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from the bring-back-common-sense-adctl dept.
Google engineers have proposed changes to Chromium which would completely break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers, ostensibly for "security" reasons.
Per The Register:
In a note posted Tuesday to the Chromium bug tracker, Raymond Hill, the developer behind uBlock Origin and uMatrix, said the changes contemplated by the Manifest v3 proposal will ruin his ad and content blocking extensions, and take control of content away from users.
Content blockers may be used to block ads, but they have broader applications. They're predicated on the notion that users, rather than anyone else, should be able to control how their browser presents and interacts with remote resources.
Manifest v3 refers to the specification for browser extension manifest files, which enumerate the resources and capabilities available to browser extensions. Google's stated rationale for making the proposed changes is to improve security, privacy and performance, and supposedly to enhance user control.
"Users should have increased control over their extensions," the design document says. "A user should be able to determine what information is available to an extension, and be able to control that privilege."
But one way Google would like to achieve these goals involves replacing the webRequest API with a new one, declarativeNetRequest.
[...] Hill, who said he's waiting for a response from the Google software engineer overseeing this issue, said in an email to The Register: "I understand the point of a declarativeNetRequest API, and I am not against such API. However I don't understand why the blocking ability of the webRequest API – which has existed for over seven years – would be removed (as the design document proposes). I don't see what is to be gained from doing this."
Hill observes that several other capabilities will no longer be available under the new API, including blocking media elements larger than a specified size, disable JavaScript execution by injecting Content-Security-Policy directives, and removing the outgoing Cookie headers.
And he argues that if these changes get implemented, Chromium will no longer serve users.
The Register points out that this will not just affect Google Chrome and Chromium, but also Chromium based web browsers such as Brave Browser and Microsoft Edge.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 23 2019, @04:16PM (6 children)
I'm still thinking that maybe Google is still less evil than Microsoft and Facefook. They are busily eroding my remaining faith in them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday January 23 2019, @04:44PM (4 children)
Could be an interesting poll and discussion, come to think of it...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday January 23 2019, @10:35PM (1 child)
Apple's "evilness" is an interesting subject of debate.
On the one hand, they love their walled gardens. These achieve two purposes:
On a related note, Apple has gone pretty hard on privacy and security. And they should - it's a strong differentiator between themselves and Google. Since they don't rely on selling their users' data to survive, they can offer products that protect their customers - something that people are prepared to pay a premium for. Phone security, Apple Pay transaction privacy, and others. These things are good things, and I have no problem with Apple benefiting from offering services that protect their customers' privacy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:01PM
Since iOS is proprietary, how do we know it respects users' privacy? And, even if it does now, how do we know it will continue to do so? Since the software does not respect users' freedoms, users will have no recourse if Apple becomes even more abusive than they already are, other than to stop using the software entirely.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday January 24 2019, @12:55AM
... aka the ELE (Evil League of Evil)
... about which one is Bad Horse?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:30AM
While the others are evil too, I do not think that Microsoft has mellowed.
After all, they have forced updates in Win 10, they are slurping more data then ever before under win10, and they even deceived people to upgrade to their masterwork of data slurping by making Win10 a "security upgrade" forcing people to opt-out instead of opt-in to the upgrade and using deceptive language to trick people to upgrade. And of course the upgrade now in the first year and get it for free... to make people want to upgrade while they can... only to never charge a fee after the year.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday January 23 2019, @10:58PM
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford