5 ms·

In June 2024, ad blockers such as uBlock Origin will be disabled in Chrome 127

143 points by consumer451 3y ago

leke 3y ago
Does this affect chrome based browsers like Brave?
- xinayder 3y ago
  yes it does, since Manifest v3 is being rolled out on Chromium (which Chrome is based on). unless Brave and other forks (like Cromite, Vanadium, Ungoogled-Chromium) manage to disable MV3, which I think Google will make it impossible to do so, they are affected by this change. Switch to Firefox.
  - bambax 3y ago
    This isn't true. I'm not a Brave user (I use FF), but Brave have said that 1/ they have adblocking built-in [0] 2/ they will continue to support Manifest V2 indefinitely, esp. so that uBlock Origin continues to work [1] That doesn't mean uBlock will continue to exist... If it can't be installed on Chrome it's possible the sole dev will lose motivation (although he has already made a V3 version of the extension). [0] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822798299729925 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822798299729925 [1] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822799700541446 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822799700541446
    - rchaud 3y ago
      Ublock Origin is the only one that can be trusted. I use Brave on mobile and it's adblocker + JS toggle switch work great, but I don't fully trust them on ads considering how they've tried to push crypto BAT token stuff in the past.
      - pg5 3y ago
        I use Firefox on mobile with Ublock origin installed, works perfectly for me
  - wmitty 3y ago
    Brave has written their own (open source) adblock engine (in rust) that is directly integrated into the browser (ie. not an extension, so is not affected by Manifest V3). https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/
sillysaurusx 3y ago
Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?) Between this and Reddit casually crushing third party clients out of existence, we’ve probably entered into a new era of the web.
- xinayder 3y ago
  The era of enshittification.
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  > Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?) Isn't it a "Microsoft has shares in Apple so it has a competitor so they don't get sued/dismembered for being a monopoly" ? So, the next logical step for Google is to keep funding Moz/ff ?
  - laserbeam 3y ago
    No, during the recent antitrust trial Google was forced to reveal how much they pay each platform to be the default search engine. This is not a Chrome vs Firefox share deal thing. This is a Google Search vs "all other search engines" issue. Google pays most browsers to be the default engine, and has done so for many years. The legality of it is not my area of expertise and I won't comment on that.
- yulker 3y ago
  But why is it shocking? Isn't it antithetical to what a browser is to have "content" (ads) be given special privileges?
  - shortcake27 3y ago
    It’s shocking because Alphabet is in the business of making money at the expense of their users. They aren’t building Chrome because they believe in the open web, they build it to extract every last cent out of us. Ad blockers cost them millions, perhaps even billions, a year. Despite having the ability to stop it, they allow it to occur. And that is shocking from a capitalistic point of view.
xoac 3y ago
Chromium is overdue for an IE style backlash
jsnell 3y ago
The title is outright dishonest. Ad blockers are not being disabled. Also, news of the manifest v3 timeline discussed a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292409
- addandsubtract 3y ago
  Is it? From TFA: "The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future..." If this is true, then ad blockers will, de facto, be disabled in Chrome.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    The title claims ad blockers will be disabled, and that is just not true. I would bet actual money that adblockers will continue to be available. The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility. But nobody would say that Safari doesn't have adblockers, despite having a similar interface. The "Google authorized updates to blocklist" bit looks like an even more blatant lie. Dynamic blocklists that aren't updated via Chrome Web Store are supported: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-filtering-in-manifest-v3/#more-dynamic-rules https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-fi...
    - pizza234 3y ago
      > The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility AFAIU, this is indeed the case of uBlock Origin lite: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
    - megasteel32 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - 3y ago
ImaCake 3y ago
This seems like a blow to accessibility too. Beyond impact adblockers, would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism? uBlock and Darkreader are really important tools for making the web usable for me. I don't mind not using YT, but there are some websites I am obliged to use.
- rafram 3y ago
  > would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism? No, those don’t use blockingWebRequest. Absolutely no relation.
doktrin 3y ago
Google clearly feels comfortable enough in their browser share market dominance to pull this rather user-hostile move, but I can't help but wonder if they're overplaying their hand. From my humble POV Chrome is only marginally superior to the alternatives. That margin has been sufficient to keep me around as a user - but crippling such a central feature easily outweighs all of Chrome's relative strengths and then some.
