5 ms·

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests

by _cenw 1y ago

You are using the inferior way to block ads, which will continue to degrade as advertisers take advantage of Google killing synchronous blocking of web requests with Manifest v2. https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section https://ublockorigin.com/#manifest-v3-section

antfarm 1y ago
Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-Hole?
- stefanfisk 1y ago
  uBlock Origin as linked.
  - antfarm 1y ago
    I see. Your mentioning of Google distracted me, how are they involved?
  - colecut 1y ago
    @antfarm: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/google_v2_eol_v3_rollout/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/google_v2_eol_v3_roll...
    - antfarm 1y ago
      Thanks, but this does not apply to me, not using Chrome is part of my ad blocking strategy.
      - zargon 1y ago
        Safari is limited in the same way as Chrome manifest v3, allowing basically only a URL blacklist. They're crippled compared to uBlock Origin's various other blocking capabilities.
        gruez 1y ago
        Safari extensions can inject scripts/css as well. That's not as full featured as ubo, but is not "basically only a URL blacklist" either.
    - jama211 1y ago
      I’m also going to add for now you can still manually install ublock on the latest chrome by downloading it from GitHub and installing it under manage extensions. For now.
  - tmendez 1y ago
    Also plugging Firefox mobile here if you do any web browsing from mobile. You can add uBlock Origin on Firefox mobile, which you can't do on Chrome mobile.
    - Jalad 1y ago
      But only on Android as far as I know
      - Nursie 1y ago
        Firefox on iOS is a safari wrapper. They do what they can, but they can’t support extensions the same way the Android browser does. It’s a real shame Apple continues to block it from being full-fat.
        _cenw 1y ago
        Orion can. My guess is that it's just not a priority.
        Nursie 1y ago
        From a quick web search, while it supports installing firefox plugins they may not all work as expected due to limitations/differences in the browser APIs, and ublock origin fails to work properly as a result. So IMHO mozilla are probably choosing "Let's not" rather than "Let's deliver a broken experience" As one user on reddit said - "Orion supports Firefox and Chrome extensions. Yes. And you can install them. Yes. Do they work, though? No, most of them don't. Orion is lying about their extension support. "
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  I have found a really amazing way to block ads on websites. It's by not visiting them in the first place. Imagine how well this could work. It's sort of like abstinence and chastity rather than contraception. "Oh you know I love you, let me just have a little for free, and not worry so much about consequences, baby!" Also I found this amazing hack for YouTube and YT Music. I am nearly hesitant to write it down here, lest everyone try it out. I figured out that if I pay them like $20/mo, all the ads disappear from both apps! Can you believe what suckers they are! I fear that this loophole may be closed soon, but for now I'm living high on the hog!
  - antfarm 1y ago
    Nothing wrong with paying for a commercial service. I rather pay with money than indirectly by losing time and being annoyed in the best case and manipulated in the worst case. With the sites that I choose to not visit (Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram) this is not possible, as the attempted manipulation of users is an integral part of the business model. Also, your attempt of being funny is not working, neither is your metaphor.
    - AStonesThrow 1y ago
      > not working No, my friend, what is reprehensible to me is freeloaders who believe that they can just play cat-and-mouse wars by installing software and then scrape whatever web content they want, without giving the company their due expected revenue. This is cheating of the cheapest cheapskate order. It's dishonest, it's disingenuous to say "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like". Perhaps you feel a little guilty, and needed to take a dig at my comment tone in turn? I can understand needing to protect/defend yourself against malice and undue surprises. The web is wild and wooly. I can understand how intrusive and troublesome ads can become. But people with adblockers? They are ruining it for everyone -- raising prices, jacking up the cost to deliver and maintain sites, and in fact, you're to blame for ads becoming more intrusive and more ubiquitous, because how else are they going to get past your damn blockers??? But if you're going to visit a site, and you want to see/read their stuff, then I feel it would be ethical to engage with them on a level playing field. Because how badly do you want their stuff? If the ads turn you off so much, then don't go to the site. I simply find 98% of the Web is not worth my time after this calculus. News sites don't really report news anyway; why should I waste my time. All this Hacker News ethic of cheating with ad blockers and yt-dlp and posting archive.is links to "help you bypass this evil paywall" is just ripping off companies. It is not a victimless crime. It is not working and it is most definitely not funny!
