19 ms·

“UBO Minus (MV3)” – An Experimental uBlock Origin Build for Manifest V3

339 points by antonok 4y ago

gapo 4y ago
From the commit msg: At this point I consider being permission-less the limiting factor: if broad "read/modify data" permission is to be used, than there is not much point for an MV3 version over MV2, just use the MV2 version if you want to benefit all the features which can't be implemented without broad "read/modify data" permission.
fezfight 4y ago
How many people use adblockers? Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome to build a community around an open alternative, like we did when we abandoned IE for Firefox all those years ago?
- kibwen 4y ago
  Adblockers are an existential threat to Google. If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power, because the alternative is the death of their entire business model and the end of the company). Even if you can play cat-and-mouse games to get around the adblocker-blocking, the inconvenience of that alone would be enough to shift most non-power-users back onto Chrome.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    Adblockers might be an existential threat to Google, but MV3 won't change anything for Google. Google AdSense ads will almost certainly still get blocked, they're not hard to block/ obfuscated. I really doubt this will change anything for Google with regards to ads. At most you can argue that this is "step 1" in a larger plan to eventually bypass these adblockers or something, which I'll totally buy, but V3 has gotten better at blocking ads over time, not worse.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      From Google's point of view, they generally use "How many people are running adblockers" as just another quality signal on whether the ads are actually working as intended. Google doesn't really care if a little under half the users on the web block them.
    - antonok 4y ago
      > V3 has gotten better at blocking ads over time, not worse. That may be true, but it's still significantly limited compared to MV2. And at the current rate, that is unlikely to change by the time Manifest V2 support is removed. What's important is that MV3 adblocker developers no longer have full control over how they're allowed to modify pages. Given how adversarial the relationship between adblockers and websites is, that lack of control will be exploited almost immediately.
      - staticassertion 4y ago
        Yeah, so I'm against V3 mostly because I think that the pros of developers having power outweigh the cons of potential malicious extensions. I personally would have preferred rethinking a few other areas first: 1. Auditability - both in terms of the code and the behaviors 2. Improved permissions - could we have split WebRequest up? 3. Improved performance - could we have leveraged new APIs, like the declarative API, for improved performance? What about compiling to wasm? Or new APIs? 4. Capabilities/ Sandboxing - Within an extension could we slice out capabilities? 5. Improved UX around permissions. Surfacing the permissions and performance implications of extensions would be worth exploring and aided by any ability to slice up permissions more. Chrome could even create 'sanctioned' extensions that wouldn't trigger scary popups in order to make it that much clearer when something is scary - something like "if you publish your extension such that it is digitally signed, you use 2FA or whatever, you have good standing with us, blah blah blah, we will waive that popup". IIRC Firefox did this to lower their review burden, NoScript was one of the ones on the list I think, but that would have been many years ago and I don't know if it has changed since. That said, I don't think V3 is the end of the world. I would have preferred the other options, and I bet some people at Google explored them too and know much more about why they are/aren't viable, but I'm OK with V3. I don't really think that Google Adsense is driving this decision at all nor do I expect it to benefit them, at least not in the short/medium term.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Are they? I see ad blocker ads on YouTube all the time. Presumably google would block them if they were a real threat.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      If adblockers can afford to pay for ads, that means they have a business model, and the one and only adblocker business model is "pay to play", where companies pay adblockers to allow their ads through.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
        Nagware/scareware (pushing subscriptions on users, possibly with misleading claims) is also a business model I've seen used. I honestly don't mind the "pay to play" model. It's a way to establish a healthy ad ecosystem. Ad blockers define what they consider acceptable, and collect money. They have an incentive to find a reasonable balance: The less restrictive they are, the more money they make, but the second they go over the line, users will jump to another ad blocker that's more restrictive. I've intentionally and knowingly tolerated the "acceptable ads" from ABP until they started allowing the Outbrain/Taboola chumboxes. (There even were two versions of those, the normal one full of bright colors, tits and disgusting disease images, and a slightly toned down one for the "acceptable ads" users!) Since those ads rely on making you psychologically uncomfortable (feeling like you're missing out) unless you engage with their worthless, misleading and unsatisfactory clickbait content, they're 100% unacceptable to me, and ABP lost a user. If uBlock Origin offered an ad whitelist that only allows ad networks that a) serve only their own JavaScript, no third party crap b) only serve static text and re-encoded static, non-animated images c) have some meaningfully enforced editorial standards, d) have some privacy oversight and follow tracking opt-outs, I would definitely give it a chance. I don't mind supporting web sites and content creators, and I don't mind seeing relevant ads (which can usually be targeted based on the content I'm looking at just fine). I do mind having my fan try to reach escape velocity due to crappy JS, getting served malware and exploits, random "this site is trying to play DRM protected video" popups indicating that something is trying to do fingerprinting, 300 different companies getting my browsing data and 20 of them executing code in my browser (code that they haven't written themselves but have been handed by an intermediary of an intermediary), and last but not least graphic images of diseased body parts. Solve these problems, and I won't need to use an ad blocker. Don't solve these problems, and I will put protecting myself over your revenue. I also mind having to constantly explain to my parents why the new cool product or shop they saw an ad for is an utter scam, and how exactly they'll lose money if they fall for it. I also mind having to constantly scrape crapware and malware from my friends' and relatives' computers, _including Chromebooks_. As long as ads lead to that, I have no choice but to deploy ad blockers.
