18 ms·

Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge

787 points by thombles 2y ago

insane_dreamer 2y ago
Speaking of Edge, every so often it resets by default search engine to Bing (from Kagi), and it requires about 10 clicks in a well hidden away setting to restore it.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  "every so often" Microsoft does this on purpose but when one has a monopoly, they do anything they want
southernplaces7 2y ago
Meh, a piece of shit browser that I never use just got a bit shittier and less worthy of using, if such were possible. One company that takes user hostility to special levels.
zfg 2y ago
uBlock Origin always worked best in Firefox anyhow: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- nicman23 2y ago
  hando wehn
- Arisaka1 2y ago
  This was the drop in the bucket I was waiting to migrate my daily use to Firefox, and keep a vanilla Chrome installation around to test my frontends. It's funny how Chrome became practically my new Internet Explorer.
  - krzat 2y ago
    Sometimes a webpage works only on Chrome somehow. Would be fun if Firefox had some kind of extension to emulate Chrome for those scenarios.
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      Usually this is for one of the following reasons: (1) negligence on the side of web devs (2) the site in silly ways relying on shit like google fonts or other trackers, which a privacy consciou user will block (3) the site relying on being able to plaster your face with ads, which u block (ha!) (4) stronger fingerprinting countermeasures on FF and again site stupidly relying on that (5) incapability of web devs to test their stuff properly (6) junior web devs being very green and not adhering to standards, that will work in any mainstream modern browser In 99.9% of the cases it comes down to bad engineering or even intentionally ethically highly questionable methods.
  - AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
    For me it's Safari. In Firefox, everything works as I expect almost always. Chrome requires weird workarounds from time to time. And Safari is just all kinds of screwed up.
bediger4000 2y ago
Embrace, extend, extinguish. Oldest play in the Microsoft book. I sincerely think Microsoft can't be trusted.
- zfg 2y ago
  This play is actually in Google's book. Microsoft is going along for the ride.
  - EdgeFanSan 2y ago
    Looks like this was a bug in Edge. I dont see this prompt anymore. Also, the pop-up message said Chrome and not Edge.
- TheCleric 2y ago
  It is their original play. However I think this is just “Chrome is going to do this anyway and we’re not about to write custom code to work around it.”
  - hirsin 2y ago
    This. It's extremely expensive to keep core functionality like this in a fork. Every single surface that manifest v2 touches (js runtime, extension hosting, permissions, network, APIs, chrome even) that gets changed upstream has to be redone to account for v2. Every new system built into Chrome that only works with v3 has to be effectively back ported to v2. The only other option is to keep v2 in chromium itself and have Chrome disable it... While still paying the cost of supporting it in all new feature dev. There's no world where Microsoft spins up a new engineering team solely to deal with the extra cost of keeping v2 around. That said this sucks. I got my first internship on the Internet Explorer team by talking about how hard it was to install an ad blocker in IE, compared to Chrome.
    - hulitu 2y ago
      > It's extremely expensive to keep core functionality like this in a fork Modularity in SW is still a challenge after 50 years of progress.
jbverschoor 2y ago
Without ublock origin, the internet is simply unbearable. The result is one of the following two: migrate to Firefox, or the biggest web detox ever
- geor9e 2y ago
  Or the third option "you can still make them work by clicking "Manage extension" and toggling it back"
  - lloeki 2y ago
    Until the Manifest V2 code is ripped out. The current situation looks more like a deprecation brownout than a chance at continued support.
    - geor9e 2y ago
      Maybe a lot of things will happen. I'll downgrade when I'm forced to, and not a day earlier.
- romanovcode 2y ago
  Safari with [0]AdGuard works very well as well. Been using it for around 4 years now without any issues. [0] https://github.com/adguardteam https://github.com/adguardteam
  - matwood 2y ago
    It’s not UBO, but it does work well. Safari is my default browser except for Google sites and development.
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    Safari does Manifest v3 blocking, exactly the same as Chrome except with fewer filters, and is otherwise worse in every way.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
est 2y ago
If MS continues to support ManifestV2 in edge, I think the usage would increase. Sadly they chose not.
- sureIy 2y ago
  They could do something really funny and just fork Chromium like Google forked WebKit. The reality is that no business likes ad-blockers so why go through that trouble only to get less money?
- chippiewill 2y ago
  Microsoft don't really invest the right kind of resources into Edge to make that happen. There are sound technical reasons (aside from the obvious financial reason) why Google wants to make this change, I suspect this'll unblock the Chromium team making a very substantial refactor of the networking layer which Microsoft can't feasibly maintain a fork of.
  - harrygeez 2y ago
    I wish all Chromium forks would band together to maintain a base that supports Manifest V2, it shouldn't be that difficult to each chip in some funding.
  - wavemode 2y ago
    > I suspect this'll unblock the Chromium team making a very substantial refactor of the networking layer I'm curious as to why you suspect this. Have they stated so?
    - chippiewill 2y ago
      The webRequestBlocking API exposes fairly low level hooks into the networking stack to the javascript layer which would be a significant limitation to performance optimisation in how requests are processed. That said I've now read that the API is still available to policy based extensions (essentially OS installed extensions) in manifest v3, so that doesn't hold water since it's literally the same API.
ingohelpinger 2y ago
they want to track your ass, whatever it costs.
VTimofeenko 2y ago
I still somewhat miss the old Edge(trident-based). IME it worked perfectly on low power netbooks.
- nicman23 2y ago
  YES! it was great for those old under powered win8 tablets. I had an acer with a amd c50 and edge was actually fast!
feverzsj 2y ago
Edge is only good for its support of cleartype on Windows. Now it's nothing.
picafrost 2y ago
Recently I've been asking myself, what do web browsers and the web look like in twenty years? I've been applying this to all "free" software (e.g., VSCode) released by the large tech companies who ultimately are incentivized by profit. I really have no clue, but as far as I can see the answer is never better. More centralized, more bloated, more invasive, less choice, and less freedom.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  It’s at the point now where basically everything you do is online owned by some online mega-corp.
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Ladybird, Servo, etc... offer a brighter future. Servo takes donations if you want to help put our collective thumbs on the scale.
- silisili 2y ago
  Personally, I wish it was more like 20 years ago. I've always held AOL fondly. You paid per month, and get access to a giant ecosystem including forums, chat, email, news, zines, games, etc. Mostly ad free as I remember. In fact, when NetZero became a thing, people mostly weren't interested. They were turned off by the stupid permanent ad bar, and the lack of community. I wish something like AOL would come back around. Charge me $20 a month, give me a community, email, etc. Don't dare show me an ad. We're just now getting back to pay for no ads, but its 5 dollars here or there for disparate services. Man, AOL was ahead of its time. All it needs today that it didn't have was the 'wall', 'profile', whatever. And of course vid/pic sharing. I remember when moving off AOL to broadband, my family hated it despite the speed. They thought it was clunky and stupid to have to download separate programs or visit different websites to do one thing at a time, in what was in AOL an integration. FB is probably closest to that experience today, but of course is ad and data driven, and somehow still doesn't feel very community like. I'd love to see a new, electron based AOL type service come about today. It'd cost a crapton to get the network and content up to attract any user base, else I'd try it myself.
AnonC 2y ago