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  Pi holes don't swallow everything, in stream ads like on Youtube and Twitch and served by the domain all make it through the Pi hole approach. It also doesn't allow you to turn it off for a particular page or site either, if you want to allow ads on Phronix you can't do it without enabling that advertiser everywhere since it lacks the context of the DNS calls. The advantage is it works with every browser on every device, its network wide and it blocks a tonne of other calls that aren't made by the browser such as telemetry.
- int_19h 1y ago
  Use a third-party browser with integrated ad blocker - then all this Manifest v3 stuff doesn't matter even if the browser is Blink-based. One example is Vivaldi. Pi-Hole (or better yet AdGuard) is still desirable because it will block ads for other apps and devices. Defense in depth.
skygazer 1y ago
I'm like the parent, on Safari – apparently also using an "inferior" way to block ads that, somehow, inexplicably, works 100% of the time and has never let an ad slip through. Is it supposed to be inferior because it's brittle and requires constant work on the side of the developer? Is it blocking too much and I'm just not aware of it? Is there some new ad tech that it's not prepared for, and can't adapt to, and will fail in the near future?
- grugagag 1y ago
  Me too but expect this to stop working though.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - int_19h 1y ago
    Why? Apple has a vested interest in keeping ad blocking working in Safari - it hurts Google, which is their primary competitor.
    - _cenw 1y ago
      They adopted declarativeWebRequest as the exclusive option for "content blocking" years ago, which requires an actual extension update to change blocked URLs. It allows for some optimizations that look nice on benchmarks, but in reality uBO makes the web faster by getting rid of a lot of tracking requests and javascript. Nobody in the ad industry cared, because Safari's share is so small and plastering Safari users that use this basic adblocking in ads probably would've made them move elsewhere. Chrome doing this however changes the value of working around adblockers, because they now lack the ability to rapidly respond or match with code (that's not regex) or even reading a bit of the response.
- Nursie 1y ago
  It’s inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and it looks an awful lot like the world’s biggest ad company (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less effective for ad and tracker blocking. It’s a good reason to use Firefox.
knome 1y ago
Only for chrome. I finally went back to firefox, recently. I needed to update some of the flag defaults to turn on tab changing with mouse scroll and similar, but they are unlikely to break things like ublock any time soon. I was a frequent profiles user under chrome, and still don't like firefoxes UI there, but just made a bookmark to the profile launching screen. It's good enough.
- kilburn 1y ago
  You may have reasons to require separate profiles. However, keep in mind that firefox multi-account containers [1] address many of the use cases for separate profiles in chrome with an IMHO better UX. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/ca/kb/how-use-firefox-containers https://support.mozilla.org/ca/kb/how-use-firefox-containers
end1snight 1y ago
You all still use the web? I've been transpiling video game frame data into shader, geometry, lighting, color gradient data, and an agent system that mix-n-matches styles. I got into software modding game engines, though. Never cared much for web apps, SaaS. Never much saw the use in paid software since it's just geometry. We made a lot of dumb busy work out of SWE with web apps. DRY? Yes, let's not repeat ourselves still bothering with lame day jobs that obfuscate it's just physical statistics in a machine of known constraints. Am really excited about the rest of the world flipping the US off, nVidia full-steam ahead on autonomously organizing distributed systems. Propping up SWEs props up a dangerous delusion.
- jama211 1y ago
  This genuinely reads like a copypasta.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Scrounger 1y ago
How does Ublock origin compare to using Brave Browser + NextDNS (Pi-Hole in the cloud basically) tho? Because I haven't seen a YouTube ad in a looong time and I don't pay for premium. I just use this combo.