  - titaniczero 4y ago
    > If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power, because the alternative is the death of their entire business model and the end of the company) Even easier, they would just sabotage their own web versions (like reddit with mobile.reddit.com) to force people to use the app versions where tracking/ads is harder to block. The web is the best platform for us, the users, and the way to go - good sandbox, transparent, customizable. We should fight tooth and nail to preserve it.
  - causi 4y ago
    We've been living in a golden age for some time now. We browse the clean, crisp web for free and the ignorant "plebs" pay our way by living in an ad-riddled nightmare.
  - bambax 4y ago
    They would have to be pretty stealth and smooth to pull this off because that kind of behavior would attract even more scrutiny from regulators. They don't operate in a vacuum.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  The question is: how many people will miss manifest v2 options. I'm using adblocker written by myself. It's pretty primitive, it uses declarative blocking by URLs and optionally inserts some CSS and JS to selected websites. So far I was able to solve all my ads issues with this approach.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    I'm a little surprised Google hasn't seen more pushback from enterprise. I'd expect the weirdest uses of broad permissions to be on intranets, where the inherent risks of such breadth can be mitigated by controlling the accessed data itself. I'm comparing the situation to one of the things that kept Flash on life support for so long: it had been used to build key internal and external tools for fortune-500 companies that they needed time to replace. That Google hasn't seen such pushback suggests to me that corps writing their own extensions for internal use never caught on like Flash did.
    - staticassertion 4y ago
      That's an interesting point, but I think it may also speak to the fact that v3 isn't that restrictive other than for very specific use cases.
    - antonok 4y ago
      Google actually is allowing MV2 extensions to work under enterprise policy for much longer than anyone else: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/
- ainar-g 4y ago
  > How many people use adblockers? About 43 %, according to [1]. > Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome […] No. Google Chrome is pretty much in the same position as Internet Explorer used to be. It's the default browser in the most popular mobile OS and the first thing people install on their PC (or get it installed by someone else). Mozilla can barely play catch-up with all the complex web standards pushed by Goog&co., to say nothing about adding killer features that could bring enough users back from Chrome. Modern web browsers are rapidly approaching the YouTube territory. That is, becoming a technology so complex that only a multibillion-dollar conglomerate can really maintain it without losing money. [1]: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
  - revlolz 4y ago
    The 43% number is huge imo. A large quantity of devices either cannot install adblock (or cannot do so easily) such as "smart" tvs. Even to install on Android Firefox it took more effort than I expected.
    - connicpu 4y ago
      It seems the actual number is 43% of those surveyed use an ad blocking tool at least once a month, so a lot of those may only have their ad blocker installed on their PC, plus the bias that comes from only having the answers of those who responded to the survey
      - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
        Still that’s a fairly overwhelming number of people who feel strongly enough about the topic to install a plug-in. I’m sure there’s a portion of ‘no’ responses that are not aware of what adblockers are or do
  - josefx 4y ago
    > Mozilla can barely play catch-up with all the complex web standards pushed by Goog&co. To be fair they also spend a lot of resources on dreaming up their own shit tier solutions. Like the time Google proposed federated learning of cohorts, which was universally shot down by critics. Mozilla saw that as a sign and jumped into bed with Meta to create their own version of it. Because who could think about user privacy without immediately thinking of Meta? It is almost as if Mozillas leadership wants to prove that Mozilla is a waste of money.
- LelouBil 4y ago
  Personally,that will be the motivation I needed to switch to Firefox on my main computer. So... thanks Google I guess ?
- redox99 4y ago
  It really depends on the platform and target audience. For example for a website I manage that targets PC gamers, 80-90% desktop users use adblockers. On mobile however the majority settles for chrome (which intentionally doesn't support extensions to avoid adblockers), therefore most mobile users don't have adblockers.
driverdan 4y ago
If you're still using Chrome now is the time to switch to Firefox. This is an interesting experiment but the only solution is to stop using Chrome.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Firefox FTW
- tapoxi 4y ago
  You can also use Brave, which implements its own native adblocker and isn't impacted by Manifest v3.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    Do you mean that particular adblocker is not impacted or is Brave going to maintain support for the APIs dropped by Manifest v3?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bkallus 4y ago
      Both. "We will continue to support Manifest v2 to the extent that we can" "Brave's adblocker (Brave Shields) is not an extension, and is natively implemented. So, it will be totally unaffected." Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/rdab12/how_will_manifest_v3_affect_adblocking_on_brave/ https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/rdab12/how_w...
    - nightpool 4y ago
      Brave has committed to retaining support for all of the APIs that were removed by Manifest v3 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059#issuecomment-992720832 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059#issuecom... (There are other mentions in the wiki and other places)