Seems like Microsoft is just taking whatever Chromium releases and repackages it to show more ads and to make Bing the default search engine. In this case, it's just dropping support for Manifest V2 extensions, such as uBlock Origin, and moving to Manifest V3, which does not support extensions intercepting and blocking requests using blockingWebRequest. Just three days ago, Mozilla reiterated [1] that Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2 alongside Manifest V3. So if you want a better web experience with uBlock Origin, Firefox is your only choice (or use Firefox forks that support it). While you're at it, note that "uBlock Origin works best on Firefox". [2] [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adblockers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifes... [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- nout 2y ago
  It's quite relevant to highlight that Mozilla is removing the promise that they won't sell your data: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#commitcomment-153095625 https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b... Another browser option is Brave, but you have to disable the altcoins stuff :/
  - WithinReason 2y ago
    No you don't, it's opt in.
  - handoflixue 2y ago
    Full context, from the link you provided: ""Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love." I don't think that's an unreasonable stance, and they're still explicitly saying "We are as close to not selling data as it is legally possible to be". This is reiterated in the linked Privacy FAQ on their official site: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
quyleanh 2y ago
I just moved my main browser on Android to Edge using the uBlock Origin installation trick. It will not have a happy ending as I hoped. I will consider moving away from Edge on my PC now. Sadly, I still cannot add custom filters to uBlock Lite.
- esperent 2y ago
  Have you tried Kiwi browser on Android? It's supported installing extensions for many years but for some reason never gets much traction. I guess they don't have enough of a marketing budget.
  - kasabali 2y ago
    Kiwi browser is abandoned
  - quyleanh 2y ago
    I was long time Kiwi user, then changed to Cromite recently. But I missed uBlock Origin so I decided to give Edge a try. And fyi, Kiwi browser is discontinued. [1] [1]: https://browsernative.com/kiwi-browser-discontinued-7097/ https://browsernative.com/kiwi-browser-discontinued-7097/
  - 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
    firefox for android works wonderful
- soundnote 2y ago
  Brave lets you add custom filter lists and write your own filters. The blocker can also do eg. CNAME uncloaking, which even full-fat uBO can't do on Chromium.
jhoechtl 2y ago
Firefox is an alternative, just saying.
neilv 2y ago
Is the timing only a coincidence, with Mozilla pulling another of its multiple-personality-disorder moves? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201096 There really isn't a trustworthy Web browser anymore.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  There is always a massive push when Mozilla does something dumb for large numbers of people to say that they are the devil incarnate and it's a waste of dev time to care about anything besides Chrome and we are all better off just letting Google control the browser. Just assume Mozilla has the worst possible intentions and Google, Microsoft, or a crypto browser are the same choice. It's good to call Mozilla out for doing something shitty, but it always feels chicken little at best when people yell about switching to any Chromium varient. Usually it just feels kind of like Astro turfing, The best version of ublock origin is the one that is banned by Google but allowed in Firefox, Ad Nauseum
  - neilv 2y ago
    You're too generous to Mozilla, and too ungenerous to people tired of being betrayed repeatedly.
buyucu 2y ago
The internet is unusable without uBlock. At this point I don't have a browser preference, I only have a uBlock preference. I'll use whatever browser that has good uBlock support.
indit 2y ago
For users who will miss custom filtering in uBlock Origin, AdGuard supports custom filtering and is compatible with Manifest V3. Custom filter lists from uBlock Origin can be imported into AdGuard. However, AdGuard lacks the element picker function.
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
  [dead]
globular-toast 2y ago
Firefox is still here for you, folks. It's been here the whole time and it's been great.
KronisLV 2y ago
Time to go back to Firefox. I switched to Edge on my Windows machine for a while, because that meant that I didn’t need the disk space for an additional browser (same as when just using Safari on Mac) and it was reasonably pleasant and worked well. Guess that’s ending, I liked the DevTools in Firefox a bit more anyways.
- tored 2y ago
  I find Firefox much more heavy on resources vs Edge. I’m always get disappointed when trying to make Firefox my main browser. Chromium devtools has more features but more cluttered and more annoying to work with.For the common devtools tasks Firefox works better IMHO. But that can be my bias after using Firefox/Firebug devtools for over 15 years.
  - maigret 2y ago
    How many tabs do you have open? I am often surprised at such statements, because my browser have basically never been slow the last 20 years. Like, never. Sometimes they crash / hang. But then I view on screen sharing colleagues who have like 200+ tabs open, and then I'm like "ah, this must be it". Not discarding your case but maybe try to have better digital hygiene?
    - tored 2y ago
      Yes, it is the 200+ tabs (probably closer to 500) over multiple windows. My latest move was to merge every tab in all windows to one window only (with an extension) and start using vertical tabs (better scrolling and overview of tabs) Then sort tabs by title with another extension (Edge built in AI tab sort sucked on sorting so many tabs). With sorted tabs I could start create tab groups, Edge AI tab sort worked better when the tabs was already sorted alphabetically and managed to create most of the tab groups for me. With all this reorganization it was easier to manage all of them and to start closing tabs. I’m not done yet but it is much better and number of opened tabs has been significantly reduced. Now I have one main window with all the tabs and some temporary windows that is only used for temporary stuff that get closed within a day. What makes things a bit more complicated is that I also use two profiles, private and work. Firefox always sucked on multi-profile setup. Firefox’s new container stuff is somewhat improvement but not fully (at least when I tried last)
redder23 2y ago
[dead]
HHalvi 2y ago
The current boat I am on is relying on Firefox for most of my devices: Windows Laptops, Android Phones/Tablets with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set over DNS mode for all of the devices in my family. For iDevices relying on Orion Browser paired with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set up. As good as Safari but without the annoyances of Plugins. Their compatablity mode seems to work on sites where Safari seems to have issues. Ungoggled Chromium for sites that seem to break on both Firefox and Orion, unfortunately there are loads out there. It's a shame that Firefox isn't as effecient with Battery Consumption as Orion is. Brave/Edge just never cut it for me.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Edge is much worse than chrome anyway. Chrome just screws the user behind their back, with hidden tracking. Edge has all the user-hostile stuff much more in your face. Like the shopping bar that keeps popping up with coupons or tries to get you to buy at a shop that pays more for advertising. And it tries to trick the user into getting bogged down with loans by offering buy now pay later schemes. All the sneaky tracking stuff from chrome also happens. So why would you bother? The only reason it's still popular is that companies love it because they can lock it down in full BOFH mode. At my work I can't even choose to reopen the last tabs anymore on launch. That and pretty much every other setting is "managed by your organisation"
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    Is Portable Firefox still an option, or is that sort if thing possible to lock down too now? (I've only very briefly worked with restrictive Windows, and it was years ago.) https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      It's not allowed in our policy. However Firefox is still on my system from the time when it was officially supported. I've heard they want to schedule a removal though.
thecleaner 2y ago