by _cenw 1y ago

antfarm 1y ago

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the superior way? Pi-Hole?

stefanfisk 1y ago
uBlock Origin as linked.
- antfarm 1y ago
  I see. Your mentioning of Google distracted me, how are they involved?
- colecut 1y ago
  @antfarm: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/google_v2_eol_v3_rollout/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/google_v2_eol_v3_roll...
  - antfarm 1y ago
    Thanks, but this does not apply to me, not using Chrome is part of my ad blocking strategy.
    - zargon 1y ago
      Safari is limited in the same way as Chrome manifest v3, allowing basically only a URL blacklist. They're crippled compared to uBlock Origin's various other blocking capabilities.
      - gruez 1y ago
        Safari extensions can inject scripts/css as well. That's not as full featured as ubo, but is not "basically only a URL blacklist" either.
  - jama211 1y ago
    I’m also going to add for now you can still manually install ublock on the latest chrome by downloading it from GitHub and installing it under manage extensions. For now.
- tmendez 1y ago
  Also plugging Firefox mobile here if you do any web browsing from mobile. You can add uBlock Origin on Firefox mobile, which you can't do on Chrome mobile.
  - Jalad 1y ago
    But only on Android as far as I know
    - Nursie 1y ago
      Firefox on iOS is a safari wrapper. They do what they can, but they can’t support extensions the same way the Android browser does. It’s a real shame Apple continues to block it from being full-fat.
      - _cenw 1y ago
        Orion can. My guess is that it's just not a priority.
        Nursie 1y ago
        From a quick web search, while it supports installing firefox plugins they may not all work as expected due to limitations/differences in the browser APIs, and ublock origin fails to work properly as a result. So IMHO mozilla are probably choosing "Let's not" rather than "Let's deliver a broken experience" As one user on reddit said - "Orion supports Firefox and Chrome extensions. Yes. And you can install them. Yes. Do they work, though? No, most of them don't. Orion is lying about their extension support. "
AStonesThrow 1y ago
I have found a really amazing way to block ads on websites. It's by not visiting them in the first place. Imagine how well this could work. It's sort of like abstinence and chastity rather than contraception. "Oh you know I love you, let me just have a little for free, and not worry so much about consequences, baby!" Also I found this amazing hack for YouTube and YT Music. I am nearly hesitant to write it down here, lest everyone try it out. I figured out that if I pay them like $20/mo, all the ads disappear from both apps! Can you believe what suckers they are! I fear that this loophole may be closed soon, but for now I'm living high on the hog!
- antfarm 1y ago
  Nothing wrong with paying for a commercial service. I rather pay with money than indirectly by losing time and being annoyed in the best case and manipulated in the worst case. With the sites that I choose to not visit (Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram) this is not possible, as the attempted manipulation of users is an integral part of the business model. Also, your attempt of being funny is not working, neither is your metaphor.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    > not working No, my friend, what is reprehensible to me is freeloaders who believe that they can just play cat-and-mouse wars by installing software and then scrape whatever web content they want, without giving the company their due expected revenue. This is cheating of the cheapest cheapskate order. It's dishonest, it's disingenuous to say "please send me your web content but only the stuff I like". Perhaps you feel a little guilty, and needed to take a dig at my comment tone in turn? I can understand needing to protect/defend yourself against malice and undue surprises. The web is wild and wooly. I can understand how intrusive and troublesome ads can become. But people with adblockers? They are ruining it for everyone -- raising prices, jacking up the cost to deliver and maintain sites, and in fact, you're to blame for ads becoming more intrusive and more ubiquitous, because how else are they going to get past your damn blockers??? But if you're going to visit a site, and you want to see/read their stuff, then I feel it would be ethical to engage with them on a level playing field. Because how badly do you want their stuff? If the ads turn you off so much, then don't go to the site. I simply find 98% of the Web is not worth my time after this calculus. News sites don't really report news anyway; why should I waste my time. All this Hacker News ethic of cheating with ad blockers and yt-dlp and posting archive.is links to "help you bypass this evil paywall" is just ripping off companies. It is not a victimless crime. It is not working and it is most definitely not funny!
PaulKeeble 1y ago
Pi holes don't swallow everything, in stream ads like on Youtube and Twitch and served by the domain all make it through the Pi hole approach. It also doesn't allow you to turn it off for a particular page or site either, if you want to allow ads on Phronix you can't do it without enabling that advertiser everywhere since it lacks the context of the DNS calls. The advantage is it works with every browser on every device, its network wide and it blocks a tonne of other calls that aren't made by the browser such as telemetry.
int_19h 1y ago
Use a third-party browser with integrated ad blocker - then all this Manifest v3 stuff doesn't matter even if the browser is Blink-based. One example is Vivaldi. Pi-Hole (or better yet AdGuard) is still desirable because it will block ads for other apps and devices. Defense in depth.

