitly notes that it will probably be required to retain some degree of the existing functionality slated for eventually removal until the new API and other replacements cover all use cases; the response linked here appears to (not improperly, in the context of making a case for why much of the functionality is needed) ignoring that and treating the planned intent as removing all of the existing WebRequest API functionality that is not observational for a hard cutover to the new API which does not immediately supports large swath of currently used functionality. I think the response is appropriate, energetic advocacy, but the HN headline is hyperbolic.
  • engineeringwoke 8y ago
    I think most of the meaning here isn't found in a design document
  • metalliqaz 8y ago
    But the design document only mentions retaining the old API for features that aren't possible with the new API, such as onAuthRequired. So it would still cripple uBlock
    • edwintorok 8y ago
      What if someone would create a pull request to implement unlock origin natively inside chromium, instead of an extension. If such a PR met all technical criteria, would Chromium project accept it?
      • berbec 8y ago
        No. Google would not include, as a built-in part of Chromium that is installed by default, a feature to lower their ad revenue.
        • awirth 8y ago
          Doesn't Chromium already lower their revenue from other lacks of integration that are included in Chrome?
• alexnewman 8y ago
  Another reason to try out the new brave which has all the capabilities of chromium without downsides
• novaRom 8y ago
  duck.com + mozilla.org
• leeoniya 8y ago
  i will go wherever uBlock Origin and uMatrix go
• euske 8y ago
  Next move by Google: slowly crippling the functions of most Google sites (YT, Gmail, etc.) on Firefox for "better UX on major browsers." You see? Power corrupts.
  • GranPC 8y ago
    This is already happening. The new Gmail redesign is borderline unusable and uses up 60% CPU just to display a plain text email, and YouTube's latest update is slower in Firefox because they use a Chrome specific API.
• companyhen 8y ago
  Brave is my new everyday browser since they added Chrome plugin support.
• unwabuisi 8y ago
  For those that have migrated from Chrome to Firefox recently, what adjustments did you have to make/get used to in Firefox?
  • keithnz 8y ago
    I changed last year? ( whenever the quantum beta came out ) now I live between the two browsers. For the most, there is no real difference and for both browsers, holes can be plugged with plugins. ( One nice thing I like out of the box for FF is that it supports column selection which makes my life easier on some web pages I have to use regularly ) I like the web development tools on firefox, and usually use them over chromes The only few things I've really had an issue with is a particular wiki page in my works confluence system that seems to go incredibly slowly on firefox and I end up using chrome to edit that page. The other is sometimes firefox doesn't open a new tab in a new tab if the tab bar has a lot of tabs if I'm using the UI ( I use vimium on both chrome and FF and it can open tabs no matter what ) Other than that, I have this very subjective "feeling" that chrome feels just a wee bit nicer than FF.
• novaRom 8y ago
  I find it disappointing that uBlock cannot be installed on Firefox on iOS.
• partiallypro 8y ago
  This makes me again wish that Microsoft had used Firefox's engine for their new version of Edge.
• dbg31415 8y ago
  Annoying, but just block at DNS or host level. * Pi-hole®: A black hole for Internet advertisements – curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net https://install.pi-hole.net | bash || https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/ * GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: Extending and consolidating hosts files from several well-curated sources like adaway.org, mvps.org, malwaredomainlist.com, someonewhocares.org, and potentially others. You can optionally invoke extensions to block additional sites by category. || https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts Someone will make money selling an ad blocker device that's just a configured Raspberry Pi with a consumer-friendly way to install it on a home network.
• finnthehuman 8y ago
  Apparently I can't post just the thinking face emoji. But we all know what this is, what else is there to say that hasn't been said to death already?
• amatecha 8y ago
  The comment author provides these notable examples which would no longer be possible: > the blocking of media element which are larger than a set size, the disabling of JavaScript execution through the injection of CSP directives, the removal of outgoing Cookie headers, etc. Seems like pretty fundamental stuff for any user-side content filtering, especially for the use of bandwidth and privacy considerations, ad-blocking aside.
• sakisv 8y ago
  Well, look at the bright side: People will (hopefully) remember that there's an open source browser from a non-advertiser company (and therefore with not many incentives to break your adblocks)
  • partiallypro 8y ago
    Unfortunately Google invests heavily in Firefox, and Edge is switching to Chromium.
