9 ms·

Google has not provided any reason to not include "block request" functionality. And that the super bad faith underlying fact that poison their "reasoning".

by yonixw 5y ago

jefftk 5y ago
There is still "block request" functionality, the change is that it's now declarative. This is the same way it works in Safari, and is (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request and (b) more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions. There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Docs: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/declarativeNetRequest/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla... (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
- everforward 5y ago
  > (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request This is true, but I think overly performance-focused. It doesn't feel like that much time, so I think there's a valid complaint that it doesn't make sense to kneecap flexibility for speed. > more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions Sure, but this doesn't seem like the only possible solution for the people that own the browser. Why not only allow a restricted subset of JS that lacks any form of IO? Or if that's impossible/risky, why not something like Starlark or Lua? I think this is based on a fundamental misreading of the problem. The privacy concern is that your data will leak, not merely that it's accessible to a third party. The cat binary can read my data, and I'm not at all concerned about that. So can my shell, and likewise on the concern. Privacy doesn't necessitate this solution. It is one of the possible solutions, but I think is hard to sell as the best solution to the problem. It is likely the easiest.
- Qub3d 5y ago
  The safari change absolutely kneecapped content blockers. Ublock dropped it[0], and the remaining few providers, like AdGuard, have to do all sorts of trickery[1] to get even close to the same performance. If you're going to argue this is better, don't point us to such a clearly worse result. [0]:https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 [1]:https://adguard.com/en/blog/safari-adblock-extensions.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/safari-adblock-extensions.html
  - jefftk 5y ago
    I'm not arguing that V3 is better -- I think that's a complicated question, and I was trying to describe some of the tradeoffs. What I am arguing is that V3 does, contra my parent, support request blocking.
    - imbnwa 5y ago
      I just hate that rhetorical game of "well, prima facie I meet your standard so what's the problem?" You met the standard before too, obviously that's not the problem
    - LamaOfRuin 5y ago
      It does not allow request blocking as that has been understood in the context of extensions until now It is not a question that V3 breaks the gold standard privacy protecting extension.
      - nickelpro 5y ago
        I quibble with this. Request blocking "as that has been understood", is preventing the request from leaving the browser. That's still demonstrably doable with mv3. What's changed is the mechanism. You can argue about the value of changing the mechanism, about the burden placed on plugin developers, or the efficacy of various APIs, but the functionality is inarguably still there.
        creamytaco 5y ago
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  They can block Google ads for now. Google is playing a long game.
- dessant 5y ago
  This is just an attempt to rehash the same old arguments provided by Google that have been repeatedly debunked by developers and security researchers. > I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself I'm doubtful about a person's ability to speak for themselves, when they have been consistently defending their employer on HN for years, at every occasion they got.
  - chii 5y ago
    "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
    - anticensor 5y ago
      Also known as Sinclair's law.
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  I’m sure you are an honest person working in good faith. But we saw very similar behavior from Google around AMP. They had a very narrow reasonable sounding explanation, and just ignored all criticism and requests from both users and publishers that didn’t fit their narrative. This went on for years. Today we know AMP was also a anticompetitive plot to kill off header bidding. Why should we to believe a word of what Google says about Manifest v3?
  - jefftk 5y ago
    > Today we know AMP was also a anticompetitive plot to kill off header bidding. I completely disagree, and I think this will become clear as information continues to come out.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      It's been years since AMP went live. Disagreeing while pointing to information that's been withheld for years and does not (to my knowledge) have a timeline for release... that does not make a very compelling argument. It amounts to "trust us". But we don't-- that's kind of the point.
      - jefftk 5y ago
        I interpreted coffeefirst as referring to the current antitrust action against Google, and saying that I expect more information will come out as it progresses.
        kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
        There will never be a smoking gun because the people cooking up these dark pattern schemes are generally smart enough to not document them. The problem they want solved gets broken up into pieces that are given credible cover stories and then when it is all integrated together the intended outcome happens without it ever being explicitly written down in an incriminating email.
- yonixw 5y ago
  > (a) more efficient + (b) more private This is somewhat debunked in the article of this post. > the change is that it's now declarative. In the App MANIFEST. To my understanding, each update of those lists will require an app update (going through Store approval process). If only it would have been dynamic, the end result would have been much better. And again, there is no reason to disable dynamic updates if they are only lists of blocked URLs.
- DoctorNick 5y ago
  > (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself) Thank you for letting us know you have a giant material conflict of interest and we shouldn't trust anything you say.
  - ahahahahah 5y ago
    Great, let me help you then. There is still "block request" functionality, the change is that it's now declarative. This is the same way it works in Safari, and is (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request and (b) more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions. There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Docs: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla... (Disclosure: I don't work at Google or on ads anywhere, speaking only for myself)
- amluto 5y ago
  I would believe this more if Mv3 didn’t allow extensions to inspect all web requests programmatically, just not block them. Want to exfiltrate your users’ data to attack or track them? Fine. Want to block ads. No way!
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  > There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Those serious "serious tradeoffs" made me completely stop using the web on my iPhone. Yeah, Safari content block can block roughly 80% of web ads, but those extra 20% are extremely annoying. Web owners use all sorts of trickery to bypass adblockers and serve malware filled ads. Handicapping our current best defense tech against this is a sure as hell way to make me never open chrome again and completely purging it from any friends and family computer.
- bananabernhard 5y ago
  While there seems to be some disagreement with your position, I just wanted to thank you for being transparent about your involvement at Google. More people should act like that.