underseacables 3y ago
Maybe this will lead to more people using Firefox and other browsers
- doktrin 3y ago
  IMO the only question is one of magnitude. Based on a cursory search it appears that adblock addons are used by anywhere between 20-45% of users across all browsers. Based on this I wouldn't be wildly shocked if Chrome sheds anywhere between 5-10% of its userbase almost overnight. I would also expect this to cause a modest-to-significant backlash against Google as a whole. This is a change that will be widely noticed among regular internet users, and rolled out at a time when Google's bread and butter (search) is at its weakest point in decades. Moving into purely speculative territory here, but I also wonder what impact this might have on their business moving forward. Without having hard numbers to back this up, my anecdotally-backed hunch is that ad blocking is disproportionately popular among younger users. That's a risky demographic for any tech company to alienate in part or in whole.
  - ericpauley 3y ago
    Doubt it. Ad blockers still work on MV3, just not as well. The vast majority of people won’t notice a difference and the ones that will are the same ones that probably switched already.
    - doktrin 3y ago
      Unlike amorphous concerns like “privacy” that for better or worse only resonate with a niche audience, ads are by definition hard to ignore. Once users are forced to both potentially replace their adblocker entirely and begin mucking around with config settings and filter lists it seems inevitable that many simply jump ship. Doubly so if the advice gets amplified across social media / streaming platforms et al. The crowd you’re referring to - i.e who follow tech news and the manifest rollout - are a tiny minority many of whom probably never used Chrome to begin with. That’s not who I have in mind here.
    - postalrat 3y ago
hilbert42 3y ago
What a wonderful excuse to not use Chrome. This may advantage Google in the short-term, but it'll suffer in the long-term.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Alifatisk 3y ago
The time is now, either switch to FF or use Brave (and similar)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hackideiomat 3y ago
  But rather FF than chromium based stuff :)
- Turskarama 3y ago
  This update will also get rolled out to Brave, since it's also Chromium in the back. Firefox is the _only_ alternative unless you're on Mac and can use Safari.
  - Alifatisk 3y ago
    Oh so Brave is only a soft-fork? I thought they would still support Manifest V2 indefinitely?
rabbits_2002 3y ago
And suddenly Firefox has runaway CPU usage on YouTube
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
coreyog 3y ago
They literally said that since at least January of this year: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/google-chrome-upgrade-planned-for-january-2023-will-disable-most-ad-block-software/71482 https://budgetlightforum.com/t/google-chrome-upgrade-planned... They know it's anti-consumer. They see that the YouTube push is actually causing people to install more, smarter ad blockers. I myself have finally got around to setting up pihole. "We're serious, by 2027 your adblocker will be toast" whatever, if you think we're still using the browser to block ads, you grossly misunderstood your userbase.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  can pihole block ads as effectively as ublock origin?
  - Kubuxu 3y ago
    No, it can't, as it primarily supports only domain blocking.
  - CommanderData 3y ago
    It's DNS level adblocking, so no. E.g. If sites used a hardcoded IP address, pihole will be useless. Same applies if devices such as TVs use their own DNS/DNS over TLS. Sort of see IP + DNS blocking catching on next once pihole becomes ineffective.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      that's what I thought but I don't use pihole so thought it might be effective somehow.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago
  [dead]
nottorp 3y ago
That's fine, I switched to Firefox ages ago. Might be worth making a list of other alternative browsers that are not based on Chromium... if there are any. Almost donated to mozilla.org too but they kept pushing the recurring donation so I ran away.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Other than Firefox and Safari, there are a few but they're all maintained by small teams and you can expect them to have trouble with some modern sites. You can look at the Wikipedia list of web browsers, any that aren't listed under Chromium (Blink-Based) will be fine, but notable browsers that WILL be affected: Chromium: Amazon Silk Arc Avast Secure Browser Blisk Brave Cốc Cốc Comodo Dragon[28] Epic Google Chrome (based on Blink since Chrome v. 28) JioPages Microsoft Edge[29] NAVER Whale Opera[30] Opera GX Puffin Browser qutebrowser (Blink backend mostly stable) Redcore RockMelt Sleipnir SRWare Iron Torch Ungoogled-chromium (lol) Vivaldi Yandex Browser
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Pihole works just fine, regardless of browser.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
Possibly there's a market for pi-hole-like devices? "Privacy firewall for your house, now just Eur 100".
nojvek 3y ago
Out of all the anti-trust cases, Google has the most obvious abuse of its monopoly position. I feel for them. The make >80% of their profits from ads. Ads is everything to them. They need to sacrifice privacy and fuck over the users to satisfy their growth targets. The world would be a better place if the ads division is split from the rest of org.