    - antonok 4y ago
Raed667 4y ago
I think uBlock Origin providing a manifest-v3 compatible extension would be a net negative for the community. As it will help more people accept the status-quo and accept a mediocre state of ad blocking, instead of switching to Firefox
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  What community? "People who use chrome"? Because that community couldn't care less about which version of manifest is the current version, and what its restrictions are. If they did, they'd already not be using Chrome anymore.
- Tenoke 4y ago
  If uBlock doesn't provide a compatible extension or if their extension is worse than possible I'd likely just switch to the best alternative which will pop-up. I imagine most users will do the same.
  - redox99 4y ago
    Why are you willing to accept an inferior adblocker, instead of switching to another browser that maintains support for fully featured adblockers?
    - comex 4y ago
      Until recently, Firefox was an inferior browser, at least on macOS where it did a bad job of fitting native UI conventions, had a much less secure sandbox than Chrome, and was also behind in performance. Seems like things have improved on all of those fronts, so perhaps it's time to take another look. (That said, I've only ever used Chrome as a secondary browser for certain sites – my current primary one is Orion – so I have less incentive to experiment.)
    - Tenoke 4y ago
      I've had multiple (typically but not always google) sites not work as well with firefox, as well as minor things like more captchas. I also don't want to worry and keep checking if my subpar performance on a site is because Google, a lazy dev or a lib didn't optimize for FF. Further, I just have a bunch of settings, extensions, saved password, history etc. already setup in Chrome.
blibble 4y ago
this is actually a clever way of hurting Google if gorhill simply refused to release UBO for manifest V3 then someone would, and release something similar without the negative branding (plus eyeo crapware "ad blocking" extensions would gain market share) this way the users are being reminded that on Google's platform you're getting an inferior blocker
- ryeights 4y ago
  Great point! Initially I thought it would be wrong to kowtow to Google by releasing a MV3-compliant version, but I think you’re more correct.
- btown 4y ago
  It's also an interesting magnet for traditional media - imagine if CNN ran a lede "Ad blockers. You may use them, you may not, but Google is on the warpath against them. Here's the developer of the popular uBlock Origin Minus describing why his software suddenly has that odd name." Sadly, this is likely not to happen, as every newsroom relies on online ad clicks for a revenue stream...
  - puffoflogic 4y ago
    Wait, are you suggesting that technologies that may be bad for news media profits get unfavorable coverage?
nightpool 4y ago
Just so I understand correctly: This version removes *all* of the features that read or modify a user's data, so as to abide by the ""stated intent"" of MV3, rather than taking full advantage of all of the actual MV3 APIs? For example, this commit removes the "scriplet injection" and cosmetic filtering features, which AFAIK work perfectly fine on MV3? if broad "read/modify data" permission is to be used, than there is not much point for an MV3 version over MV2, just use the MV2 version if you want to benefit all the features which can't be implemented without broad "read/modify data" permission. Huh? But ... the "read/modify data" permission isn't getting removed by MV3? I don't understand how this follows. This is like saying "Google implemented all of the same things we could do in MV2 in MV3, so we went ahead and removed all of the features anyway". I don't see any way to interpret this as anything except cutting off your own nose to spite the face of Google. It certainly doesn't seem to be a good faith attempt to reproduce the features of uBlock within the new technical framework of MV3.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Google is an ad company. The logical strategy is embrace extend extinguish ad blocking. If your extension is getting attacked and stripped of functionality minimal investment in keeping it working likely to continue to work the longest is logical
  - nightpool 4y ago
    Many people have responded to this argument across many different threads, but just to reiterate: this is just the exact opposite of true. Google's ads are very, very easy to block, and you could do it with a one-line chrome extension. The vast majority of complexity in ad blockers is required for other ads that live outside of Google's ecosystem. If you really believed that Google was making their MV3 changes based on their business goals for their ads team (a pretty ludicrous idea when you think about how big Google is and how far separated the ads department and extensions teams are), then the inescapable conclusion is that Google should be supporting ad blockers themselves, to hurt the smaller companies that threaten their monopoly by trying to work around ad blockers.
horsawlarway 4y ago
I approve (of both the release and the name). I see plenty of folks in here lamenting this release at all - in the hopes that the lack of it will push folks to Firefox. It won't. Those who care about this are already on Firefox, and frankly - Firefox isn't going to be the answer here (to be clear, this is opinion). I'm also not thrilled at manifest v3, although for very different reasons than the adblocking limitations - I do lots of extension development, and I think the service worker approach taken is a bad mistake, forcing a distributed consensus model onto extensions without understanding the limitations that model imposes given how often extensions span multiple js contexts (across tabs/frames/content_scripts/windows/etc). Frankly - the environment is also still riddled with bugs... everything from docs that are wrong, to serious issues like a service worker not activating on simple, basic, required events (like chrome.action.onClicked, which is literally about as basic as it gets for extensions). Overall - my first impression of the manifest v3 upgrade was fairly neutral (it's not really solving any of my pain points, and it requires a lot of changes to support - but it seemed functional). My opinion after porting several large extension projects to the space is... bad. It's a bad set of changes as implemented in chromium right now.
- clumsysmurf 4y ago