I have been on firefox since forever. Not quite sure why people would even bother with Edge unless of course its the "approved" browser in your org.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I’ve not followed this issue with ad blockers being blocked. Is there any legitimate reason for this or is it just a corrupt change from big tech?
- bix6 2y ago
  Any “legitimate” reason is a smoke screen. It’s about the dolla dolla bills.
u02sgb 2y ago
Anyone have suggestions for which other browser is best for power saving? I’ve been using Edge on my Surface as it seemed much better on the battery than Chrome.
neuroelectron 2y ago
LibreWolf.
zerr 2y ago
There is no way uBlock Origin users suddenly accept seeing ads. They will switch browsers.
- fph 2y ago
  There is no way someone smart enough to use Ublock Origin was using Edge in the first place.
0xEF 2y ago
Honest question since I am not exactly of a skill level that really understands what goes on under the hood of popular browsers, but I am baffled as to why people are so resistant to just switching to Firefox. Every time this conversation comes up here and elsewhere, you get a huge swath of comments decrying Mozilla or suggesting Brave instead, which is Chrome in a trenchcoat last I checked. I've used all sorts of browsers over the years, and I keep returning to Firefox, at this point being able to configure it for good level of privacy in less than a minute with each install on a new machine. My experience is perhaps skewed, but I view Google and Microsoft as modern enemies of the Web I want to see happen, perhaps having started off the hero, but living long enough to see themselves become the villain. Their products seem actively and aggressively hostile to users and compliant with websites that demand we use them for "best experience" which, by now we should all know means harvesting our data. Again, I have some ignorance here that needs to be rectified, but where are the true apples to apples comparisons of all browsers so that users can use to evaluate which is best? I don't mean just surface level features and marketing woo, but what's happening at the code level that allows the developer or websites we visit to treat us like data thralls. Where are the resources to learn about that in these discussions?
- Alifatisk 2y ago
  If you enjoy FF, check out Zen browser, it’s gathering attention
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    Why, though? I suppose the point of my original comment was to ask that in broader strokes. I'm happy with Firefox and do not see a compelling reason to switch to Zen without an apples-to-apples comparison, which seems like a ridiculously taboo ask in this space. I appreciate your recommendation, I'm just frustrated with the level of discourse I see in these discussions.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I had issues with Firefox sometimes not showing Google Docs / Sheets (which I use extensively) in other words, would not show any text / values, whereas Edge worked fine. So I switched and didn't go back.
srmarm 2y ago
> If you use the uBlock Origin extension in Google Chrome or Edge, you should probably start looking for alternative browsers or extensions—either way. I've used Firefox on android for a while as android chrome hasn't had adblocking for a long time. Am pretty anti-google these days but it'll take some time to untangle myself from the ecosystem. Anyway, I've largely moved back to Firefox on the desktop too, swapped a few icons about so my muscle memory now opens Firefox instead of Chrome and it's been totally painless. An easy win.
- reddalo 2y ago
  I think Firefox on Android could be better, but even in its current state is better than Chrome. The next step is start paying for Kagi...
  - srmarm 2y ago
    Good call, I've been meaning to try it for a while. It feels a bit like ~25 years ago when Yahoo was this bloated do everything company with a bad search engine and someone showed me this simple website with just a search bar that was super quick with clean results...
kleiba 2y ago
The day my webbrowser cannot run an adblocker anymore is the day I'm saying goodbye to the www. Together with the recent FF news, this is terrible news for the open, user-controlled web.
bustling-noose 2y ago
>We are deprecating the blocking version of the webRequest API. This required extensions to proxy all network traffic to provide filtering capabilities, which came at a performance and privacy cost. The new declarativeNetRequest API provides a safer alternative for many use cases. This is from manifest v3 google page. Is this declarativeNetRequest API not able to provide any filtration ? Proxying traffic does affect privacy, I agree, but that also means that Google is trusting all traffic by default which is another privacy concern. So the privacy concern seems to not make sense except that in one of the two, google loses money because of ads being blocked.
- chippiewill 2y ago
  It allows for filtering, but in a less powerful way. It'll still block some ads, but anti-ad-blocker tech will have an easier time.
mococa 2y ago
Safari + Wipr is perfect and fast.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  Safaris ad blocking APIs have the same limitations as ManifestV3
  - mococa 2y ago
    It gets 100/100 blocking in my tests, not same for V3.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating-a-content-blocker https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre... > Apps tell Safari in advance what kinds of content to block. Because Safari doesn’t have to consult with the app during loading, and because Xcode compiles content blockers into bytecode, this model runs efficiently. Additionally, content blockers have no knowledge of users’ history or the websites they visit. This is the same change that ManifestV3 brings - ad blockers can no longer run code to determine if they get to block content or not, they have to supply lists that the browser applies. If you're getting good results that just means you're using good lists.
- lilyball 2y ago
  This is the same combination I'm using, and it works so well that I really have to wonder if all this handwringing over the move from Manifest V2 to V3 is really worth it. What is uBlock Origin supposed to be able to block that Wipr isn't already blocking?
  - mococa 2y ago
    See this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43207606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43207606
stuckkeys 2y ago
Well I guess that will be the last time I use edge. KUNTZ
everdrive 2y ago
Does anyone know if any of the Firefox forks avoid this problem? Librewolf, Waterfox, etc. I know this might not be a long-term solution if Firefox continues to degrade, but it does seem like a valid short term measure.
- guerrilla 2y ago
  All of them do, including Firefox.
nanis 2y ago
This is why Firefox's changes are so frustrating[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096
- kevincox 2y ago
  The perfect opportunity to attract more market share, but instead they are shooting themselves in the foot at exactly the wrong time.
DiabloD3 2y ago
I'm going to be honest, but this is a really weird way for Microsoft to announce Edge is EOL and they can't afford to even hire two or three more developers to perma-fork Chrome and bring the rest of the Chromium community under one roof, away from Google (who is an extremely bad steward of the project). Shame that Microsoft just chose to no longer have a real browser. Oh well, long live MSIE I guess.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  It is also a collossal missed opportunity. When Google eventually kills it on Chrome, everyone will switch to the next best thing. Microsoft could have put Edge ahead of Firefox in that game and collected all those users. Since Microsoft's business doesn't revolve around ad-revenue, they don't even have any skin in this game. It's pure lazyness that will only hurt them long-time.
  - DiabloD3 2y ago
    Yep. And they don't even have skin in the Windows game. They haven't been the Windows company for... Oh Christ, I'm getting old, since 2014. The day Sataya became CEO they officially became a cloud company. If it wouldn't literally fuck over the entire world, they'd just stop Windows entirely.
- account42 2y ago
  If microsoft wanted to spend the money required to maintain a browser on their own they wouldn't have moved to Chromium in the first place - the entire point of Edge vs. IE was that they gave that up.
apricot 2y ago
Gotta admire the way they worded the dialog box. "uBlock Origin was turned off. This extension is no longer supported. Edge recommends that you remove it." I have a few decades of experience with the Internet, and even I understood the dialog box as saying that Ublock didn't work anymore. In reality, as the text says, it still works if you click "Manage Extension" and turn it back on. This infuriates me.