143 points by consumer451 3y ago

leke 3y ago

Does this affect chrome based browsers like Brave?

xinayder 3y ago
yes it does, since Manifest v3 is being rolled out on Chromium (which Chrome is based on). unless Brave and other forks (like Cromite, Vanadium, Ungoogled-Chromium) manage to disable MV3, which I think Google will make it impossible to do so, they are affected by this change. Switch to Firefox.
- bambax 3y ago
  This isn't true. I'm not a Brave user (I use FF), but Brave have said that 1/ they have adblocking built-in [0] 2/ they will continue to support Manifest V2 indefinitely, esp. so that uBlock Origin continues to work [1] That doesn't mean uBlock will continue to exist... If it can't be installed on Chrome it's possible the sole dev will lose motivation (although he has already made a V3 version of the extension). [0] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822798299729925 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822798299729925 [1] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822799700541446 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1574822799700541446
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Ublock Origin is the only one that can be trusted. I use Brave on mobile and it's adblocker + JS toggle switch work great, but I don't fully trust them on ads considering how they've tried to push crypto BAT token stuff in the past.
    - pg5 3y ago
      I use Firefox on mobile with Ublock origin installed, works perfectly for me
- wmitty 3y ago
  Brave has written their own (open source) adblock engine (in rust) that is directly integrated into the browser (ie. not an extension, so is not affected by Manifest V3). https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

sillysaurusx 3y ago

Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?) Between this and Reddit casually crushing third party clients out of existence, we’ve probably entered into a new era of the web.

xinayder 3y ago
The era of enshittification.
johnchristopher 3y ago
> Honestly, it was a bit shocking that big players allowed ad blocking to go on for so long. The next logical step is for google to pull funding from Firefox unless they implement it too. (They still pay a lot of money for google to be the default search engine, right?) Isn't it a "Microsoft has shares in Apple so it has a competitor so they don't get sued/dismembered for being a monopoly" ? So, the next logical step for Google is to keep funding Moz/ff ?
- laserbeam 3y ago
  No, during the recent antitrust trial Google was forced to reveal how much they pay each platform to be the default search engine. This is not a Chrome vs Firefox share deal thing. This is a Google Search vs "all other search engines" issue. Google pays most browsers to be the default engine, and has done so for many years. The legality of it is not my area of expertise and I won't comment on that.
yulker 3y ago
But why is it shocking? Isn't it antithetical to what a browser is to have "content" (ads) be given special privileges?
- shortcake27 3y ago
  It’s shocking because Alphabet is in the business of making money at the expense of their users. They aren’t building Chrome because they believe in the open web, they build it to extract every last cent out of us. Ad blockers cost them millions, perhaps even billions, a year. Despite having the ability to stop it, they allow it to occur. And that is shocking from a capitalistic point of view.

xoac 3y ago

Chromium is overdue for an IE style backlash

jsnell 3y ago

The title is outright dishonest. Ad blockers are not being disabled. Also, news of the manifest v3 timeline discussed a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38292409

addandsubtract 3y ago
Is it? From TFA: "The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future..." If this is true, then ad blockers will, de facto, be disabled in Chrome.
- jsnell 3y ago
  The title claims ad blockers will be disabled, and that is just not true. I would bet actual money that adblockers will continue to be available. The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility. But nobody would say that Safari doesn't have adblockers, despite having a similar interface. The "Google authorized updates to blocklist" bit looks like an even more blatant lie. Dynamic blocklists that aren't updated via Chrome Web Store are supported: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-filtering-in-manifest-v3/#more-dynamic-rules https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-fi...
  - pizza234 3y ago
    > The functionality available to adblockers will change, and they will definitely have less flexibility AFAIU, this is indeed the case of uBlock Origin lite: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
  - megasteel32 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - 3y ago

ImaCake 3y ago

This seems like a blow to accessibility too. Beyond impact adblockers, would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism? uBlock and Darkreader are really important tools for making the web usable for me. I don't mind not using YT, but there are some websites I am obliged to use.

rafram 3y ago
> would this also make it difficult for me to use tools like DarkReader which dynamically overrides the site's styling to implement a less jarring one for my astigmatism? No, those don’t use blockingWebRequest. Absolutely no relation.

doktrin 3y ago

Google clearly feels comfortable enough in their browser share market dominance to pull this rather user-hostile move, but I can't help but wonder if they're overplaying their hand. From my humble POV Chrome is only marginally superior to the alternatives. That margin has been sufficient to keep me around as a user - but crippling such a central feature easily outweighs all of Chrome's relative strengths and then some.