  > I do lots of extension development Off topic, but since you seem experienced at this, do you recommend any resources for extension development for someone that's beginning from scratch with no experience in this area?
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    I would still recommend the docs from MDN and Google. If you're relatively familiar with web development in general - you can just peruse the APIs that are available for extensions Chromium based: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ Or for Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Then hit the MDN "My first extension page" to get a mostly functional manifest file: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Your_first_WebExtension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Get familiar with `about:debugging` in firefox, and `chrome://extensions` in chrome - you'll need them to load your test extensions. Finally - It's very worth it to read and understand the "core concepts" as outlined here, starting with the content_scripts: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/content_scripts/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/content_scr...
krono 4y ago
Tangent but let's stop referring to it as a mere ad blocker, it's a content blocker - it's even a very useful and impactful accessibility tool in that capacity. ADHD sucks and I have a lot to thank to these types of tools for acting as my "crutches" that allowed me get where I am today.
- ChemicalScum 4y ago
  No.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - yamazakiwi 4y ago
- notriddle 4y ago
  I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as an ad blocker, is in fact, a content/ad blocker, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, a content plus ad blocker. Ad blockers are not an extension unto themselves, but rather another downloadable block list for a fully functioning user agent made useful by the extension, browser chrome, and vital web engine components comprising a full user agent content customization system, which, in this case, can be customized using the ABP blocklist syntax. Many computer users run a modified version of a content blocker every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of the content blocker which is widely used today is often called an ad blocker, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically a generic content blocker with a particularly popular block list preloaded.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    For the uninitiated: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection
bot41 4y ago
What is "Manifest v3"?
- swat535 4y ago
  see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173
- loxias 4y ago
  I was wondering the same. I think it's a new standard for how Chrome extensions work? I hope it doesn't affect FF users, and uBlock Origin will continue to function same as it always has.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Why hope? If a market majority product does something, so does the rest of the market. Especially now that Firefox has like 3% market share. Fresh info regarding mv3 & FF: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...
Havoc 4y ago
That naming convention is an absolute stroke of genius. Not enough to get sued, but enough to convey to millions that they are using an intentionally crippled product.
s-video 4y ago
No cosmetic filtering might still tip me over into switching to Firefox.
- nightpool 4y ago
  Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly what the removal was designed to do—nothing about MV3 impacts cosmetic filtering in any way, and it seems to have been removed by the developer purely out of a sense of stubborn pique.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    Judging by their comments now, the point is to show that the stated reasons for crippling MV3 are invalid - because the technology that allows for cosmetic filtering undermines those goals. However, if you do care about those goals, you can use Minus, which applies further restrictions in line with the stated reasons.
- jacooper 4y ago
  There is also Brave.
jrm4 4y ago
Hackers are undefeated. This is why I became a tech person. Incredibly inspiring.
jacooper 4y ago
There is Also Brave, which has Brave shields as a part of the browser, so its not limited by any extension API. While still using the best engine out there, chromium.
cyphar 4y ago
Is there a plan to make the existing Chrome extension update to this (somewhat neutered) version automatically when the time comes for v2 deprecation (which appears to be in January 2023 for non-enterprise Chrome users)? I ask because I have provided my elderly relatives with Chromebooks and if the built-in adblocker is going to stop working I'll need to remote desktop to their machines (which requires a fairly-complicated-for-them dance with generating one-time codes) in order to install this other version when it's released... (I personally use Firefox but I didn't want to give them a regular Windows laptop because they'd have to re-learn far too many things -- the old laptops were Windows XP -- and ChromeOS is both harder to break and easier to recover.)
Stamp01 4y ago
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
EbNar 4y ago
BuckRogers 4y ago
I tested this against AdGuard MV3 on Edge, and while I will wait for 1.0 releases of both, so far, AdGuard MV3 is trouncing uBO Minus. It's doing cosmetic filtering, uBO is not. Neither seem to be slowing down the browser in a noticeable way. Eager to see 1.0 benchmark results. You also get some options to adjust in AdGuard. uBO Minus (hell of a name), nothing. I would suggest to the author of uBlock Origin to change attitudes towards the MV3 extension as even Mozilla said MV2 was sticking around "for now". This work is inevitable. Other options would be to partner with a browser like Brave to take over their adblocking development, or, create a system-wide blocking solution. Microsoft may be worth engaging with as they have no native adblocker, but given gorhill's clear purism about profits and Microsoft that doesn't seem likely. Someone else has to publish uBlock Origin for him on the Edge Add-ons store. Still a bit exciting, as even Mozilla will turn off MV2 at a point. No reason to resist this. Once the uBlock Origin guys figure this out, we'll get a good race between it and AdGuard. So far, AdGuard is the clear winner.
zerof1l 4y ago
The Chromium - a thing on which Google Chrome is based - is open source. I imagine someone could make a version of it where you'd get most of the Google Chrome features but be able to give elevated access to certain extensions like ad-blockers to the network and requests.