Google has not provided any reason to not include "block request" functionality. And that the super bad faith underlying fact that poison their "reasoning".

by yonixw 5y ago

Google has not provided any reason to not include "block request" functionality. And that the super bad faith underlying fact that poison their "reasoning".

jefftk 5y ago

There is still "block request" functionality, the change is that it's now declarative. This is the same way it works in Safari, and is (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request and (b) more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions. There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Docs: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/declarativeNetRequest/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla... (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

everforward 5y ago
> (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request This is true, but I think overly performance-focused. It doesn't feel like that much time, so I think there's a valid complaint that it doesn't make sense to kneecap flexibility for speed. > more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions Sure, but this doesn't seem like the only possible solution for the people that own the browser. Why not only allow a restricted subset of JS that lacks any form of IO? Or if that's impossible/risky, why not something like Starlark or Lua? I think this is based on a fundamental misreading of the problem. The privacy concern is that your data will leak, not merely that it's accessible to a third party. The cat binary can read my data, and I'm not at all concerned about that. So can my shell, and likewise on the concern. Privacy doesn't necessitate this solution. It is one of the possible solutions, but I think is hard to sell as the best solution to the problem. It is likely the easiest.
Qub3d 5y ago
The safari change absolutely kneecapped content blockers. Ublock dropped it[0], and the remaining few providers, like AdGuard, have to do all sorts of trickery[1] to get even close to the same performance. If you're going to argue this is better, don't point us to such a clearly worse result. [0]:https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 [1]:https://adguard.com/en/blog/safari-adblock-extensions.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/safari-adblock-extensions.html
- jefftk 5y ago
  I'm not arguing that V3 is better -- I think that's a complicated question, and I was trying to describe some of the tradeoffs. What I am arguing is that V3 does, contra my parent, support request blocking.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    I just hate that rhetorical game of "well, prima facie I meet your standard so what's the problem?" You met the standard before too, obviously that's not the problem
  - LamaOfRuin 5y ago
    It does not allow request blocking as that has been understood in the context of extensions until now It is not a question that V3 breaks the gold standard privacy protecting extension.
    - nickelpro 5y ago
      I quibble with this. Request blocking "as that has been understood", is preventing the request from leaving the browser. That's still demonstrably doable with mv3. What's changed is the mechanism. You can argue about the value of changing the mechanism, about the burden placed on plugin developers, or the efficacy of various APIs, but the functionality is inarguably still there.
      - creamytaco 5y ago
thatguy0900 5y ago
They can block Google ads for now. Google is playing a long game.
dessant 5y ago
This is just an attempt to rehash the same old arguments provided by Google that have been repeatedly debunked by developers and security researchers. > I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself I'm doubtful about a person's ability to speak for themselves, when they have been consistently defending their employer on HN for years, at every occasion they got.
- chii 5y ago
  "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"
  - anticensor 5y ago
    Also known as Sinclair's law.
coffeefirst 5y ago
I’m sure you are an honest person working in good faith. But we saw very similar behavior from Google around AMP. They had a very narrow reasonable sounding explanation, and just ignored all criticism and requests from both users and publishers that didn’t fit their narrative. This went on for years. Today we know AMP was also a anticompetitive plot to kill off header bidding. Why should we to believe a word of what Google says about Manifest v3?
- jefftk 5y ago
  > Today we know AMP was also a anticompetitive plot to kill off header bidding. I completely disagree, and I think this will become clear as information continues to come out.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    It's been years since AMP went live. Disagreeing while pointing to information that's been withheld for years and does not (to my knowledge) have a timeline for release... that does not make a very compelling argument. It amounts to "trust us". But we don't-- that's kind of the point.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      I interpreted coffeefirst as referring to the current antitrust action against Google, and saying that I expect more information will come out as it progresses.
      - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
        There will never be a smoking gun because the people cooking up these dark pattern schemes are generally smart enough to not document them. The problem they want solved gets broken up into pieces that are given credible cover stories and then when it is all integrated together the intended outcome happens without it ever being explicitly written down in an incriminating email.
yonixw 5y ago
> (a) more efficient + (b) more private This is somewhat debunked in the article of this post. > the change is that it's now declarative. In the App MANIFEST. To my understanding, each update of those lists will require an app update (going through Store approval process). If only it would have been dynamic, the end result would have been much better. And again, there is no reason to disable dynamic updates if they are only lists of blocked URLs.
DoctorNick 5y ago
> (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself) Thank you for letting us know you have a giant material conflict of interest and we shouldn't trust anything you say.
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  Great, let me help you then. There is still "block request" functionality, the change is that it's now declarative. This is the same way it works in Safari, and is (a) more efficient because you don't need to execute JS to evaluate each request and (b) more private because an ad/content blocker doesn't need to be given such broad permissions. There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Docs: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/decla... (Disclosure: I don't work at Google or on ads anywhere, speaking only for myself)
amluto 5y ago
I would believe this more if Mv3 didn’t allow extensions to inspect all web requests programmatically, just not block them. Want to exfiltrate your users’ data to attack or track them? Fine. Want to block ads. No way!
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
> There are serious tradeoffs (no request time js makes it less flexible) but it's still very capable and easily can be used to block Google ads. Those serious "serious tradeoffs" made me completely stop using the web on my iPhone. Yeah, Safari content block can block roughly 80% of web ads, but those extra 20% are extremely annoying. Web owners use all sorts of trickery to bypass adblockers and serve malware filled ads. Handicapping our current best defense tech against this is a sure as hell way to make me never open chrome again and completely purging it from any friends and family computer.
bananabernhard 5y ago
While there seems to be some disagreement with your position, I just wanted to thank you for being transparent about your involvement at Google. More people should act like that.