- norskeld 2y ago
  Turned off? How nice of them. Chrome with the last update simply removed 4 extensions I was using, including uBlock.
underseacables 2y ago
You guys are using Edge?
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yeah, I use everything else MS at work, why wouldn't I?
sylware 2y ago
agenda--> next: kernel code deployment _MUST_ go thru them, namely internet or offline storage for clients paying more (A LOT more). next: app installation _MUST_ go thru their store (or the ones from their big tech friends). next: "validated" hardware will have to have _NOT_ "secure boot" you can disable. And now we have a "MicrosoftStation", the new video game console.
jppope 2y ago
Lazy web reminder try Brave or Arc. Ladybird is also looking promising
edem 2y ago
Time to put a dns sinkhole on your network
phendrenad2 2y ago
As one of the few (only?) HN users who uses Edge, I'll wait until this actually reaches the mainline Edge build. If it even does. And then, I'll evaluate the Manifest V3 compatible ad blockers. And if those are inadequate, I'll switch to another browser. But I'm expecting that, as always, this is largely a nonexistent scenario.
remoteambience 2y ago
FreeTube works very well for watching YT videos. They have adblock and sponsorblock. You can subscribe without logging in. You stay out of the ecosystem as it were. This is a cat and mouse game. The overarching issue here is the web embraced the monoculture of Chromium as the basis for browsers. Can we really expect any less? I've had good success with Violent Monkey and scripts from Greasy Fork on every browser I run, which is Edge (work becoz SSO), Chrome, and Firefox. They have never been detected.
remoteambience 2y ago
Serious question: Would it not be possible to build an adblocker that is not browser based but installable? The browsers control what they allow to be loaded (extensions, add-ons). They are forever changing internally. If the blocking was outside the browser, they could do nothing about it. Yes, a type of proxy perhaps, whereby the stream was filtered. Could a type of uBO or similar be created that has lists to filter all traffic through the program?
- Izikiel43 2y ago
  Pihole?
  - remoteambience 2y ago
    I've ran a Pi-hole for years, but increasingly there is 1st-party content and Pi-hole cannot handle this. Likewise for YT videos. Pi-hole cannot handle this issue.
- gigel82 2y ago
  DNS ad blockers like Pi Hole and AdGuardHome have been around forever. However, in non-free browsers like Edge and Chrome, they can (and do) play all kinds of tricks such as hardcoding DNS servers, cert pinning, fixed DOH routes, etc. which means it's only a matter of time until those stop working as well.
- pabs3 2y ago
  That wouldn't block crap that is delivered from the same domain as the content, or stuff delivered within the content itself, like embedded ads, or even content advertising (where the content itself is just advertising).
physhster 2y ago
I gave up and started using ControlD instead of uBlock or PiHole. It's been great and well worth the price. Clean, fast page loads.
knowitnone 2y ago
this is funny. This is an opportunity for Microsoft (and other browsers) to gain some marketshare/goodwill and they fumble it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
dadrian 2y ago
You can install uBlock Origin Lite [1], and get literally the same blocklists but with better security properties. [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...
- emaro 2y ago
  Tbh, I trust uBlock Origin more than Edge and Chrome. The security properties of uBo Lite are better but the blocking properties are worse.
- cautious-fly 2y ago
  Last time I checked it did nothing on YouTube. Has that changed?
- e2le 2y ago
  It's not an exact drop-in replacement. There are many filtering capabilities that cannot be ported [1] to MV3, filtering lists can only be distributed through extension updates [2], and filtering is unreliable. > Injecting content scripts in a non-declarative way is unreliable in MV3 due to fact that extensions are really service workers which can be suspended at any time. [1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#filtering-capabilities-which-cant-be-ported-to-mv3 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as... [2]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#when-do-filter-lists-update https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
gorbachev 2y ago
It's a tradegy antitrust enforcement isn't forbidding advertising networks owning / having undue influence on browsers. I think this is heading to a point where lot of power users are simply not updating their browsers any more. Personally I'll take the miniscule chance of being infected with malware due to a security bug on an older version of Firefox over the inability to run uBlock Origin any day. I can recover from malware installation. I can not use the web without an ad blocker. What I'll probably do is use an isolated sandbox environment for any web browsing I need absolute security (e.g. online banking/shopping).
- a123b456c 2y ago
  The doj v Google ad tech case is awaiting resolution and possible remedies, so we don't know what antitrust allows right now.
  - account42 2y ago
    But that is about google fucking over advertisers. Helping advertisers doesn't help me because I don't want to see any ads. Meanwhile the decline of end-user options in browsers remains completely ignored by anti-trus authorities even though that's what got Microsoft/IE slapped in the past.
solardev 2y ago
What's a good Webkit browser to switch to that supports ad blocking? Don't want to use Firefox, too many rendering bugs and performance issues we've run into.
- kcb 2y ago
  Brave. Either the built in adblocker or you can enabled manifest v2 ublock.
  - solardev 2y ago
    Isn't that Blink/Chromium though? Just worried they'll eventually be affected by the Manifestv2 deprecation too.
agigao 2y ago
Today I moved from Firefox & DuckDuckGo to Orion + Kagi. After 21 years of Firefox, that was rather bitter goodbye moment.
wetpaws 2y ago
[dead]
kadomony 2y ago
I think that we'll need to adopt network-level filtering if we want to outsmart the browsers. I haven't looked back since adopting NextDNS and configuring my router to filter all traffic through it. It does a great job of stripping ads out of all my devices connected to it, and that's something I don't mind paying a few bucks for a year (I think it's like $19/year). Check it out here: https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/
- Arnavion 2y ago
  Unfortunately, the browsers are one step ahead of you. They already have a way to ignore your DHCP-provided DNS and instead use DoH, which you can't inspect and filter easily, especially since it's over the HTTPS port. There is also a proposal for individual web properties to tell the browser what DNS (DoH) servers should be used for further requests to them, so even blocking a few well-known DoH resolvers could become impossible: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9462/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9462/
  - kadomony 2y ago
    Ugh. Can't someone please just let us customize how we want to experience the Internet? It seems like a right to repair law. But right to remove. If I know how to take out ads and I want them gone, I should be free to do so.
ryanmcbride 2y ago
Not surprising since they're gearing up to inject ads into their office suite (free tier anyway)
debo_ 2y ago
Does anyone have (educated) qualms about ungoogled chromium? I started using it on a whim awhile ago, and it works great on MacOS and Linux for me with uBlock installed.
Henchman21 2y ago
This arms race between users and ad companies is lost. The users have lost utterly. We DO have an ace up our sleeves should we choose to use it: Stop using any of it
airstrike 2y ago
TIL people are using Edge.
- bigpeopleareold 2y ago
  Also - there are people forced to use Edge ... Like me. To look at my payslips. Because InTune. I use Firefox for everything else :)
Gormo 2y ago
Thorium (https://thorium.rocks/ https://thorium.rocks/) is a fork of Chromium that maintains a patchset that reverses functional and UI regressions introduced by Google (such as the tabs and menu styling from the 2023 refresh). The author has committed to maintain manifest V2 support for as long as possible.
_23sd 2y ago
I've moved to using systemwide Adguard on my home PCs and Macs. It's not a solution for work devices (my employer doesn't have ads on internal websites so this is not much of an issue), but it frees me from worrying about browser APIs and having to copy my custom filters to every single browser I want to use.
cytocync 2y ago
[dead]