339 points by antonok 4y ago

gapo 4y ago

From the commit msg: At this point I consider being permission-less the limiting factor: if broad "read/modify data" permission is to be used, than there is not much point for an MV3 version over MV2, just use the MV2 version if you want to benefit all the features which can't be implemented without broad "read/modify data" permission.

fezfight 4y ago

How many people use adblockers? Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome to build a community around an open alternative, like we did when we abandoned IE for Firefox all those years ago?

kibwen 4y ago
Adblockers are an existential threat to Google. If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power, because the alternative is the death of their entire business model and the end of the company). Even if you can play cat-and-mouse games to get around the adblocker-blocking, the inconvenience of that alone would be enough to shift most non-power-users back onto Chrome.
- staticassertion 4y ago
  Adblockers might be an existential threat to Google, but MV3 won't change anything for Google. Google AdSense ads will almost certainly still get blocked, they're not hard to block/ obfuscated. I really doubt this will change anything for Google with regards to ads. At most you can argue that this is "step 1" in a larger plan to eventually bypass these adblockers or something, which I'll totally buy, but V3 has gotten better at blocking ads over time, not worse.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    From Google's point of view, they generally use "How many people are running adblockers" as just another quality signal on whether the ads are actually working as intended. Google doesn't really care if a little under half the users on the web block them.
  - antonok 4y ago
    > V3 has gotten better at blocking ads over time, not worse. That may be true, but it's still significantly limited compared to MV2. And at the current rate, that is unlikely to change by the time Manifest V2 support is removed. What's important is that MV3 adblocker developers no longer have full control over how they're allowed to modify pages. Given how adversarial the relationship between adblockers and websites is, that lack of control will be exploited almost immediately.
    - staticassertion 4y ago
      Yeah, so I'm against V3 mostly because I think that the pros of developers having power outweigh the cons of potential malicious extensions. I personally would have preferred rethinking a few other areas first: 1. Auditability - both in terms of the code and the behaviors 2. Improved permissions - could we have split WebRequest up? 3. Improved performance - could we have leveraged new APIs, like the declarative API, for improved performance? What about compiling to wasm? Or new APIs? 4. Capabilities/ Sandboxing - Within an extension could we slice out capabilities? 5. Improved UX around permissions. Surfacing the permissions and performance implications of extensions would be worth exploring and aided by any ability to slice up permissions more. Chrome could even create 'sanctioned' extensions that wouldn't trigger scary popups in order to make it that much clearer when something is scary - something like "if you publish your extension such that it is digitally signed, you use 2FA or whatever, you have good standing with us, blah blah blah, we will waive that popup". IIRC Firefox did this to lower their review burden, NoScript was one of the ones on the list I think, but that would have been many years ago and I don't know if it has changed since. That said, I don't think V3 is the end of the world. I would have preferred the other options, and I bet some people at Google explored them too and know much more about why they are/aren't viable, but I'm OK with V3. I don't really think that Google Adsense is driving this decision at all nor do I expect it to benefit them, at least not in the short/medium term.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Are they? I see ad blocker ads on YouTube all the time. Presumably google would block them if they were a real threat.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    If adblockers can afford to pay for ads, that means they have a business model, and the one and only adblocker business model is "pay to play", where companies pay adblockers to allow their ads through.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      Nagware/scareware (pushing subscriptions on users, possibly with misleading claims) is also a business model I've seen used. I honestly don't mind the "pay to play" model. It's a way to establish a healthy ad ecosystem. Ad blockers define what they consider acceptable, and collect money. They have an incentive to find a reasonable balance: The less restrictive they are, the more money they make, but the second they go over the line, users will jump to another ad blocker that's more restrictive. I've intentionally and knowingly tolerated the "acceptable ads" from ABP until they started allowing the Outbrain/Taboola chumboxes. (There even were two versions of those, the normal one full of bright colors, tits and disgusting disease images, and a slightly toned down one for the "acceptable ads" users!) Since those ads rely on making you psychologically uncomfortable (feeling like you're missing out) unless you engage with their worthless, misleading and unsatisfactory clickbait content, they're 100% unacceptable to me, and ABP lost a user. If uBlock Origin offered an ad whitelist that only allows ad networks that a) serve only their own JavaScript, no third party crap b) only serve static text and re-encoded static, non-animated images c) have some meaningfully enforced editorial standards, d) have some privacy oversight and follow tracking opt-outs, I would definitely give it a chance. I don't mind supporting web sites and content creators, and I don't mind seeing relevant ads (which can usually be targeted based on the content I'm looking at just fine). I do mind having my fan try to reach escape velocity due to crappy JS, getting served