• smsm42 8y ago
  I wonder what this means for browsers like Brave. They are on Chromium engine but AFAIK they are using their own blocking, different from uBO (not sure what exactly they're using).
• colordrops 8y ago
  If you prefer chrome but don't want to deal with the privacy issues, definitely try out brave-browser. It's a custom build of chromium with privacy and ad blocking enabled by default, and is fully open source.
• cheez 8y ago
  If uBlock stops working... I stop using Chrome. Simple as that.
  • Chris_Chambers 8y ago
    I doubt Google cares if they lose the 0.01% of users who will actually get upset about this.
  • jaxn 8y ago
    Pi-hole covers you regardless of browser.
    • xythian 8y ago
      Yes, but also less so every day. Google has already figured out that they should serve Youtube ads and content from the same servers to limit the ability of DNS based ad filtering. DNS filtering is a cat-and-mouse game that DNS filtering tools will eventually lose. Don't get me wrong, I love Pihole and have used it for a while, but I know that I'm on the losing side of this battle.
      • seanp2k2 8y ago
        DNS filtering has been on the "losing side" for a few decades now. As long as more than 0.1% of people don't use it, it's not worth solving for most ad companies. Even if places like YouTube DO find ways to stuff ads into my face (likely at great technical and operational expense to them), I make it a point to NEVER EVER buy anything advertised, search for any of it, etc. Because they know so little about me (I go out of my way to block as much telemetry and data sharing as possible), their ads aren't very relevant to me anyway, so they're literally just wasting money serving me an ad, trying to pressure me into paying for their premium service. Instead, I just get annoyed if there are too many ads and find something else to do. It would probably serve them better to just realize that some users won't ever convert, and stop wasting time serving them ads.
        • dylan604 8y ago
• eugenekolo2 8y ago
  I recently set up pi-hole in a couple of hours on a raspberry pi I have at home. Works fairly well - it can't block as many things as ublock origin can, but it gets the job mostly done while still providing some sort of revenue to content creators. curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net https://install.pi-hole.net | bash
• imhelpingu 8y ago
  That's fine; I've already phased google out of nearly every aspect of my personal life including what browser I use. Eat shit in hell forever, Evil Company.
• quakeguy 8y ago
  Vivaldi user here, should i switch to Firefox too?
• aboutruby 8y ago
  Anybody knows what "Hotlist-ConOps" means? I'm guessing "ConOps" is the name of the project. Even looking at the issues like[1], I still have no idea what it means. [1]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=label:Hotlist-ConOps https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=label:Hot...
• aboutruby 8y ago
  A little PSA, "uBlock Origin" is the currently updated, correctly working extension, "uBlock" is the broken one. https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ub...
• AaronFriel 8y ago
  Another reason why it was an enormous mistake for Microsoft to adopt Chromium as the engine. Now Microsoft has a choice for Edge: A. Fork here and pay the maintenance price and extension compat issues, with potentially unlimited downside of technical debt in reconciling the two. B. Adopt these changes and kill ad blocking in Edge, preventing them from differentiating themselves from Chrome and reinforcing Google's position as an advertising giant. Both are bad. What would have been less bad is if Microsoft switched Edge to say, Gecko, or maintained EdgeHTML and continued to support a multi-platform, multi-implementation web.
  • ngngngng 8y ago
    Or pull a 180 and start running their own build of firefox that they contribute to.
• jeffrogers 8y ago
  I’m more concerned that the http/3 Connection Migration ID, proposed by Google via the QUIC spec and operating at a lower level, will create a persistent tracking mechanism, regardless of the application in use.
• happybuy 8y ago
  To defend Google a bit, it looks like the change is being put in place so that users would have more privacy – by stopping extensions accessing all active URLs. In essence they are copying what Apple did with Safari and their content blocking APIs. In this model, content blockers provide the browser with a set of blocking rules and the browser executes them against pages during render & load. Ad blocking can occur and privacy of what the user is viewing is retained. Sure it's more restrictive and yes will likely break existing adblockers, but it's probably a better model for the future. There will be arguments that you "can't do what is necessary" to create effective adblockers. That's incorrect.... I've created such an adblocker [1] using the Safari methods and its efficient, effective and high performance – including loading some sites 2x faster. [1] https://www.magiclasso.co/ https://www.magiclasso.co/
  • omeid2 8y ago
    It doesn't actually provide any privacy at all, it simply removes the possiblity to block and leaves the events to be observable. > In Manifest V3, we will strive to limit the blocking version > of webRequest, potentially removing blocking options from most > events (**making them observational only**)
  • acrispino 8y ago
    How do you respond to the comment (#23) from the author of uBlock Origin & uMatrix describing the filtering capabilities that will be lost under the proposed declarativeNetRequest API?