787 points by thombles 2y ago

Speaking of Edge, every so often it resets by default search engine to Bing (from Kagi), and it requires about 10 clicks in a well hidden away setting to restore it.

knowitnone 2y ago
"every so often" Microsoft does this on purpose but when one has a monopoly, they do anything they want

southernplaces7 2y ago

Meh, a piece of shit browser that I never use just got a bit shittier and less worthy of using, if such were possible. One company that takes user hostility to special levels.

zfg 2y ago

uBlock Origin always worked best in Firefox anyhow: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

nicman23 2y ago
hando wehn
Arisaka1 2y ago
This was the drop in the bucket I was waiting to migrate my daily use to Firefox, and keep a vanilla Chrome installation around to test my frontends. It's funny how Chrome became practically my new Internet Explorer.
- krzat 2y ago
  Sometimes a webpage works only on Chrome somehow. Would be fun if Firefox had some kind of extension to emulate Chrome for those scenarios.
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    Usually this is for one of the following reasons: (1) negligence on the side of web devs (2) the site in silly ways relying on shit like google fonts or other trackers, which a privacy consciou user will block (3) the site relying on being able to plaster your face with ads, which u block (ha!) (4) stronger fingerprinting countermeasures on FF and again site stupidly relying on that (5) incapability of web devs to test their stuff properly (6) junior web devs being very green and not adhering to standards, that will work in any mainstream modern browser In 99.9% of the cases it comes down to bad engineering or even intentionally ethically highly questionable methods.
- AcquiescentWolf 2y ago
  For me it's Safari. In Firefox, everything works as I expect almost always. Chrome requires weird workarounds from time to time. And Safari is just all kinds of screwed up.

bediger4000 2y ago

Embrace, extend, extinguish. Oldest play in the Microsoft book. I sincerely think Microsoft can't be trusted.

zfg 2y ago
This play is actually in Google's book. Microsoft is going along for the ride.
- EdgeFanSan 2y ago
  Looks like this was a bug in Edge. I dont see this prompt anymore. Also, the pop-up message said Chrome and not Edge.
TheCleric 2y ago
It is their original play. However I think this is just “Chrome is going to do this anyway and we’re not about to write custom code to work around it.”
- hirsin 2y ago
  This. It's extremely expensive to keep core functionality like this in a fork. Every single surface that manifest v2 touches (js runtime, extension hosting, permissions, network, APIs, chrome even) that gets changed upstream has to be redone to account for v2. Every new system built into Chrome that only works with v3 has to be effectively back ported to v2. The only other option is to keep v2 in chromium itself and have Chrome disable it... While still paying the cost of supporting it in all new feature dev. There's no world where Microsoft spins up a new engineering team solely to deal with the extra cost of keeping v2 around. That said this sucks. I got my first internship on the Internet Explorer team by talking about how hard it was to install an ad blocker in IE, compared to Chrome.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > It's extremely expensive to keep core functionality like this in a fork Modularity in SW is still a challenge after 50 years of progress.

jbverschoor 2y ago

Without ublock origin, the internet is simply unbearable. The result is one of the following two: migrate to Firefox, or the biggest web detox ever

geor9e 2y ago
Or the third option "you can still make them work by clicking "Manage extension" and toggling it back"
- lloeki 2y ago
  Until the Manifest V2 code is ripped out. The current situation looks more like a deprecation brownout than a chance at continued support.
  - geor9e 2y ago
    Maybe a lot of things will happen. I'll downgrade when I'm forced to, and not a day earlier.
romanovcode 2y ago
Safari with [0]AdGuard works very well as well. Been using it for around 4 years now without any issues. [0] https://github.com/adguardteam https://github.com/adguardteam
- matwood 2y ago
  It’s not UBO, but it does work well. Safari is my default browser except for Google sites and development.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  Safari does Manifest v3 blocking, exactly the same as Chrome except with fewer filters, and is otherwise worse in every way.
readthenotes1 2y ago

est 2y ago

If MS continues to support ManifestV2 in edge, I think the usage would increase. Sadly they chose not.

sureIy 2y ago
They could do something really funny and just fork Chromium like Google forked WebKit. The reality is that no business likes ad-blockers so why go through that trouble only to get less money?
chippiewill 2y ago
Microsoft don't really invest the right kind of resources into Edge to make that happen. There are sound technical reasons (aside from the obvious financial reason) why Google wants to make this change, I suspect this'll unblock the Chromium team making a very substantial refactor of the networking layer which Microsoft can't feasibly maintain a fork of.
- harrygeez 2y ago
  I wish all Chromium forks would band together to maintain a base that supports Manifest V2, it shouldn't be that difficult to each chip in some funding.
- wavemode 2y ago
  > I suspect this'll unblock the Chromium team making a very substantial refactor of the networking layer I'm curious as to why you suspect this. Have they stated so?
  - chippiewill 2y ago
    The webRequestBlocking API exposes fairly low level hooks into the networking stack to the javascript layer which would be a significant limitation to performance optimisation in how requests are processed. That said I've now read that the API is still available to policy based extensions (essentially OS installed extensions) in manifest v3, so that doesn't hold water since it's literally the same API.

ingohelpinger 2y ago

they want to track your ass, whatever it costs.

VTimofeenko 2y ago

I still somewhat miss the old Edge(trident-based). IME it worked perfectly on low power netbooks.

nicman23 2y ago
YES! it was great for those old under powered win8 tablets. I had an acer with a amd c50 and edge was actually fast!

feverzsj 2y ago

Edge is only good for its support of cleartype on Windows. Now it's nothing.

picafrost 2y ago

Recently I've been asking myself, what do web browsers and the web look like in twenty years? I've been applying this to all "free" software (e.g., VSCode) released by the large tech companies who ultimately are incentivized by profit. I really have no clue, but as far as I can see the answer is never better. More centralized, more bloated, more invasive, less choice, and less freedom.

bamboozled 2y ago
It’s at the point now where basically everything you do is online owned by some online mega-corp.
jszymborski 2y ago
Ladybird, Servo, etc... offer a brighter future. Servo takes donations if you want to help put our collective thumbs on the scale.
silisili 2y ago
Personally, I wish it was more like 20 years ago. I've always held AOL fondly. You paid per month, and get access to a giant ecosystem including forums, chat, email, news, zines, games, etc. Mostly ad free as I remember. In fact, when NetZero became a thing, people mostly weren't interested. They were turned off by the stupid permanent ad bar, and the lack of community. I wish something like AOL would come back around. Charge me $20 a month, give me a community, email, etc. Don't dare show me an ad. We're just now getting back to pay for no ads, but its 5 dollars here or there for disparate services. Man, AOL was ahead of its time. All it needs today that it didn't have was the 'wall', 'profile', whatever. And of course vid/pic sharing. I remember when moving off AOL to broadband, my family hated it despite the speed. They thought it was clunky and stupid to have to download separate programs or visit different websites to do one thing at a time, in what was in AOL an integration. FB is probably closest to that experience today, but of course is ad and data driven, and somehow still doesn't feel very community like. I'd love to see a new, electron based AOL type service come about today. It'd cost a crapton to get the network and content up to attract any user base, else I'd try it myself.