malware and exploits, random "this site is trying to play DRM protected video" popups indicating that something is trying to do fingerprinting, 300 different companies getting my browsing data and 20 of them executing code in my browser (code that they haven't written themselves but have been handed by an intermediary of an intermediary), and last but not least graphic images of diseased body parts. Solve these problems, and I won't need to use an ad blocker. Don't solve these problems, and I will put protecting myself over your revenue. I also mind having to constantly explain to my parents why the new cool product or shop they saw an ad for is an utter scam, and how exactly they'll lose money if they fall for it. I also mind having to constantly scrape crapware and malware from my friends' and relatives' computers, _including Chromebooks_. As long as ads lead to that, I have no choice but to deploy ad blockers.
- titaniczero 4y ago
  > If any appreciable percentage of the population started using a browser that allowed adblockers, Google (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit, and...) would do everything within their power to block that browser from all the web properties they control (this is not an exaggeration: everything within their power, because the alternative is the death of their entire business model and the end of the company) Even easier, they would just sabotage their own web versions (like reddit with mobile.reddit.com) to force people to use the app versions where tracking/ads is harder to block. The web is the best platform for us, the users, and the way to go - good sandbox, transparent, customizable. We should fight tooth and nail to preserve it.
- causi 4y ago
  We've been living in a golden age for some time now. We browse the clean, crisp web for free and the ignorant "plebs" pay our way by living in an ad-riddled nightmare.
- bambax 4y ago
  They would have to be pretty stealth and smooth to pull this off because that kind of behavior would attract even more scrutiny from regulators. They don't operate in a vacuum.
vbezhenar 4y ago
The question is: how many people will miss manifest v2 options. I'm using adblocker written by myself. It's pretty primitive, it uses declarative blocking by URLs and optionally inserts some CSS and JS to selected websites. So far I was able to solve all my ads issues with this approach.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I'm a little surprised Google hasn't seen more pushback from enterprise. I'd expect the weirdest uses of broad permissions to be on intranets, where the inherent risks of such breadth can be mitigated by controlling the accessed data itself. I'm comparing the situation to one of the things that kept Flash on life support for so long: it had been used to build key internal and external tools for fortune-500 companies that they needed time to replace. That Google hasn't seen such pushback suggests to me that corps writing their own extensions for internal use never caught on like Flash did.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    That's an interesting point, but I think it may also speak to the fact that v3 isn't that restrictive other than for very specific use cases.
  - antonok 4y ago
    Google actually is allowing MV2 extensions to work under enterprise policy for much longer than anyone else: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset/
ainar-g 4y ago
> How many people use adblockers? About 43 %, according to [1]. > Is there any chance manifest v3 will lead to enough users abandoning Googles Chrome […] No. Google Chrome is pretty much in the same position as Internet Explorer used to be. It's the default browser in the most popular mobile OS and the first thing people install on their PC (or get it installed by someone else). Mozilla can barely play catch-up with all the complex web standards pushed by Goog&co., to say nothing about adding killer features that could bring enough users back from Chrome. Modern web browsers are rapidly approaching the YouTube territory. That is, becoming a technology so complex that only a multibillion-dollar conglomerate can really maintain it without losing money. [1]: https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
- revlolz 4y ago
  The 43% number is huge imo. A large quantity of devices either cannot install adblock (or cannot do so easily) such as "smart" tvs. Even to install on Android Firefox it took more effort than I expected.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    It seems the actual number is 43% of those surveyed use an ad blocking tool at least once a month, so a lot of those may only have their ad blocker installed on their PC, plus the bias that comes from only having the answers of those who responded to the survey
    - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
      Still that’s a fairly overwhelming number of people who feel strongly enough about the topic to install a plug-in. I’m sure there’s a portion of ‘no’ responses that are not aware of what adblockers are or do
- josefx 4y ago
  > Mozilla can barely play catch-up with all the complex web standards pushed by Goog&co. To be fair they also spend a lot of resources on dreaming up their own shit tier solutions. Like the time Google proposed federated learning of cohorts, which was universally shot down by critics. Mozilla saw that as a sign and jumped into bed with Meta to create their own version of it. Because who could think about user privacy without immediately thinking of Meta? It is almost as if Mozillas leadership wants to prove that Mozilla is a waste of money.
LelouBil 4y ago
Personally,that will be the motivation I needed to switch to Firefox on my main computer. So... thanks Google I guess ?
redox99 4y ago
It really depends on the platform and target audience. For example for a website I manage that targets PC gamers, 80-90% desktop users use adblockers. On mobile however the majority settles for chrome (which intentionally doesn't support extensions to avoid adblockers), therefore most mobile users don't have adblockers.