    • happybuy 8y ago
      Many similar concerns were raised when the Safari API changed, in this case some of the specific limitations and concerns re the declarativeNetRequest approach may be valid – if so, I'd hope that the Chromium team take them on board and improve. I think the concern re the 30,000 rule limit is misguided. Many of these adblock rule lists are extremely inefficient and should probably be pruned to have less rules. Extremely good and effective adblocking across most websites can be achieved with significantly less rules.
• keithnz 8y ago
  main reason why I use firefox on my mobile these days instead of chrome, I can install uBlock Origin in Firefox.
• yogthos 8y ago
  Firefox exists, it works well, and it doesn't fuck its users to help advertisers. If Google manages to push it out of the market we'll be stuck with a garbage browser built by an ads company.
  • Zarath 8y ago
    Meh, I waste way too much time on the internet anyway. Maybe it's time to rediscover some outdoor hobbies.
• paulie_a 8y ago
  Google proposed changes to chromium that makes many people not use chromium. Or chrome. I will focus on Firefox for compatibility, if it works on chrome that's great but I will consider it ie6, I don't care about crippled browsers. Depending on the project and leeway I might even block it outright. I did that with ie6 on one system.
• londons_explore 8y ago
  Quote from the linked design doc: The current webRequest API allows extensions to intercept network requests in order to modify, redirect, or block them. It is frequently used by content blockers. Currently, with the webRequest permission, an extension can delay a request for an arbitrary amount of time, since Chrome needs to wait for the result from the extension in order to continue processing the request. The basic flow is that when a network request begins, Chrome sends information about it to interested extensions, and the extensions respond with which action to take. This begins in the browser process, involves a process hop to the extension's renderer process, where the extension then performs arbitrary (and potentially very slow) JavaScript, and returns the result back to the browser process. This can have a significant effect on every single network request, even those that are not modified, redirected, or blocked by the extension (since Chrome needs to dispatch the event to the extension to determine the result). Google has noticed (as have I) that a typical chrome instance is significantly slowed down by things like adblock plus, because it turns out running every URL through a million regex's uses a massive amount of CPU and really slows down loading. As web pages get bigger and have more resources, it isn't going to scale. This has been going on a long time, and there are totally ways to improve performance, but typically ad-blocker authors don't have a commercial incentive to make their software super performant, so as far as I know, none have even implemented basic performance features like prefix trees, bloom filters or hashed lookups.
  • kabes 8y ago
    You know what else takes up massive amounts of CPU and slows down a typical chrome instance? Sites filled with ads.
    • londons_explore 8y ago
      In my tests (albeit a few years ago), the actual text content on web pages was slowed down slightly by adblock plus. I measured with a video recording of the screen, and considered a page complete when the title and main body text of a page were loaded. It became a dramatic slowdown with a slow CPU. I made a performance patch which saved 40% CPU time (by making a new css selector matcher). I even tried to submit the patch upstream, but my employer blocked it with bureaucracy.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• tgeorge 8y ago
  Fork them
• openloop 8y ago
  Ruh roh.
• Proven 8y ago
  Just looked at Chromium for Windows the other day, for general reasons (which can be summarized as stay the hell away from Google). Turns out those suckers don't even release it as such. They only build nightlys (useless for actual use and impractical too). If the community forks that sucker that would be great. Firefox is just as bad (and as some noted, uglier too). Thankfully there are community versions without he Mozilla Foundation junk.
• Marsymars 8y ago
  Doesn't matter to me much for the browser since I use Firefox, but would ruin Chrome OS for me.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• izacus 8y ago
  Perhaps the participants of this debate should also comment on the ticket itself? Complaining here probably won't make Google hear you.
  • scrollaway 8y ago
    Can we not brigade? That would be great.
  • SquareWheel 8y ago
    If your goal is to lock the bug report to all future discussion, then by all means start brigading.