AnonC 2y ago

Seems like Microsoft is just taking whatever Chromium releases and repackages it to show more ads and to make Bing the default search engine. In this case, it's just dropping support for Manifest V2 extensions, such as uBlock Origin, and moving to Manifest V3, which does not support extensions intercepting and blocking requests using blockingWebRequest. Just three days ago, Mozilla reiterated [1] that Firefox would continue to support Manifest V2 alongside Manifest V3. So if you want a better web experience with uBlock Origin, Firefox is your only choice (or use Firefox forks that support it). While you're at it, note that "uBlock Origin works best on Firefox". [2] [1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adblockers/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-manifes... [2]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

nout 2y ago
It's quite relevant to highlight that Mozilla is removing the promise that they won't sell your data: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#commitcomment-153095625 https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b... Another browser option is Brave, but you have to disable the altcoins stuff :/
- WithinReason 2y ago
  No you don't, it's opt in.
- handoflixue 2y ago
  Full context, from the link you provided: ""Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love." I don't think that's an unreasonable stance, and they're still explicitly saying "We are as close to not selling data as it is legally possible to be". This is reiterated in the linked Privacy FAQ on their official site: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

quyleanh 2y ago

I just moved my main browser on Android to Edge using the uBlock Origin installation trick. It will not have a happy ending as I hoped. I will consider moving away from Edge on my PC now. Sadly, I still cannot add custom filters to uBlock Lite.

esperent 2y ago
Have you tried Kiwi browser on Android? It's supported installing extensions for many years but for some reason never gets much traction. I guess they don't have enough of a marketing budget.
- kasabali 2y ago
  Kiwi browser is abandoned
- quyleanh 2y ago
  I was long time Kiwi user, then changed to Cromite recently. But I missed uBlock Origin so I decided to give Edge a try. And fyi, Kiwi browser is discontinued. [1] [1]: https://browsernative.com/kiwi-browser-discontinued-7097/ https://browsernative.com/kiwi-browser-discontinued-7097/
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
  firefox for android works wonderful
soundnote 2y ago
Brave lets you add custom filter lists and write your own filters. The blocker can also do eg. CNAME uncloaking, which even full-fat uBO can't do on Chromium.

jhoechtl 2y ago

Firefox is an alternative, just saying.

neilv 2y ago

Is the timing only a coincidence, with Mozilla pulling another of its multiple-personality-disorder moves? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43200065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43201096 There really isn't a trustworthy Web browser anymore.

Larrikin 2y ago
There is always a massive push when Mozilla does something dumb for large numbers of people to say that they are the devil incarnate and it's a waste of dev time to care about anything besides Chrome and we are all better off just letting Google control the browser. Just assume Mozilla has the worst possible intentions and Google, Microsoft, or a crypto browser are the same choice. It's good to call Mozilla out for doing something shitty, but it always feels chicken little at best when people yell about switching to any Chromium varient. Usually it just feels kind of like Astro turfing, The best version of ublock origin is the one that is banned by Google but allowed in Firefox, Ad Nauseum
- neilv 2y ago
  You're too generous to Mozilla, and too ungenerous to people tired of being betrayed repeatedly.

buyucu 2y ago

The internet is unusable without uBlock. At this point I don't have a browser preference, I only have a uBlock preference. I'll use whatever browser that has good uBlock support.

indit 2y ago

For users who will miss custom filtering in uBlock Origin, AdGuard supports custom filtering and is compatible with Manifest V3. Custom filter lists from uBlock Origin can be imported into AdGuard. However, AdGuard lacks the element picker function.

kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
[dead]

globular-toast 2y ago

Firefox is still here for you, folks. It's been here the whole time and it's been great.

KronisLV 2y ago

Time to go back to Firefox. I switched to Edge on my Windows machine for a while, because that meant that I didn’t need the disk space for an additional browser (same as when just using Safari on Mac) and it was reasonably pleasant and worked well. Guess that’s ending, I liked the DevTools in Firefox a bit more anyways.

tored 2y ago
I find Firefox much more heavy on resources vs Edge. I’m always get disappointed when trying to make Firefox my main browser. Chromium devtools has more features but more cluttered and more annoying to work with.For the common devtools tasks Firefox works better IMHO. But that can be my bias after using Firefox/Firebug devtools for over 15 years.
- maigret 2y ago
  How many tabs do you have open? I am often surprised at such statements, because my browser have basically never been slow the last 20 years. Like, never. Sometimes they crash / hang. But then I view on screen sharing colleagues who have like 200+ tabs open, and then I'm like "ah, this must be it". Not discarding your case but maybe try to have better digital hygiene?
  - tored 2y ago
    Yes, it is the 200+ tabs (probably closer to 500) over multiple windows. My latest move was to merge every tab in all windows to one window only (with an extension) and start using vertical tabs (better scrolling and overview of tabs) Then sort tabs by title with another extension (Edge built in AI tab sort sucked on sorting so many tabs). With sorted tabs I could start create tab groups, Edge AI tab sort worked better when the tabs was already sorted alphabetically and managed to create most of the tab groups for me. With all this reorganization it was easier to manage all of them and to start closing tabs. I’m not done yet but it is much better and number of opened tabs has been significantly reduced. Now I have one main window with all the tabs and some temporary windows that is only used for temporary stuff that get closed within a day. What makes things a bit more complicated is that I also use two profiles, private and work. Firefox always sucked on multi-profile setup. Firefox’s new container stuff is somewhat improvement but not fully (at least when I tried last)

redder23 2y ago

[dead]

HHalvi 2y ago

The current boat I am on is relying on Firefox for most of my devices: Windows Laptops, Android Phones/Tablets with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set over DNS mode for all of the devices in my family. For iDevices relying on Orion Browser paired with Ublock Origin and NextDNS set up. As good as Safari but without the annoyances of Plugins. Their compatablity mode seems to work on sites where Safari seems to have issues. Ungoggled Chromium for sites that seem to break on both Firefox and Orion, unfortunately there are loads out there. It's a shame that Firefox isn't as effecient with Battery Consumption as Orion is. Brave/Edge just never cut it for me.

wkat4242 2y ago
Edge is much worse than chrome anyway. Chrome just screws the user behind their back, with hidden tracking. Edge has all the user-hostile stuff much more in your face. Like the shopping bar that keeps popping up with coupons or tries to get you to buy at a shop that pays more for advertising. And it tries to trick the user into getting bogged down with loans by offering buy now pay later schemes. All the sneaky tracking stuff from chrome also happens. So why would you bother? The only reason it's still popular is that companies love it because they can lock it down in full BOFH mode. At my work I can't even choose to reopen the last tabs anymore on launch. That and pretty much every other setting is "managed by your organisation"
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Is Portable Firefox still an option, or is that sort if thing possible to lock down too now? (I've only very briefly worked with restrictive Windows, and it was years ago.) https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It's not allowed in our policy. However Firefox is still on my system from the time when it was officially supported. I've heard they want to schedule a removal though.

thecleaner 2y ago

I have been on firefox since forever. Not quite sure why people would even bother with Edge unless of course its the "approved" browser in your org.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I’ve not followed this issue with ad blockers being blocked. Is there any legitimate reason for this or is it just a corrupt change from big tech?

bix6 2y ago
Any “legitimate” reason is a smoke screen. It’s about the dolla dolla bills.

u02sgb 2y ago

Anyone have suggestions for which other browser is best for power saving? I’ve been using Edge on my Surface as it seemed much better on the battery than Chrome.

neuroelectron 2y ago

LibreWolf.

zerr 2y ago

There is no way uBlock Origin users suddenly accept seeing ads. They will switch browsers.

fph 2y ago
There is no way someone smart enough to use Ublock Origin was using Edge in the first place.