driverdan 4y ago

If you're still using Chrome now is the time to switch to Firefox. This is an interesting experiment but the only solution is to stop using Chrome.

Melatonic 4y ago
Firefox FTW
tapoxi 4y ago
You can also use Brave, which implements its own native adblocker and isn't impacted by Manifest v3.
- contravariant 4y ago
  Do you mean that particular adblocker is not impacted or is Brave going to maintain support for the APIs dropped by Manifest v3?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bkallus 4y ago
    Both. "We will continue to support Manifest v2 to the extent that we can" "Brave's adblocker (Brave Shields) is not an extension, and is natively implemented. So, it will be totally unaffected." Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/rdab12/how_will_manifest_v3_affect_adblocking_on_brave/ https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/rdab12/how_w...
  - nightpool 4y ago
    Brave has committed to retaining support for all of the APIs that were removed by Manifest v3 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059#issuecomment-992720832 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/20059#issuecom... (There are other mentions in the wiki and other places)
  - antonok 4y ago

Raed667 4y ago

I think uBlock Origin providing a manifest-v3 compatible extension would be a net negative for the community. As it will help more people accept the status-quo and accept a mediocre state of ad blocking, instead of switching to Firefox

TheRealPomax 4y ago
What community? "People who use chrome"? Because that community couldn't care less about which version of manifest is the current version, and what its restrictions are. If they did, they'd already not be using Chrome anymore.
Tenoke 4y ago
If uBlock doesn't provide a compatible extension or if their extension is worse than possible I'd likely just switch to the best alternative which will pop-up. I imagine most users will do the same.
- redox99 4y ago
  Why are you willing to accept an inferior adblocker, instead of switching to another browser that maintains support for fully featured adblockers?
  - comex 4y ago
    Until recently, Firefox was an inferior browser, at least on macOS where it did a bad job of fitting native UI conventions, had a much less secure sandbox than Chrome, and was also behind in performance. Seems like things have improved on all of those fronts, so perhaps it's time to take another look. (That said, I've only ever used Chrome as a secondary browser for certain sites – my current primary one is Orion – so I have less incentive to experiment.)
  - Tenoke 4y ago
    I've had multiple (typically but not always google) sites not work as well with firefox, as well as minor things like more captchas. I also don't want to worry and keep checking if my subpar performance on a site is because Google, a lazy dev or a lib didn't optimize for FF. Further, I just have a bunch of settings, extensions, saved password, history etc. already setup in Chrome.

blibble 4y ago

this is actually a clever way of hurting Google if gorhill simply refused to release UBO for manifest V3 then someone would, and release something similar without the negative branding (plus eyeo crapware "ad blocking" extensions would gain market share) this way the users are being reminded that on Google's platform you're getting an inferior blocker

ryeights 4y ago
Great point! Initially I thought it would be wrong to kowtow to Google by releasing a MV3-compliant version, but I think you’re more correct.
btown 4y ago
It's also an interesting magnet for traditional media - imagine if CNN ran a lede "Ad blockers. You may use them, you may not, but Google is on the warpath against them. Here's the developer of the popular uBlock Origin Minus describing why his software suddenly has that odd name." Sadly, this is likely not to happen, as every newsroom relies on online ad clicks for a revenue stream...
- puffoflogic 4y ago
  Wait, are you suggesting that technologies that may be bad for news media profits get unfavorable coverage?

nightpool 4y ago

Just so I understand correctly: This version removes *all* of the features that read or modify a user's data, so as to abide by the ""stated intent"" of MV3, rather than taking full advantage of all of the actual MV3 APIs? For example, this commit removes the "scriplet injection" and cosmetic filtering features, which AFAIK work perfectly fine on MV3? if broad "read/modify data" permission is to be used, than there is not much point for an MV3 version over MV2, just use the MV2 version if you want to benefit all the features which can't be implemented without broad "read/modify data" permission. Huh? But ... the "read/modify data" permission isn't getting removed by MV3? I don't understand how this follows. This is like saying "Google implemented all of the same things we could do in MV2 in MV3, so we went ahead and removed all of the features anyway". I don't see any way to interpret this as anything except cutting off your own nose to spite the face of Google. It certainly doesn't seem to be a good faith attempt to reproduce the features of uBlock within the new technical framework of MV3.

michaelmrose 4y ago
Google is an ad company. The logical strategy is embrace extend extinguish ad blocking. If your extension is getting attacked and stripped of functionality minimal investment in keeping it working likely to continue to work the longest is logical
- nightpool 4y ago
  Many people have responded to this argument across many different threads, but just to reiterate: this is just the exact opposite of true. Google's ads are very, very easy to block, and you could do it with a one-line chrome extension. The vast majority of complexity in ad blockers is required for other ads that live outside of Google's ecosystem. If you really believed that Google was making their MV3 changes based on their business goals for their ads team (a pretty ludicrous idea when you think about how big Google is and how far separated the ads department and extensions teams are), then the inescapable conclusion is that Google should be supporting ad blockers themselves, to hurt the smaller companies that threaten their monopoly by trying to work around ad blockers.

horsawlarway 4y ago

I approve (of both the release and the name). I see plenty of folks in here lamenting this release at all - in the hopes that the lack of it will push folks to Firefox. It won't. Those who care about this are already on Firefox, and frankly - Firefox isn't going to be the answer here (to be clear, this is opinion). I'm also not thrilled at manifest v3, although for very different reasons than the adblocking limitations - I do lots of extension development, and I think the service worker approach taken is a bad mistake, forcing a distributed consensus model onto extensions without understanding the limitations that model imposes given how often extensions span multiple js contexts (across tabs/frames/content_scripts/windows/etc). Frankly - the environment is also still riddled with bugs... everything from docs that are wrong, to serious issues like a service worker not activating on simple, basic, required events (like chrome.action.onClicked, which is literally about as basic as it gets for extensions). Overall - my first impression of the manifest v3 upgrade was fairly neutral (it's not really solving any of my pain points, and it requires a lot of changes to support - but it seemed functional). My opinion after porting several large extension projects to the space is... bad. It's a bad set of changes as implemented in chromium right now.