skygazer 1y ago

I'm like the parent, on Safari – apparently also using an "inferior" way to block ads that, somehow, inexplicably, works 100% of the time and has never let an ad slip through. Is it supposed to be inferior because it's brittle and requires constant work on the side of the developer? Is it blocking too much and I'm just not aware of it? Is there some new ad tech that it's not prepared for, and can't adapt to, and will fail in the near future?

grugagag 1y ago
Me too but expect this to stop working though.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- int_19h 1y ago
  Why? Apple has a vested interest in keeping ad blocking working in Safari - it hurts Google, which is their primary competitor.
  - _cenw 1y ago
    They adopted declarativeWebRequest as the exclusive option for "content blocking" years ago, which requires an actual extension update to change blocked URLs. It allows for some optimizations that look nice on benchmarks, but in reality uBO makes the web faster by getting rid of a lot of tracking requests and javascript. Nobody in the ad industry cared, because Safari's share is so small and plastering Safari users that use this basic adblocking in ads probably would've made them move elsewhere. Chrome doing this however changes the value of working around adblockers, because they now lack the ability to rapidly respond or match with code (that's not regex) or even reading a bit of the response.
Nursie 1y ago
It’s inferior AFAICT because the API is more limited, and it looks an awful lot like the world’s biggest ad company (Google) has arranged that specifically to be less effective for ad and tracker blocking. It’s a good reason to use Firefox.

knome 1y ago

Only for chrome. I finally went back to firefox, recently. I needed to update some of the flag defaults to turn on tab changing with mouse scroll and similar, but they are unlikely to break things like ublock any time soon. I was a frequent profiles user under chrome, and still don't like firefoxes UI there, but just made a bookmark to the profile launching screen. It's good enough.

kilburn 1y ago
You may have reasons to require separate profiles. However, keep in mind that firefox multi-account containers [1] address many of the use cases for separate profiles in chrome with an IMHO better UX. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/ca/kb/how-use-firefox-containers https://support.mozilla.org/ca/kb/how-use-firefox-containers

end1snight 1y ago

You all still use the web? I've been transpiling video game frame data into shader, geometry, lighting, color gradient data, and an agent system that mix-n-matches styles. I got into software modding game engines, though. Never cared much for web apps, SaaS. Never much saw the use in paid software since it's just geometry. We made a lot of dumb busy work out of SWE with web apps. DRY? Yes, let's not repeat ourselves still bothering with lame day jobs that obfuscate it's just physical statistics in a machine of known constraints. Am really excited about the rest of the world flipping the US off, nVidia full-steam ahead on autonomously organizing distributed systems. Propping up SWEs props up a dangerous delusion.

jama211 1y ago
This genuinely reads like a copypasta.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Scrounger 1y ago

How does Ublock origin compare to using Brave Browser + NextDNS (Pi-Hole in the cloud basically) tho? Because I haven't seen a YouTube ad in a looong time and I don't pay for premium. I just use this combo.