0xEF 2y ago

Honest question since I am not exactly of a skill level that really understands what goes on under the hood of popular browsers, but I am baffled as to why people are so resistant to just switching to Firefox. Every time this conversation comes up here and elsewhere, you get a huge swath of comments decrying Mozilla or suggesting Brave instead, which is Chrome in a trenchcoat last I checked. I've used all sorts of browsers over the years, and I keep returning to Firefox, at this point being able to configure it for good level of privacy in less than a minute with each install on a new machine. My experience is perhaps skewed, but I view Google and Microsoft as modern enemies of the Web I want to see happen, perhaps having started off the hero, but living long enough to see themselves become the villain. Their products seem actively and aggressively hostile to users and compliant with websites that demand we use them for "best experience" which, by now we should all know means harvesting our data. Again, I have some ignorance here that needs to be rectified, but where are the true apples to apples comparisons of all browsers so that users can use to evaluate which is best? I don't mean just surface level features and marketing woo, but what's happening at the code level that allows the developer or websites we visit to treat us like data thralls. Where are the resources to learn about that in these discussions?

Alifatisk 2y ago
If you enjoy FF, check out Zen browser, it’s gathering attention
- 0xEF 2y ago
  Why, though? I suppose the point of my original comment was to ask that in broader strokes. I'm happy with Firefox and do not see a compelling reason to switch to Zen without an apples-to-apples comparison, which seems like a ridiculously taboo ask in this space. I appreciate your recommendation, I'm just frustrated with the level of discourse I see in these discussions.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I had issues with Firefox sometimes not showing Google Docs / Sheets (which I use extensively) in other words, would not show any text / values, whereas Edge worked fine. So I switched and didn't go back.

srmarm 2y ago

> If you use the uBlock Origin extension in Google Chrome or Edge, you should probably start looking for alternative browsers or extensions—either way. I've used Firefox on android for a while as android chrome hasn't had adblocking for a long time. Am pretty anti-google these days but it'll take some time to untangle myself from the ecosystem. Anyway, I've largely moved back to Firefox on the desktop too, swapped a few icons about so my muscle memory now opens Firefox instead of Chrome and it's been totally painless. An easy win.

reddalo 2y ago
I think Firefox on Android could be better, but even in its current state is better than Chrome. The next step is start paying for Kagi...
- srmarm 2y ago
  Good call, I've been meaning to try it for a while. It feels a bit like ~25 years ago when Yahoo was this bloated do everything company with a bad search engine and someone showed me this simple website with just a search bar that was super quick with clean results...

kleiba 2y ago

The day my webbrowser cannot run an adblocker anymore is the day I'm saying goodbye to the www. Together with the recent FF news, this is terrible news for the open, user-controlled web.

bustling-noose 2y ago

>We are deprecating the blocking version of the webRequest API. This required extensions to proxy all network traffic to provide filtering capabilities, which came at a performance and privacy cost. The new declarativeNetRequest API provides a safer alternative for many use cases. This is from manifest v3 google page. Is this declarativeNetRequest API not able to provide any filtration ? Proxying traffic does affect privacy, I agree, but that also means that Google is trusting all traffic by default which is another privacy concern. So the privacy concern seems to not make sense except that in one of the two, google loses money because of ads being blocked.

chippiewill 2y ago
It allows for filtering, but in a less powerful way. It'll still block some ads, but anti-ad-blocker tech will have an easier time.

mococa 2y ago

Safari + Wipr is perfect and fast.

kalleboo 2y ago
Safaris ad blocking APIs have the same limitations as ManifestV3
- mococa 2y ago
  It gets 100/100 blocking in my tests, not same for V3.
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating-a-content-blocker https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre... > Apps tell Safari in advance what kinds of content to block. Because Safari doesn’t have to consult with the app during loading, and because Xcode compiles content blockers into bytecode, this model runs efficiently. Additionally, content blockers have no knowledge of users’ history or the websites they visit. This is the same change that ManifestV3 brings - ad blockers can no longer run code to determine if they get to block content or not, they have to supply lists that the browser applies. If you're getting good results that just means you're using good lists.
lilyball 2y ago
This is the same combination I'm using, and it works so well that I really have to wonder if all this handwringing over the move from Manifest V2 to V3 is really worth it. What is uBlock Origin supposed to be able to block that Wipr isn't already blocking?
- mococa 2y ago
  See this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43207606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43207606

stuckkeys 2y ago

Well I guess that will be the last time I use edge. KUNTZ

everdrive 2y ago

Does anyone know if any of the Firefox forks avoid this problem? Librewolf, Waterfox, etc. I know this might not be a long-term solution if Firefox continues to degrade, but it does seem like a valid short term measure.

guerrilla 2y ago
All of them do, including Firefox.

nanis 2y ago

This is why Firefox's changes are so frustrating[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203096

kevincox 2y ago
The perfect opportunity to attract more market share, but instead they are shooting themselves in the foot at exactly the wrong time.

DiabloD3 2y ago

I'm going to be honest, but this is a really weird way for Microsoft to announce Edge is EOL and they can't afford to even hire two or three more developers to perma-fork Chrome and bring the rest of the Chromium community under one roof, away from Google (who is an extremely bad steward of the project). Shame that Microsoft just chose to no longer have a real browser. Oh well, long live MSIE I guess.

sigmoid10 2y ago
It is also a collossal missed opportunity. When Google eventually kills it on Chrome, everyone will switch to the next best thing. Microsoft could have put Edge ahead of Firefox in that game and collected all those users. Since Microsoft's business doesn't revolve around ad-revenue, they don't even have any skin in this game. It's pure lazyness that will only hurt them long-time.
- DiabloD3 2y ago
  Yep. And they don't even have skin in the Windows game. They haven't been the Windows company for... Oh Christ, I'm getting old, since 2014. The day Sataya became CEO they officially became a cloud company. If it wouldn't literally fuck over the entire world, they'd just stop Windows entirely.
account42 2y ago
If microsoft wanted to spend the money required to maintain a browser on their own they wouldn't have moved to Chromium in the first place - the entire point of Edge vs. IE was that they gave that up.

apricot 2y ago

Gotta admire the way they worded the dialog box. "uBlock Origin was turned off. This extension is no longer supported. Edge recommends that you remove it." I have a few decades of experience with the Internet, and even I understood the dialog box as saying that Ublock didn't work anymore. In reality, as the text says, it still works if you click "Manage Extension" and turn it back on. This infuriates me.

norskeld 2y ago
Turned off? How nice of them. Chrome with the last update simply removed 4 extensions I was using, including uBlock.

underseacables 2y ago

You guys are using Edge?

bongodongobob 2y ago
Yeah, I use everything else MS at work, why wouldn't I?