underseacables 3y ago

Maybe this will lead to more people using Firefox and other browsers

doktrin 3y ago
IMO the only question is one of magnitude. Based on a cursory search it appears that adblock addons are used by anywhere between 20-45% of users across all browsers. Based on this I wouldn't be wildly shocked if Chrome sheds anywhere between 5-10% of its userbase almost overnight. I would also expect this to cause a modest-to-significant backlash against Google as a whole. This is a change that will be widely noticed among regular internet users, and rolled out at a time when Google's bread and butter (search) is at its weakest point in decades. Moving into purely speculative territory here, but I also wonder what impact this might have on their business moving forward. Without having hard numbers to back this up, my anecdotally-backed hunch is that ad blocking is disproportionately popular among younger users. That's a risky demographic for any tech company to alienate in part or in whole.
- ericpauley 3y ago
  Doubt it. Ad blockers still work on MV3, just not as well. The vast majority of people won’t notice a difference and the ones that will are the same ones that probably switched already.
  - doktrin 3y ago
    Unlike amorphous concerns like “privacy” that for better or worse only resonate with a niche audience, ads are by definition hard to ignore. Once users are forced to both potentially replace their adblocker entirely and begin mucking around with config settings and filter lists it seems inevitable that many simply jump ship. Doubly so if the advice gets amplified across social media / streaming platforms et al. The crowd you’re referring to - i.e who follow tech news and the manifest rollout - are a tiny minority many of whom probably never used Chrome to begin with. That’s not who I have in mind here.
  - postalrat 3y ago

hilbert42 3y ago

What a wonderful excuse to not use Chrome. This may advantage Google in the short-term, but it'll suffer in the long-term.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Alifatisk 3y ago

The time is now, either switch to FF or use Brave (and similar)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hackideiomat 3y ago
But rather FF than chromium based stuff :)
Turskarama 3y ago
This update will also get rolled out to Brave, since it's also Chromium in the back. Firefox is the _only_ alternative unless you're on Mac and can use Safari.
- Alifatisk 3y ago
  Oh so Brave is only a soft-fork? I thought they would still support Manifest V2 indefinitely?

rabbits_2002 3y ago

And suddenly Firefox has runaway CPU usage on YouTube

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

coreyog 3y ago

They literally said that since at least January of this year: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/google-chrome-upgrade-planned-for-january-2023-will-disable-most-ad-block-software/71482 https://budgetlightforum.com/t/google-chrome-upgrade-planned... They know it's anti-consumer. They see that the YouTube push is actually causing people to install more, smarter ad blockers. I myself have finally got around to setting up pihole. "We're serious, by 2027 your adblocker will be toast" whatever, if you think we're still using the browser to block ads, you grossly misunderstood your userbase.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
can pihole block ads as effectively as ublock origin?
- Kubuxu 3y ago
  No, it can't, as it primarily supports only domain blocking.
- CommanderData 3y ago
  It's DNS level adblocking, so no. E.g. If sites used a hardcoded IP address, pihole will be useless. Same applies if devices such as TVs use their own DNS/DNS over TLS. Sort of see IP + DNS blocking catching on next once pihole becomes ineffective.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    that's what I thought but I don't use pihole so thought it might be effective somehow.
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]

nottorp 3y ago

That's fine, I switched to Firefox ages ago. Might be worth making a list of other alternative browsers that are not based on Chromium... if there are any. Almost donated to mozilla.org too but they kept pushing the recurring donation so I ran away.

Turskarama 3y ago
Other than Firefox and Safari, there are a few but they're all maintained by small teams and you can expect them to have trouble with some modern sites. You can look at the Wikipedia list of web browsers, any that aren't listed under Chromium (Blink-Based) will be fine, but notable browsers that WILL be affected: Chromium: Amazon Silk Arc Avast Secure Browser Blisk Brave Cốc Cốc Comodo Dragon[28] Epic Google Chrome (based on Blink since Chrome v. 28) JioPages Microsoft Edge[29] NAVER Whale Opera[30] Opera GX Puffin Browser qutebrowser (Blink backend mostly stable) Redcore RockMelt Sleipnir SRWare Iron Torch Ungoogled-chromium (lol) Vivaldi Yandex Browser

sonicanatidae 3y ago

Pihole works just fine, regardless of browser.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

Possibly there's a market for pi-hole-like devices? "Privacy firewall for your house, now just Eur 100".

nojvek 3y ago

Out of all the anti-trust cases, Google has the most obvious abuse of its monopoly position. I feel for them. The make >80% of their profits from ads. Ads is everything to them. They need to sacrifice privacy and fuck over the users to satisfy their growth targets. The world would be a better place if the ads division is split from the rest of org.