• nopacience 8y ago
  Firefox is available, faster and better. Stop using chrome/chromium.
• aj7 8y ago
  As far as I’m concerned, this wii break Chrome.
• patagonia 8y ago
  I heart Mozilla Firefox.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• SquareWheel 8y ago
  Bug reports are for technical discussion, not filing grievances. Please don't be "that guy" who uses this space to complain. Especially if you haven't bothered to read the new spec and are simply mad at the title.
  • svnpenn 8y ago
    watch out everyone - forum police is here
    • SquareWheel 8y ago
      What is this, reddit? If you're a new user, please read the site guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• EpicEng 8y ago
  The spec makes this a bit ambiguous, and I have experienced nothing but frustration in my continual attempts to move to FF (last time was two months ago, spare me the argument), but if uBlock is over then so is my relationship with chrome.
• danielrowe 8y ago
  Firefox is a much nicer browser anyway. For a number of reasons including privacy.
• 0xADEADBEE 8y ago
  I assume people with much more data than me have ran the numbers and concluded this is a good move, but with the rise in people using ad-blockers [0], this seems myopic from the outside. The GDPR situation and this week's 'fine' for Google certainly suggests that the current model of surreptitiously harvesting outrageous amounts of data from unsuspecting service-users is untenable (as well it should be), so I'll be fascinated to observe the next stages of the data collection vs privacy skirmish. [0] - https://marketingland.com/survey-shows-us-ad-blocking-usage-40-percent-laptops-15-percent-mobile-216324 https://marketingland.com/survey-shows-us-ad-blocking-usage-...
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jeff_marshall 8y ago
  Ublock Origin (or equivalent) compatibility is a deal-breaker for me.
• sekasi 8y ago
  I'm surprised at the lack of support (hacker news) for Safari. It's a fantastic browser, made by people who have a track record of not being evil with data. I know that might seem like a big statement, but in the face of Google I will happily trust Apple.
  • askmike 8y ago
    A few years ago they were considered the new IE when it came to html5 compat (which was lagging behind other browsers). I'm not sure what the status is now.
  • steedsofwar 8y ago
    I love safari, but of late unlock Origin has stopped working, which means i constantly switch to firefox when the ad's get nauseating.
  • steedsofwar 8y ago
    I love safari, but of late unBlock Origin has stopped working, which means i constantly switch to firefox when the ad's get nauseating.
    • ivl 8y ago
      Amusingly, Safari made the same change as the Chrominum devs are discussing here. Limiting how well extensions can parse and block requests.
• 0xmohit 8y ago
  It is funny to think that company that makes money by showing you ads based on information that it harvests by various mechanisms would let you browse the web without watching ads. Interesting changes to Chrome seem to have become more often. A recent one was the forced login policy. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/ https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-l...
• outside1234 8y ago
  Can a downstream client of Chromium (like Brave) add it back in?
• 3xblah 8y ago
  I always found it strange that the most popular ad blocking method is one that is internal to and relies on the browser itself. Companies can change their browsers anytime and for whatever reasons they want. As far as I can tell, users have little control over the organizations/companies that write browsers, not to mention that the most popular browsers are written by companies that benefit from sale of the online ads. This make the ad-blocking browser extension brittle. I also find it peculiar that the preferred approach to ad blocking has been blacklisting rather than whitelisting. In other words, users prefer to let a third party pick a list of servers to block. Everything else is allowed by default. Besides issues of delegation and having to trust a third a party, this of course is a very large, constantly growing list that includes many, many servers most users will never, ever encounter in their entire lifetime online. Though it may be unnoticeable for now, an enormous block list is inefficient. The alternative, which I have found easier to manage, is for users to determine what servers they need to access, "whitelist" them (e.g. by placing them in localhost authoritative DNS or /etc/hosts), and then block everything else by default. This is similar to a firewall ruleset. The number of servers any user will use in their lifetime is relatively small compared to the total number of ad server addresses in existence now or in the future. It is manageable. If you are a non-technical Chrome user, and you have no idea of what servers you are actually using repeatedly day-to-day, there is a built-in feature that can help you make your own "whitelist". Here's the URL: chrome://site-engagement
• zelon88 8y ago
  "Hi folks! Can we please move this discussion to somewhere it's not as noticeable? K thx bye!" doesn't address anything Sounds like Google devs to me!