sylware 2y ago

agenda--> next: kernel code deployment _MUST_ go thru them, namely internet or offline storage for clients paying more (A LOT more). next: app installation _MUST_ go thru their store (or the ones from their big tech friends). next: "validated" hardware will have to have _NOT_ "secure boot" you can disable. And now we have a "MicrosoftStation", the new video game console.

jppope 2y ago

Lazy web reminder try Brave or Arc. Ladybird is also looking promising

edem 2y ago

Time to put a dns sinkhole on your network

phendrenad2 2y ago

As one of the few (only?) HN users who uses Edge, I'll wait until this actually reaches the mainline Edge build. If it even does. And then, I'll evaluate the Manifest V3 compatible ad blockers. And if those are inadequate, I'll switch to another browser. But I'm expecting that, as always, this is largely a nonexistent scenario.

remoteambience 2y ago

FreeTube works very well for watching YT videos. They have adblock and sponsorblock. You can subscribe without logging in. You stay out of the ecosystem as it were. This is a cat and mouse game. The overarching issue here is the web embraced the monoculture of Chromium as the basis for browsers. Can we really expect any less? I've had good success with Violent Monkey and scripts from Greasy Fork on every browser I run, which is Edge (work becoz SSO), Chrome, and Firefox. They have never been detected.

remoteambience 2y ago

Serious question: Would it not be possible to build an adblocker that is not browser based but installable? The browsers control what they allow to be loaded (extensions, add-ons). They are forever changing internally. If the blocking was outside the browser, they could do nothing about it. Yes, a type of proxy perhaps, whereby the stream was filtered. Could a type of uBO or similar be created that has lists to filter all traffic through the program?

Izikiel43 2y ago
Pihole?
- remoteambience 2y ago
  I've ran a Pi-hole for years, but increasingly there is 1st-party content and Pi-hole cannot handle this. Likewise for YT videos. Pi-hole cannot handle this issue.
gigel82 2y ago
DNS ad blockers like Pi Hole and AdGuardHome have been around forever. However, in non-free browsers like Edge and Chrome, they can (and do) play all kinds of tricks such as hardcoding DNS servers, cert pinning, fixed DOH routes, etc. which means it's only a matter of time until those stop working as well.
pabs3 2y ago
That wouldn't block crap that is delivered from the same domain as the content, or stuff delivered within the content itself, like embedded ads, or even content advertising (where the content itself is just advertising).

physhster 2y ago

I gave up and started using ControlD instead of uBlock or PiHole. It's been great and well worth the price. Clean, fast page loads.

knowitnone 2y ago

this is funny. This is an opportunity for Microsoft (and other browsers) to gain some marketshare/goodwill and they fumble it.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

dadrian 2y ago

You can install uBlock Origin Lite [1], and get literally the same blocklists but with better security properties. [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/...

emaro 2y ago
Tbh, I trust uBlock Origin more than Edge and Chrome. The security properties of uBo Lite are better but the blocking properties are worse.
cautious-fly 2y ago
Last time I checked it did nothing on YouTube. Has that changed?
e2le 2y ago
It's not an exact drop-in replacement. There are many filtering capabilities that cannot be ported [1] to MV3, filtering lists can only be distributed through extension updates [2], and filtering is unreliable. > Injecting content scripts in a non-declarative way is unreliable in MV3 due to fact that extensions are really service workers which can be suspended at any time. [1]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#filtering-capabilities-which-cant-be-ported-to-mv3 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as... [2]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions-(FAQ)#when-do-filter-lists-update https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...

gorbachev 2y ago

It's a tradegy antitrust enforcement isn't forbidding advertising networks owning / having undue influence on browsers. I think this is heading to a point where lot of power users are simply not updating their browsers any more. Personally I'll take the miniscule chance of being infected with malware due to a security bug on an older version of Firefox over the inability to run uBlock Origin any day. I can recover from malware installation. I can not use the web without an ad blocker. What I'll probably do is use an isolated sandbox environment for any web browsing I need absolute security (e.g. online banking/shopping).

a123b456c 2y ago
The doj v Google ad tech case is awaiting resolution and possible remedies, so we don't know what antitrust allows right now.
- account42 2y ago
  But that is about google fucking over advertisers. Helping advertisers doesn't help me because I don't want to see any ads. Meanwhile the decline of end-user options in browsers remains completely ignored by anti-trus authorities even though that's what got Microsoft/IE slapped in the past.

solardev 2y ago

What's a good Webkit browser to switch to that supports ad blocking? Don't want to use Firefox, too many rendering bugs and performance issues we've run into.

kcb 2y ago
Brave. Either the built in adblocker or you can enabled manifest v2 ublock.
- solardev 2y ago
  Isn't that Blink/Chromium though? Just worried they'll eventually be affected by the Manifestv2 deprecation too.

agigao 2y ago

Today I moved from Firefox & DuckDuckGo to Orion + Kagi. After 21 years of Firefox, that was rather bitter goodbye moment.

wetpaws 2y ago

[dead]

kadomony 2y ago

I think that we'll need to adopt network-level filtering if we want to outsmart the browsers. I haven't looked back since adopting NextDNS and configuring my router to filter all traffic through it. It does a great job of stripping ads out of all my devices connected to it, and that's something I don't mind paying a few bucks for a year (I think it's like $19/year). Check it out here: https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/

Arnavion 2y ago
Unfortunately, the browsers are one step ahead of you. They already have a way to ignore your DHCP-provided DNS and instead use DoH, which you can't inspect and filter easily, especially since it's over the HTTPS port. There is also a proposal for individual web properties to tell the browser what DNS (DoH) servers should be used for further requests to them, so even blocking a few well-known DoH resolvers could become impossible: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9462/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9462/
- kadomony 2y ago
  Ugh. Can't someone please just let us customize how we want to experience the Internet? It seems like a right to repair law. But right to remove. If I know how to take out ads and I want them gone, I should be free to do so.

ryanmcbride 2y ago

Not surprising since they're gearing up to inject ads into their office suite (free tier anyway)

debo_ 2y ago

Does anyone have (educated) qualms about ungoogled chromium? I started using it on a whim awhile ago, and it works great on MacOS and Linux for me with uBlock installed.

Henchman21 2y ago

This arms race between users and ad companies is lost. The users have lost utterly. We DO have an ace up our sleeves should we choose to use it: Stop using any of it

airstrike 2y ago

TIL people are using Edge.

bigpeopleareold 2y ago
Also - there are people forced to use Edge ... Like me. To look at my payslips. Because InTune. I use Firefox for everything else :)

Gormo 2y ago

Thorium (https://thorium.rocks/ https://thorium.rocks/) is a fork of Chromium that maintains a patchset that reverses functional and UI regressions introduced by Google (such as the tabs and menu styling from the 2023 refresh). The author has committed to maintain manifest V2 support for as long as possible.

_23sd 2y ago

I've moved to using systemwide Adguard on my home PCs and Macs. It's not a solution for work devices (my employer doesn't have ads on internal websites so this is not much of an issue), but it frees me from worrying about browser APIs and having to copy my custom filters to every single browser I want to use.

cytocync 2y ago

[dead]