clumsysmurf 4y ago
> I do lots of extension development Off topic, but since you seem experienced at this, do you recommend any resources for extension development for someone that's beginning from scratch with no experience in this area?
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  I would still recommend the docs from MDN and Google. If you're relatively familiar with web development in general - you can just peruse the APIs that are available for extensions Chromium based: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/ Or for Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Then hit the MDN "My first extension page" to get a mostly functional manifest file: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Your_first_WebExtension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Get familiar with `about:debugging` in firefox, and `chrome://extensions` in chrome - you'll need them to load your test extensions. Finally - It's very worth it to read and understand the "core concepts" as outlined here, starting with the content_scripts: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/content_scripts/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/content_scr...

krono 4y ago

Tangent but let's stop referring to it as a mere ad blocker, it's a content blocker - it's even a very useful and impactful accessibility tool in that capacity. ADHD sucks and I have a lot to thank to these types of tools for acting as my "crutches" that allowed me get where I am today.

ChemicalScum 4y ago
No.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - yamazakiwi 4y ago
notriddle 4y ago
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as an ad blocker, is in fact, a content/ad blocker, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, a content plus ad blocker. Ad blockers are not an extension unto themselves, but rather another downloadable block list for a fully functioning user agent made useful by the extension, browser chrome, and vital web engine components comprising a full user agent content customization system, which, in this case, can be customized using the ABP blocklist syntax. Many computer users run a modified version of a content blocker every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of the content blocker which is widely used today is often called an ad blocker, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically a generic content blocker with a particularly popular block list preloaded.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  For the uninitiated: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection

bot41 4y ago

What is "Manifest v3"?

swat535 4y ago
see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173
loxias 4y ago
I was wondering the same. I think it's a new standard for how Chrome extensions work? I hope it doesn't affect FF users, and uBlock Origin will continue to function same as it always has.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Why hope? If a market majority product does something, so does the rest of the market. Especially now that Firefox has like 3% market share. Fresh info regarding mv3 & FF: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-firefox-recap-next-steps/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2022/05/18/manifest-v3-in-fi...

Havoc 4y ago

That naming convention is an absolute stroke of genius. Not enough to get sued, but enough to convey to millions that they are using an intentionally crippled product.

s-video 4y ago

No cosmetic filtering might still tip me over into switching to Firefox.

nightpool 4y ago
Which, as far as I can tell, is exactly what the removal was designed to do—nothing about MV3 impacts cosmetic filtering in any way, and it seems to have been removed by the developer purely out of a sense of stubborn pique.
- Vinnl 4y ago
  Judging by their comments now, the point is to show that the stated reasons for crippling MV3 are invalid - because the technology that allows for cosmetic filtering undermines those goals. However, if you do care about those goals, you can use Minus, which applies further restrictions in line with the stated reasons.
jacooper 4y ago
There is also Brave.

jrm4 4y ago

Hackers are undefeated. This is why I became a tech person. Incredibly inspiring.

jacooper 4y ago

There is Also Brave, which has Brave shields as a part of the browser, so its not limited by any extension API. While still using the best engine out there, chromium.

cyphar 4y ago

Is there a plan to make the existing Chrome extension update to this (somewhat neutered) version automatically when the time comes for v2 deprecation (which appears to be in January 2023 for non-enterprise Chrome users)? I ask because I have provided my elderly relatives with Chromebooks and if the built-in adblocker is going to stop working I'll need to remote desktop to their machines (which requires a fairly-complicated-for-them dance with generating one-time codes) in order to install this other version when it's released... (I personally use Firefox but I didn't want to give them a regular Windows laptop because they'd have to re-learn far too many things -- the old laptops were Windows XP -- and ChromeOS is both harder to break and easier to recover.)

Stamp01 4y ago

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

EbNar 4y ago

BuckRogers 4y ago

I tested this against AdGuard MV3 on Edge, and while I will wait for 1.0 releases of both, so far, AdGuard MV3 is trouncing uBO Minus. It's doing cosmetic filtering, uBO is not. Neither seem to be slowing down the browser in a noticeable way. Eager to see 1.0 benchmark results. You also get some options to adjust in AdGuard. uBO Minus (hell of a name), nothing. I would suggest to the author of uBlock Origin to change attitudes towards the MV3 extension as even Mozilla said MV2 was sticking around "for now". This work is inevitable. Other options would be to partner with a browser like Brave to take over their adblocking development, or, create a system-wide blocking solution. Microsoft may be worth engaging with as they have no native adblocker, but given gorhill's clear purism about profits and Microsoft that doesn't seem likely. Someone else has to publish uBlock Origin for him on the Edge Add-ons store. Still a bit exciting, as even Mozilla will turn off MV2 at a point. No reason to resist this. Once the uBlock Origin guys figure this out, we'll get a good race between it and AdGuard. So far, AdGuard is the clear winner.

zerof1l 4y ago

The Chromium - a thing on which Google Chrome is based - is open source. I imagine someone could make a version of it where you'd get most of the Google Chrome features but be able to give elevated access to certain extensions like ad-blockers to the network and requests.