  • SquareWheel 8y ago
    Or perhaps it's because people are spamming their bug tracker from sites like Hacker News, preventing the necessary technical discussion from taking place.
    • zelon88 8y ago
      So unexpected traffic is "spam?" Seems like everyone posting has a stake and is pretty engaged with the topic. Negative != Disrespectful Unexpected != Illegitimate
      • SquareWheel 8y ago
        This isn't just traffic. This is interrupting someone else's conversation to complain after reading an editorialized headline. Having dozens of people post "I'm moving to Firefox!!" doesn't contribute anything. It detracts from discussion. For exactly those reasons the thread has now been locked. We screwed it up, like we always do.
• privacywall 8y ago
  This was bound to happen. Google has always treated Chromium as their toy and a way to protect their advertising monopoly. That is why we released the new PrivacyWall today which includes the most advanced host level ad blocker built by Stanford engineers. It's free and we will never sell out.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jimbo999 8y ago
  gorhill is a very short sighted zealot
• privacywall 8y ago
  Privacywall provides host level ad blocking http://www.privacywall.org http://www.privacywall.org
• happppy 8y ago
  They are blocking Ad-blockers and improving Ads. Blocking Ads that are scam like popups and such so ux should be good with content and Ads side by side. It's actually Google wants to rule by blocking other platforms that provide Ads.
• feanaro 8y ago
  Why would Google be given any benefit of a doubt in the case of ad/resource blocking? They are a behemoth ad-based corporation that is becoming a monopoly in many areas of computing. In yet more areas, they are becoming an effective monopoly through size: they may not be the only company offering a type of service, but they are the only one able to offer it at scale and/or with a certain level of sophistication, given their resources are orders of magnitude larger than almost any other company's. All this taken into account, it's obvious how much is at stake for them. Why wouldn't they try crippling blockers? Their revenue depends on it and the only counter-incentive is that there may be a massive exodus of users to Firefox, while it still exists. Do it slowly enough, though...
  • londons_explore 8y ago
    I think you overestimate the level of strategy here. This is simply an engineer spotting a performance bottleneck in Chrome and posting a design to resolve it. There is zero chance that Google's top brass told the engineer to deliberately cripple ublock.
    • millstone 8y ago
      Hmm. Google very closely tracks ad-blocker usage.
    • AlexandrB 8y ago
      > This is simply an engineer spotting a performance bottleneck in Chrome and posting a design to resolve it. The #1 way to improve web browsing performance is with aggressive and comprehensive ad blocking.
    • feanaro 8y ago
      A design that happens to cripple modern ad blocking and is not nearly close to being a full replacement of the existing API. Improving performance by removing features is easy. I don't think it's misrepresentation to call it crippling of said features. The fact is that modern ads and crapware/malware web resources are a large problem that users choose to deal with by installing modern ad blockers. Even if that makes the browser somewhat slower overall, it is the ads that are the culprit, not the ad blockers. Also, anecdotally, but I find the web's performance to be vastly improved by installing uBlock Origin, as has also been noted in another comment. It is also a fact that Google's whole business revolves around ads. Again, why wouldn't Google be mindful of ad blocking and try to prevent it from happening, with all the resources it has at its disposal? It would be bad business not to try. Even if this particular situation isn't an example of this, I think it is irrational to think it does not and will not happen.
• B-Con 8y ago
  > There are other features (which I understand are appreciated by many users) which can't be implemented with the declarativeNetRequest API, for examples, ... the disabling of JavaScript execution through the injection of CSP directives, the removal of outgoing Cookie headers, etc. This is also incredibly important. It's my HTML, don't restrict me. Let me mangle the web pages I request.
• forgotmypw2 8y ago
  dropped chrome long ago, actively remove it from anywhere I'm authorized to. recommend you do the same, it's crossed the malware threshold long ago.
• padraic7a 8y ago
  Beautiful. Will be great to see Firefox share increasing.
• lsiebert 8y ago
  Loving my decision to switch to firefox this year more and more.
• pleasecalllater 8y ago
  Google is an advertisement publishing company. All the things they do, they do to earn money, not to give people anything. When Chrome first appeared, I was wondering about the extremely huge cost of building the browser and how Google wants to earn from that. Then it started to be obvious: it's all to spy on people. Not from the beginning, but slowly... the google account integration... the forced logging into the account... adding custom adblock (which doesn't block most of the ads)... and now this: disabling adblockers. I'm glad that I stopped using it.
  • pojzon 8y ago
    Sadly people who dont care about their privacy will keep on using Chrome. Same with folks who are not so "advanced" as we call it.
    • pleasecalllater 8y ago
      All the I-have-nothing-to-hide people, please publish your bank account, address, SSN, passwords and other information the bank can ask when trying to transfer the money. Yea, I know... so they really have something to hide, right? So why not to start caring about the privacy and start thinking?
      • konart 8y ago
        > I-have-nothing-to-hide Not one of them, but I hope you realize that this 'example' is completely off mark. I have nothing to hide if we are talking about that new hifi system I was looking on Amazon, I don't care if google knows what did I have for breakfast, I might even be ok with you knowing my address, but this is fundamentally different from you haveing keys from my apartment or my bank account.
        • BoiledCabbage 8y ago
          I'm not necessarily of this opinion, but his view is that knowing what you had for breakfast and your address is the same as your bank account # or house keys; it's just that people haven't realized this yet. Their argument is that the reason why people say house keys, or bank act # is different is because they are protecting something of value. His argument is what you do on a daily basis is just as valuable you just don't know it yet. The other argument against is "yes my privacy/ daily activity may have 'value', but unlike my bank account or house keys people can't take something from me from knowing it. " That's more up to opinion, but the argument is knowing you so well, someone can take your independence. A bit dystopian, but imagine n years from now, ML is good enough to predict your responses and behaviors to 80+% of things. Companies now use it to effectively get you to make decisions they want. Combinations of timing, placement, location, repetition, persuasion, counter-argument all to produce a desired result, but unlike present day extremely effective and possibly without your awareness. If there is a way to get our wet ware to do it, ML will figure it out. Advertising/Marketing/Sales become a game of Go, where you're the Go board. Best ML wins. We like to think we're fully in control of our decision making facilities, but study after study shows that's mostly an illusion. Our sub-conscience mostly decides for us, and then our brains rationalize this away after the fact. The fear is that by giving away your emotions, your responses, your ocean 5 factor model, your preferences, your habits, and a playground to test all of this in you are potentially giving up your independence at a future time. It's all dystopian, it's not guaranteed, but it pans out as all likely directions and very probable tech.
• deepstream 8y ago
  The uBlock origin author's comment on the CR bug threads looks incorrect to me, for the following reason. Chrome extensions have access to the 'debugger' API. Debugger API provides access to remote debugging protocol. Remote debugging protocol provides commands to intercept, filter and block requests. Please see: https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/ https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/ and specifically the "Network" domain.
• ForHackernews 8y ago
  Choose Firefox Now Or Later You Won't Have a Choice https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-later-you-wont.html https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-l...
• kamyarg 8y ago
  The day I see google ads on my chrome I will switch, they can do whatever they want. I will also advocate switching to every person I know, so disable ublock origin with that in mind.
• givinguflac 8y ago
  Discussion moved here: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chromium-extensions/veJy9uAwS00 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/m/#!topic/chr... So glad I’m not a google user. How much more does google have to do before people stop seeing them as the freedom option?
• neves 8y ago
  Go Firefox!
• mountainofdeath 8y ago
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Where have I heard that before?
• mancerayder 8y ago
  Not surprised. Was no one but me outraged about them turning the 'stop autoplay' of video feature off within Chrome on desktop? This happened in the last year or two - I don't remember since I switched to Firefox. Chrome I only use for business / G-Suite purposes and for dumbo sites that only work in Chrome. Admittedly I'll use IE before I use Chrome.
• CompMagicWork 8y ago
  Would this also affect Brave? From what I understand they pack their blocker into the binary, but they might still call this API under the hood.
• john4534243 8y ago
  Stick to firefox, for this simple reaseon.
• hi41 8y ago
  This is why we need competing browsers and Microsoft should have continued Edge browser development. Thank goodness we still have Firefox.
• fawelo123 8y ago
  Just use Firefox, disable all content blocking addons and enable resistFingerprinting and container tabs. There you go you are virtually impossible to track, and as thus will only generate useless traffic for advertisers/trackers and actually cost them money in a legal way. It would actually go hand in hand with "hide but load element"
• bausano_michael 8y ago
  Check what effect this proposed change have on @exteranto framework